Why a CLM Strategy Is More Important Than Ever For Small Businesses

CLM Strategy (Customer Lifecycle Management) isn’t just for enterprises. While it may have a different look than customer lifecycle at enterprises, it is still very important for small and medium businesses to map out their customer journey and build a plan to cater to their needs at various stages. This will help SMBs retain their customers, drive customer satisfaction and encourage brand advocacy.

What is CLM Strategy?

Creating a CLM strategy involves mapping out the customer journey, understanding customer needs at various stages on the journey and then associating them with individual metrics. Small businesses can then measure and track these metrics and get a 360-degree view of overall customer satisfaction.

A CLM strategy ensures that nothing slips through the cracks when it comes to keeping your customers happy. It ensures that your business understands customer needs.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

Let’s start by understanding what customer journey means. A customer journey is a complete experience a customer has with your company. It starts with the first moment he interacts with your company and continues till he remains a customer.

The visual representation of this journey is called a customer journey map. It tells you the way a customer generally engages with your company across all touchpoints. Mapping the customer journey helps business leaders gain key insights into common customer needs and pain points to better optimize and personalize the customer experience.

Image Source: columbiaroadcom.medium.com

Importance of CLM Strategy

For small businesses, having a CLM strategy can be a key competitive differentiator in the present times when sales are dropping, sales pipelines are shrinking, and acquiring new customers is tough due to the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In today’s time, the need is to engage with your existing customers and get more business with them. Getting business from existing customers would be far easier and cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Also, the competition is increasing and if your company is not able to keep the customers happy then they may switch to your competitors.

That’s why small businesses must pay attention to the Customer Journey Map and Customer Lifecycle Management to fix or control customer issues before they become a problem and the customer drops out.

Mapping out customer lifecycles and tracking various stages is a great way to assess customer satisfaction and where relationships stand. It is also an excellent way to know how customers rate your company against the competition.

Getting Started With CLM Strategy

You can start your CLM program by first creating a Customer Journey Map. The Customer Journey Map is the first step towards understanding customer interactions and engagements. It is also helpful in ensuring all your employees and departments are on the same page when it comes to keeping the customers happy.

After drawing the Customer Journey Map, you can then associate each touchpoint or lifecycle moment with customer goals and needs, your business goals, your company’s response to customer needs, people responsible to meet the needs, and specific metrics as shown in the ‘Customer Journey Map’ graphic above. These metrics can then be monitored and measured regularly to assess the success of your customer lifecycle management strategy.

CLM Software Is Key

CLM is a complex and continuous process. And small businesses don’t have the luxury to build a specialized team for managing it. More so, in the present business environment, when companies are working with reduced staff and lower budgets.

A CLM software allows businesses like yours to manage entire business operations- Sales, Marketing, Billing, and Customer Support- from one platform. It will help you track the entire lifecycle journey of a customer, right from his first engagement as a lead/inquiry to becoming a customer and beyond. A customer lifecycle management software can help you execute your CLM strategy with minimum effort and costs.

ConvergeHub – A Complete Lifecycle Management Software For Small Businesses

ConvergeHub is a complete CLM software that allows small and medium businesses to execute their CLM programs with ease. It automates several repetitive tasks to help you run your programs with minimum labor and with low investments.

You can check out various features offered by ConvergeHub here.

We are also offering a 14-day free trial where you can set up ConvergeHub in your business and test it for real life scenarios. Get the free trial here.

Sales Force Automation – Help Your Sales Team Sell More & Better

Every enterprise, no matter the size, faces challenges to improve the performance of their sales teams. Sales reps devoting a lot of their time to administrative tasks doesn’t help either. If you too are looking for a way to empower your sales teams and turbocharge their performance then Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the right solution for you.

A sales force automation software takes care of many of the repetitive tasks that consume a lot of your sales reps’ time and help your sales team drive their productivity. Sales Force Automation is a combination of information systems including marketing information, contact information, sales lead tracking, used to drive the productivity and performance of your sales teams. In short, SFA is a sales management software. Its automated workflow helps to manage sales leads, resources, and customer acquisition easily.

Understanding Sales Force Automation

The real purpose of Sales Force Automation is to automate repetitive tasks so that your Sales reps can focus on their core tasks. SFA helps companies to drive tangible productivity, increase customer satisfaction and lastly, make more profit by selling more products.

Benefits of SFA includes-

  • Sales Team Focus: By setting the sales reps free from administrative tasks, SFA allows them to actively focus on revenue-generating tasks.
  • Streamline Sales Process: Yes, SFA helps to streamline the sales process so that the most effective sales strategy can be used by enterprises. Generate and manage leads faster and easier with Sales Force Management.
  • Data Analytics: Available with most of the SFA platforms, data analytics allows you to get a 360-degree view of your sales process, leads, deals, and the productivity and efficiency of your sales reps.

The SFA the sales process by empowering your sales team and helping you implement an effective sales strategy.

But how does it increase revenue and generate leads?

Increase Revenue with SFA

A study shows that sales representatives are bound to spend two-third of their time on non-revenue generating tasks. Sales Force Automation primarily focuses on reducing the repetitive administrative tasks of sales representatives, thus saving their time for other important and revenue-generating tasks. SFA reduces the risk of overlapping sales efforts and drives the workflow towards a productive outcome. SFA dashboard assists your sales reps to focus on authentic and first-hand leads.

As Bill Gates rightly said “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that the automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Sales force automation tools can help an enterprise with better ROI, by helping your sales reps focus more on revenue-generating tasks than administrative work.

Follow-up with Leads Using CRM

The SFA tool integrated with CRM software can simplify the work of sales reps. For example, follow-up emails can be sent to your leads. The emails can be triggered based on the behavior of the prospect. Other works like assigning tasks to team members and assembled assignments can be executed with the help of SFA via a CRM.

Sales force automation can also include reporting and analytics tools, which help sales managers to scale the teams’ sales performance and analyze the upcoming revenue. Coming to the usage of sales force automation. It is easy to integrate your CRM with the sales force automation tool.
Overarching Effects of SFA on Your Enterprise

By now, we know the functionality and importance of Sales Force Automation (SFA) in a business. To sum it all up here are the list of benefits:

  • Using sales force automation, an enterprise can easily increase tangible sales productivity.
  • SFA offers an added advantage in terms of cost and revenue.
  • Enterprises get timely analytical information about sales to measure the success rate.
  • With SFA businesses can easily reduce customer response time.
  • SFA allows us to record and track customers’ information easily to mitigate the duplicate sales effort risk.

Apart from these benefits, the sales force automation tool also allows your managers to get daily, fortnight, monthly or annual reports effectively.

Get the Most of SFA

If you are looking for a CRM that also provides SFA, then check out ConvergeHub. It is a CRM that helps in managing sales, billing, marketing, and services from one platform. And one of its prominent features is sales force automation. ConvergeHub is more than just a CRM, it is a complete customer lifecycle management software.

Try ConvergeHub CRM on a 14-day free trial!

Ramp UP Up-Selling and Cross-Selling With CRM Software

When your customer makes the first purchase from you, you don’t want her to stop there. You would like her to make more purchases, buy more valuable products. In short, you want to up-sell and cross-sell. In whatever business you’re in, cross-selling and up-selling work brilliantly to drive sales and profitability.

In this blog post, we’ll cover-

  1. What is cross-selling and why it’s important?
  2. What is up-selling and why it’s important?
  3. What is the difference between up-selling and cross-selling?
  4. When cross-selling and up-selling work and when they don’t?
  5. How to leverage CRM for cross-selling and up-selling?

And a bonus tip!

If you have not tried up-selling and cross-selling or haven’t had much success with it before then this article is for you. By putting some of the advice discussed in this article into practice, you can really drive more sales, higher revenues, and repeat business.

What cross-selling means…

Cross-selling means selling a different product or service to a customer to increase the value of the sale. When you’re asked if you would like to have fries or a beverage with your burger in a fast-food joint, it is cross-selling. The idea behind cross-selling is to encourage a customer to buy more or spend more than what he would have initially bought or spent.

It is always better to recommend related products or services to the customer while cross-selling so as to keep him focussed on the original sale. So, if a customer buys a bed from you then recommend him mattresses, bedsheets, and pillows, etc. Things which he would need along with the bed.

What up-selling means…

Up-selling means selling a higher-priced alternative product or service to a customer to increase the value of the sale. When you’re asked if you would like to buy a bigger size burger or a combo meal, it is up-selling in action.

Cross-selling and up-selling differences…

Many people get confused between up-selling and cross-selling. In sales and marketing parlance, the two terms are also interchangeably used by many professionals, but they have different meanings. Check the graphic below to understand the difference between cross-selling and up-selling-

what is upselling and cross selling

Image Source- sketchbubble.com

Cross-selling relates to selling more related products or services in addition to the product or service initially selected by the customer whereas up-selling relates to selling a higher value alternative to the product or service initially selected by the customer. In up-selling, you’re selling an expensive item whereas in cross-selling you’re selling more items to the customer. Both techniques help you in increasing the basket or cart value of the customer.

Now that we’ve understood what cross-selling and up-selling means and the difference between the two, let’s move on to the most important part- Why should you cross-sell and up-sell?

Benefits of cross-selling and up-selling

why upselling & crossselling is important

Image Source- adamenfroy.com

While there are many benefits as listed in the above graphic, the key benefits of up-selling and cross-selling includes-

  1. Drive sales and profits by selling more per customer- When you sell more products or services to customers you save on transaction costs, time and efforts. Considering how expensive it is to get a customer, it is better to sell him more than spend money finding another. As the odds of selling to an existing customer are 60-70% and the odds to a new customer are 5-20%, investing your resources in selling to existing customers is more beneficial.
  2. Drive customer lifetime value- If you’re wondering what customer lifetime value means then it is the total amount of money a customer would spend in your business during her lifetime. For example, the CLV of a car buyer can be as high as $100,000 if they buy 3-4 cars in their lifetime. The CLV of a coffee drinker at Starbucks might be even higher depending on the number of cups they purchase in a day. By up-selling and cross-selling, you are increasing the CLV of a customer every time they purchase from you.
  3. Eliminating the competition- Let’s go back to the bed and mattress example we discussed in the cross-selling section above. Now, the customer buys the bed, and you don’t recommend mattresses or pillows. He pays for the bed and the sale ends. The next day or a few weeks later, he feels the need to buy a mattress and pillows. What are the chances that he will come to your store? What if he sees an ad from your competitor and decides to go there? By cross-selling, you are killing the competition then and there without your competitor knowing about it.
  4. Build stronger customer relationships- Bad selling can irritate a customer, good selling impresses her. What is good selling? Good selling is consultative where your sales rep plays the role of advisor. He is not selling, he is solving a customer’s problem by recommending him the right product. Your rep is not only thinking of the immediate needs of the customer but also her future needs. Good selling is the foundation for stronger customer relationships. People want to buy from companies they can trust with solving their problems.

Ready to up-sell and cross-sell? But what next? How should you do it? Yes, this brings us to our execution part. How to up-sell and cross-sell? Let’s dive into it-

When cross-selling and up-selling work and when they don’t…

Here’s a table that explains when up-selling and cross-selling work and when it leads to failure-

upselling-crossselling-success-factors

Image Source- Amnesty.com

  1. When you upsell, ensure the product or service you recommend caters to the exact needs of your customer and then does more. For example, if a customer is looking for a mobile phone, upselling a Tablet phone doesn’t work.
  2. The prices of your recommended products are important. When cross-selling, recommend products that are much below the price of the main purchase. While up-selling, keep the price difference between the customer’s chosen product and your recommended product to a reasonable level. You can’t sell a Jaguar car to a customer looking for a Ford or Honda. But you can surely sell a higher version of Honda or Ford to him.

Up-selling and cross-selling using a CRM…

Upselling and cross-selling can happen in various ways. In a physical sales engagement, say in a retail store, your Sales rep can personally cross-sell and up-sell during the purchase cycle. But what if you are selling your services online or want to up-sell and cross-sell to customers who have purchased from you in the past. Here’s how you can use CRM software to automate your up-selling and cross-selling efforts-

  • Segment your audience- Customer segmentation based on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) will help you identify the customers with potential for up-selling and cross-selling. This will also help you identify the least profitable customers and help you better allocate your resources towards those customers who are more likely to respond to your up-selling or cross-selling recommendations. A good customer relationship management software will help you easily and quickly segment your customers.
  • Map products & services to each segment- Once you’ve defined your customer segments, review your products and services portfolio, identify and map relevant products to your segments. Your CRM must-have information on the past buying history of your customers. Now based on that information, you can create custom lists to run targeted campaigns to specific customer segments.
  • Identify the best time to up-sell and cross-sell- It is important to give correct advice but equally important is to do it at the right time. Up-selling or cross-selling to a customer who has called you to register a complaint about a faulty product or delay in service delivery will lead to customer dissatisfaction. So, identify the moments when you want to up-sell or cross-sell.
  • Personalize the experience- Yes, no mass messaging please! Sophisticated CRMs and other associated technologies today allow businesses like you to personalize the entire experience and make 1-to-1 selling. You can personalize the experience by tying up your up-selling and cross-selling messaging with the past purchase of the customer or with his last engagement with your brands such as using a free trial, visit the website, or a call to customer support. A CRM can help you personalize your message by making use of the past purchase data of the customer.
  • Incentivize sales teams & customer support- While upselling and cross-selling through emails and other digital modes is important but don’t miss out on live customer engagements. Your sales reps and customer support executives can spot up-sell and cross-sell opportunities while interacting with customers. All they would need is access to customer data available in the CRM. But remember that all customer support engagements are not sales opportunities. Keep these two rules in mind-
  1. Never up-sell or cross-sell to an angry customer. First, solve his problem.
  2. Only sell when there’s an opportunity. Don’t push.

And here comes the bonus tip!

Invest in a Customer Lifecycle Management Software. It will help you up-sell and cross-sell better and solve many of your business worries.

Yeah, you got it right, we’re up-selling here 🙂

ConvergeHub, our Customer Lifecycle Management Software is more than a CRM. It does what the best CRM software does and plenty more. Our software helps you manage your entire business including Sales, Marketing, Customer Support, and Billing, all from one single platform. With ConvergeHub-

  1. You can empower your sales teams to automate their tasks and convert leads better and faster.
  2. Your Marketing team can automate many of its tasks, harness customer data to run precision campaigns.
  3. Your Customer Support team will have all the customer data to personalize the engagement and also up-sell/cross-sell when there’s an opportunity.
  4. You can automate billing tasks like invoice generation, payment follow ups and reminders etc.
  5. You can get a complete view of your business operations to better manage it.

ConvergeHub is a piece of excellent up-selling advice that checks all the essentials- Needs, Features, Pricing, and Value.

And we offer a 14-day free trial. No credit card needed. Try it for free here and check yourself!

Check various features of ConvergeHub here.
For pricing, click here.

Best CRM Software in 2021- Why Your Business Needs More Than A CRM Today

Recently, ConvergeHub, our Customer Lifecycle Management CRM was named Best CRM software in 2021 by ZDNet, a global IT News magazine. Recognitions like these mean a lot to our team. And we thank you all for making this possible!

What makes the best CRM software in 2021? The answer would have been pretty simple in normal times. But today we are living in a new normal. Most of the workforce is working from home. Businesses are forced to downsize. Layoffs and furloughs are a sad reality. And Sales opportunities are shrinking.

 Sales Pipeline 2021

Source- Marketstar

In the new normal, you need more than a CRM. Why?

Businesses are working under tight budgets. So, investing in multiple software is not practical. Most small and medium businesses are working with reduced staff. And, multiple software requires more people with specialized skill sets to manage it. Embedding multiple different software in your business is not a scalable model as it will require complex IT infrastructure and a team to support it.

You need one CRM that can support you in other business operations along with Sales. That will help you get a complete view of your business, manage it from one place and integrate various departments in your business.
Moreover, it will bring consistency in customer engagement across various touchpoints as all your people would be accessing information from one software. So, whether a customer contacts your Sales or Customer Support, he/she would get the same information and the same personalized experience.

Do we have a CRM that does more than Sales Automation?

Yes, ConvergeHub is more than a CRM. It is CRM+. Like all CRMs, our platform helps Sales Teams manage their leads, contacts, accounts, and deals. But it does plenty more.

Marketing Automation: Yes, ConvergeHub is also a complete Marketing Automation software that allows your marketing teams the entire marketing mix. They can manage lists, granularly segment their customers, run targeted campaigns and do more. We have many ready-to-use email templates and other marketing content to kickstart any marketing campaign in a quick time.

ConvergeHub offers powerful campaign management capabilities to manage your leads and convert them into deals. You can-

  • Monitor your marketing performance in real-time with packaged and customizable reports.
  • Track each email campaign result through Total Sent, Opened, Viewed, Link clicked, Un-subscribed, and Bounce.
  • Understand and present campaign results with highly visual, context-rich Bar, Pie, and Line charts for quick analytics.

Customer Support: Excellent customer support is a must to retain customers and delight them. ConvergeHub can help you streamline your entire Customer Support process. It allows you to integrate your sales and post-sales support and manage it from one platform. ConvergeHub empowers your customer support agents with the right tools and resources to handle any customer question. It allows you to capture customer support requests from the website, Case History and Case Management. You can also integrate your RingCentral telephone systems with ConvergeHub to access contextual information during calls.  This helps you provide speedy resolutions to boost customer satisfaction and increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Billing:  ConvergeHub platform also provides you Accounting and Billing support. You can automate repetitive tasks such as generating quotes, sending invoices, following up with customers, and tracking your payments.

And we have a lot more. You can check out all the features here.

Compare and Then Choose The Best CRM Software In 2021

We suggest you first compare and then make the decision to buy a CRM. That’s the best practice and we understand it. To make your job easier, we have created a CRM comparison tool wherein you can compare ConvergeHub with all the best CRM software in 2021. You can compare CRMs here.

Listen to what our existing customers say about ConvergeHub

We are really thankful to our customers and appreciate their efforts in sharing their experiences at G2.com an independent CRM review platform. There are many small business owners like you who have tried ConvergeHub and are happy with its performance. Check it out yourself.

Need Time To Think?

We suggest you take 14 days. But in a better way. We offer a free 14-day trial. There’s no obligation and No Credit Card needed. We can setup ConvergeHub for your business in a few hours. You can start instantly working with it. Put it in real-life business scenarios for the trial. And check the results yourself.

You can try ConvergeHub for free here.

Working With A Reduced Sales Team? 5 Reasons Why You Need A CRM For Small Business

The entire global economy has slowed down because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sales have fallen, and businesses have to work with reduced Sales Teams. 64% of businesses are reporting a moderate decrease in sales pipeline while 16% are reporting a significant reduction. The top reasons for the shrinking sales pipeline are businesses compelled to reduce their Sales teams due to budget compulsions and sales personnel working from home.

And, It’s a lot worse for small businesses.

If your business is facing a similar situation too, there’s a way to make your smaller sales team better and mightier than any sales team and bring your sales pipeline to life again.

With a CRM for Small Business.

“But do I need a CRM? We are managing fine with our excel sheets and mobile phones.” Well, there’s a reason, and not one but five, why your team needs a CRM for small business more than ever.

5 Reasons Why A CRM For Small Business Is A Must

1. Drives SalesForce Automation

You may be working with a small team but you don’t want to miss out on available sales opportunities, do you?. According to Mckinsey, over 30% of sales-related activities can be automated. Automation can help you do more in less time with lesser efforts. A top CRM software can help you automate a lot of your activities and ramp up your productivity even with a reduced sales team. Activities like generating a quote, checking the past buying history of a customer or previous orders, etc., that take your sales team hours to do can be done in a few minutes.

Sales force automation with CRM

2. Convert Leads Faster

When leads are difficult to come by, you need to improve your lead conversion rate and convert them fast. Sales responsiveness is key to converting your leads. Research shows that 50% of buyers choose the vendors that respond first. A CRM software can enable creating alerts to your Sales Reps whenever a new lead enters into your system. This way he can respond faster and convert the prospect into a customer.

A CRM also allows you to build a lead management process to convert leads better.

Sales CRM for Small Business

3. Run Highly Targeted Campaigns

As sales opportunities dry up, every company is aggressively pursuing the prospects. A one-size-fits-all lead generation method will not deliver expected results. You need to run focused and personalized campaigns to reach prospects with higher potential for conversion.

A CRM for small businesses can give your team capabilities to process volumes of customer data, segment them into various categories, and then run highly targeted email campaigns. You can use ready-to-use email templates, schedule your campaigns and automate them.

And the results can be surprising!

Email open rates CRM

4. Improve Engagement With Existing Customers

In our quest to find new customers, we often forget the value of our existing customer base. These are people who have tested and trusted your product. Happy customers can give you repeat business. But more than that they can promote your business to their friends. A real treasure trove!

Most of the small businesses are not able to drive engagement with their customers. An occasional phone call from your sales reps is not enough. A CRM can help you regularly engage with your customers so that whenever there’s a need for your product/service, your company name is at the top of his/her mind. You can even run and manage a referral program using a CRM and convert your customers into brand advocates.

5. Prepare For The Future

Businesses were adopting various digital technologies before Covid-19. The pandemic has only accelerated the digital transformation of businesses. The same is with Sales. Most of the sales activities have gone online and experts believe it will be the new normal. A CRM can be the backbone of your digital transformation journey and help you go digital faster.

A good small business CRM allows you to integrate it with other software and apps such as billing, accounting, and even telephone systems. You can make it the central hub of your Sales Teams.

Ready to try a CRM!

We have something better for you! Convergehub- The complete Customer Lifecycle Management Software. It is more than a CRM for small business. It does all the things that any of the best Enterprise CRM software available in the market does. Additionally, it helps you automate and manage your marketing, billing, payments, and customer service. One software to manage your entire business!

Recently, global IT News Magazine ZDNet has named ConvergeHub as one of the Top 10 CRM Software in 2021.

To know more about how ConvergeHub can help your business, click here.

For a 14-day free trial, click here.

Power of Email Marketing Campaign via CRM

There are times when the personalities of some people do not mesh. Just like any other areas in our lives, this is even true in sales, in spite of the fact that people often stereotype sales reps of having a personality like social champions, nevertheless, if you work in sales and is seeking business growth it is important and critical that you must be able to deal with prospects and customers who have certain obtrusive personalities that might even clash with your own. Now as a salesperson you need not always have to be the best friend with a prospective customer to work together and find them a solution with your brand’s offerings.

The Covid-19 pandemic has compelled many businesses to solely rely on digital marketing to promote their products and services. The lockdown severely affected Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) and has resulted in revenue losses. To revive from such a situation, small businesses need to creatively leverage digital marketing tools and identify new ways to acquire customers.

Some of the ways companies are marketing their products and services digitally are:

  • Email marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Search engine marketing
  • Online ads
  • Influencer marketing

In this blog, we will discuss email marketing. It is a popularly used marketing strategy by companies to convert leads into customers. Despite various social media channels and other marketing platforms, email marketing remains the most popular and used process to communicate with customers. There are multiple ways to leverage email as a strategy to attract and retain customers. Here are several common practices of email marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing Campaign Best Practices

Studies done by various companies suggest that email is the best way to communicate with your customer and directly impact your business ROI. Any email marketing strategy depends on the stage of the customer’s journey and the defined objective of an enterprise. Here are some common practices of email marketing campaigns:

Campaign Objective

Stage of Customer Journey

Usage Stat%

Welcoming Customers

Onboarding

92%

Informing About Upcoming Features

Existing Customers

89%

Promoting Offers, Sales & Events

Existing and Left Customers

72%

Requesting for Feedback

Relatively Old Customers

78%

Remarketing – Upsell or Cross-sell

Existing Customers

87%

As you see, understanding the customer’s journey and sending out the right set of emails at the right time is very important to make the email marketing campaign successful.

We know, analyzing the journey of thousands of customers manually is not possible. Therefore, SMBs mostly rely on CRM platforms. If we can combine CRM and email marketing, it will scale the process and minimize the risk of sending irrelevant emails to your valuable customers. Just segment the customers based on the stage of their journey and set up the email marketing campaign from the CRM itself.

Successful Email Marketing Campaign Sample

When a prospect decides to become your customer you need to be ready with an effective onboarding process. Welcoming Customer is a mandatory template for any company and it is one of the most crucial emails sent out to your ‘just turned’ customer. The email should be promising, simple, and easy to understand. Remember this email is going out to people who are new to your business. One of the best samples for this can be:

Welcome Customer Template Sample:

Hi [name],
Thanks for signing up for [product name]!
As a special thank you, we’re giving you 15% off when you sign up for a paid plan.
Simply use the coupon below at the checkout.
[Discount Code]

Informing About Upcoming Features Sample

This is an important template to communicate with your customers about the upcoming features of your product. It is also the best way to cross-sell or upsell your services or products to your customers.

Hey [name],

The big day has finally come! We just finished [the product, e.g. the most awaited product for your customers].

We’d like to reward all our loyal supporters by allowing you to pre-order the features, before anyone else.

[add an element of scarcity, e.g. Only the first 100 lucky customers will get the feature for free!]

[Add CTA, e.g. Pre-Order now]

Promoting Offers, Sales & Events Sample

Promotions and discounts are proven strategies, especially in the B2C market, to attract and retain customers. We often get offers on clothes, books, accessories, phones, and laptops, etc. To make a sale or discount successful you need to reach out to your customers informing them about the discount and encourage them to buy. What can be better than reaching out to your customers via email marketing?

Dear [name],

We are excited to announce that, due to our remarkable growth over the last [enter number] of years, we are expanding!

In fact, we are opening a new store in [enter location and specifics].

We invite you to celebrate with us during the big opening day on [enter date]. There will be many exciting surprises, including irresistible discounts.

[Add specific CTA depending on your specific offer, in this example -] If you want to make use of your opening day discount, please click on the button below so we can send you the discount code.

See you there.

Team [name of your brand]

Requesting for Feedback Sample

Feedback helps companies understand their customers’ needs, satisfaction level, and their issues better. Therefore it is necessary to ask for your customers’ feedback. It can be easily done with the help of email marketing.

Dear [Name],
We really appreciate your choosing the [name of the product]

Since we want to make it better for your business we would like to ask, whether you like [product name]? How can we make it better?

It should take less than 2 minutes, and your feedback will help us make [product name] better!

Thank you,

Team [Company name]

Email marketing is an effective and powerful tool to communicate with your customers. However, it is rather tedious to collect all the customers’ information, based on their journey level and then send them the mail. That’s where the effectiveness of CRM software integrated with an email marketing tool can help.

CRM with Email Integration

There are many email marketing software available in the market. But a CRM that also offers email marketing can help reach out to your customers easily. You can select the leads from the CRM dashboard and send out the email to chosen customers. ConvergeHub is a CRM that offers complete customer lifecycle management. It is more than a CRM that offers billing, marketing, sales, and services in a unified platform. It facilitates the analysis of customers’ stages (customer’s journey position) and helps you to select a suitable email marketing campaign.

Customer relationship management software brings all the leads together, it is meant to help you deal with your customers better and easier. With the combination of email marketing, it will be easy for you to manage everything on just one platform. You can easily cut off the long hours of importing data to email marketing platforms. Just set up the campaign and you have everything within the CRM.

Concluding with Expert’s Note

Email marketing campaigns come with a risk of being identified as spam, high unsubscription rate, and bounces; resulting in a bad reputation for the company. But mail spam can be avoided with the following practice:

  • Check if you are a blacklisted sender
  • Stay updated with the spam filter technology
  • Keep your email copy simple and catchy
  • Avoid videos or gifs
  • Avoid embedded forms
  • Use a sender name that’s recognizable
  • DON’T USE BOLD – IT MAKES YOU SHOUT AT YOUR AUDIENCE
  • Add an unsubscribe button

Email marketing is the key to communicating with your customers easily. Just one click and you reach out to many at once. CRM and email marketing are a great combination only if small and medium businesses can make the most of it.

Also Read – 9 Powerful Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business Faster

ConvergeHub Named Best CRM software in 2021 by ZDNet

We are thrilled to announce that global IT News Magazine ZdNet has named ConvergeHub as one of the Top 10 CRM Software in 2021. We are truly thankful to the ZDNet team for recognizing us, our customers for appreciating our product, and proud of our team for consistently working to make ConvergeHub, a world-class CRM.

Best CRM software

We, at ConvergeHub, remain committed to empowering every small business with the right features and tools to automate their processes and enhance their capabilities to drive business growth, something that is more critical in these challenging times.

ConvergeHub is more than a CRM. It is a customer lifecycle management platform that can help you manage your entire business operations- right from Sales, Marketing to Billing from one place. Moreover, it allows you to map a customer’s journey, understand his/her needs at various stages and meet them to keep him/her happy and satisfied. Click here to know more about ConvergeHub. You can also try Convergehub for a 14-day free trial.

Business Growth Ideas: How To Close Deals With Prospective Leads (You Do Not Like)

There are times when the personalities of some people do not mesh. Just like any other areas in our lives, this is even true in sales, in spite of the fact that people often stereotype sales reps of having a personality like social champions, nevertheless, if you work in sales and is seeking business growth it is important and critical that you must be able to deal with prospects and customers who have certain obtrusive personalities that might even clash with your own. Now as a salesperson you need not always have to be the best friend with a prospective customer to work together and find them a solution with your brand’s offerings.

There are times when the personalities of some people do not mesh.
Just like any other areas in our lives, this is even true in sales, in spite of the fact that people often stereotype sales reps of having a personality like social champions, nevertheless, if you work in sales and is seeking business growth it is important and critical that you must be able to deal with prospects and customers who have certain obtrusive personalities that might even clash with your own.

80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up. Click To Tweet

Now as a salesperson you need not always have to be the best friend with a prospective customer to work together and find them a solution with your brand’s offerings.

Therefore here are certain vital tips as to how you can close a deal with even an unfriendly prospect inside your CRM software platform’s database that you may not like:

Never Ever Try To Rush It

It is very natural that as a sales rep you can be obviously tempted to try to rush a deal in your sales pipeline so that you do not have to invest more time with a challenging prospect in your CRM database.

However, when you and your prospective lead are not quite comfortably remaining on the same page, it is important that you must lie low and take time to help build a sense of trust and understanding with the prospective buyer of your offerings.

This is because, in the end, it is no wonder that you both are in fact on the same side and so working together will help both to cherish the best outcome.

Swallow Your Pride

There are several times we have observed as a vendor of CRM software for small and medium businesses, that dislike for a prospective customer often stems from that person disregarding your opinion and advice.

This is because as a sales representative of an offering, it is most likely that you do understand a lot more about what you are suggesting, but then again, an individual who has never met you has no reason to consider you as an expert.
Therefore, there is bound to remain a bit of uncertainty until you establish your credibility and credentials to the person on the other side of the line and in B2B selling show them ways for business growth.

Hence, try to remain humble and acknowledge your prospect’s doubts since brushing their concerns and pain-points aside will only drive you both further away from the imminent sale.

Find Common Ground

No matter how poles apart you and your prospective customer may be, there are going to be for certain a few aspects that you have in common.

Therefore, take your time to tease out these common likings and disliking between you and your prospect, and your experience will be significantly more pleasant.

Make some small talks with your prospect, asking them about their interests and hobbies, and thereafter whatever you do never lie about being interested in what they are (even if it is illogical, or not true).
Since they are going to figure it out that you are not interested in their favorite Hip-Hop or R&B band pretty quickly if you fake it.

Focus On The Big Picture

Even if working in tandem with this customer is torture and you are deep inside the ‘5th circle of Hell’ try to focus on the big picture to calm down your fury.
Just remember once you hopefully close the deal you will never have to see the prospect you do not like anymore.

Hence, stay strong, remain composed, and think about the commission check that you will be receiving once you win the deal.

Pass It Off If Needed

Well, this is the last resort, so think twice before you take this step and even if you do it, never makes this a habit.

Now, if you and your prospective customer will really never see eye to eye, it is time that you might as well pass the deal (especially if the deal is not exceptionally large) to another member of your sales team.

In other words, pass the baton if working with this prospect is truly making you feel miserable, however, before that always remain sure that you have used all your other options first before deciding on this ultimate step and thereafter select another prospect that you might nurture from your easy to use CRM software solution’s database of prospective leads.

Conclusion

As a sales rep, you need to be able to get your work done for business growth even when you do not like some of your prospects.

Therefore in a gist, although making deals with prospects that you do not like may seem to be a frustrating act, however, by using a proactive customer relationship platform like sales CRM software whereby you can find a 360-degree view of your prospects and customers can decrease your sales cycle and make you close these hated deals successfully in lesser time.

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Customer Acquisition Or Retention – Which One Should Be Your Main Concern Today

Have you ever thought about which one is more important for your business: new customer acquisition or retention of the one that you already have? We all are aware of the fact, that acquiring new customers is one of the most important criteria for any business. However, this must also be remembered that retaining your present and old customers is also critically important if you are running a subscription-based business (like cloud based CRM software) or have repeat customers. Hence, we can see both acquiring fresh customers and retaining the existing ones are equally important for the growth of any company.

Have you ever thought about which one is more important for your business: new customer acquisition or retention of the one that you already have?

We all are aware of the fact, that acquiring new customers is one of the most important criteria for any business.

Acquiring new customers costs 5 times more than retaining their existing ones. Click To Tweet

However, this must also be remembered that retaining your present and old customers is also critically important if you are running a subscription-based business (like cloud based CRM software) or have repeat customers.

Hence, we can see both acquiring fresh customers and retaining the existing ones are equally important for the growth of any company.

Nevertheless, it is really a big question for many as to how do they know which one to focus more on customer acquisition or retention when forming the strategies needed to boost their business growth.

Now, the answer to this question is subjective, and highly complicated, as it involves several variables like your long-term business goals, customer acquisition cost, your business model, and so on.

Hence to answer this complex topic, whereby we need to consider several things, let us dig into the topic and shed some light, as to which is the right strategy for your company based on the business model you work on.

Basic of Customer Acquisition

So let us start with the obvious. It is no brainer that you just cannot run a successful business without winning fresh customers, which is particularly true for small businesses and startups.

Now, acquiring the first few customers does always seem to be a monumental up-hill task when you start your business. Since building your brand reputation can be most difficult without any customers.

Mostly the first customers for any business come from the existing contracts of the company and its stakeholders in the business. However, as your business evolves acquiring new customers becomes exponentially easier, since an increase in brand awareness helps in growing your customer base.

Nevertheless, how you approach your sales strategy for customer growth largely depends on your business goals.

Therefore, let us now look into how you can develop the right sales strategy for your business to find customer growth.

Potential Pitfalls of Customer Acquisition

Although it has been agreed that your business needs new customers and hence the sales pipeline in your best CRM software should never remain empty, nevertheless, several organizations make the blunder of devoting too many resources for customer acquisition and not enough staffs for retaining them, since they remain confused about understanding whether customer acquisition or retention which should supersede the other as their goal.

Therefore, customer churn is an obvious phenomenon that happens when you acquire a new customer but do not take the appropriate measures to ensure that your customer is happy using your offerings, which results in losing them quickly.

Therefore, the key to keeping your customers happy is to provide a world-class customer experience (CX) right from the very beginning after your sale that in turn boosts customer satisfaction and renewal rates.

According to a survey done by Invesp, acquiring fresh customers in most businesses costs 5 times more than retaining their existing ones.

Therefore, when you win over a fresh customer, there is your chance to solidify their trust in your businesses’ ability to support them successfully.

Never sign in a new customer and then leave them to fend for themselves on their own, for if you do this you will surely dissatisfy the customers, who will most likely leave your brand for competition.

Hence while you onboard a new customer, ensure that you also provide high-quality training to the customer to increase their customer satisfaction which will eventually make the customer stay for long with your brand.

The Basics Of Customer Retention

Retaining your existing customers is not always as difficult as it seems.
This often-overlooked factor in business which determines the success and failure of your brand can be easily done by delivering a world-class customer experience that you can do simply by delighting your customers.

Here are some basic tips as to how you can retain your customers for long:

  • Start out on the right foot by ensuring that your customers have everything they need, which must begin from their first day.
  • Distribute contents that can solve some of the common problems faced by your customer base, which will help in building trust and also aid in positioning you as an authority in your marketplace.
  • Reach out to your customers on a regular basis, to check out how things are going.
  • Keep your customers informed about your brand’s new developments (like info on new products, bug fixes, forward-looking plans, and more).
  • Create a customer advisory board to let your customers suggest you in the evolution process of your company.
  • Focus on resolving customer issues on the first attempt by creating a dedicated helpdesk group.

Now, this is only a partial list of many other things that you can do to keep your customers loyal and satisfied with your brand so that they stick around and provide recurring revenue for your business.

 Benefits Of Customer Retention: Not Pitfalls

To be truthful there is really no drawbacks focusing on customer retention, as there are a plethora of statistics that back this up which even hints at your business growth:

  • Long-term loyal and satisfied customers spend more than the new ones. – Business.com
  • 80% of key business revenue comes from 20% of existing customers those who are satisfied and happy. – Forbes
  • Just a 2% growth in customer retention decrease up to 10% overall cost of the company – Amazon

Food for thoughts:

Would you rather have 50 new customers each year that leaves after that year or just 15 customers that stick with you for a decade?

Well, the answer seems to be pretty obvious.

Talking about customer acquisition or retention, new customers eat up more resources and administration costs, and they also do not produce enough revenue for your company.

On the other hand, a loyal and happy existing customer who remains with your business over the long haul not only allows you to predict your businesses’ future revenue more accurately but also provides you the peace of your mind.

Conclusion

Therefore, the future of all successful businesses remains with maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction using the best small business CRM software if they are a growing startup. Since doing so naturally results in a higher level of customer retention and helps in creating brand advocates that ultimately can do wonders for your brand reputation management efforts.

According to a report published by Corporate Visions, more than 80% of businesses spend more than 70% on their marketing budgets for acquiring new customers and unfortunately even lesser than 30% on customer retention initiatives.

Therefore, to conclude on this topic it is recommended that as a modern business organization using Salesforce Alternative CRM software like ConvergeHub for managing the relationship with your customers you should at least spend 50% of your marketing budgets on strategies and processes for retaining your customers since it is one of the best tactics for ensuring long-term business growth.

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Business Development Ideas For Better Serving Customers During A Crisis

The recent economic downfall due to COVID-19 Pandemic has involuntarily forced SMBs to transform the way they work from the office and live rapidly. In fact, many elements in several companies like customer service, sales, and supply chain management have been challenged in recent times. Nevertheless, small and medium businesses are doing their best to manage through this global Pandemic by drafting an effective crisis response strategy using new business development ideas that can manage supply-chain interruptions and retain communication with the employees and customers to ensure their wellbeing.

The recent economic downfall due to COVID-19 Pandemic has involuntarily forced SMBs to transform the way they work from the office and live rapidly. In fact, many elements in several companies like customer service, sales, and supply chain management have been challenged in recent times.
Nevertheless, small and medium businesses are doing their best to manage through this global Pandemic by drafting an effective crisis response strategy using new business development ideas that can manage supply-chain interruptions and retain communication with the employees and customers to ensure their wellbeing.

Salespeople saw productivity increase by 30% once they had mobile access to CRM. Click To Tweet

Now with these new models of business, it is no doubt that customer experience or CX will take on a new meaning in the light of Coronavirus malady.
For example, the requirements of the customers have in recent times changed dramatically from convenient, seamless, and engaging communication to the most empathizing one.

In a report published in the Gallup Business Journal, consumers nowadays are 9X more likely to get them engaged with any brand or business if they receive empathetic customer support- which illustrates how vital ‘empathy’ is nowadays.

Hence leading organizations across the globe that have recently realized the current needs of today’s consumers are reorienting their CX efforts and business development ideas to meet those needs, which dwells in these three words- security, safety, and empathy.

Therefore by emotionally interfacing with the customers during this crisis, SMBs can build a solid foundation of generosity that can result in forming an enduring relationship with the customers.

So here are six such crisis management strategies that have been adopted by certain business communities and brands at this time:

1. Plan Well and Stay Calm

This Pandemic like many others that happened before is all about distress. Nevertheless, exhibiting the emotion to your consumers will not help your SMBs in any way. Rather, plan and show your customers your readiness to face this Pandemic or any other crisis that may emerge even in the future days to come.
In other words, when you reach out to your customers, ensure that you have sound knowledge and confidence since your customers will always want to know if your business is all set to handle the situation, and whether your business is available to help them during this trying times.

In fact, it is only by planning, you can save your brand now from making insensitive and hasty decisions that can put a pause on your business growth, even though as a small business organization you must always prioritize supporting your customers with a limited budget while planning your crisis management strategies.

Additionally, remember as customer practices are undeniably changing nowadays like never before, ensure customers can connect with your small business amidst this crisis 24/7 and your business is willing to help them round the clock as they are at home and therefore their buying behaviors have switching online for which SMB organizations need to adapt to this change.

2. Support Your Customers Emotionally

Nowadays customers are forced to work from their homes due to this COVID-19 Pandemic, and so SMBs too must have to ensure that they can make their customer’s life more enjoyable at their homes with their products and services.

For example, Comcast has recently offered free access to its Xfinity WiFi hot spots for all people (which includes even non-subscribers) for 60 days so that their families can entertain themselves by viewing videos and online courses at home or New York’s Metropolitan Opera released digital shows to engage the virtual crowds for free.

Your business can also offer mindfulness and contemplation by offering applications like Headspace which is currently opening free membership to healthcare experts and providing free content for its customers.

Hence as an SMB owner, you can utilize these business development ideas or brainstorm for more new concepts to help relieve the stress of your consumers amidst this global crisis.

3. Assist Community in Financial Distress

In this hour of crisis, organizations all across the globe are compelled to lessen the work of their employees for a questionable period of time which uncovers SMB owners to an enormous risk of liquidity issues.
Hence in such scenarios offering high-quality solutions while dealing with financial distress can be a big challenge for small firms.

Nevertheless, instead of penalizing the customers for not meeting their payment obligations, businesses need to be flexible with them nowadays.

In fact, there are several automakers, telecommunication companies, and utility firms that are waiving their fees and easing shutoffs to aid communities struggling during this Pandemic.

For example, AT&T has halted the termination of home telephone, and broadband assistance when customers cannot take care of their payments as a result of this Pandemic or Burger King is providing two free meals to Americans purchasing through their Burger King app. and thereby helping the families who formerly relied on school lunches to feed their kids.

4. Treat Customers with Utmost Care

Treating your customers with care has become the need of the hour. With physical channels like retail brick and mortar stores being closed, SMBs must adopt online strategies to resolve customer issues and other requests that otherwise would have needed personal attention.

There are several service-oriented companies that have already established a customer-resource center focused to assist customers with claims related to this Pandemic.

Now be as it may, such firms, once they are small in size are presently encountering increased volumes of calls in their contact centers whereby dealing with these call rates has resulted in complexity for small businesses, especially while most customer-service operations have shifted to remote-working arrangements.

Nevertheless, with a specific well-though crisis management plan, and by using advanced business tools like easy to use CRM software platforms, there are many SMBs that are rightly utilizing these issues to increase their conversion and revenue.

For example, Cisco’s Webex is presently helping colleges and schools by remotely offering free apparatuses for students, educators, and guardians, and in this way aiding the internet learning platform or LinkedIn through its workers’ referral is providing free access to its top-notch highlights for a limited period of time.

5. Reduce Physical Interaction as Much as Possible

Now while supporting the community with their services, it is also the responsibility of SMBs to eliminate the spread of the virus.

Therefore for small businesses here are certain business development ideas that can minimize contagion risk by following specific precautionary measures, especially if their sales process involves physical interactions.

For example, there are many organizations that are providing free home delivery for customers over 65 years old or limiting the number of people to enter the store at once.
There are also several food-conveyance firms that are offering new contactless delivery choices to wipe-out physical contact among customers and their conveyance operators, guaranteeing the well-being and security for both the customers and their representatives.

6. Contribute to Safer Innovations

As an owner of a small and medium business it is the right time to ask yourself these two basic questions:

Do you have an offering that is safer for the consumers to use right now?

Is it possible to innovate your offering(s) new tools that are required for the community?

Now with a sufficient budget, SMBs can pursue this approach for a limited period of time and use their strength to contribute to society by supplying goods that are outside their current product portfolio.

For example, there are several distilleries across the globe that are partnering with refineries to provide hand sanitizers or appeal manufacturers are shifting to stitching thousands of face masks that are crucially needed at this moment.
Similarly, automotive industries are also manufacturing respiratory care products and ventilators or rideshare firms are transporting essential goods and medicines rather than passengers.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

Organizations, these days are investing in the CRM Software to manage their customers in a more streamlined and seamless manner. Many are outsourcing the CRM Software development to design their own product , but instead of bearing software development outsourcing costs, you can opt for one of the best CRM product in the market, which is also a great Salesforce Alternative too.

Stay Connect with us & Use Our Enterprise CRM Software.

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6 Reasons Your SMB Needs A Small And Medium Business CRM Software Tool

As a small and medium business, in order to prosper and grow you need to invest pragmatically in the areas that can provide the greatest dividends, that is the reason more and more SMBs are implementing small and medium business CRM tools for generating steady revenue growth. In fact, CRM software is a tool that not only helps businesses to stay organized and build superior relationships as a contact management software but it also pays back $8.71 against every single dollar spent on this tool. And that means a phenomenal 774 percent return on your investments. Hence choosing an automated cloud-based CRM software solution is just not a smart business practice, but a CRM for small and medium businesses can easily transform your operations by increasing sales through lead scoring and thereby helping your employees to understand and support the customers and create optimal workflow processes for your teams.

As a small and medium business, in order to prosper and grow you need to invest pragmatically in the areas that can provide the greatest dividends, that is the reason more and more SMBs are implementing small and medium business CRM tools for generating steady revenue growth.

CRM is considered as one of the most important aspects of business operations as it integrates sales, marketing, customer support, and customer feedback in one system - Super Office (2021) Click To Tweet

In fact, CRM software is a tool that not only helps businesses to stay organized and build superior relationships as a contact management software but it also pays back $8.71 against every single dollar spent on this tool. And that means a phenomenal 774 percent return on your investments.

Hence choosing an automated cloud-based CRM software solution is just not a smart business practice, but a CRM for small and medium businesses can easily transform your operations by increasing sales through lead scoring and thereby helping your employees to understand and support the customers and create optimal workflow processes for your teams.

Still, need further persuasions?

Do not worry, here are some of the other big reason why having a CRM software solution is a must for your small and medium business:

1. It Nurtures Leads and Increases Sales

Do you know that the most basic reason why small and medium businesses adopt a CRM for SMB is that this business growth technology helps to streamline and boost their revenue?

How?

Well, it all begins with lead nurturing and management of the lead after initial lead generation. Modern online CRM permits small businesses to capture more leads from their business websites, social media platforms, emails, etc., and then track those leads throughout the entire sales process.

With your small and medium business CRM stocked up and filled with new contacts, your sales reps can easily start nurturing prospective buyers in the sales pipeline with personalized and targeted campaigns until they are ready to purchase your brand’s offerings.

That means using a CRM your sales teams can not only prioritize the leads but also spend less time trying to persuade unqualified leads who are never going to pull the trigger by taking endless time for closing their deals.

Another big plus of purchasing a small and medium business CRM tool is that the software helps to deliver key insights so that you can make smarter decisions for your company in sales.

This is because a small business CRM software solution can promptly let you know which lead source drives most sales for your brand so that you can allocate more time and money where it is needed. Moreover, it is also a tool that can point out which sales reps in your team are stressed to hit their goals or shed light on what your long-term and short- term forecasts about sales look like so that new business growth ideas and strategies can be tested as per need.

Are you aware that late follow-ups are one of the main reasons for businesses losing customers or failing to convert prospective leads stored in their CRM database?

Now CRM solution helps the sales reps to provide their contacts with appropriate and automated follow-ups to turn present customers into long-term buyers of their brands easily.

2. It Helps You Understand Your Customers

You must be knowing that the best way you can serve your customers is by understanding exactly what they need. Rather say, you must understand your customer’s pain points even though it might seem like a monumental task to gather such information when you have thousands of customers in your database.

Now, this is exactly where CRM comes into play since it is a tool that can gather information about all your customers at a granular level and thereafter even analyze those data to gain valuable insights that might help your business to make more customer-centric and intelligent business decisions for your company.

CRM can track trends, identify opportunities, assess behaviors – all with a few clicks of a button.

Therefore small and medium business CRM tool is particularly useful for SMBs selling complex solutions or for startups with longer sales cycles.

This is because the constant data collection by the Enterprise CRM software allows your business to relentlessly perfect how you interact with each and every customer, since when months of customer-related data is effortlessly recorded and analyzed it allows businesses to understand the different decisions that guided the customers throughout their entire journey.

You can even use this information stored to improve your small businesses’ marketing strategies, tweak your email marketing campaigns, sales approaches, website designs until you can find the optimal way to reach your target audience in the marketplace.

Additionally, another way you can leverage the insight that you have gained through CRM is to create a more personalized experience for your customers.

This is because, when you have accurate oversight into the preferences and behaviors of your clientele, you can easily tailor messages or improve your offerings so that they align more closely with your customer’s expectations and needs, and thereby help develop more meaningful and deeper connections with your customers which can promote loyalty and increase chances of customer referrals for your brand.

3. It Improves Workflow

Irrespective of how small is your business, your marketing and sales processes will always have room for improvements.

Now, the reality here is that most businesses have a plethora of manual processes in their organization and use sticky notes and spreadsheets that kills productivity.

CRM software for small and medium business is a tool that can help to remove the bottlenecks and make it easy to create effective workflows you teams can stick to on a daily basis.

No matter if it is just automating flow-ups on new leads or delivering a reliable onboarding process for new customers, a CRM for SMB can boost your entire team’s efficiency right from lead generation, through sales to customer support – which leads me to my next point.

4. It Escalates Customer Support

Now providing world-class support is one of the strongest pillars for every small business and startup, which not only impacts the retention rate of their customers but also their revenue.

But how can you deliver a consistent world-class customer experience?

Well, you can easily do it by providing your support team’s instant access to detailed information about each and every customer.

Allow your support reps to discover your customer’s online history, their purchase and order information, and their past interactions with your company so that your support reps can truly understand what each customer has gone through.

Now a big advantage of CRM software is that it is a tool that can collect all customer data inside a single repository, which can make it easier to segment your customers based on their specific interests and needs.

5. It Maximizes Resources

We all know that most owners of small and medium businesses are too familiar with the challenge of wearing multiple hats.

In the present business landscape, even mid-sized companies struggle to make the most out of limited resources.

Now as technology does the heavy lifting marketing automation in a robust small business CRM allows a company of any size to do more with fewer resources in their payrolls.

Therefore using a small and medium business CRM tool even companies operating on a skeleton crew can provide high-level service and remain competitive with bigger businesses.

As it has been mentioned even earlier, CRM software can take care of the majority of repetitive admin tasks, keep records and make timely follow-ups with the contacts in the CRM software’s database, while providing you as an entrepreneur to run your business, attend conferences and meetings or provide demos to prospective customers that are ready to buy.

6. It Enables You to Develop Best Practices

Finally, the best CRM software for small and medium businesses can help SMBs to identify and implement best practices to make sure that every employee in their organization remains on the same page and that the business runs smoothly like a well-oiled machine.

Therefore CRM not only helps businesses to find ways to maximize their productivity but also aids in keeping costs down and makes SMBs operate profitably.

It helps in building best practices for making small businesses’ new employee onboarding processes easier, bring them up to speed faster, and provide new entrants with the appropriate information and tools they need to do their job effectively.

Conclusion

Hence with the best small and medium business CRM tool in place your SMB can not only drive more sales, but it can help to delight your customers and make your business more productive.

Therefore with everything, a CRM can do for your business, can you really afford not to have one for finding rapid sales and revenue growth?

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5 Lead Tracking Best Practices To Manage Your Sales Pipeline

Even if your business does not have written documentation of the details of how you move your leads through pipeline or funnel, you must be still following a series of steps for lead tracking the prospective customers that guide you from point A to point B in your sales process. Now in order to identify the weakest point of your present sales process, it is as simple as identifying the best and the worst things about your lead’s movement in the sales pipeline. This is because, even if you get tons of apparently profitable leads from a free lead generation tool, or by sharing free resources, but eventually lose half of them, it could be a sign that you need a better lead tracking solution and the best lead tracking practices that will help grow your business.

Even if your business does not have written documentation of the details of how you move your leads through pipeline or funnel, you must be still following a series of steps for lead tracking the prospective customers that guide you from point A to point B in your sales process.

Now in order to identify the weakest point of your present sales process, it is as simple as identifying the best and the worst things about your lead’s movement in the sales pipeline.

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. - DemandGen Report Click To Tweet

This is because, even if you get tons of apparently profitable leads from a free lead generation tool, or by sharing free resources, but eventually lose half of them, it could be a sign that you need a better lead tracking solution and the best lead tracking practices that will help grow your business.

Hence irrespective of whether your businesses goals are to provide better service to your customers, or build better social media engagements, or just find more time on your hand, understanding your organization is the primary step to tracking sales leads which can be as easy as using a CRM software or setting up spreadsheets for finding sales growth.

BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING SALES LEADS TRACKING SKILLS

1. Create an Email Sending Sequence

A big part of managing leads involves nurturing the leads. Therefore even before you send your first email to your prospective customers ensure that you have an entire sales cadence ready that you can send out sequentially over the course of weeks or months.

This is because as one of the leading vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, we have observed that just one email and thereafter one follow-up are never enough to understand the effectiveness of your lead nurturing campaigns.

Hence businesses must use an email tracking tool like a CRM platform that can allow organizations to track and measure email opening rates, click-through rates, replies, and bounce rates of the emails, which are all important metrics in determining the efforts of your email marketing campaigns.

Therefore it is only with a structured email sequence, you can find a controlled variable to judge upon individual lead responses, which is an info that you can track to find the interested prospects and also those leads that require a bit more convincing.

2. Schedule Follow-Ups

We all know that not all the leads that enter the sales funnel will be at once ready to buy your offerings. Therefore it always requires some extra work to be done before finding successful conversions.

Hence it is important that businesses must invest in lead tracking, lead generation, and lead automation software solutions since by actually neglecting to nurture and talk to your leads, you will be eventually wasting a good deal of money that your business has spent on acquiring them in the first place.

Now you might think that tracking 20 potential customers through your sales pipeline is an easy job, but that changes when that number of leads up to the 100s.

This is because losing track of where your leads are in your sales pipeline (which ones are reading what content or which ones have received your proposals) can be detrimental to your sales process.

Therefore you should schedule your follow-ups to understand exactly where your prospects are in the sales pipeline, and what the next step should be so that you do not start overselling even before enough resources have been shared with the prospective customer, or you might forget them altogether and make them fall through the crack.

3. Follow a Lead Cycle That Makes Sense

While it is always beneficial to nurture and build relationships with long-term leads, instead of exclusively going for the relatively short-term ones. Lead cycles can go on for months and might even take more resources than it is worth.

Hence stick to a lead cycle that essentially makes sense with the model of your business, so that you can increase your profits.

This is important since which B2C leads tend to have a shorter cycle, like if you are an e-commerce site, a fortnight of nurturing campaign is sufficient, whereas for B2B leads the nurturing process can last as long as several months and with some lasting up to a whole year.

Therefore imposing a lead cycle for your business, will help to ensure that your sales reps do not keep engaging with the same prospects over and over again. Moreover shortening your lead cycle will also help to keep your sales pipeline fresh with new leads flowing into the funnel and ensure that your sales reps are pursuing new leads every day and thereby connecting with new opportunities on a regular basis.

4. Track the Sales Pipeline

Now while the sales funnel focuses on the stage-by-stage conversion of the leads, the sales pipeline reflects only what is on your plate at this very minute.

Therefore if you are just keeping track of your sales funnel using a sales CRM tool, consider integrating the sales pipeline also into your process.

This is because when you successfully track the leads through the sales pipeline, it becomes much more easier to remain cognizant of what each lead requires from your company.

Hence think of your sales pipeline stages as steps and formulate what actions are needed to be taken at each stage, since when you can organize leads this way and track them according to their placement in the sales pipeline, you can create a standardized process on how your sales reps should approach the leads.

This also makes your lead nurturing process simpler, whereby you can perform mass actions and create relationships with your leads as a group that can reduce your efforts, but you must do it without forgetting about personalization.

5. Practice Lead Scoring

Finally, you must practice lead scoring, which is a process of segregating leads that belong to the highest priority down to leads that of the least priority in the funnel.

Businesses can score their leads using a business CRM tool based on their urgency, project size, availability of resources, and more.

Therefore instead of treating all leads as the same and one, this practice helps to focus more resources, personalization, and efforts on leads that are more beneficial for your business.

Lead scoring also makes it easier for businesses to understand when it is the right time to weed out unresponsive leads from your sales pipeline when you are sifting through hundreds of leads and thousands of data points that need to be monitored every day.

In other words, lead scoring helps your teams to make decisions at a glance without even worrying about making uninformed decisions in their lead tracking endeavors for finding sales growth.

Conclusion

Now as you must have understood by now, that ultimately all these lead tracking practices can only be performed by a single business growth tool which is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, which is a platform that is dedicated to lead management and lead nurturing and can easily perform any of these tasks simultaneously without fail.

Additionally, an all in one CRM can also help businesses to understand the best performing sales reps in their teams as well as the movement of their leads along the pipeline, generate reports and make you see trends in your sales processes that can amplify your efforts to stay on top of new and ongoing leads for finding rapid revenue growth.

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