Tag: Business Growth

Why You Need Marketing Automation In Your Best Small Business CRM Software

Approximately 9 out of 10 buyers in the B2B segment nowadays begin their buying process online. They start their buy cycle journey by searching on the internet to find independent product reviews, while also asking their friends and colleagues in social networking websites who they recommend and read contents in customer forums to view what existing customers have to say. Research has shown that B2B buyers educate themselves with online contents and therefore approximately three-quarter of their buy cycles gets completed even before they have started their engagement with a vendor.

Approximately 9 out of 10 buyers in the B2B segment nowadays begin their buying process online. They start their buy cycle journey by searching on the internet to find independent product reviews, while also asking their friends and colleagues in social networking websites who they recommend and read contents in customer forums to view what existing customers have to say.
Research has shown that B2B buyers educate themselves with online contents and therefore approximately three-quarter of their buy cycles gets completed even before they have started their engagement with a vendor.
In other words, B2B buyers usually shortlists a vendor even before they interact with those vendors.
Therefore, it is tragic for the vendors that if they are not found in the online discovery process, they get excluded from the sale opportunities.
Now, marketers are also keenly aware that the previously held vendor-led sales cycle has been completely replaced with an online buyer-driven sales cycle in modern times.
Hence modern day marketers are also presently shifting their marketing budgets towards digital marketing campaigns or doing content marketing, email marketing, marketing in social media, paid marketing using their best small business CRM software platform, which is gradually becoming the most preferred methods for engaging and attracting online buyers with their offerings.

76% of B2B marketing professionals strongly agree that their ability to track marketing ROI gives marketing more respect - Forrester Click To Tweet

 The Problem Areas

Now, even after increasing their investments on online marketing methods markets are incurring several tactical challenges, which include:

  • How do marketers track, identify, and engage anonymous online prospects?
  • How do marketers link the volume of digital history to each online buyer?
  • How do marketers identify which online prospects can be ranked qualified and which are not?
  • Once the marketers find an online prospect in the company website, how do they convert them to a recognized person?
  • How do companies do all these activities without adding new staffs?

Therefore, now we need to consider how these tactical obstructions contribute to much larger challenges.

When sales are slow, sales reps rants that they are just not getting enough leads to convert from the marketing teams. Although this may be at times right, then again when sales are good, sales reps even then opines that the leads delivered by the marketing teams are not up to the mark.

In a recent study published by Insights (a global leader in business development solutions), it has been found that more than two-thirds of sales reps rate their lead generation capabilities as “needs improvement”.
Additionally, in the same study, it has also been highlighted that marketers only supply on an average only 30% of the leads sales needs on a day-to-day basis.

Viewing from a lead generation perspective, the marketing department in any organization, is made responsible to bring segmentation, relevant and personalized contents, highly tested messaging, and scale up demand generation campaigns using their best small business CRM software, to acquire the required volume and quality of leads which is needed by the sales teams to achieve their revenue objective for business growth .

However, this becomes a tall order for marketing, when the leads buying intents are unknown or the sales reps harps for more leads, whereby in several instances marketers throw all their leads over the fence, which consequentially incurs several ramifications, which include:

  • Good lead falls between the cracks when marketers also combine unqualified leads in their lead distribution to sales.
  • Productivity in sales drops when sales reps become lead qualifiers rather than lead verifiers or are forced to become their own marketing shops.
  • The CPL (Cost per Lead) increases drastically when sales reps are made to acquire their own leads one at a time, as opposed to the marketing teams that apply repeatable process to acquire leads in bulk.
  • Leads that are not acquired by the marketing do not benefit from lead nurturing campaign and other marketing programs and so they have higher chances to be languished or get lost.

The Business Solution- Marketing Automation Software

The solution to all these above-stated issues lies in making marketing to acquire the bulk of leads using repeatable processes and thereafter transfer only those leads that are qualified to the sales teams.

Does it sound easy? Well, it is not.

Nevertheless, in the modern times marketing applications like best small business CRM software platforms have responded with automation and methods to tackle both these online marketing problems and their overarched lead generation objectives.

Marketing automation is a software application which not only brings process and precision but it also capable of analyzing lead generation campaigns. To be more specific marketing automation in easy to use CRM software helps to acquire, track, score, nurture, and thereafter send sales-ready leads to the sales team.

Here is how marketing automation in best small business CRM software do it.

Digital Tracking

Marketing automation systems when integrated into CRM software is capable of tracking website visitors using cookies, store click-stream data by cookie ID and after that apply IP reverse to identify the leads. Now, using this technique when anonymous visitors become known, the cookie history is associated with the lead records.

Additionally, marketing automation software in a CRM software helps marketers to create landing pages along with registration forms which are also capable of converting unknown visitors into know contacts, to be stored in the CRM database.

Moreover, by tracking the lead’s digital footprints, marketing automation applications can easily find out what contents the leads have consumed, what searches they have made online, which can help marketers to understand the buyer’s preferences and where they are in the buying cycle.

Lead Scoring

This is a process which can be performed using marketing automation in a CRM, whereby leads are assigned points for the lead’s attributes and behavior in order to measure if a lead is fit and has the propensity to buy the offerings.

By capturing actionable data points which helps in scoring buyer’s behaviors like the volume of the lead’s visit to your company’s website, the type of searches they performed, the specified pages they read on your website, and the number of contents they downloaded, marketing automation software in a CRM automatically update lead scores and thereafter once the leads reach a threshold score, the system automatically forwards the sales-ready leads to the designated sales reps for immediate follow-ups.

This way using lead scoring techniques marketing can forward fewer but higher quality leads to the sales teams.

According to a study, it has been found that 10 percent increases in lead quality can generate 40 percent increased productive for the sales teams.

Lead Nurturing

The over-abundance of information about products and services in the internet has changed the way buyers search and research for their requirements.

According to a research, it has been found that in the B2B space:

“25-30% of new leads are sales-ready when received, about 45-55% are not sales-ready when received but about three-quarters of this group will eventually become qualified, and about 25-30% of new leads are not sales-ready when received and never will be.”

Therefore using marketing automation businesses can build lead nurturing campaigns which are capable of delivering educational and informational contents to the leads to engage and advance the required leads until they are matured and becomes sales-ready.

In other words, lead nurturing creates high impact revenue opportunities that can go untapped in your business if you are not using marketing automation in your easy to use CRM software.

Lead Transfer

Marketing automation software is an application that can forward sales-ready leads automatically to the sales teams once those leads have reached a preapproved threshold score by implementing lead nurturing processes.

Moreover, using marketing automation applications marketers can deliver more intelligence with their sales-ready leads, which can empower the sales reps to close their deals in lesser time, and also deliver updates when previously transferred leads gets engaged in an unusual behavior or any new activity.

Lead Analytics

Business intelligence gathered from a closed-loop reporting system helps in continuous process improvement and thereby helps in business growth.

When marketing automation software is integrated with easy to use CRM system it is capable of tying every lead, customer, and revenue dollars back to the marketing program that created them.

According to Forrester Research:

“76% of B2B marketing professionals strongly agree that their ability to track marketing ROI gives marketing more respect.”

Conclusion

Therefore, if marketing automation which is also known as Sales Force Automation (SFA) is used with easy to use CRM software, it does not only offers a tremendous potential for generating new leads from anonymous visitors and nurture them till they become sales-ready, but it also makes your sales teams more efficient by helping your sales reps concentrate more on what they do best (sale) for generating more revenue and bring rapid business growth.

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How Data Science Can Boost Customer Experience For Rapid Business Growth

While content marketing may still remain the number one means to reach out to the customers on the internet, but in 2019 making use of data science is also the number one way to keep your customers around once you have caught their attention on the web. Data science which is also synonymous to big data or machine learning helps businesses that are already using easy to use CRM software platforms to develop a kind of customer experience or CX that leave consumers of your offerings satisfied and looking for more. We all know by now, that building customer loyalty is the golden key to longstanding success in any market, irrespective of which industry you are in. Therefore, in this article let us explore different avenues as to how you can use data science to help your business succeed over time, and provide exceptional customer experience.

While content marketing may still remain the number one means to reach out to the customers on the internet, but in 2019 making use of data science is also the number one way to keep your customers around once you have caught their attention on the web.
Data science which is also synonymous to big data or machine learning helps businesses that are already using easy to use CRM software platforms to develop a kind of customer experience or CX that leave consumers of your offerings satisfied and looking for more.

When assessing the most important CRM features, 18% of organizations stress the ability to see a clear snapshot of their data- Smart Insights Click To Tweet

We all know by now, that building customer loyalty is the golden key to longstanding success in any market, irrespective of which industry you are in.

Therefore, in this article let us explore different avenues as to how you can use data science to help your business succeed over time, and provide exceptional customer experience.

Personalize Services to Net Rewards

While it is equally true that consumers get bothered when services are too customized, recommendation services that are geared towards advocating new products and services to the customers, and are of high quality have the potential to rapidly improve sales per customer and price point per order for any brand in the present competitive marketplace.

Spotify, Amazon, Netflix are all benchmark examples of business and services that do a great job recommending the customers about their new products that entrance and excite the customers.

Give Customers What They Need

One reason that Uber faced recently is that potential customers of this transportation network company might avoid using its services for not being able to know how much their fare will be at the end of their rides.

Therefore, to address this grave issue company like Uber nowadays creates fair price calculators that allow the customers to find the best guess of what their fare might be even before they book their rides.

This can be considered as a great example of two ways that big data can be used.

Firstly by aggregating data, Uber apprehended that one of the main reason customers were restraining their need instead of booking the rides was the uncertainty they were facing about what the price of the ride might be at the end of their journey.
Secondly using a fair price calculator, customers can get a near-to-the-actual estimate of what their rides may cost even before they book the ride, and can make sure that what they end up paying is not too far-off from their expected rates.

Although after all, it is impossible to determine the cost of any single ride before it is complete. But calculators like this that uses big data technology to look over thousands of customer-related data of riders who have traveled similar distances at analogous times, found that they can be fairly accurate while providing their customers with their fair price suggestions.

Fix Issues Even Before They Happen

As a negative story about any brand nowadays can spread like wildfire on the social media platforms, therefore it is extremely essential that businesses must avoid issues with their customers, more important than ever to keep away from meting out unpleasant customer experience whenever it is possible, while selling their products and services in this competitive marketplace.

One way big data technology with the help of easy to use CRM software can improve customer experience is by spotting issues that the average human simply cannot see.

For example, several disconnected customer support representatives for a brand might all get separate service calls from customers complaining about a minor issue with their offerings, which can go unnoticed and disregarded for its simplicity.

However, an intelligent system dedicated to machine learning technology can easily identify that problem across an array of call logs in easy to use CRM software and instruct the CRM to send automated alerts to someone higher-up in the organization to investigate the issue immediately.

Optimizing Product Locations

In both online retailing and brick and mortar stores, organizing products and services in an optimal pattern is always necessary and an interesting thing to do.

For example, if a customer is browsing laser printers, having refill cartridges and other accessories for the printing device nearby may seem logical.

But big data is a technology that can perhaps even tell you that someone purchasing a laser printer might also need a new chair or table for their office, or a laptop that perfectly matches that specific customer’s needs.

Therefore big data when used with easy to use CRM software that has all the customers data in its CRM database , can allow your business to better arrange your offerings online and also in brick and mortar stores by creating product association, which greatly increases the amount of customer purchase per visit.

Conclusion

However, businesses also need to careful of the extent to which they should use big data technology for boosting customer experience and consumer satisfaction for their business growth .

In the modern times, there are even many customers that do not trust companies with too much information about their leads, prospects, and customers, and so will opt out of cookies and other collection options whenever they visit your brand’s website.

Therefore the best way for brands to improve customer willingness to share their information is to act responsibly towards their customers, which means companies should protect their customer’s information in their CRM database , never sell their customer-related data to other third-party sources, and use the information they have in their easy to use CRM platforms carefully, only for the benefit of their consumers in the days to come.

Now, if you are further interested in knowing how your organization can engage technology for rapid business growth; continue reading our “Business Growth Manifesto”.
Since even the best CRM software and big data technology in the world will not improve your business if your business process is in shambles, your workflow is disjointed, or your employees do not feel the necessity of using the software.

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Recent Trends and Developments in Chatbot Customer Support Strategies in 2019

The developments in Chatbot services have traveled a long way and have also achieved huge success and milestones since its beginning that started back in the 1950s. During the initial years after the launch of this technology Chatbots were only used as an interface for web development services to enhance business interactions, however times have now changed and technology has also evolved greatly over the last few decades just like it has happened with easy to use CRM software in the CRM marketplace.

The developments in Chatbot services have traveled a long way and have also achieved huge success and milestones since its beginning that started back in the 1950s.
During the initial years after the launch of this technology Chatbots were only used as an interface for web development services to enhance business interactions, however times have now changed and technology has also evolved greatly over the last few decades just like it has happened with easy to use CRM software in the CRM marketplace.

80% of businesses want Chatbots by 2020- BusinessInsider Click To Tweet

Now, if we look at the Chatbot technology we will certainly accept the fact, that although Chatbots were their all along, however, this technology has gained unseen momentum and popularity over the last few years. Especially in 2018-19 the trends in Chatbot technology has shown some amazing runs that portrays several tweaks to its traditional technology as it is becoming more and more useful for rendering support to the customers and prospects in small and medium-sized organizations that are using best small business CRM software platforms to enhance the customer experience associated with their offerings and find rapid business growth.

This is happening because, the recent development in the field of Big Data and AI (Artificial Intelligence) has significantly improved the level of technology usage in Chatbot development, helping Chatbots to evolve from simple answering applications to the advanced Chatbots that are smart and intelligent enough to effectively interact with prospects and customers in the CRM database .

Hence there are many organizations that are looking to hire app developers for implementing Chatbots in their business websites and integrate its functionality with an easy to use CRM for leveraging its power in providing world-class support to their prospects and customers.

Advancements in Chatbots nowadays are allowing the implementation of AI tools which is the main reason for Chatbots to gain this large consumer base, like small organizations with limited resources those that are most essentially in need of remaining online 24/7 using Chatbots.

Since Chatbot technology aids in providing instant response to the requirements and questions of prospects and customers living in completely different time zones across the globe.

According to the Harvard Business Review and InsideSales:

“A five-minute delay can result in your chances to attract lead decimation. In ten minutes the delayed answer will reduce your chances to get the effective contact up to 400%.”

Therefore, it can be easily said that with the extensive area for development, Chatbot technology just like easy to use CRM software, has a boundless unrestrained space and future to thrive and grow, but what seems to be the trend for this year provides us the picture as depicted below, as according to BusinessInsider:

“80% of businesses want Chatbots by 2020.”

Replacement of Legacy App Interfaces

There are several web and app development services in 2019 that have already adopted the trends with legacy app interfaces replaced and interchanged by unique interfaces, which results into using Chatbots for making interactive conversations with a customer instead of simply navigating through the UI of the app.

This way it has been found that businesses using Chatbots gets high-level of engagement with their customers, as irrespective of whether your customer is a Baby Boomers (age 55+) or a Millennial (age 18-34), people are looking to Chatbots for providing them on-demand answers to their questions in real time, since 55% of people in the USA believe the top benefit of interacting with a Chatbot is getting instant responses to their inquiries.

Follow-line of Google Duplex

Built on an RNN (Recurrent Neural Network) using ‘TensorFlow Extended’, a general purpose Google machine learning platform, Google Duplex is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) chat agent that can perform definite verbal tasks.

It has been recently observed that small and medium businesses that use best small business CRM software is using this innovative tool to book appointments and orders on the command of the users, which in the years to come can also be followed by other similar ideas, because technology never waits to evolve, which is more so pertinent in the present times.

Human-like Chatbot Experience

The entire race in the Chatbot technology is for rendering human-like experiences to the users of the application. Therefore, business establishments that are working on Chatbots are also slowly becoming smarter to deliver human-like experience through Chatbots, using technological advancements in AI, Big Data, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.

Additionally, in an HBR survey, it showed that decision makers and business leaders are turning towards the broader umbrella of business automation technologies that also most importantly includes CRM integration with Chatbots, for things like marketing, sales, and customer support services.
According to the HBR study:

“Forty-two percent of participants believe automation technologies in these areas will mostly improve the customer experience. And 48% said that they already use automation technology for these business functions, with 40% planning to implement some form of automated technology by 2020.”

Chatbot powered UI

It has been found that UI or User Interfaces that are Chatbot enabled helps the UI to deliver information quickly, as interacting through Chatbots is a lot more simpler than using app-based UI tour.

Automatic Customer Support Center

The most advanced artificial based voice and other devices are the server-less technology that is currently deployed Over-the-Automated-Call-Center.

In the present times smart Chatbot development companies can help you to set up the automatic call center and infuse them with the deep domain knowledge base to serve the customers 24/7, and that too without any reduction in efficiency.

In-depth Customer Data Analysis

In the present times as AI is helping data mining and analysis activities that are most necessary for finding customer insights for businesses, hence Chatbots in 2019 are getting integrated with Machine Learning which is aiding Chatbots to solve even technical tasks.

Moreover, this effective analysis of Chatbots about customer insights and pattern recognition using Big Data and Machine Learning technologies integrated with the app along with data collected inside the CRM database is helping Chatbots to gain an advantage in real-time scenarios over the human mind.

Conclusion

As the ultimate goal of almost all businesses is to engage the customer, show them their plans, sell the customers their offerings, and provide world-class support services an innovative and futuristic Chatbot technology will definitely help businesses to achieve these goals.
Since looking at the trends in Chatbot technology although friendliness and approachability” are not areas where consumers believe Chatbots are particularly strong, according to a Drift report 15% of consumers in the US have used Chatbots to communicate with businesses in the past 12 months and this number is on the rise steadily.

To know more on how you can use technology to find massive business growth read our “Business Growth Manifesto”, to identifying areas that can be optimized or automated in your organization and then implement technology that will optimize, automate and improve your business processes.

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Key Customer Experience Metrics That You Must Measure and Cannot Leave Behind

In this modern era of data analytics, most businesses have enough information, metrics, data, and dashboards in their easy to use CRM software platforms to deal with. However, unfortunately, when it comes to Customer Experience or CX, most organizations do not always keep a track or measure and report the right metrics for their organization. In a report published in 2018 by NPX & CX Benchmark states: “One-third of businesses (especially small and medium organizations) do not measure their Retention or Customer Churn.”

In this modern era of data analytics, most businesses have enough information, metrics, data, and dashboards in their easy to use CRM software platforms to deal with. However, unfortunately, when it comes to Customer Experience or CX, most organizations do not always keep a track or measure and report the right metrics for their organization.

By 2020, more than 40 percent of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience- Gartner Click To Tweet

In a report published in 2018 by NPX & CX Benchmark states:

“One-third of businesses (especially small and medium organizations) do not measure their Retention or Customer Churn.”

Well, this is indeed an irony since businesses spend a considerable amount of their time and resources in sales and marketing but ultimately they do not keep a track of how many of those acquired customers have been retained or try to find what were the reasons for their attrition.

Hence, how big or small your business is, and in which sector your company belongs to, here are key 4 top of the line Customer Experience metrics that you should track and measure at all times using your best small business CRM software.

What are the CX top of the line metrics?

Top of the line metrics in CX are those that bear minimum stats you should measure which are outcome indicators and lag measures that can be easily found in your easy to use CRM platform’s dashboard. These metrics help to keep us tied to our organization’s long term visions and goals for strategic business growth . Therefore, to show an improvement on these metrics, we need to improve other independent or lead Customer Experience (CX) metrics in your CRM database.

The most vital top line CX Metrics that you should always measure are:

  • Net Promoter Score
  • Customer-Lifetime-Value/Cost-of-Acquisition-of-Customer
  • Customer-Churn
  • Customer Effort Score

So let us talk about each of them now briefly.

  1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Possibly, there is no need for a detailed explanations since NPS has gained tremendous popularity in the recent times, as in a report published by Forrester it indicated that more than 70% of both big and small organizations listed in the Fortune 1000 companies use Net Promoter Score to measure the loyalty of their brands.

The biggest advantage of this metrics is its simplicity (you can use a single question format) to evaluate the customer’s intentions to recommend your offerings to their trusted ones, like friends, colleagues, and relatives.

The uniqueness of the NPS question lies in its 11 point survey, which is scaled from 0 to 10, with 0 to 6 as detractors, 7 and 8 as passive, and 9 and 10 as promoters of your brand.

In order to calculate your brand’s NPs, detract the percentage of Detractors from this percentage of Promoters.

For an example, if 60 percent of your respondents in the Net Promoter Survey (which you can perform using email campaigning functionality in your easy to use CRM) are Promoters and 10 percent are Detractors; your brand’s NPS is 50.

The importance of NPS is that it provides an insight into the customer loyalty spectrum for your business so that you can identify the weak points in your customer experience that needs improvement.

  1. Customer-Lifetime-Value/Cost-of-Acquisition-of-Customer (CLV/CAC)

What is interesting and we are looking for in these two metrics is the ratio of CLV to CAC that can be easily measured in all best small business CRM software platforms.

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) which is also known as LCV (Lifetime Customer Value) is the net economic or financial value associated to the relationship between the customer and the brand or the company.

CLV is an ideal metric that illustrates and lets us know how much revenue we are making from each customer. Additionally, when CLV is averaged out, any organization can easily generalize it for its entire customer base.

CLV is an important measurement that you must measure using your easy to use CRM software since if you are not making enough money from your relationship with your customers, it is no brainer that you may sooner or later seize to be in business.

Calculating net contribution (profit margin) or net financial value from an ongoing relationship with your customers will definitely involve the contributions that your buyers have made in the past and an ongoing estimate of their future contributions for your brand. Therefore, CLV or LVC is estimated metrics.

Hence, to explain it in its simplistic form, Customer Lifetime Value is the average sum of purchases made by your customers till they retire or churn.

Therefore, CLV takes into consideration the “average contribution from each customer per period” and the expected number of periods that the customer remains with the company.

For an example, if the average revenue of a CRM company like ConvergeHub is $59 per user/ month for its Premium Edition billed yearly, and if the cost of offering the service is $40, then its average customer contribution is $19 per month. Now, if the customer stays with the organization for 24 months before churning out, then the CLV for that customer is $456 ($19 x 24 Mt.)

This calculation takes into consideration, the Customer Retention Rate (or in a reverse way the Customer Churn Rate) and average contribution per customer.

We all know that the future value of cash flow is at all times less than its present value, therefore, this formula can be improved or adjusted also to include this aspect.

As Customer Lifetime Value engages an economic value to Customer Relationship strategy, CLV is considered as an excellent metric for the following:

  • Evaluate if your delivery model is viable
  • Helps to refine your customer support strategies, so as to increase your CLV
  • Sensitize your team members about economic value and inculcate ownership into their actions

Apart from this, evaluating each customer individually as against average CLV, to find out whose relationship is more precious for your brand can also help in customer segmentation for up-selling and cross-selling your other offerings.

What is the Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC)?

CLV alone may aid you to a certain extent to refine your organization’s operations and service delivery models; however, we all know that Customer Experience (CX) begins right from Marketing.
Therefore, now you need a metric that considers an end-to-end impact, and that can only be measured by considering the Cost of Acquisition of Customer for your brand.

Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC) is the average cost of acquiring a customer which can include right from marketing and sales expenses to offers and discounts that your organization (if required) provides to its customers.

CLV/CAC

The ratio of CLV to CAC is extremely important and useful to evaluate the complete business model and its viability for any organization.

We say this because, when the CAC is greater than CLV, it clearly indicates that the business model is not a viable proposition at all.

Therefore, as a thumb rule, your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) must be 3 to 4 times more than your Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC).

There are several factors which drive this; however, CX professionals can play a significant role in optimizing this ratio using different levels of Customer Experience strategies to the purchasers of your offerings.

Apart from this tacking the trends of CLV and CLV/CAC ratio can also aid CX professionals to gauge the impact of CX initiatives that have been implemented in your organization.

  1. Customer-Retention or Customer-Churn

Over the course of time, Customer Churn rate has become one of the other most popular metrics as most CX professionals talk about it while assessing ‘Customer Experience management’ of any organization.

Nevertheless, according to the NPX and CX benchmark report published in 2018, it states that:

Only one-third of companies proactively track their Customer Retention Rate (CRR) in their organization.

In simple language Customer Churn is the percentage or proportion of customers those who have discontinued or left after using a brand as against the total base of its active customers in the list.

In fact, the Customer Retention rate is just the inverse of Customer Churn rate, for which the math is:

1/Customer Churn Rate

Although apparently, it might look extremely easy, however, in reality, there are several scenarios such as non-recurring business models, pure subscription models, businesses with lock-in periods and without lock-in periods, and others that needs to be taken into consideration while measuring CCR. Therefore calculating CCR (Customer Churn Rate) for a brand is actually a very tricky process, which is one of the major reasons as to why businesses do not most often like to calculate their Customer Churn.

Nevertheless, we have found that base-lining an organization or brand’s historic churn rate is a far superior way to access the efficacy of that company’s Customer Experience initiatives as even lack of accurate data for benchmarking across industries is not a matter of concern to perform this calculation, which is a good metric to know the effectiveness of an organization’s Customer Experience strategy.

Revenue Churn Rate

Revenue Churn Rate is a variation of Customer Churn Rate since this metric portrays how much revenue got lost within a given period of time.

In other words, Revenue Churn Rate as the name suggests is a very pertinent economic and financial indicator of customer loyalty in ‘subscription-based business models’.

The math over here is, if $100 K is the recurring revenue of last month and if that has decreased to $90 K in the present month, there is a revenue churn of $10 K this month. Which means the Revenue Churn Rate is 10% [=100-90/100].

However, it must be most essentially remembered over here that you should take only into consideration the base of installed customers and should never add new acquisitions to the current month. Moreover, another simple version of the Revenue Churn Rate also ignores customers who have upgraded their subscriptions (a refinement that is not cover in this article).
Therefore RCR (Revenue Churn Rate) is as good as CCR (Customer Churn Rate) for all types of subscription-based business like Cloud Based CRM software solutions, except that downgrading a subscription would impact the RCR but not CCR.

  1. Customer Effort Score (CES)

This is a CX metric that is mostly neglected by several organizations across the globe. According to an NPX & CX Benchmark report published in 2018, only 15% of businesses use CES and hence it is one of the most under-utilized metrics by the CX Management fraternity.

However, it must be acknowledged that Customer Effort Score has a greater statistical correlation with both repurchase and enhanced spending rates than NPS.
That implies CES is a better metric to predictive repurchase and spending behaviors of your customers than Net Promoter Score.

For example, most of us would cherish to use a web-based check-in facility rather than stand in a check-in queue while boarding flights in an airport. This reduction in the customer’s effort by helping the customer to “get their job done” can radically increase brand preferences.

Much like NPS, Customer Effort Score (CES) is also measured through a single question but with a 5 point scale.

Another advantage for measuring CES is that the same question can be asked to the same customer times and again after every transaction as it obviously makes sense to find out if the customer has found it effortless to transact after each and every deal.

 Conclusion

There are also many more metrics such as Turnaround Time, Service Levels, Compliance Percentage, and others that can also be tracked to measure CX of a brand, which we shall discuss later on.
So subscribe to our blogs for learning more or read our Business Growth Manifesto, which is a definitive guide on how to use technology to fuel massive business growth.

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How To Measure Sales Skills For Phenomenal Business Growth

If you are a trainer or a sales manager you must have spent plenty of time and effort trying to quantify and measure your sales rep’s skills. You must have also in the process come up with useful training methodologies and tests, most of which your sales teams have failed or performed poorly during the sales training programs, but nevertheless closed their sales in flying colors that enhanced your company’s business growth. However, from our experience as a vendor of small business sales CRM software platform, we found that there are no other better indicators for sales growth than viewing sales pipeline metrics for evaluating a sales person’s skills.

If you are a trainer or a sales manager you must have spent plenty of time and effort trying to quantify and measure your sales rep’s skills.
You must have also in the process come up with useful training methodologies and tests, most of which your sales teams have failed or performed poorly during the sales training programs, but nevertheless closed their sales in flying colors that enhanced your company’s business growth .

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

However, from our experience as a vendor of small business sales CRM software platform, we found that there are no other better indicators for sales growth than viewing sales pipeline metrics for evaluating a sales person’s skills.

To be more specific and precise, we would like to highlight just four sales pipeline indicators for your business growth, which can be easily found from your CRM database, such as:

  • Pipeline Velocity
  • Size of the deals
  • Number of deals accomplished over a period of time
  • Number of conversions done over a period of time

Now if you are someone who has just purchased an easy to use CRM platform like ConvergeHub and is getting started with sales pipeline management, before reading these four metrics that can help to measure sales skills check the “Sales Cycle” in your business, which is according to Trackmaven:

“The sales cycle is the process that companies undergo when selling a product to a customer. It encompasses all activities associated with the closing sale. Many companies have different steps and activities in their sales cycle, depending on how they define it.

Finding a clear cut definition of a sales cycle that spans across the sales industry is tricky. This is because many variations of the definition exist. Some people define it as the time it takes from starting from nothing to closing a deal. Others define it as the time it takes to bring a qualified prospect to close.

Regardless of the definition, however, businesses should keep track of the length of their sales cycle to ensure that their selling process is efficient.”

Why is the sales cycle important for business growth?

Keeping track of the sales cycle provides businesses deeper insights into the efficiency of the operations in sales. Tracking, analyzing and comparing the length of the sales cycle to the standard length across your industry provides information on business growth. For an example, if an organizations sales cycle is shorter than the average length of its industry, it can mean that the organization’s sales department is more efficient than its competitor, whereas a longer sales cycle indicate higher chances of sales falling through the crack.

Here is how the above mentioned four metrics help to measure your businesses’ sales skills:


  1. Measure how fast deals go through the pipeline

You can measure the average age of deals at each stage of the sales pipeline or the average across the whole length of sales cycles, or alternatively measure the average length of time it takes to close a deal.

Now, let us compare two hypothetical sales people and see why measuring sales cycle plays a big role for your business growth. If Tom closes a deal in 6 weeks on an average and Tim does it in 3 weeks, there must be a substantial difference in their work methods and skills.
Since, based on the these numbers we can easily assume that Tom does not have the tendency of gaining small-sized agreements (or mini-closes) during the process of sales, while Tim’s pipeline velocity is a good indicator to show that he uses confirmations like:
“So if I am understanding correctly, are you willing to consider our offering if it helps you save more than $2000?”
Furthermore, Tim probably takes matters into his own hand during the sales process, and continuously checks at a regular interval if another decision has been made by the potential customer.

It is no brainer that pipeline velocity increases with time.
That means sales pipeline velocity must remain higher with experienced sales reps in your organization since it is a sign of danger if that is not.

You can be even more specific in measuring your rep’s sales pipeline velocity using information stored in your CRM database, by starting to measure deal age by each sales stage that you have made in your easy to use CRM software for continuously monitoring predictable revenue for your business growth.


  1. Measure the average size of a sale

Much like deal velocity in the sales pipeline, the average size of deals is another aspect that should increase with time, (assuming that the business you are into does not have any constraint for deal size).

The average size of deals that can be monitored from information stored in the CRM database of your easy to use CRM software is an excellent indicator of the negotiation skills and confidence of your sales teams.

Average deal size shows whether your saleMeasure the number of leads or deals in the sales pipelines reps do have the courage to go after the ‘Big Fish’ and whether they can identify the requirements of the prospective customers during their meetings and calls.

In other words, the average size of the deals indicates how well are your sale rep’s in choosing the right prospects for your organization’s business growth, or how good are your salespersons at finding out the real requirements of the prospects and thereafter skilled enough to match them to the premium products and services offered by your company.


  1. Measure the number of leads or deals in the sales pipeline

It is extremely important that you must measure how many leads or deals someone can add within a specific period of time and what is the total number of deals in the sales pipeline in your CRM database.

Now, if the numbers of new leads/deals are scarce, it is a good enough indicator to show that either your sales reps are not very good at initiating their first contacts or they are simply not working hard enough towards generating new leads.

Therefore, that number of deals added within a specific period of time shows sales skills as well as the work ethics maintained by your sales teams, which is one of the best indicators of success in sales and business growth that can be easily measured using a best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub the award-winning CRM for small and medium businesses.


  1. Measure total win conversion, and conversion by stage

Most owners and sales managers measure the win ratio of their sales reps, since it is a piece of very pertinent information if you look at it by sales stages.

For an example, if Tim has a 75% conversion ratio from “First Meetings Done” to the “Proposal Made” stage in the easy to use CRM software platform, and if it is just 25% for Tom, this can mean one of two things.
It is either Tim is way ahead better at turning a prospective customer’s needs into identifiable “Pain” or that Tim tends to waste time more on nurturing hopeless leads and prospects in his sales pipeline.

Therefore, always compare this sale metric in the CRM database relative to other members in your sales teams.

Conclusion

Hence, all said and done, if you know these 4 sales pipeline metrics (pipeline velocity, size of the deals, number of the deals and conversion ratio) for each team members in your sales at each stage of the sales pipeline in the CRM database, you will have a pretty good idea of each person’s sales skills in your sale team and you can easily compare them with each other for generating more sales and find rapid business growth.

Remember, you do not always need to track every metrics found in your easy to use CRM software at all times since it is definitely wiser to pick only the metrics in your CRM database that matter the most for your business and focus on them for fast-paced business growth.

Although, in conclusion, I would once more reiterate that sales pipeline metrics are the most to-the-point indicators found in an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub and other Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions for highlighting the sales skills of your employees, nevertheless if you have found even better ones, please do add your ideas in the comment below.

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Most Important Integrations That Every MCA CRM Must Have For Business Growth

If you are an owner of a Merchant Cash Advance business, chances are that you have sat in on a few meetings with your employees to help your teams understand the best approaches to manage their leads, contacts, customers, and opportunities. Now, what begun with a Rolodex machine, a date book, and a telephone has now evolved in MCA businesses to the use of sophisticated online lead management software applications- better known as MCA CRM platforms, like ConvergeHub, which is customized for Cash Advance businesses. If you are not aware of what is CRM, you might wonder what is exactly the purpose of Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, how it can help your business to attract and retain more customers, or how you can integrate your easy to use CRM with your MCA website for rapid and consistent business growth.

If you are an owner of a Merchant Cash Advance business, chances are that you have sat in on a few meetings with your employees to help your teams understand the best approaches to manage their leads, contacts, customers, and opportunities.
Now, what begun with a Rolodex machine, a date book, and a telephone has now evolved in MCA businesses to the use of sophisticated online lead management software applications- better known as MCA CRM platforms, like ConvergeHub, which is customized for Cash Advance businesses.

Integrating QuickBooks and CRM helps your business deliver a better customer experience. Click To Tweet

If you are not aware of what is CRM , you might wonder what is exactly the purpose of Merchant Cash Advance CRM software , how it can help your business to attract and retain more customers, or how you can integrate your easy to use CRM with your MCA website for rapid and consistent business growth.

So, here are the answers to your question.

What is Customer Relationship Management software?

The main task of any CRM software be it customized for Cash Advance or any other business, is that it is an application that helps your sales, marketing, support, and even accounts manage your leads, prospects, customers, leading to business growth and more sales.
It is a software that helps to keep track of your leads and customers, their relationship with your organization, keep a record of whom they work for, what they are doing, what they are thinking about buying, or keep a tab on how often they contact you, among an incredible number of other options that CRM also aids in business.

The major benefit of using Merchant Cash Advance software in your MCA business is to find the ability to streamline your sales process, increase interactions with your Cash Advance customers and prospects and finally nurture those relationships in a way you see it fit for your business growth.

Therefore, regardless of whatever easy to use CRM software that you use, for Cash Advance, Retail, Reality, Legal, or any other business, majority of CRM software platforms, gathers the same type of information and have identical types of goals, such as:

  • Perk up customer communication and customer retention plans
  • Enhance company profitability by ushering business growth
  • Increase focus in your business
  • Increase prospect and customer tracking abilities

What are CRM integrations?

The best and the most popular easy to use CRM software especially Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions are the ones with the highest user adoption rates. This is because, the more your sales, marketing, support, and accounts are willing to input data, the better will be the CRM platform’s ability to enable your employees to engage more customers and perform better over time. Hence inputting more data in the MCA CRM leads to increased business growth.

As with most easy to use CRM software platforms there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as vendors of CRM software as a whole strive to meld different functions to accommodate the needs of individual employees, to personalize their workflow, and create a uniform system that better tracks performance, ensure consistency in customer engagement, and improve productivity for business growth.

Now, CRM platforms can achieve this above-stated feat, with official and third-party integrations.
While official integrations are native collaborations between the MCA CRM and external software solutions, third-party integrations need the use of APIs or web services such as Zapier.

Here are some of the most used integrations that your MCA CRM platforms must have for increasing your alternative lending business’s growth.

  1. QuickBooks (Online)

For organizations, especially the ones that cater to financial services, QuickBooks accounting software is one of the most popular third-party software used along with their CRM platforms.
MCA CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub, offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, and is widely accepted as one of the best QuickBooks CRM software for any alternative lending business who are looking forward to using the data from their QuickBooks accounting software to build a closer relationship with their customers and generate more sales.

Once you integrate QuickBooks and your MCA CRM together, there can be a free exchange of information and data between these two software applications, whereby you can continue to use QuickBooks for accounting purposes, and at the same time see all the customer’s details, products and services for sale, along with invoice and payment information directly in your CRM.
You can then use this data from QuickBooks CRM for reminders, follow-ups, customer service, and business process automation.

  1. DocuSign

A plethora of signing on documents is most essentially required in alternative lending businesses. Therefore, most Merchant Cash Advance software users prefer integrating their MCA CRM with DocuSign that can help them to manage every aspect of each contact from preparing and sending documents for signing to managing them in their CRM platforms.

Using DocuSign with CRM for your business growth helps in remaining rest assured that everything stays legal, secure, and visible with a complete audit trail, apart from saving money and time and enhance your customer’s experience with your organization, delighting your customers along the way.

  1. Ring Central

MCA CRM is a storehouse of information about communications between your teams and your leads, prospects, and customers. Therefore, most companies in alternative lending business integrate Ring Central, which is an external software that help users to dial and log calls through RingCentral inside the CRM in a smarter way to enhance productivity and enrich customer interactions. This integration between the MCA CRM and RingCentral is perfect for small businesses who want to have a reliable voice service inside their CRM and efficiently manage customer phone calls.

  1. Google Drive

Google Drive integration for Merchant Cash Advance CRM software allows the users of the MCA CRM to share, sync, manage and access files associated with records through Google Drive right from within the easy to use CRM account. All attachments from your respective CRM records gets stored and synced into your associated Google Drive account with the help of this most important integration, used by many in alternative lending businesses.

  1. Google Calendar

Integrating Google Calendar with your MCA CRM software helps to bring all of your events, tasks, and meetings from your Google Calendar to your Merchant Cash Advance software, allowing you to stay updated by referring to what you have planned so that you never miss out any opportunities.

Once you use this integration for your alternative lending business and edit the calendar of your choice in real time, you can make a decision if you want those alterations to be reflected in either the Google Calendar, or MCA CRM software’s calendar, or both.

  1. Lead Generator Tool

If you are using ConvergeHub, the best MCA CRM for small businesses, you can also download and integrate its Free Lead Generator Tool.

Using this integration allows you to visit any lead’s social media page and capture all information instantly with no manual typing and hereafter save qualified leads from social media, other websites and even Gmail with one click of the mouse for even more sales power and business growth.

This integration (which is most often liked by all ConvergeHub MCA CRM users) helps to capture qualified leads into the sales funnel in a flash and use the power of CRM to convert them into paying customers – all for FREE.

Conclusion

Hence, the only limit to the ways you can use ConvergeHub MCA CRM is your imagination. ConvergeHub CRM seamlessly integrates with more than 30 third-party integrations, helping you to integrate your billing, call management, e-signature solution, and others, for a complete customer data, smarter selling, leading to rapid business growth .

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Marketing Trends- That You Cannot Ignore This Year For Your Business Growth

Since you are using best small business CRM software for helping your organization accomplish its sales and marketing plans, it is equally important that you must remain aware of the evolving marketing trends and changes ahead, those that predict to alter the shape of the marketing world in 2019 and beyond. Hence, understanding these new trends in marketing this year will enable you to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly and remain ahead of the completion in your marketplace, once you keep these trends in mind and formulate your strategies to ensure optimum success in your businesses.

Since you are using best small business CRM software for helping your organization accomplish its sales and marketing plans, it is equally important that you must remain aware of the evolving marketing trends and changes ahead, those that predict to alter the shape of the marketing world in 2019 and beyond.

94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as part of their content strategy. Other popular platforms include Twitter (87%), Facebook (84%), and YouTube (74%) - Content Marketing Institute Click To Tweet

Hence, understanding these new trends in marketing this year will enable you to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly and remain ahead of the completion in your marketplace, once you keep these trends in mind and formulate your strategies to ensure optimum success in your businesses.

Marketing Automation

Now that you know what is CRM, as a user of the best small business CRM software, it is apprehended strongly that this year and going ahead AI-powered technological advancements will take personalized marketing a step further.

Marketing automation and lead generation that is supported by AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help organizations using best small business CRM software to enhance their customer profiling strategies, which, in turn, will aid in facilitating the development of more sophisticated and refined customer-centric marketing strategies, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and a decrease in churn rates.

According to research published by Forbes, it has been suggested that more than 50% of present-day marketers will adopt AI by 2019, for accomplishing their business growth.

So choosing the best CRM for small business like ConvergeHub , which is already working on developing such technologies for its all-in-one easy to use CRM platform , will help you to stay ahead of the game.

Chatbots

In 2019, most of us are aware of chatbots that we deploy on our company websites for business growth.

Actually, chatbots are interactive software applications that are created to mimic normal human conversations.

Apart from websites, chatbots can also be incorporated into apps, emails and SMS platforms.

This year and going beyond it is predicted that the use of chatbots will increase, as according to a study published by Gartner, it is prognosticated that 85% of all customer support interactions will be powered by chatbots by 2020.

Therefore, marketers in 2019 using the best small business CRM software should start leveraging on chatbots now by having them answer frequently asked questions online, or walk the customers through their buying processes.

Video marketing

It is also predicted that video ads will be on a rise this year.

In a recent study published by Cisco, it has been projected that more than 80% of all internet traffic will be videos by 2021.

As in the present times with the stellar growth in social media 90% of digital markets are already making use of videos as a key element of their online marketing strategy, it is no brainer to expect that live video feeds will continue to grow.

Video marketing is not only an excellent way to tell customers and prospects your brand’s stories but it can be also considered as a better way to share testimonials with leads and prospects, whereby you can broadcast your  happy customers talk about their experience with your company, or which of your offerings has helped them in their business growth .

Influencer marketing

The consumers in all industries will be putting even more trust in relationships and people they know, as well as high-quality contents.

In other words, in modern times, consumers are becoming more and more difficult to impresses with sordid sales pitches from company reps, as they are becoming increasingly resistant towards being sold.

Consumers in 2019, especially the Millennial(s) group of consumers who are gradually moving into decision-making positions in several organizations, just want brands to help them buy.

Now, when it comes to influencer marketing, present-day tech-savvy consumers are more aware of influencers who openly endorse numerous brands. Therefore you need to adopt a more transparent and subtle approach by building long-term relationships with selected influencers, who may not be a big-name celebrity, but someone who has a  following of more than 10,000 followers on social media to foster more organic endorsement with transparent communications leading to your business growth.

Semantic SEO

According to ComScore, it has been predicted that 50% of all search on the internet will be voice searches by 2020, credits to virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa.

In recent times with new updates on Google’s search algorithms search engines have started showing a preference for cluster of contents around topics instead of keywords.

This change in part on SEO requirements has happened due to the rising popularity of searches being implemented verbally, instead of typing on keyboards.

Therefore, voice search marketing and Semantic SEO that provides more value and depth around a topic are expected to become increasingly important in 2019 and beyond.

Mobile marketing

According to an article published by Google in 2017, it stated that more than 89% of online consumers are likely to recommend a brand after a positive brand experience on their mobile devices.

In another statistics revealed by Statista:

In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3% in the previous year.

Since mobile users view contents in short intervals, contents generated for mobile marketing should be pithy, and easy-to-understand as possible.

Therefore, remember to optimize your landing pages and your website for mobile viewing so that you can engage your potential and existing customers, and evolve over time the contents that you share with your consumers for developing their brand awareness and scale up your business growth.

Conclusion

Although there are no best marketing strategies and no one can for certain predict the future with unflinching accuracy, nevertheless preparing yourself and watching out for these marketing trends will obviously help you as a user of best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub to achieve your goals this year and remain competitive in your marketplace for your business growth.

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