Tag: Business Growth

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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Customer Acquisition Or Retention – Which One Should Be Your Main Concern Today

Have you ever thought about which one is more important for your business: new customer acquisition or retention of the one that you already have? We all are aware of the fact, that acquiring new customers is one of the most important criteria for any business. However, this must also be remembered that retaining your present and old customers is also critically important if you are running a subscription-based business (like cloud based CRM software) or have repeat customers. Hence, we can see both acquiring fresh customers and retaining the existing ones are equally important for the growth of any company.

Have you ever thought about which one is more important for your business: new customer acquisition or retention of the one that you already have?

We all are aware of the fact, that acquiring new customers is one of the most important criteria for any business.

Acquiring new customers costs 5 times more than retaining their existing ones. Click To Tweet

However, this must also be remembered that retaining your present and old customers is also critically important if you are running a subscription-based business (like cloud based CRM software) or have repeat customers.

Hence, we can see both acquiring fresh customers and retaining the existing ones are equally important for the growth of any company.

Nevertheless, it is really a big question for many as to how do they know which one to focus more on customer acquisition or retention when forming the strategies needed to boost their business growth.

Now, the answer to this question is subjective, and highly complicated, as it involves several variables like your long-term business goals, customer acquisition cost, your business model, and so on.

Hence to answer this complex topic, whereby we need to consider several things, let us dig into the topic and shed some light, as to which is the right strategy for your company based on the business model you work on.

Basic of Customer Acquisition

So let us start with the obvious. It is no brainer that you just cannot run a successful business without winning fresh customers, which is particularly true for small businesses and startups.

Now, acquiring the first few customers does always seem to be a monumental up-hill task when you start your business. Since building your brand reputation can be most difficult without any customers.

Mostly the first customers for any business come from the existing contracts of the company and its stakeholders in the business. However, as your business evolves acquiring new customers becomes exponentially easier, since an increase in brand awareness helps in growing your customer base.

Nevertheless, how you approach your sales strategy for customer growth largely depends on your business goals.

Therefore, let us now look into how you can develop the right sales strategy for your business to find customer growth.

Potential Pitfalls of Customer Acquisition

Although it has been agreed that your business needs new customers and hence the sales pipeline in your best CRM software should never remain empty, nevertheless, several organizations make the blunder of devoting too many resources for customer acquisition and not enough staffs for retaining them, since they remain confused about understanding whether customer acquisition or retention which should supersede the other as their goal.

Therefore, customer churn is an obvious phenomenon that happens when you acquire a new customer but do not take the appropriate measures to ensure that your customer is happy using your offerings, which results in losing them quickly.

Therefore, the key to keeping your customers happy is to provide a world-class customer experience (CX) right from the very beginning after your sale that in turn boosts customer satisfaction and renewal rates.

According to a survey done by Invesp, acquiring fresh customers in most businesses costs 5 times more than retaining their existing ones.

Therefore, when you win over a fresh customer, there is your chance to solidify their trust in your businesses’ ability to support them successfully.

Never sign in a new customer and then leave them to fend for themselves on their own, for if you do this you will surely dissatisfy the customers, who will most likely leave your brand for competition.

Hence while you onboard a new customer, ensure that you also provide high-quality training to the customer to increase their customer satisfaction which will eventually make the customer stay for long with your brand.

The Basics Of Customer Retention

Retaining your existing customers is not always as difficult as it seems.
This often-overlooked factor in business which determines the success and failure of your brand can be easily done by delivering a world-class customer experience that you can do simply by delighting your customers.

Here are some basic tips as to how you can retain your customers for long:

  • Start out on the right foot by ensuring that your customers have everything they need, which must begin from their first day.
  • Distribute contents that can solve some of the common problems faced by your customer base, which will help in building trust and also aid in positioning you as an authority in your marketplace.
  • Reach out to your customers on a regular basis, to check out how things are going.
  • Keep your customers informed about your brand’s new developments (like info on new products, bug fixes, forward-looking plans, and more).
  • Create a customer advisory board to let your customers suggest you in the evolution process of your company.
  • Focus on resolving customer issues on the first attempt by creating a dedicated helpdesk group.

Now, this is only a partial list of many other things that you can do to keep your customers loyal and satisfied with your brand so that they stick around and provide recurring revenue for your business.

 Benefits Of Customer Retention: Not Pitfalls

To be truthful there is really no drawbacks focusing on customer retention, as there are a plethora of statistics that back this up which even hints at your business growth:

  • Long-term loyal and satisfied customers spend more than the new ones. – Business.com
  • 80% of key business revenue comes from 20% of existing customers those who are satisfied and happy. – Forbes
  • Just a 2% growth in customer retention decrease up to 10% overall cost of the company – Amazon

Food for thoughts:

Would you rather have 50 new customers each year that leaves after that year or just 15 customers that stick with you for a decade?

Well, the answer seems to be pretty obvious.

Talking about customer acquisition or retention, new customers eat up more resources and administration costs, and they also do not produce enough revenue for your company.

On the other hand, a loyal and happy existing customer who remains with your business over the long haul not only allows you to predict your businesses’ future revenue more accurately but also provides you the peace of your mind.

Conclusion

Therefore, the future of all successful businesses remains with maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction using the best small business CRM software if they are a growing startup. Since doing so naturally results in a higher level of customer retention and helps in creating brand advocates that ultimately can do wonders for your brand reputation management efforts.

According to a report published by Corporate Visions, more than 80% of businesses spend more than 70% on their marketing budgets for acquiring new customers and unfortunately even lesser than 30% on customer retention initiatives.

Therefore, to conclude on this topic it is recommended that as a modern business organization using Salesforce Alternative CRM software like ConvergeHub for managing the relationship with your customers you should at least spend 50% of your marketing budgets on strategies and processes for retaining your customers since it is one of the best tactics for ensuring long-term business growth.

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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.

Stay Connect with us & Use Our Enterprise CRM Software.

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Best Small Business CRM Software for SMB

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

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

The proof is in the pudding:

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

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

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

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

Improves decision making

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

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

Enhance productivity

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

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

Promotes teamwork        

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

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

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

Improve calling services

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

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

Provide mobile access to data

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Do Not Make Things Too Complicated

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

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

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

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

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

2. Work With What You Have Got

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Sell Your Ideas Effectively

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

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

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

Never use data as a crutch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are customer retention programs?

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

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

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

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

1. Create an onboarding program

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

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

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

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

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

2. Create customer follow up programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Identify risk customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Win back lost customers

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

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

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

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

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

Wrapping Up

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

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Small Business Growth Ideas: Sales Hack For SMBs (That You Cannot Ignore)

Before you start learning some more small business growth ideas, are you aware that only 35 percent of a sales rep’s time is actually spent in selling? Well, we know these stats can be absolutely frustrating for sale reps and managers alike. Therefore, to stay successful, sales teams have to not only become an expert at organizing their time but also needs to maximize it. Hence, here are some of the most simple tried and common hacking tips that you and your sales reps can utilize in your small business to maximize their selling time.

Before you start learning some more small business growth ideas, are you aware that only 35 percent of a sales rep’s time is actually spent in selling?

Well, we know these stats can be absolutely frustrating for sales reps and managers alike. Therefore, to stay successful, sales teams have to not only become an expert at organizing their time but also needs to maximize it.

A properly implemented CRM solution can yield an ROI of 45% per dollar invested. Click To Tweet

Hence, here are some of the most simple tried and common hacking tips that you and your sales reps can utilize in your small business to maximize their selling time.

Simplify Your Easy To Use CRM Data       

As a manager looking after your sales teams, look for ways to streamline the quantum of information that you need your sales reps to collect and enter into the CRM database.

Well, we know it must seem tempting to track and evaluate every single piece of information about your salesperson’s deals. Nevertheless, in reality, doing this will not only steal invaluable time from your sales reps, but excessive data even in your best small business CRM software can bog down your team, and seldom provide any extra info that may revolutionize your sales process.

Automate As Many Activities As You Can

Irrespective of whether you are using enterprise-level CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small businesses in either case sales automation is becoming more and more sophisticated every day.

However when we talk about data fidelity it can still feel like a gamble, and so your sales teams must identify activities in sales that are not heavily tied to AI (Artificial Intelligence) and so can be automated easily.

For example, as another small business growth ideas if you are using a separate software tool like accounting software to create proposals for your prospective customers, make sure that you are leveraging integration like QuickBooks CRM (software that integrates CRM with QuickBooks) to automatically pull data from your accounting software into your CRM database.

This is because automating tasks using Sales Force Automation (SFA) in a CRM means reducing errors that at the end save your sales teams countless hours of overtime.

Make Contents Easier To Find

It is hard to believe, but it is true that 60-70 percent of the content created by B2B marketing teams, especially in small businesses is never used by sales.

Here is a solution:

Instead of your sales reps wasting their precious time searching for contents, use a smart folder in your easy to use CRM that provides discoverability or use dedicated content distribution applications like DropBox™ or OneDrive™ that helps in sharing assets by integrating it with your CRM database.

Avoid The Back-And-Forth Scheduling            

There are several business application tools available in the marketplace these days that permit your sales reps to schedule meetings by sharing a link to your calendar instead of firing several messages and emails to verify each other’s availability and thereafter suggesting a time for the meeting.

Integrating online appointment schedules with your easy to use CRM aids in easily avoiding this time suck and therefore provides more time for doing sales for your sales teams.

Use Data To Your Advantage

As another small business growth ideas leverage applications like PandaDoc™ and others for document management and automation to provide extremely useful information like document viewing reports, document forwarding reports, and eSignature notifications that leverages the sales rep’s power to understand when to follow up.

Moreover, integrating document management software with best small business CRM software provides instant access to this type of data that helps in completely eliminating the questions of whether or not contact or a proposal has been reviewed or received by the customers that boost the likelihood of winning the deals quickly.

Conclusion

Therefore after reading through these small business growth ideas irrespective of whether you are a team of 10 or 50, remember it is always beneficial and smart to dedicate some energy and time to leverage your sales operations and use sales enablement tools that help in dramatically reducing the time spend by your sales teams on mundane admin works, so that your sales reps may find more time to sell, which directly translates to rapid business growth.

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How To Use The Best Sales CRM Software To Segment Customers And Promote Your Brand

In a gist customer segmentation is a powerful strategy whereby you divide your customer base into individual groups that share similar characteristics which can be easily done once you are using any of the best sales CRM software for finding revenue growth. Segmentation of the customers is important because when you try to use the one-size-fits-all approach in your marketing strategies, even the best strategy will come up with mixed results. This happens because while some customers may like one campaign, others may not. Therefore by executing a customer segmentation strategy once you buy the best sales CRM software, you can easily use the tool to divide your customer base into subgroups with similar attributes, after which you can tailor your marketing plans and create contents around those subgroups and personalize your marketing messages to better communicate with different groups of customers for rapid sales and business growth.

What Is Customer Segmentation?

In a gist customer segmentation is a powerful strategy whereby you divide your customer base into individual groups that share similar characteristics which can be easily done once you are using any of the best sales CRM software for finding revenue growth.

The global mobile CRM market will grow 11% to $15 billion worldwide this year. - MarketingDive Click To Tweet

Segmentation of the customers is important because when you try to use the one-size-fits-all approach in your marketing strategies, even the best strategy will come up with mixed results.

This happens because while some customers may like one campaign, others may not.

Therefore by executing a customer segmentation strategy once you buy the best sales CRM software, you can easily use the tool to divide your customer base into subgroups with similar attributes, after which you can tailor your marketing plans and create contents around those subgroups and personalize your marketing messages to better communicate with different groups of customers for rapid sales and business growth.

Now as CRM is a business growth technology that helps in streamlining this workflow and process so that you can reach the leads and customers who are most receptive to your offering(s), here is why combining easy to use CRM software with customer segmentation strategy benefits your brand:

1. Analyze Patterns and Trends

Business CRM software is a tool that collects customer data and stores them in one place for easy reference. Now, since CRM is an important tool for your customer service teams, this lead management software harvests customer data, such as a prospects purchasing behaviors, location, interest and hobbies, age group and more for your marketing staffs, after which the tool can also analyze patterns and trends in this data for providing accurate results needed for proper nurturing of the leads without any guesswork.

2. Determine the Lifetime Value of Your Customers

Once you buy the best sales CRM software and implement it effectively, the application helps the users to create predictive models that aids in determining profitable customer-base based on the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) of the customers.

Using a sales CRM, the users of this business growth technology can help the users to ascertain which segment of their market has the highest CLV and thereafter send marketing materials that resonate with those customers.

Now, since CRM also helps in discovering customers with a low CLV you can use this tool and use the information found in the CRM database of those customers to find methods that can increase their lifetime value with your brand and company.

For example, Facebook allows its users to filter their posts based on age, gender, interest, relationship status, location and more.

Hence using CRM and integrating it with social media tools you can create posts that target the bulk of your low CLV customer-base and reach a cross-section of your demography instantly and even address a specific audience on LinkedIn and other social media websites.

3. Increase Sales

According to certain research conducted by leading global market research organizations, all in one CRM is a software that boosts sales by 30 percent.
Hence, combining easy to use CRM software platforms with customer segmentation strategy can generate even more successful results.

This is because, using this approach you can easily get to the right customer with the right message at the right time, a thing that you just cannot do with generic “one-size-fits-all” marketing strategies.

For example, once you buy the best sales CRM software you can easily target your customers with suggestions on products and services based on their previous purchase histories.

In fact, one of the biggest brands across the globe relies on marketing CRM software solutions to sift through a plethora of customer data, something that marketers are unable to do manually, or by using spreadsheets, for up-selling and cross-selling their offerings.

4. Increase Engagement

For the most part, engaged customers are always more profitable customers for any business. According to research more than 86 percent of buyers will pay for a better CX (Customer Experience), while customers who are totally engaged represent on an average 23 percent of all premium customers for any brand when it comes to profitability, revenue and growth of relationship when compared to average buyers in the marketplace.

Therefore using easy to use CRM as a business growth technology solution for segmenting customers will not only help you to separate your buyer’s based on demography but also find out other common characteristics as per their sales cadence and collective characteristics so that you can engage your customers on a deeper personal level.

Conclusion

Enterprise CRM is a tool that not only provides you with useful insights into your customer’s attitude and behaviors by tracking interactions and collecting sales data, but it can also send powerful marketing material to smaller groups in the CRM database who share similar traits and comparable sales cadence, resulting in increased customer lifetime value and higher rates of engagements.

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Boxes You Must Check Before Adopting A Sales CRM Software For Small Business

The incredible impact that technology has on business growth is fairly recognized now, especially in marketing, support, and sales. However, for this, you have to choose the right business growth technology and tools for your company or you will surely run the risk of it not being used at all. Now, the most popularly used tool for marketing, support, and sales teams is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system because if you buy a sales CRM software for small business it helps SMB organizations to be more productive by working more efficiently and understanding the customer’s experience with your brand that boosts sales and revenue. However, to reap the full benefit of a business CRM solution, your teams must use the software application, even though it is often stated that the employee adoption of CRM is neither easy nor assured be it an enterprise-level CRM solution like Salesforce or other Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by small businesses and startups in the CRM space.

The incredible impact that technology has on business growth is fairly recognized now, especially in marketing, support, and sales.
However, for this, you have to choose the right business growth technology and tools for your company or you will surely run the risk of it not being used at all.
Now, the most popularly used tool for marketing, support, and sales teams is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system because if you buy a sales CRM software for small business it helps SMB organizations to be more productive by working more efficiently and understanding the customer’s experience with your brand that boosts sales and revenue.

43% of CRM customers use fewer than half the features they have on their CRM. - CSO Insights Click To Tweet

However, to reap the full benefit of a business CRM solution, your teams must use the software application, even though it is often stated that the employee adoption of CRM is neither easy nor assured be it an enterprise-level CRM solution like Salesforce or other Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by small businesses and startups in the CRM space.

Therefore, it is always a smoother process if you can understand what your teams (especially sales) need once you purchase a sales CRM software for small business and so here are the four most important qualities your team members will absolutely want to see in a new easy to use CRM tool, since purchasing bad technology is even worse than none, as adopting a wrong technology for your startup or small business can rapidly scale down your business growth.

1. Buy CRM That Automates Your Processes

The best sales CRM software for small business should be both easy to use and automate processes for your sales, marketing, and support teams.
This is because; fancy features that are not essential for your business processes can be not only pretty distracting but it can also make the whole CRM adoption more complicated than it should be for your startup.

Hence, before you buy CRM for your company, think of the bells and whistles (which might seem attractive) if they are absolutely necessary for your business.

Rather, look for features in your best CRM for small business that will save you time and not take it away by complicating your business workflows.

Now, the ability to automate tasks and processes by using functions like Sales Force Automation is the most time-saving qualities of a CRM.

Therefore, buy CRM that is capable of automating your staff’s daily mundane and repetitive tasks.

Moreover, CRM also saves time by automatically pulling all customer data into one place which not only saves efforts but also provides the great benefit of establishing one source of truth about your leads, prospects, and customers.

2. Buy CRM that is user-friendly

We all are aware of the feeling of frustration that happens when you are unable to make out how a piece of software or an application works.
This is because, when something is difficult to use or confusing, we normally tend to quickly work it out or stop working with it if it takes too long to understand.

This same thing even applies to CRM software systems. Since the very moment, a CRM solution starts becoming a source of friction that very moment people also stop using it.

Hence look for a CRM solution that is intuitive, and has a clean design so that it can be easily used by your employees.

According to research, it has been found that salespeople spend more than 60% of their time using various business growth technology and tools and so they just cannot afford to use a CRM that they do not understand.

As an early warning sign check out if your preferred CRM comes with a long training guide, since the less training a CRM system requires, the more likely it is that the software will be easy to use and can be conveniently adopted by your teams.

3. Buy CRM that can be quickly implemented

Some businesses (mostly large enterprises) require a full-time staff member to implement, train, and manage the CRM software platform.
However, for startups and small organizations, this is neither realistic nor necessary with limited capabilities.

Therefore your organization’s best small business CRM software should not be complicated to set up and maintain.

Buy CRM that has an easy implementation process.

Moreover, it is never a great beginning to your team’s CRM experience, if it starts with a lengthy and drawn-out onboarding process.

Hence always buy a CRM with which your teams can get started right away.

4. Buy CRM that integrates with your existing software(s)

Think about all the business growth technology and tools that your teams already use along with the ones that you may also need in the days to come even before you buy your CRM.

It is most essential that you must check your best small business CRM software’s integrity with the tools that you use every day since if it does not, adopting a CRM for your business will only add to your team’s existing workload and that will naturally lead to further frustrations.

Moreover, when you use an all-in-one CRM that does bring in all the data from all your disparate silo software applications, the system helps your employee’s to find a bird’s eye 360-degree view of the information they need about their leads, prospects, and customers in a quick and easy manner.

Takeaway

Therefore to conclude for startups and small businesses, simplicity must be the key driving element behind your CRM software section process, since the less complicated the software is the more likely is it that your employees will understand the system and use it immediately.

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Killer Strategies On Email Customer Engagement Policies That Can Fuel Business Growth

Email marketing is most probably the most popular customer engagement strategy and the most widely used terminology of today’s digital marketing world. Thanks to the rapid swell in internet usage across the globe, this term has become nowadays a familiar word even for ordinary people living around us. In fact, email marketing is the hottest and the most potent trend in the digital marketing field which can make or break any brand’s presence in the marketplace. This is because email marketing when done with the help of an easy to use CRM software, is not only budget-friendly, but it is an effective digital marketing practice, which has undoubtedly become any digital marketer’s weapon of choice to make their brands stand out in the crowd.

Email marketing is most probably the most popular customer engagement strategy and the most widely used terminology of today’s digital marketing world.
Thanks to the rapid swell in internet usage across the globe, this term has become nowadays a familiar word even for ordinary people living around us.
In fact, email marketing is the hottest and the most potent trend in the digital marketing field which can make or break any brand’s presence in the marketplace.

Nearly 60% of organizations increased IT spending in 2020. And it remains the same in 2021. Click To Tweet

This is because email marketing when done with the help of an easy to use CRM software, is not only budget-friendly, but it is an effective digital marketing practice, which has undoubtedly become any digital marketer’s weapon of choice to make their brands stand out in the crowd.

What about- Assurance of Success

For boosting customer engagement of any brand, email marketing as a strategy holds immense importance in a sender’s or user’s life. Nevertheless, this process is not entirely faultless nor reliable. This is because the senders of these emails may need to face some unpleasant experiences at times since recipients of the emails can tend to unsubscribe to the list or change their registered email id or even the email that you send can inadvertently land into the recipient’s spam-box.

Hence, since these paramount challenges can often remain there, as an email marketer, you are required to come up with a spotless email marketing strategy to overcome these trivial yet of consequence hurdles and find success over time.

Build your Email List

Any weathered email marketer well understands why building a potential database of their customers with the help of a business CRM is a critical urgent cry.

Now, if you as an email marketer have a long list of subscribers who are all enthusiastic to know more about your brand and your offerings, it can be a boon for the marketer, as the mindset of the recipients is the ultimate factor for deciding the success in sending the emails to your customer base.

Hence, in other words, the efforts of an email marketing strategy for boosting customer engagement can go in vain overnight, if the recipients of the email are reluctant to open and view through the emails shared by your company.

In fact, a fall in open rate while doing email marketing can not only affect your CTR (Click through Rate) but it will also increase Bounce Rate whereby your overall customer engagement strategy may come to a standstill.

Now to grow your email list, you can use lead magnets and opt-in forms, which are the two most essential elements that work hand-in-hand to help grow and sustain your subscribers list substantially over time.

Time of using Email Marketing

Even though to most in common, email marketing might sound simple, however in reality only the digital marketer understands how hard it can be if the sense of creating perfect timing is found to be missing from their email marketing plans.

This is because as one of the most popular vendors of small business CRM software, we know that a sender of the email must have a clear understanding of when to start sending emails to increase customer engagement activities.

Therefore, here are a few important practices which any email marketer must adhere to while sending their emails which are mentioned below:

  • As personalized mailer contents tend to find more views and thereby customer engagements, try to personalize the communications that you have with your prospects and customers.
  • Since the main motive behind pursuing an email marketing practice is to let people get aware of what kind of offerings that your brand provides to the consumers in the marketplace, hence try to deliver messages in such a manner that it will help to enhance brand awareness among your consumer base.
  • Take out time to invite your email subscribers to provide their personal information once they are receiving your emails, and so brainstorm and come up with unique ideas that can be beneficial to your subscribers, since you will only get your desired information from the consumers if they find your click-bait plans too tempting to resist.
  • Lead nurturing is another important factor for conducting a successful email marketing strategy that boosts customer engagement. Therefore see that your users remain happy with the type of content that you are sending to them (which must be useful and pertinent) that can solve their pain-points and issues.
    Hence, as email marketing can do wonders in relation to your content management strategy, email marketers can use this tool to share relevant assets, case studies and articles to provide a more realistic approach to his or her email marketing skills.

USEFUL EMAIL MARKETING STATISTICS THAT CAN SURPRISE EVERYONE:

  • More than 86 percent of marketing professionals prefer email as their primary mode of communication.
  • A well-researched email copy can fetch more than 47 percent higher CTR.
  • Emails that include emoji(s) fetch higher than 56 percent open rate than any normal emails.
  • More than 60 percent of marketers believe that email marketing when done with an all in one CRM software can bring in more ROI without investing an excess amount on other business growth technologies.

Conclusion

Do you know according to Google there are more than 3.8 billion active users across the globe who uses email to stay in touch with others?

Therefore, you see, it is too simple to understand why email marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies nowadays that can really boost customer engagement without allocating more budgets.

It has been found in research that email generates 3,800 percent ROI in general, and for that, all that a marketer requires is access to an email marketing tool like a marketing CRM and the list of subscribers to make it a success any day.
Additionally, as this same research also states that emails are capable of fetching 40X more traffic in comparison to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook, hence building a proper email marketing strategy can not only boost customer engagement but also increase the turnover of your organization rapidly.

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How To Increase Lead Conversion Rate in Small Businesses Using The Best Lead Management Software

Do you know how your sales teams are winning your prospects and making them your customers? Does your company have a defined process in place to help your teams qualify their leads so that your salespersons can concentrate their resources and time on the most sales-ready leads in the database of your best lead management software? Are you converting enough MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) sent by your marketing teams? We all know lead conversion is the key to revenue and business growth in any organization. Therefore, here are a few best practices that you can follow for increasing the lead conversion rate of your best lead management software and expand your business more sustainably.

Do you know how your sales teams are winning your prospects and making them your customers?

Does your company have a defined process in place to help your teams qualify their leads so that your salespersons can concentrate their resources and time on the most sales-ready leads in the database of your best lead management software?

Are you converting enough MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) sent by your marketing teams?

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you. - Zig Ziglar Click To Tweet

We all know lead conversion is the key to revenue and business growth in any organization.

Therefore, here are a few best practices that you can follow for increasing the lead conversion rate of your best lead management software and expand your business more sustainably.

Publish A Blog

Blogging is an excellent means to build trust as according to an article published in Forbes:

“The fact is that in the world of today you cannot become an authority simply by declaring yourself as one. Customers are more suspicious, and they want to see you prove it. By producing quality information that’s true and reliable in every blog, you are making sure that you can become that authority.”

This is because we are all aware that converting leads lies at the end of the sales cycle. However, to get to that point whereby the leads will find enough interest to buy your offerings, you first need to acquire the trust of your leads. Your leads need to see your business as an authority in your space and find enough trust that you can support them and ensure their success after using your offerings.

Therefore, with the help of blogging, you can easily make your leads and prospect get engaged with your business once you can solidify your reputation as a subject matter expert or an authority in their mind, which will eventually lead to a higher lead conversion rate.

Integrate Your CRM Software With A Marketing Automation Platform

Most of the sales teams today use easy to use CRM software platforms to move opportunities through the sales pipeline and win deals.
A CRM database stores a gigantic amount of information about every leads in your best small business CRM software system, which includes behavioral and demographic data of your leads, prospects, and customers.

Therefore, when you use an MA (Marketing Automation) solution in conjunction with your business CRM platform, you can easily pull all that contact data stored in the CRM database to personalize your messages that you send to your prospective leads.

This is because, once you send highly relevant messages to your prospects rather than sending one-size-fits-all general messages to everyone in the database of your best lead management software it helps you to better engage with your prospects and increases the likelihood of conversion, as you make your personalization based on the interests, past buying behaviors, and social media activities of your leads.

However, to do this you must integrate your marketing CRM with an MA system, and let them share data in real-time, or use an all in one CRM which comes with inbuilt sales, marketing, and customer support automation, on a single platform.

Set Up A Lead Scoring System In Your CRM

Lead scoring is a process that helps you to identify the most prospective and sales-ready leads in your CRM software’s database. Using a ‘point system’ that aids in indicating the value every leads and prospect represents to your small business organization, you can very easily hone in on the sales-readiness of your leads.

Using the lead scoring process, in your best small business CRM software you can award (and also deduct) points to leads for the actions they take like visiting your website, clicking and opening your emails, downloading your contents, and others.
Additionally, you can even award points to your leads for demographic data (like job titles).

Now as the scores accumulate over time, you need to set up a scoring threshold at which a lead should be considered as an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). When any lead cross that predefined threshold, those leads are then passed over to the sales teams for immediate follow-ups.

Doing this activity aids the sales teams to prioritize their outreach to the most sales-ready leads, and not waste their efforts and time on dead-end leads that are not yet ready to make a purchase.

In other words, lead scoring is a process that improves the quality of your leads.

In a study done by TrackVia in 2018, it was found that 42% of businesses experienced a higher lead conversion rate with lead scoring in their small businesses.

However, it must be remembered that your marketing teams must get buy-in from your sales teams to fine-tune your scoring system and consolidate the alignment between the two teams for developing an effective and successful lead scoring process.

Moreover, you are also advised to reevaluate your lead scoring mechanism once every month since if you find that your marketing teams are passing a lot of MQLs to the sales, of which only a few are getting converted, it can be that you are qualifying your leads to soon. In this case, you must increase the MQL threshold score in your scoring mechanism and fine-tune your lead conversion mapping processes.

Run Lead Generation And Nurturing Campaigns

In order to convert leads, you must primarily generate leads. You can generate leads in many ways, right from using social media to making use of email drip campaigns or even use free lead generation software which you can find in certain lead management software tools.

Now, once you generate new leads, and store them in your CRM platform’s database, you need to nurture the leads through the sales pipeline with a series of touchpoints that will move the leads closer to conversion.

Set Up Killer Landing Pages

As your leads move through the sales pipeline, you need to find a means to capture more information about the leads which will help to increase their engagement with your business over time.

Irrespective of whether you are using an enterprise-level, highly expensive and robust CRM like Salesforce or mostly used by small businesses and startups a Salesforce Alternative CRM software, one of the most effective ways to do this is by creating simple landing pages, with only one objective, to encourage your leads to take an action like register for a webinar, download specific content, request a demo, and others.

Use examples from peers in your industry; check their format, images, contents, and CTA (Call to Action) buttons for creating killer landing pages.

However, always remember to make it amply clear to the visitors in your landing pages, which action you want them to take, how they should take it, and what they will receive in exchange for sharing their personal information with your brand.

When done rightly, using an effective CTA can significantly increase your lead conversion rate.

Incorporate Data Verification

Typically, all landing pages will have forms to collect information about the prospects to store them in the CRM database.

Now, it is also most often found that many people will provide you with false information, like fake email id, or phony mobile numbers to receive your offers.

To avoid this include data verification measures in your lead generation forms, like using reCAPTCHA, and other data verification processes to reduce the accumulation of fake leads in your database, and increase the ability of your sales teams to qualify high-quality leads in the CRM system.

Use Social Monitoring To Find Brand Advocates

Using social CRM which is also known as SCRM software you can practice social listening and social monitoring which will help you to find instant alerts when someone mentions your brand or offerings on the social media platforms.

Therefore, if you find someone speaking positively about your organization or brand and are happy about your products or services, reach out to them to demonstrate your appreciation.

Treating these people with respect and catering to their needs can help you to find brand advocates, those who can be super helpful in promoting your brand and increase conversion rates.

According to a survey done by Nielsen and Forrester Research, it has been found that:

“92% of consumers trust recommendations from brand advocates while only 18% of consumers trust recommendations from industry influencers.”

Routinely Measure Your Lead Conversion Ratio

Routinely measuring your lead conversion ratio aids in keeping track of your efforts. The lead conversion ratio is most essentially the ratio of the number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) that your sales teams have converted to customers over a specific period of time.

Therefore, create and keep a monthly scorecard that can help in tracking these metrics from your easy to use CRM. This is because; maintain insights on how well your lead scoring process is working will aid you to make data-driven decisions, and also find which processes are working and what is broken in the lead conversion workflow.

Takeaway

Lead conversion is what allows you to grow your business. However, you need to carefully plan and execute various tactics to increase your conversion rates.

Therefore, if you are running a small business following the above-stated points and using the best lead management software (which integrates MA and an easy to use CRM), will not only help you automate your lead conversion processes but also aid in streamlining your efforts for rapid business growth.

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Why You Most Essentially Need An All In One CRM Tool For Your Work From Home Businesses

Maybe you have always been a supporter of remoter working. Or maybe your business has recently made the switch because of social-distancing measures bought by this COVID-19 Pandemic in recent times. Whatever be it, either way, your business is now in a situation where your teams are split up in different locations and are connected only by the Internet. Now, most businesses have a question once they go into work-from-home operations: Will remote working affect the team’s productivity and impact their business in a negative way? Do not worry as one of the most popular vendors all in one CRM in the Salesforce Alternative CRM field, let us ease your mind before showing you the best tools that are needed for your job.

Maybe you have always been a supporter of remoter working. Or maybe your business has recently made the switch because of social-distancing measures bought by this COVID-19 Pandemic in recent times.
Whatever be it, either way, your business is now in a situation where your teams are split up in different locations and are connected only by the Internet.
Now, most businesses have a question once they go into work-from-home operations: Will remote working affect the team’s productivity and impact their business in a negative way?
Do not worry as one of the most popular vendors all in one CRM in the Salesforce Alternative CRM field, let us ease your mind before showing you the best tools that are needed for your job.

32% of CRM users belong to the service industry, followed by IT at 13% and manufacturing companies also at 13% - Selecthub Click To Tweet

Can I Run A Successful Business Working From Home?

Now the answer to this question is an easy one as all the signs points towards a resounding yes.

In fact, several studies that have been recently done on remote working highlights how this could actually boost productivity, as it has been illustrated in the survey report presented by FlexJobs Corp., a company which has helped thousands to find the best remote work from their homes:

  • More than 85 percent of businesses say that flexible working improves productivity.
  • More than 77 percent of businesses say that permitting employees to work remote leads to lower operating costs.
  • More than 90 percent of businesses say that a remote and flexible working schedule improves the morale of the employees.
  • More than 65 percent of the respondents in the survey are more productive in the homes than in traditional workplaces.

Hence these statics points out that as employees working from their homes have fewer interruptions and distractions, less commuting and miscellaneous stresses of office politics, and have instead access to a personalized and quiet environment they become more productive while working remotely from their homes rather than from traditional office spaces.

Therefore it is worth noting at this stage that businesses that wish to attract the best talents in the marketplace should absolutely consider remote and flexible working as an option since in the present times 80 percent of candidates in the US job market expressed that they would turn down a job if it did not offer remote working facilities, which makes “work from home” a strong competitive advantage.

The Right Tools For the Job

Of course, remote work is only as good as the people who do it, and the tools that they use. Hence without delving deep into extraneous details, for remote working operations ensure that all your work-from-home employees (and yourself) have access to all the following which include:

  • A fast Internet
  • A good microphone, and webcam for video conferencing
  • Adequate communication software
  • Industry-specific cloud-based software (like an easy to use CRM tool)

In fact, the advantages of using cloud-based all in one CRM software are so many in general, that it is worth examining them further.

ADVANTAGE OF CLOUD-BASED SOFTWARE

Business Continuity With Remote Work

The primary and most obvious benefit is that cloud-based platforms enable remote work. This is because by sharing storage, online tools, and workflows, employees working remotely can easily maintain a good level of productivity from the comfort of their homes via laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other hand-held devices.

Better Peace of Mind

Cloud-computing platforms are designed and created for business continuity and disaster recovery. Hence, while all businesses must have appropriate back-up solutions in case of any data loss, nevertheless this often proves to be an expensive mission for IT departments in establishments of all sizes.

Therefore, with cloud-based technology, like using the best Sales CRM software even small and medium businesses or startups can enjoy a future-proof solution for backup that not only reduces a large expenditure upfront but even save time for the IT teams.

Always Up-to-Date

Traditional in-house IT software solutions also required constant upgrades of hardware and software. Therefore this rip-and-replace approach often proved prohibitively costly, and also overwhelm the IT staff in all businesses every three to five years when systems needed an upgrade.

However, with cloud-based applications like a business CRM tool since their services are hosted entirely by third-party establishments like Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services, and others, third-party companies take care of all the maintenance, bug fixes, and more.

Hence while using a cloud-based app, all you need to do is to click on updates, restart your system, and reap the benefits of the software.

In fact, cloud-based applications make businesses access the very latest business growth technologies available at their fingertips in seconds, irrespective of whether people are doing their jobs from home or from their offices.

Better Integrations

Web-based apps are most often designed to work seamlessly with each other. One great example is the seamless integration between all in one CRM solutions and your Microsoft Office Outlook or QuickBooks Accounting software, which can allow businesses to capture and transfer data directly between these platforms instead of going through a third-party program like Excel.

Save on IT Expenditure

Finally, cloud-based software solutions are the most cost-effective than their traditional setups. We say this because in a recent study done of cloud-based apps across 1300 organizations in the US it was found that 54 percent of these organizations increased their profits through cloud services. Thanks to reduced investments in the purchase of data center, cheaper updates, and fewer expenses for IT equipment or facilities.

ONE SHARED CLOUD-BASED CRM, AND ITS MULTIPLE USES

If you still need to convince yourself about the power of cloud-based software, do consider the following which can drastically reduce the number of tools that you currently use for your business growth.

This is because according to research it has been found that businesses with fewer than 1000 employees run on an average 22 custom applications and so it is always beneficial to centralize operations using an easy to use CRM within one dashboard.

Here are a number of use cases that you can experience once you use a cloud-based easy to use CRM for your business growth.

Seamless coordination between multiple sales teams

Once you use a cloud-based all in one CRM you can synchronize the lead and prospect data in real-time with all members of your sales teams, which reduces errors, data silos and eliminates annoying duplicates from your system which is a bane to businesses.

Faster marketing campaigns

Using a cloud-based business CRM marketers can create personalized campaigns and also track social-media activities in real-time, which helps them share results with their team members immediately so that the campaigns can be adjusted or tweaked to improve targeting.

Increased customer satisfaction

Since cloud-based CRM solutions let your customer service team always have access to fresh data about the customers, this helps in providing better support and more appropriate answers to the customer-facing issues.

Better cross-department cooperation

Even though marketers often have a notorious hands-off approach towards a CRM tool, since they believe CRM is mostly needed by the sales team, nevertheless sharing one dashboard teams from all departments in any organization can create enhanced workflows, boost communications and even provide critical insights that might have otherwise been locked inside data silos.

Takeaway

Businesses that are yet to implement a remote and flexible working policy may find the prospect daunting since it needs close collaboration between employees and executives.

Nevertheless, in the modern time businesses those who resist work-from-home or remote working can put them at a competitive disadvantage, especially with the onset of this global COVID-19 Pandemic, and so must view this mode of working as a must for attracting top-talents and for this use cloud-based applications like an easy to use CRM tool for enjoying a consistent business growth.

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