Year: 2020

How To Recapture Dormant Customers Using The Best CRM For Small Business

Smart business owners and sales representatives in all businesses using the best small business CRM system know the necessity to focus their efforts on retaining customer that are loyal as much as they need to pay attention to the acquisition of their new ones. We say this because it is much convenient to sell to the present customers rather than hunt around for finding new ones.

Smart business owners and sales representatives in all businesses using the best small business CRM system know the necessity to focus their efforts on retaining customer that are loyal as much as they need to pay attention to the acquisition of their new ones.

We say this because it is much convenient to sell to the present customers rather than hunt around for finding new ones.
According to Forrester reports, the chances of selling to previous customers of your brand are 60- 70%, while the chances of selling are 5-20% for new ones.
Moreover, in the same report, it has also been suggested that existing customers are also likely to spend on an average of 31% more than customers who are new.

Nevertheless, it is a common trait with several organizations, to abandon the existing buyers of their products and services when customers stop responding to their marketing efforts.

But, why should you abandon a customer who has already done business with you?

Hence, even if an existing customer has not responded for a long time, marketing expenses are still better spent on wooing existing but dormant customers than finding new ones.

The chances of selling to previous customers of your brand are 60- 70%, while the chances of selling are 5-20% for new ones - Forrester Click To Tweet

Now as finding new business is 4-10 times more expensive than reactivating dormant customers, here are three unique strategies that startups and small businesses can make use of to recapture the unresponsive customers stored in their CRM database:

Strategy #1

Email retargeting

By using email-retargeting strategy, you can use retargeting-cookie to set off ads on the web pages that your customer visits, after they click on the emails that you have sent them.

However, what happens if your customers are not clicking on the emails that you are sending or ignoring them completely?

Well, for this you can create a special email list of all your existing dormant customers and start an ongoing email campaign using your best small business CRM system just targeted to your inactive customers.
You can even upload this list to your retargeting program, so that people who are included in the list in your best CRM for small business will start viewing the ad’s of your brand’s across their social media websites and other web pages, without even having the necessity to click on your emails.

Strategy #2

Personalized Messaging

There are even instances when a dearth of customer activity can also occur because of your fault.

Hence, once your customer makes a purchase, always make sure that you follow up on that customer with targeted personalized messages using your best small and medium business CRM software that reflects your customer’s preference and add value to the customer’s experience with your company.

The entire point of collecting and analyzing your customer’s data with the help of the best small business CRM platform is to find out what makes your customers buy and then launch an effective marketing campaign that targets the interests of your active customers.

Using business growth technology like CRM you always have the advantage of understanding the habits and obtain the purchase histories with your existing customer. Occasionally, you can even remind your dormant customers as to how much they wished for a specific product, and send them communication with a money-off for that offering.

Additionally, you can also put forward new services and products that your existing customers might like which can be easily assumed based on their past behaviors and previous purchases.
Hence the more pertinent are your approaches in marketing, the bigger the chances you will have to recapture their businesses using your best small and medium business CRM software platform for rekindling your sales growth.

Strategy #3

Deep Linking

When you are trying to reactive your dormant customers, try to make it as easy as it is possible to make your customers take their desired actions. For this, while doing in-app marketing, always remember to include ‘deep linking’, which generates a shortcut connection to the product page that your customer is interested, without making the customer even reach on your businesses’ homepage and then search for the required product using the search bar.

It is of utmost importance that for customers who have remained unresponsive to your marketing efforts, you must primarily remove all the obstacles from their path, to make them purchase your products easily once again.

For this, many small and medium businesses also trust in sending app notifications or SMS messages with an exact link to the product that a particular customer was interested to buy in the past using SMS sending applications integrated with their best CRM for small business.

Takeaway

As re-engaging inactive ‘gone-but-never-forgotten’ customers is at all times more worthy as an investment, we are sure you will find these three strategies extremely helpful, and as a user of best small business CRM, find rapid business growth.

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Ways To Jointly Improve Customer Experience And Service In 2020

Customer Experience aka CX and Customer Service have enough of sobering stats to consider for business growth. Here are two of our favorites: In 2017, more than 54 percent of the consumers in the USA had greater expectations for customer service compared to prior years; the expectation of the consumers jumped to 66 percent for consumers aged from 18 to 34 years old – Microsoft It takes a minimum of 12 positive experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative experience – Ruby Newell-Legner

Customer Experience aka CX and Customer Service have enough of sobering stats to consider for business growth . Here are two of our favorites:

  • In 2017, more than 54 percent of the consumers in the USA had greater expectations for customer service compared to prior years; the expectation of the consumers jumped to 66 percent for consumers aged from 18 to 34 years old – Microsoft

  • It takes a minimum of 12 positive experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative experience – Ruby Newell-Legner

On a more optimistic note:

  • It was observed in a study done across 20 industries a modest boost in CX would help increase the revenue of a typical $1 dollar business, on average to $775 million over the next forthcoming three years – ROI of Customer Experience

  • Just a 5 percent boost in the retention of the customers can lead to a 25-100 percent increase in profits for your brand (whether it be through referrals, up-sells or repurchases) – The Loyalty Effect

Hence reading through these stats it is amply clear that customer expectations are high, and so the requirement for delivering quality customer service and product experiences leads to larger business growth.

It takes a minimum of 12 positive experiences to make up for just one unresolved negative experience - Ruby Newell-Legner Click To Tweet

Now as problems will always occur and it is hard to avoid the inevitable, whereby consumers will reach out to customer service, nevertheless, while many business leaders believe that just quality service to the customers will suffice but in reality, it is not good enough to simply just answer phone calls or respond to emails and chats quickly.

Therefore in this article let us consider how your business can focus on making an impact in 2020, by resolving to deliver great CX and customer service by diving deeper and collaborating with teams outside the customer service department to address the underlying reasons for the problems that customers face with brands.

Working across departments

It has been observed times and again that it is common for departments to operate in their own silos, without connecting with others.
Now, while this is indeed truly unfortunate, the isolation of especially ‘customer service’  is detrimental for businesses.

This is because, beyond serving as a voice of the company and a friendly face, customer service in any organization brings additional value to the company. By acting as the ear and eyes into the customer base, customer service can offer extremely valuable insights and eye-openers into the problems that customers are experiencing.
For example, products arriving with unclear instruction manuals, broken or missing parts, billing issues and more- all in a day’s work.

The issue is that these problems all originate (an can also be resolved) outside of customer service. Therefore, to address them properly it requires help from another team, and this is the very reason why customer service must create and maintain strong connections with other departments within the organization where those real solutions can be resolved easily.

With solid working relationship along with a shared purpose to raise the bar on Customer Service and Customer Experience, customer service can work in tandem with other teams to do more than just simply provide a workaround, and can address the core problem to resolve their customer-facing issues.

Discovering the root cause

Even though it is necessary to satisfy the consumers of your offering(s) with a sensible resolution in a timely manner, however when brands limit their responses to just repeating one-time answers they most often miss the opportunity to deliver permanent solutions to their customers since the fundamental cause underlying the problem continues to exist.

For example, the issues faced by customer service which have been cited earlier mostly comes as a broken process that originates somewhere outside of customer service in the company.

Like issues with products are results of problems of the quality control team in engineering or manufacturing departments of an organization. Similarly, billing issues happens when finance makes a mistake.

Well, it is true that customer service can provide the necessary details as to how the problem impacts the customers or how widespread is the issue, however, they just cannot provide the change required to stop the issue from recurring for the affected customer as well all the future customers, since the real solution to the problem lies elsewhere, and customer service must, therefore, work with other teams to identify the root cause.

Hence, once the root cause has been located, customer service can continue to work with the appropriate team to develop a solution to the issue.

Now, problems can arrive in diverse orders of magnitude, and so customer service and the team in question in your organization must work collaboratively on the best solution and thereafter if the issue affects all the customers a business process change might be necessary since if cent percent of the customers are affected by a specific problem, it neither portray a quality image of the brand nor can service teams carry on servicing all customers with the same issue over a prolonged period of time.

However, if the issue is of a lower priority or only a small group of customers is affected with a lower CX impact, other opinions can be accommodated whereby it might be more lucrative to provide a workaround touching a not so large subset of your consumers rather than totally recall a product or service for its issues.

For example, if the involved customer segment is small, and you buy CRM as a business growth technology for streamlining your business process and workflow, alternatives like using a knowledge base for automated self-service can be utilized to deliver adequate solutions to problems that are smaller in magnitude.

Maintaining visibility and accountability

When the customer service team and any other team in your company agrees to a process change or a workaround, the team owing the solution to the issue goes to work, even though the customer service’s job does not end here, as with the other team working on the solution, customer service still is required to know when the solution will be ready and deliverable to the customers of your brand.

It is only immaculate workflow that can make this possible, and so part of any customer service platform like an all-in-one easy to use CRM solution not only provides full visibility but also total accountability and also a timeline from issue identification till solution delivery. So that once the required repair is ready the customer service team can notify presently affected customers. Hence being spared from taking supplementary calls, chat, and emails on the same issue.

Improving customer service and CX jointly

When customer service in any organization operates in a silo, the status quo is maintained and nothing improves at the end.

This implies that in such an environment, even though the service might be satisfactory, but more importantly the CX does not get any better.

World-class Customer Service and Customer Experience can only be catered as a team when the customer service connected to the length and breadth of the entire organization. Since by doing this customer service can triage the issues, work cooperatively with other teams in the company to raise the complains, identify the real cause, discuss and agree on a solution and thereafter use workflow to monitor the resolution through to its conclusion.

This is because by dealing with the root cause, not only the existing customers of any brand benefits from receiving a permanent fix but it also ensures that future customers are never bothered by the same problem which ultimately improves CX and even helps the customer service be nullifying the need to address the same issue once more in row.

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Buy CRM To Decrease The Cost Involved For Running Your Business

Are you still in the era of printing out documents and adding your comments by pencil? Are you still printing documents and adding them to your file folders? Well, if it is so, then buy CRM as it is a business growth technology platform that can help you to become more digitally organized and therefore reduce costs in your office. Many among us use social media to advertise our businesses online yet we still incur a high paper wastage that costs us both time and money. According to a recent survey done in 2017, it has been found that 58% of office in Europe store paper records on their office premises rather than adopting a digital system, and out of them 2% of businesses has no structure for archiving their client communications. So how can we create an exceptional customer service, bring in loyal customers, and at the same time lessen the use of administering papers?

Are you still in the era of printing out documents and adding your comments by pencil?
Are you still printing documents and adding them to your file folders?
Well, if it is so, then buy CRM as it is a business growth technology platform that can help you to become more digitally organized and therefore reduce costs in your office. Many among us use social media to advertise our businesses online yet we still incur a high paper wastage that costs us both time and money.

Cloud CRM usage has grown from 15% in 2010 to 97% in 2019- SuperOffice(2020) Click To Tweet

According to a recent survey done in 2017, it has been found that 58% of office in Europe store paper records on their office premises rather than adopting a digital system, and out of them 2% of businesses has no structure for archiving their client communications.

So how can we create an exceptional customer service, bring in loyal customers, and at the same time lessen the use of administering papers? Digital record management gives you:

  • Improved business process through speedier retrieval and access of information
  • Make better-informed decisions through faster access to all right information
  • Better service delivery as the right information can be located quickly
  • Reduced staff time looking for information
  • Lesser compliance cost and increased ability to provide timely, accurate and transparent responses
  • Cost savings from less storage, creation, handling, and retrieval of paper records

Every business initiative starts with a singular person and so here are 8 workable tips on how you can organize your day and be on the way to digitally manage your growing organization.

  1. Plan your tasks and activities ahead

When you have several ideas and a multitude of agendas on your mind, it is impossible to do ‘everything’ at once. Therefore, sit in front of your diary and plan the different tasks over a period of time. However, make sure that your hard priorities do not get disturbed and so keep some open room for unexpected and important tasks that may come up in-between.

  1. Log everything

As with your database, your dairy is only good if you keep it updated every day. Write down in your dairy everything right from your colleague’s birthday to ordering flowers and management meetings. Not only does this help you but it also provides your colleagues and not to forget the front desk, an overview of your day or week. However, remember to make all your private bookings only visible to you.

  1. Avoid the Print button

Although it may depend on the job that you have as to what is really necessary to print. Nevertheless, in truth, most of us do not need much paper in today’s digital world. Hence, if you use an easy to use CRM you can conveniently save all your documents, emails, and activities as Projects in your CRM platform.

  1. Share electronically

Once you buy CRM it can help you to share your documents and emails, since using business growth technology you can have all your information stored in one place where they are traceable. Additionally, you also save time by not having to send an email to for example your sales group, and the possibility that your “crucial” messages do not get lost inside hundreds of other emails. You can also use applications like WeTransfer or FTP for sharing bigger files.

  1. Use electronic templates

There are several organizations that waste a lot of their time building templates for advertising, sales offers, invitation, and others. However, if you digital library available for your organization in your lead management software you will not only save money but also a lot of time by not inventing new templates and instead focus on your original work. Moreover, doing this will ensure a uniform profile and verbiage in all your outbound communications, which will be in accordance with the policy upheld by your company.

  1. Reporting

Are you getting tired of endless hours putting together an Excel spreadsheet with the latest sales figures in your sales pipeline? Today we all have to put in our optimal performances and show results to the management, and to do that we need to take out data from several sources, for example, sales by week, months or quarters or by the open rates on the e-marketing mailers. However, if we buy CRM, we can easily find all the sales data in one system and therefore take out standard reports or even if needed add an Analytics module to get the data reproduced in chart formations on the CRM’s dashboard.

  1. Contact information

Have you ever used Google or Yahoo to find company information or looked into a corporate website to find out information about a contact person? It is true that when a company does not have a contact database or a business directory, it becomes time-consuming for the employees of that organization to quickly find the relevant information. Therefore, having all the personal and company data in one place benefits the organization in several ways. Hence if your organization has an easy to use CRM system you can search for everything, for example, if you just have an email address you can search for all the related information tagged with the email which is there in your CRM database .

  1. Mailing lists

Are you buying your prospect lists from external agencies, if you do, we recommend to not to do it anymore? Start building your own prospect list, since this proves to be better leads and cheaper in the long run. Adding a call to action buttons to your website, getting subscribers through your social media channels and blogs or you can do it even by collecting emails at business conferences and do not forget to add these contacts to your lead management software so that you can send them direct mailers using your information stored in your CRM database.

Takeaway

Hence once you buy CRM the tool helps in automating your sales process by with the help of Sales Force Automation (SFA), track prospects, schedule appointments and follow-ups, warm up new leads, manages orders and quotes and thereby helps in closing sales deals in less time, which in turn saves money as the additional time your sales teams get can be utilized in starting and closing new deals.

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The Role Of An MCA CRM Administrator While Using This Business Growth Tool

Talking about the rise of burgeoning use of cloud-based Merchant Cash Advance software systems over the last few years in the Alternative Financing companies, there has been a steadily growing necessity to find qualified and well-trained people who are capable of taking care of this business growth technology and perform the duties and responsibilities of CRM administration consistently for keeping it out of the harm’s way. Even though for larger organizations the job of the Administrator of a CRM is in most cases a full-time work. Ne, for startups and small or medium businesses, the job of a CRM administration can be just one of the many areas of responsibility for the employee assigned to the role.
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However, what set Merchant Cash Advance CRM apart are those functionalities that cater to MCA industry for meeting with their unique purposes.  MCA CRM is designed to help Cash Advance businesses run their front-end operations and at the same time improve their customer lifecycle management for retention of the clients by providing unsurpassable services.

CRM gives businesses a 65% boost in sales quotas- Innopple Technologies Click To Tweet

Apart from this Merchant Cash Advance CRM also enables the lenders to keep detailed client data and maintain timely customer follow up with loan pipeline management to stay in control of the business.

Comparing Merchant Cash Advances to Traditional Business Lending

MCA or Merchant Cash Advance are gradually becoming more mainstream as several small and medium businesses that are not being able to secure a bank loan are turning to alternative funding sources. This is because; a merchant cash advance can be availed by a business quickly and that too with minimal paperworks. Hence, as banks continue to be very tight with their loans; merchant cash advance is becoming extremely appealing to small business owners over time.

How MCA works?

To illustrate in layman’s terms, Merchant Cash Advance, or an MCA provides purchases a pre-defined amount of a business’s future credit card receivables in one lump sum in return for the receivables, which is paid back to the lending organization over a certain period of time, which is usually calculated as a daily percentage of the customer’s debit/credit card totals. This is the key benefit that distinguishes MCA from conventional loans.

In other words, Merchant Cash Advance is not loaning a business any money, rather it is a simple process of buying a portion of the customer’s future business revenue.

Advantages of MCA Borrowings Over Bank Loans

The primary advantage of MCA over bank loans is that Merchant Cash Advance, in general, does not require any collateral, and liens (although this is always subjected to certain conditions). Apart from this, the other ranges of benefits that small businesses receive from choosing this kind of funding are:

  • No rigid monthly payments
  • No upfront fees
  • No UCC-1 (Uniform Commercial Code-1) at the time of funding
  • No collaterals (subjected to certain conditions)
  • No limits on how you spend the fund
  • Minimal approval time for disbursement of the fund

Therefore, the greatest advantage of MCA is that the amount, which the business pays, is based on the sum total of the credit card transactions that the borrower receives every day. As there are no set fees that must be paid every month, so small businesses taking merchant cash advance still have an access to a greater portion of their own revenues. This implies, if your sale drops for a specific month, your MCA payment will also become low to reflect that change.

Why use a Merchant Cash Advance CRM?

While all CRM may work for any business, Merchant Cash Advance CRM is specially designed for MCA businesses, as it not only helps in easy collaboration with the funders but it also helps MCA business in the following ways, which include:

  • Find a central repository for merchant contact information, related documents and underwriting information
  • Escalate the power of communication by integrated with DocuSign, Email, and Fax application templates for merchants and funders
  • Track deals from underwriting to funded stages
  • Syndicate and track approval numbers, management fees and commissions
  • Increase agent’s productivity by using quick lead capture form, easy edits, 360-degree merchant profile view and one-click deal conversion
  • Multiple fund submission and tracking

Takeaway

Therefore as a small business owner, if you find that you have the opportunity of expanding your business, but you do not have the time for traditional funding to come through, it is the perfect time to consider Merchant Cash Advance to get the finance you need, especially just when you need them.

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Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

Talking about the rise of burgeoning use of cloud-based Merchant Cash Advance software systems over the last few years in the Alternative Financing companies, there has been a steadily growing necessity to find qualified and well-trained people who are capable of taking care of this business growth technology as an MCA CRM administrator and perform the duties and responsibilities consistently for keeping the CRM out of the harm’s way.

Even though for larger organizations the job of the Administrator of a CRM is in most cases a full-time work. Now, for startups and small or medium businesses, the job of a CRM administration can be just one of the many areas of responsibility for the employee assigned to the role.

43% of businesses applied for additional financing over the past 12 months - Federal Reserve Survey (2019) Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, for either case, the job of CRM administrator in alternative financing business can be a set of new responsibilities for many people using Merchant Cash Advance software .

Therefore, here are a few vital best practices to consider for anyone new to this role among hundreds of our MCA CRM users in the Cash Advance business.

Best Practice #1

Perform Habitual CRM Database Cleaning

CRM database can very quickly become dirty within a few months. Errors like creating duplicate records and entry of loose data both contribute to the escalation of this issue.

Therefore, juxtaposing ongoing MCA CRM training for the users of the platform and the use of (technically imposed) data entry formats and necessary protocols can aid in ensuring that proper information is placed in the right fields inside the Merchant Cash Advance software.

Like, never enter add-on notes or other information into an address or phone number field.

If you are a user of MCA CRM, you can use its native CRM database cleaning functionalities, duplicate avoidance capabilities, or even a third-party tool to periodically scan for supposed duplicates in the CRM to stay on the top of your data cleaning process.

Best Practice #2

Make the interface of the MCA CRM appropriate to each user

We from our experiences as one of the most popular vendors of MCA CRM software in the US have found that one of the many factors that help in user adoption of CRM solutions is the relevant and clean user experience of the CRM.

For each group of users (marketing, sales, operations, support, and finance) remove the fields and tabs that do not apply to the people in that functional role.

This is because a ‘less-is-more’ approach to screen layouts of the Merchant Cash Advance CRM software will keep the user’s attention riveted on the main information they require to view and maintain in this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.

Moreover, doing this will also make information easy to find through search functionalities, in the easy to use CRM whereby reports will be more meaningful and complete, making your CRM an easy to work with software.

Best Practice #3

Take Written Consensus Before Adding New Fields

As the adage goes ‘with great power comes greater responsibilities’, therefore, it is very easy for an MCA CRM administrator to add new fields in the MCA CRM software. However, owing to this, fields can be at times added to the CRM platform, with no internal discussion or a little forethought.

Therefore, before adding any new fields in the Merchant Cash Advance software, it is most important to run the rationale for the new field and obtain buy-in from the manager whose teams will be responsible for maintaining that field in the CRM system.

Best Practice #4

Obliterate Old CRM Users and Create New Ones

Like all other businesses, when a user of your MCA CRM software leaves your alternate funding organization and a new user record is subsequently needed to be added to the Merchant Cash Advance software, the record of the previous user ‘SHOULD NOT’ be simply updated with the name of the new user and his/her email address.

This is because; doing so will make all the previous users’ past emails and activities to get associated with the new user’s profile in the CRM database.

Therefore, it is extremely important that your CRM administrator should deactivate the old users so that their licenses are freed up and their name remains associated only with erstwhile past activities.

Best Practice #5

Annotate Your MCA CRM Configurations

Whether you are creating an email template, adding a new custom field, or setting up a new workflow process in your MCA CRM, ensure that you as the CRM administrator must key in the purpose of the modification or addition that you have done in the associated notes or description field in the business growth tool.

This is because, although the reason for this addition or modification may be clear to you and obvious in the moment, however, down the road you may forget the exact reason or purpose which made you do so, and then if the reason is not apparent to you as an administrator of the CRM, it will also not be clear to the other stakeholders using the software in your organization.

Now, if your CRM does not have the required annotation field, create another parallel document in your system, that will take a note of these modifications and the reasons for performing these activities.

Best Practice #6

Never Forget to Create Backups of Your MCA CRM Data

Finally, as an MCA CRM administrator, what will you do if a user of your Merchant Cash Advance software deletes a vital company record accidentally, and along with all its related contacts, historic activities, and also the emails?

Even though most popular cloud-based Salesforce Alternative CRM vendors much like Salesforce creates backups of your data, however, if your CRM database ever needs to be restored you would lose all the changes that were made by the users of your MCA CRM since the most recent backup occurred, and so use an export service in your CRM and create consistent backups of your most important information in the CRM database, before it is getting too late.

Takeaway

The role of a CRM administrator involves a range of very important responsibilities. Hence, using this set of best practices, which if followed up on a regular basis, will for certain optimize the user experience of your MCA CRM software, which will even increase the user adoption rate of this cutting-edge business growth technology and result in more meaningful reporting of information from your preferred CRM that you use for your alternative funding businesses.

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Mistakes To Avoid For First Time User Of The Best Small Business CRM Software

So, you are a new user of the best small business CRM software and you want to bypass any roadblocks that could impact the successful implementation of your new and the best CRM for small business. Well, do not worry; you have come to the right place for finding some insider tips and tricks on using your easy to use CRM software platform. Therefore, here are the five most common rookie mistakes that we want beginners to avoid while working on their newfound business growth technology like a CRM tool.

So, you are a new user of the best small business CRM software and you want to bypass any roadblocks that could impact the successful implementation of your new and the best CRM for small business.

Well, do not worry; you have come to the right place for finding some insider tips and tricks on using your easy to use CRM software platform.

Therefore, here are the five most common rookie mistakes that we want beginners to avoid while working on their newfound business growth technology like a CRM tool:

Let us get started!

  1. Specifying Incorrect Account Administrator

While using a CRM when the first account is created, the member of the core CRM implementation team who pioneers the account making process will become the administrator of the account by default. Therefore, we suggest you to select an appropriate administrator to set up your CRM account, before simply jumping into the system.
Keep in mind that the administrator will be the designated license creator, bill receiver, user selector, and the gatekeeper to assign who receives permission for using specific features within this cutting-edge business growth tool.

44% of businesses planning to increase IT budgets in 2020, up from 38% in 2019 - SuperOffice(2020) Click To Tweet

However, if anyone other than the right person among your teammates has been accidentally assigned the role of an account administrator, you can even, later on, switch their roles by modifying your settings.

  1. Importing Your Entire Contact List

It has been observed that more common than not, new users of CRM will mostly import all their contacts from Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and other applications once they start working on their brand-new CRM platform. Now, when we use the phrase all contacts, we actually mean ‘all contacts’, which most often even consist of outdated, and irrelevant personal data. However, once that is done, when the user enters their Contact tab, they most often feel and realize that they need to clean up the list in the newly created CRM database.

Now, this can be an incredibly time-consuming process, like going through and selecting the inappropriate data, which may no longer be important to the user or to their company.

Save yourself this headache, by creating a list of contact within an Excel file in order to build a well thought out list of important connections that are presently required for your business. Save the file as CSV (Comma Separated Values) and simply import it to your CRM using the “Import a File” functionality. This process could save you a lot of time, and help you to get started with the best small business CRM software quickly.

  1. Forgetting To Tag Contacts Upon Import

It is most natural that after creating new contacts, the new information can always get blended within the rest of the customer database in the CRM. For this, we suggest you tag your contacts as soon as you import them, in order to classify where the contacts came from, whom they work for, or why they are being added to the easy to use CRM software solution’s database.

Hence, while a contact is being added to your team’s accounts, each member of the teams can tag their individual contracts with their name so that they can easily locate individuals that are significant and important to them while working with the software.

  1. Using Incorrect Email Addresses

All product updates, marketing promotions, and webinar news will be always sent to the email address that your CRM account is registered with right from day one after installation of the software.

Hence, using the right email address comes in handy when you are concerned about exporting your deals or contacts from your CRM account. Since CRM will automatically send these exports that have been requested to the registered email address that you confirmed while setting-up your best small and medium business CRM software platform.

Therefore, when selecting an email address for your CRM software’s account registration, be aware that all the important CRM-related outreach and data export will be received in that location.

Remember at any time if you need to reach out to your CRM provider be it a robust CRM like Salesforce or even any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platform used mostly by SMB to talk about your billing specifications and your account, it may be noted that you will need to write CRM vendor from your registered email account for adhering to security protocols. However, you can change your registered email address multiple times in your CRM settings whenever it is needed, as a safety measure or for other similar purposes.

  1. Duplicate Contact Creation Within Your CRM Account

Finally, oftentimes, contracts are listed with more than one email accounts and social platforms. Therefore importing various lists from all of your accounts unavoidably create duplicates in your best small business CRM software’s contact list. Nevertheless, most CRM platforms combine your contacts based on their individual email addresses and other specific options you can always specify to stay away since doing so creates redundant contacts and irrelevant company records.

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5 Way to Refine Your CRM Implementation Process In 2020

As customers are an invaluable asset to any company, therefore every business must work harder this year to gain new customers and sustain a good relationship with their existing ones. Nevertheless, the work of managing customers and the skills required for guiding them through the sales funnel is an overwhelming task. This is exactly where easy to use CRM be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platform (mostly used by SMB organizations) could be a powerful tool in your arsenal that can streamline business processes by gathering, coordinating and organizing customer information stored in the CRM database.

According to a Beagle Research, it has been predicted that even though 36 percent of sales professionals are still to adopt easy to use CRM for business growth, nevertheless it is predicted that this will change as we head into 2020, as it has been aptly quoted by  Denis Pombriant:

“There is a great deal of white space in CRM to be claimed and this will be where humans will add the greatest value as we continue to bring CRM to businesses that were once completely manual.”

We highlighted this fact as according to another recent study conducted by  Grandview Research, it states that:

“The CRM market would be worth $81.9 billion by 2025 and Gartner and others publish annual reports indicating the market’s vibrancy.”

Hence as customers are an invaluable asset to any company, therefore every business must work harder this year to gain new customers and sustain a good relationship with their existing ones.

CRM as a whole is expected to reach over $81.9 billion revenue by 2025 - Gartner Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, the work of managing customers and the skills required for guiding them through the sales funnel is an overwhelming task.

This is exactly where easy to use CRM be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platform (mostly used by SMB organizations) could be a powerful tool in your arsenal that can streamline business processes by gathering, coordinating and organizing customer information stored in the CRM database.

Easy to use CRM is a software that can work for any business, irrespective of whether you implementing it for a large enterprise or you are just a small startup.

Now even though CRM is a powerful business growth technology , it is a known fact that many businesses do not utilize it fully.

A Customer Relationship Management system has several benefits, like boosting retention and optimizing your sales, marketing, and support efforts and so in this article let us find out how you can improve the implementation of your easy to use CRM or your best small business CRM software solution if you are an SMB to ensure success and steady business growth.

  1. Involve Your Team In CRM Selection Process

Most often than not, the people who will be implementing your easy to use CRM tool are your sales teams.
Hence it is most important that you need to involve them when you choose your CRM software and buy CRM for business growth.

Always remember when selecting the software, that it matches your organizational requirements.

However, how do you identify your needs?

Well, your sales team can aid you to pinpoint the challenges they face in their sales cycle and even provide solutions as to how CRM can address the problems for sales growth.

Now once your sales team is recognizing the issues, your marketing team needs to identify the touch-points with the customers, how they manage their communication or the time they need to deal with the leads and prospects to qualify the leads.

We say this because only armed with the knowledge of the underlying issues, you can choose an easy to use CRM tool that will ensure streamlining your processes and provide efficient customer management for your business.

Moreover, even before you buy CRM if you accept the ideas and thoughts of your sales and marketing teams into consideration it is natural that they will embrace the software without resistance, easily.

  1. Show Your Employees The Value Of Utilizing The Software

As one of the most acclaimed and award-winning CRM for SMB organizations, we have frequently found that sales teams most often have a negative opinion about using this business growth technology and tool.

This is because most often than not sales professionals find this tool as an unnecessary burden due to the time they need to update customer-related data into the CRM database.

Hence irrespective of whether you are buying CRM for small business or for a big enterprise, you need to highlight its value in the marketing functionalities and aspects of the software.

This is because as sales reps most of their time spend researching on customer data or doing follow-ups on prospective buyers on their list.
Now, with the marketing industry becoming increasingly data-driven, sales teams once they understand the value of easy to use CRM which aids harvests prospect’s data, such as a prospect’s interests and hobbies, location, purchasing behavior, age group, and more and then analyze patterns and trends in this data, sales teams are more likely to get on board on the use this business growth technology for enhancing their data management skills.

Remember, you should sell your CRM software to your employees as a tool that can make their works simple by reducing tasks and optimizing their efforts in sales and marketing, so that your sales reps acknowledges that the tool will be able to provide them with all the necessary information to influence sale at their fingertips, easily.

  1. Thoroughly Train Your Employees

For your teams to cherish the easy to use CRM tool, they need to grasp the ins and out of the software. Now, while it an easy to use CRM may be straightforward and simple to use, you still need to educate your employees on how they must use the software for harvesting optimal ROI.

The CRM training should cover all the guidelines on the operational aspect of the tool. For example how to enter the company’s data in the CRM database , or use the dashboard more efficiently, or create customer segmentation based on different filters and more.

Remember, as employees are diverse in nature, and so while some might find it easy to figure out how the software works, others without additional and ongoing training might even make mistakes which can lead to ineffective use of the software.

Additionally, encouraging your employees to take a short course on the goals and implementation process of this business growth technology most often increases the adoption rate of the software.

  1. Define your CRM strategy

Now, if you are just trying to use a robust business growth technology solution like a CRM as a plug and play tool, you are surely setting yourself up for failure.

Hence, before the implementation of your CRM, rather even before you buy CRM for your business you need to create an excellent and a doable strategy to ensure you maximize the use of the software.

How do you come up with a strategy?

Well, for example, once you have recognized the goals like generating high-quality leads or goals like customer retention, you can easily come up with a definite strategy to meet up these goals.

For this evaluate your businesses’ workflow at each stage of the CRM implementation process and thereafter analyze its performance on a regular basis.

In other words, irrespective of the plan of action you decide to take, make sure that the easy to use CRM should complement the vision laid down by your company.

  1. Lead By Example

Even though in an HBR (Harvard Business Review) publication it states that in 2017, CIO magazine reported around one-third of all CRM projects fail it has been observed that most CRM implementations fail due to the dearth of support from the top management in the company.

Hence if the senior managers in your company are not a part of the CRM implementation process, your employees will likewise keep on neglecting to embrace the software.

This the reason, once you buy CRM you must get all the leaders on board from the beginning to create a ripple effect. For this make your managers take part in the training, attend meetings, and stay abreast of the latest CRM implementation processes.

Conclusion

Remember, CRM implementation in any industry is an ongoing process, and therefore you need to tweak your CRM strategies from time to time.

Nevertheless, once you buy CRM you should always keep your employees and teams happy working with the system by incorporating their feedback in the implementation process until the time the systems get adopted by your employees completely.

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Key Customer Service Skills That Every Service Reps Should Know For Business Growth

Since ages, customer service skills are so critical for businesses both big and small to get right because of its undeniable ability to help businesses and brands maintain their existing customers and acquire new prospects for their company. Now effective customer service does never happen just by deputing one of your customer-facing employees on the front desk or at the phone and thereafter make them face the customers. Therefore businesses must ensure that their customer service reps have the right skill sets to be able to encounter the most difficult and complicated of customers which is what that makes a big difference in establishing the credibility of your brand since according to a recent survey done by PWC it was found that more than 54 percent of consumers in the U.S. believes that customer experience at most companies needs improvements. Hence to let you find and agree on what are the customer service skills that can help you to make the difference here is a list of the most important skills every customer service representative must always have for finding business growth.

Since ages, customer service skills are so critical for businesses both big and small to get right because of its undeniable ability to help businesses and brands maintain their existing customers and acquire new prospects for their company.
Now effective customer service does never happen just by deputing one of your customer-facing employees on the front desk or at the phone and thereafter make them face the customers.
Therefore businesses must ensure that their customer service reps have the right skill sets to be able to encounter the most difficult and complicated of customers which is what that makes a big difference in establishing the credibility of your brand since according to a recent survey done by PWC it was found that more than 54 percent of consumers in the U.S. believes that customer experience at most companies needs improvements.
Hence to let you find and agree on what are the customer service skills that can help you to make the difference here is a list of the most important skills every customer service representative must always have for finding business growth.

73% of customers fall in love with a brand and remain loyal because of friendly customer service reps - RightNow(2020) Click To Tweet

Eight Most Essential Customer Service Skills

  1. Understand the Customer

As a customer service representative, you should not just identify what is the problem and determine its solution. In fact, your customer service reps must understand their customers as the customers are human beings and have emotions that must not be neglected by your company.
Hence service reps must empathize with the customers (let them know that it is understandable that they are frustrated) and thereafter find out the problems and provide a solution, but most essentially with a human touch.

  1. Product Knowledge

It is needless to say how important it is for your customer service reps to understand your brand’s products and services so that they can efficiently and quickly provide a solution to the issues faced by the customers without having to look them up as ask others for a solution.
This is where an easy to use CRM comes to use, as it not only helps in providing all the interactions that the customer had with your brand, but it can also help the support rep to find out the solution to frequently asked customer-related issues by providing answers stored in the system’s knowledge-base.

Always remember a knowledgeable employee will help put even the most agitated customers at an ease.

  1. Listening Skills

Ensure that your customer reps spend reasonable time to actively listen to what your customers need. Hence, never let your reps just assume solutions based on the problem until they understand the issue entirely by listening to them intently, since listening to your customers can go a long way in making them feel more loyal to your brand.

  1. Time Management

Irrespective of if your service reps are using a robust and popular CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms used by startups and small businesses, time management should be one of the most important customer service skills that need to be understood and nurtured by many.

Therefore, use business growth technology solutions that can help you access that your service reps are spending the appropriate time with each customer and also perform their admin works that go along every day.

  1. Deal with Personal Emotions Rightly

Now, this may be one of the greatest challenges customer service reps face at work. Since if you did not get enough sleep, or have a sick child at home or someone cuts you off on the road on your way to work, it can be really difficult to put that all aside while you are on the job.
Nevertheless, as soon as you pick up the phone or face a customer it is best to keep all that personal stuff aside since customers who are worried about their own problems never want to hear the agony and pains in the voice of the service reps when they want a solution to their pain points and issues.

Hence, let patience be your best friend and instead of getting irritated with your customers let them know what you can do for them and thereafter wait patiently as the ultimately de-escalate enough to have a civil conversation.
Additionally, even though at times it may seem tempting to talk with a customer who is similar to you as a friend, never relax your tone and language around them because ‘they get it’. Instead always maintain professionalism at work, especially with your customers, since it helps in building the reputation of your brand.

  1. Respond Quickly

If your business is using easy to use CRM platforms, which are mostly Omni-channel business growth tools there are a number of ways to respond to customers nowadays.

Therefore irrespective of whether you are using enterprise-level robust software like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software whenever your customers get in touch with a concern or a comment over email, social media, chat or phone, make sure that you respond to them quickly.
Now the timing of your response may change depending on the channel that your customer is using, for instance, while a chat or email conversation must be replied to immediately, comments on social media platforms can be attended to within a couple of hours.

  1. Be Authentic

Being authentic with the customers in pain is a very important element in providing world-class customer experience to the consumers of your offerings.
We say this since there is always a very big difference between “putting on a happy face” and being yourself to exude a positive vibe and attitude towards your customers.

Hence, never be fake, but rather put up the nicest version that you have in front of the customers so that they feel happy with your services and come back for more.

Therefore we reiterate that you must put your personal struggles aside and wear a smile that will, in turn, help you to embrace a positive attitude. You may be surprised, but your actual mood may change for better once you do so.

  1. Encourage Teamwork

Finally, the ability of a customer service representative to work with their bosses, teammates, and others is also one of the most important skills required for providing world-class customer service to the consumers of your offerings in order to find the complete skill set needed for satisfying the customers.

Conclusion

A study done by American Express Bank revealed the uncomfortable truth which indicates that more than 33 percent of the consumers in the U.S. would proactively consider changing brands and companies after only one instance of poor service.
Hence there is nothing more fearful in today’s competitive markets if businesses have to lose one-third of their customers because of a grumpy or misinformed customer service representative.

Nevertheless using an easy to use CRM which can be Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platform is one business growth solution that can make all your customer service reps more efficient by putting all information pertaining to the customers at their fingertips while automation found in most easy to use CRM will also help businesses save money and time and thereby predict consistent revenue growth.

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Tends In Customer Support To Look For In 2020

Loss of customers and revenue are the inevitable results of poor customer support, and so implementing new methodologies and trends helps to boost revenue. Therefore without ado here are the latest customer trends that you must look for in 2020.

Loss of customers and revenue are the inevitable results of poor customer support, which leads to loss in business growth and so implementing new methodologies and trends helps to boost revenue.

93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service. Click To Tweet

Therefore without ado here are the latest customer trends that you must look for in 2020:

Trend #1

True Omnichannel Experience

Potential leads and customers find your offerings on any number that are available to them nowadays.
Hence, offering your potential leads and customers the ability to continue their customer journey between different devices and platforms will be of utmost importance in 2020.
In fact, the multichannel experience that customers presently know is a significant step-up from the erstwhile single-channel experience.
Nevertheless, as multichannel tends to be siloed nowadays it allows interactions between several platforms but inhibits the continued journey between one to the next.

Therefore, in 2020 businesses is more likely to hold on a customer throughout their journey by incorporating an omnichannel experience that ensures identifying and implementing all of the platforms potentially used by their customers that is sure to boost up customer service ratings.

Trend #2

Connect Through Social Media

Using social media platforms for boosting engagements in marketing is nothing new. Nevertheless, it may be news to you that in 2020 you should no longer focus on numerous social media platforms, but rather scale them down to the ones that make more sense for your type of business, which will let you spend more quality time on the few chosen platforms rather than lose sight of engagements on some of your many platforms on the list.

For this try to evaluate your target audience and engage with them in their preferred media. Try to understand whether your audiences respond more to images, videos or texts.

Get engaged with your prospective leads and customers often and do not forget to thank them for their feedback.

Additionally, apologize to your customers and prospects for any negative experience and provide them with enhanced support.

Remember, doing so not only your unhappy customers will always remain grateful for what you did but your other customers once they see that cared enough for your unhappy customer will trust your support that they need right on your social media platforms.

Trend #3

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is getting more smarter every day. Hence, in 2020 look to implement AI in as many of the customer interactions you have. Nowadays AI assistants are changing the way we live our lives with Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri.
Hence in 2020 using AI to automate customer support processes will help businesses considerably, whereby brands should automate some of the customer-facing interactions that will help them exponentially.

Trend #4

Machine Learning

In 2020 data-driven customer service will be much more prevalent than ever before. This is because nowadays machines are becoming more efficient to ‘learn’ fro data using algorithms that are increasingly getting more competent in understanding how to connect with the customers better and thereby help customer service teams to make better decisions that aids in business growth.

Once considered prohibitively for SMB organizations customer service Chatbots are one of the intelligent outcomes of Machine Learning and can now be easily integrated even in most best small and medium business CRM software platforms.

Additionally, real-time data that are needed for Machine Learning can also help in the detection and prevention of fraud in businesses.

Trend #5

Internet of Things (IoT)

It is predicted that IoT is going to help drive sales and support activities much more efficiently in 2020. This is because according to a study published by Statista it has been predicted that there will be more than even 30 billion connected devices installed worldwide this year which is twice as many as it was in 2015.

Therefore, businesses must not underestimate the importance of IoT this year, as business growth technology solutions are trying to leverage all and any connected products to enhance the customer experience, which is becoming more important than ever.

Trend #6

Remote Customer Support Representatives

With all the cutting-edge technologies that we have in hand as we enter 2020, there will be a trend more towards remotely locating customer support representatives in all businesses.

This is because with the growth of this trend companies are becoming increasingly capable of saving their employers money on office space and on higher salaries that are required for big cities across the globe by hiring employees who can work from the convenience of their own homes.

In fact, this trend will not only attract more recruits but will also provide organizations a much larger pool to choose from.

Tend #7

Real-time Support

Nowadays with customer support reps potentially available 24/7 which can be accessed from anywhere across the globe and with the previously mentioned Chatbot technologies that can be at present even integrated into the best small business CRM software platforms, there is a need for emphasis on real-time support in several different formats.

Therefore, it can be predicted that real-time support will likely boost up conversion rates in 2020 with faster response time and quicker resolution of issues.

Trend #8

Live Video

It also can be assumed that 2020 will see a rise of live video streams which will help businesses to reach out to more people on social media channels which in turn will increase the brand’s visibility. Live videos can be used for the promotion of contests, webinars, product giveaways and more.
Hence businesses this year will find more options to announce in advance or just go live whenever they want, which in turn will encourage followers of different brands to pay attention to their brand’s social media platforms.

Trend #9

Personalized Content

Personalization will be more important than ever in 2020, with the growing trend of less human contact and more automated interactions in businesses.

Luckily, this will be easier than ever to accomplish with the assistance of AI technology whereby in 2020 personalized content will look more like targeted advertisements that are well aware of the customer’s name, gender, location, and even their likes and dislikes.

Trend #10           

Predictive Analytics

Both with robust CRM software solutions like Salesforce and with solutions like best CRM for small business establishments and startups predictive analytics will be called upon much more frequently this year.

This is because with predictive analytics helping businesses to foretell their customer outcomes, brands will be able to provide world-class customer service to the consumers of their offerings.

Predictive analytics will even help businesses to discover issues even before they arise, and alleviate those problems, by running hundreds of scenarios based on data they already have in their easy to use CRM platforms to provide proactive and personalized service to the customers.

Takeaway

Finally, with all the security breaches in the news, the security of customer data is going to be extremely important in 2020.

In all businesses, customers provide a lot of information when they buy your offerings. Hence both CRM for enterprises and even the best CRM software for SMB organizations will ensure that the customer data in their business growth technology solutions are locked up tightly that will enhance the trust of the customers for their businesses.

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Why Use CLM CRM For Implementing A Customer-Centric Strategy For Your SMB

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations. This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach. Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations.  This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach.

When you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

What is CLM in a CRM?

Plainly speaking by the books Customer Lifecycle in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term used that describes the succession of steps a customer goes through when taking into consideration, buying, using, and thereafter upholding their loyalty to a company’s products or services.

Hence, although you and your employees are always pushing yourselves hard to satisfy your customer’s needs, nevertheless being customer-centric requires taking actions, rather than simply making a desire to appear conscientious.

Why is customer-centricity so important?

Keeping buzzwords and business jargon aside, irrespective of whether you are a user of CLM CRM, customer-centricity makes sense in this present digital world.

According to Bill Macaitis, CMO/CRO of Slack:

“The voice of the customer so far has never so strong as it has been now with the growth of social….businesses are increasingly acknowledging the power of word-of-mouth marketing strategies today, and how that starts and ends by providing a great experience for the customers. ”

But how does this translate in the scenarios of our real world? Let us look at the plea from Randy Garutti CEO of Shake Shack to his employees:

“I would like to challenge you to put our company out of its business…because we are so damn generous with what we offer the people who walk in through this door.”

Therefore, his words illustrate a bigger effort to empower his staff to do whatever it takes to build optimal customer experience. Rather it is just not, giving a ladle of custard to an unruly crying kid.

Hence, the big picture is when you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. Customer centricity, therefore, looks at the lifetime value of the customer using different metrics found in CLM CRM, which increases customer satisfaction and reduces churn rate over a period of time.

Common pitfalls of customer-centricity

Now, if acting customer-centric is so easy and understandable, why then it is so challenging?

There are three major challenges in being customer-centric that Forrester sited in their Vendor Landscape report (2015):

Lack of clarity: Not all in an organization understands the definition of the experience that their company is willing to deliver to its customers.

Failure to affect company culture: No organization can implement a customer-centric culture in an organization without embedding it in all parts of the establishment.

Loss of interest: Cultural transformation is not the end goal; rather employees need to practice customer-centricity with unsuppressed intentions and focus that should be a perennial process and not just as a temporary fad.

The biggest issue with customer-centricity is that cannot be classified as a singular project. Since being customer-centric is a collection of all the actions and activities that an organization performs- right from mundane everyday decisions to company-wide initiatives.

How can you implement a customer-centric strategy?

Therefore how can you make the practices in your business reflect all about the customer in this consumer-obsessed market?

So underneath are a few researched tips to make your business more customer-oriented in this present world:

  1. Truthfully consider that the customer always comes first

You cannot fake caring about your customers; you need to employ passionate and genuine employees who want to view your business through your customer’s eyes. For this, you need to make your company’s core value the heart of any onboarding practice, and continually support your commitment to these tenets.

  1. Measure the customer experience

It is important that you must always measure the success of your customer-centric in order to practice what you are preaching to your employees in your organization. Using a CLM CRM software platform, you can gauge your rate of churn and even NPS (Net Promotion Score) as a baseline.

NPS is calculated and measured in one simple and straightforward question: Would you recommend this company to a relative or friend?

  1. Let feedback drive your improvement

Once you are gauging your customer’s experience and going after your customer’s ever-changing desires and needs, let that feedback lead to real changes in your products, services, and your company.

Conclusion

Businesses are not going to shut down this customer-centric trend anytime soon, so what does that signify for consumers and their competitors?

Well, it implies more of digital marketing (including interactive materials like blogs, newsletters, eBooks, and videos), and automated marketing, with the help of business growth technology like CLM CRM software solutions, which can be even found in best small and medium business CRM software platforms for SMBs.

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Tips to Turn Your Easy To Use CRM Into a Money Making Machine

It is needless to say that if you know what is CRM and is using a robust and enterprise-level CRM like Salesforce or other Salesforce Alternative CRM which are mostly used by SMB organizations, a business growth technology like an easy to use CRM is always a smart investment. Hence everyone wants a positive return out of it, whereby businesses invest their money in easy to use CRM expecting a positive effect on their business (maybe even to increase their money by multiple folds). Nevertheless, several people forget that even before expecting your CRM to become a game-changer and money-making machine for your company, there are a few things that you need to take care of to make this business growth technology perform at its best.

It is needless to say that if you know what is CRM and is using a robust and enterprise-level CRM like Salesforce or other Salesforce Alternative CRM which are mostly used by SMB organizations, a business growth technology like an easy to use CRM is always a smart investment.

Every dollar spent on CRM implementation returns as much as $8.71 in sales revenue - Nucleus Research (2014) Click To Tweet

Hence everyone wants a positive return out of it, whereby businesses invest their money in easy to use CRM expecting a positive effect on their business (maybe even to increase their money by multiple folds).

Nevertheless, several people forget that even before expecting your CRM to become a game-changer and money-making machine for your company, there are a few things that you need to take care of to make this business growth technology perform at its best.

Therefore here are few tips on how you can make the most of this cutting-edge technology and turn your easy to use CRM into a money-making machine which predicts phenomenal revenue growth:

Information is Gold

Irrespective of which CRM you use be it Salesforce or any Salesforce Alternative CRM platform, how complicated or easy you think it is, there is no denying the fact, that CRM software presents to you a database which you might as well consider to have its value in gold.
In other words, a CRM consists of the information related to hundreds and thousands of leads and customers and is nothing less than a Black Friday jackpot that aids in the systematical arrangement of that data in one place.

Hence if you make the right use of this data stored in the CRM database, there is so much more you can do and achieve with this software tool.

Now if you will look a little deep and put on your thinking cap, you will realize that once you adopt an easy to use CRM software for your business it is far more easier to go after the customers with unique demands, and proactively remain in touch with your prospective leads at their proffered time or even keep all your sales, marketing, and support teams remain up-to-date with the latest things happening in your company.

The trick over here is to make someone from your teams responsible for managing all the data, someone who should be the one who should be trained even to take up necessary steps if any data issue or compliance is found in the software.

Still, You Are Using Spreadsheets?

Contrary to popular beliefs by many, everything that can be performed on a spreadsheet can be also accomplished in a CRM, and for that matter a lot better than a spreadsheet too.

Hence, if you are still living in the past and is using the age-old way of managing all your customer data using spreadsheets, just imagine how much time you are killing that you could have utilized in better ways for boosting your sales revenue and business growth.

Therefore, set your database once, and then enjoy everything that an easy to use CRM can do for you which even includes finding automated insightful reports on your sales, marketing and support teams, and the best way to start this is with your sales pipeline reports.

Hence, throw away that spreadsheet of yours into the trash and list all your leads and contacts in the CRM, you can count on us as one of the leading vendors of the best small and medium business CRM software , that you will not miss the spreadsheet for even a second once you start using this cutting-edge business growth tool.

Do More With Integration

Once you are convinced that easy to use CRM software platforms are your key for streamlining your sales pipeline, it is unfair on your part to expect a basic CRM to perform tasks like generating invoices, sending mass emails, automate your marketing efforts or make calls to your prospective leads.

However, the good thing is that there is a workaround.

Now if you are using a cloud-based CRM software, most of the third-party application providers nowadays provide APIs to integrate other business applications to your CRM.

In fact, to make things easier most of the CRM vendors provide these integrations by themselves.

Hence pick all the third-party apps like Gmail, Outlook, QuickBooks Online for accounting, PieSync, MailChimp, Zapier and more and look for their APIs for integration.

This is because once you integrate the easy to use CRM with these third-party tools there is no limit to what you can achieve with your CRM.

Now your easy to use CRM may not be your one-stop solution from the very first day you start using the software, but then again we all must remember that Rome was not even built in a day.

Embrace Automation

Like our saying or not, most people in this present world of digitalization is becoming more and lazier every passing day.

We expect our factories to run by themselves, our care to drive on their own. Rather say why leave a CRM behind when we expect robotics to do it for us, everything that is doable?

Now, most of the major CRM provides now offers marketing automation at an advanced level. Therefore modern CRM software solutions irrespective of whether it is Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms take some burden off your shoulders by automating processes and workflows using Sales Force Automation (SFA) integrated into the software.

Takeaway

Hence to conclude even though there is no guaranteed path to success while using an easy to use CRM software, nevertheless the above points do help a lot in making your CRM a successful investment and enjoy using the software for rapid business growth.

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Do Not Overlook These Unique Capabilities To Find The Maximum Benefit From Your CRM

Cloud based CRM software solutions are available nowadays in abundance. In fact, there are so many easy to use CRM solutions in the marketplace that we are spoiled with too many choices. As a matter of fact, there is a wide variety of both proprietary business growth applications and open-source software solutions which can be adapted to accommodate most business models and budgets. In the modern times, cloud based CRM solutions are so common that leading CRM platforms like Salesforce and other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions mostly used by startups and small businesses are now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.

Cloud based CRM software solutions are available nowadays in abundance.
In fact, there are so many easy to use CRM solutions in the marketplace that we are spoiled with too many choices.

As a matter of fact, there is a wide variety of both proprietary business growth applications and open-source software solutions which can be adapted to accommodate most business models and budgets.

Effective sales organizations are 81% more likely to be practicing consistent usage of a CRM or other system of record - Aberdeen Group Click To Tweet

In the modern times, cloud based CRM solutions are so common that leading CRM platforms like Salesforce and other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions mostly used by startups and small businesses are now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.

This is because none can deny the fact easy to use CRM is one of the best and cutting-edge business growth technology and tools that can have a significant impact on sales, marketing and support activities of any business.

However, it has been observed by us as the creator of one of the best CRM for small and medium businesses that not all sales teams make the maximum use of the capabilities of this technology.

Now, even though with all CRM solutions you can seamlessly contact fresh leads, follow-up with the existing ones, check the progress of your deals, with this lead management tool, but CRM as a business growth technology can do much more, right from personalization of customer experience at a granular level to elevating the productivity of customer service channels for your brand and company.

In fact like any other technology solutions in the marketplace CRM software solutions are also only as effectual just as much you use them.

Therefore in this article let us deep dive and look at what capabilities and features are sales professionals still unaware or failing to use in their easy to use CRM software:

  1. SPOT THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS AND TARGET THEM

All leading CRM software applications in the marketplace can be leveraged to segment the customers in the CRM database at a granular level.

Now, by gathering and thereafter analyzing data based on specific subgroups, your sales teams your sales reps will be well-equipped to create highly effective marketing strategies and tactics for revenue growth.

Which are the features you must look for in a customer segmentation tool at a granular level?

  • Highly user-friendly data collection and analytics
  • Seamless and easy integration with shopping cart and quick checkout
  • Flexibility and scalability of the software

Segment Customers As Per Their Engagements

Using a cloud based CRM you can easily zero in on your target audience based on their level of engagement with your brand.

Now CRM is a software that can group these levels according to the user activity on your business website and social media web page, click-through rates and more.

Therefore, whenever any customer fails to engage with your marketing campaigns, CRM helps you to adapt your approach.
For example, if you find a decline in your click-through rates it will tell you if your customers dislike receiving direct emails and so you can reduce the number of emails that you send or shift your focus to other types of marketing outreach.

Segment Customers Based on Previous Purchasing Behavior

Once you buy CRM you can even segment your customers on the basis of the products or services they have purchased from your brand and make product or service recommendations for cross-selling your offerings accordingly.

Moreover, whenever any customer abandons your shopping cart, you can use SFA (Sales Force Automation) in your CRM to automatically send your fence-sitting customers an email to re-engage them.

Additionally, this type of granular segmentation can also be achieved across channels whereby you can target potential customers in your CRM database with relevant ads while they browse through other websites, a marketing approach that will negate the requirement to send emails that are often perceived impersonal by the customers and thereby gets deleted.

Forecast and Retarget Existing Customers

All this information gathered in the CRM database during each of these exercises can be used for forecasting and retargeting your customers.

This is because past behaviors of the customers is an excellent predictor of the future buying patterns and your customer’s response to your campaigns, which is important info that can aid your teams to develop highly personalized and effective campaigns that can get converted at different touch-points.

Hence irrespective of whether you are collecting data from your business website, in-store purchases, customer service departments, make sure to use easy to use CRM to segment these customers based on their shared patterns of activities.

Now, if your information related to your customers is incorrect, it is natural that you will be wasting time and resources creating personalized experiences that will not appeal to the target audience. Therefore, always remember to select the right tools that integrate seamlessly with your cloud based CRM platform (like Zapier, PieSync, and others) that will reduce the amount of time you spend on transferring and analyzing data from multiple end-points and channels for your business growth.

  1. ENHANCE CUSTOMER RETENTION RATES WITH CHATBOTS

In modern times AI (Artificial Intelligence) has come a long way along with Chatbots that is capable of delivering superior and authentic customer service experiences.

Hence nowadays it has become almost necessary to leverage Chatbots, as the differences in the marketplace between competitors are narrowing and thereby buying decisions are dictated by real-time customer experiences.

Smart Algorithms Enhance Customer Service

In modern times as the expectations of the customers are also much higher, hence it is no longer possible to deliver enhanced customer experiences with just human efforts.

Therefore, now adopting intelligent algorithms for smart customer care automation is also another cheap option to keep the conversation going between your brand and your customers in real-time, 24/7.

Smart Algorithms Boost Operations

Chatbot features, when integrated with the right cloud based CRM, can do a lot more than customer service to the consumers of your offerings.

This is because Chatbots can also be used by businesses to increase productivity and operational efficiency for business growth.

Chatbots can remind your employees of scheduled meetings apart from answering simple questions without disturbing your employees with whatever activities they are engaged in.

Find below the key benefits of using a Chatbot for your business:

  • Being available 24/7/365 chatbots enhance your brand’s image
  • Chatbots cuts down on average as much as 30% on the cost of processing customer requests
  • Chatbots are highly effective at first-level filtering of customer requests which in turn improves customer service experience
  • Chatbots appeal to the Millennial(s), as they, in general, prefer self-service options
  • Chatbots reduce operational costs
  1. BETTER ALLOCATE RESOURCES AND INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY

All the data that is generated both externally or internally can be leveraged effectively to better allocate the sales resources of your company.

Use GPS in Your CRM App to Connect in Person

There are several CRM applications that use GPS (Global Positioning System) features that can be leveraged by easy to use CRM to lead your sales reps right to the prospect’s doors, which will not only aid in identifying potential leads in your selected demography, but it will also help provide a map and direction to their locations.

  1. USE GAMIFICATION TO INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY

Modern cloud based CRM software solutions can be even used to create healthy competition within your organization.

For example, your staff-data stored in the CRM can be used to analyze a leaderboard and benchmark performances.

This is because, by leveraging on gamification using your CRM tool you can not only easily boost productivity but also increase sales, and therefore increase your businesses’ bottom line.

Conclusion

Therefore, when all the different features of any modern cloud based CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM are used properly, your entire organization can reap the benefits of this business growth technology, create new revenue models, reduce operational costs, increase sales and thereby boost efficiency of your business for providing world-class customer experience that always promotes rapid revenue growth.

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Why Personal Branding Is Utterly Futile Without Relationship Management

You must be already knowing the true importance of having a personal brand, for business growth if you are using social media to build relationships, that is in harmony with the bona fide version of your business. Now there are several people within a company understand that they all are working towards achieving a common goal, irrespective of whether they are a member of the security guards, cleaner, an intern or the CEO of the company. Therefore, it can be surmised that businesses only benefit when everyone within the organization builds their personal brand and thereafter use it to communicate genuinely and build relationships.

You must be already knowing the true importance of having a personal brand, for business growth if you are using social media to build relationships, that is in harmony with the bona fide version of your business.

About 79% of leads do not convert without CRM- Pardot Click To Tweet

Now there are several people within a company understand that they all are working towards achieving a common goal, irrespective of whether they are a member of the security guards, cleaner, an intern or the CEO of the company.
Therefore, it can be surmised that businesses only benefit when everyone within the organization builds their personal brand and thereafter use it to communicate genuinely and build relationships.

Most of us might have heard of this true story:

“During a visit to NASA in 1962, President John F. Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?’

‘Well, Mr. President,’ the janitor responded, ‘I’m helping put a man on the moon.’

To most people, this janitor was just cleaning the building. But in the more mythic, larger story unfolding around him, he was helping to make history.

Here’s the point:
“No matter how large or small your role, you are contributing to the larger story unfolding within your life, your business, and your organization. When your entire team embraces that type of attitude and belief system, incredible things happen.”

Now most of us believe that:
Is it not that personal branding is the responsibility of the marketing department of the company?

However to answer this much-debated question, according to Natschool.com is:

“Results from personal branding can be transformational for businesses and individuals. 561% more reach is obtained from employees sharing business messaging. Content is shared 24X more frequently from employees VS brand accounts. 8X more engagement from employees vs. business social media accounts.”

Hence even before we go into personal branding, it is imperative that we must understand more about relationships, which is a key part of relationship management strategy which lies in comprehending our cognitive capabilities as human beings.

Now, according to the Dunbar’s number, which is a proposed cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom one can uphold stable social relationships, that stems from Dunbar’s research which goes all the way back to our ape ancestors, reveals that modern-day individuals have the ability to maintain on an average just 150 relationships (which can vary in-between as low as 90 and as high as 250 depending on specific individuals) in the society.

Therefore a lack of relationship could be causing you to miss out on opportunities, even though many reading this article will, of course, might already have a great personal brand and thereby understand how valuable it is to build one for their business growth.

The question is:

Are you missing out on reminding people that you are still alive and ask genuine questions about them to enforce your relationship?

We say this since according to Dale Carnegie the author of the all-time bestseller “How to Win Friends and Influence People” quotes in his book:

“When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.”

There are several reasons why you need to build your personal brand.

Of course, there are the pretty obvious ones that can be directly related to the standard of living and income levels, nevertheless, there are even less-obvious reasons like boosting self-esteem, which correlates to more fulfillment at work that can mean more happiness at home too.

Additionally, building your brand with the help of micro-bloggers on social media platforms also means that you have a chance of becoming someone who can express authority in front of your peers, and have a chance to share your knowledge, perception, insights, and experience with any reader and perhaps helps them to do likewise, since passing all these benefits to others is indeed a very rewarding activity.

Hence communicating resourceful information to your community with the help of social media channels is a key part of building your brand and sharing your opinion is the main key to this activity.

Now in the next step after we have established a relationship, what should we do to nurture it?

Here is the list:

  • Delve deep into your prospect’s and customer’s interests
  • Share contents they like
  • Comment on their posts on social media
  • Post their contents on social media
  • Remember their anniversaries and birthdays and set reminders for the following years
  • Email them articles directly that they may like
  • Introduce them with people who can help them out or provide them with their requirements
  • Reach out and invite them to video chat or call or for a lunch

Now, if you are stressed up and worried about how you can manage all these relationships with your leads, prospects, and customers, try using an easy to use CRM , which is the modern-day cutting-edge business growth technology and then begin building the relationship you need to move ahead with your goals.

Just remember, networking for building relationships is more like eating with a very long chopstick, with which if you try to feed yourself, you will even drop a lot of food, and so if you feed other people you will get fed by them too.

If you are not yet convinced here are 11 solid reasons to build your personal brand:

Reason #1

To explore and open new professional opportunities, which might even imply starting your own business, a new job, or even forming a new partnership.

Reason #2

Building a strong network with your customers, so that they can also assist you in every way possible since they know you carry a certain weight behind your “persona”.

Reason #3

Add value to your existing and current relationships.

Reason #4

Build an audience base, where you can launch a service or product designed specifically with them in mind.

Reason #5

Find the right mentor, you can see who you are without wasting both of your precious time.

Reason #6

Crafting a brand aids people to understand what makes you “tick” which can lead to a more productive and synergistic relationship.

Reason #7

Brand building is a time tested way to stay ahead of industry developments, and craft a differentiation as a thought-leader in your industry.

Reason #8

Build credibility among your industrial influencers and peers for the hard work that you have put in your field.

Reason #9

You can negotiate better payments and leverage your expertise and knowledge to command a premium in your fees and perks for your product, service or job.

Reason #10

Create an additional revenue generation path for your business, considering how many new businesses read your articles, view your videos on social media platforms.

Reason #11

Expand your credibility and knowledge into other areas with your niche.

Conclusion

Remember that your opinions and personality may not suit everyone’s taste, and so take time to consider who you want to be and with whom you would like to work with before you show this off in your blog or whatever content that you create to help you build your personal brand.

Finally, just do not become a carbon-copy of someone who you have seen online. Be yourself and never be afraid to move forward or stand-up and be yourself, which in most cases is the best thing you can do for business growth in your professional life.

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