Year: 2020

A Checklist Of Six Indisputable Features Of An Effective CRM Software Solution

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business. This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers. Therefore, here are 6 checklists of an effective and great CRM solution for your business growth.

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business.
This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers.
Therefore, here are 6 checklists of an effective and great Features Of An Effective CRM Software Solution for your business growth:

56% of companies targeted their audiences based on CRM data such as purchase transactions, postal address and customer service information. This is expected to rise to 69% in 2020.- SFDC Click To Tweet

1. All Functionalities Within One Single Window

Without jumping between windows, your easy to use CRM must have the ability to aid your team members to view every detail of the actions taken by the customers in a single window.

Easy to use CRM is a solution that is capable of capturing all available information about the customers, leads, and prospects from all sources that include call centers, branches, emails, SMS, web integrations and more in order to offer the best possible personalized service to the customers.

Therefore an effective all-in-one 360-degree CRM view of the prospects and customers in the CRM database creates a unified destination for all customer-facing information that eliminates the requirement for hopping between different silo software platforms.

2. Complex Yet Simple

The success and growth of any company do not hinge on how advanced a technology is that they are using for the success of their business. Rather to say, it depends on how the technology is acting as an enabler to the workforce to make them more productive in their workplace.

Hence right from the start, efficient easy to use CRM should have a simple interface, irrespective of the complexities that are involved in the making and working of the software.

This is because the complexity of the CRM software mostly affects the user’s experience of the solution which can very easily lead to loss of efficiency of the CRM solution even before proper adoption of the software.

3. Easy Integrations

Irrespective of the legacy software solutions that you use, an easy to use CRM that you choose should be able to retrospectively integrate with your businesses’ core IT infrastructure.

In other words, the features and tools of your CRM, be it an enterprise-level robust CRM solution like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small business, should actually integrate seamlessly and optimize the operations in your business, rather than create new investment headaches for your organization.

4. Guarantees Customer Satisfaction

Now that you have invested in your easy to use CRM software, the solution should be actively beneficial to fulfill the targets of your business and also the expectation of your customers.

In other words, your easy to use CRM solution should create a customer service platform that addresses proactively all the pain-points of the customers.
It must be a solution that can motivate and persuade your support staffs to cater a more professional service to your customer base.

In fact, right SLAs and quicker resolutions along with defined metrics help in rendering delightful and world-class customer experience.

5. Evaluation and Projections

All business big or small survives under evaluations in terms of their failure and success, upon which companies strategize their very best next moves.

Monitoring tools in an easy to use CRM helps in recording the activities and interactions of customers and employees that relates to their business.

Therefore effective CRM solutions with the aid of this historical data can make digital predictions about demand spikes, market trends, customer sentiments for your brand and more, that can help in shaping a better tomorrow for your company.

6. Flexible, Scalable And Efficient

Finally, for any entrepreneur, their ultimate aim is to grow in capacity and scale in their business.
Therefore, if you know what is a CRM, then what good is a solution if the cost of its upgrade gets in your way?

As the features of any effective CRM are important on a long-term basis, so the easy to use CRM software that you are interested in investing for your business should also expand and be scalable in proportion to your businesses’ growth.

However, this scalability of the software should never compromise the efficiency of the software, as we should always remember that investing in CRM is a long-term commitment that should not be looked through a prism just for bring short term sales and revenue growth.

Conclusion

As we all know a great easy to use CRM translates to greater opportunities in business by providing delightful and happy customer engagements, therefore we suggest all business owners should most essentially consider these six most important factors before finalizing on choosing their CRM system for rapid business growth .

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A List Of Top Prospecting Strategies For Revenue Growth

In business, you must be knowing how critical it is that you must obtain meetings with your prospective customers. Now you must also be aware by now that getting a prospect’s meeting scheduled is rarely an easy task, as it takes time and an effective approach to do it and so it is important that you must have a strategy for prospecting your customers irrespective of whether you want to sit face-to-face or appear over phone calls or do it over video call (as may be the case) for business growth. Strategies for prospecting your customers means more than the medium or the method that you choose to use, since finding success in prospecting has more to do with how you acquire a meeting with your prospect rather than the medium or the technique that you use to perform it.

In business, you must be knowing how critical it is that you must obtain meetings with your prospective customers.
Now you must also be aware by now that getting a prospect’s meeting scheduled is rarely an easy task, as it takes time and an effective approach to do it and so it is important that you must have a strategy for prospecting your customers irrespective of whether you want to sit face-to-face or appear over phone calls or do it over video call (as may be the case) for business growth.

65% of companies adopt a CRM system within the first five years of business. 18% adopt a CRM within the first year- Capterra Click To Tweet

Strategies for prospecting your customers means more than the medium or the method that you choose to use, since finding success in prospecting has more to do with how you acquire a meeting with your prospect rather than the medium or the technique that you use to perform it.

Target Your Dream Clients

The first and the foremost thing that you must remember while prospecting is that it is a profound mistake to invest time prospecting leads in your easy to use CRM who are not going to benefit from what you are selling.
Even though there are many sales reps that believe (since they need to sell) everyone is a prospect.

Now, this is certainly a poor decision since the belief that every name and every phone number is equally likely to buy or need what you sell is never true.
Hence the primary critical prospecting strategy us to define your dream customers and your targets. This is because you must always call on people and companies who will recognize the value you can create for them as being relevant for solving their pain points and needs.

Additionally, you must also target prospects who are willing to invest in your solutions while allowing your business to capture some of the values you create for your customers.

An Incredible Value Proposition for a Meeting

Always remember that when you are prospecting, you are asking your would-be customers to provide you with the gift of their time.

Therefore you need to make sure that you are using that time to your client’s benefits wisely.
Hence when you ask for a meeting, ensure that you provide a value proposition that trades enough value to command that time, even though in certain cases your prospect might not buy from you (at least not right away).

Capturing Mindshare

This strategy for prospecting and the two that follows (as well as the first two we mentioned above) reinforces and supports each other.

Now the idea of “capturing mindset” implies shaping the lens through which your prospects view their businesses, their challenges, their problems and even their opportunities.
This strategy helps in showing your prospects something that they could not see previously or enlightening your prospects by revealing something helpful (in a higher resolution) to their future.

Remember you should always make your prospects feel that the ideas you share with them are attached to you, and you care about the things that will impact your prospect’s business and you are on top of what is relevant right now and can impact your prospect’s business readily.

Hence one way you can prove to your prospects that you deserve a meeting is be making them preview the value you promised when you ask for the meeting.

An Effective Prospecting Sequence

There are several sales reps who love their phone and so believe that it is the most effective and the fastest method for gaining a meeting, while there are also others who prefer different mediums, like emails and LinkedIn for their business growth.

Now irrespective of what medium that you prefer to use, set up a prospecting sequence that allows you to be professionally persistent over time.

In fact, as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms, we found that the most effective prospective sequence is the one in which you link together different mediums for communicating with your prospective customers.

Get the chain of mediums right by testing the best sequences of the use of different mediums over time that helps in improving your results, especially if you can show up in different places, whereby you can use one medium for communication to ask for meeting, others for capturing mindshare and nurturing the relationship.

No Ask Communications and Content

Once you need to ask for a meeting, do not ask for it in every communication. Rather try to enrich the relationship with your prospective customers by providing insights and updates that might help them to think about their business in a new way.

Hence without making an ask, make an investment with your content as a deposit, as “no ask” contents can break up your communication in the right way while also demonstrating that you are someone who is thoughtful and caring about the very results that your contacts are trying to create or improve in your prospect’s businesses.

Using Multiple Methods

Instead of using phone and emails as your prospective methods, another strategy that is worth pursuing is to show up where your contacts are found.
This could include places like vendor referrals, customer referrals, networking events, social media, trade shows, traditional mail and even showing up at their front doors.

In fact, as one of the most popular vendors of business growth technology and tools, we have found that choosing all these methods can help improve your prospecting in B2B sales, as this strategy results in more new opportunities and meetings, and winning big deals which you might not have won if you had limited yourself to a single approach for selling your offerings.

Hence it can be said in a nutshell that for consultative selling, relationship selling or insight selling you primarily need a strategy that matches your approach in its professionalism and also finds the ability to create value for our prospective customers. Hence businesses needs to improve their activities to boost their results and for that, you should better enhance your effectiveness first.

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How Can Businesses Inspire Their Customers To Share Personal Data Effortlessly

It is of little surprise that there is a gradual shift happening in terms of the consumer’s attitude to the value of the data they are willing to share with brands and businesses. Since, as the digital economy is growing and expanding consumers and people, in general, are becoming less sensitive about sharing their data with brands for their business growth. This is because, many consumers have learned by now that sharing their data can make them benefit through offers and rewards and so brands should feel themselves presently empowered to request data from their customers, or use information by a prospect’s interaction with a brand’s website, to inform their marketing teams if the persons in their email campaign’s list have actively opted-in to their marketing efforts.

It is of little surprise that there is a gradual shift happening in terms of the consumer’s attitude to the value of the data they are willing to share with brands and businesses. Since, as the digital economy is growing and expanding consumers and people, in general, are becoming less sensitive about sharing their data with brands for their business growth.

A recent survey revealed that for companies that use a CRM, the average return on their technology investment is $8.71 for each dollar spent - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

This is because, many consumers have learned by now that sharing their data can make them benefit through offers and rewards and so brands should feel themselves presently empowered to request data from their customers, or use information by a prospect’s interaction with a brand’s website, to inform their marketing teams if the persons in their email campaign’s list have actively opted-in to their marketing efforts.

Hence for brands that are willing to stay ahead of the pack, here are some of the top tips that will help businesses to build strong relationships with their customer base, and implement effective methods for building motivations among their customers which even help create brand loyalty in the long haul resulting in business growth.

Be clear about how personal data will be used

Extracting valuable information and insights by requesting the customer to understand their likes and pain points and thereafter define their requirements is most important when it comes to boosting their relationship with your brand.

However, the framing, and context of this request are vital, as it provides clarity on how this information most often stored in the CRM database will be used if you are a user of an easy to use CRM system.

In a recent survey conducted by a popular vendor of CRM for small business, it has been found that while many consumers are willing to share their personal info with a brand or company they trust, there are also others that proclaim that they are ready to do it if they are aware that parting with their information would make them receive rewards or discounts in exchange of their data.

Therefore, ensuring your customers and making them learn why you are requesting their personal data, and what they can expect in return, is incredibly necessary for building trust and credibility of your brand for consistent business growth.

Use data in a timely manner, and use it effectively at regular touch-points

You must take adequate care to avoid dropouts during the registration process with your brand, and also make sure that any information shared is effectively and swiftly deployed into a nurturing process. Hence, once the information about the leads and customers is collected in your CRM database , it must be acted upon quickly to decrease the risk of losing that customer forever.

According to a survey it has been found that 84% of participants said that they would not register with a business if they are not subsequently contacted more than twice, which amply implies how necessary it is for the information to be used instantaneously and thereafter at regular intervals.

This is because, like with any other relationships, the primary stages are extremely critical for building a long-lasting impression on your leads and customers.

Hence after a new customer or lead signs up for your newsletter send a tailored offer in an email to the customer or send a helpful post-purchase email containing further information about your offerings that will aid in creating engagements at every touch-point and reflect the present context of that relationship by anticipating the customer’s needs.

Follow and match your customers’ communication preferences

While well-established channels for marketing like email are still adding value for the brands but presently according to studies even less than 10 percent of customers feel that their favorite brands are ‘excellent’ at anticipating and understanding their customer’s needs.

Therefore, modern marketers must gain and manage insights from all touchpoints at all times for their business growth.

Businesses are also required to bring in continual refinement to their marketing and support strategies so that they can reflect and understand how their customers are adopting new behaviors.

This is because; influential contact points and emerging channels such as SMS, and social media are becoming more important nowadays which is especially true for the younger audiences in today’s B2C and B2B marketplace.

Therefore, to be able to identify how to effectively engage a customer across this mix, and understand the complications of today’s data-driven customers is the key to creating relevance nowadays.

Hence it is only be orchestrating channel preferences you can improve the customer experience of your brand by building upon each contact points, which is capable of generating seamless interactions that lay the foundation of an effective and impactful nurturing program through deeper customer interactions, a process which can be aided by using an easy to use CRM software platform.

Reward and measure

Discounts and vouchers are one of the leading triggers to purchase for all cash-conscious customers.
According to a survey some 74% of the surveyors that used vouchers while shopping, proactively engaged to access them in several ways.

Therefore, after looking at this redemption behavior, ensure that you must continue to optimize the impact of offering rewards and offers, whilst creating a parallel control group in your organization that must provide a true test of the purchase’s uplift value that your email campaigns have driven for business growth.

However, while providing offers and discounts you must also remain sure that you are not just encouraging promiscuous buyers who only shop with incentives and for that ensure that all your communication with the shoppers adds high potential value and relevance to their purchasing experience.

Keep on top of your data

Finally, according to a survey, it has also been found that more than 81% of the consumers welcome and like brands that make their decision to buy easier, by suggesting inspirations for future purchases based on their previous shopping- as long as these recommendations are accurate and appropriate.

However, the essential part in achieving this success lies in assimilating and updating your customer data and integrating it across your channel mix, by using technology systems like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions that facilitates centralized and automated analysis across all touchpoints.

Conclusion
Therefore, balancing trust and data sensitivity through contextual and meaningful customer interactions is most needed to ensure that your prospects and customers will continue to view the benefits of data exchange, as nowadays “Average” experience in an age where customers can pick from a growing number of alternative options will not cut with the demanding shoppers that rule the modern marketplace.

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How Segmenting and Profiling Your Customers Can Increase Their Lifetime Value With Your Brand

CLV or Customer Lifetime Value is an index that has remained fairly untouched in the business world primarily because companies are still unsure about how exactly it fosters business growth and boost revenue over time. However, more than anything, calculating CLV brings about a pertinent change in the way organizations function, as it paves a golden opportunity for businesses to get ahead of the competition, especially if they are using CLM CRM software, which is the acronym of Customer Lifecycle Management CRM tool. This is because; your job does not end, once you have managed to successfully bring a steady flow of customers for your company. Rather your customer relationship starts right over here, as you now need a sharp insight into your customer base to identify your most important buyers by keenly observing their behaviors.

CLV or Customer Lifetime Value is an index that has remained fairly untouched in the business world primarily because companies are still unsure about how exactly it fosters business growth and boost revenue over time.
However, more than anything, calculating CLV brings about a pertinent change in the way organizations function, as it paves a golden opportunity for businesses to get ahead of the competition, especially if they are using CLM CRM software, which is the acronym of Customer Lifecycle Management CRM tool.

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

This is because; your job does not end, once you have managed to successfully bring a steady flow of customers for your company.

Rather your customer relationship starts right over here, as you now need a sharp insight into your customer base to identify your most important buyers by keenly observing their behaviors.

Winning new customers for your business is indeed a daunting task that most businesses struggle with. However, on the other hand, engaging and retaining existing customers takes far less effort and resources.

This is where metrics like Customer Lifetime Value comes into play since this a metric in the CLM CRM software that analyzes existing customer base to find out who, when, and how will bring the most revenue for your brand and also help to evaluate the existing worth of your customers.

CLV is a metric that makes a huge difference to any business since equipped with this knowledge; brands find the ability to gear-up with their customer engagement strategies, which aids in improvising, honing, and doubling engagements with their high-value customer base.

The strategies for engagement that CLV can leverage through CLM CRM software includes the complete customer service processes that can be personalized to make your high-paying customers feel appreciated and stick with your brand for a long time.

Since by offering customized and prioritizing services to the customers of higher value it is not that you are not only making them stay longer but it also helps in increasing the customer spent on your brand.
CLV also drives marketing strategies in order to increase and improve engagements with customers of higher worth.

Therefore, with respect to increasing CLV, there are several solutions that work in tandem with customer worth for creating accurate engagement strategies leading to better conversions of the prospects with the help of CLM CRM software.

Customer Profiling

Customer profiling is an activity that enables businesses to store profiles of the customers that tells the story of every customer locked in the CRM database, which helps in sending the right message to the customers that match their individual preferences.

It is always easier to offer customized services to your customers when you are using an easy to use all-in-one CRM software solution that offers a 360-degree view of high-paying customers that can be evaluated and measured by a profiling system.

Labeling VIP Customers

To find the maximum revenue from your customer base with respect to their spending potentials, you need to distinguish between them with the help of a solution like CLM CRM software that lets you label high-paying customers like a VIP.

Therefore, performing this classification can help you to evaluate conversions every time using CLM CRM software solutions and offer special discounts and dynamic pricing to customers who are marked special on your CRM database.

Customer Segmentation

With the help of customer segmentation, you can divide your customer base depending upon their spending ability and take a dedicated approach towards each segment using the CLM CRM platform.

Dedicated Workflow

Dedicated workflow aids businesses to target customers with higher potential in every step along with your engagement and market strategies.

For example, you can set up a targeted sequence for each segment of your customer base like ad campaigns, and email campaigns that boost revenue growth.

Building Customer Loyalty

Customer profiling and segmentation provides you with a better view on how to improve the efficiency and speed of your customer service with higher lifetime value and avoid the dissatisfaction of the customers by introducing loyalty programs that helps in reducing customers churn and aids in holding on to high-paying customers for a longer time.

Conclusion

For calculating CLV primarily you require a 360-degree view of your customers, for knowing the worth of each customer in your CRM database, for which you need an easy to use CRM since it is hard to calculate the customer spent by manually searching for data which represent the worth of each customer, that help in boosting the lifetime value of your customer for your business growth.

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Tips to Reposition Your Offerings and Outreach to Provide Value In These Pandemic Times

The state of sales and businesses all across the globe is highly uncertain today. Now even though we are talking about it, and we are doing whatever we can do best to adjust to this current Coronavirus Pandemic, what we are not doing is refraining from discussing the aftermath of this crisis and talking about what this will means for sales and business growth. We are all hoping that everything will snap back as soon as possible when this social-distancing and bans are lifted at people at large can go back to their offices and resume face-to-face work. Nevertheless, it will not happen as quickly we are anticipating now.

The state of sales and businesses all across the globe is highly uncertain today.
Now even though we are talking about it, and we are doing whatever we can do best to adjust to this current Coronavirus Pandemic, what we are not doing is refraining from discussing the aftermath of this crisis and talking about what this will means for sales and business growth.

We are all hoping that everything will snap back as soon as possible when this social-distancing and bans are lifted at people at large can go back to their offices and resume face-to-face work. Nevertheless, it will not happen as quickly we are anticipating now.

Businesses that leverage CRM software see sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. Click To Tweet

Hence as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM for small and medium businesses we think that repositioning your offerings and sales outreaches in reaction to this present situation is critical for sustaining business growth.

However, to do this your sales teams need to reposition their sales strategies with future conditions in sight.
This is because we guess none of us will want to put their sales teams to perform this exercise once again during the post-Corona times just because you were unable to calculate what “not quite back to business as usual” actually means.

Therefore, as one of most recognized and award-winning vendors of CRM for SMB and startups, we would like to cover four steps here that might help you to reframe how you sold your offerings yesterday and even keep the near future in mind when businesses will hopefully start operating “normally” once again.

Step# 1

Identify Niche Markets and Use Cases

It has been observed that not only businesses are right now scrambling to move their marketing and sales budgets from offline channels to virtual events, webinars, and more advertisings digitally- they are even contending to reposition their values and messages for apparently new purchasers or niche markets.

Here are three distinct trends within any organizations that sellers are falling into:

• Firstly, businesses that are still prospering right now because they have already found their niche markets and use cases for their present needs.

• Secondly, the companies who are struggling to find their niche market and use cases since they are finding them in a market that is extremely affected by COVID-19 Pandemic and their offerings are not flexible enough to fit into this current market.

• Thirdly, businesses that fall somewhere in-between these two extreme scenarios.
Now as per observations, it has been found that most companies across the globe fall in this third category, whereby they are struggling to find their niche markets and targeted use cases, even though the potential to fit in those niche markets with the right repositioning of their offerings and strategic messaging shifts.

Step# 2

Place Your Buyers Into Two Separate Buckets

Right after you have been able to identify the most immediate niche market that requires your solution, do not stop since to effectively modernize the outbound strategies you need to play short and long games sequentially.
This implies warming up and prepping up your leads and customers with a specific future need that you have identified.

Hence your consumers now should be spilled into two buckets:

• Firstly your present buyers whom you have identified in Step# 1

• Secondly, your future buyers of tomorrow who will either require your solution during the world’s time of rebuilding in the post-crisis landscape or purchasers who you will need to provide your solutions again when businesses stabilize.

Now, buyers those that are in your first bucket, who will find your solutions very relevant to their needs right now, should get very specific messages which are still focused on call-to-action, but the buyers in your second bucket where your solution is nice-to-have but does not fulfill an immediate need, should get value-driven, and different messages that are meant to nurture them and keep your business top of their mind.
Since only by doing this, when conditions shift to more a favorable business scenario, you will be able to make your consumers find your offerings already in front of them, while at the same time you can also establish yourself as a trusted resource.

Step# 3

Customize Your Messaging and Empathize More With The Buyer

One of the most critical challenges right now in front of the sales teams is how they can be more empathetic and still get the things in front of their buyers without sounding overtly pitchy during these turbulent times.
For this, the primary thing that Marketing and Sales need to do is to get out of their autopilot mode. Therefore if your brand still has campaigns scheduled in their business growth tools like an easy to use CRM software, its best to cancel them and recalibrate everything to the requirements and current pain-point of the bucket-one buyers explained in the Step #2 of this blog.

This is because as businesses, we cannot just be tome-deft right now to the situations that our leads, prospects, and customers nowadays. Rather everything that you send now to your leads and prospects has to be relevant to them in a more genuine manner.

So just do not start sending email messages that begin with the cliché “We know times are strenuous and crazy right now…” and call them empathetic messaging for the consumers in your marketplace.
Since the only way that you will be able to show any value to the consumers is with a one-on-one approach and scrapping automated one-size-fits-all outreaching strategies.

Now we are no longer in practice to really think about what our purchasers are going through at the moment and adapting messages-although this really at the heart of all sales.

Hence getting back to the fundamentals, if your business does not know how a brand makes money, or what your prospective leads do in their jobs, how is it possible to help them under these present circumstances? How can you narrow down and tailor your messages to precisely what they require versus sending blanket statements about your offerings?

Perse, even though you can provide your prospects information since you do not require to know about anyone to give them information about your offerings. But nevertheless, you just cannot make your offerings applicable to your prospective buyers and their businesses, especially during these trying times of change when you have to reposition the value of your offerings.

Step# 4

Modernize Your Outbound Strategy

Any modern outbound marketing and selling strategy relies on a combination of traditional (calls and emails), video, and LinkedIn with highly segmented groups and hyper-targeted sequences.

Traditional (phone and emails)

Most sales teams in the present times are extremely comfortable with traditional channels, but where most strategies fall short is not segmenting outreach sequences by buyers, markets, and solutions.
Hence, now is the time to get your marketing and selling strategies more narrow and provide that one-on-one experience, which can be easily done when your business is assisted by an easy to use CRM software.

Now, LinkedIn and video touchpoints between emails and phone calls provide additional help in optimizing your strategies even further.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most useful social platforms for sales teams since it helps in promoting your business solutions in an organic way, by building exceptional and exclusive relationships with the buyers and thereby help in generating new businesses.

Therefore integrating LinkedIn into your outbound strategies will permit your business to connect with your bucket one buyers and also nurture in bucket two.

We say this since focusing more on B2B social selling during this global unrest is a no brainer as everyone is nowadays investing more time on social media and online than ever before, which is especially true for LinkedIn for business professionals.

Video

In the present times when face-to-face is off-limits due to social distancing norms prevailing all across the globe to thwart the spread of COVID-19, the video has an even more significant impact on building up a purely digital relationship in sales outreach.

It can help to put a face to the rep and allow real-time explanations of complicated concepts, which was also true even before people were asked to stay at home.
However, as now buyers are yearning for the personal connection to happen more so nowadays when they hear the voice of a person and sees them, it definitely helps more in creating better conversions.

Conclusion

Therefore, to recap briefly, to survive this global COVID-19 Pandemic businesses must reposition their offerings and their sales outreaches to clearly show their values, whereby the biggest lift will be going back to the drawing boards and genuinely digging into what the purchasers want and finding their present pain-points are how your solutions can relieve them, whereby Google is a good place to start figuring that out for sustaining your sales and business growth.

Who knows doing this exercise might even help you to find new markets you had never thought to sell into ever before.

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How To Build A Custom Facebook Audience Using Your MCA CRM Software

In modern times, most owners of businesses in the Alternative Lending industry using MCA CRM software would effortlessly agree that social media marketing is an extremely important and effective advertisement tool nowadays. However, in spite of the growing rise in social media many small business owners might not be conscious of all the existing resources and tools that are freely available for building a custom and preset audience for their relevant ads. To elaborate, for example. Facebook is one of the most popular and trending social media platforms when anyone among us thinks about putting up an adv on social media, more so because Facebook freely provides such wide-ranging customer targeting tools.

In modern times, most owners of businesses in the Alternative Lending industry using MCA CRM software would effortlessly agree that social media marketing is an extremely important and effective advertisement tool nowadays.
However, in spite of the growing rise in social media many small business owners might not be conscious of all the existing resources and tools that are freely available for building a custom and preset audience for their relevant ads.

To elaborate, for example. Facebook is one of the most popular and trending social media platforms when anyone among us thinks about putting up an adv on social media, more so because Facebook freely provides such wide-ranging customer targeting tools.

Seven out of ten (69%) adults in the U.S. claim that they use Facebook - Pew Research Center(2019) Click To Tweet

One of these targeting tools found in Facebook is its ability to upload your self-created customized audience list right from your Merchant Cash Advance CRM software.

Hence if you have a list of customers that have not been visiting your MCA website for a while and you are in a desperation to your lost customers a targeted ad as a simple reminder to visit the new offers that you have placed on your website, creating a list of the custom audience is a perfect way of doing so.
Now, there are several ways that you can approach to build your custom audience on social media platforms like Facebook.

Nevertheless, irrespective of how you choose to create the custom audience, the primary and the foremost thing that you need to ensure is that you have a saved list of your MCA customers which contains their phone numbers and their email addresses in your MCA CRM software platform’s database.

Thereafter, ensure that this list is saved as a CSV or a TXT file.

How to Build a Custom Audience Through Facebook Business Manager:

1. Log into your Facebook Business Manager.

2. Next, beneath the Business Manager Button (which is located in the upper left-hand corner), click on the Audiences.

MCA CRM

3. After this click on the Create Audience tab and select Custom Audience which you will find in the drop-down menu.

MCA CRM

4. Select Customer File in the list that appears on the screen.

5. Next click on “Add Customers From Your Own File or Copy and Paste Data”.

MCA CRM

6. Upload the previously created CSV or TXT and saved in the pop-up of the window.

MCA CRM

7. For the uploading process to complete permit Facebook at least 20-30 minutes and ensure that you name the list in the best way to describe its use.

8. You create now create a Facebook ad that is perfectly in accordance to the audience, once your data upload is completed.

How to build a Custom Audience Using Ads Manager:

1. To begin with, create a Facebook ad by logging into your Ads Manager on Facebook.

MCA CRM

2. Underneath the Custom Audiences (as you explore the audience section) click on Create New Tab and after that click on Custom Audience.

MCA CRM

3. Next, opt for Custom File in the box that appears on the screen.

4. Next just click on “Add Customers From Your Own File or Copy and Paste Data”.

MCA CRM

5. Now just like we did it even before, upload the previously created CSV or TXT and saved in the pop-up of the window.

MCA CRM

6. After initiating the upload to complete the entire process permit Facebook at least 20-30 minutes and ensure that you name the list in the best way to describe its use.

7. Once the upload is over, you can create a Facebook ad that is precisely in accordance with the audience.

Conclusion

Using a Custom Audience from a customer list that you have created in your Merchant Cash Advance software for your alternative lending business not only helps you to invite past customers to return to your MCA website, but it also aids in sending special offers to repeat customers or want to let people know of a special offer that you provide for a specific set of customers in your CRM database.

Hence once you are using an MCA CRM to reach your customers on two perspectives (Email marketing and also in Facebook Custom Audiences) you can be double sure of reaching an audience that is highly qualified and so is more likely to be your customers which results in consistent business growth.

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Unique Benefits of Easy to Use CRM That Will Accelerate Your Sales Growth

Are you aware that according to Fortunly, just 78.5% of startup businesses survive the first year? And that implies a significant 21.5% of businesses fail in the first year itself. Now among many other reasons for failures in businesses, we also know as one of the leading easy to use CRM vendors for SMBs that 14% of startups and small business organizations fail since they pay no attention to their customer’s needs, which shows that companies shun their customers at their own peril. Therefore, once you start a business, just understanding what you are selling to your consumers in the marketplace is just not enough. Rather in the present times, companies most essentially need to know who they are selling their offerings. For which getting acquainted with the customers, understanding their requirements, and more importantly building world-class long-term relationships with them is essential to continue success for business growth.

Are you aware that according to Fortunly, just 78.5% of startup businesses survive the first year?
And that implies a significant 21.5% of businesses fail in the first year itself.
Now among many other reasons for failures in businesses, we also know as one of the leading easy to use CRM vendors for SMBs that 14% of startups and small business organizations fail since they pay no attention to their customer’s needs, which shows that companies shun their customers at their own peril.

Therefore, once you start a business, just understanding what you are selling to your consumers in the marketplace is just not enough. Rather in the present times, companies most essentially need to know who they are selling their offerings. For which getting acquainted with the customers, understanding their requirements, and more importantly building world-class long-term relationships with them is essential to continue success for business growth.

Nearly 60% of organizations expect to increase IT spending in 2019. And it remains the same in 2020. Click To Tweet

This is exactly where business growth technology solutions like easy to use CRM software steps in.

However, it is unfortunate that according to a report published by Stellaxius, still today 50% of companies with 10 or fewer employees do not use CRM for their businesses.

Therefore, if your startup or small business is yet to buy CRM , the time to do so is now.

So, here are the five most unique benefits of using an easy to use CRM software solution you should look at for accelerating your business growth.

Benefit #1

CRM Helps Make Employee Transition Smooth

Just imagine a situation: Your star sales represented is leaving your company, and you have to distribute his/her accounts to the rest of your teams until you are able to find a replacement.

Now, without a CRM in hand, all the interactions and accounts that the rep had may be scattered across several spreadsheets, sticky notes, and emails, which will make it difficult and tiresome to find a complete view of these accounts and their progress.

But with an easy to use CRM in place, you can easily and quickly conduct a sales pipeline audit, which will allow you to find a complete understanding of the accounts and comprehend deal stages and their progress, and thereby even if your star sales rep leaves can enable the rest of your sales teams to engage in contextual conversation with his/her prospects and customers.

An easy to use CRM enables your business to:

• Go through your sales rep’s accounts and clearly perceive how many deals they have in their sales pipeline and understand which stages they are in.

• Strategize your next course of action as when you review the attributes in the pipeline you can identify new ways and possibilities to take the deals forward and also find how the new reps you hire will take over.

Benefit #2

CRM Helps To Boost Collaboration

Any CRM software be it Salesforce used by enterprise-level organizations or Salesforce Alternative CRM tools used by SMBs, at its core is a platform that enables people in sales to collaborate not only within themselves but even with other different teams like marketing, support, production, partners, and accounts across the organization.

In other words, easy to use CRM solutions allows sales reps to access and share essential documents collected and stored within the system.
In fact, some of the best known CRM platforms in the marketplace come with in-built communication tools that permit salespeople to not only communicate with each other without leaving the CRM but also share interactions they collect from interactions with their customers.

This functionality found in a CRM is essential as when leads get passed on from sales development representatives to the account executives in business, the account executives need context to get engaged with the leads, which can be easily done using an easy to use CRM whereby the account executives get access to past emails, conversations, char notes and more.

Benefit #3

Automations Boost The Productivity Of Reps

Repetitious tasks like updating and adding contact information, sending the same email to several recipients, setting up monotonous follow-up tasks and others can be simply automated using Sales Force Automationm (SFA) that is integrated with most easy to use CRM tools, which aids in freeing time for the sales reps to take care of more important tasks like interacting and communicating with prospects, and more.

Modern CRM software solutions can not only help capture prospects and customer data but it can also populate a lead with useful information such as job title, industry and company and even automatically log calls which can save reps the time required to log every call to the respective prospects.

Additionally easy to use CRM can even contact leads within minutes of their sign-up that can increase the likelihood of them answering the call by automatically assigning prospects to the right sales reps available in the team.

Finally, using CRM sales reps can allow the software to automatically create appointments and thereafter get constantly reminded to help them stay on track.

Benefit #4

Get A Forecasted View Of Sales

Wrong data is bad for any business, and so are the wrong numbers in sales.
Therefore, using a modern CRM solution businesses can find well-engineered and accurate forecasts of their sales, which can help organizations to avoid major and expensive mistakes when it comes to planning their marketing campaigns, gather leads, and conduct their overall sales process.

Easy to use CRM can do the following to provide value out of sales forecasting for any business:

• Sales Pipeline forecasting

Once a deal is initiated it passes through several stages in the sales pipeline. Modern CRM can provide the ability to set a customized percentage that can be measured for each stage to show how likely the deals will move to get to the next stage in the pipeline or how likely it is for the deal to convert to a sale.

• Goal-based forecasting

Based on the numbers and revenue of the deals that you have closed, CRM can help to forecast sales and show how likely your team is to achieve them.
Using CRM sales managers can find an idea of the number of deals that are won and thereby determine the average deal win rates.

Benefit #5

Improve Customer Relationships And Reduce Churn

CRM is known as Customer Relationship Management software for a reason.

It cannot be denied that your customers make your business- and there are no two ways about it.

Therefore you need to provide your customers with the best Customer Experience (CX) right from when they are your prospects, to when they purchase your offerings and even after that as they remain to make them stay back as your future customers.

Now providing the best experience for the customer needs a 360-degree view of the customers, which an essential feature that is found with the most easy to use CRM software solutions in the marketplace.

Modern CRM solutions come with prospect management tools, and the good ones are those platforms that are capable of telling everything you need to know about your leads and customers from a single screen.

This includes information captured from:

• Customer interactions

• Social media

• Email campaigns they are a part of

• The tasks and appointments scheduled with them

• Real-time usage statistics

• Other touchpoints

Therefore once you buy CRM all these benefits will aid your sales teams to build long-term relationships with your brand’s customers that can result in few leads slipping through the crack and also boost customer retention rate consequentially.

Conclusion

Hence as the key for providing your customers what they want mostly depends on how well you understand them, and easy to use CRM is a tool that can do it effortlessly, modern CRM software benefits you sales team and your whole organization by facilitating customer satisfaction, ease collaborations, protect data and finally by boosting productivity and revenue.

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5 Killer Marketing Strategies For The Growth Of Your Small Business

The daily grind of any solopreneur can be really overwhelming. While it might be true that you have this wonderful product or service that makes people more efficient and happier, nevertheless when it comes to sharing this offering with the world, it looks like you have hit a dead end. Now, when you read about marketing strategies for business growth all that you see are these great examples of Apple and Coca Cola, which must have worked for them, but then again as a small business or a startup, you do not have the budget to ask Kendall Jenner of sponsor a baseball team to promote your offerings. This is because the truth is, you do not need that as a small business, since most big brands create advertisements for brand exposure, like Budweiser sponsors major NFL teams to make their fans say “Oh, look I know these guys” when they go for buying Bud Light at the local supermarkets

The daily grind of any solopreneur can be really overwhelming.
While it might be true that you have this wonderful product or service that makes people more efficient and happier, nevertheless when it comes to sharing this offering with the world, it looks like you have hit a dead end.
Now, when you read about marketing strategies for business growth, all that you see are these great examples of Apple and Coca Cola, which must have worked for them, but then again as a small business or a startup, you do not have the budget to ask Kendall Jenner of sponsor a baseball team to promote your offerings.

CRM is considered one of the most important aspects of sales right next to lead generation and lead engagement. Click To Tweet

This is because the truth is, you do not need that as a small business, since most big brands create advertisements for brand exposure, like Budweiser sponsors major NFL teams to make their fans say “Oh, look I know these guys” when they go for buying Bud Light at the local supermarkets.

Now your small business probably does not need that kind of reach or advertisement since in really small business and startups ideally require marketing that works with a small audience who are likely to purchase your offerings.

Therefore, instead of millions or thousands of people seeing your products, in small businesses if a dozen good leads in your small business CRM software platform’s database gets converted you can consider yourself as a winner and thereby grow your business.

Hence in this write-up here are five killer strategies that will for sure grow your small business or startup for little to no money at all.

Before You Start

Now if you want to grow your small business, it is most important that even before you start your marketing efforts, you need to build a plan which is one of the most vital tips for any small business trying to grow using digital marketing.

This is because primarily you need to understand what people you are targeting, how many leads you need to generate to keep growing and why would your leads want to buy your offerings, which are certain most crucial factors that will define both the quality and quantity of your marketing efforts which is needed for your business growth.

Hence kick-off your marketing by defining your audience.
Now it can be an issue if you are just starting out of you do not have any leads or prospective customers to base your assumptions on, and so look at who your competitors serve and thereafter brainstorm with your teams before answering these questions listed below:

When you have that figured out, think how many clients can your team handle at once, and how many leads do you need each month to make your business grow.

• What is the demography of my audience?

• What problems and pain-points so they solve with my offering(s)?

• Where does my audience look for information?

• Which social media platforms are used by my audience?

• How long on an average does your audience take to make a decision about their purchases?

Now, in case you are targeting customers in another country, it is natural you might have trouble viewing the web as they do.

Hence, to resolve this issue, get a VPN service and use the VPN to change your location while you access foreign websites and see what your customers see while they search for your offering.

Since with these assumptions, it will be easier for you to choose one or marketing strategies for your small business, since it must be understood that a plan is also an assumption, and so always be ready to change your plan if you see that the leads that you are getting in your easy to use CRM database are different than what you are expecting for your sales and business growth.

1. Create authority

One of the best things that you can do for your small business is to establish yourself as an authority. Hence, share your suggestions, advice and expertise on popular platforms, so that people might notice your business right away.

Therefore, guest blogging is a great way to find a huge exposure. Now even though you may not be writing for Forbes anytime soon, but if you find blogs and websites related to your business that have a big enough following, and accepts contributions, leaving a link to your business website or blog will surely boost your website’s authority in the eyes of Google bots and your potential customers.

2. Focus on long-tail keywords

It is an accepted fact that organic traffic ensures a much better ROI than PPC, even though your conversion rate might be lower with organic footfall sue to the lack of precise targeting.

Now it might take years before your new business website can rank well with high competitive words like “easy to use CRM”, “buy jewelry NYC” and others, therefore focus on dominating the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) with low-competitive long-tail keywords like for example “what is the best Salesforce Alternative CRM in the US?” or “What gems to buy instead of rubies?” to make your audience find your business easily in the marketplace.

Hence make a quick search of the long-tail keywords related to your industry, look for the topics that can cover the keywords that you can rank for, create unique contents and promote them by:

• Searching and outreaching smaller blogs and offering them to repost their contents with a back-link

• Outreaching resource pages and offering to post links to necessary, helpful and relevant contents

• Asking top bloggers in your industry of their opinions, mentioning them in your posts and asking for promotion of your offerings on their social media platforms

• Searching and finding out broken links and offering to post your link instead

• Finding post in Reddit or Quora asking about the topics and providing meaningful answers with back-links to your business websites and blogs

Pro Tip:
Work on creating a newsletter and create an effective way of getting people to subscribe as you are growing website traffic with content. It has been found that the ROI of email marketing is approximately $32 for every dollar spent.

3. Hire micro-influencers

If you are selling products like something that looks good on photos and is Instagram-worthy, get on Instagram to sell your offerings.

Now, this does not necessarily mean you need to spend thousands of dollars on a post since according to a survey done by Emarketer it revealed that you can even pay influencers on Instagram as low s $100 and still get conversions.

For this send your micro-influencers a free product for their review after selecting your influencers on YouTube and/or Instagram that works in your niche. The main criteria for finding such influencers is selecting one who has at least more than 5,000 subscribers, have a good engagement in their comments and are respected for their expertise by their followers.

4. Outbound prospecting

Now, this strategy is not fit for everyone, and so this is the reason why if you are in a B2C market you should start primarily by defining your audience and your goals.

Nevertheless, if you are a B2B company and need just a couple of customers to grow each year, outbound prospecting can be your preferred match.

However never send emails to everyone, as buying a mailing list from the web is a sure way for making your emails reach the spam.

Therefore, here is what you need to do to make outbound marketing effective for your business growth:

• Study your leads and if they seem like they need your help, it implies that they are not cold

• Find the right person to contact

• Personalize your emails using an easy to use CRM can increase your email marketing ROI by 122 percent

• Never engage your lead in a conversion with a sales pitch

• Follow up every week with your prospective leads consistently

• Always ask for referrals

5. Automate

Irrespective of whether you are doing inbound or outbound marketing, it is never possible to keep track of every leads manually on your own.

Hence use an easy to use CRM, especially Salesforce Alternative CRM software platforms that are mostly used by small businesses and startups to keep all your contact’s data and history in one place.

Using a CRM for small and medium business aids in keeping track of all conversations and calls and thereafter analyze your interactions easily, which is especially helpful if you are interacting with your customers across multiple channels since once you buy CRM it can make your marketing efforts more organized and also reduce its cost.

Takeaway

Doing marketing for your small business as a solopreneur may seem hard. Nevertheless, if you know your customers and have an idea as to where you want your business to be in the future, applying the right marketing strategies will surely get you dozens of qualified leads for little or no money and make your find success and business growth.

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How To Get Started With Outbound Sales Strategies In B2B Small And Medium Businesses

Are you running an SMB and trying to get started with outbound sales? We guess for this you need a solid outbound strategy in place for your business growth. We say this because honestly when it comes to making outbound sales if you have not diligently done your footwork and have avoided creating the required infrastructure that is needed for business growth, it can really get messy.

Are you running an SMB and trying to get started with outbound sales?
We guess for this you need a solid outbound strategy in place for your business growth.

We say this because honestly when it comes to making outbound sales if you have not diligently done your footwork and have avoided creating the required infrastructure that is needed for business growth, it can really get messy.

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

However, on the other hand, if you lay the required groundworks and thereafter create a smart strategy, we are certain as one of the most popular vendors of CRM for small and medium businesses, that you will start seeing the desired results in a very short time.

Therefore, with that in mind, let now take a quick peek at what it requires to develop the outbound sales strategy for your startup or small business.

Hence in this article, we are going to provide you with four key requirements for getting started:

• Identifying your ICP

• Creating contents that support sales

• Creating a strong value proposition

• Knowing your engagement tools (like an easy to use CRM software)

THE 4 ELEMENTS OF A WINNING OUTBOUND SALES STRATEGY

1. Identifying your ICP

Now we have heard times and again the cliché “We cater to every industry, and our offerings can appeal to several job titles and departments in any company”.
However, unfortunately, it never works that way.

This is because if you are unable to target your messages specifically to an ICP or Ideal Customer Profile, your outbound sales outreaches will result in a disaster since an ICP is a qualifiable and quantifiable description of the perfect company in need for your solution.

Hence to build and ICP, begin by analyzing your existing customers in your CRM database, or try for the customers of your competition in the marketplace who are in need of your offerings, which in detail means:

• Specifically identifying the company location, size, technology and service requirements of your buyers, along with tracking their pain-points, the number of employees, the age of the company, and their typical customers.

• Look into the data in your CRM be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM, since Ideal Customer Profile is different from Buyer Personas (which are semi-fictional and are more related to B2C marketplace).

• Look at your ten best customers and find out the characteristics that work and what you would like to improve. However, as a startup organization if you even do not have any customers, do not worry, you can easily create ICP by making sure your products and services appeal to a very specific business audience in the marketplace.

2. Creating contents that support sales

When your team may be introducing your company to a new lead for the first time for prospects that are unfamiliar with your offerings, your team has to assume that they will be doing their own research on your offerings.

Therefore if you do not have the goods, you will not be able to seal the sale.

What kind of content do you need for this?

Well, truthfully this can vary based on what your ICP is most willing to buy.

Nevertheless, your content can include sales decks, case studies, blog posts, pricing sheets, and even a strong social media presence.

Remember, your brand needs more than just a Feature page. Therefore, when you are connecting with B2B leads through outbound sales, your business must be savvy.

Hence, implementing other unique techniques through your digital and social media channels, like videos can help to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

3. Creating a strong value proposition

It will not do much good, if you are just filling up your website and target, but not spending enough time to research and test and thereafter perfect your current offerings.

Your product and service must be solving a problem for your customers, and the only way you can do it is your brand is fitting your market with a strong value proposition.

Now if you do not know what is a value proposition, it is just a simple statement designed to convince a potential customer and make them believe that your product or service will add value to their business.

For this, your business has to prove its worth over similar offerings in the marketplace.

Now it must be remembered that creating a value proposition is more than an exercise. Rather it is free of jargon, to-the-point, compelling statement that proves the worth of your offering.

Additional a strong value proposition must be accompanied by a powerful headline, followed by sub-headings that can help explain the value of the offering or what your product or service is best at.

Never make the content of your value offerings more than three sentences long and include bullet points in the verbiage.

In fact, any great value proposition can also be used as a foundation of a call script or a great email message that you will write heading into the outbound sales process for your SMB.

If you are still not sure where to start, create an outbound campaign suing your easy to use CRM tool and then ask for feedback from your prospects and listen to their constructive criticisms, and thereafter if you find that your message is not reaching them, alter it as per their needs.

4. Knowing your engagement tools

No to find the right engagement tool for your sales team in B2B organizations you need not search and buy every SaaS product available in the marketplace.

This is because to track and analyze the reactions of your prospects, once you implement the best small and medium business CRM software it can help you to find sales and business growth.

Using an easy to use CRM you will not only be able to create an automated timeline for engagements, but you can also create a series of touch-points, and track customer insights, all in one place once you are using this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.

Your best CRM for SMB can also help your sales teams to get organized and get your messages hyper-personalized, which is the need of the hour nowadays.

Conclusion

So, have you checked all the boxes?
Now, while this list is not the end-all and be-all of outbound sales preparedness, however, these are some of the basics B2B small and medium businesses require to get started with their outbound sales.

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