Tag: business growth ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Ever Try To Rush It

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

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

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

Swallow Your Pride

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

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

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

Find Common Ground

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

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

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

Focus On The Big Picture

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

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

Pass It Off If Needed

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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Business Development Ideas For Better Serving Customers During A Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Plan Well and Stay Calm

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

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

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

2. Support Your Customers Emotionally

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

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

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

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

3. Assist Community in Financial Distress

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

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

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

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

4. Treat Customers with Utmost Care

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

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

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

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

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

5. Reduce Physical Interaction as Much as Possible

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

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

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

6. Contribute to Safer Innovations

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

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

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

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

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

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, need further persuasions?

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

1. It Nurtures Leads and Increases Sales

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

How?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. It Helps You Understand Your Customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. It Improves Workflow

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

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

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

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

4. It Escalates Customer Support

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

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

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

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

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

5. It Maximizes Resources

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

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

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

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

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

6. It Enables You to Develop Best Practices

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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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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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 B2B Sales Prospecting Methods Are So Tough To Realize – And How to Make It Easier For SMBs

To begin with, let us admit that B2B sales prospecting methods are not easy to accomplish. Rather B2B sales prospecting can be really tough to find the attention of the B2B (Business to Business) buyers in a marketing model that has altered a lot in the recent years, whereby increasing competition in the marketplace makes is more and more stand out from the crowd. Now prospecting for hot new products and services on the market is not a difficult thing. This is because direct and targeted approaches can create enough demand and thereby keep the sales funnel from getting depleted when a new offering fills a gap in the market. But what happens when the low-hanging fruit has been picked up by the knowledgeable buyers? What happens when the competition has caught on and caught up?

To begin with, let us admit that B2B sales prospecting methods are not easy to accomplish. Rather B2B sales prospecting can be really tough to find the attention of the B2B (Business to Business) buyers in a marketing model that has altered a lot in the recent years, whereby increasing competition in the marketplace makes is more and more stand out from the crowd.

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Now prospecting for hot new products and services on the market is not a difficult thing. This is because direct and targeted approaches can create enough demand and thereby keep the sales funnel from getting depleted when a new offering fills a gap in the market.

But what happens when the low-hanging fruit has been picked up by the knowledgeable buyers?
What happens when the competition has caught on and caught up?

In this case when the executive suite will be still calling for action and revenue that is when fresh B2B prospecting methods and skills are needed as we as one of the popular vendors of easy to use CRM will discuss below.

Actually at the heart of the dilemma faced by the B2 prospectors lies the inability to create selling opportunities when their buyers (inconveniently) are not actually looking to buy. Therefore traditional prospecting methods and sales pitches may no longer be effective with B2B prospecting nowadays, and this is clearly a big problem with so many sales, marketing, and business development professionals having being bought up with old school business growth ideas on a diet of little else that hardly works in B2B marketplace today.

Who Are These New Breed of B2B Buyer

In present times the rules have changed for the B2B marketers since the typical new breed of B2B buyers has evolved in several ways.

Multiple Buyers

In modern times the individual buyers have largely given way to a “team approach” whereby multiple players are most often involved in purchasing decisions made by organizations, sometimes which spreads across different business functions, where people entrusted for buying often have very little experience of the procurement process.

An interesting report published by HBR (Harvard Business Review) in 2015, illustrated that the average number of buyers involved in a considered buying process is 5.4, however, what is more, alarming was the drop off in conversion rate as more people are added to that buying process.

Hence sellers that are keen on developing their B2B prospecting methods need to primarily ascertain who has the authority to make the buying decision in an organization, and thereafter if it is found that the person cannot make a unilateral decision, the next goal should be to help the decision-maker to get others on board and thereafter provide additional tailored information covering each buyer’s specific area of responsibility.

For example, an end-user of any B2B product or service will definitely have different information requirements and concerns vs. a financial authority working in the same company.

Informed Buyers

Nowadays with the rise in the internet which has led to a sporadic abundance of research information available online has given birth to the rise of “self-educated” buyers and so potential prospects are no longer sitting back waiting for a solution to be presented to them, as the buyers are proactively seeking information themselves nowadays and as a consequence are likely to be less receptive to traditional unsolicited approaches.

Buyers seek value not price

In a research done by SiriusDecisions, it suggests that the cost factor involved in a sale is no longer a main deciding-factor for the B2B buyers in making their purchase decisions, whereby in the present times the “unique business value” of a solution or that an organization can provide to its buyer has become the factor of primary importance.

Nevertheless, even in this era of progressively more complex solutions, it appears that old habits are hard to die, and so too many teams in sales are now still considering price and also features when in reality the focus needs to be on conversions about the distinct value that the seller can offer to set them apart from the completion in the marketplace.

SOLUTION– Going Beyond B2B Cold Calling

While this might require some time and long term training along with a cultural shift but what about here and now.  So what can organizations involved in selling can do to go beyond the realms of cold calling to reach out to their prospects and get things moving in the short-term?

So as one of the most acclaimed vendors of CRM for small and medium businesses and startups here we have provided a few suggestions for growing enterprises to get them started.

  • Deploy Effective Business Growth Tools

Every structure needs a firm foundation to stand on its own, this is the reason people who know what is CRM is greatly in favor of this business growth tool.

CRM helps to record and organize every interaction with the leads, prospects, and customers and make it available for analysis to every department in an organization –which results in ushering more effective communication, better organizational culture, and less waste of resources.

Using easy to use CRM solutions while the number of leads generated will be less than if it was done in a haphazard and unstructured manner, but the quality of the leads generated will be much higher which will better the conversion rate in the sales pipeline.

  • Have A Focus

The time and effort dedicated to prospecting in the B2B segment should be just on where it is going to be effective and not spread too thin.
This can be done by concentration on the best market segment (based on profitability) and personas as identified by the business CRM tool whereby the approach can be refined to appeal to a specific buying audience in the marketplace.

  • Go Social

Social media can be another robust digital tool in finding outreach and build relationships online. According to research, LinkedIn is the best haunting place for the B2B community, followed by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all other good platforms like Quora which are good places to connect and demonstrate expertise.

  • Shoot Email campaigns

Email still remains one of the most preferred modes of communication despite all that plethora of social platforms that we use. And that includes B2B buyers who are also considered as prime targets for a well-targeted email campaign that addresses their pain-points and provides solutions to those issues.

Creating separate email campaigns for the sales and marketing teams can help in prospecting B2B buyers where the sales campaigns are targeted towards the decision-makers and the marketing campaigns are covering all titles in the company involved in the buying decision of the purchasing process.

  • Do Networking

Joining networking groups online can be a source of new B2B contacts in real life as well as online, which can help to create relationships that can culminate in fresh businesses. Businesses can also consider putting their own networking events to raise their industry profiles.

Takeaway- Achieving The B2B Prospecting Challenge Today

B2B sales prospecting methods can be challenging and often discouraging in the face of the consumer’s demands. However, by undertaking long-term and short-term actions sales and marketing teams in the B2B industries can breathe new life into their prospecting methodology, and so we hope these thoughts will put coal and fire into your prospecting engine if it has stopped.

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