Tag: CLM CRM

Why Use CLM CRM For Implementing A Customer-Centric Strategy For Your SMB

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations. This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach. Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations.  This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach.

When you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

What is CLM in a CRM?

Plainly speaking by the books Customer Lifecycle in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term used that describes the succession of steps a customer goes through when taking into consideration, buying, using, and thereafter upholding their loyalty to a company’s products or services.

Hence, although you and your employees are always pushing yourselves hard to satisfy your customer’s needs, nevertheless being customer-centric requires taking actions, rather than simply making a desire to appear conscientious.

Why is customer-centricity so important?

Keeping buzzwords and business jargon aside, irrespective of whether you are a user of CLM CRM, customer-centricity makes sense in this present digital world.

According to Bill Macaitis, CMO/CRO of Slack:

“The voice of the customer so far has never so strong as it has been now with the growth of social….businesses are increasingly acknowledging the power of word-of-mouth marketing strategies today, and how that starts and ends by providing a great experience for the customers. ”

But how does this translate in the scenarios of our real world? Let us look at the plea from Randy Garutti CEO of Shake Shack to his employees:

“I would like to challenge you to put our company out of its business…because we are so damn generous with what we offer the people who walk in through this door.”

Therefore, his words illustrate a bigger effort to empower his staff to do whatever it takes to build optimal customer experience. Rather it is just not, giving a ladle of custard to an unruly crying kid.

Hence, the big picture is when you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. Customer centricity, therefore, looks at the lifetime value of the customer using different metrics found in CLM CRM, which increases customer satisfaction and reduces churn rate over a period of time.

Common pitfalls of customer-centricity

Now, if acting customer-centric is so easy and understandable, why then it is so challenging?

There are three major challenges in being customer-centric that Forrester sited in their Vendor Landscape report (2015):

Lack of clarity: Not all in an organization understands the definition of the experience that their company is willing to deliver to its customers.

Failure to affect company culture: No organization can implement a customer-centric culture in an organization without embedding it in all parts of the establishment.

Loss of interest: Cultural transformation is not the end goal; rather employees need to practice customer-centricity with unsuppressed intentions and focus that should be a perennial process and not just as a temporary fad.

The biggest issue with customer-centricity is that cannot be classified as a singular project. Since being customer-centric is a collection of all the actions and activities that an organization performs- right from mundane everyday decisions to company-wide initiatives.

How can you implement a customer-centric strategy?

Therefore how can you make the practices in your business reflect all about the customer in this consumer-obsessed market?

So underneath are a few researched tips to make your business more customer-oriented in this present world:

  1. Truthfully consider that the customer always comes first

You cannot fake caring about your customers; you need to employ passionate and genuine employees who want to view your business through your customer’s eyes. For this, you need to make your company’s core value the heart of any onboarding practice, and continually support your commitment to these tenets.

  1. Measure the customer experience

It is important that you must always measure the success of your customer-centric in order to practice what you are preaching to your employees in your organization. Using a CLM CRM software platform, you can gauge your rate of churn and even NPS (Net Promotion Score) as a baseline.

NPS is calculated and measured in one simple and straightforward question: Would you recommend this company to a relative or friend?

  1. Let feedback drive your improvement

Once you are gauging your customer’s experience and going after your customer’s ever-changing desires and needs, let that feedback lead to real changes in your products, services, and your company.

Conclusion

Businesses are not going to shut down this customer-centric trend anytime soon, so what does that signify for consumers and their competitors?

Well, it implies more of digital marketing (including interactive materials like blogs, newsletters, eBooks, and videos), and automated marketing, with the help of business growth technology like CLM CRM software solutions, which can be even found in best small and medium business CRM software platforms for SMBs.

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5 Ways to Step up Loyalty with CLM CRM Software

If you are using a CLM (Customer Lifetime Management) CRM software you must be knowing that any great loyalty program not only makes sure that your customers feel appreciated, but it also boosts revenue generation in the long haul. However, even if you just announce a customer loyalty program for your brand, the program will undoubtedly generate great attention, although the values from such loyalty programs are most often hard to extract and analyze for business growth. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary for businesses to focus on robust loyalty programs using CLM CRM software solutions that will create a lasting impression on the consumers of your offerings.

If you are using a CLM (Customer Lifetime Management) CRM software you must be knowing that any great loyalty program not only makes sure that your customers feel appreciated, but it also boosts revenue generation in the long haul.

However, even if you just announce a customer loyalty program for your brand, the program will undoubtedly generate great attention, although the values from such loyalty programs are most often hard to extract and analyze for business growth.

Therefore, it is absolutely necessary for businesses to focus on robust loyalty programs using CLM CRM software solutions that will create a lasting impression on the consumers of your offerings.

Companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within 3 years of investing in customer experience - Temkin Group Click To Tweet

CLM CRM solutions can not only be used for boosting the success of these loyalty programs but it also helps in increasing customer satisfaction, which can be done by doing the following as explained below:

  1. Identify program goals

Primarily even before you launch a loyalty program you must understand the purpose of launching your program, which can include reasons such as:

  • Entice customers
  • Retain customers
  • Find enhanced wallet share
  • Boost profits
  • Find insights into customer behavior

Although most of these stated goals are related to each other, nevertheless, it is always advised that you must provide your attention to specific goals.

  1. Track customer spending habits

Use an easy to use CRM solution that offers comprehensive tools for accumulating your customer’s data, such as integrating your CLM CRM tool with accounting software, like QuickBooks CRM that offer  QuickBooks CRM integration free. Using integrations like these helps in analyzing the purchase behaviors of your customers and thereafter offer customized discounts and customer schemes according to their spending habits for upselling your offerings.

Hence integrating third party business applications with CLM CRM software present a great way to update brands to assemble customer data from several sources that help in making your loyalty programs a success.

  1. Never shortchange points

Businesses employ several approaches to reward their loyal customers and thereby enhance the company-consumer relationship.
Therefore, always remember to honor your commitments while running a loyalty program.

Avoid putting complex rules and regulations as doing so will for sure scare away your customers and even worse make them feel that the program is all but just another ‘bait’.

Additionally, avoid creating tricky situations where points are awarded to the customers in the loyalty programs but are distributed in such a manner that most customers can never accumulate enough reward points to redeem anything meaningful.

Therefore, remember; if you shortchange customers your loyalty programs are sure to fail.

  1. Profile vendor information

Just like businesses use CLM CRM software to gain insights on the spending habits of the consumers and find out ways they can make use of that information to boosts service delivery which aids in building better relationships between them and their customers, you can do the same for vendors associated with your loyalty program using your CRM solution.

This is because doing this activity will aid you in rightly matching vendors with your customer’s expectations that in turn will help improve the performance of your loyalty programs in the long haul.

  1. Log and analyze interaction history

The interaction history that can be found in the CRM database can offer vital clues about both the customers and the vendors to determine the parameters around the program.

For example, analyzing and tracking interactions will help you to set the right number of loyalty points to be earned for a specific amount of cash spent by the customers for buying your offerings.

Moreover, without a log to monitor the activities of your customers, you will always risk of excluding most of your customers if the information is not properly gathered, or land up in a scenario where your brand many give out too many loyalty points that can eventually eat into the profits of your company when customers redeem them.

Conclusion

Hence, CLM CRM solution not only helps to establish an effective loyalty program, but it also aids in impacting both the customers and the partnering vendors in the program that aids in the growth of your business positively.

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Best Small Business CRM And the 4 Human Point of Contacts in Sales

Now that most of us know what best small business CRM software stands for, let us understand CRM software as a platform that helps businesses to track their customers and manage prospects and leads through the sales pipeline, making selling easier and more effective. While the stellar growth in technology is making this process less hard every day, nevertheless, there is no way to completely automate the human point of contacts that are most essential for effective sales. Therefore, in every step of your sales process, you should be making direct contacts to keep your buyers informed and educate them about your products and services, which builds trust between the brand and its consumers.

Now that most of us know what best small business CRM software stands for, let us understand CRM software as a platform that helps businesses to track their customers and manage prospects and leads through the sales pipeline, making selling easier and more effective.

While the stellar growth in technology is making this process less hard every day, nevertheless, there is no way to completely automate the human point of contacts that are most essential for effective sales. Therefore, in every step of your sales process, you should be making direct contacts to keep your buyers informed and educate them about your products and services, which builds trust between the brand and its consumers.

Hence, what should you be doing exactly to ensure that you are hitting the nail on its head, by striking on these points of contact and help guide the consumers of your brand towards a decision making process?

Brands that provide the best experience throughout the customer journey accomplish higher levels of sales, retention, and customer satisfaction.- McKinsey & Company Click To Tweet

To aid you in refining your efforts, we have outlined the most crucial human point of contacts that should be present in any sales procedure, with subtle hints of different ways you can deepen your customer relationship with potential purchasers of your brand along the way.

Point of Contact #1

The Potential Buyer Makes Contact

Your primary chance to create a connection with the purchaser is during the initial contact.

At this juncture, the purchaser has visited your brand’s website and has expressed an interest in your product, service, or solution. For example, they may have filled out a CTA form for downloading a free resource like a Free Lead Generator Tool or an eBook or may have just contacted you personally with certain questions they have on their minds.

Remember, this is your primary chance to speak to your buyer’s needs and create a good impression in their minds.

Now, it is most pertinent to understand that in most cases this is not the ideal time for pitching your brand since your job now is to find out exactly what your buyers are looking for and how you can help them to satisfy that desired quest.

You can decide to follow up on these prospects directly and if you do, you must try to identify the following:

-How did the purchaser found your website?

-What made them reach out for your product or service?

-What are their problems?

This is the chance for you to better understand your prospective buyer’s wants, needs, and pain points. Where after, you can apprehend if your brand is a fit and suggest ways you can help your customer.

Additionally, you can also direct the prospect to other helpful sales resources like blog posts, videos, case studies, and F&Qs.

You can even enquire if the prospect wants to sign-up to your email list, once they have already availed or signed in for your free offer. This way, you can send them your best offers and keep them engaged with your brand.

Most importantly, you need to be available when your buyer has a question and wants to converse with someone. Therefore, make sure you are always available on your email, phone, and live chat. For this include all these information in your email signature and in your website so that the buyer can retrieve your contact details easily.

Point of Contact #2

The Prospect Is Assessing Your Solution

Once the purchaser is able to understand how your product or service can address their pain-points, they move ahead to the ‘mid-to-later’ stages in the sales funnel, where they most likely evaluate the existing solution with other providers in the market.

Therefore, what can you do to persuade them to choose your brand? What does additional information the purchasers needs to finalize their decisions?

Every single situation, in this case, will be different, but then again the key decision factors culminate to:

  • Does your solution meet the purchaser’s needs?
  • Does your product or service make financial sense?
  • Does buying your proposed solution make them stand more successful?

Here is what you need to do now to address each of these questions:

To answer, “Does your solution meet the purchaser’s needs?” you can-

  • Set up a call or product demo

This will permit you to speak directly with the purchasers and show them how exactly your solution can address their particular needs. Once you set up a call or a product demo, you can ask what your buyer is exactly looking for and then show them just how they can benefit by using your solution, software, product, or services.

  • Invite the purchaser to a webinar

A webinar is an appropriate alternative to a one-on-one product demo, whereby you can invite multiple prospective buyers. This option applies best for demonstrating the key features of your brand and for explaining how the features of your brand can benefit the users.

  • Invite buyers to sign up for a free trial or use a test account

This will empower the prospective purchasers to try your solution on their own. Thereafter, you can follow up on the free trial users of your solution and answer any question that they have on your products or services.

To answer the question “Does your product or service make financial sense?” you can put forward a personalized plan after referring to the contact’s information in your best small business CRM software’s database, which fits the buyer’s budget. This will permit the prospects to perceive the exact cost of your solution and anything other included in the plan.

Moreover, it will also help the prospect to clear up any misunderstandings about the pricings of your offerings.

Lastly, to provide the answer to the question “Does buying your proposed solution make them stand more successful?” you can bring confidence in the proposed buyer’s decision-making process by:

  • Furnishing case studies
  • Furnishing positive customer feedbacks
  • Referring them to a customer who may speak positively of your solution, as a brand advocate of your company

Lastly, in most cases even after all these efforts, you may have to “nudge” the buyer a little, in order to make them choose your brand.  For this, you can continue to follow up your buyers via phone or email and since it is been sometime that the prospect first considered your brand, you may reach out with a new time-bound discount offer, as a last-ditch effort to secure the sale.

Point of Contact #3

After the Purchaser Has Bought Your Solution

 

Congratulations! You have won the sale. The purchaser has decided to go with your brand and buy your solution. Nevertheless, it does not mean that your sales process is over and it is now the right time to move onto the next qualifying lead.

Customer retention should be your next logical step in developing the buyer relationship since it can take anywhere from 5 to 25 times as much in cost and effort to attract new customers than to retain an existing one.

Remember for small businesses, it is more essential to keep existing customers happy, rather than simply pursuing new businesses.

At this point, it is necessary that you must make your recent buyers feel comfortable by making them think that they have made the right decision, which will encourage them to stay with your brand and start building a long-lasting relationship.

Therefore, what are you planning to do to ensure that your customers are satisfied and your buyer retention plans are running smoothly for increasing the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) of your purchasers?

Here are a few golden ideas to keep your buyers happy:

  • Thank the buyer
  • Provide fast delivery
  • Help the purchaser set up your solution
  • Reach out frequently to see if your buyers need help
  • Make sure you’re easily available on all channels
  • Send use cases
  • Send surveys

Now by sending surveys, you can inquire about things such as:

– How satisfied are your buyers with your solution?

-How satisfied are buyers with your support?

-How difficult or easy do your purchasers find your solution to use?

-What unexpected problems your buyers are experiencing after purchasing from your company?

Point of Contact #4

Going Beyond the Initial Purchase (Continuing the Relationship)

The final customer relationship management’s point of contact remains with continuing the relationship over time.

One of the biggest reasons buyers leave because they feel neglected.

Therefore, what can you do to keep your buyers happy in the days, weeks, months, or even years after they made their purchases?

Here are some ideas apart from the others mentioned previously, which you can also implement, such as:

  • Create a loyalty program
  • Set up a referral program
  • Send your buyers freebies
  • Up-sell or cross-sell to your purchasers other products and services

Final Takeaway

Never Lose That “One-on-One” Connection with Your Buyers

Although best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub and others makes our lives easier. Still then, it is most important to maintain that “human-touch” with the buyers, as every buyer is unique and they all have specific wants, needs, and pain-points in their distinctive ways.

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Therefore, we strongly believe that by implementing these ideas listed in the post, you may not only be able to increase the effectiveness of your existing sales processes but by upholding these strategies you can also build stronger and long-lasting potential relationships with the existing consumers of your products and services to help grow your business over time.