Year: 2020

The 5 Elements Of A Sales Funnel: A Guide For New Marketers

Until you start exploring the world of digital marketing and sales, it might be true that you may not have ever heard of the term “sales funnel”. Nevertheless, sales funnel is actually a concept that relates to all types of action-based persuasions (not just sales) that occurs in the digital realm. Hence as we referred in the title of this blog, we as one of the most popular vendors of easy to use CRM software we will go over the four main elements of the sales funnel and how to illustrate even further to show how they relate to the sales journey while digitally marketing and selling an offering.

If you are into digital marketing and sales, the term “sales funnel” must be familiar to you. However, for new marketers, it might take a little while to grasp the concept.

Nevertheless, a sales funnel is actually a fundamental concept that relates to all types of action-based persuasions (not just sales) that occur in the digital realm.

Hence as we referred to in the title of this blog, we as one of the most popular vendors of easy-to-use CRM software, will go over the five main elements of the sales funnel and illustrate even further to show how they relate to the sales journey while digitally marketing and selling an offering.

In other words, it is a marketing strategy that helps businesses visualize the customer journey from initial interest to final purchase. In simple terms, this is how a complete stranger who is searching for a solution to his pain points is converted into leads, turns those leads into prospects, and finally converts them into customers.

The sales funnel consists of three sections:

• The Top of the Funnel
• The Middle of the Funnel
• The Bottom of the Funnel

Now the goal of the funnel is to push prospects up the path and make it to the top of the funnel. That is how the sales process gets completed resulting in a closed deal. This is what exactly you would want for the growth of your business. Let’s move on to learn the difference between two buzzwords in the sales world – sales funnel and sales pipeline.

Difference between a sales pipeline and a sales funnel?

While most find confusion between the two terms, the primary difference lies in the fact that the pipeline indicates the sales process from the perspective of a salesperson, while the funnel represents a buyer’s perspective. This is when the customers are actively looking for solutions to meet their needs in the marketplace.

Therefore, similar to an upside-down pyramid, the funnel helps to identify the stage of the buyer’s journey and thereafter break it down helping businesses to perceive where the actions have been taken by the customers. Further, it also helps to understand at which stage of the funnel the opportunity lies for lead engagement. The stages of the funnel include:

• AWARENESS
• INTEREST
• EVALUATION
• ENGAGEMENT
• PURCHASE

Hence now that we have a brief idea about what is a sales funnel, let us take a deep dive into the five stages of the funnel and try to understand how reps should get them engaged during each of these five stages with leads for closing their deals and finding business growth.

AWARENESS

The awareness stage in the funnel is where the consumers find a new product or service in the marketplace.

Therefore, sales reps can effectively spread awareness for their product or services at this stage. This is done by using promotional tactics like cold calling, outreach through emails, or even by offering free trials on their business websites.

INTEREST

In the second stage of the funnel i.e. the “interest” stage, the leads show genuine interest in a brand’s products or services available in the marketplace.

Hence, this is the right time for the sales reps to capitalize on this opportunity to educate these prospective leads on the brand’s offerings. It can be easily done by sending the prospects (over email drip sequence) case studies and testimonials. This in turn can be used for building a positive impression on the prospective leads and boost their trust in the brand.

EVALUATION

Now as the prospects move further down and enter the third stage of the funnel, it shows that the prospective lead is further ready to evaluate and know more about the desired product or service.

Therefore over here, the sales reps can find an opportunity to fill any gap in the prospect’s knowledge about their offering and illustrate more on the solutions for the challenges of the prospective leads.

ENGAGEMENT

As the prospective leads move now to the engagement stage of the funnel, it shows that the prospect has ultimately reached the stage in their buyer’s journey where they are ready to finally decide and buy the offering.

Hence at this stage salespersons working with these leads continue to assist the lead and send them additional content to keep up the engagement, so that it can help the prospects to pass through the final few yards of the funnel and close the deal.

PURCHASE

This is the final stage where it shows that the lead has purchased your brand offerings and has finally become a customer of your business.

Now, it must be remembered that even though the prospect got converted and has come out of the funnel, it is mandatory for the sales reps to continue building a relationship with the customers after the close, to identify further opportunities for cross-selling and upselling to the existing customer and thereby boost their brand’s customer retention rate.

Conclusion

As one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we have often found several people asking us- Why should I use a funnel to showcase a sales process?

The answer to this question is- Because the sales funnel represents the number-game dynamic of the sales­. It can be safely said that only a very small number of your total leads turn into sales-ready prospects, and even fewer are going to turn into a sale.

Hence, the funnel shape which is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom makes complete sense. The more you feed the top of the funnel, the more business comes out of the bottom. In a nutshell, the sales funnel is a visual representation that provides reps with a visual roadmap of the customer journey.

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7 Tips To Win More Deals with Effective Sales Pipeline Management Strategies

You used your best marketing strategies by running successful marketing campaigns and did whatever that is possible to load your sales pipeline with the maximum number of leads- but what next? Are you deal converting or are they slipping out through the cracks? Now, a sales pipeline is not just space where you collect golden opportunities for sales, but it is also the key to understanding the trends and patterns in your sales process. In fact, this can be truer when we say that to increase conversions, businesses need to manage their sales pipeline efficiently, as according to research it has been found that businesses that are capable of mastering pipeline management skills see approximately 28% growth in their revenue.

You used your best marketing strategies by running successful marketing campaigns and did whatever that is possible to load your sales pipeline with the maximum number of leads- but what next?

Are you deal converting or are they slipping out through the cracks?

On average, 65% of salespeople who adopt mobile CRM meet their sales quotas. Only 22% of salespeople who don’t leverage mobile CRM meet their quotas. Click To Tweet

Now, a sales pipeline is not just space where you collect golden opportunities for sales, but it is also the key to understanding the trends and patterns in your sales process.

In fact, this can be truer when we say that to increase conversions, businesses need to manage their sales pipeline efficiently, as according to research it has been found that businesses that are capable of mastering pipeline management skills see approximately 28% growth in their revenue.

Hence as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we are here to help you out, by sharing seven tried tips for effectively managing your sales pipeline so that you can close more deals quickly.

Tips #1

Target the right prospect

What we mean over here, is that businesses must focus on quality rather than quantity to move their opportunities through the pipeline quickly, since the only way to boost the velocity of any sales cycle can only be found by concentrating on the right deal.

Hence, plan ahead to determine the right company or prospects that you need for your business and also the decision-makers you need to approach for closing your deal.

For this reflect on the historical data stored in your easy to use CRM tool and identify the ideal customers for your business.

Find out which are channels are providing your business the best deals.

It is also advisable that you can check out the testimonials on your competitor’s websites and study their case studies to evaluate what kind of companies they are targeting for their sales growth.

Tips #2

Collect information about the deal

When you know what the prospects really want from your brand it becomes easier to move the deals through the various stages in the pipeline which are as follows:

  • Prospecting
  • Lead qualification
  • Demo or meeting
  • Proposal
  • Negotiation and commitment
  • Opportunity won
  • Post-purchase

Remember just contact information alone will never help to close a deal, and so you need to have an in-depth understanding of your prospects’ business challenges, pain-points, budget and goals.

Never dither from questioning your prospects for finding out their needs and always listen with attention to your prospect’s needs for collecting crucial business details.

Find out their budget, who are their decision-makers, and the timeline they are expecting for implementing the solution.

Tips #3

Manage your time efficiently

At times it becomes really difficult to focus on sales processes when businesses have too many things to solve on their platter.
As an easy to use CRM vendor we have seen that most sales reports and admin tasks consume the precious working hours of most people working in the sales teams.

Hence to maximize the efficiency of your sales process tries to eliminate such time-consuming tasks using a sales CRM for rapid business growth.

CRM is a business growth tool that can not only help to set workflow and automate most of the redundant tasks, but it even aids in creating customized sales reports seamlessly.

Additionally CRM also helps the sales teams to get notified about each activity to stay on the right track and so stop prospects from falling through the crack.

Tips #4

Focus on each deal

Do not ignore an opportunity in your sales pipeline so make sure you follow-up and reply to every prospect’s inquiries, on time.

Keep your deals organized to nurture and convert them quickly, Try to spot those of them that are more likely to close ad handle them at once.

Hence use the right tool to track the movement of every single deal, evaluate the sales pipeline regularly to spot the cold deals in the pipeline, and if need render your prospects immediate attention after determining the attributes of all your valuable deals.

Tips #5

Lessen the length of your sales cycle

The longer is the sales cycles the less likely are the chances of closing those deals. Hence businesses should set a timeline to close their deals and create a plan for finding a clear direction to ensure the necessary steps needed to win them within a specific period of time.

For this use a sales CRM to measure different stages of the pipeline and understand how much time your reps need to provide at each stage in the deal.

Now, you need to update these sales strategies periodically and explore new avenues to shorten the sales cycle as discussed even before.

In fact, if you are unable to close any deal within a stipulated time window, then try to find the reason which is stooping the deal to flow to the next step smoothly within the pipeline.

Tips #6

Flush the pipeline regularly

Your sales pipeline will always have a wide variety of deals, and for sure all of them are not going to convert into sales.

Hence quit wasting time on useless prospects that do not need your solution and keep your sales pipeline healthy and clean by weeding out low-quality leads in the pipeline on a regular basis.

Use your CRM tool to create categories “cold deal”, “hot deal” and “dead deal” to figure out which sales prospects need to be followed are the ones which need to be scraped out of the pipeline.

However, do not blindly abandon all the low-quality deals, since you always need to see if the prospect can be added to your future-call list for further nurturing of the leads.

Tips #7

Conduct pipeline review meetings

Sales pipeline review meetings are the best way to keep your deals in motion and also focus on opportunities that have a high possibility of closing shortly.

For this invest one-on-one meetings with the sales reps for evaluating their pipeline and make use of detailed rep[orts that can help to dig deeper into insights that are needed to find out what is working and where your sales process needs improvements.

As an easy to use CRM vendor, we suggest businesses must get an overview of the overall health of their sales pipelines and provide feedback at an early stage to their sales reps to shorten their sales cycles when needed by identifying risks on-time and thereafter addressing them immediately.

Take away

Creating and maintaining a healthy sales pipeline is crucial for meeting and exceeding your sales targets. Hence examine your sales pipeline regularly to understand how the deals are progressing and where your sales teams need to spend more time focusing on the right opportunities and pay due diligence to the pipeline management strategies to boost conversation rate easily.

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Holiday Marketing 101: Strategies To Sell More This Season

Holidays are the only time in the year, when people find a chance to unwind, relax, and create beautiful memories with their relatives, family, and friends. In essence, it is during this time, people do so much more, as they are free. This is the reason as to why businesses also need to tap into their marketplaces during such times and apply their holiday marketing strategies so that they can yield the highest results from their investments. Now, even though as a business owner you might be completely a newcomer to this game, and so would like to find insights into how things really do work during the holiday season, hence as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we are here to get you covered, by showing you a few strategies to help you market your offerings during the upcoming festival season this year.

Holidays are the only time in the year, when people find a chance to unwind, relax, and create beautiful memories with their relatives, family, and friends. In essence, it is during this time, people do so much more, as they are free.
This is the reason as to why businesses also need to tap into their marketplaces during such times and apply their holiday marketing strategies so that they can yield the highest results from their investments.

64% of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search before heading to the store - WordStream Click To Tweet

Now, even though as a business owner you might be completely a newcomer to this game, and so would like to find insights into how things really do work during the holiday season, hence as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we are here to get you covered, by showing you a few strategies to help you market your offerings during the upcoming festival season this year.

Holiday Marketing Tips #1

Make Use Of Signs

You must have noticed even before, as you walk around the streets it is almost difficult to miss a billboard, poster, or any other signs on the road showing the public at large about various products and services.
Therefore, just like the other brands are using these signs to market themselves- so should you.

It is natural that during the holiday season all people tend to go out and move from one place for shopping to another more frequently, and so for holiday marketing, you can definitely use that to your businesses’ advantage.

Hence print posters, and place them on streets, if you cannot invest in billboards, which is nonetheless also very useful for marketing holiday promotions successfully.

Additionally, you can also use retractable banner stands, which can even help a lot in spreading the word about your brand and offerings.

Holiday Marketing Tips #2

Invest in Social Media

In addition to adopting a new easy to use CRM software for your business during this holiday season, one of the other most powerful holiday promotion strategies you can adopt is to invest in social media.

This is because, we all know that we are now living in the digital era, hence almost everyone around us has access to a smartphone and so remains active on social media most of the time when they are free.

The holidays are the best time in the year when you can put your holiday offers on social media platforms, as during this time it has been found in studies that people spend most of their time moving from one social platform to another.

Now if you are new to this kind of promotion, we can help you by letting you know that you can start your social media holiday marketing by creating a Facebook or Instagram profile and thereafter add pictures along with relevant contents of your products and services so that people can easily get them familiarized with your offerings.

Additionally, you can even invite your family members, friends and your present customers to these platforms and ask them to follow your social media posts to get you started.

This is because once people view that you have a substantial number of followers, likes, and responses on your social profiles, they will be more likely to get interested and go through your offerings.

Holiday Marketing Tips #3

Create Festive Ads

Well, if you are looking for more holiday marketing or December marketing ideas, producing festival ads might be just another useful choice for promoting your brand.

This is because nothing sets a business apart from its competitors than creative advertisements that match the seasonal festive spirit and thereby help to deliver a clear message about your offerings.

For this, there are several advertisement types that you can use as a part of your holiday marketing strategy to market your offerings.

One of these is “Pay per Click” advertisements which you can invest in, whereby the advertiser pays a fee every time their ads are clicked online.

We are sure as one of the most popular vendors of easy to you CRM tools, that once you add a little festive touch to your online advertisements and use the right channel that suits your offerings, your products and services will be known by many.

Holiday Marketing Tips #4

Offer Free Rewards

Finally, another great holiday campaign idea is that you can offer free rewards to your customers. This is one good holiday marketing strategy that we have found works well for most companies during the holiday seasons, especially if you are selling products that are tangible in form.

For instance, if the COVID-19 still persists during the upcoming holiday seasons you can offer your customers a free bottle of sanitizer or gift them with a holiday-themed face mask with your company’s logo on it, once they purchase any product from your brand as with this the word will continue spreading the news about your offer to others.

Conclusion

Hence, if you have been all along stressed not knowing what to do for your holiday marketing to promote your offerings during the upcoming the festival season this year, these are some of the strategies that you can adopt for your brand since once you start embracing these strategies and take the effort in growing your profile right from now, we are sure your ads will reach those consumers you want for finding business growth.

As we have even said before that creating festival ads, which essentially implies creating advertisements that highlight the beauty of holidays and promote your products and services, by putting up posters and billboards across the town in advance can greatly help you market your offerings and fetch substantial rewards on your investments.

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Four Vital Tips For Evaluating And Raising The Bar For Customer Support In Businesses

World-class customer service will surely get you loyal and happy customers and amplify your revenues. Just ask any satisfied customers why they liked your services and one thing they will all probably say is “Because your support team solves problems quickly”. Hence as one of the most popular vendors of business CRM tools, we find quick turnaround time when it comes to dealing with customer issues is of utmost importance to your customer service reputation in the marketplace. However, it is needless to assume that you always need money to deliver prompt customer services. This is because, you can even run a lean customer service machine, on a shoestring budget, if you are aware of what is CRM technology that can even be the envy of any Fortune 500 company.

World-class customer service will surely get you loyal and happy customers and amplify your revenues.
Just ask any satisfied customers why they liked your services and one thing they will all probably say is “Because your support team solves problems quickly”.
Hence as one of the most popular vendors of business CRM tools, we find quick turnaround time when it comes to dealing with customer issues is of utmost importance to your customer service reputation in the marketplace.

28% of millennials think CRM applications are “extremely critical” to their success, compared to 18% of Generation X and 9% of Baby Boomers. Click To Tweet

However, it is needless to assume that you always need money to deliver prompt customer services.

This is because, you can even run a lean customer service machine, on a shoestring budget, if you are aware of what is CRM technology that can even be the envy of any Fortune 500 company.

In fact, according to Gartner Research, it has been found that if you are having a small business, odds are in your company’s favor that your establishment can deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction by customer tracking with the help of a business growth technology like a business CRM software.

Nevertheless, being small as an organization, you have the advantage of being nimble and approachable by your customers. In general, small businesses are not staggered by inter-departmental politics, and red tapes that big organizations face in their business establishments.

Hence, here are a few strategies that can help you to quickly deal with your customer issues. Most of these tools fall with the low to no cost category, but they definitely need investment in time and training if you want to enjoy the full benefit of these tips for decreasing the time needed for resolving your brand’s customer issues.

1. Use social media monitoring tools

Social listening on social media platforms may be one of the most helpful ways to track customers and solve their problems.
Encourage your customers to reach you out on social media platforms like

Facebook and Twitter and advise your customer care representatives to respond to them rapidly.

Now business CRM software, especially those that are integrated with social sharing features, better known as SCRM can help you listen in to the conversations of your followers on social media and thereby take necessary actions rapidly.

2. Take Advantage of Google Alerts

Although it is not a shiny and new application like social platforms, Google Alerts is also efficient if you need to keep an eye on what customers are saying online about your products or services.

Create a series of alerts with suitable keywords and set it up so that you can get necessary alerts by either RSS or email feeds. And the best part is as a Google product, it is free.

3. Use CRM software

You do not need to be on the list of Fortune 500 business establishments to buy CRM solution for keeping your customers happy.

In the present times and with the growth of cloud-based SaaS technology, depending on the scale and size of your small business, you can purchase Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions that are price-performance leaders and are best suited for startups and small businesses.

However, if you want to spend more but stay with big names, vendors like Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce have also scaled-down versions of their lead management software for small and medium businesses but might prove extremely heavy in your pocket.

4. Use feedback apps for brick and mortar businesses
Although there are several options for receiving online customer feedback, never neglect spot feedback from customers when they visit your brick and mortar store.

One of the fast deploying technology in many niches is QR (Quick Response) codes. Small businesses can team up with vendors of QR code apps that insert quick response codes on products in the store.

By scanning, the code customers are redirected to a mobile-optimized form while they are still shopping in your store and leave suitable feedback that can be examined in real-time and so complaints found can be resolved rapidly.

Conclusion

Hence, to fetch up, it is necessary that all small businesses must focus on customer satisfaction by adopting a business CRM in this ever increasingly competitive marketplace, with the help of these vital tips that are sure to bring more happy customers and increase your ROI.sign up

Tips on How Businesses Can Calculate Their Customer Retention Rate

Loyal and happy customers are the bedrock for any successful business. This is not only because customers who are loyal mostly become repeat customers, but also since they are generally most likely to the business they like on social media or tend to report the highest levels on any customer satisfaction surveys, have the lowest churn rate, and last but not the least help in boosting any company’s NPS (Net Promoter Score). Hence retention of the existing customers is extremely critical for all businesses.

Loyal and happy customers are the bedrock for any successful business. This is not only because customers who are loyal mostly become repeat customers, but also since they are generally most likely to the business they like on social media or tend to report the highest levels on any customer satisfaction surveys, have the lowest churn rate, and last but not the least help in boosting any company’s NPS (Net Promoter Score).
Hence retention of the existing customers is extremely critical for all businesses.
However, keeping the customers happy and satisfied for a long time is much easier said than done. Therefore brands and businesses that want to find an interest in creating loyalty programs or they are willing to understand what does make their existing customers happy, must also consider customer retention as one of their core strategies for finding success in their business.
Now this aforesaid statement often starts with two key metrics that they can view using an easy to use CRM software, which includes:

• CCR (Customer Retention Rate) and

• CCR (Customer Churn Rate)

These two juxtaposing metrics help businesses come to grips with the most decisive measure of customer satisfaction and customer service- irrespective of whether the customer continues or does not want to do business with the company.

91% of businesses with 10 or more employees now use CRM software. Click To Tweet

These two intertwining metrics also can provide any business with actionable insights into the good and bad news when it comes to evaluating metrics surrounding customer loyalty and satisfaction scores.

Let us begin with the tough news.

Now customer churn which is the downside of retention represents the pace at which a customer stops doing business with any company.

Churn metrics, in general, are illustrated as a percentage of the company’s or brand’s total customers, or can also show the percentage of the number of customers that have left, over a specific period of time.

Even though this metric is often lumped in among the negative metrics in any business CRM software, understanding churn is a very effective way for a business to find what is working and what needs improvement when it comes to everything that starts from the onboarding process to its support services and customer loyalty programs.

Hence businesses should not run from its churn rates but rather use it as a critical metric to guide its retention strategy and thereby boost its CRR (Customer Retention Rate).

And of course, on another hand, the good news on the flip side is that metrics about a company’s customer retention offer a golden insight into demystifying retention and creating healthy and loyal customer experiences.

What is Customer Retention Rate?

Simply speaking CRR is a metric that measures the number of customers that a company continues to do business with over a specific period of time.

Hence CCR is represented as a percentage of the company’s current customers that are maintaining loyalty to the company in that window.

Now monitoring and evaluating CCR is inverse of churn metrics and is needed for understanding CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) in an easy to use CRM and even for quantifying the efficacy of any company’s customer support programs, social media channels, and many more customer retention strategies.

One most important reason as to why businesses focus on their retention rate, customer retention and churn rate metrics is because it is far inexpensive to retain an existing customer than to find a new one.

We all know that customer acquisition campaigns are mostly expensive and slow while a strategy that can be made to work for increasing customer retention and loyalty can have an immediate effect on the CLV and thereby even on the company’s bottom line.

Data You Need To Calculate CRR

Once the company identifies the time window that it wants to measure to find out its CRR, it needs to collect three simple pieces of information which one can find in all easy to use CRM software platforms:

• The number of customers at the beginning of that period (S)

• The total number of customers at the end of that period (E)

• The number of new customers added during that period (N)

While some companies evaluate their CRR on an annual, quarterly, or monthly basis, fast-moving SaaS organizations can even do it on a weekly or daily basis for finding business growth.

The formula for measuring CRR is ((E – N) / S) * 100 = Customer Retention Rate

Results Of Improving Customer Retention Rates

As a final statement, we as one of the leading vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools would like to say that the very first step for any business that is willing to improve customer retention, decrease churn, and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers is to get a handle on their CRR.

This is because once businesses are capable of understanding the right metrics in an easy to use CRM they can easily measure, social media, marketing, and customer service campaign results to fit into a customer retention program which can benefit the customer journey and help guard against a lost customer.

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What Is The Difference Between Sales Funnel And Sales Pipeline

It is a salesperson’s job to guide the consumers through the sales process of learning about the brand’s products and thereafter ultimately make them purchase it. Now a sales pipeline is simply a rep’s tool for organizing and managing this consumer journey and for this easy to use CRM is the secret weapon that helps them perform their job. Hence in this post, we will take a deeper into what is sales pipeline and sales funnel by clearing some of the mostly found confusions around these buzzwords by explaining the subtle difference between these two, along with how to track and manage a sales pipeline with a CRM.

It is a salesperson’s job to guide the consumers through the sales process of learning about the brand’s products and thereafter ultimately make them purchase it.

Now a sales pipeline is simply a rep’s tool for organizing and managing this consumer journey and for this easy to use CRM is the secret weapon that helps them perform their job.

What Is The Difference Between Sales Funnel And Sales Pipeline Click To Tweet

Hence in this post, we will take a deeper into what is sales pipeline and sales funnel by clearing some of the mostly found confusions around these buzzwords by explaining the subtle difference between these two, along with how to track and manage a sales pipeline with a CRM.

What Is Known As A “Sales Pipeline”?

For any layman to understand, a sales pipeline is a simple representation of exactly where the prospects are in their buyer’s journey. It consists of five stages which signify the buyer’s journey from a sales rep’s perspective.

Typically you can manage a sales pipeline using a CRM like Salesforce or even any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms which can help organize any sales rep their leads and guide them through the journey to become a customer.

Stages in Sales Pipeline

The sales pipeline consists of five stages which include:

1. Prospecting: This is the stage where you identify and enter the prospects into the pipeline.

2. Qualifying: In this stage, you set up a meeting or a demo to present your brand’s offerings. Over here your home in the value of your offering and explain how it meets the customer’s needs.

3. Quote: In this stage you discuss the terms and prices with your prospect, explaining to them what features the potential customer is getting fir that price. Additionally, in this stage as a sales rep, you can determine whether the lead is really willing to buy your products and/or services.

4. Closure: This is the time when you need to seal the deal. For this put everything that you have discussed with your prospect in writing and send them the final terms or proposal. You can even offer a discount or a tailored membership at this stage.

5. Won/Lost: This stage shows whether the prospect has eventually brought or rejected your offering. If they did buy, that makes good on your promises. However, if they do not then try to find out why and determine what worked and what did not work in your sales pipeline.

Therefore think of a sales pipeline as a pipe through which you move the prospects and get them to the end of the pipeline and convert them ultimately into customers.

What Is Known As A “Sales Funnel”?

Would you agree that a pipeline and a funnel look the same? Hopefully, your answer to this question would be – No.

Nevertheless “sales pipeline” and “sales funnel” are terms that are often confused.

Now the basic difference between these two is that while a “sales pipeline” depicts the sales process from a salesperson’s perspective, a “sales funnel” illustrates the same process from the buyer’s perspective.

Set like an upside-down pyramid, a sales funnel help to identify and breakdown the key steps in a buyer’s journey and helps to better understand where customers have taken actions and where the opportunities lie for engaging with leads during each of the five stages in the funnel that include:

1. Awareness: In this step, the consumer finds a new product, whereby sales reps can help drive awareness for their offerings with tactics like email outreach, cold calling, or by offering a free trial of their offerings.

2. Interest: In this step, the lead shows real concern and interest in your offer. For the sales reps, this is the right opportunity to nurture these prospective leads by educating and letting them know more about their brand’s offerings. The reps can use case studies, email drip sequences, and testimonial over here which are all excellent means foe building the prospective lead’s trust and appreciation for their brand.

3. Evaluation: This step in the funnel suggests that the lead is further interested to know more about your offering. Hence the sales reps now can find an opportunity to fill in the prospect’s knowledge gap and show the lead that their solution can solve the unique pain-points of the prospective customer.

4. Engagement: This is the second last stage in the funnel when the lead has entered the final decision-making stage in their buyer’s journey. At this point, the sales reps can continue to support the prospective lead and keep them engaged, which helps the leads to travel the last few yards of the sales funnel and finalize the deal.

5. Purchase: This stage in the funnel illustrates that their lead has completed the purchase and has become a customer. Over here it is most necessary that the sales reps must continue to build the relationship after the close to identify opportunities for upselling and improve customer-retention rate for their company.

So you see the sales funnel is a tool that helps reps visualize the buying journey from the perspective of the consumers. But nevertheless, to actively drive that experience, and to make the prospect buy from your brand, means managing the customer’s journey from a sales rep’s perspective with a sales pipeline tool.

Now if you want to increase the success rate of your sales, you need to optimize your sales pipeline, and that implies tracking important metrics with your business growth tool like an easy to use CRM to identify the various stages at which leads are usually getting lost and find why or who are the sales reps in your team that is driving the most conversions.

Hence let us take a look at how to do this.

How To Track Sales Pipeline Metrics With An Easy To Use CRM Tool

Monitoring the following metrics using a business growth tool like an easy to use CRM not only helps to identify bottlenecks in the sales process but it even aids in gaining insights about how businesses can improve the overall health and efficiency of their sales pipeline.

  • Number Of Qualified Leads

Businesses need to track this metric in their CRM to ensure that their sales teams are generating enough qualified leads that they need to enter for the Prospecting stage in the pipeline to meet their revenue goals.

  • MQL To SQL Conversion Rate

This metric in the CRM can easily illustrate how many MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) are becoming SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) at the prospecting stage.

Now if you find that there is a big gap between these two numbers, you need to better align sales with your marketing team, since the effectiveness of marketing-generated leads can be easily tracked by the progress of those leads through the sales pipeline.

  • Average Sales Cycle

This metric in the CRM denotes how long it typically takes to close a deal for your company. Therefore, if you find there are deals that are getting stagnated in your sales pipeline for longer than you average sales cycle, try to enquire why and find out how and what you can improve to shorten the process.

  • Reason for Deal Loss

It is natural that you will not be able to close every deal in the pipeline. However, you can learn from the lost ones.
Therefore track the deal-lost reasons by customizing your CRM metrics on typical trends like “customer did not have the budget” or “poor follow-up” which are valuable insights to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your pipeline as well as help to evaluate the sales rep’s performance in your company.

Conclusion

Easy to use CRM not only makes tracking the stages of the sales pipeline effortless, but it even provides a road map for your sales reps to follow when guiding leads through their buyer’s journey.

It is a tool that can automatically generate reports to help you find a high-level view of your sales pipeline, identify bottlenecks, find out where the leads are getting lost, and even identify new opportunities, providing information to improve your sales operations which ultimately can help drive more sales.

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Effective Tips for Building A Value-Based Selling Strategy

Value-based selling is an approach that has found widespread attention in the B2B community over the years. Nevertheless, the basic problem that lies with value-based selling for business growth is that a very large number of webinars, articles and conference sessions that have been dedicated to this subject treats Value-based selling just a mere ideology, without illustrating how businesses can actually apply this approach in sales within their organization on a day-to-day basis. Therefore as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms, here in this article let us aim to provide tactical advice to help businesses get started.

Value-based selling is an approach that has found widespread attention in the B2B community over the years.
Nevertheless, the basic problem that lies with value-based selling for business growth is that a very large number of webinars, articles and conference sessions that have been dedicated to this subject treats value-based selling just as a mere ideology, without illustrating how businesses can actually apply this approach in sales within their organization on a day-to-day basis.

CRM software is now the biggest software market in the world and the growth isn't slowing down. In fact, CRM is now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025. Click To Tweet

Therefore as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms, here in this article let us aim to provide tactical advice to help businesses get started.

What Is Value-Based Selling?

Now, before we take a deep dive into the practical applications of using a value-based selling strategy for business growth, let us define it:

In the most basic way, value-based selling is an approach in sales that focuses on understanding the prospects and thereafter reinforce to them why your brand’s offerings are valuable to the buyers of your products and services, which is in contrast to the common techniques used in sales that focuses only on the objectives and goals of the buyers.

Hence value-based selling connects the dots between your brand’s offerings and the desired outcome of the buyers.
Nevertheless, as we have observed in several cases even if sales reps are instructed to do otherwise, professionals in sales tend to land up with the habit of investing their vigor on prospecting rather than concentrating and focusing on the requirements of the potential buyers.

However in the recent times, as we are living in a market where buyers have more options than ever before, therefore today one of the best ways to set your business apart in front of your prospective customers is value-based selling, by which you can show them that your products and services can provide value in a way that is specific to your prospect’s business goal, which can easily make your brand stand out from the competitors and set your business for success down the road.

Applying Value-Based Selling

In reality, being successful in value-based selling all boils down to performing your research and putting the requirements of the potential buyers before your own.

Therefore, keeping these six lessons in mind can help you when implanting this approach for business growth.

Lesson #1
Do your due diligence

To create trust in the mind of your potential buyers, and for starting to substantiate your value, you primarily have to perceive the buyer’s problems, pain points as well as their objectives and goals.

Hence even before you first meet with a prospect, use all the resources available to you to find a better understanding of the prospect’s company, its competitions, its products and services, and the industry it is in.

For this to begin with you can start with the company’s website and then look into review sites, analysis reports, its quarterly earnings, its partner content, and whatever else that you can find.

This is because it is only by gaining a full understanding of your prospect’s company, you can start to map out the specific ways your offerings can provide value to your prospective customers.

Now your discovery should not stop there.
Hence in your first call with any prospect, ensure to ask hard-hitting questions about their company to help you further understand what the buyer is looking to achieve, since the more precise you can be when you are first positioning your value, the easier and better will be your chances of closing the deal down the road.

Lesson #2
Keep an open dialogue

We have often observed that sales reps mostly fall into the habit of using the same sales pitch no matter who the buyer is in the marketplace.

However, to adopt a value-based selling approach, there must be a dynamic communication with a lot of give-and-take between the supplier and the buyer of the offering, since communication is the key to success in sales for all businesses.

Hence when you primarily meet a prospect, go into the meeting with a plan (which can be based on the afore-stated research), but ask frequent questions to your prospect and do not be afraid to pivot when it is necessary.

Additionally, during every interaction with the prospect, continuously measure the requirement of their business and thereafter fine-tune your understanding of their desired business outcomes.

Lesson #3
Prove your impact

In this fast world of constant promotions, nowadays B2B purchasers are more skeptical than they had been ever before. Hence your selling strategy in the present times just cannot remain confined in saying about your products and services. Rather, if you are willing to truly break through your prospects, you have to learn the ability to prove how your offerings directly relate to the achievements of their objectives and goals.

Therefore when you are showing or demonstrating your offerings, you can apply them to particular use cases, which can aid in building a solid reputation and thereby move the deals forwards inside the sales pipeline in your easy to use CRM tools.

Lesson #4
Educate instead of sell

Your goal during every interaction with a prospect should be to offer guidance, educate, and lend your expertise to your existing prospective customers.

This is because, if a buyer views you as a valuable and important resource and confidant, it is more likely that it will help to build a solid foundation for an ongoing and steady relationship.

Remember, as in life, even in business the relationship between a supplier and its buyers has to be mutually beneficial to create longevity.

Therefore, once you have proved your enthusiasm and commitment to helping the buyers succeed, the sales process gets a lot more easier under such circumstances.

Lesson #5
Add value in every interaction

Whenever a deal gets interrupted and stalled, it can be really tempting to reach out to the buyers and enquire for an update.
Now, in reality, these actions do nothing to move the deal forward or more to say, create a positive relationship.

Rather, trying to offer value by sharing important informative content and opportunities, pertaining to the prospect’s industry can make the prospect feel heard and supported which can aid in building trust and create a positive long-term customer experience once they ultimately buy your offerings.

Lesson #6
Coordinate handoffs post-sale

Finally, once you have been successful in positioning your brand’s value in a way that a prospect understands and is capable of moving the deal beyond the finishing line, remember not to get disconnected.

This is because post-sales handoff often starts the unraveling of a previously successful partnership with the customers and your brand.

We say this since we have often seen many B2B suppliers experience a collective memory loss as the closing of many deals does not translate into a lasting success plan, whereby the customers are left behind awaiting their promised value to arrive, (while everyone else has moved on).
Therefore, it is necessary that in your best interest make sure that your implementation and success teams understand a new customer’s need-based desired outcomes.

Hence make sure to document your new customer’s goals and objectives and store them in your easy to use CRM solution’s database during the sales cycle and thereafter create a tight process around the internal handoff.
Doing this can not only help you to accelerate your offering’s post-sales value realization plans but also make way for future growth.

So as you gear up to approach new B2B leads, in value-based selling instead of going in with your typical sales pitch, ask your sales reps as to how they can provide value and help to your prospects succeed.

We are hopeful following these six tips may surprise you by making you start experiencing greater win rates and long-term, happier customer relationships.

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Features You MUST Look For In Your MCA CRM Software (Especially During This Pandemic)

Technology solutions for business practices do not usually involve reinventing the wheel, but so to speak add enhanced and efficiency and functionalities to existing business processes to boost accuracy, speed, and user experiences. And it is even more true- when we are looking for a solution to manage our businesses during this COVID-19 Pandemic times. MCA CRM is an important tool that allows Merchant Cash Advance businesses to communicate with and serve the requirements of their customers. The purpose of easy to use Merchant Cash Advance CRM is to engage customers and create a meaningful relationship with the customers, create lasting dialogues that enhance understanding of the customer base, and increase their loyalty for your business growth.

Technology solutions for business practices do not usually involve reinventing the wheel, but so to speak add enhanced and efficiency and functionalities to existing business processes to boost accuracy, speed, and user experiences.
And it is even more true- when we are looking for a solution to manage our businesses during this COVID-19 Pandemic times.
MCA CRM is an important tool that allows Merchant Cash Advance businesses to communicate with and serve the requirements of their customers.

The share of applicants approved for at least some financing is highest for merchant cash advances and auto/equipment loans. - SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT SURVEY (2020) Click To Tweet

The purpose of easy to use Merchant Cash Advance CRM is to engage customers and create a meaningful relationship with the customers, create lasting dialogues that enhance understanding of the customer base, and increase their loyalty for your business growth.

Merchant Cash Advance CRM platforms can aid in tracking and thereafter measuring campaigns and perform in-depth customer analysis, which can help in expanding knowledge beyond the core marketing and sales areas to incorporate customer support and even financial data, which can provide a 360-degree view of every individual customer and even measure experiences of the wider customer base in the Alternative Lending marketplace.

Apart from developing and maintaining customer relationship, most MCA CRM has three robust functionalities which include:

• Sales Force Automation (SFA)
• Data warehousing
• Opportunity management

SFA can automate tracking of customer account histories, implement sales analysis, and coordinate sales, marketing, and retail outlets borrowing from alternate lending businesses.

Data warehousing of MCA CRM software allows users to follow trends, aggregate transaction information, and determine value and KPIs by uncovering data from the CRM database.

Opportunity management aids cash advance businesses to manage unpredictable demand and growth through a forecasting model that integrates sales projections with sales histories.

Therefore, a robust MCA CRM software increases customer satisfaction while at the same time reduces the number of actions needed for managing the customers.

As mentioned even before, integration is the key to proper implementation and adoption of any CRM software.

This means, your easy to use CRM must be able to work seamlessly with your present and existing business software platforms.

For example, most MCA CRM software integrates with accounting packages like QuickBooks for leveraging the power and functionalities of QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free.

An effective CRM solution should inevitably increase sales without increasing overhead. If you find your CRM solution adds complexity without any benefits, you may be using a system that is not right for your business.

But do not give up. The best CRM solution is there for every business – it may take some customization and tweaking, but the benefits it can provide far outweigh the time it takes to calibrate a CRM system to fit your needs.

Now choosing the right MCA CRM for your alternative lending business depends mostly on the size of your organization.

For example startups and small businesses usually does best with customized CRM solutions that are scalable and meets the requirements of their organizations without adding an extraneous feature that bog the system and also most essentially your workflow as it happens when SMBs opt for CRM solutions like Salesforce and prefer not to use Salesforce Alternative CRM software platforms that are specially developed for small businesses.

Takeaway

Therefore to conclude, the key benefits of implementing the right MCA CRM for your Cash Advance business include customer loyalty that enhances the security of your future revenues.

That means, implementing the right MCA CRM solution like ConvergeHub for your alternative financing business during these troubled times, when every single customer counts, lets you simultaneously save resources and time while it helps to increase your customer base and ROI.

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Primary Reasons For Buying CRM To Boost Sales and Revenue

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is time-tested software, which is not just the application of technology but is also a strategy to learn more about your customer’s needs and behavior in order the build a stronger relationship. However, as it is true that getting an easy to use CRM for your SMB too early is a wrong thing, similarly you can inflict a negative impact on your business if you buy CRM and its implementation gets too long. Even CRM guru Paul Greenberg the writer of the bestselling book “CRM at the Speed of Light” admits that it can be an accepted fact, like many others, your business may not be ready for CRM, for if that is the case, you will be wasting your money and efforts if you adopt easy to use CRM for your business growth.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is time-tested software, which is not just the application of technology but is also a strategy to learn more about your customer’s needs and behavior in order the build a stronger relationship.
However, as it is true that getting an easy to use CRM for your SMB too early is a wrong thing, similarly you can inflict a negative impact on your business if you buy CRM and its implementation gets too long.

Using CRM software can increase sales conversion rates by up to 300% - Cloudswave Click To Tweet

Even CRM guru Paul Greenberg the writer of the bestselling book “CRM at the Speed of Light” admits that it can be an accepted fact, like many others, your business may not be ready for CRM, for if that is the case, you will be wasting your money and efforts if you adopt easy to use CRM for your business growth.

So, is your business ready for this business growth technology and tools?

To find an answer to this critical question, here are 3 indicators that can guide you to understand whether you should buy an easy to use CRM for your business right now or your company needs to grow further till you adopt this business growth technology for earning even better revenue.

1. Are You Losing New Sales?

Selling would have been a lot easier if none of the companies would have lost in their selling process. However, if you are losing sales because your lead and customer information got misplaced, or you failed to follow-up because your CRM database is disorganized, or your sales team is spending more time updating and managing their Excel spreadsheets than selling, then it is high time you should move towards implementing an easy to use CRM for your company.

At the most basic level CRM is a tool where you can store all leads and customer information in the CRM database that allows the user to collect, store and use the data for alerts and future sales and customer service activities.

CRM also allows rapid access to all collateral materials as and when they are needed, understand where sales may be going wrong, and find an immediate solution to the problem.

So the answer to what is CRM can be summarized that CRM software is a technology that helps in performing actions that are hard to do with a pure manual, spreadsheet-based approach.

2. Are You Loosing Existing Customers?

Apart from gaining new customers, CRM is even more valuable when it comes to retaining existing customers. Hence, if you are losing existing customers because of failure to follow-up, it is the time that you must introduce ‘Sales Force Automation’ or SFA with the help of easy to use CRM, into sales and customer service operations in your company.

3. Is Your Customer Data Too Large?

The longer you retain your customers, the more you know them. However, it is impossible to carry all the details of your customers, such as their payment terms, buying patterns, things they respond to, and even their personal information and others, in your head.

Therefore, when your organization needs to remember the large volume of data about your leads, prospects, and existing customers, it is the time that you need a CRM database to keep your entire information safe in one central repository.

Endnote

Although implementing CRM can be challenging, but if you are losing sales for any of these above scenarios, it is the time you must understand what is CRM, and adopt this most popular business growth technology for optimizing your organization’s sales and customer support efficiently.

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