Tag: Best small and medium business CRM software

CRM Database: Tips For Unlocking Secrets Of Your Customers For Business Growth

According to Search Business Analytics, 41% of businesses are currently struggling to tie customer data to business actions. Since there is little use of the information in CRM database if you do not make it work for you. If you are aware of what is CRM, you must be knowing that Customer Relationship Management is all about making the best use of CRM database to discover valuable customer insights about your leads, prospects, and customers and then turn those insights into successful business decisions. This is why CRM software is important for all businesses. In this article, we will look into some of the ways you can use CRM database to unveil your customer secrets.

According to Search Business Analytics, 41% of businesses are currently struggling to tie customer data to business actions. Since there is little use of the information in CRM database if you do not make it work for you.
If you are aware of what is CRM, you must be knowing that Customer Relationship Management is all about making the best use of CRM database to discover valuable customer insights about your leads, prospects, and customers and then turn those insights into successful business decisions.

This is why CRM software is important for all businesses.

15% of a business’s annual profits are misspent owing to bad data residing in their CRM database as CRM data degrades at a rate of 30% per annum. - Gartner Click To Tweet

According to Software Advice, more than 74% of business organizations state that an easy to use CRM software solution allows them to have greater access to customer data. While Accenture confirms that high-yielding businesses (those that greatly outperform over long-term) are 5 times more likely to use the information stored in their CRM’s customer database pitted against low performing businesses.

However, the big question is, what you need to look at to know who your customers are, or what they want, and lastly how do your business benefits from that information?

In this article, we will look into some of the ways you can use CRM database to unveil your customer secrets.

Use CRM Database for Personalization

As every customer is a different individual, hence they all have different preferences when it relates to their communication and their buying habits.
According to Digital Trends, more than 73% of consumers choose to do business with organizations that use their personal information to enhance their shopping experiences.

Additionally, according to a report published by Infosys, it has been established that 86% of consumers support the role that personalization plays in their purchasing decisions.

This is exactly where you can use the information stored in your easy to use CRM software, since this platform does not only stores names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers of your customers, but all your other interactions with the customers are also stored in the CRM database.

Therefore, take the advantage of using the customer information in your CRM database, which helps to address your customer by their names and incorporate the information that you know about them to show them that you are interested in treating them individually.

Personalize and shape your communications with your customers in such a manner that it suits the need of each customer individually and see how your customer’s perception of your brand starts to improve over time.

Discover Your Top Customers

As your customers are far from being equal, therefore, some of your customers earn you more profits than others, while there are also many that even waste your time.
According to the Pareto Principle – “80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers”

Hence, if you need to focus on this 20 % of your customers that brings you most of your revenue, your easy to use CRM software provides the analytical tools that can help you to spot your top purchasers by analyzing your CRM database.
Similarly, the CRM software can also identify the customers who are taking up most of your time and are top time wasters- customers that are not vital for your company.

Once you find this information, you can focus and treat your top hassle-free customers, provide them with more attention and uncover more business opportunities with this ever-growing selected few.

Become Trained To Win and Close More Deals

Have you ever thought- actually how you sell?

What are the steps that you unconsciously follow all the way to closing a deal?

More importantly, what are the things that you do to win a sale, and if they are really working?

Now if you start digging deeper, you will certainly start to understand which sales strategies are really helping you to advance the deals and which are those that do not.

However, to do this you need to look into the CRM database.
When every action that you take and every document that you send to the prospect is logged into the easy to use CRM system, you can view the major steps that you have taken in the sales process and the touch points that you have registered with the prospective customer. Data in the CRM platform also lets you understand how long the entire procedure takes, and how much time elapsed between each step in the buying process.

If you find some of the tactics that you have used generated higher closing ratio, or have made the sales cycles shorter, you can make that as a part of your every sales process, and stop doing things that did not.

So CRM database helps in making your sales reps follow successful sales processes ever time they are trying to close a deal.

Discover Upselling Opportunities

We all want to increase our revenue, and the best way to do it is to persuade your customers with products and services that they like instead of just bombarding them with random offerings.

CRM data helps us to anticipate the customer’s interests and needs and offer them opportunities to enhance their buying experiences. This is where an easy to use CRM earns its keep.

Converged CRM software like ConvergeHub (the best small business CRM software) provides a 360-degree view of the customers, whereby it helps you to analyze all customer information in the CRM database and pinpoint what the customer is likely to purchase as per their existing requirements.

For service-oriented businesses, information stored about your customers in the CRM database can also help you to send reminders to your customers before their contract is up for renewal so that you can upsell your customer at the right time.

Reduce Churn

Although there is always a lot of focus on increasing sales, however keeping the customer that you already have from leaving, is less talked about in the business world.

Nevertheless, the loss of customers, or customer churn, can crush your business goals.

According to a study done by Kini Group, it has been found that by just reducing customer churn by 5% businesses can increase their profits by 25-95 percent.

Now, if you evaluate the data in the CRM database between steadfast and broken relations with your customers, you can find valuable insights which can help you to evaluate what is working and what you should avoid in your customer relationship management to keep away from higher churn rates in the future days to come.

Moreover, access to these insights can also help you to resolve customer-facing issues faster and make your customers have a great experience with your brand, just by feeling that their pain-points have been understood.

Conclusion

Therefore, use your CRM database to develop an all-around customer experience strategy.

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Always remember, that the main benefit of having an easy to use CRM in place is to manage the relationship with your customers using information hidden in the CRM database, for now, and forever, in order to increase your sales and grow your business’s revenue.

5 Ways to Tell If Your Alternative Lending Business Needs a Merchant Cash Advance CRM

Any good easy to use CRM software can alleviate many of the persistent headaches that come with managing alternative funding business that is poised for fast growth. However, how do you know if your MCA business needs a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software solution? If you know what is a CRM solution, well then CRM or Customer Relationship Management has been around for quite some time and more to say has in the recent times made a booming comeback, with social CRM technology, with applications focusing more on interactions than on just transactional feedbacks. Here in this article let us look into the 5 keys areas that suggest any alternative financing MCA business, just like other industries, need a Merchant Cash Advance CRM.
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Any good easy to use CRM software can alleviate many of the persistent headaches that come with managing alternative funding business that is poised for fast growth.
However, how do you know if your MCA business needs a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software solution?

If you know what is a CRM solution, well then CRM or Customer Relationship Management has been around for quite some time and more to say has in the recent times made a booming comeback, with social CRM technology, with applications focusing more on interactions than on just transactional feedbacks.

Without an easy to use CRM, 79% of leads fail to convert- Pardot Click To Tweet

With Cloud-based and SaaS CRM solutions integrating even more features, CRM in all industries and businesses is gaining popularity, that too with easy installation and low initial costs, which can also be accessed through handheld mobile device.

Here in this article let us look into the 5 keys areas that suggest any alternative financing MCA business, just like other industries, need a Merchant Cash Advance CRM .

  1. DO YOU- Wish You Had More Time?

Does it seem to you that you had more time to concentrate on selling your financial products and services to prospective new customers? Or just simply wish that you could have spent less time dealing with admin tasks, such as managing your sales rep’s progress, or locating information and past communications with your customers. An efficient MCA CRM software solution will allow you to store and access all your customer data in CRM, as well as provide you with in-depth analysis on your sales team’s progress- thereby allowing you to focus on other important tasks and manage your office hours more efficiently.

  1. DO YOU- Want More Revenue?

To increase their revenue, all businesses typically invest in improving their sales, and support teams. With the help of a thorough easy to use MCA CRM like ConvergeHub, alternative funding companies can easily afford an insight into their customer information stored in the CRM database.

MCA organizations can view where their best leads and sales are coming from, or which marketing campaign proved successful that in turn enables companies to invest more money and time, in the right areas to maximize growth.

  1. DO YOU- Want To Grow Your Customer Base?

It is natural that in the present times your customers will communicate with you company in a multitude of ways. Now, if they have to deal with different representatives of your organization, every time they contact your MCA firm, having an accurate record of each and every dialogue, in the CRM database, ensures that your debtors do not have to provide details of their contact information, loan history, complaints and other documents needed for establishing their credibility.

All customers want to deal with organizations that understand and is capable of responding to their needs, preferable even anticipate them in advance.

Using a Merchant Cash Advance software helps in treating your customers as individuals, provide them with personal attention, acknowledge their requirements individually, and therefore give the respect they need for doing business with your MCA firm.

Invariably, earning the trust of your customers will also lead to growth in your alternative lending businesses’ revenue.

Using an MCA CRM software solution you can make your customers feel special by targeting personalized messages to your present and would be consumers, helping to better connect with them across multiple communication platforms.

  1. DO YOU- Want To Increase Your Customer Retention Rates?

Over the last few years, customers and prospects have become much more tech-dependent and tech-savvy than they were ever before.

As a result, consumers expect a seamless user experience across every channels and device, whilst at the same instance, they also expect the best possible standards of customer support.

With countless customer choices, building up loyalty among your highest value customers for your organizing is crucial for your alternative lending business.

A Merchant Cash Advance software platform can help in communicating with the existing clients at the right moment, through the right channels, and with the most appropriate message to ensure that your customers come back and better yet become a ‘brand advocate’ of your MCA firm.

  1. DO YOU- Want Better Insight into Your Cash Advance Business?

Not be able to precisely forecast your incoming revenue can cause a lot of stress. Can you predict which of your sales reps is going to close your biggest deals? Alternatively, which of your marketing email campaigns delivered the best returns on your investments?

An MCA CRM software platform should not only allow your business to gather and track that data from its CRM database whenever you choose, but also provide substantial information to help you in making decisions and correct your course of actions and strategies as and when it is needed.

Takeaway

If one or more of this five enlisted areas resonates with you, then for sure you need a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software like ConvergeHub to manage your growing Merchant Cash Alternative Lending business.

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To test the effectiveness of any proposed CRM initiative, primarily use a small-scale working model of the software.
So why wait!
Try ConvergeHub’s 14-Day Free Trial– The most awarded Merchant Cash Advance CRM for alternative funding businesses.

What Is CRM ROI? How To Get Paid For Your Investments Using Cloud Based CRM Systems

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, it was found that for every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM platform, the return is between $5.60 and $8.71. According to another research done by HubSpot, it was established that 40% of sales reps do not even use this online lead management tool to manage leads and prospects but instead relies on Rolodex cards and Excel spreadsheets to manage their sales funnel and cultivate customer relationship. Now, how can this be possible when statistically 47% of the sales teams that use a cloud based CRM say that they registered a positive impact on customer retention by using CRM for their businesses? Part of the problem in this long-standing self-contradicting confusing statement lays in the horror stories we hear about companies that did unsuccessfully spend thousands of dollars on the promise of improving productivity with the help of a CRM for their sales teams.

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, it was found that for every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM system , the return is between $5.60 and $8.71.

Nevertheless, there is also a bad news.

According to another research done by HubSpot, it was established that 40% of sales reps do not even use this online lead management software to manage leads and prospects but instead relies on Rolodex cards and Excel spreadsheets to manage their sales funnel and cultivate customer relationship.

Every single dollar spent on a cloud based CRM system, the return is between $5.60 and $8.71. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Now, how can this be possible when statistically 47% of the sales teams that use a cloud based CRM say that they registered a positive impact on customer retention by using CRM for their businesses?

Part of the problem in this long-standing self-contradicting confusing statement lays in the horror stories we hear about companies that did unsuccessfully spend thousands of dollars on the promise of improving productivity with the help of a CRM for their sales teams.

We all know any CRM is more than just a sales tool.

This means a CRM database serves as a data warehouse that centers on client interactions, so that marketing, customer support, billing, and other departments should be able to use its centralized repository for collecting and retrieving information.

Cloud based CRM software should also offer automation that effectively improves workflow and permits a seamless connection to all the front and back-end systems in an organization.

However, the golden key for this cutting-edge tool is that you have to use it right to garner your ROI.

In this article, we will look into CRM ROI and provide the readers with certain pointers on why investing in cloud based CRM software like ConvergeHub can make all the difference for your team.

Top Considerations for CRM ROI

Creating a business case for your cloud based CRM software got you this far. However, after go-live of the CRM users must find the impact this new online lead management software has on all the departments that use this platform.

Forrester (the global research firm) is one organization that has provided us a framework of how we can do this. Their methodology, which is known as ‘Total Economic Impact’ views on the sales outcomes as weighted against money and time spent on the CRM.

Forrester’s TEI methodology typically looks at whether sales increased or closed faster via improved lead generation strategies.

Forrester also evaluates the user-friendliness of the cloud based CRM software and how scalable is the CRM as the company changes and registers growth in employment over time.

Here are some of the questions Forrester use to measure their CRM ROI, which includes:

  • Did the CRM platform increase wallet share by capturing more customer income and consumers on your offerings?
  • Did the cloud based CRM software help sales reps match the services that your client needs?
  • Are the customer relationships lasting longer than before?
  • Did the cloud based CRM software provide marketing, sales, support, and the management teams with automated functions that improve business efficiency?
  • Have the management team in your organization been able to capture data that shows reduced direct selling costs?
  • Is the CRM platform, easy to use and intuitive enough to eliminate the time required for IT to pull reports from the CRM database?

CRM implementations are never identical. Therefore, as you can only see an ROI from your CRM if your employees use the platform, this human variable has a direct impact on CRM ROI. Hence, if you take two organizations with competing offerings from the same industry and provide them with identical CRM platforms, it is highly likely that the experiences of these two companies will never be similar. Consequentially, so shall be the differences in their ROI.

With that being said, let us quantify some of the steps that are necessary to set up a new cloud based CRM system for success in any organization, that include:

  • Making certain that the information silo housed in the different departments in the organization are abolished. It has been found that there will always be certain departments that will be more unwilling than others to comply with the CRM software, where all data is collected and stored in one place. However, it is important that each department in your organization agree to enter information in one place to reap the benefits of CRM ROI.
  • Create a means to measure the different metrics by departments and develop a reporting structure that can follow these benchmarks effectively. Therefore, select an online lead management software that is able to handle the deviating goals of marketing, sales, operations, billing, customer support, and others.
  • Accept workflow changes that will completely leverage the software. This may be a conflicting situation for most employees that are set in their ways. Setting the expectation upfront that CRM ROI is based on each team member’s acceptance of the software, is an important part of finding employee buy-in. Each of the employees must be aware that they will receive proper training to utilize the cloud based CRM software, which will make them grow individually and as a department.
  • Customize the CRM software to reduce the busy works, which is holding your organization back for generating CRM ROI, as you are likely to find a host of redundant tasks baked into many of the departments in your business.

Recovering what you pay for your cloud based CRM software means choosing the right CRM software and optimizing the platform to fit your business.

Recently we hired a research agency to conduct an analysis of CRM ROI for ConvergeHub CRM. Let us look at what they discovered about ConvergeHub online lead management software, which is a FinanceOnline award-winning CRM for small businesses:

According to the research study, the potential ROI of ConvergeHub cloud based CRM saw a number of business benefits, like reduced CRM maintenance and infrastructure costs, and quicker time-to-market.

The report further elaborated that:

  • The time-to-implement and deploy was much faster with ConvergeHub cloud based CRM solution than an on-site CRM implementation.
  • Organizational efficiency in the processes was improved as sales and customer support departments were able to automate several basic and redundant works.
  • The online model of ConvergeHub CRM software allowed customers to avail a fixed monthly subscription, which nullified overhead costs.
  • ConvergeHub helped businesses save money in the long term.
  • Businesses began to see an ROI within 3 months after installation of the small business CRM software.

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Ultimately, the research stated that ConvergeHub has an overall 63% CRM ROI rate, a figure that places ConvergeHub as a highly rated SaaS-based online lead management software , which is worth considering, as it helps you to get the most for your investments.

What To Do And Avoid With Pipeline Management Using Best Small Business CRM Platform

Pipeline management is vital for any sales company using the best small business CRM software. Since, without pipeline management software that offers necessary features, your business will be left with a chaotic and bewildering mess of data that will not be useful to anyone in your company. Therefore, it is imperative that you must use your easy to use CRM software platform’s pipeline management system appropriately and effectively, and ensure that each member of your sales team is also using it proactively to generate more sales and revenue. In this article, we shall explore how you can best manage your sales pipeline in order to increase your profits and ROI.

Pipeline management is vital for any sales company using the best small business CRM software. Since, without pipeline management software that offers necessary features, your business will be left with a chaotic and bewildering mess of data that will not be useful to anyone in your company.

Therefore, it is imperative that you must use your easy to use CRM software platform’s pipeline management system appropriately and effectively, and ensure that each member of your sales team is also using it proactively to generate more sales and revenue.

In this article, we shall explore how you can best manage your sales pipeline in order to increase your profits and ROI.

What is Pipeline Management?

A sales pipeline of an organization is a diagrammatic representation of its sales prospects, and to find the exact place where these prospects are in the purchasing process. Visualizing a sales pipeline also provide an overview of any sales person’s account forecast and how he is to accomplish his sales quota, as well as, how a sales team as a whole is capable of reaching its target.

80% of all sales are made on the 5th–12th contact. 15 years ago it took on average 2–4 contacts before concluding a sale. - The National Association of Sales Executives Click To Tweet

Sales pipeline management enables sales managers and reps to forecast the numbers and revenue generation of deals that are predicted to close in a given span of time.

In other words, a sales pipeline aggregates individual prospect and customer’s sales funnel into a composite visual representation that weighs the health of all the sales prospects of an organization. The sales pipeline also helps in illustrating the lifecycle of various customers and prospects from their initial interaction with your business to the closing of the deals.

These steps in a sales pipeline management include:

  • Help to collect incoming leads.
  • Qualify a sales prospect into a marketing-qualified lead by using methods such as lead scoring and thereafter into a sales-qualified lead.
  • Help to validate a qualified lead into a sales opportunity.
  • Register the deal as ‘closed’, ‘on hold’, or as a ‘lost opportunity’.

Therefore, having a sales pipeline management embedded in your best CRM for small business helps to manage the task more efficiently.

The health of a sales pipeline is most often measured by the following metrics that include:

  • The total number of deals in a pipeline.
  • The average size of the deals in a pipeline.
  • The average percentage of deals that have been won or the close ratio.
  • The average time taken to close the deals or the sales velocity.

Common mistakes- what to avoid in pipeline management

Sales managers using pipeline management embedded in the CRM for small business most often tend to think only about numbers and statistics. Therefore, they fail to focus on what is happening with each opportunity. Sales managers do not look at people they are positioned with, the customer’s goal or buying process, the relationship strength with the customers, the competitive position of the offering, or what is in for the customer for purchasing the product or service provided by the organization.

That means sales managers who use pipeline management often miss coaching opportunities and therefore produce poor results.

Here are certain things that you should not do with pipeline management:

  • Avoid keeping focusing only on the numbers. Instead, look into more in-depth study of the status of the opportunities and how they can be moved forward through the pipeline.
  • Do not confuse pipeline management with sales forecasting.
  • Remember, sales pipeline management is just a coaching tool.
  • Do not believe in the idea that a bigger pipeline is a better pipeline, as smaller pipelines can be more productive, since it can be devoid of the junk deals that will never amount to any revenue, allowing sales reps and managers to focus on selling to lead that are more qualified for faster closer of the deals.
  • Do not focus on only late-stage or about to close deals.

Best practices for Pipeline Management using small business CRM

Over-complicating what you are trying to measure drives low adoption of pipeline management software. Therefore keep your sales pipeline management simple and to the point.

Believe in creating holistic skill development of your employees in the sales and marketing teams. Let your sales managers help the reps to execute necessities required for managing the sales pipeline across all stages of the process, and so create targeted training for each step for every individual in the team.

Create account plans that illustrate the sales rep’s position within the organization, and what are their opportunities. The strategies that you need to employ, the resources needed to be successful, and recognize the key players to help move the opportunities through the pipeline.

Train the sales team how to prospect, which should include things like asking questions, writing emails and motivating potential prospects to act.

Takeaway

Advanced and best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub, allows users to manage multiple sales pipelines.

This is most important since most CRM do not offer this option.
Suppose you run an automobile dealership and make money by selling cars, automobile parts and also provide repairs. Many customer relationship management software, will allow you to configure only one pipeline, which means you will not be able to accurately analyze or track multiple lines of business and profit centers using such CRM platforms. Therefore, keep this in mind while choosing your pipeline management software embedded in the CRM.

For more information on sales pipeline management and a 14-day free trial of ConvergeHub, click on the link below.

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9 Killer Outbound Marketing Tips To Drive Growth In Merchant Cash Advance Business In 2018

A merchant cash advance or MCA allows small business owners those who allow credit card payments to acquire an advance of the funds regularly flowing through the businesses’ merchant account. Hence, MCA is not a loan, but rather it is an advance based upon the future credit card sales of a business. An MCA provider weight credit criteria and evaluates risks differently than traditional bankers, as merchant cash advance providers examine the volume of daily credit card receipts to evaluate if the business can pay the MCA lender in a timely manner. However, whatever may be your business, even for Merchant Cash Advance organizations, outbound marketing is still a doable option for moving leads through their sales funnel.

What is Merchant Cash Advance?

A merchant cash advance or MCA allows small business owners those who accept credit card payments to acquire an advance of the funds regularly flowing through the businesses’ merchant account. Hence, MCA is not a loan, but rather it is an advance based upon the future credit card sales of a business.

An MCA provider weigh credit criteria and evaluates risks differently than traditional bankers, as merchant cash advance providers examine the volume of daily credit card receipts to evaluate if the business can pay the MCA lender in a timely manner.

Merchant cash advance companies are less concerned with FICO scores and more concerned with signing businesses up that have a steady supply of paying customers.- GSFunding Click To Tweet

Since in MCA the small business is selling a portion of its future credit card sales to acquire a capital, businesses opting for MCA get the required advance deposited into their accounts quickly.

Why use Outbound Marketing?

However, whatever may be your business, even for Merchant Cash Advance organizations, outbound marketing is still a doable option for moving leads through their sales funnel.

Although there has been a lot of clamor about inbound marketing in the recent times, however, it also has its drawbacks. For example, inbound marketing may generate demand for your content rather than your services. Hence, it is best used in combination with outbound marketing, in order to convert more leads into customers.

Here are nine highly useful outbound marketing tips to help users of merchant cash advance CRM to close more deals.

#01. Social media advertising

Every MCA business using merchant cash advance software is also much familiar with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Therefore, with so many people on social media platforms these days, it is hard to go wrong leveraging social media advertising, when it is anticipated that the social media reach is expected to grow to 3.02 billion by 2021.

Advertising on different social media channels comes at varying costs. Nevertheless, Facebook is usually the cheapest, and Twitter is likely to be the most expensive.

Hence, do your research before deciding upon which channel is best or your MCA audience, before pushing your ads out into the digital world.

#02. Boost successful social media posts

Boosting a social media post is a little different from just posting your ad.

You can boost your existing posts by paying a little extra to extend its reach and put your post in front of more people.

The best time to boost your post is when you find any particular post doing well (having lots of shares and likes), as boosting popular posts is likely to skyrocket its engagement and thereby increase your social returns on your investments.

#03. Pay-per-click advertising

PPC or Pay-per-click advertising is creating an ad for your MCA firm with an image that is linked to a particular landing page on your website.

It is fairly easy to setup and runs PPC ad campaigns. You only pay Google once someone clicks on your ad, and so if your ad is not successful, you do not end up paying for the flop.

#04. Cold calling

Cold calling is still a necessary and viable part of any outbound marketing strategy. Especially if you are using a merchant cash advance CRM that can be integrated with call management software like Ring Central and others.

Even though many people will certainly hang up or say that they are not interested in your MCA business, a certain percentage of those you call will actually be interested in opting for a cash advance for their small businesses and become your leads.

Moreover, integrating advanced call management software with your MCA CRM lets you make more calls in much lesser time than it was possible before. Therefore, advanced telephony software used in combination with merchant cash advance CRM can turn your sales and marketing team into a lean, mean, calling machine.

#05. Email newsletters

If you are using a cash advance CRM, email newsletters are an excellent way to get the word out about your new and existing products and service offerings to new leads. You can leverage marketing automation solutions found in ConvergeHub merchant cash advance CRM to create professional-looking email newsletter in a matter of minutes.

Always select or design email templates that fit your brand’s personality, after which with your CRM software’s email marketing capabilities, you can send it to your entire list of leads in no time.

#06. Print and radio ads

You may think that these marketing strategies are dead, now that we have ventured into the age of digital marketing. Nevertheless, radio ads and print advertisements can be even very successful for cash advance business, especially for smaller firms with a local presence.

Therefore, when you are developing your outbound marketing strategies, do not forget to consider these types of ads and target small brick and mortar business establishments in your community.

#07. Video Ads

Video ads are no exception, as they are also one of the most engaging forms of marketing contents. Channels like YouTube and Vimeo lets you easily upload your video clippings and even determine your targeted audience. Moreover, like PPC advertising, you can also run Pay-per-click video ads of your cash advance business, and when someone shows interest in your ads that makes it another cost-effective solution for outbound marketing.

#08. Tradeshows and other industry events

The oldie but still a goodie, tradeshows are still there, so why not sponsor one and show up with your best sales reps, highest-quality marketing materials, and most experienced product experts. Tradeshows are one of the best ways to land and shine in front of your leads. It also helps to how superior or at par, your business establishment is compared to other cash advance companies.

If you are using a mobile cash advance CRM software, you can easily enter the information of your new leads instantly to your CRM database, without even bringing the lead-sheet back to your office.

#09. Email blasts with one-time discounts or offers

Good old email blasts still work. Despite the onslaught of social media email use is still on a rise. Therefore, if you are using a merchant cash advance CRM for managing your cash advance business with the right email marketing capabilities like ConvergeHub, which aids in creating emails quickly. Use your CRM’s marketing automation capabilities and send email blasts to new leads with one-time discounts or offers.
People love free stuff.

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Conclusion

Although inbound marketing has been seriously on the surge in the last few years, when it is used in unison with outbound marketing tactics, they can form the perfect marketing storm to help you generate more leads.

Additionally, as inbound marketing cannot convert leads on its own, therefore, when it is complemented by outbound marketing strategies using merchant cash advance software it will certainly aid you in closing more deals.

5 Critical KPIs To Track As A Small Business Owner Using ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM

The fact remains, however, that your profits are one of the several factors, which affects your company’s balance sheet. If you are a user of QuickBooks CRM for small businesses, your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) refer to the values used to assess your business’s success in reaching its goals. Over the course of time, tracking pertinent KPIs can aid you in making critical decisions about your business’s development and growth. Here are 5 most important KPIs to track with the best CRM for QuickBooks online as a small and medium business owner in your industry.

The fact remains, however, that your profits are one of the several factors, which affects your company’s balance sheet. If you are a user of QuickBooks CRM for small businesses, your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) refer to the values used to assess your business’s success in reaching its goals.

Over the course of time, tracking pertinent KPIs can aid you in making critical decisions about your business’s development and growth.

65% of businesses adopt a CRM within their first five years.- Software Advice Click To Tweet

Here are 5 most important KPIs to track with the best CRM for QuickBooks online as a small and medium business owner in your industry:

#1. Cash Flow Forecast

Cash flow forecasting is an important KPI that let businesses assess whether their sales and margins are appropriate. To make this forecast, you need to add the total cash your small business have in savings to the anticipated cash value for the upcoming four weeks, and then subtract the anticipated cash out for the same period of time.

Intelligent small business owners using QuickBooks CRM software perform day-to-day cash flow forecasts, whereby they can identify upcoming financial problems in their nascent stages and then make necessary changes accordingly.

In addition to aiding small businesses foresee expected surpluses or shortages in the revenue, a cash flow forecasting is also most vital for proposing upcoming business loan applications, and for tax planning of your enterprise.

#2. Gross Profit Margin as a Percentage of Sales

No small business can achieve success if it is paying more to the suppliers than its gross monthly sales revenue. Gross profit margin as a percentage of sales is a financial expression that illustrates total profit margin of a business compared to its revenue.

Therefore, primarily to find your businesses’ GPM (Gross Profit Margin) divide your gross profit by your sales. Thereafter multiply the result, by hundred and you will then get your businesses’ GPM as a number in percentage.

Next, to determine the extent your GMP contributes to your overall sales turnover, divide that integer with your sales amount.

Here is the math for your easy reference:

 ( Gross Profit/Sales x 100) / Sales

The usefulness of using this performance indicator consistently is that this KPI helps you to easily quantify how much cash you are keeping against the amount paid out to your suppliers.

The GMP increases as your business retain more cash, and similarly, a decline in gross profit as a percentage of your sales could be a sign that your business is excessively spending on the suppliers.

As a small business owner using QuickBooks CRM accounting platform, you need to reduce overhead expenses or increase the price of your products or services to compensate for the decrease in gross profit as a percentage of sales.

#3. Revenue Growth Rate

It might seem obvious; however, the revenue growth of a business refers to the rate at which a business’s income or sales growth is increasing.

Therefore, to evaluate a revenue growth rate, start by calculating your business’s total revenue for the whole year, which is very easy to find using a QuickBooks CRM platform. Next, divide the current revenue by the total revenue from the previous year to find your present rate of growth.

By calculating RGR (Revenue Growth Rate) as an ongoing process, you can easily assess whether the growth in your business is increasing, decreasing, or is it in a plateau state.

#4. Funnel Drop-Off Rate

The funnel drop-off rate illustrates the number of visitors, who have left your sales funnel, or abandoned a conversion process, prior to its completion.

In a sales funnel (for laymen, envision a sales funnel as a real funnel pointed downward) there are many conversion steps along the way, while the prospects and leads move from the crest of the funnel to its bottom, where the prospects exit or get converted into a sale.

Therefore, the funnel drop rate is the number of prospects that move away from the funnel prior to sale.

To calculate funnel drop rate, begin by calculating the number of visits of a particular sale conversion step and then subtract the number of visits of the first step in the funnel. Next, divide this new value by the visits of the first conversion step.

In the recent times, for users of easy to use CRM software, the funnel drop off rate KPI has become one of the most important performance indicators that businesses must track using a CRM platform for finding growth or decrease in its sales activities.

#5. Accounts Payable Turnover

A business, especially if it is a small business cannot keep its establishment open for long if it runs out of funds to pay its outstanding suppliers. Accounts Payable Turnover is a KPI that measures the rate at which businesses pays for its required goods and services. It reveals the amount of fund spent on the supplying vendors over a given period of time.

Once you are using QuickBooks CRM software, to find this KPI, sum up the cost of your total purchases under supplies, and then divide it by AAP (Average Accounts Payable). Now, once you are aware as a business owner how much you are spending on your suppliers, you can find out if steps are necessary to reduce your spending that can boost long-term profits for your small and medium businesses.

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Takeaway

It is impossible to make any adjustment to your businesses’ strategies and procedures if you do not know how your business is trending.
For it is only by tracking KPIs on a regular interval, entrepreneurs can measure the factors, which are affecting their business growth and thereafter make necessary corrections that in the long run gives businesses the best shot at success.

5 Key Factors Of Successful Lead Scoring

The inbound marketing bug has already bitten most of the modern day marketers. Therefore, once your inbound marketing is running successfully and you are generating a high volume of fresh leads, you need to score those leads for further actions. Successful lead scoring aligns marketing and sales automatically. When it comes to lead scoring, we have some good and some bad news for the readers of this blog. Disclosing the bad news first it is, that only 23% of salespeople say that the marketing department delivers sales-ready leads. However, the good news is that this does not have to be the case. Lead scoring that provides sales-ready leads is easier than you can think, as long as you comprehend your buyers and build a lead scoring process around their behaviors and interests.

The inbound marketing bug has already bitten most of the modern day marketers. Therefore, once your inbound marketing is running successfully and you are generating a high volume of fresh leads, you need to score those leads for further actions. Successful lead scoring aligns marketing and sales automatically.

Only 23% of salespeople say that the marketing department delivers sales-ready leads- Data2CRM Click To Tweet

When it comes to lead scoring, we have some good and some bad news for the readers of this blog. Disclosing the bad news first it is, that only 23% of salespeople say that the marketing department delivers sales-ready leads. However, the good news is that this does not have to be the case.

Lead scoring that provides sales-ready leads is easier than you can think, as long as you comprehend your buyers and build a lead scoring process around their behaviors and interests.

Comprehending your leads

A well-performing lead scoring machine can align marketing and sales efforts and do wonders for your pipeline. The most efficient lead scoring sees two main aspects of a lead’s journey with your brand: Behavioral aspects and Demographic aspects

Behavioral aspects

The behavioral aspect of your prospective customer’s interaction with your product or service includes the way they purchase, where they like to interact (web, phone, social media, email) and what they find most interesting about your brand. Web analytics are a powerful way to understand the lead’s interests in tracking how many web pages a lead visits on your brand’s website, which pages they like to view more and for how long. Are they opening the emails in one of your particular campaigns or responding particularly well to an SMS message about a new product or service?
All these are behavioral aspects of a lead.

Demographic aspects

The demographic aspects of any lead identify common characteristics of your prospective customers. Especially main characteristics such as company size, location, the range of the revenue. On an individual level, the demographic aspects include categories such as job titles, age group, gender, income level and others.
However, the most vital demographic aspect of the lead scoring process depends on the particular business on an organizational and individual level.

The critical harmonious balance for the lead scoring technique is where the behavior and demography intersect. Once you identify that intersection, it is time to build the lead scoring system for your brand.

5 Key Factors Of Successful Lead Scoring

Which are the factors that you apply for setting up your lead scoring process completely depends on your business model, but these building blocks of the lead scoring system are the same for all small and medium businesses.

Here are the five key factors for setting up an effective and robust lead scoring process that can automatically align both your marketing and sales efforts. 


  1. Define your criteria

Even before you start your lead scoring rules, brainstorm with your sales team for identifying your brand’s ideal customer. This is the basic criteria for building your lead scoring system. There may be different types of customer personas for your ideal customer, if it is so, find out where do those buyers overlap.


  1. Recognize your Target Audience (TA)

Once your ideal customer conditions are finalized, the next step is to identify your TA (Target Audience). The questions that you should ask your marketing team to find out your TA may include:

  • Are you TA based in Europe, North America, Middle East, or are they spread across the globe?
  • Which income group is the TA inclined towards?
  • Is your TA composed of mid-level management or top-level managerial staffs?

Although your sales team may help you to find information about your target audience, your marketing team is best equipped to answer these queries on your TA.


  1. Define your brand’s unique customer journey

Find out what the steps in your customer journey are, and how these steps should be scored? Once you have the characteristics of your leads well defined, focus on your lead’s behavior with your brand. List out all the possible touch points through which your prospective customers engage with your brand before they become your loyal customers. Over here, some behaviors may be more important than others. Make a list and assign score points to empathize each step’s importance. These mentioned steps may include:

  • A lead opening an email
  • A lead visits and signs up on your website’s signup page
  • A lead registers for a webinar etc.

The points allocated for each of these actions taken by the leads may vary from business to business.


  1. Structure a system and assign scores

After the behavior and characteristic aspects have been identified, define your lead scoring structure. For example, if you focus on the North American market, then you give leads from North America a positive score versus a lead from China or India (or this might also be the other way around). Another instance is when you allot a negative score to any lead coming to your brand’s job page because those leads are concerned for working in your organization and are not anxious about buying your product.

Once your lead generation process is ready for operation, you need to deal out a particular number or score to every touch points of your leads, which should be based on the priority that you have set for each aspect.

Do you want to provide higher scores to leads visiting your brand’s pricing page than leads visiting your career page?

Do you want to give a higher score to leads coming from private companies than those are from government institutions?

All these decisions should be incorporated into your lead scoring system.


  1. Track and Tweak

The last key factor to this lead scoring building blocks to make a good lead scoring system is to continuously track and tweak the lead scoring process.

Do not be surprised if you discover new aspects of your lead’s behavior that are crucial to defining a buy-ready lead.

For example, if you find that leads that are visiting your blog page are converting more than who are visiting your webinars, you should revise your lead scoring points for webinar visits and increase the ranking for the blog visits of your prospective leads.

Conclusion

Most silo marketing automation systems and easy to use CRM that have inbuilt marketing automation platforms, provide some sort of lead scoring functionality. However, it is essential to choose the one that exactly syncs with the model of your business.

Moreover, lead scoring for small and medium business is different from what it is for large enterprises. Therefore, always discuss with your sales and marketing team to improve your implemented lead scoring process.

6 Most Effective Lead Generation Strategies and a FREE TOOL for Small and Medium Businesses

Lead generation is the primary and the most significant stage of a sales cycle. In fact, it can be called as the “sales engine” of any business. Lead generation strategies followed at this stage reflects directly on the sales revenue. Since, if the lead that has been generated is not of superior quality, which means in other words, if they do not fit your brand’s ‘ideal customer profile’, your sales funnel and pipeline could end up to be extremely weak and vulnerable for a drop in sales revenue. As a procedure, lead generation helps to move focused prospects into your sales funnel whereby you can target those leads for nurturing and eventually generate a sale. Here are a few low budget lead generation ideas for small and medium businesses, which we found interesting enough to share for the growth of SMBs.

Lead generation is the primary and the most significant stage of a sales cycle. In fact, it can be called as the “sales engine” of any business. Lead generation strategies followed at this stage reflects directly on the sales revenue. Since, if the lead that has been generated is not of superior quality, which means in other words, if they do not fit your brand’s ‘ideal customer profile’, your sales funnel and pipeline could end up to be extremely weak and vulnerable for a drop in sales revenue.

Lead generation includes the technique of collecting a database of potential leads with their contact information. Since, small and medium businesses’ strategies circles around the principals of spending less and gaining more, lead generation tactics should never become an uneasy overhead for your company.

84% of consumers trust the recommendations made by their family and friends.- Nielsen Survey (2017) Click To Tweet

As a procedure, lead generation helps to move focused prospects into your sales funnel whereby you can target those leads for nurturing and eventually generate a sale.

Here are a few low budget lead generation ideas for small and medium businesses, which we found interesting enough to share for the growth of SMBs:

#1.  Exit intent popup

Creating an exit intent popup for your website hardly requires 15 minutes. Exit intent popup helps businesses to track the movement of the website and mobile application users by offering an opt-in form when they leave your website.

Once you find your website visitor is leaving your site, by creating exit intent pop-up, without acting on a CTA (Click to Action) button like registering or buying, you can interrupt your visitor and re-direct them to take a specific action.

Several large organizations have been using this technique since long and have achieved exemplary results by implementing this as a part of their marketing strategy.

You can use exit intent popup when people are leaving your pricing page, landing page, or abandoning your shopping cart, because these parts of your website allow people to make the most important decision before buying your products and services.

#2. Add call-to-action button

Popularly known as CTA, call-to-action buttons are used for drawing people to use a particular product, application, or service. CTA is meant for provoking instant responses. For example, they provide the consumers with compelling reasons to make an immediate purchase with click-bait verbiage like- “This offer expires in 3 hours”.

You can include call-to-action buttons in your digital brochures, catalogs, emails and others. Hence, a CTA needs to be designed in an effective manner that incorporates click-worthy contents. For instance, you can include in your CTA content what your product or service can offer and how the consumer can actually sign-up and use it for free.

Always make sure that your “Sign up for Free” CTA button should be jazzy enough to stands out predominantly over everything else on the web-page.

#3. Share best practices or success stories

Most of your consumers would always like to know if your product or service really stands up for what you say or can it deliver the solution your consumers are looking for.

The best way to answer this question is to showcase what your brand did for your customers, and how their business benefitted by purchasing your products or services.

Therefore, while sharing your success stories, write a small compelling introduction, with a CTA that requires your prospects to fill in their details, once they want to download them.

This way, you will understand that your prospects are trying to find a solution to the challenges you noted in your story and might be interested in purchasing your products or services for solving their issues.

#4. Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a roundabout way for generating leads. Blogging as a guest on other’s websites increases your web traffic and thereby introduces prospects to your solutions, by using back-links within the blog contents to redirect traffic to your website.

Guest blogs are mostly published on websites that attracts very high traffic.

However, before you start blogging here are a few things that you need to remember:

  • Provide compelling contents that are focused on your niche
  • Post contents only on those websites where the audience fits your niche
  • Be sure that the owner of the blog is active on social media websites

#5. Add testimonials

Testimonials are similar to success stories but while success stories are written from your end, testimonials are provided directly by your customers, in their own words.

You shall often find customers who reach out on social media to appreciate your product, customer support endeavors, or even your organization. You can always leverage these testimonials and publish them on your website.

Testimonials are a highly effective way of demonstrating your success that helps your potential customers to decide on making a purchase.

#6. Add social proof

According to Nielsen Survey: “84% of consumers trust the recommendations made by their family and friends.”

Therefore, word of mouth marketing on social media is one of the best ways for generating leads. There are several portals that allow you to get connected to your potential leads. One such portal is LinkedIn.

Once you are connected with the leads and understand the level of interest, you can initiate conversation with the prospect or even create LinkedIn Groups, which allows people with similar taste and interests to comment or react to your postings on the group.

Takeaway

As an add-on, here is a link to the CONVERGEHUB LEAD GENERATOR, which is a free tool that lets you visit anyone’s social media page (like LinkedIn, Facebook, Yelp etc.) and capture all information instantly without any manual typing.

Using this free tool you can save qualified leads from social media, other sites and even Gmail with one click of the mouse. It even lets you create notes and follow up tasks to get a head start with that lead.

You can save the captured leads in the Lead Generator itself or save them in the ConvergeHub CRM for even more sales power.

Did we miss on any other lead generation strategies for SMBs, on a low budget?

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In such a case, please comment and let us know about it in the comment box below.

How do GDPR principles apply for best small and medium business CRM software data management?

For not only best small and medium business CRM software data management, the European Union’s latest GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) constitutes a paradigm shift in the consumer ownership of all Customer Relationship Management software data. The GDPR principles apply to any business that the CRM company has with users living in Europe, and so GDPR norms will affect CRM organizations globally. There are also GDPR guidelines that cover the principle for the flow of information of consumer data out of the European Union.

Not only for best small and medium business CRM software data management, the European Union’s latest GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) constitutes a paradigm shift in the consumer ownership of all Customer Relationship Management software data.

The GDPR principles transfer the authorization and ownership to use the data frequently processed by CRM platforms, which includes:

  • The customer’s names
  • The customer’s Social Security Numbers
  • Income
  • Addresses
  • Medical information
  • Purchasing histories and others

The GDPR principles also apply to the data normally used for tracking the users across websites, which includes browser information and IP addresses of the visitors.

Personal information protection is the foundation of trust, which is the basic right of man and the backbone of the digital economy. Click To Tweet

All easy to use CRM enterprises even bear a responsibility to provide notice to all the affected parties of a CRM data breach, that too within 72 hours.  Since failure to abide by this deadline could lead to a penalty of up to €20 million or 4% of the company’s revenue.

Moreover, online lead management software vendors also need to appoint a Data Protection Officer to supervise CRM data management in their organizations.

The GDPR principles apply to any business that the CRM company has with users living in Europe, and so GDPR norms will affect CRM organizations globally. There are also GDPR guidelines that cover the principle for the flow of information of consumer data out of the European Union.

Based on the GDPR protocols any European Union’s citizen can now make several requests to a customer information database software development enterprise like:

  • Delete all or some of his or her data.
  • Enquire how his or her data is being used.
  • Enquire how a decision that used his or her data was made?

Some of the important ways this GDPR principle affected the best small business CRM data management include:

  • All CRM companies must audit their CRM database archiving systems to find where the data is being stored.
  • All CRM companies must assess their partners that provide leads and process the CRM data for services like analytics.
  • All CRM companies must set up convenient ways to automate CRM data across all partner services and internal systems as and when requested.
  • It is essential to evaluate analytics services and AI used to analyze easy to use CRM data and to make decisions so that the company can answer user requests as per GDPR norms in simple language.
  • When a breach occurs, CRM companies need to build a workflow process to speedily inform the affected users of the data infringement.

GDPR Checklist

 

GDPR Data Protection Officer’s Role and Responsibilities

As the General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect this 25th of May 2018, it has set forth a number of prerequisites for CRM enterprises that store and process personal data of citizens living in EU. One such requirement (as per Article 37), is that organizations will need to appoint someone to take on the GDPR Data Protection Officer’s role.

Although there is no specific qualification required for this position, however, GDPR criteria state that the DPO must have “expert knowledge of data protection law and practices.”

Here is a list of the DPO’s responsibilities as it is mentioned in the GDPR:

  • Keep the controllers informed of the obligations and responsibilities pertaining to data protection.
  • Communicate with data subjects about the rights pertaining to use and handling of their data.
  • Counsel the company as to how data protection rules should be applied and interpreted in the organization.
  • Create and maintain a register of the organization’s processing operations.
  • Initiate communication with EU of any intended processing operation that could breach the data protection rights of its citizens.
  • Ensure that the company maintains ongoing data protection compliance.
  • Respond to any applicable data protection related complains or questions.
  • Act as the point of contact for the European Data Protection Supervisor and assist requests for investigations, inspections and so on.
  • Inform the company of any failure to comply with applicable data protection rules.

Conclusion

Therefore, with the onset of GDPR principles CRM vendors like ConvergeHub with strong data protection initiatives already in place, will most often than not find that few significant changes are required at the IT level although some changes may be required pertaining to workflow and documentation requirements.

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However, adhering to the GDPR principles is likely to be the biggest challenge of the decade for many CRM companies that will face a major hurdle for establishing an initial state of compliance, as CRM is a platform that owns a vast repository of data.

Hence, to figure out what data the organization actually owns, how the data is used, where the data is stored and what security measures are in place is surely a monumental task for less organized CRM enterprises in 2018.

4 Must-Have Add-ons for your Easy to Use Small Business CRM System

When people ask me what easy to use small business CRM system to buy, I always suggests that, whatever be their preferred choice, the CRM application should be Cloud-based. Why? It is because Cloud-based or SaaS applications join much better and updates quicker than On-Premise CRM systems. Additionally, changes made in one platform is seamlessly altered in the other integrated applications, rather than making amendments in multiple separate apps. Moreover, tools are more consistent, and support is faster for cloud based CRM software. The best small and medium business CRM systems like ConvergeHub offers tools and applications so that third-party vendors can build custom solutions and connect their software systems with ConvergeHub, in order to provide a more robust experience for the users.

When people ask me what easy to use small business CRM system to buy, I always suggests that, whatever be their preferred choice, the CRM application should be Cloud-based.

Why?

It is because Cloud-based or SaaS applications join much better and updates quicker than On-Premise CRM systems. Additionally, changes made in one platform is seamlessly altered in the other integrated applications, rather than making amendments in multiple separate apps. Moreover, tools are more consistent, and support is faster for cloud based CRM software.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM – This figure has now increased to 87% in 2017 (SuperOffice'2018) Click To Tweet

The best small and medium business CRM systems like ConvergeHub offers tools and applications so that third-party vendors can build custom solutions and connect their software systems with ConvergeHub, in order to provide a more robust experience for the users.

Because of this, most of our customers use one or two third-party applications, since ConvergeHub easy to use CRM provides several choices to choose from.

Here are the top four and the most trending types of add-ons which most of our customers use for escalating their business processes every day:

Accounting

When any customer calls, it is natural that you would always want to make sure that you have every detail about them right at your fingertips. An easy to use CRM will always be tracking emails, activities, notes from the CRM database . However, what about the rest? What about order histories, open invoices, and products bought by the customer?

Let us be clear that a CRM system is not an accounting and bookkeeping software. Hence, it lacks the audit controls required for creating a powerful financial database.

This is the reason why most of our clients prefer to integrate ConvergeHub with QuickBooks, which is one of the most popular online accounting software in the USA.

ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM that offer QuickBooks CRM integration free is one of the best CRM for QuickBooks online that allows the customers to synchronize contact information and also view the transaction history of the customers on the go.

Additionally, ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM software even allows the users of the CRM to create invoices in the CRM system and the port it over to the accounting database.

This way ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM eliminates double entry and helps the sales and support reps to find all the information they need about their customers in real time.

E-Mail Marketing 

If you need to send a few hundred emails at a time, they any efficient easy to use CRM should be able to handle it. However, if your business needs to fire thousands of emails every day to several opt-in lists, then the best small and medium business CRM software needs to be integrated to a dedicated email marketing service like MailChimp and others.
Why?
For, to begin with, your local internet service provider may shut you down if you do not. Nevertheless, that will never happen with an efficient and popular email marketing service, because their only job is to assure their customers the delivery of the mails. Any good email service like MailChimp will put your emails through certain diligent protocols to make sure that your messages are not inappropriate and they do not find their way to the spam box. For once, your emails have passed the email provider’s thorough tests, the email service provider should be able to handle thousands of emails at a go and bring the results of those email campaigns back into your easy to use CRM, so that you can use analytics to measure the results and if needed modify your future campaigns.

Phone 

Would not it be nice if when you receive a call, the caller’s records automatically pop up on your window with all their history of prior interactions with anyone in your company? Moreover, would not it be productive if you can have the ability to start an outgoing call with just a click of the button right from your contact’s database or, be able to seamlessly record any phone calls and attach the audio-file with the called contact’s record for listening in the later times?

You can get all these if you integrate your best small and medium business CRM software with a cloud-based phone system like NextInteractive Dialer or RingCentral, which can access contextual information during calls and provide a personalized experience for building better relationships.

If you are a user of ConvergeHub, you can set up these integrations in a few minutes with a couple of simple steps for making your calls faster and keep better track of your prospect’s and customer’s call activities.

Data Integration 

Sometimes a specific add-in that you need for your niche business may not exist. In the past, that would have been a problem. However, today there are several cutting-edge powerful tools, which are automatically configured to read the tables of your easy to use CRM system. With the help of these robust tools, you can easily read and write data in and out of the CRM and the required software needed for your business. Moreover, even if some of these tools cannot cut, then a good CRM system’s API can help you to accomplish your objectives, although you may require an experienced software programmer to accomplish the feat.

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Takeaway

Always remember that your best small business CRM is just a database. However, it an extremely important database that is storing information about everyone that comes in touch with your business.

Therefore, it is extremely important that you must integrate your CRM with these few illustrated software mentioned above so that you can leverage your CRM data.