Tag: All In One CRM software

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.

Key Features Of Sales And Marketing CRM Tools – That Can Save Your Startup Today

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, is circumventing nine to five jobs, and throwing them into the bin. Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money. Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real problems and issues that can stall your super ideas and how adopting the best sales and marketing CRM tools can change that for you and make your company find business growth.

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, is circumventing nine to five jobs, and throwing them into the bin.

Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money.

Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real problems and issues that can stall your super ideas and how adopting the best sales and marketing CRM tools can change that for you and make your company find business growth.

Paying attention to your customers is important since 14% of startups fail due to not regarding customers’ needs. - Fundera Click To Tweet

What is CRM?

CRM is both a technology and an awesome strategy that integrates into itself several dimensions of customer relations, which helps to convey real value to the customers and retain the same for businesses. With CRM related IT solutions, world-class customer relations can be easily attained and utilized to create brands in the marketplace.

In other words, best business CRM is a tool that helps one understand their target customers, their needs, and how brands can sustain that customer relationship to propel your startup on the basis of that relationship.

Now there are three types of easy to use CRM software that is available in the marketplace:

1. Strategic CRM

This is a CRM software that is based on delivering value to the customers, better than the rest of the competitions, and integrates the same in product development and structure of the business.

2. Operational CRM

This CRM software focuses on the automation of sales, production, and service as per the requirement of the consumers.

3. Analytical CRM

This CRM software focuses on gathering, storing, distributing, and thereafter integrating and analyzing consumer-facing data to cater value to both customers and businesses.

There are several models of sales and marketing CRM tools available in the marketplace. Nevertheless, in this article, we shall discuss the IDIC model which aids businesses to ascertain the customers who are of high value and loyalty towards the brands.

Identification: Find out who is the customers and understand them well.

Differentiation: Identity which customer has the greatest potentiality and thereby have more future prospects.

Interaction: Makes sure that businesses can perceive the customer’s desires, and understand the customer’s possible relationship with other brands.

Customization: Personalize offers and means of communication to make sure that the customer’s desires can be fulfilled.

So now that you are aware of what is CRM let us move on to the five most important reasons as to why you must buy your best sales and marketing CRM tools for your startup organization and stick to this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.

5 KEY PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS (FOR STARTUPS)

1. CASH CRUNCH

According to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that more than 29 percent of startups fail because of cash crunch and more than 18 percent for cost and pricing issues.

Therefore it is important for any startup business to keep their pricing compatible and yet generate enough profits to keep the krypton of cash crunch at a bay.

This is over here small business CRM software comes into play as it can help customers to understand the customer’s choices and buying patterns to integrate the same in product development and provide pricing that predicts good business growth.

2. POOR RELATIONS WITH THE CUSTOMERS

Relations with its customers is the spine of any business, especially startups as they are more consumer-based models of business and this is why more startups are in need of incorporating CRM strategies for their growing businesses.

According to reports among all startups that fail more than 17 percent are those that failed to develop and deliver a user-friendly product or service and another 17 percent failed because of inappropriate business models that underlined their offerings.

Therefore, this data even illustrates the growing importance to adopt the best all in one CRM in developing a consumer-based model for business that can help in building user-friendly offerings.

3. NEED FOR THE RIGHT TEAM

The idea of delivering a customer-friendly offering, for any startup is a challenging task, which needs the right team to pull that off.
As per statistics and data that we referred to before about 23 percent of startups fail due to their team’s inefficiency in catering a customer-friendly offering to the consumers in the marketplace.

Therefore as a startup entrepreneur, you need extensive staffing and training programs that can aid you in employing the right team to focus on providing value to the needs of your customers.

This is over here CRM for small business once again comes into play as it can help you to identify the right persons for your job and even train the same marketing, sales, and support strategies to reach customers and sustain them over a long period of time.

4. NEED FOR RESEARCH

Just as there is no way that we can write an article without any proper research, similarly the same applies to any startup, as comprehensive market research is most important and a must for the growth of any startup business across the globe.

According to research, it has been found that 42 percent of failed startup ventures were not successful since they did start their business after performing any market research about their proposed offerings.
Additionally, 13 percent of startup businesses failed and are so ill-fated because they launched their business at a bad time, statistics which show the extent to which startup organizations ignore real-time market trends while starting their businesses.

Therefore, as one of the most recognized vendors of software solutions in the Salesforce Alternative CRM marketplace, we can assure that it is the business growth technology that is capable of storing, integrating, and analyzing consumer data which aid startups to find and focus on the right market at the right time to launch the right product or service in the marketplace.

5. MARKETING WOES

As per statistics and data that we referred even before 14 percent of startups fail due to poor or ineffectual marketing and another 14 percent for ignoring their customers.

But why do startups fail at marketing or while conducting their after-sales service?

Even though there can be multiple factors that can make it happen but one of the most important of all these factors is not knowing well your customers.

CRM for SMB and startups helps growing businesses to understand their customers thoroughly so that they can cater to their customer’s needs.

This is exactly where Analytical CRM comes into play which aids in gathering consumer-related data and with Operational CRM that can ensure faster services to their customers and Strategic CRM that can help in marketing their offerings strategically to target relevant consumers based on their behavioral and purchase patterns which can be easily collected, stored and thereafter analyzed once it is hived inside the CRM database.

Conclusion

Therefore now that you know why your startup needs to adopt the best sales and marketing CRM tools and implement CRM strategies for your business growth, and the right type of CRM to go for to overcome each of these hurdles at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, it remains without any doubt that small business CRM software is that much-needed firepower which your startup needs as the next big weapon for victories ahead in this competitive global marketplace.

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How To Use The Best Sales CRM Software To Segment Customers And Promote Your Brand

In a gist customer segmentation is a powerful strategy whereby you divide your customer base into individual groups that share similar characteristics which can be easily done once you are using any of the best sales CRM software for finding revenue growth. Segmentation of the customers is important because when you try to use the one-size-fits-all approach in your marketing strategies, even the best strategy will come up with mixed results. This happens because while some customers may like one campaign, others may not. Therefore by executing a customer segmentation strategy once you buy the best sales CRM software, you can easily use the tool to divide your customer base into subgroups with similar attributes, after which you can tailor your marketing plans and create contents around those subgroups and personalize your marketing messages to better communicate with different groups of customers for rapid sales and business growth.

What Is Customer Segmentation?

In a gist customer segmentation is a powerful strategy whereby you divide your customer base into individual groups that share similar characteristics which can be easily done once you are using any of the best sales CRM software for finding revenue growth.

The global mobile CRM market will grow 11% to $15 billion worldwide this year. - MarketingDive Click To Tweet

Segmentation of the customers is important because when you try to use the one-size-fits-all approach in your marketing strategies, even the best strategy will come up with mixed results.

This happens because while some customers may like one campaign, others may not.

Therefore by executing a customer segmentation strategy once you buy the best sales CRM software, you can easily use the tool to divide your customer base into subgroups with similar attributes, after which you can tailor your marketing plans and create contents around those subgroups and personalize your marketing messages to better communicate with different groups of customers for rapid sales and business growth.

Now as CRM is a business growth technology that helps in streamlining this workflow and process so that you can reach the leads and customers who are most receptive to your offering(s), here is why combining easy to use CRM software with customer segmentation strategy benefits your brand:

1. Analyze Patterns and Trends

Business CRM software is a tool that collects customer data and stores them in one place for easy reference. Now, since CRM is an important tool for your customer service teams, this lead management software harvests customer data, such as a prospects purchasing behaviors, location, interest and hobbies, age group and more for your marketing staffs, after which the tool can also analyze patterns and trends in this data for providing accurate results needed for proper nurturing of the leads without any guesswork.

2. Determine the Lifetime Value of Your Customers

Once you buy the best sales CRM software and implement it effectively, the application helps the users to create predictive models that aids in determining profitable customer-base based on the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) of the customers.

Using a sales CRM, the users of this business growth technology can help the users to ascertain which segment of their market has the highest CLV and thereafter send marketing materials that resonate with those customers.

Now, since CRM also helps in discovering customers with a low CLV you can use this tool and use the information found in the CRM database of those customers to find methods that can increase their lifetime value with your brand and company.

For example, Facebook allows its users to filter their posts based on age, gender, interest, relationship status, location and more.

Hence using CRM and integrating it with social media tools you can create posts that target the bulk of your low CLV customer-base and reach a cross-section of your demography instantly and even address a specific audience on LinkedIn and other social media websites.

3. Increase Sales

According to certain research conducted by leading global market research organizations, all in one CRM is a software that boosts sales by 30 percent.
Hence, combining easy to use CRM software platforms with customer segmentation strategy can generate even more successful results.

This is because, using this approach you can easily get to the right customer with the right message at the right time, a thing that you just cannot do with generic “one-size-fits-all” marketing strategies.

For example, once you buy the best sales CRM software you can easily target your customers with suggestions on products and services based on their previous purchase histories.

In fact, one of the biggest brands across the globe relies on marketing CRM software solutions to sift through a plethora of customer data, something that marketers are unable to do manually, or by using spreadsheets, for up-selling and cross-selling their offerings.

4. Increase Engagement

For the most part, engaged customers are always more profitable customers for any business. According to research more than 86 percent of buyers will pay for a better CX (Customer Experience), while customers who are totally engaged represent on an average 23 percent of all premium customers for any brand when it comes to profitability, revenue and growth of relationship when compared to average buyers in the marketplace.

Therefore using easy to use CRM as a business growth technology solution for segmenting customers will not only help you to separate your buyer’s based on demography but also find out other common characteristics as per their sales cadence and collective characteristics so that you can engage your customers on a deeper personal level.

Conclusion

Enterprise CRM is a tool that not only provides you with useful insights into your customer’s attitude and behaviors by tracking interactions and collecting sales data, but it can also send powerful marketing material to smaller groups in the CRM database who share similar traits and comparable sales cadence, resulting in increased customer lifetime value and higher rates of engagements.

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6 Things You Can Do To Increase Revenue With Prospecting CRM For Enterprise-Ready Small Businesses

At the very onset primarily let us accept the fact, that Customer Relationship Management abbreviated CRM is a business workflow management software, which makes it convenient for large enterprises like SMBs to handle their entire sales process, right from prospecting to the final delivery of the solution to the customer and even beyond. This is a reality, which is true for any organization or business, irrespective of whether they have a sales team of just one or more than 100.

Below are 6 ways SMB and enterprise-ready businesses can boost sales using modern Prospecting CRM solution, and easily turn their leads into prospects and then customers.

More than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%). Click To Tweet

1. Share information across your team

Easy to use CRM system, which is known for its power of bringing together disparate and disjointed information from its database, helps in coordinating activities within the sales team when sales reps want to make pitches or contact leads for prospecting towards a sale.

2. Keep track of your sales process

Whether you have a five-step sales cadence or any other sales process designed to keep your sales team consistent when closing sales or following up with leads, CRM for SMB organizations helps you to make sure that your team is following the sales path to the letters, which will certainly help your establishment to increase sales.

Therefore, using a business CRM you can easily double-check what your sales reps say while monitoring their activities remotely.

In other words, sales CRM software helps you to understand what deals are in the pipeline, more importantly, keep track of what stage each deal is in and so keep a finger on the pulse of your entire sales process.

3. Better allocate your sales resources

Prospecting CRM software helps businesses to let them see, how their sales resources are allocated at a glance. These not only aid the sales managers to make intelligent decisions about how they can deploy their team, but also assign more leads to performers and shame the laggards which ultimately increase sales and brings additional revenue for the company.

4. Enable collaboration

Instead of wasting valuable work hours tracking important sales documents, CRM helps to build a single library of all your sales materials that can be accessed by everyone in your sales team. You can choose documents, brochures, sales collaterals from the CRM database to include in your emails right from a drop-down menu in your email’s inbox.

5. Create “Web to Lead” systems

Say goodbye to hot leads getting lost in an overcrowded inbox. Prospecting CRM software helps you to create forms on your website’s landing page to capture leads. Next, the system automatically routes the leads directly to the salesperson in the sales department who is free or is capable of reaching out and make a connection between the sales rep and the lead in just a few minutes.

6. Keep up with reminders and notifications

Just as it is necessary to keep track of your important sales contacts and prospects, you also need to reminders about when your sales reps should call up the leads and customers, since broken follow-ups could mean losing important businesses.

Most all in one CRM systems provide reminders about contacting important contacts and hot leads; you may not have spoken to lately and so helps you not to miss your next big sale.

Aren’t the benefits of using a CRM for complementing your sales process amazing?

Hence, to conclude, if you are a small or midsized business owner, or even just about to get your business enterprise-ready using CRM for SMB can definitely help you to increase sales and reach your goals easily.

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7 Metrics That You Must Cover In Your Monthly Sales Report To Impress Your Employee

As a manager in sales it is ultimately your responsibility to keep your sales team accountable to their or organizational and personal goals- but how? Well, we do agree with you when you say that tracking sales metrics for creating monthly sales report is extremely time-consuming. Hence as one of the award-winning vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions with thousands of easy to use CRM implementations across the global marketplace here are some of the key sales KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you must focus on to create your team’s monthly sales report despite the overwhelming amount of data being thrown on your way. And which can be your secret weapon in developing high-performing sales teams predicting rapid business growth.

As a manager in sales it is ultimately your responsibility to keep your sales team accountable to their or organizational and personal goals- but how?
Well, we do agree with you when you say that tracking sales metrics for creating monthly sales report is extremely time-consuming.

Sales teams that are productive and have effective workflows are 81% more likely to use a CRM system consistently. Click To Tweet

Hence as one of the award-winning vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions with thousands of easy to use CRM implementations across the global marketplace here are some of the key sales KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you must focus on to create your team’s monthly sales report despite the overwhelming amount of data being thrown on your way. And which can be your secret weapon in developing high-performing sales teams predicting rapid business growth.

# 1

Opportunity-to-Win Ratio

The opportunity-to-win ratio which is also known as the win rate is used for measuring the success of your sales team per opportunity over a predefined time window.

Now to calcite this KPI you need to compare the number of closed and won opportunities against all closed opportunities within the same time frame (both “closed won” and “closed lost”), which can provide you as a manager a high-level view of the overall success score of your sales team.

Managers in sales can even track this KPI in the monthly sales reports to identify strengths and weaknesses among individual reps and thereafter take corrective actions accordingly.

Here is how you can calculate this KPI using your sales CRM software:

Win Rate = the number of “closed won” opportunities divided by the number of “closed” opportunities (“closed won” + “closed lost”) in the same frame of time.

# 2

Conversion Rate

This KPI which is also known as the Close Rate is measured to calculate the effectiveness of your sales funnel.

Now we all know irrespective of whether we buy leads from the marketplace or use a free lead generation tool, the process of lead generation starts at the top of the funnel, and thereafter every lead works its way down the funnel which requires the deft expertise of the members of the sales team.

In other words, conversion rate provides both marketing and sales insights to the quality of leads arriving into the sales funnel through the marketing campaigns created by your marketing team.

Hence to measure your teams’ lead conversion rate, primarily you as a manager need to determine what is considered “being converted” in the eyes of your employees.

Now typically any lead is deemed to be converted once the lead becomes a paying customer.

Now the average conversion rate generally varies from one industry to another. Nevertheless, it is critical to track the conversion rate from either side which includes SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) or MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads).

Here is how you can calculate this KPI using your business CRM software:

Lead Conversion Rate = (The total number of New Customers divided by the total number of Leads) multiplied by 100.

# 3

Average Deal Size

This KPI is going to provide you with the initiation point to enlarge the size of your deals.

It is a tool that is going to aid you as a manager to keep track of inflowing revenues and act as a pivotal guideline for how many deals you require to close to reach (or even surpass) your quotas.

This KPI also helps the managers in sales to identify at-risk opportunities.

This is because, if you keep track of this KPI month-over-month as you create your monthly sales report, this metric can help you understand how or when you need to change your sales pipeline.

For example, if you increase the average deal size of your orders you might attract leads with a wider range of needs than what you required in the previous months.

# 4

Average Days to Close

This KPI is based on how long your sales reps take to close a deal right from the lead’s first point of contact to the conversion of the lead into a loyal customer.

In other words, this is a metric that can provide you insights as a manager as to how fast your sales reps are capable of moving prospects through their sales pipelines and turn them into revenue for your company.

Now different sales cycles are needed to close different deals. For example, a bigger opportunity might take a significantly longer time to close than one which will generate lesser revenue.

Here is how you can calculate this KPI using your all in one CRM software:

Average Days to Close = Add all days it took to close deals for the month and after that divide, the number by the number of deals closed that month.

# 5

Time Spent In Each Stage Of The Pipeline

Knowing about the number of deals that are there in each stage of your business growth tool’s sales pipeline will help to reveal how your prospects are moving through your pipeline and also where there are facing bottlenecks.

In other words, this metric provides deep insights into developing different sales techniques to push prospects from one stage to the next.

However, as a sales manager, you must ensure that the stages in your sales pipeline are based on what is actually happening in the sales arena, and not on how your sales reps feel, since you can always feel confident about a deal, but it never means that the prospect will obviously close.

# 6

Customer Churn Rate

This KPI in the easy to use CRM answers the question: How good are you at keeping your customers?

Therefore, if there is just one sales metric that you want to show to your employees in your monthly sales report and focus on every month – CCR would likely be the only one.

This is because knowing your brand’s churn rate means knowing why or how often your customer is leaving you for another in your marketplace.

Remember once your brand’s churn rate becomes too high, it means you surely need to make improvements in your sales tactics and find new business growth ideas, for the future success of your company.

# 7

Average Lead Response Time

According to research, it states that more than 50 percent of buyers choose the vendor or seller that responds first.

Therefore, learning this metric helps to understand the average time your sales reps take to reach out to a lead after they have been identified as a prospective contact for your company.

Now even though each company will have their own description of what a lead means to their business, but typically in general a lead refers to an individual or organization downloading a piece of content or fill out a request for a demo.

Here is how you can calculate this KPI using your marketing CRM software:

Average Lead Response Time = Sum of the number of minutes/hours/day to respond for all contacts divided by the number of contacts in your CRM database.

Conclusion

Now even though there are in reality endless sales metrics that you can use for filling up your monthly sales report.

These metrics and KPIs illustrated above will not only scale productivity but it will help to easily boost the performance of your sales team and so make you find respect among your employees as an ideal “Boss” – showing them the path for rapid and sure business growth.

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Why Should Realtors Use An Easy To Use Real Estate CRM For More Productivity And Growth

First off, adopting an easy to use real estate CRM software will make your business much productive. In fact, according to a study published by Software Advice in 2018, it states that 45 percent of buyers of business CRM software are either in consulting or insurance markets or real estate. Now, what do all these industries have in common? Well, they all need to centralize their contact management system. Actually, any realtor deals with a lot of business-related problems and issues, and so any business growth technology solution that will cut back on their stress and make their life more productive is a plus.

First off, adopting an easy to use real estate CRM software will make your business much productive.

In fact, according to a study published by Software Advice in 2018, it states that 45 percent of buyers of business CRM software are either in consulting or insurance markets or real estate.

Now, what do all these industries have in common?

Well, they all need to centralize their contact management system.

5.34 million existing homes were sold in 2019, according to data from the National Association of Realtors and 682,000 newly constructed homes were sold in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Click To Tweet

Actually, any realtor deals with a lot of business-related problems and issues, and so any business growth technology solution that will cut back on their stress and make their life more productive is a plus.

Hence a CRM solution that is built just for the real estate business can easily help to eliminate some of the daily issues and challenges faced by the realtors which include:

  • Helping agents who have to manage a bulk of information (all at once)
  • Respond to customers, sellers, and landlords who want instant responses to their queries
  • Help agents who are mostly on-the-go and need a cloud-based software solution
  • Help agents who wish to keep in contact with former clients to boost relationships
  • Assist agents who need to quickly identify what is working and what is not without mulling over Excel spreadsheets

For example, a typical day of any realtor will be a whirlwind of customer meetings, catching up with other agents, conducting an inspection of properties and open houses, and scrambling to fulfill other duties like data entry in between it all.

Now one thing is for certain that real estate agents do not have the luxury of sending their working hours in front of their computer, and so keeping on top of paperwork is often a challenge that most realtors face every day.

Hence the advantages of using an easy to use real estate CRM can be a godsend for realtors who are always on-the-move.

In recent times most CRM solutions like Salesforce and all other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms used by SMBs are cloud-based tools.
Therefore once you use a cloud based CRM software as a realtor you will be able to effectively take your office with you and have any relevant data on hand, quickly.

Additionally, once you work in real estate, you will understand the importance of building strong relationships as they can provide you a head start on a new property before it gets listed. Moreover, good relationships also help you calculate a fair price or gauge which properties are hot in the market.

However for all these, you as a builder or a real estate agent need the right information, and that too at the right time, at your fingertips, be that on potential clients, available properties, or neighborhoods, so that you can pass on this information to as many potential customers as possible.

Now, this where again an easy to use real estate CRM software comes into play one that is easily customizable for your specific needs.

No matter what size your real estate agency is, dealing with a barrage of inquiries and listings can be a real drag.

Hence segmenting contacts in your CRM database can save you time, and the right real estate CRM will provide you the tools to do so in your lead capture forms.

Now even though, controlling where a new lead lands in your real estate CRM solution’s sales funnel and what list they will belong to is completely up to you as you can choose whether you want to segment prospective leads by their timeline, their budget, or even their address and zip code.

However, segmenting contacts from the very moment a prospective lead enters your funnel can act as a game-changer for your real estate agency.

For example, let us assume that you have got a property for sale in downtown Chicago and you are wanting to send an invite for an open house. Once you adopt an all in one CRM for real estate in just a few clicks, you will have a list of prospects who are looking to buy in that zip code available to you.

In addition to this following up with prospective house buyers or tenants is key to any realtor’s business growth, but it also takes up a good chunk of a realtor’s day.

Now, not all leads are considered to be of equal value in the real estate marketplace.

But one thing you must as a realtor keep in mind is that every lead in your sales funnel needs to be nurtured, which implies following up with the leads consistently.

An easy to use real estate CRM will permit you to automate all your important follow-ups using templates that are pre-made and comes along with the software, enabling you to keep your own style and tone.

Hence once you schedule your follow-up emails using a CRM tool you are good to go, since your easy to use CRM will not only remind you it will even follow-up for you with your prospects just in time.

Finally, the time has come to close the deal.

As a real estate agent, you have kept the buyer interested and your seller is also happy with how the deal is progressing.

Therefore if you are using a CRM for real estate the right CRM will not only provide you with the ability to respond quickly to additional last-minute inquiries, but it will also help in arranging meetings with the buyer and the seller and track the results of those meetings.

It will make sure that as an agent you are on the right track to conduct a final walkthrough with the prospective buyer of the property before you hand over the keys after signing the contract.

Now in the realty marketplace, the sales do not complete until your customer has also signed the after-sales paperwork, and signing the appropriate paperwork is the most crucial phase of the deal.

Now even though as an agent or a realtor you understand the jargons within those contracts it is most unlikely that the buyer or seller of the property will also understand it and so you must make sure that you take your time to explain to them any portions of the deal or any terms they are unsure about.

Many CRM software solutions are there in the marketplace which can get seamlessly integrated with digital document signing applications like “DocuSign” whereby once all the papers are signed, your easy to use CRM will automatically move the deal to the end of your sales funnel.

Last but not the least, you can even set up an alert in your sales pipeline to remind you when it is the move-in day for the buyers of your properties so that no deal is ever forgotten and you can send the new property owners a move-in gift and also send the seller a gift for a successful sale.

Now even though this might be a small touch, but it can easily set your realty agency apart- so buy an easy to use real estate CRM that can help you to stand out from the crowd in this ever-competitive marketplace.

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Killer Strategies On Email Customer Engagement Policies That Can Fuel Business Growth

Email marketing is most probably the most popular customer engagement strategy and the most widely used terminology of today’s digital marketing world. Thanks to the rapid swell in internet usage across the globe, this term has become nowadays a familiar word even for ordinary people living around us. In fact, email marketing is the hottest and the most potent trend in the digital marketing field which can make or break any brand’s presence in the marketplace. This is because email marketing when done with the help of an easy to use CRM software, is not only budget-friendly, but it is an effective digital marketing practice, which has undoubtedly become any digital marketer’s weapon of choice to make their brands stand out in the crowd.

Email marketing is most probably the most popular customer engagement strategy and the most widely used terminology of today’s digital marketing world.
Thanks to the rapid swell in internet usage across the globe, this term has become nowadays a familiar word even for ordinary people living around us.
In fact, email marketing is the hottest and the most potent trend in the digital marketing field which can make or break any brand’s presence in the marketplace.

Nearly 60% of organizations increased IT spending in 2020. And it remains the same in 2021. Click To Tweet

This is because email marketing when done with the help of an easy to use CRM software, is not only budget-friendly, but it is an effective digital marketing practice, which has undoubtedly become any digital marketer’s weapon of choice to make their brands stand out in the crowd.

What about- Assurance of Success

For boosting customer engagement of any brand, email marketing as a strategy holds immense importance in a sender’s or user’s life. Nevertheless, this process is not entirely faultless nor reliable. This is because the senders of these emails may need to face some unpleasant experiences at times since recipients of the emails can tend to unsubscribe to the list or change their registered email id or even the email that you send can inadvertently land into the recipient’s spam-box.

Hence, since these paramount challenges can often remain there, as an email marketer, you are required to come up with a spotless email marketing strategy to overcome these trivial yet of consequence hurdles and find success over time.

Build your Email List

Any weathered email marketer well understands why building a potential database of their customers with the help of a business CRM is a critical urgent cry.

Now, if you as an email marketer have a long list of subscribers who are all enthusiastic to know more about your brand and your offerings, it can be a boon for the marketer, as the mindset of the recipients is the ultimate factor for deciding the success in sending the emails to your customer base.

Hence, in other words, the efforts of an email marketing strategy for boosting customer engagement can go in vain overnight, if the recipients of the email are reluctant to open and view through the emails shared by your company.

In fact, a fall in open rate while doing email marketing can not only affect your CTR (Click through Rate) but it will also increase Bounce Rate whereby your overall customer engagement strategy may come to a standstill.

Now to grow your email list, you can use lead magnets and opt-in forms, which are the two most essential elements that work hand-in-hand to help grow and sustain your subscribers list substantially over time.

Time of using Email Marketing

Even though to most in common, email marketing might sound simple, however in reality only the digital marketer understands how hard it can be if the sense of creating perfect timing is found to be missing from their email marketing plans.

This is because as one of the most popular vendors of small business CRM software, we know that a sender of the email must have a clear understanding of when to start sending emails to increase customer engagement activities.

Therefore, here are a few important practices which any email marketer must adhere to while sending their emails which are mentioned below:

  • As personalized mailer contents tend to find more views and thereby customer engagements, try to personalize the communications that you have with your prospects and customers.
  • Since the main motive behind pursuing an email marketing practice is to let people get aware of what kind of offerings that your brand provides to the consumers in the marketplace, hence try to deliver messages in such a manner that it will help to enhance brand awareness among your consumer base.
  • Take out time to invite your email subscribers to provide their personal information once they are receiving your emails, and so brainstorm and come up with unique ideas that can be beneficial to your subscribers, since you will only get your desired information from the consumers if they find your click-bait plans too tempting to resist.
  • Lead nurturing is another important factor for conducting a successful email marketing strategy that boosts customer engagement. Therefore see that your users remain happy with the type of content that you are sending to them (which must be useful and pertinent) that can solve their pain-points and issues.
    Hence, as email marketing can do wonders in relation to your content management strategy, email marketers can use this tool to share relevant assets, case studies and articles to provide a more realistic approach to his or her email marketing skills.

USEFUL EMAIL MARKETING STATISTICS THAT CAN SURPRISE EVERYONE:

  • More than 86 percent of marketing professionals prefer email as their primary mode of communication.
  • A well-researched email copy can fetch more than 47 percent higher CTR.
  • Emails that include emoji(s) fetch higher than 56 percent open rate than any normal emails.
  • More than 60 percent of marketers believe that email marketing when done with an all in one CRM software can bring in more ROI without investing an excess amount on other business growth technologies.

Conclusion

Do you know according to Google there are more than 3.8 billion active users across the globe who uses email to stay in touch with others?

Therefore, you see, it is too simple to understand why email marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies nowadays that can really boost customer engagement without allocating more budgets.

It has been found in research that email generates 3,800 percent ROI in general, and for that, all that a marketer requires is access to an email marketing tool like a marketing CRM and the list of subscribers to make it a success any day.
Additionally, as this same research also states that emails are capable of fetching 40X more traffic in comparison to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook, hence building a proper email marketing strategy can not only boost customer engagement but also increase the turnover of your organization rapidly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Customer Effort Score (CES)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Publish A Blog

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

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

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

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

Integrate Your CRM Software With A Marketing Automation Platform

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

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

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

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

Set Up A Lead Scoring System In Your CRM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Run Lead Generation And Nurturing Campaigns

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

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

Set Up Killer Landing Pages

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

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

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

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

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

Incorporate Data Verification

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

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

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

Use Social Monitoring To Find Brand Advocates

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

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

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

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

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

Routinely Measure Your Lead Conversion Ratio

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

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

Takeaway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Customer Journey for Companies of All Sizes

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

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

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

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

Someone Always Owns the Moment

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

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

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

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

Best Practices to Create the Customer Success Journey Map Easily

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

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

  1. Always use an outside-in approach

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

  1. Define the handoffs

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

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

  1. Focus on key moments of truth

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

  1. Share with customers and provide them insights

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

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

  1. Measure and optimize the journey map

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can I Run A Successful Business Working From Home?

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

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

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

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

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

The Right Tools For the Job

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

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

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

ADVANTAGE OF CLOUD-BASED SOFTWARE

Business Continuity With Remote Work

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

Better Peace of Mind

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

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

Always Up-to-Date

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

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

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

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

Better Integrations

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

Save on IT Expenditure

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

ONE SHARED CLOUD-BASED CRM, AND ITS MULTIPLE USES

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

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

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

Seamless coordination between multiple sales teams

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

Faster marketing campaigns

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

Increased customer satisfaction

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

Better cross-department cooperation

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

Takeaway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the Facts Right

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

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

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

Track and Measure in CRM

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

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

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

Takeaway

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

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