Year: 2020

How To Rate Customer Satisfaction Using Sales CRM Software For Small Business

Maintaining customer satisfaction is extremely crucial for all businesses in modern times. Since it is only by concentrating on measuring customer satisfaction and carrying out necessary changes based on the customer feedback your company will be able to continually enhance the customer experience with your brand and hence retain more customers over the long haul using sales CRM software for small business. Nevertheless, it has been often found that customer satisfaction is an aspect that is overlooked by companies as most businesses focus too heavily on bringing in new customers and too little on retaining the existing ones. But do you know that on average an existing customer in any business spends 67% greater than a new customer, or that it cost 5 to 10 times more to find and onboard new customers than retain the existing ones?

Maintaining customer satisfaction is extremely crucial for all businesses in modern times. Since it is only by concentrating on measuring customer satisfaction and carrying out necessary changes based on the customer feedback your company will be able to continually enhance the customer experience with your brand and hence retain more customers over the long haul using sales CRM software for small business.

CRM can boost conversion rates by 300% - Financesonline Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, it has been often found that customer satisfaction is an aspect that is overlooked by companies as most businesses focus too heavily on bringing in new customers and too little on retaining the existing ones.

But do you know that on average an existing customer in any business spends 67% greater than a new customer, or that it cost 5 to 10 times more to find and onboard new customers than retain the existing ones?

Now, to generate stellar customer satisfaction for users of your brand that can help differentiate your business from the competition, you need to measure your customer satisfaction, using sales CRM software for small business which can be done by using these three primary models, to rate customer satisfaction, so that your customers reward your brand with recurring businesses.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is a widely acknowledge metrics used for measuring customer satisfaction using an easy to use CRM tool that is measured using a scale of 1 to 5.

CSAT is used for gauging the customer’s experience with a particular offering or topic, where customers can rate their level of satisfaction as:

  • Extremely Unsatisfied- 1
  • Unsatisfied- 2
  • Neutral – 3
  • Satisfied- 4
  • Extremely Satisfied- 5

For example, you can ask your customers to rate the quality of your brand’s customer support, on this five-point scale.

To find out CSAT, you can create a survey which can consist of 5 to 10 questions on a given offering or topic, and take the average of responses presented by each customer, which will be considered as that customer’s CSAT score.

Now, once enough responses have been gathered you can consolidate the CSAT sores of the individual customers, add them up and thereafter divide the figure with the total number of respondents, which will help in generating your company’s overall CSAT score using a business CRM software.

Alternatively, you can also draw upon the average score of individual questions, add them up, and then divide it by the total number of respondents to find insights on individual topics, which were there in the submitted list of questions in the survey.

However, CSAT is a stat that measures the satisfaction of your customers on a short-term granular level. Therefore, when this score is used in conjunction with any one of these other two metrics mentioned below, which can be easily found using sales CRM software for small business measuring CSAT becomes more advantageous for your company.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

While you can use CSAT for rating your brand’s customer satisfaction on a short-term, NPS is used for measuring long-term loyalty and satisfaction of your customers, and hence is considered as the better dependable metrics in your all in one CRM for measuring customer satisfaction with your company.

Unlike CSAT which uses several questions for evaluating customer satisfaction, NPS relies on a single question:

“How likely is it for you to recommend our offerings?”

The responses of an NPS survey are measured on a scale of 0 to 10.

While 0 in this survey is considered “least likely”, figure 10 is considered as the “most likely” answer for NPS rating.

Here is a further breakdown of the middle-order ratings in the NPS score:

  • Promoters of your brand (customers who will stay around and buy more and will recommend your brand to others) – 9 or 10
  • Passive respondents (customers who do not have any stronger emotions either way for your brand) – 7 or 8
  • Detractors of your brand (customers who are likely to leave and not recommend your brand to others) – 6 or any lower number in the list

Now rather than calculating simply average like CSAT, here an example along with the math used for calculating Net Promoter Score.

For this, let us assume you have found answers from 100 respondents in your NPS survey, with 80 Promoters (80%), 20 Passive (20%), and 10 Detractors (10%) for your brand.
Therefore, taking these above-mentioned figures, to get the NPS, you need to deduct 10% from 80%, while ignoring the 20% that are Passive respondents to come up to 70%, whereby 70 will be considered as your brand’s Net Promoter Score.

Additionally, unlike CSAT your business can also have a negative NPS, which will happen if there are more Detractors than Promoters in response to your survey.

Therefore, while figure 0 is considered to be a “Good NPS”, a score in-between 50 to 70 is considered “Excellent NPS” and anything beyond that is considered “World-Class NPS” for your brand.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Lastly, to rate customer satisfaction for your business, let us discuss in brief CES, which differs from CSAT and NPS, as it is a customer satisfaction metric that unlike others does not measure the satisfaction of your customers directly.

Rather, CES is a metric that measures the amount of effort the customer had to put in order to complete a specific interaction with your brand.

There are many organizations that use CES using enterprise-level tools or even Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms to access the efficiency of their brand’s customer support activities.

This is because the lesser amount of efforts your customers make while interacting with your company (during the purchase or for clearing their service-related issues) they will remain more satisfied and support your company.

Now, CES is a customer satisfaction rating that is calculated by asking the customer the amount of effort they had to put into an interaction with your brand, on a 5-point scale where:

  • Very low Effort – 1
  • Very high Effort – 5

Hence, while calculating CES a score of or below 2 implies that your business is making life easier for your customers, and your customers are happy, a score of or higher than5 should really make you think again as to how you can better support your customers and take some burden out off their shoulders by revising your business processes.

Conclusion

Therefore to rate customer satisfaction, evaluating the results of either NPS or CES with CSAT and then implementing changes based on customer feedback, is one of the best ways to continually improve customer experience and decrease customer churn over the long haul, which ultimately translates to a bright future and longevity for your business.

Using easy to use CRM software can help generate these above-stated metrics, and thereby provide world-class customer satisfaction for buyers of your products and services as most all-in-one, cloud-based CRM for small business is capable of managing all of your marketing, sales, support, and billing needs and are also priced within your reach.

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How To Increase Lead Conversion Rate in Small Businesses Using The Best Lead Management Software

Do you know how your sales teams are winning your prospects and making them your customers? Does your company have a defined process in place to help your teams qualify their leads so that your salespersons can concentrate their resources and time on the most sales-ready leads in the database of your best lead management software? Are you converting enough MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) sent by your marketing teams? We all know lead conversion is the key to revenue and business growth in any organization. Therefore, here are a few best practices that you can follow for increasing the lead conversion rate of your best lead management software and expand your business more sustainably.

Do you know how your sales teams are winning your prospects and making them your customers?

Does your company have a defined process in place to help your teams qualify their leads so that your salespersons can concentrate their resources and time on the most sales-ready leads in the database of your best lead management software?

Are you converting enough MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) sent by your marketing teams?

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you. - Zig Ziglar Click To Tweet

We all know lead conversion is the key to revenue and business growth in any organization.

Therefore, here are a few best practices that you can follow for increasing the lead conversion rate of your best lead management software and expand your business more sustainably.

Publish A Blog

Blogging is an excellent means to build trust as according to an article published in Forbes:

“The fact is that in the world of today you cannot become an authority simply by declaring yourself as one. Customers are more suspicious, and they want to see you prove it. By producing quality information that’s true and reliable in every blog, you are making sure that you can become that authority.”

This is because we are all aware that converting leads lies at the end of the sales cycle. However, to get to that point whereby the leads will find enough interest to buy your offerings, you first need to acquire the trust of your leads. Your leads need to see your business as an authority in your space and find enough trust that you can support them and ensure their success after using your offerings.

Therefore, with the help of blogging, you can easily make your leads and prospect get engaged with your business once you can solidify your reputation as a subject matter expert or an authority in their mind, which will eventually lead to a higher lead conversion rate.

Integrate Your CRM Software With A Marketing Automation Platform

Most of the sales teams today use easy to use CRM software platforms to move opportunities through the sales pipeline and win deals.
A CRM database stores a gigantic amount of information about every leads in your best small business CRM software system, which includes behavioral and demographic data of your leads, prospects, and customers.

Therefore, when you use an MA (Marketing Automation) solution in conjunction with your business CRM platform, you can easily pull all that contact data stored in the CRM database to personalize your messages that you send to your prospective leads.

This is because, once you send highly relevant messages to your prospects rather than sending one-size-fits-all general messages to everyone in the database of your best lead management software it helps you to better engage with your prospects and increases the likelihood of conversion, as you make your personalization based on the interests, past buying behaviors, and social media activities of your leads.

However, to do this you must integrate your marketing CRM with an MA system, and let them share data in real-time, or use an all in one CRM which comes with inbuilt sales, marketing, and customer support automation, on a single platform.

Set Up A Lead Scoring System In Your CRM

Lead scoring is a process that helps you to identify the most prospective and sales-ready leads in your CRM software’s database. Using a ‘point system’ that aids in indicating the value every leads and prospect represents to your small business organization, you can very easily hone in on the sales-readiness of your leads.

Using the lead scoring process, in your best small business CRM software you can award (and also deduct) points to leads for the actions they take like visiting your website, clicking and opening your emails, downloading your contents, and others.
Additionally, you can even award points to your leads for demographic data (like job titles).

Now as the scores accumulate over time, you need to set up a scoring threshold at which a lead should be considered as an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). When any lead cross that predefined threshold, those leads are then passed over to the sales teams for immediate follow-ups.

Doing this activity aids the sales teams to prioritize their outreach to the most sales-ready leads, and not waste their efforts and time on dead-end leads that are not yet ready to make a purchase.

In other words, lead scoring is a process that improves the quality of your leads.

In a study done by TrackVia in 2018, it was found that 42% of businesses experienced a higher lead conversion rate with lead scoring in their small businesses.

However, it must be remembered that your marketing teams must get buy-in from your sales teams to fine-tune your scoring system and consolidate the alignment between the two teams for developing an effective and successful lead scoring process.

Moreover, you are also advised to reevaluate your lead scoring mechanism once every month since if you find that your marketing teams are passing a lot of MQLs to the sales, of which only a few are getting converted, it can be that you are qualifying your leads to soon. In this case, you must increase the MQL threshold score in your scoring mechanism and fine-tune your lead conversion mapping processes.

Run Lead Generation And Nurturing Campaigns

In order to convert leads, you must primarily generate leads. You can generate leads in many ways, right from using social media to making use of email drip campaigns or even use free lead generation software which you can find in certain lead management software tools.

Now, once you generate new leads, and store them in your CRM platform’s database, you need to nurture the leads through the sales pipeline with a series of touchpoints that will move the leads closer to conversion.

Set Up Killer Landing Pages

As your leads move through the sales pipeline, you need to find a means to capture more information about the leads which will help to increase their engagement with your business over time.

Irrespective of whether you are using an enterprise-level, highly expensive and robust CRM like Salesforce or mostly used by small businesses and startups a Salesforce Alternative CRM software, one of the most effective ways to do this is by creating simple landing pages, with only one objective, to encourage your leads to take an action like register for a webinar, download specific content, request a demo, and others.

Use examples from peers in your industry; check their format, images, contents, and CTA (Call to Action) buttons for creating killer landing pages.

However, always remember to make it amply clear to the visitors in your landing pages, which action you want them to take, how they should take it, and what they will receive in exchange for sharing their personal information with your brand.

When done rightly, using an effective CTA can significantly increase your lead conversion rate.

Incorporate Data Verification

Typically, all landing pages will have forms to collect information about the prospects to store them in the CRM database.

Now, it is also most often found that many people will provide you with false information, like fake email id, or phony mobile numbers to receive your offers.

To avoid this include data verification measures in your lead generation forms, like using reCAPTCHA, and other data verification processes to reduce the accumulation of fake leads in your database, and increase the ability of your sales teams to qualify high-quality leads in the CRM system.

Use Social Monitoring To Find Brand Advocates

Using social CRM which is also known as SCRM software you can practice social listening and social monitoring which will help you to find instant alerts when someone mentions your brand or offerings on the social media platforms.

Therefore, if you find someone speaking positively about your organization or brand and are happy about your products or services, reach out to them to demonstrate your appreciation.

Treating these people with respect and catering to their needs can help you to find brand advocates, those who can be super helpful in promoting your brand and increase conversion rates.

According to a survey done by Nielsen and Forrester Research, it has been found that:

“92% of consumers trust recommendations from brand advocates while only 18% of consumers trust recommendations from industry influencers.”

Routinely Measure Your Lead Conversion Ratio

Routinely measuring your lead conversion ratio aids in keeping track of your efforts. The lead conversion ratio is most essentially the ratio of the number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) that your sales teams have converted to customers over a specific period of time.

Therefore, create and keep a monthly scorecard that can help in tracking these metrics from your easy to use CRM. This is because; maintain insights on how well your lead scoring process is working will aid you to make data-driven decisions, and also find which processes are working and what is broken in the lead conversion workflow.

Takeaway

Lead conversion is what allows you to grow your business. However, you need to carefully plan and execute various tactics to increase your conversion rates.

Therefore, if you are running a small business following the above-stated points and using the best lead management software (which integrates MA and an easy to use CRM), will not only help you automate your lead conversion processes but also aid in streamlining your efforts for rapid business growth.

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How To Build Successful Customer Journey Milestones Along The Digital Transformation Pathway

As the old saying says: “you do not find a second chance to make a first impression”, hence each touchpoint in the customer journey milestones matter throughout the journey of the customer through your brand. In fact, the primary ninety days of a customer relationship with any business can easily determine the outcome whether it has been good or bad. Therefore, businesses must focus and double the efforts to satisfy their customers during these first ninety days which mostly includes processes like implementation, product or service training, and initial relationship cadences, even though it is important to note that the journey to customer success is a constant endeavor and so it never really ends. This is because, post-implementation, you will find most of your customers in your easy to use CRM software’s database will need to feel that they have your company’s support at every level.

As the old saying says: “you do not find a second chance to make a first impression”, hence each touchpoint in the customer journey milestones matter throughout the journey of the customer through your brand.

54 percent of B2B marketers say they feel empowered to collaborate with their sales teams. Click To Tweet

In fact, the primary ninety days of a customer relationship with any business can easily determine the outcome whether it has been good or bad.

Therefore, businesses must focus and double the efforts to satisfy their customers during these first ninety days which mostly includes processes like implementation, product or service training, and initial relationship cadences, even though it is important to note that the journey to customer success is a constant endeavor and so it never really ends.

This is because, post-implementation, you will find most of your customers in your easy to use CRM software’s database will need to feel that they have your company’s support at every level.

As one of the prominent vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms, we have often seen that companies too many times finish their implementation in a proactive manner and then gradually recedes into a reactive state.

Hence, we suggest that the best practice in this digital transformation path is to develop successful customer journey milestones with definite tasks and align them throughout the whole lifecycle of the customer.

Focus on the Entire Journey (Not Just a Single Aspect)

Remember you must never look into one single aspect in your customer journey milestones, but rather one of the main ways to uphold customer successes to focus on the entire journey of the customers through your brand.

This is because once you delve deep into the process, you will realize that your customers undergo and experience several changes through their journey on their pathway.

Hence creating a seamless customer experience or CX throughout their lifecycle aids them to know what they need from your company and in turn, this makes them feel valued, irrespective of where they are in the journey with your brand.

Therefore just after you develop a strong journey, your next goal will be to put metrics or measurements which you can find once you use an all in one CRM software for your business, which will allow you to quickly measure success and optimize pitfalls for further improvements.

For this you must take an outside-in approach and measure metrics that include:

The Customer Journey for Companies of All Sizes

Even though creating a customer journey milestone map is important for any organization that wishes to provide a world-class experience to its customers, it might look different for companies at various stages. For example:

For startup organizations, the journey can be siloed, limited, and even fragmented. This is because at this point, very few processes are in place and so their teams must shepherd the customers across onboarding, renewal, and other critical milestones. Hence customers involved with startup organizations the customer journey might often feel scrappy.

Now for emerging companies, the focus is often on onboarding and implementation touch-points on the customer journey milestones since those are the primary experiences that customers will face with mid-sized businesses. Therefore these organizations work hard to define these processes first and foremost while guiding their customers.

Finally, for scaling and enterprise-level companies, or scaling businesses, the customer journey is defined and executed across the entire Customer Lifecycle and is most strongly proactive in nature.

Someone Always Owns the Moment

If you have heard Walt Disney “someone always owns the moment” is a phrase that he often used in his approach to just about everything.

This is because Disney always understood the consistency of great moments which creates great experiences, and these experiences provide happy memories, and creating awesome memories is how Disney measured success in his wonderland.

Now the same principle also applies to customer experience or CX.

So who owes these moments and when- let us deep dive and find out more:

Best Practices to Create the Customer Success Journey Map Easily

As you develop your customer success journey map, you need to involve your whole team in the process, and it will take a lot of collaborations and alignments to do that.

This is because your goal (the outcome) should be that everyone in your business understands their specific roles and timings in help your customers succeed, and so here are few principles that you can undertake which can help you during the process:

  1. Always use an outside-in approach

Ensure that you view the journey primarily from the customer’s perspective, rather than from your company’s end. This is so since the customer journey map begins at brand impression and thereafter guides the customer towards success (renewals).

  1. Define the handoffs

Identify the handoffs between departments as you build your journey. For this, it should be clear who does what and when?

Additionally, you also need to provide new game plans on how your information will circulate and travel and be consumed between handoff processes within your teams.

  1. Focus on key moments of truth

Always remain vigilant to define success milestones along the journey. For this make it clear to everyone in your teams that these customer journey milestones are actually moments that manifest a customer in moving and progressing and so it implies that they are having success with your offerings, which in other words are known as “moments of truth” in businesses.

  1. Share with customers and provide them insights

Sharing the customer journey map with your loyal customers and having them help you with the process by validating whether things are true or not can help businesses a lot in forming a realistic customer journey mapping program for their company.

Therefore do not feel shy or vulnerable to get their feedback, we can assure you that it will pay its dividends in the long run.

  1. Measure and optimize the journey map

As your organization and customers evolve, remember this map will change accordingly. Therefore do not indulge in mapping the customer journey milestones as you did a year ago.

Hence ensure that you are measuring the results and optimizing your customer’s journey on a regular basis that can foretell business growth.

Conclusion

No matter the stage your company is in right now, as one of the award-winning vendors of sales CRM tools, we can assure you that it is never too early to start thinking about your customer’s journey through your brand, which you can ask by asking questions like:

  • What does your current business process look like?
  • Where do you need improvements?
  • Where and how could you improve your customer journey process?
  • What does a successful customer look; like for your company?

This is because it is only after you have a clear picture of success, you can then work backward to define your customer’s journey, its milestones and delineate hands off that can help you to take customer success from being just a departmental process and move it to the forefront of your company’s culture, vision, and more.

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The Four C’s Of Customer Relationship Management Process That Helps in Business Growth

Simply speaking, the customer relationship management process consists of certain activities that grow relationships with existing customers and new ones. This is because customer relationship management implies nurturing and continuously expanding relationships with the customers while moving prospective customers through your CRM software solution’s sales pipeline. Now CRM is a cutting-edge, intelligent process that happens internally within your organization, however, its impacts are directly experienced by the customers.

Simply speaking, the customer relationship management process consists of certain activities that grow relationships with existing customers and new ones.

The global mobile CRM market will grow 11% to $15 billion worldwide this year as businesses seek to connect with their customers through their mobile devices. Click To Tweet

This is because customer relationship management implies nurturing and continuously expanding relationships with the customers while moving prospective customers through your CRM software solution’s sales pipeline.

Now CRM is a cutting-edge, intelligent process that happens internally within your organization, however, its impacts are directly experienced by the customers.

What Is Involved In The Customer Relationship Management Process?

While CRM is a term that most often relates to the software by the same name (which is created to help businesses stay on top of their deals) the Customer Relationship Management process also involves such skills as attention to detail, listening, and consistency.

Therefore an effective CRM process results in your customers experiencing that you value them and their time.

It is a process that not only helps businesses to establish trust but it even adds value to the relationship by offering the best products and services for their unique and respective needs.

Easy to use CRM software irrespective of whether it is enterprise-level CRM or any other robust and affordable Salesforce Alternative CRM tools mostly used by SMB and startups is just a platform that can be used as a part of the process to do these things more efficiently.

Here is an example:

If a part of your businesses’ CRM strategy is to use the business CRM software to manage prospects and contacts and keep track of your company’s project deliverables, you can organize your contacts by their company name using this cutting-edge and intuitive business growth technology platform.
On the other hand for projects, CRM is a software that can help you get notifications and calendar features integrated within the system to keep your projects on the necessary timeline.

As a consequence, it is a tool that can allow businesses to grow a solid foundation with the correct stakeholders and hand over their deliverables in time, whereby by progressively streamlining the entire workflow, your easy to use CRM can strengthen customer relationships over time.

Now every organization should put forethought into thinking and redefining how they will manage their CX (Customer Experience) since for retaining their customer brands and businesses need to continually create new connections, monitor and track sales opportunities, underrated the customers, and finally their team’s efforts effectively.

Hence your customer relationship management process will not only allow your business to take a proactive approach to understand the requirements and challenges of your prospects but it will also help to actively engage them in your sales strategies.

Now regardless of your industry, each interaction with your current and future customers, once you use a CRM process, will be defined by these four C’s of the customer relationship management process which includes:

  1. CORRELATE

This element of the CRM process includes a series of transactions and interactions that take place between the customer, channel, end-user, and an organization. The data should be collected from all the contact points and also involves communication outside the organization. The information collected from all the sources will provide a better understanding of the customers.

  1. COMBINE

This element of the CRM process includes the mapping and management of the interaction point’s beta customer and the organization. The points of interaction should be carefully managed to ensure the achievement of the goal, for which CRM is processed in an organization.

  1. COGNIZE

The capture and analysis of the detailed information help in getting an insight which helps an organization in creating continuous learning about customer products, channels, markets, and competition from the data warehouse and knowledge base. The overall learning is available through the analysis of the information available.

  1. CONNECT

The insights available in the cognize element can be applied to create relevant interaction or communication with consumers, channels, suppliers, and partners that help to build a valuable relationship.

Conclusion

Now the choice of CRM strategy would be based on the type of customer service to be offered by your business.

It would also include the decision relating to the type of relationship management that would work better for your business and the customers.

There are various strategies available for a customer relationship manager, whereby the customer relationship management process can be co-created with the help of customers. Hence businesses can have a dedicated online CRM community or may also involve the handling of customers with hands-on assistance i.e. the traditional way of dealing with customers for finding business growth.

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Why You Most Essentially Need An All In One CRM Tool For Your Work From Home Businesses

Maybe you have always been a supporter of remoter working. Or maybe your business has recently made the switch because of social-distancing measures bought by this COVID-19 Pandemic in recent times. Whatever be it, either way, your business is now in a situation where your teams are split up in different locations and are connected only by the Internet. Now, most businesses have a question once they go into work-from-home operations: Will remote working affect the team’s productivity and impact their business in a negative way? Do not worry as one of the most popular vendors all in one CRM in the Salesforce Alternative CRM field, let us ease your mind before showing you the best tools that are needed for your job.

Maybe you have always been a supporter of remoter working. Or maybe your business has recently made the switch because of social-distancing measures bought by this COVID-19 Pandemic in recent times.
Whatever be it, either way, your business is now in a situation where your teams are split up in different locations and are connected only by the Internet.
Now, most businesses have a question once they go into work-from-home operations: Will remote working affect the team’s productivity and impact their business in a negative way?
Do not worry as one of the most popular vendors all in one CRM in the Salesforce Alternative CRM field, let us ease your mind before showing you the best tools that are needed for your job.

32% of CRM users belong to the service industry, followed by IT at 13% and manufacturing companies also at 13% - Selecthub Click To Tweet

Can I Run A Successful Business Working From Home?

Now the answer to this question is an easy one as all the signs points towards a resounding yes.

In fact, several studies that have been recently done on remote working highlights how this could actually boost productivity, as it has been illustrated in the survey report presented by FlexJobs Corp., a company which has helped thousands to find the best remote work from their homes:

  • More than 85 percent of businesses say that flexible working improves productivity.
  • More than 77 percent of businesses say that permitting employees to work remote leads to lower operating costs.
  • More than 90 percent of businesses say that a remote and flexible working schedule improves the morale of the employees.
  • More than 65 percent of the respondents in the survey are more productive in the homes than in traditional workplaces.

Hence these statics points out that as employees working from their homes have fewer interruptions and distractions, less commuting and miscellaneous stresses of office politics, and have instead access to a personalized and quiet environment they become more productive while working remotely from their homes rather than from traditional office spaces.

Therefore it is worth noting at this stage that businesses that wish to attract the best talents in the marketplace should absolutely consider remote and flexible working as an option since in the present times 80 percent of candidates in the US job market expressed that they would turn down a job if it did not offer remote working facilities, which makes “work from home” a strong competitive advantage.

The Right Tools For the Job

Of course, remote work is only as good as the people who do it, and the tools that they use. Hence without delving deep into extraneous details, for remote working operations ensure that all your work-from-home employees (and yourself) have access to all the following which include:

  • A fast Internet
  • A good microphone, and webcam for video conferencing
  • Adequate communication software
  • Industry-specific cloud-based software (like an easy to use CRM tool)

In fact, the advantages of using cloud-based all in one CRM software are so many in general, that it is worth examining them further.

ADVANTAGE OF CLOUD-BASED SOFTWARE

Business Continuity With Remote Work

The primary and most obvious benefit is that cloud-based platforms enable remote work. This is because by sharing storage, online tools, and workflows, employees working remotely can easily maintain a good level of productivity from the comfort of their homes via laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other hand-held devices.

Better Peace of Mind

Cloud-computing platforms are designed and created for business continuity and disaster recovery. Hence, while all businesses must have appropriate back-up solutions in case of any data loss, nevertheless this often proves to be an expensive mission for IT departments in establishments of all sizes.

Therefore, with cloud-based technology, like using the best Sales CRM software even small and medium businesses or startups can enjoy a future-proof solution for backup that not only reduces a large expenditure upfront but even save time for the IT teams.

Always Up-to-Date

Traditional in-house IT software solutions also required constant upgrades of hardware and software. Therefore this rip-and-replace approach often proved prohibitively costly, and also overwhelm the IT staff in all businesses every three to five years when systems needed an upgrade.

However, with cloud-based applications like a business CRM tool since their services are hosted entirely by third-party establishments like Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services, and others, third-party companies take care of all the maintenance, bug fixes, and more.

Hence while using a cloud-based app, all you need to do is to click on updates, restart your system, and reap the benefits of the software.

In fact, cloud-based applications make businesses access the very latest business growth technologies available at their fingertips in seconds, irrespective of whether people are doing their jobs from home or from their offices.

Better Integrations

Web-based apps are most often designed to work seamlessly with each other. One great example is the seamless integration between all in one CRM solutions and your Microsoft Office Outlook or QuickBooks Accounting software, which can allow businesses to capture and transfer data directly between these platforms instead of going through a third-party program like Excel.

Save on IT Expenditure

Finally, cloud-based software solutions are the most cost-effective than their traditional setups. We say this because in a recent study done of cloud-based apps across 1300 organizations in the US it was found that 54 percent of these organizations increased their profits through cloud services. Thanks to reduced investments in the purchase of data center, cheaper updates, and fewer expenses for IT equipment or facilities.

ONE SHARED CLOUD-BASED CRM, AND ITS MULTIPLE USES

If you still need to convince yourself about the power of cloud-based software, do consider the following which can drastically reduce the number of tools that you currently use for your business growth.

This is because according to research it has been found that businesses with fewer than 1000 employees run on an average 22 custom applications and so it is always beneficial to centralize operations using an easy to use CRM within one dashboard.

Here are a number of use cases that you can experience once you use a cloud-based easy to use CRM for your business growth.

Seamless coordination between multiple sales teams

Once you use a cloud-based all in one CRM you can synchronize the lead and prospect data in real-time with all members of your sales teams, which reduces errors, data silos and eliminates annoying duplicates from your system which is a bane to businesses.

Faster marketing campaigns

Using a cloud-based business CRM marketers can create personalized campaigns and also track social-media activities in real-time, which helps them share results with their team members immediately so that the campaigns can be adjusted or tweaked to improve targeting.

Increased customer satisfaction

Since cloud-based CRM solutions let your customer service team always have access to fresh data about the customers, this helps in providing better support and more appropriate answers to the customer-facing issues.

Better cross-department cooperation

Even though marketers often have a notorious hands-off approach towards a CRM tool, since they believe CRM is mostly needed by the sales team, nevertheless sharing one dashboard teams from all departments in any organization can create enhanced workflows, boost communications and even provide critical insights that might have otherwise been locked inside data silos.

Takeaway

Businesses that are yet to implement a remote and flexible working policy may find the prospect daunting since it needs close collaboration between employees and executives.

Nevertheless, in the modern time businesses those who resist work-from-home or remote working can put them at a competitive disadvantage, especially with the onset of this global COVID-19 Pandemic, and so must view this mode of working as a must for attracting top-talents and for this use cloud-based applications like an easy to use CRM tool for enjoying a consistent business growth.

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How To Strategically Track Leads and Create Effective Engagements Using Marketing CRM Platform

Finding new leads and acquiring customers that are new is the lifeline of all businesses irrespective of their size big or small. Moreover, in modern times, many organizations think that satisfied customers and referrals are the best sources for acquiring new leads especially when they are using a marketing CRM platform for finding revenue growth. Hence the above-stated fact is undoubtedly a sound principle and is also a marketing strategy to strive for. However, unless you are tracking and measuring the sources of your leads, this tactic is anecdotal and becomes a little more fanciful idea than company lore.

Finding new leads and acquiring customers that are new is the lifeline of all businesses irrespective of their size big or small. Moreover, in modern times, many organizations think that satisfied customers and referrals are the best sources for acquiring new leads especially when they are using a marketing CRM platform for finding revenue growth.
Hence the above-stated fact is undoubtedly a sound principle and is also a marketing strategy to strive for.

The average CRM user adoption among sales professionals is 73% and the average ROI period is 13 months. Click To Tweet

However, unless you are tracking and measuring the sources of your leads, this tactic is anecdotal and becomes a little more fanciful idea than company lore.

Here are a few tips that will help you in your lead tracking activities using easy to use CRM as a business growth technology for your company:

Get the Facts Right

Generally, leads are generated by innumerable sources, such as self-generated leads by the sales and marketing teams, or referrals from employees, vendors, clients, and business partners of an organization. Therefore, without thoughtful plans and campaigns to cultivate and get engaged with these lead sources, it is very natural to lose control what are the lead sources that work best for your organization and has the ability to meet your goals.

Giving some thought to these best practices for lead tracking, we are sure, you will for sure quickly see gaps that need to be addressed as noted below:

  • Primarily, make sure how many leads you desire to generate by source. To take this step further you can set a monthly/weekly goal for your marketing and sales teams for each kind of leads that you want.
  • Next, communicate your lead acquisition expectations to your marketing, sales, and customer support teams. For in case they are unaware of what you are shooting for, they cannot support you or align their daily activities, with what that are needed to meet your set goals.
  • Conduct outreach and create marketing campaigns using a marketing CRM platform for engaging with each lead acquisition groups, through SEO, social media, event marketing, and traditional inbound marketing programs.
  • Finally, buy a business CRM to conduct lead tracking, measure, and analyze your results. Since this is the only way by which you will be able to know your campaign’s success and make you understand if your leads are coming from the expected sources and to the extent that you expect them to meet your company’s needs.

Track and Measure in CRM

Enterprise-level CRM platforms like Salesforce or Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions mostly used by small and medium businesses have quite a few functionalities for tracking and comparing real-time lead results to your lead source objectives.

Here are a few steps that you can follow to set up all the needed elements that can ensure an accurate and meaningful analysis of your lead acquisition skills.

  • Establish your primary lead sources with an all in one CRM Apart from traditional lead sources such as banner ads, trade shows, referrals, and SEO, be sure that you also include marketing campaigns to measure the overall effectiveness of your lead acquisition plans and tweak accordingly to improve upon the end results.
  • Create deeper levels of details for activities that produce a lot of For example, trade show leads can be broken down to names of all the trade shows that forms a significant part of your businesses’ event marketing strategy. Similarly, referral leads can be subdivided into vendors, customers, and business partners once you segment the leads inside your CRM database.
  • Establish your goals by entering the expected numbers of leads that you require from each source.
  • Once you a marketing CRM platform associates every contact and new accounts entered in the software, with a specific campaign or lead source.
  • Identify by lead tracking as proof around your effort, which lead source tracks best from opportunities through to sales.

Takeaway

Therefore if you already know what is a CRM, now applying these best practices will not only help you to find superior control over lead generation skills but it will also aid in improving the effectiveness of your sales and support reps using this business growth training and tools in finding your best and most loyal customers.

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Sales Lead Definition With Examples – For Generating New Leads On The Go

Generating sales leads is one of the most critical aspects of every company’s marketing and sales process. This is because finding promising leads and thereafter converting them into loyal customers is an important part of any company’s workflows, ensuring that their business continues successfully, Therefore if you are interested in knowing the sales lead definition with example and how they factor into the sales process, primarily you need to know what they are and how businesses find them from the marketplace.

Generating sales leads is one of the most critical aspects of every company’s marketing and sales process. This is because finding promising leads and thereafter converting them into loyal customers is an important part of any company’s workflows, ensuring that their business continues successfully.
Therefore if you are interested in knowing the sales lead definition with examples and how they factor into the sales process, primarily you need to know what they are and how businesses find them from the marketplace.

You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise. - Patricia Fripp Click To Tweet

So let us look over here at different types of sales leads and after that discuss some of the effective lead generation methods which can bring more sales revenue to your business and, consequently, profits within a very short time.

What are sales leads?

A sales lead is an individual or company that has the potential to become a paying customer.

Therefore leads are prospects at the earliest stages of becoming a loyal customer.

In fact, leads are people or organizations that have expressed interest in the offerings of a brand by undertaking some sort of action, which can be clicking on a link or filling out a form.

Hence to turn a lead into a customer, businesses must first contact the lead and then provide information and data about their products or services to close the sale.

There are in general three types of leads which most of us have learned in our business growth training that includes:

  • Cold leads

A cold lead is an organization or an individual who practically knows nothing about your brand or your offerings.

It can always be that a cold lead may not have shown any specific curiosity or interest in your offerings yet- but still, they could be a perfect fit as your consumer.

Hence in order to appeal to the cold leads, the members of your sales team must remain extra careful not to overwhelm them with information, but rather present a concise introduction of your brand and your business and provide them a low-risk opportunity to interact with your offerings.

There are several businesses that purchase cold leads using professional lead generation services from the marketplace that meet geographical and demographical criteria and thereafter exert considerable efforts to persuade the lead to become their customers.

  • Warm leads

These leads are the entities that have demonstrated some interest in a company’s offerings but have not yet expressed any desire to make a purchase.

Now warm leads that you have in your easy to use CRM software’s database, might respond to a brand’s social media post or have filled out a form to receive more information about a certain offering that your company sells in the marketplace.

Warm leads can also be those who are interested in a company’s brand or mission but have not made any commitment to support the company monetarily or people who have contacted the company in the past or have responded to the company’s general marketing efforts and so have the potential to become customers with a relatively small amount of effort.

  • Hot leads

Finally, the hot leads (the most sought-after leads for any business) are individuals or companies who have expressed a positive desire to purchase a certain offering that you sell in the marketplace.

Now hot leads, in general, are well-informed on the product and services sold by your company, they are also agreeable to the price.

Hot leads are mostly consumers who have received a recommendation for your brand, conducted in-depth independent research, and have decided to purchase on their own.

There might be also hot leads in your sales CRM software’s database that might have originally been cold or warm leads that were effectively converted by the sales and marketing teams.

For the hot leads mostly the only effort required by the company is closing the sale and completing the transaction.

Where can you find new leads?

Now that you know the sales lead definition with examples here are several effective and time-tested methods that businesses use to find and generate leads.

Therefore as one of the best vendors of CRM for small and medium business and startups, here are some of the best lead generation practices for SMBs.

1. Website

The most basic tool that any business need for lead generation is a website that effectively features your company’s mission, vision, pricing, and offerings.

Actually, websites are landing pages to which all other lead generation tools and methods are redirected.

Now the website of your company should present your brand’s offerings in a way that must appeal to a wide range of customers.

Most importantly the website should also request the visitors to input their contact information as soon as they arrive at the home page.

There are several methods you can attract visitors to your website which includes email marketing or ensure that your website appears in the search engine results by using effective SEO techniques that can make your brand show up on the first page.

The technique used for website lead generation, in general, takes the form of a pop-up that greets the visitor and asks them to type their email address into a field after which once the company receives the visitor’s email address they send the visitor a series of follow-up emails that contains more detailed information about their offerings and also invite the lead to contact customer support if they have any other questions on their mind.

2. Social Media

Another most effective tool that is used nowadays for the generation of leads is social media platforms.

This is because, creating a company profile for services like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provide opportunities to businesses for promoting their brand and offerings to millions of users on the internet.

However, to generate leads using social media platforms, you need to post contents that are relevant to your brand on a regular basis and thereafter invite viewers to interact with your company.

You can share polls, quizzes, contests, and giveaways on your social media platforms that can, not only keep your followers engaged but also set your brand apart from other competitors in the marketplace.

Now the ultimate goal of all social media activities will be to direct your brand’s followers to your business website or any other landing page where they can purchase your offerings.

As a leading vendor of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we have found that promotions like online discounts, free trials, or free of cost shipping and installation can help to persuade leads found in social media to be a customer.

3. Customer Referral System

Finally one of the other effective types of lead generation is a customer referral system, whereby companies provide incentives to their existing customers to refer their brand to their family, coworkers, friends, and relatives.

Now, this is a highly effective and beneficial lead generation tactic since over here the potential leads are more likely to trust a recommendation from their known ones and so these leads are mostly “hot leads” which are low hanging fruits that are easy to close and so are cherished by most companies.

Takeaway

Even though there are many other ways to find leads for your businesses, nevertheless these three tried and tested methods have bought revenue for most B2B and B2C companies.

However, it must be remembered that any lead generation strategy needs patience and time and also a whole lot of A/B testing to get to a situation where it puts your brand to find more leads.

So be wise with your marketing efforts and do not be lured by shady lead generation techniques that promise to find your business excellent leads from the marketplace.

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5 Types Of Customer Sales And Their Behaviors To Generate The Highest Profits Easily

Customer sales always play a significant role in any business. Hence to understand your customer’s behaviors and to better allocate resources to different customers for generating the highest profits we feel like one of the leading vendors of sales CRM software for small business it is utmost necessary that businesses irrespective of their size and industry must be able to identify and thereafter segment different types of customers using a business CRM tool. This is because it is only by better understanding the different types of customer sales, businesses can be better equipped to develop effective and successful strategies that can help in rapid business growth.

Customer sales always play a significant role in any business.

Hence to understand your customer’s behaviors and to better allocate resources to different customers for generating the highest profits we feel like one of the leading vendors of sales CRM software for small business it is utmost necessary that businesses irrespective of their size and industry must be able to identify and thereafter segment different types of customers using a business CRM tool.

44% of businesses are planning to increase IT budgets in 2021, up from 38% in 2020. This is not just to keep up with their competitors, but also as a result of improving sales.- SuperOffice Click To Tweet

This is because it is only by better understanding the different types of customer sales, businesses can be better equipped to develop effective and successful strategies that can help in rapid business growth.

What are the Different Types of Customers?

In the retail industry, consumers can be divided into five main types which include:

1. Loyal customers: Even though these customers make up a smaller percentage of customer sales, nevertheless this customer base generates a large portion of sales and revenue.

2. Impulse customers: These customers do not in general have any specific product or services in their mind but they purchase when it seems good at times.

3. Discount customers: These customers shop frequently but base their valuable buying decisions primarily when the market is down.

4. Need-based customers: These customers come with the intention of buying a specific offering.

5. Wandering customers: These customers are not sure of what they want to buy.

Type #1 – Loyal Customers

The loyal customers are the most important segment of the customers that all businesses must appease and should keep on top of their mind.

According to research, it has been noted that this type of customer, in general, represents no more than just 20 percent of any company’s customer base. Nevertheless, they contribute to the majority of sales revenue.

As the name suggests loyal customers are not only loyal but they even value a product or service heavily.

Additionally, loyal customers are more likely to recommend their preferred brand’s products and services to other people.

Hence it is important to always solicit their feedback and inputs and even involve them in a company’s decision-making process since heavy emphasis must be placed on loyal customers if a company wants to grow rapidly.

Type #2 – Impulse Customers

After the loyal customers impulse customers are the best customers to upsell and so are the most attractive segment in the customer-base to focus on.

These customers do not have any specific list in their mind and buy products and services spontaneously.

Additionally, these consumers are typically open and receptive to recommendations on new offerings.

Hence these customers are second to loyal customers in the generation of revenue in sales and so keeping impulse customers in the loop on new offerings goes a long way in boosting a company’s profitability.

Type #3 – Discount Customers

These customers in your CRM database play an important role in turning over a brand’s inventory. Hence discount customers are a key contributor to a company’s cash flow during holiday season sales or while implementing Christmas sales strategies of a company.

As it has been observed discount customers seldom purchase at full price and mostly shop around when the markets are down.

Now, these customers are resistant to upselling and are also the least loyal type of customers, that typically move on when they find better markdowns – elsewhere.

Type #4 – Need-Based Customers

These customers are typically driven by a specific need.

In other words, these customers enter the retail stores and online e-commerce portals quickly, buy what they require, and leave.

Need-based customers only purchase for their specific need or occasion and so are hard to upsell.

It is critical to note over here, that these customers can be easily drawn by other businesses both in B2B and B2C market landscapes.

Hence it is important that brands must initiate positive personal interactions with this segment of customers in order to retain them for a longer time.

Additionally, converting need-based customers to loyal customers is very much attainable with the right positive personal interactions and nurturing that can be fostered with the help of an easy to use CRM tool.

Type #5 – Wandering Customers

Finally, wandering customers are the type of customers that draw the largest amount of traffic and footfall to the company. Nevertheless, they make up the smallest percentage of any brand’s sales revenue.

This is because wandering customers do not have any specific requirement nor desire in their minds and are mostly attracted by the location of the business more than anything else.

However, these types of customers in the retail shopping marketplace enjoy the social interactions of their shopping experiences.

Hence investing too much time trying to please this segment of the customers can draw your business away from the more revenue-earning segments.

Now even though wandering customers generates the minimum amount of sales revenue, providing intuitive and insightful information about your offerings to these customers can stimulate interest which can ultimately create customer sales resulting from a purchase.

Conclusion- Flexibility Is The Key

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you will probably never meet a lot of customers who will perfectly fit one of the aforementioned types since most of them will be a mix of different sorts of personalities.

Hence even though it can be difficult to personalize your customer service efforts for each individual types, nevertheless, as a vendor of CRM for SMB we suggest that the best strategy is to get to know these five core type of customers, recognize the customer your are dealing with and thereafter adjust your communication strategy based on our business growth ideas accordingly.

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