Tag: Business CRM software

5 Lead Tracking Best Practices To Manage Your Sales Pipeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING SALES LEADS TRACKING SKILLS

1. Create an Email Sending Sequence

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

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

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

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

2. Schedule Follow-Ups

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

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

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

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

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

3. Follow a Lead Cycle That Makes Sense

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

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

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

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

4. Track the Sales Pipeline

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

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

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

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

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

5. Practice Lead Scoring

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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5 Reasons To Choose A Cloud-Based Low-Cost CRM Software For Small Business And Startups

Although Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is really a buzzword in the present business space, and most look for low-cost CRM software for small business and startups since almost all know that they can significantly benefit from adopting a CRM for SMB tool – yet only a very few know which solution fits their business model effectively. Now it does not really matter if your company employs just 10 staff or has more than 100 employees- business CRM is a tool that can help you build closer connections with your prospective leads and customers, sell more, and provide professional customer service and thereby grow your business. Therefore, when it comes to buying an easy to use CRM, it must be affordable, it should not be complicated, should be accessible day and night, and should target your unique business needs.

Although Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is really a buzzword in the present business space, and most look for low-cost CRM software for small business and startups since almost all know that they can significantly benefit from adopting a CRM for SMB tool – yet only a very few know which solution fits their business model effectively.

64.2% of companies rate CRM tools as impactful or very impactful - LinkedIn Click To Tweet

Now it does not really matter if your company employs just 10 staff or has more than 100 employees- business CRM is a tool that can help you build closer connections with your prospective leads and customers, sell more, and provide professional customer service and thereby grow your business.

Therefore, when it comes to buying an easy to use CRM, it must be affordable, it should not be complicated, should be accessible day and night, and should target your unique business needs.

Now gone are those years when the term “CRM” bought to mind a picture of expensive and bulky software that needs an entire IT team and experts working solely on installation and maintenance of the software.

In fact, today’s modern all-in-one CRM systems are more user-friendly and technologically advance, but it even comes with a variety of business growth solutions that are designed to address the needs of all types of businesses, irrespective of whether they are big or small.

Therefore modern CRM solutions not only offer new possibilities, but they are easy to deploy and maintain, comes at a flexible cost.

This is because most CRM solutions nowadays have moved from their earth-bound domains all the way to the Cloud. And so if you are looking for a low-cost CRM software for small business and startups this is exactly in the Cloud where your business should look for a business CRM solution.

Hence if you are still not sure about cloud-based CRM solutions that are price-performance leaders in the CRM space, here are 5 solid reasons why CRM that are cloud-based is something that all businesses should consider seriously if they are looking forward to growing their business and find rapid sales growth:

  1. Hassle-Free Installation

The long innate fear that CRM comes with a complex installation procedure is no more a valid reason for not adopting a CRM for your business.

In fact, present-day cloud-based CRM tools are “IT hassle-free” and you can be up and running in no time, and all you need for that is an Internet connection, after which you can sign in online and use it.

Hence for using a modern easy to use CRM you not only do not have to pay for hardware, software maintenance, and servers you also do not need a permanent IT staff for data migration or even installing upgrades.

With cloud-based CRM all this is done by the CRM vendors remotely.

  1. Seamless Access

One of the greatest benefits of buying a CRM in the cloud is the round-the-clock accessibility of the software.

For example, imagine a situation whereby you need to make some game-changing and urgent sales call while you are on-the-go, or quickly find a contact’s phone no, or send a revised sales proposal, or an email when you are out of your workstation in the office, cloud CRM software can provide you access to the software from anywhere on any device be it a laptop, desktop, tablet or even a smartphone.

Again all you need for accessing the low-cost CRM software for small business is the Internet.

Hence using a cloud-based CRM you can always remain connected to the centralized CRM database as cloud CRM provides businesses the freedom and flexibility to what you need to do when you need to do it from anywhere.

  1. Affordable Product

Another important benefit of using this cloud-based business growth technology solution is that this business-enhancing solution certainly will never break your bank.

This is because if you are using a cloud-based Salesforce Alternative CRM tool you do not have to allocate a big sum of money for making a one-off purchase, but you can pay in regular installment which is usually preferred by SMBs.

Typically cloud CRM solutions operate on the pay-as-you-go subscription model that needs minimal upfront investments and so reduces the risk of going bust while using the software.

  1. High-Security Levels

Since the introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) on May 25th, 2018, as information security levels at Cloud services are times higher than those provided by local IT firms, vendors that offer cloud-based CRM tools take security issues seriously.

Additionally, providers of cloud CRM solutions even offer advanced automatized back-up policies and have robust data-recovery plans if any breach happens while working with their software.

Moreover, most low-cost CRM software for small business also offers data safety to their customers by using two-step authentication and robust passwords.

  1. Enhanced Compatibility

Finally, as stand-alone business growth solutions have little chance of success in today’s IT world, so modern business environment requires information exchange between already available technology solutions which is paramount for all businesses.

Therefore, no one would invest in a software solution that cannot save your contacts, open your documents, or be able to integrate the email or accounting software that you are using for your business.

Hence compatibility with other products and services is the key to ensuring CRM’s effectiveness and longevity.

Now, CRM that uses cloud-based technology can be easily integrated with other software or applications, such as Gmail, QuickBooks CRM, Excel, Words, PowerPoint, Zapier, and many other tools.

In fact, it is this compatibility that makes cloud-based CRM an even more appropriate choice for your small business.

Conclusion

Now that you know what you need to look for in your low-cost CRM software for small business, the only thing that is left is to choose the CRM for small and medium business solutions’ vendor wisely.

Remember it has never been more important to improve workflow between your teams and provide full visibility of client communications between your employees than ever before.

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How To Use Automation In Top CRM Software For Improving Sales And Business Growth

If your question is: Why should I automate my workflow or use a top CRM software? The briefest answer to this is: To get the most out of your work with the minimum efforts. Now, you may be wondering if there is any scope for such effectual automation within your sales team. Yes, there is! Hence, in this article let us outline a few tested and tried ideas for automation that are certain to deliver better results while reducing the workload of your sales teams.

If your question is: Why should I automate my workflow or use a top CRM software?
The briefest answer to this is: To get the most out of your work with the minimum efforts.

Now, you may be wondering if there is any scope for such effectual automation within your sales team.

Yes, there is!

Hence, in this article let us outline a few tested and tried ideas for automation that are certain to deliver better results while reducing the workload of your sales teams.

If sales reps make contact within 5 minutes after generation of the lead, the lead is 22 times more like to get converted into a hot prospect. Click To Tweet

Idea #1

Make sure that your web-based leads are contacted in minutes

Web-generated leads are precious for all businesses. Nevertheless, your sales reps must ensure that web leads are contacted within minutes after they are generated online.

This is because, according to a study published by MIT, it states that if sales reps make contact within 5 minutes after generation of the lead, the lead is 22 times more like to get converted into a hot prospect ready for buying your offering.

However, how can you be assured that your sales team will be capable of following up with every web lead so promptly?

This is where automation in a robust CRM like Salesforce or any other reputed Salesforce Alternative CRM for small business comes into play.

  • As soon as the web-to-form is filled up, the information gets collected in the CRM database.
  • Next, your easy to use CRM taps into your integrated telephony software solutions and prompts your sales reps active on the system and mobile devices.
  • If the sales rep is busy, the CRM system automatically forwards the call to the next able rep and continues to do so, until a free sales rep is capable of making the call to the given number.
  • The sales rep finds all the relevant information about the lead on their CRM system, and therefore armed with that data just need to click to make the call. This makes sure that all calls are contacted when they are hot and that too before the stipulated 5 minutes time.

Idea #2

Automate follow-up calls on email campaigns

Irrespective of whether your email campaign is about a demo, your new product launch, or a meetup, in all cases, it is really tough for leads to open your emails.

Easy to use CRM software with integrated email campaigning functionalities, help the users of the software to view who opened their emails.

Therefore, to ensure that your sales teams make follow up calls to every lead that opens their emails here is how you can automate your CRM to do it.

  • See the email campaigns report in the top CRM software solutions’ easy to use dashboard.
  • Select all the contacts that opened the email.
  • Push all the contacts into the dialing software integrated with the CRM.
  • For hereon let the dialer do its job of persistently and automatically dial every lead in the contact list and connect them to a representative.

Idea #3

Ensure that missed and abandoned calls do not become missed leads

All sales CRM software solutions capture incoming lead 24/7.

Now it is natural that you can miss calls during holidays, after your work hours, or when your lines are busy.

However, when you are using a CRM missed calls should not mean missing a valuable lead.

Hence, here is a workflow that you can set up easily to make sure that you never miss doing a follow up on any of your missed calls.

  • Your integrated telephony system can find any phone number that goes unanswered with the numbers in your CRM database.
  • Now if the call is from a fresh lead, you can set up your top CRM software system that a new follow up the ticket is automatically generated by the system.
  • An alert on the missed call can be sent by the system to your inbox, and in case there is a voice message that can also get attached to your email.

Idea #4

Send greetings, voice messages, and notifications to all in the contact lists in one go

Do your sales team members need to remind qualified leads, prospects, and customers about their subscription renewal dates, approaching last payment due dates and others?

You can easily set a configurable IVR (Interactive Voice Response) message, and create a workflow using automation in your business CRM that lets you broadcast the message to any or all in the contact list within your CRM database with a single click.

Conclusion

Essentially all of these stated ideas depend on a smooth integration between your top CRM software tool and telephone software applications like RingCentral, NexInteractive Dialer or Twilio Call that are most essential software solutions which can be integrated with Salesforce and all other major Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions like ConvergeHub that are meant for small businesses.

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Why Do You Need A Scalable Business CRM Software Tool In SMBs For Finding Rapid Growth

The number of startups and SMBs in the US since 1982 (according to the U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 48.7%. New businesses are starting every other day by ambitious businesspersons who want to lead a company and run it on their own. But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles. Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth? Many SMB owners make business growth tougher than it is. This is because, they complicate their products and services, over-think their strategies, and fear too much about the stability of their employees.

The number of startups and SMBs in the US since 1982 (according to the U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 48.7%.
New businesses are starting every other day by ambitious businesspersons who want to lead a company and run it on their own.
But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles.
Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth?
Many SMB owners make business growth tougher than it is. This is because, they complicate their products and services, over-think their strategies, and fear too much about the stability of their employees.
It is beyond any doubt that these are indeed important issues, but these problems pail out when compared to the one area that contributes most to the success of any business: Sales.
Now sales teams in SMBs that follow a rigorous and methodical sales process or a business CRM software tool on average according to CSO Insights, make more than 33 percent growth in their production and revenue than the sales teams that do not.

CRM applications can increase revenue by up to 41% per sales representative – Finances Online Click To Tweet

Therefore to find rapid growth, small business owners have to invest enough time every day in ‘Sales’ and so businesses that have adopted easy to use sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform experience seamless and better growth.

The Importance of Best Small Business CRM Software for SMB

The importance of small business CRM software is the need to address the ever-growing size of the business.

This is because today’s small business is tomorrow’s enterprise, and therefore successful startup owners that have adopted a CRM solution that grows with their business are the ones that realize stellar business growth.

The proof is in the pudding:

According to an infographic published by Bizhumm, sales CRM solutions have been known to boost revenue by 41 percent per salesperson, increase lead conversion rate by more than 300 percent while decreasing the cost of sales and marketing by 23 percent.

Therefore to empower sales and grow revenue small businesses need to implement the right resources and business management tools to do it.

Now if you are shopping around for your best CRM for small business, to help in your business growth, you need to accept the fact that a business CRM software goes well beyond just record-keeping.
This is the reason top-performing establishments use their CRM to its fullest potentials for automating tasks, such as marketing and customer support while ensuring that as their number of employees grows so does the capability of their CRM platform to manage its load.

Hence in this article let us explore a few key areas that best small business CRM software solutions help startups and small businesses to grow:

Improves decision making

Easy to use CRM technology delivers visibility into vital customer data. Since the more comprehensive and detailed are your reports, the better you will be able to measure sales activities, forecast sales, and track your business performances.
It has been found in certain research that most sales-oriented organizations are 38 percent more likely to use CRM for collecting sales analytics and customer information for getting informed on their ongoing customer interactions and touch-points.

Without the information gathered from analytics found in your best CRM for small business, you will not be able to focus on the big picture solutions for your company or empower your sales, marketing, and support teams to focus on opportunities.

Enhance productivity

With business CRM software solutions, your marketing, sales and support reps can seamlessly and safely automate their tasks apart from gaining quick access to customer information as CRM ensures all critical information remains stored in a single place within the CRM database.

Therefore as your business grows, you can significantly boost your brand’s productivity by having a scalable CRM platform that grows along with your prospering business, and also keep all records of your customer’s data which includes all customer history and buyer journey information stored in its database for boosting cross-selling and up-selling activities.

Promotes teamwork        

Growing small businesses and startups requires a scalable business CRM software platform in order to make marketing, sales, customer support work in a more aligned manner since it has been found in research by Aberdeen Group, that companies that have strong marketing and sales alignment achieve more than 20 percent increase in their annual growth rates.

Now if you are using a QuickBooks CRM solution, which even integrates accounting with your best small business CRM software when it is combined with sales and customer service modules in the CRM, it not only boosts productivity but also increases customer experience and promotes seamless teamwork that is needed for rapid business growth.

Therefore an all-in-one CRM makes it possible to open up lines of communication between your teams.

Improve calling services

Easy to use CRM, helps businesses to make outbound calls, receive incoming calls, record calls, create personalized calling scripts, automate voice mails and create many other telephony-based activates, which helps employees using CRM to quickly manage, assign and resolve incidents when these processes are automated.

Therefore, scalability in a CRM becomes a necessity when small businesses have ever-growing data of customer information in their CRM database.

Provide mobile access to data

In the present times, key data no longer can remain confined to the office. Therefore mobile CRM technology provides your team instant access to data which helps them to view sales and customer support activities in real-time.

This is because, with a complete view of customer history, pricing history, and several other types of lead intelligence data which can be seen from any mobile device, the best small business CRM software makes it possible to gain access to information that is needed for any growing business.

Conclusion

Therefore, in a gist business CRM software is a scalable business tool that not only provides small businesses with the commitment to sell better than their competitors, but it also enables collaborations across departments that results in providing world-class customer experience which helps to create grounds for new business and aids in finding rapid revenue growth.

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How To Boost Lead Conversion Using Sales Management CRM Tools

Does your organization have a solid process in place to get your leads qualified so that your sales teams find time to focus on the most sales-ready prospects in their sales management CRM software? Do you have any idea about how your sales reps are qualifying and thereafter converting those leads into customers? Lead conversion skills are the heart of revenue growth and expansion in any organization. Therefore, here are a few best practices that can help you increase your lead conversion ratio and grow your business to new heights in 2021.

Does your organization have a solid process in place to get your leads qualified so that your sales teams find time to focus on the most sales-ready prospects in their sales management CRM software?

Do you have any idea about how your sales reps are qualifying and thereafter converting those leads into customers?

92% of consumers trust recommendations from brand advocates. - Nielsen Click To Tweet

Lead conversion skills are the heart of revenue growth and expansion in any organization.

Therefore, here are a few best practices that can help you increase your lead conversion ratio and grow your business to new heights in 2021.

Integrate Your Sales Management CRM With A Marketing Automation Platform

A majority of sales reps today use easy to use CRM software solutions to move leads and prospective opportunities through the sales pipeline and close deals.

If you know what is CRM software, you must be aware that CRM is a robust application that stores a plethora of information about all your leads, and customers in the CRM database, which includes details like demographic and behavioral data.

Therefore, when you use automation in CRM, which is also known as Sales Force Automation (SFA) in tandem with your sales management CRM, you can without any hassles leverage that contact details to customize and target the messages that you need to send to your prospects.

Nowadays even most Salesforce Alternative CRM tools, let you personalize your lead nurturing process and send messages based on your prospects’ past buying behaviors, interests, and more.

Since doing this allows you to send more personalized outreach. Which in turn helps in better engaging prospects that enhance the likelihood of conversion.

Publish Awesome And Informative Blogs

We all acknowledge that the stage for converting leads comes at the very end of the sales cycle. However, to persuade the leads to get to that point, whereby they become interested enough to procure your offerings- you primarily need to build up trust.

Leads and prospective customers cherish to see you as a subject matter expert and an authority in your arena and feel that you can be trusted to support them and ensure their growth and satisfaction using your offering(s).

According to Forbes, blogging is a great way of building that trust:

“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.”

Prospects and leads are more likely to engage with brands and organizations once you can establish yourself as an indisputable authority in their minds, leading to more lead conversion rates.

Set Up Killer Landing Pages With Optimized CTA Buttons

As the leads move through your sales pipeline, you need ways to capture more of their information by increasing their engagement with your brand.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to create simple, yet attractive landing pages that will encourage your leads to take the desired action, like request a demo, register for a webinar, etc.

Make it painfully clear to your leads, and visitors viewing your landing page, which action you want them to take, how they can take it, and most importantly what will they receive in exchange.

If you are not sure how to create awesome landing pages, it is best to check out some examples from your competitor’s websites.

Run Lead Nurturing And Lead Generation Campaigns

It is a common fact, that to convert leads, you must primarily generate leads. There are several ways you can generate new leads, from email drip campaigning to social media programs.

Now, once you have generated new leads, you need to nurture them through the sales pipeline that must consist of a series of ‘touch-points’ to move them towards a sale.

Lead nurturing aids in identifying sales-ready leads using lead scoring, since each action your leads take can be scored to move the leads closer to conversion.

Set Up Lead Scoring To Qualify Leads

Lead scoring techniques help your marketing teams to identify the most sales-ready leads in your CRM database.

While scoring leads, you can use a point system that indicates the value a lead represents, by awarding points to leads for actions they take, like clicking or opening emails, visiting your website, downloading eBooks, participating in post-sales surveys, etc.

You can also award points to your leads for demographic data such as the place they reside, their job titles, the industry they work, etc.

As these scores accumulate over time, you set a score threshold, at which a lead may be considered as an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), which once they cross can be passed over to the sales teams for immediate follow-ups.

Remember, while you are setting up your lead scoring system, always include your sales teams in the process, since they can better decide along with your marketing teams, which action warrants which score, and at which a new lead can be considered as an MQL.

Moreover, it is also highly advisable that you must check your lead scoring practice at least once every quarter, for finding whether the leads are being qualified too soon or too late in the process. Since, if your marketing teams are passing a lot of MQLs to your sales teams, but very few of them are getting converted, odds are that your marketing executives are qualifying the leads too soon, and hence you must increase your MQL threshold to fine-tune your lead scoring process.

Simply put lead scoring boosts the lead quality in your business CRM, which helps in achieving a better conversion rate for your organization.

Enable Sales To Quickly Follow Up On Qualified Leads

According to a survey done by InsideSales, it states that:

“Your odds of reaching a new sales lead drop over 10 times if you wait longer than the first hour of shown interest, and the odds of [sales] qualifying that lead decrease six times after the first 60 minutes.”

Therefore you need to enable your sales teams for immediate to follow up, using a sales cadence once a lead is qualified, since the longer you wait to reach out to a qualified lead, the lesser the chances of conversion will be along with the passage of time.

Using a sales management CRM for creating reminders and automating tasks it is easy to send alerts to sales reps the moment a new lead becomes qualified, to ensure that your sales teams do not let MQLs fall through the crack.

Share On Social Media And Use Social Monitoring To Find Brand Advocates

It is easy to engage your know leads with multichannel campaigns and email marketing.

However, what can you do about those leads whose contact data you do not have in your CRM database?

Therefore, when you create blogs and other types of content around your brand, share them on social media, so that people may share it, which in turn will extend the reach of your brand and drive in more new leads to click through to your blog or website.

Since, once people do that, you will understand that the engagement has begun, as these will be leads that are genuinely interested in your offerings, and are so easier to qualify and convert into customers.

Remember to always include some type of offer in association with your content that you are sharing to capture the contacts of these new leads.

While sharing your content on social media platforms, if you find people speaking positively about your brand, reach out, start a dialogue, and show your appreciation. You may even ask them if they want to feature in an interview or a case study of your brand.

In other words, treat these people with care and respect in any possible ways, because they are potential brand advocates for your business, who can be super helpful in promoting your brand and also help to increase conversion rates.

Here are two statistics that illustrate the role that brand advocates can play for growing your business.

  • 92% of consumers trust recommendations from brand advocates. (Nielsen)
  • Only 18% of consumers trust recommendations from industry influencers. (Forrester Research)

Key Takeaway

Lead conversion is the bread and butter of your business since it is a process that allows your business to grow, by bringing dollars into the coffers in your organization.

Nevertheless, as you can see, lead conversion does not happen on its own, as it requires serious planning and execution of various tactics to increase the lead conversion rate.

Therefore, always measure your lead conversion ratio, by keeping a scorecard that can help you track this metric so that you can easily identify what is working and what is not, and let you fix the nonperforming issues and focus more energy on conversion tactics that are producing results.

The math is simple. When you increase engagement levels, you boost conversion rates, and revenue climbs for stellar business growth.

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Play With Numbers: How To Turn Data Into Actionable Insights For Business Growth

Irrespective of the role that you play in your organization, having the right aptitude to convert raw business information or turn data into actionable insights is slowly becoming a must-have skill needed for the growth of carriers in all industries across the globe. In fact, according to an HBR (Harvard Business Review), it has been found that more than even 60% of business enterprises wants their senior leaders to have proper data-analysis skills that can help to contribute to providing strategic business decision-making skills that can turn them into an indispensable member of any team. Therefore as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools with hundreds of active users across the globe, to help you build the right mindset and skills here are some of the key strategies and skills that can help you to turn data into actionable insights which can predict rapid business growth.

Irrespective of the role that you play in your organization, having the right aptitude to convert raw business information or turn data into actionable insights is slowly becoming a must-have skill needed for the growth of carriers in all industries across the globe.

74% of CRM software users said that their CRM system gave them improved access to customer data. - Capterra (2021) Click To Tweet

In fact, according to an HBR (Harvard Business Review), it has been found that more than even 60% of business enterprises wants their senior leaders to have proper data-analysis skills that can help to contribute to providing strategic business decision-making skills that can turn them into an indispensable member of any team.

Therefore as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM tools with hundreds of active users across the globe, to help you build the right mindset and skills here are some of the key strategies and skills that can help you to turn data into actionable insights which can predict rapid business growth.

1. Do Not Make Things Too Complicated

Primarily once you start learning how you can turn data into actionable insights for your business, it is imperative that you must understand that every business or company has problems that need to be solved or even things that can be improved for finding more revenue growth.

Hence look for an opportunity to reduce cost, meet evolving customer needs, dive efficiency and thereafter prepare a set of questions that will help to generate insights and decisions through analysis.

Now, for finding insights from raw and unstructured data, you do not always need to use Python or R programming to perform basic analysis tasks.

Therefore start by using Excel or other simple tools to uncover insights, trends, and patterns and thereafter convert a few rows of data into a chart which can help to reveal unexpected and hidden things about your business.
Do not worry to get things right the very first time, but rather accept your mistakes and thereafter try to improve.

In fact, if you just have the basic technical expertise of how you can work with a business CRM solution or an Excel chart, have knowledge about your business domain, and proper communication skills, you practically have everything that you need to get started with data analysis for your company.

2. Work With What You Have Got

Remember while you are building your skills to turn data into actionable insights for your business, data is messy and there are bound to be gaps, holes, and imperfections in your datasets.

Now this is true since most useful raw data required for solving business issues is often collected from social media platforms and webpages where symbols like hashtags, ampersands, dollar-signs, etc., will remain in the data, and so you have to be able to work with what you have got.

As one of the award-winning vendors of CRM for small and medium businesses, we can assure you of the good news that the underlying information for turning data into actionable insights does not have to be perfect to provide useful insights, as long as you keep a few things in mind.

For example, before analyzing the data you need to understand where the data comes from and thereafter determine which sources will be most useful to solve your problems.

Additionally, never make assumptions about the completeness poor quality of the data.

Rather go through each dataset and verify that everything is (relatively) clean and useful. Hence always perform a visual inspection of your raw data since missing data or large gaps in data needs to be taken into consideration when making observations or drawing conclusions from the finding generated from those data.

Finally, remain vigilant and extra-careful when handling missing values or filling in the blanks in machine-learning datasets, since such things might produce biased conclusions.

Therefore, to remain on the safe side, apply common sense to the insights that you have discovered from the data before recommending actions.

3. Sell Your Ideas Effectively

Remember even great business growth ideas, cannot survive bad presentations. And sadly many new and even veteran analysts fall short when they reach this part of the data analysis process since they lack the ability to sell their ideas to stakeholders in a concise, confident, and effective manner.

Hence even before you learn how to turn data into actionable insights for your business, enrich your skills of telling a story without graphs, charts, or PowerPoint slides.

Learn to condense a story into a single line “sound-bite” that will resonate appropriately with your audience.

Never use data as a crutch.

Therefore ask these simple questions to yourself before selling your ideas, which includes (but is not limited to):

  • What does this information ultimately mean?
  • What point are you trying to make?
  • How do your results and conclusions tie back to the original problem in your business?

Once you have all the proper answers to these questions craft a narrative that should resonate instantly with your target audience, since a good data analyst has to be able to present their ideas in a way that everyone can understand and you really do not need a crystal ball to predict the future or act wisely to make a lot of sense in real life.

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Tips On Black-Belt Customer Retention Program Ideas – That Works

Excelling at retaining your existing customers is no easy task. Therefore, if retaining the customers is a part of your job, then it must be difficult to keep both your customers and your boss happy. This is because even if you are using easy to use CRM software to assist you with your customer retention program ideas it is not easy to give your customers the attention and help that they need to maintain a sustained relationship, while at the same instance maximize sales opportunities and decrease customer churn. Therefore, here is a tried customer retention program ideas that will help you to achieve both and thereby find business growth.

Excelling at retaining your existing customers is no easy task.
Therefore, if retaining customers is a part of your job, then it must be difficult to keep both your customers and your boss happy.
This is because even if you are using easy to use CRM software to assist you with your customer retention program ideas it is not easy to give your customers the attention and help that they need to maintain a sustained relationship, while at the same instance maximize sales opportunities and decrease customer churn.

Customer retention by as little as 5% can grow your profits by 95%. Click To Tweet

Therefore, here is a tried customer retention program ideas that will help you to achieve both and thereby find business growth.

What are customer retention programs?

In simple words, customer retention program ideas are your best means to keep your customers happy. Since, when you keep holding on to more customers, you can easily decrease your businesses’ churn rate, boost company revenue and thereby increase profitability.

According to a popular statistical report, customer retention by as little as 5% can grow your profits by 95%.

However, to make your businesses’ customer retention program really work, you need to make it a part of your businesses’ daily routine.

Therefore, to let us get started here we have put together a few key customer retention programs that you can implement immediately for decreasing churn and find rapid business growth.

1. Create an onboarding program

The very first program for customer retention that you must have on your checklist is implementing a customer onboarding strategy into your daily routine.

Customer onboarding is the process you require to make customers use your products and services in the easiest possible way in order to make them achieve their goals.

To conduct a proper onboarding of your new customers, primarily thank the customer for coming on-board and choosing your brand.

Apart from it during your onboarding calls, you can also cover the following points mentioned below:

  • Discuss with your customer as to how they want to get started and line up your efforts to match their expectations.
  • Offer your customer additional services to start-up.
  • Make your customers familiar with all your community websites, videos, and webinars that you can offer and also help them to overcome the common obstacles faced by others.
  • Send a welcome mail to your new customer after the primary onboarding conversation, with a small picture of yourself, so that the customer has a face to go with your brand.

2. Create customer follow up programs

According to a survey done by Econsultancy, more than 82% of business organizations acknowledge that customer retention is less labor-intensive and cheaper than closing a new deal, which makes it the main driver of any company’s revenue.

Now, do not be worried thinking that you have to use up all day calling each and every customer in your CRM database.

According to the Pareto principle, which most of us are aware of, only 20% of your customers generate 80% of your organization’s revenue.

Now, if you are using business CRM software it can create clear indicators that can aid you in identifying the customers that must receive most of your attention, and help you to spend your time on the right customers efficiently.

To do this set up your CRM software solution to segment your customers into three basic groups.

  • A – customers or large accounts
  • B – customers or medium-sized accounts
  • C – customers or small accounts

Now, while for large accounts you can schedule a face-to-face meeting with the customers or follow up with the customer once every month with medium-sized and small accounts, you can provide them a half-yearly follow-up, send newsletters and keep them updated on seasonal price offers or any other campaigns your company is having for the consumers of your offerings.

3. Identify risk customers

In most cases, customers will stop doing business with you because they are not satisfied either with your products or your support services.

Therefore, to retain customers and prevent churn it is crucial that you must identify risky customers as a part of your daily customer retention program.

According to Forrester, it cost 5 times more to acquire new customers than retain your existing ones.

Here are some of the ways you can identify the risky customers in your business:

  • Be proactive and create an overview of customers with too many open tickets, which is a red flag and should be managed with proper follow up.
  • Create an overview of customers that shows disruptive buying patterns. If a customer has bought every month over a year and then all of a sudden do not order any product for the next six months, pick up the phone to check out what is going on.
  • Create an overview of customers who are calling up regularly with questions and complaints. These demanding customers most often need training or another service to get them up and running.

Cloud-based CRM software be it Salesforce for enterprises or Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by startups and small businesses, CRM is a tool that can be used with customer retention program ideas, to easily create this overview so that you can provide better support after identifying your risky customers to reduce churn and grow your business.

4. Win back lost customers

Why spend your resources on winning new customers when you can use those efforts to win back lost customers in your CRM software’s database.

According to Jill Griffin’s book “Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers-And Keep Them Loyal” most businesses have a 20-40 percent chance of selling to their lost customers, whilst the chance for selling to new customers are only 5-20 percent in this competitive marketplace.

Here are some of the key reasons why you should focus on winning back lost customers:

  • Lost customers have once shown that they are interested in your offerings, and so they are superior prospects to arbitrary leads on your cold calling list.
  • Lost customers already know your brand, and so you require lesser time to educate them.
  • You can use technology to keep track of customers that you already know, follow their past buying patterns, and create tailor-made offers to win them back.

Winning back lost customers can have a snowball effect, whereby when you succeed in winning lost customers, and they become satisfied with your brand, it might generate word of mouth advertisement, which will help you to boost your chance of winning new prospects, as 91% of B2B customers are influenced by word-of-mouth and referrals when they make their buying decisions for new products and services.

Wrapping Up

Therefore, stop managing your customers in an ad-hoc manner, since retaining customers not only requires hard work, but it also requires the right customer retention program ideas that you must implement in your daily routine to see an increase in customer satisfaction score, revenue growth, and productivity.

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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.

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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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