Tag: best CRM software for SMB

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.

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How The Right QuickBooks CRM Can Help Generate More Sales And Revenue

Typically, sales managers of any small and medium organization find it easy to see the benefits of adopting a CRM system, which becomes more effective if they use the best small and medium business CRM software that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, and is so most often also accepted as the best CRM software for QuickBooks. They appreciate that in QuickBooks CRM their sales data is going to be centrally stored and presented in an easy-to-follow format, permitting them to monitor staff performances, sales processes, purchases, billing and invoicing, and as a result, optimize sells. But what about the sales reps? Therefore, more often than not, unlike sales managers, sales reps are not all that “happy-go-lucky” about Customer Relationship Management solution in the beginning.

Typically, sales managers of any small and medium organization find it easy to see the benefits of adopting a CRM system, which becomes more effective if they use the best small and medium business CRM software that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, and is so most often also accepted as the best CRM software for QuickBooks.

They appreciate that in QuickBooks CRM their sales data is going to be centrally stored and presented in an easy-to-follow format, permitting them to monitor staff performances, sales processes, purchases, billing and invoicing, and as a result, optimize sells.

Consumers in the US ranked Intuit (QuickBooks) on number 8 in terms of privacy trustworthiness among all companies - Colvin (2017) Click To Tweet

But what about the sales reps?

Therefore, more often than not, unlike sales managers, sales reps are not all that “happy-go-lucky” about Customer Relationship Management solution in the beginning.

Primarily, the extra time that the sales rep has to spend on entering data into the CRM software application adds to the irritation of the sales teams since they think that their main job is primarily selling.

However, this article is not about why sales team do not always find the goodness in easy to use CRM software, but rather it is all about how a QuickBooks CRM can improve the performance of the sales reps, and more importantly why they need a CRM for revenue growth.

So why do salespeople need CRM, preferably a QuickBooks CRM software?

Without the fear of oversimplifying the facts, the two greatest challenge that sales reps face in sales are:

  • How to follow up and qualify on leads?
  • How to prioritize sales activities?

And CRM is the only business growth technology and tool that can solve these key problems in sales, and this is how best small business CRM when used in SMB organizations, does it:

  1. Enjoy a safe storage space

Best CRM software platforms aid the sales teams in small businesses and startups to centrally store their sales opportunities, contacts, activities and schedule plans in one central place so that they can find seamless access to their CRM database from multiple locations, and never have to fear that their data will get lost.

For example, once you use a QuickBooks CRM, in your CRM for SMB you can also view the purchase history of the customers, create invoices for your prospects and leads without leaving your easy to use CRM platform, and store them in the CRM database for future use.

  1. Plan and manage time just like a ‘Pro’

Best CRM software for QuickBooks helps salespeople to optimize their day-to-day schedules and prioritize their tasks to make them remain assured that none of their prospects and customers are ignored and they are instead contacted on time. Though it may sound like an oxymoron easy to use CRM software, as a matter of fact, allows sales reps to spend more time with their customers, which results in closing more deals and creating stronger relationships.

  1. No brainer activity reports

The best CRM software for SMB organizations also helps the sales reps to quickly and easily create their weekly, quarterly, or monthly reports for the management and higher-ups in their organization. The process of creating these reports is transparent and automated with business growth technology applications like CRM as it takes just a few minutes to inform other members of the team and the mangers about which sales have been won and those that are currently in progress.

  1. Stay up-to-date on what is happening

Easy to use CRM offers document templates, shared calendars and email integrations, which helps to unite all team members in sales, marketing, accounts, and support and keep everyone up-to-date. Sharing selling patterns, and selling processes, and purchases made by the customers (if you are using a QuickBooks CRM) allows sales teams to see what works best.

This is because once you integrate easy to use best sales CRM software with Intuit QuickBooks, there can be a seamless exchange of all data between these two software application platforms.
This way, you can continue using your accounting software, at the same time see customer details, payment, invoice information directly on your easy to use CRM dashboard, and thereafter use this data from QuickBooks CRM for follow-ups, customer support, and business process automation to remind your prospects and customers of their needs.

Moreover, as there are several information that overlaps between sales, accounting, and customer service as the prospect moves through the sales pipeline from being just a lead to a paying customer if different teams use different software in the organization to store their data, it will undoubtedly result in double data entry causing waste of money, time and efforts.

Hence using a QuickBooks CRM for sales not only helps in eliminating double entry but also as when the customer data in the CRM database is updated it also changes in the financial application and vice versa.

Conclusion

Therefore, the best small and medium business CRM software for sales teams when integrated with QuickBooks correctly it will certainly help salespeople to excel in four areas that are critical to them, which include:

  • Reach sales targets faster
  • Better search, segregate and qualify leads
  • Prioritize follow up activities as per the urgency
  • Follow up on leads and customers systematically and on time

However, to achieve all these, sales reps have to unanimously understand that updating their CRM database is central to their success, which is only possible through absolute understanding and determination from the sales rep’s side.

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Tends In Customer Support To Look For In 2020

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

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

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

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

Trend #1

True Omnichannel Experience

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

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

Trend #2

Connect Through Social Media

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

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

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

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

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

Trend #3

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

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

Trend #4

Machine Learning

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

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

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

Trend #5

Internet of Things (IoT)

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

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

Trend #6

Remote Customer Support Representatives

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

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

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

Tend #7

Real-time Support

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

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

Trend #8

Live Video

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

Trend #9

Personalized Content

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

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

Trend #10           

Predictive Analytics

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

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

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

Takeaway

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

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

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