Tag: Cloud Based CRM

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, need further persuasions?

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

1. It Nurtures Leads and Increases Sales

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

How?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. It Helps You Understand Your Customers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. It Improves Workflow

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

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

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

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

4. It Escalates Customer Support

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

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

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

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

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

5. It Maximizes Resources

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

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

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

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

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

6. It Enables You to Develop Best Practices

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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How To Manage And Convert Leads Using A Sales Pipeline CRM Software Tool

Leads are the lifeblood of any business across the globe since without them your revenue will eventually dry up and consequentially you will have to shut off the lights of your company. But there is a problem – leads are not easy to come by as a Starbuck’s Latte. Hence in order to cope with it, businesses turn to sales pipeline CRM software solutions to aid companies to manage their leads as lead management is the first step in the customer journey once the leads have established contact with your brand. Now with competition becoming fiercer in most industries and customer’s demands for personalized experiences increasing every day, businesses cannot afford to overlook the need for lead management anymore, an opportunity that can only be found once companies adopt CRM tools like Salesforce or even any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions if they want to remain competitive in their marketplace. So in this article let us take a jaunt into the world of managing your leads which can be also called CRM lead database management which can help in building better customer relationships.

Leads are the lifeblood of any business across the globe since without them your revenue will eventually dry up and consequentially you will have to shut off the lights of your company.
But there is a problem – leads are not easy to come by as a Starbuck’s Latte.
Hence in order to cope with it, businesses turn to sales pipeline CRM software solutions to aid companies to manage their leads as lead management is the first step in the customer journey once the leads have established contact with your brand.

Patronage by loyal customers yields 65 percent of a typical business’ volume - American Management Association Click To Tweet

Now with competition becoming fiercer in most industries and customer’s demands for personalized experiences increasing every day, businesses cannot afford to overlook the need for lead management anymore, an opportunity that can only be found once companies adopt CRM tools like Salesforce or even any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions if they want to remain competitive in their marketplace.

So in this article let us take a jaunt into the world of managing your leads which can be also called CRM lead database management which can help in building better customer relationships.

Now lead management is a technique that focuses on bagging and retaining leads until they become happy and loyal customers with a subscription or purchase or any other business interactions on to the lead’s name.

In other words, lead management with a sales pipeline CRM software helps to guide the leads through a process of qualifying, scoring, and nurturing after which businesses can hand the leads off to their sales reps who are trained to turn them into paying customers.

Now that being said, let us show you some of the most important things that we have learned as one of the most promising vendors of the best small and medium business CRM software about managing sales leads over the last 15 years.

1. Define Qualified Lead

A major disconnect between the staff working in sales and the marketing department in any organization lies in finding a proper definition of a properly qualified lead.
Research suggests that more than even 75 percent of the leads that are passed on to sales departments never get actively worked by the sales reps in most organizations.

This can happen for a plethora of reasons.

We have found one major reason for this disconnect is not being able to define what a truly qualified lead is that can provide business to an organization
Hence for better sales effectiveness, the marketing and sales in an organization need to find a very precise meaning (or rules laid down for measuring engagement) when a suspected contact becomes a definite lead that can be thereafter sent to the sales department, partners, or other channels for nurturing them so that they can convert to a customer.

Now the parameters of this definition of an ideal sales-ready lead vary from company to company, but they generally include the following factors that include:

  • The horizon for purchase
  • Title of the lead
  • The budget of the lead
  • Geography of the lead
  • Size of company (in B2B businesses)
  • Size of the prospected opportunity, and more…

2. Nurture The Leads

Leads that have not fully passed the screen test of a “qualified lead” requires proactive nurturing by the marketers in an organization by using a sales pipeline CRM software.
We have found that most “leads” generated by marketing are doubtlessly not ready to buy based on their first interaction with a company.
Therefore it is best to nurture both suspects and prospects and you will be astonished at how much revenue can be made from nurturing lead in the CRM databases, even with the leads that have been already summarily written off by sales teams.

For this, campaigns need to be run allowing you to touch your prospective leads multiple times throughout the sales process using different sales cadences until they are ready to buy.

Special offers, new product announcements, and promotions are tools that should be set into action to reactive old and long-forgotten leads and even arouse interest in the new ones stored in the sales pipeline CRM software.

Hence nurturing leads is a distinctive sales and marketing skillset that needs to be greatly enhanced, measured, and rewarded appropriately for its successes by the company.

3. Distribute The Leads

According to studies, it is clear that the sales close rate increases phenomenally if you answer back within 12 to 24 hours after a lead initiates contact with your company.

This is because, by responding fast, you truly distinguish your organization and even yourself from other sales reps and your competitors.

For this, the “contact” should not just be an automated email responder, but also a personal phone call from a sales professional.

Obviously, the magnitude of the opportunity and the buying cycle command the persistence and intensity of the follow-up cycle with a lead.

Nevertheless, cloud based CRM systems that are integrated with AI and other cutting-edge business growth technology solutions are great technology in distributing leads quickly and efficiently using round-robin algorithms and more advanced techniques among the right members in the sales team.

4. Track Lead Source

In any business, you need to determine what works and what does not and the only way to know this type of information is to capture the source of the lead.

In an ideal world, this is done using a sales CRM system tool that gets automatically populated when a new contact or lead arrives into the system.

This is because if you are incapable of capturing the genesis or the source of the lead, you have no other way of figuring out what is working to make the lead find out your brand.

Most full-featured sales pipeline CRM software systems have inbuilt reporting systems that aids in understanding the Return on Investment (ROI) on the lead management activities.

Moreover, as CRM systems give you a multitude of ways for capturing and storing leads into the system, your marketing and sales team spends even less time entering and inputting data and more time acting on the stored information in its CRM database.

Additionally, with complete visibility to all leads, there is less chance of multiple people calling the same prospect, which can reduce the efficiency of your sales processes in the long run.

5. Remember Quality Beats Quantity

When it comes to generating new sales, quality definitely supersedes quantity, since significant time can be wasted by organizations and businesses that invest momentous time and energy churning through poor quality leads.

Moreover, the more information you can capture about a prospective lead, the more energized your sales team will be about the lead.

Now this information can be captured in many different ways including things like the search string someone used to get to your website.

This information increases the “quality” of the lead and should be passed to the sales via a simple CRM system.

6. Measure Everything

Lastly, you need to determine what is exactly that you want to measure and the reasons why.

Measurements generally include cost per lead, lead source, cost of acquisition, size of the opportunity, geography, buying cycle, size of the company, and more.

Hence once you determine what you want to measure, you can put the necessary tools like a sales pipeline CRM software in place to capture the information since when you have the right information, you can determine the return on investment of your marketing and sales efforts and focus on the lead generation campaigns that will increase your sales pipeline.

Conclusion

Do not leave money on the table. Invest in CRM database management and take your business to the next level.

There are plenty of easy to use CRM tools to choose from, so take your time when making a decision, ask plenty of questions, and keep your overarching goal in mind, which is – building up a strong customer base.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Hassle-Free Installation

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

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

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

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

  1. Seamless Access

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

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

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

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

  1. Affordable Product

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

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

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

  1. High-Security Levels

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

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

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

  1. Enhanced Compatibility

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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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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Why Should Realtors Use An Easy To Use Real Estate CRM For More Productivity And Growth

First off, adopting an easy to use real estate CRM software will make your business much productive. In fact, according to a study published by Software Advice in 2018, it states that 45 percent of buyers of business CRM software are either in consulting or insurance markets or real estate. Now, what do all these industries have in common? Well, they all need to centralize their contact management system. Actually, any realtor deals with a lot of business-related problems and issues, and so any business growth technology solution that will cut back on their stress and make their life more productive is a plus.

First off, adopting an easy to use real estate CRM software will make your business much productive.

In fact, according to a study published by Software Advice in 2018, it states that 45 percent of buyers of business CRM software are either in consulting or insurance markets or real estate.

Now, what do all these industries have in common?

Well, they all need to centralize their contact management system.

5.34 million existing homes were sold in 2019, according to data from the National Association of Realtors and 682,000 newly constructed homes were sold in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Click To Tweet

Actually, any realtor deals with a lot of business-related problems and issues, and so any business growth technology solution that will cut back on their stress and make their life more productive is a plus.

Hence a CRM solution that is built just for the real estate business can easily help to eliminate some of the daily issues and challenges faced by the realtors which include:

  • Helping agents who have to manage a bulk of information (all at once)
  • Respond to customers, sellers, and landlords who want instant responses to their queries
  • Help agents who are mostly on-the-go and need a cloud-based software solution
  • Help agents who wish to keep in contact with former clients to boost relationships
  • Assist agents who need to quickly identify what is working and what is not without mulling over Excel spreadsheets

For example, a typical day of any realtor will be a whirlwind of customer meetings, catching up with other agents, conducting an inspection of properties and open houses, and scrambling to fulfill other duties like data entry in between it all.

Now one thing is for certain that real estate agents do not have the luxury of sending their working hours in front of their computer, and so keeping on top of paperwork is often a challenge that most realtors face every day.

Hence the advantages of using an easy to use real estate CRM can be a godsend for realtors who are always on-the-move.

In recent times most CRM solutions like Salesforce and all other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms used by SMBs are cloud-based tools.
Therefore once you use a cloud based CRM software as a realtor you will be able to effectively take your office with you and have any relevant data on hand, quickly.

Additionally, once you work in real estate, you will understand the importance of building strong relationships as they can provide you a head start on a new property before it gets listed. Moreover, good relationships also help you calculate a fair price or gauge which properties are hot in the market.

However for all these, you as a builder or a real estate agent need the right information, and that too at the right time, at your fingertips, be that on potential clients, available properties, or neighborhoods, so that you can pass on this information to as many potential customers as possible.

Now, this where again an easy to use real estate CRM software comes into play one that is easily customizable for your specific needs.

No matter what size your real estate agency is, dealing with a barrage of inquiries and listings can be a real drag.

Hence segmenting contacts in your CRM database can save you time, and the right real estate CRM will provide you the tools to do so in your lead capture forms.

Now even though, controlling where a new lead lands in your real estate CRM solution’s sales funnel and what list they will belong to is completely up to you as you can choose whether you want to segment prospective leads by their timeline, their budget, or even their address and zip code.

However, segmenting contacts from the very moment a prospective lead enters your funnel can act as a game-changer for your real estate agency.

For example, let us assume that you have got a property for sale in downtown Chicago and you are wanting to send an invite for an open house. Once you adopt an all in one CRM for real estate in just a few clicks, you will have a list of prospects who are looking to buy in that zip code available to you.

In addition to this following up with prospective house buyers or tenants is key to any realtor’s business growth, but it also takes up a good chunk of a realtor’s day.

Now, not all leads are considered to be of equal value in the real estate marketplace.

But one thing you must as a realtor keep in mind is that every lead in your sales funnel needs to be nurtured, which implies following up with the leads consistently.

An easy to use real estate CRM will permit you to automate all your important follow-ups using templates that are pre-made and comes along with the software, enabling you to keep your own style and tone.

Hence once you schedule your follow-up emails using a CRM tool you are good to go, since your easy to use CRM will not only remind you it will even follow-up for you with your prospects just in time.

Finally, the time has come to close the deal.

As a real estate agent, you have kept the buyer interested and your seller is also happy with how the deal is progressing.

Therefore if you are using a CRM for real estate the right CRM will not only provide you with the ability to respond quickly to additional last-minute inquiries, but it will also help in arranging meetings with the buyer and the seller and track the results of those meetings.

It will make sure that as an agent you are on the right track to conduct a final walkthrough with the prospective buyer of the property before you hand over the keys after signing the contract.

Now in the realty marketplace, the sales do not complete until your customer has also signed the after-sales paperwork, and signing the appropriate paperwork is the most crucial phase of the deal.

Now even though as an agent or a realtor you understand the jargons within those contracts it is most unlikely that the buyer or seller of the property will also understand it and so you must make sure that you take your time to explain to them any portions of the deal or any terms they are unsure about.

Many CRM software solutions are there in the marketplace which can get seamlessly integrated with digital document signing applications like “DocuSign” whereby once all the papers are signed, your easy to use CRM will automatically move the deal to the end of your sales funnel.

Last but not the least, you can even set up an alert in your sales pipeline to remind you when it is the move-in day for the buyers of your properties so that no deal is ever forgotten and you can send the new property owners a move-in gift and also send the seller a gift for a successful sale.

Now even though this might be a small touch, but it can easily set your realty agency apart- so buy an easy to use real estate CRM that can help you to stand out from the crowd in this ever-competitive marketplace.

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How Can You Best Use Customer Data in Your All In One CRM Software For Revenue Growth

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers. The good news is that thanks to technology like all in one CRM software solutions, there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly. Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases, or social media platforms. Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interaction in their journey. However, when customers think that those revelations are going unnoticed, they shift to more engaging brands in the blink of an eye.

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers.
The good news is that thanks to technology like all in one CRM software solutions, there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly.

Mobile access to CRM increases sales force productivity by an average of 14.6% - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases, or social media platforms.
Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interaction in their journey.

However, when customers think that those revelations are going unnoticed, they shift to more engaging brands in the blink of an eye.

Hence failing to listen to the customers has never been more injurious to the success of businesses than what it is now.

Nevertheless, the same technological advancements that permit so much customer interaction also helps smart organizations to manage and act upon the data resulting out of these communications.

Scalable and modern cloud-based storage options like CRM database, computing technologies, intuitive API integrations, and others have created unprecedented opportunities for businesses nowadays to know their customers, decrease the time needed to act upon this knowledge and thereafter finally create more profitable and stronger customer relationships.

Now, the key to doing this is to deploy the right technology and understand how to use it and so you need to understand how data stored in the customer database in CRM can help to build stronger relationships.

Therefore, here are three smart ways for data collection using cloud based CRM systems and its use that can help your business create meaningful and profitable relationships over time.

1. Provide a more complete understanding of customers

Many large organizations have already figured out means to leverage data to build better relationships with customers of their offerings.
Nevertheless, SMBs have been hampered by a paucity of resources to appropriately collect and manage customer-facing information even a few years back in the past.

Now as the tools to generate customer data proliferated with the growth of Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, many SMBs began collecting data only to become overwhelmed with how they can manage and apply that information for their businesses.

However, by centralizing marketing and sales activities in a well-integrated CRM database, you can even easily merge artificial intelligence through CRM integrations and recognize opportunities and intersections for sale, operation, and customer support reps once you are using all in one CRM software for your business growth.

This centralization of information not only allows enhanced personalized and accurate up-selling of products and services but it even aids in better and faster resolution of customer-facing issues that helps in building long-term relationships and trust between businesses and their customers.

2. Eliminate bottlenecks to better customer sales and service

No customers like to reply to the same question(s) times and over again. Conversely, no organization likes to deploy different resources to serve its customers because their internal business process discourages or prevents effective internal communications.

This is exactly where an integrated customer data in a CRM database solves both of these above-stated issues by aiding to eliminate or reduce internal barriers between siloed business responsibilities.

For example, an easy to use CRM software that enables all team members to securely input data make sure that at every step customers are treated with non-redundant and relevant interactions.

With the help of a small business CRM software, SMBs can not only note customer details which includes email communications, key conversations, customer preferences, project requirements, and more, so that every internal touch-points gains a comprehensive and holistic view of the customer, but it also helps to make the employees know their place in the process.

Hence consolidating information about the customers in a business CRM software solution’s database helps in streamlining the delivery of services which results in maintaining appropriate follow-ups when required which makes the customers feel that they have a cohesive team working on their behalf.

3. Encourage long-lasting relationships

Like any relationship, communication is the key for all businesses. However, maintaining an ongoing understanding of your customer’s requirements (and truly relate them with your business) is what helps in nurturing and maintaining long-lasting and meaningful relationships.

Now, customizing features in easy to use CRM software enables businesses to build these more productive (and more profitable) relationships with their customers.

This is because by using all in one CRM you can easily collect and use key data, such as customer interests, and also payment and financial information, if you are using a QuickBooks CRM and other relevant information, with available technologies like CRM and email integrations, mobile CRM apps, web forms, as these tools, ensures that all data in the CRM database are accurately tracked and reported throughout the pipelines.

Hence information in your CRM database not only aids in delivering custom offering(s) to your consumers but also makes them feel like they have a partner they can count on, which results in loyalty, referrals, and most importantly rapid business growth.

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Do Not Overlook These Unique Capabilities To Find The Maximum Benefit From Your CRM

Cloud based CRM software solutions are available nowadays in abundance. In fact, there are so many easy to use CRM solutions in the marketplace that we are spoiled with too many choices. As a matter of fact, there is a wide variety of both proprietary business growth applications and open-source software solutions which can be adapted to accommodate most business models and budgets. In the modern times, cloud based CRM solutions are so common that leading CRM platforms like Salesforce and other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions mostly used by startups and small businesses are now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.

Cloud based CRM software solutions are available nowadays in abundance.
In fact, there are so many easy to use CRM solutions in the marketplace that we are spoiled with too many choices.

As a matter of fact, there is a wide variety of both proprietary business growth applications and open-source software solutions which can be adapted to accommodate most business models and budgets.

Effective sales organizations are 81% more likely to be practicing consistent usage of a CRM or other system of record - Aberdeen Group Click To Tweet

In the modern times, cloud based CRM solutions are so common that leading CRM platforms like Salesforce and other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions mostly used by startups and small businesses are now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.

This is because none can deny the fact easy to use CRM is one of the best and cutting-edge business growth technology and tools that can have a significant impact on sales, marketing and support activities of any business.

However, it has been observed by us as the creator of one of the best CRM for small and medium businesses that not all sales teams make the maximum use of the capabilities of this technology.

Now, even though with all CRM solutions you can seamlessly contact fresh leads, follow-up with the existing ones, check the progress of your deals, with this lead management tool, but CRM as a business growth technology can do much more, right from personalization of customer experience at a granular level to elevating the productivity of customer service channels for your brand and company.

In fact like any other technology solutions in the marketplace CRM software solutions are also only as effectual just as much you use them.

Therefore in this article let us deep dive and look at what capabilities and features are sales professionals still unaware or failing to use in their easy to use CRM software:

  1. SPOT THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS AND TARGET THEM

All leading CRM software applications in the marketplace can be leveraged to segment the customers in the CRM database at a granular level.

Now, by gathering and thereafter analyzing data based on specific subgroups, your sales teams your sales reps will be well-equipped to create highly effective marketing strategies and tactics for revenue growth.

Which are the features you must look for in a customer segmentation tool at a granular level?

  • Highly user-friendly data collection and analytics
  • Seamless and easy integration with shopping cart and quick checkout
  • Flexibility and scalability of the software

Segment Customers As Per Their Engagements

Using a cloud based CRM you can easily zero in on your target audience based on their level of engagement with your brand.

Now CRM is a software that can group these levels according to the user activity on your business website and social media web page, click-through rates and more.

Therefore, whenever any customer fails to engage with your marketing campaigns, CRM helps you to adapt your approach.
For example, if you find a decline in your click-through rates it will tell you if your customers dislike receiving direct emails and so you can reduce the number of emails that you send or shift your focus to other types of marketing outreach.

Segment Customers Based on Previous Purchasing Behavior

Once you buy CRM you can even segment your customers on the basis of the products or services they have purchased from your brand and make product or service recommendations for cross-selling your offerings accordingly.

Moreover, whenever any customer abandons your shopping cart, you can use SFA (Sales Force Automation) in your CRM to automatically send your fence-sitting customers an email to re-engage them.

Additionally, this type of granular segmentation can also be achieved across channels whereby you can target potential customers in your CRM database with relevant ads while they browse through other websites, a marketing approach that will negate the requirement to send emails that are often perceived impersonal by the customers and thereby gets deleted.

Forecast and Retarget Existing Customers

All this information gathered in the CRM database during each of these exercises can be used for forecasting and retargeting your customers.

This is because past behaviors of the customers is an excellent predictor of the future buying patterns and your customer’s response to your campaigns, which is important info that can aid your teams to develop highly personalized and effective campaigns that can get converted at different touch-points.

Hence irrespective of whether you are collecting data from your business website, in-store purchases, customer service departments, make sure to use easy to use CRM to segment these customers based on their shared patterns of activities.

Now, if your information related to your customers is incorrect, it is natural that you will be wasting time and resources creating personalized experiences that will not appeal to the target audience. Therefore, always remember to select the right tools that integrate seamlessly with your cloud based CRM platform (like Zapier, PieSync, and others) that will reduce the amount of time you spend on transferring and analyzing data from multiple end-points and channels for your business growth.

  1. ENHANCE CUSTOMER RETENTION RATES WITH CHATBOTS

In modern times AI (Artificial Intelligence) has come a long way along with Chatbots that is capable of delivering superior and authentic customer service experiences.

Hence nowadays it has become almost necessary to leverage Chatbots, as the differences in the marketplace between competitors are narrowing and thereby buying decisions are dictated by real-time customer experiences.

Smart Algorithms Enhance Customer Service

In modern times as the expectations of the customers are also much higher, hence it is no longer possible to deliver enhanced customer experiences with just human efforts.

Therefore, now adopting intelligent algorithms for smart customer care automation is also another cheap option to keep the conversation going between your brand and your customers in real-time, 24/7.

Smart Algorithms Boost Operations

Chatbot features, when integrated with the right cloud based CRM, can do a lot more than customer service to the consumers of your offerings.

This is because Chatbots can also be used by businesses to increase productivity and operational efficiency for business growth.

Chatbots can remind your employees of scheduled meetings apart from answering simple questions without disturbing your employees with whatever activities they are engaged in.

Find below the key benefits of using a Chatbot for your business:

  • Being available 24/7/365 chatbots enhance your brand’s image
  • Chatbots cuts down on average as much as 30% on the cost of processing customer requests
  • Chatbots are highly effective at first-level filtering of customer requests which in turn improves customer service experience
  • Chatbots appeal to the Millennial(s), as they, in general, prefer self-service options
  • Chatbots reduce operational costs
  1. BETTER ALLOCATE RESOURCES AND INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY

All the data that is generated both externally or internally can be leveraged effectively to better allocate the sales resources of your company.

Use GPS in Your CRM App to Connect in Person

There are several CRM applications that use GPS (Global Positioning System) features that can be leveraged by easy to use CRM to lead your sales reps right to the prospect’s doors, which will not only aid in identifying potential leads in your selected demography, but it will also help provide a map and direction to their locations.

  1. USE GAMIFICATION TO INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY

Modern cloud based CRM software solutions can be even used to create healthy competition within your organization.

For example, your staff-data stored in the CRM can be used to analyze a leaderboard and benchmark performances.

This is because, by leveraging on gamification using your CRM tool you can not only easily boost productivity but also increase sales, and therefore increase your businesses’ bottom line.

Conclusion

Therefore, when all the different features of any modern cloud based CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM are used properly, your entire organization can reap the benefits of this business growth technology, create new revenue models, reduce operational costs, increase sales and thereby boost efficiency of your business for providing world-class customer experience that always promotes rapid revenue growth.

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The Benefits Of Using Customized CRM Over Pre-Built On-Premise CRM Tools

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is an online lead management software and a business strategy, which helps you to manage and keep track of your customers, prospects, leads, and workflows. In other words, it is the best easy to use CRM software that manages a business establishment’s relationship with its potential customers. Companies that stay connected to their customers and thereby increase profitability by streamlining processes using a CRM find this exclusive business growth technology and tool extremely useful for contact management, sales management, productivity and more. The goal of CRM is, therefore, to improve business relationships.

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is an online lead management software and a business strategy, which helps you to manage and keep track of your customers, prospects, leads, and workflows. In other words, it is the best easy to use CRM software that manages a business establishment’s relationship with its potential customers.

Nearly 60% of organizations expect to increase IT spending in 2019. And it remains the same in 2020 -SuperOffice Click To Tweet

Companies that stay connected to their customers and thereby increase profitability by streamlining processes using a CRM find this exclusive business growth technology and tool extremely useful for contact management, sales management, productivity and more. The goal of CRM is, therefore, to improve business relationships.

When multiple streams of data come from the sales teams, marketers, customer service employees, and social media monitoring departments in an organization, easy to use CRM software help to find a clear overview of all your customer’s information in one place, for which CRM database is considered as the key element for increasing the company’s bottom-line and ROI.

This growth generated by easy to use CRM software is achieved by using a simple and customizable dashboard that provides customer statuses, the history of their previous purchases, and outstanding customer service issues and more.

When people talk about what is CRM , they mean any of these three elements that comprise customer relationship management, which are:

CRM as a Technology: Be it a cloud based CRM system or an On-Premise CRM software, this is a technology that people use for interacting between organizations and the user.

CRM as a Strategy: This is a customer relationship management guideline on how relationships with potential prospects, leads, and customers should be maintained to increase the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of the consumers of their offerings.

CRM as a Process: This is a system that businesses adapt to manage their relationship with the customers.

CRM Solutions- Nowadays

Due to web-based interfaces, the most popular easy to used CRM platforms are cloud based CRM software platforms. This solution allows the sales reps to access their leads and customer information from both computers and hand-held mobile devices at any time and from any location across the globe.

This SaaS (Software as a Service) platform is even more user-friendly than the traditional and old CRM application and can aid businesses in making better business decisions, enhance their service, and ensure quality support to the customers.

Reasons for building a customized CRM

Many software like SAP and Oracle offer enterprise-level systems. However, the problem with these software platforms lies in the complicated installation process and prohibitive cost factors, which often proves to be a burden for small and medium-sized businesses.

Lightweight customized easy to use CRM software platforms permit the users to adopt this technology not only in a short time but also at a fraction of the cost, compared to enterprise-level On-Premise CRM systems.

A customized CRM system for your needs

Although in several cases many businesses once they buy CRM use pre-built CRM solutions, however in such a case organization often find that there are many features and functions which may not be relevant for their particular business.

Therefore, while using a pre-built CRM during lead generation and contact management activities the entire process takes more time for people to learn system functions, which in turn lessens sales productivity. Using customized cloud based CRM software lets businesses get exactly what they want without unnecessary errors.

Endnote

Customers play a very important role in all businesses. Irrelevant of what sort of product or services that your business offers, customers are the people who provide direction for your businesses.

Therefore, cloud based CRM software platforms be it enterprise-level CRM solutions like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software platforms mostly used by small businesses and startups help maintain customer data in CRM that aids in finding the desired demands of the customers to bring success for businesses.

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How To Create The Right Strategy Once You Buy CRM For Business Growth

Maintaining a proper relationship with the customers is indeed an important aspect for the growth of any business. Therefore, to achieve certain benchmark for the things you require for your business growth, you need to follow a comprehensive easy to use CRM software strategy, since without it you just cannot maintain the right kind of relationship with your customers and leads, and achieve the goals you desire for your company. There has been a drastic change over the past few decades in the customer relationship, which we are about to discuss in this article below.

Maintaining a proper relationship with the customers is indeed an important aspect for the growth of any business. Therefore, to achieve certain benchmark for the things you require for your business growth , you need to follow a comprehensive easy to use CRM software strategy, since without it you just cannot maintain the right kind of relationship with your customers and leads, and achieve the goals you desire for your company.

23% of B2B CMOs see improving customer experience as a top three objective - Forrester(2019) Click To Tweet

There has been a drastic change over the past few decades in the customer relationship, which we are about to discuss in this article below.

The Makeover in the Nature of Customer Relationship

In the present world ruled by social media, customer relationship has seen a major change in its nature over the last decade or so.
Businesses nowadays over the course of time have realized that there is an ever-increasing opportunity for engagement with the customers through social media platforms that can be utilized effortlessly.

On the other hand, if any customer goes through any bad experience with any product or service, they can also very easily get the facts vocal in the social media to tarnish the image of the brand, which has led businesses to take customer relationship matters seriously.

In fact, the stellar growth of the social media platforms has lead to a massive increase in the interactions between the companies and the customers, as it is the easiest medium in the present times to raise awareness or to share both good and bad experiences online.

Therefore, in order to minimize the damage to customer relationship, businesses are nowadays resolving their customer issues as soon as possible to help redeem their lost reputations and thereafter grow a solid relationship with the consumers of the offerings.

Best CRM Strategy That We Must Follow

  • Set A Definite Goal

When you want to achieve something for your business, the primary thing you need to do is to set up your goals for yourself and your company. Try to visualize where you want to see yourself in the next 2 to 5 years.

Online lead management software or any best small and medium business CRM software is a platform that can easily help you to achieve both your personal and your company’s business goals. However, for the CRM strategy to be effective, you have to identify the goals first and understand what needs to be accomplished, or when you should decide how you must progress with the plan to arrive at your desired objectives.

By far, it is always a better idea to split up your goals into lesser but achievable objectives and at the same time maintain an easily reversible and flexible plan.

  • Always Keep Communicating With Co-Workers

Keeping an effective and constant communication with your co-workers, help in many occasions to resolve several critical issues.

Therefore, use a cloud based CRM software , be it an enterprise-level tool like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM used by SMBs, which is designed to handle a large amount of information and can facilitate communication between various workgroups.

Buy CRM , which ensures that all data is being shared between accounts, sales, marketing, and support departments to help them have a clear idea about the objectives of your company.

Hence, to get your job done, integrate policies and use business growth technology and tools that would benefit your organization in several ways.

  • Target Customers Wisely

If you cannot target your customers better, you may never be able to improve your business revenue. Therefore, in order to become a successful business establishment, you need to target your consumers wisely enough to help generate profits for your company.

Always remember returning customers are more valuable than new customers since they tend to spend more for your company.

Hence, you can use a cloud based CRM system, to identify your valuable customers and target them intelligently, by proper segmentation of such targeted customers, which is also a great strategy for building the right sales cadence for your sales team that can predict revenue growth.

  • Track The Interest Of Your Consumers

Keeping a comprehensive trail of your consumer’s interest is a valuable way for closing sales and wining deals for your company. Therefore, it is most important to analyze the kind of things that your leads, customers, and prospects shares or like across the social media channels for up-selling and cross-selling of your products and services.

The CRM database is the storehouse of customer interests in every stage of the customer journey with your brand.

Hence, synchronize everything in the CRM and revaluating your approaches by identifying weaknesses in your system, since properly evaluating the customer database in the CRM, help to identify the scope of improvement for your organization.

Conclusion

Therefore, now that you know what is CRM software, and how it can help in the implementation of your best CRM strategy and build up stronger relationships with your customers, buy CRM to quick pace your business growth.

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Why Small Businesses Need Cloud Based Business Growth Technology And Tools

In the modern times, you just cannot debate the necessity of easy to use CRM tools for both small, medium-sized, and enterprise-level businesses. This is because Customer Relationship Management software platforms have outgrown to be a robust platform for sustaining optimal customer relationships. Therefore, most businesses have invested in world-class business growth technology platforms to enhance and maintain the efficiency of their CRM systems. In recent times, one of the major emerging trends in easy to use CRM solutions is the use of cloud based CRM software platforms. While there are a lot of debates going around as to whether an organization that has already used on-premise CRM software, should use cloud based CRM platforms, here are some of the key reasons as to why cloud based CRM is so very popular among small and medium-sized business owners across the globe.

In the modern times, you just cannot debate the necessity of easy to use CRM tools for both small, medium-sized, and enterprise-level businesses. This is because Customer Relationship Management software platforms have outgrown to be a robust platform for sustaining optimal customer relationships.
Therefore, most businesses have invested in world-class business growth technology platforms to enhance and maintain the efficiency of their CRM systems.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM. This figure has now increased to 87% - SuperOffice (2018) Click To Tweet

In recent times, one of the major emerging trends in easy to use CRM solutions is the use of cloud based CRM software platforms.
While there are a lot of debates going around as to whether an organization that has already used on-premise CRM software, should use cloud based CRM platforms, here are some of the key reasons as to why cloud based CRM is so very popular among small and medium-sized business owners across the globe.

  1. Easy accessibility

Accessibility is the key to successful customer relationship management. This is because in the modern time sales reps need to access the CRM software wherever and whenever they want. Hence, a platform that allows sales reps to log-in and works from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection, proves to be helpful in critical situations where salespersons must have to make last minute calls to a customer. Hence, cloud based CRM software platforms allow your sales teams to close deals from remote areas and also generate new leads on the go.

  1. Scalability

Cloud based CRM software systems are also extremely flexible while considering the scalability factor of the tool. This is because when you buy CRM that are hosted in the cloud it allow companies to adjust their scope of operation, by either scaling up or down depending on the growth or fall in their businesses. While using a cloud based CRM software organizations can call up the CRM vendor, who can make the adjustments instantly to accommodate any growth or downfall in the data input capacity for the company.

  1. Flexible integrations

Another pertinent reason for small and medium businesses to buy CRM software tools that are cloud based is its ability to accommodate flexible integrations.

For most businesses using cloud based CRM to store their vital customer related information and initiatives, can integrate financial and accounting software, like QuickBooks CRM software, or emails and many other similar business growth technology and tools, that helps in establishing a seamless flow of data in both the applications needed for the growth of the organization.

  1. Allow Collaborations

Cloud based CRM software systems allow its multiple users to work inside one integrated platform without any type of interferences. For example, it permits each member of your sales, marketing, support, and accounts teams to have their own login, whereby it allows the possibility to log on multiple accounts at the same time. This feature of an easy to use cloud based system also offers enhanced security, since it prevents someone unauthorized from stealing any data from the CRM database .

  1. Centralization of information

Gathering information on the prospects, leads, and customers is often an uphill task for both small and medium-sized businesses, which can even be frustrating and time-consuming at times. With a cloud based CRM system, it is easily possible to collect all the customer information from one central location and also, share the information with different members in an organization.

  1. Increase productivity

Since with a cloud based CRM solution your team can work without being tied to an office desk, hence once you buy CRM that are cloud based it helps to increase the rate of productivity in your workplace. Additionally, cloud based CRM software not only allows your teams to track their customers and prospects from anywhere, but it also helps in collecting real-time data and initiating meaningful conversations that increase customer engagements to increase productivity across the board.

  1. Enhanced security

More so, after the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) norms, system security has become one of the most critical factors of any business. As cyber-attacks can always happen on the local systems used by on-premise CRM systems, the level of security offered once you buy CRM platforms that are cloud based are cheaper and more efficient, which reduces some major investments needed for implementing onsite security of the network running in the office.

  1. Hassle-free and quick deployment

In this age of advanced digitalization, it takes only a few minutes to lose a customer. As time is the essence of customer relationship in modern times therefore, sales reps need a business growth technology solution that can allow them to interact with their customers from anywhere, before they change their minds. Cloud based CRM software allows faster execution and deployment of commands regardless of the user’s location, which reduces unnecessary pressure on the IT teams.
In other words, cloud based easy to use CRM systems allows businesses to reduce their time-lag considerable while increasing their rate of quality services which boosts sales and customer experience.

  1. Data backup

Data backup is just another most critical function that usually consumes a lot of resources for most businesses. Given that a CRM database collects and stores a lot of confidential and important information about their leads, prospects, and customers, cloud based CRM allows companies to back up their data and retrieve it easily in case of any unforeseen breach of data, or system breakdowns.

  1. Easy installation

Last but not the least, most easy to use cloud based CRM software solutions can be installed in a matter of hours, which helps in not impeding the day-to-day workflow of small and medium-sized businesses, whereas on-premise CRM software needs few weeks and at times even months for proper adoption and deployment.

Conclusion

Given these following advantages, small businesses should not ignore the impact of a cloud based business growth technology like a cloud based CRM systems, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by startups and small businesses since it is time that companies must overcome the use of outdated legacy customer relationship management technologies and explore effective and financially viable ways to improve their customer relationships.

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What Is Customer Journey And How Does It Accentuate Your Business Growth

The process of buying looks completely different today than what it was a decade ago. Smartphone, online reviews, one-click ordering, social commerce, easy to use CRM technology, and the democratization of the internet- all these have over the course of time revolutionized how modern consumers research, discover, purchase and use products and services of all types nowadays. Now, as a result of all the factors and more mentioned-above in the last few years companies across B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) markets have been investing time and resources on defining ad understanding their customer’s interactions in the context of a journey with their brands over time.

The process of buying looks completely different today than what it was a decade ago.
Smartphone, online reviews, one-click ordering, social commerce, easy to use CRM technology, and the democratization of the internet- all these have over the course of time revolutionized how modern consumers research, discover, purchase and use products and services of all types nowadays.

65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.-Temkin Group Click To Tweet

Now, as a result of all the factors and more mentioned-above in the last few years companies across B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) markets have been investing time and resources on defining ad understanding their customer’s interactions in the context of a journey with their brands over time.

Nonetheless:

How do we define a “customer journey”?
How has it evolved over the last few years?
How does customer journey accentuate and impact our business growth?

Hence, to answer these critical questions let us take a closer look.

Defining The Customer Journey

At face value, as the term suggests “Customer Journey” seems like a catchphrase that can have more than a dozen potential meaning.
However according to Forrester Research a ‘Customer Journey’ is illustrated as:

“The series of interactions between a customer and a company that occur as the customer pursues a specific goal.”

Now customer journey is not as easy and simple as it sounds like it has been explained above.

This is because; given the plethora of information that is available online nowadays, most B2C purchasers do not just walk in into a brick-and-mortar business establishment and write a check on their very first visit.

Identically, B2B buyers do not issue purchase orders without conducting a reasonable amount of research before buying their needs.

This is because, all modern buyers irrespective of whether they are B2B or B2C purchasers know that this age of information has provided them with an upper hand, which is the precise reason as to why businesses need to join their customer’s in their journey with their company- rather than trying to circumvent it as it was in the past.

Understanding The Customer Journey: Goals And Personas

Therefore how can your brand and business begin to adopt a customer journey oriented mentality?

Now before making any drastic changes to your marketing and sales workflows, it is critical to primarily gain a fresh perspective of your customers to find out and evaluate their common goals.

Moreover, it must be also remembered over here that inconsistent and silo data repositories can lead to costly misconceptions about buyer’s behaviors with brands across all industries, as when you are incapable of apprehending who your customers are or what they need, it is practically impossible to completely understand their interactions in the context of a journey with your brand or company.

It is therefore important for marketing and sales leaders to align on two essential concepts “Buyer Goals and Personas” to understand customer journey with your company.

Goals

Not all interactions with your customers involve the exchange of money.
In fact, it is very much possible that most interactions with your customers will be non-transactional by its nature.

For example, with a cloud-based small business CRM software company like ConvergeHub at the highest level customers use this all-in-one easy to use CRM software to achieve their primary goal of tracking and managing their leads, customers, and projects under one roof.
Hence the customer’s journey from primary awareness to purchase and thereafter adoption and use of the CRM consists of countless other non-transactional goals, which are bound to develop, such as:

  • Downgrade or upgrade the current plan
  • Share feature enhancement ideas to make the business tool more useful
  • Participate in training webinars
  • Request added information about new features and integrations
  • Publish rating on user satisfaction on online websites…and more

In other words, the behavior of the customer is largely dictated by their motivation or until the point of flexion- when a customer enters a company’s realm by providing information or completing a transaction, after which the company has more opportunities to maneuver customers through the desired journey.

Therefore, businesses and brands that understand the “why” which lies behind the interactions of the customers at each point are well on their way in perceiving the customer’s journey and hence create a consistent world-class customer experience.

Personas

It is also a fact that no business can understand their customer’s goals without defining who the customer is.
Hence, personas (which are in reality fictitious characters but nevertheless based on actual data) can be highly useful for understanding your customer and their journey.

Now if you are unaware as to how you can develop accurate and detailed personas for your brand, as your frontline sales and support staffs a variety of open-ended questions to foster an in-depth conversation about:

  • Buying cycles and their patterns
  • Common objectives in their sales processes
  • Psychological and demographic considerations for sale
  • Typical pre and post-sales interactions with leads and customers…and more

Moreover incorporating quantitative data from your easy to use CRM is another vital step for supplementing the accuracy of your buyer personas. For this, there are several cloud based CRM platforms that even offer built-in business intelligence dashboards, which can accelerate your persona creation process.

Customer Journey Mapping

Now once you have researched and developed a solid understanding of your brand’s typical personas and goals, it is time to begin customer journey mapping process.

Well, it must be noted over here that mapping the customer’s journey can be a tedious and complex task, especially for businesses that have established lifelong relationships with their buyers.

This is because; just like with any other personal relationships, long term business relationships also expands over time, making it difficult to understand how to start the mapping process.

Since it is but natural to get confused once you have to ‘map’ something that involves hundreds of relationships and an untold number of interactions.

Therefore start your mapping process by asking yourself these questions:

  • When do your personas interact with your brand?

(Discovery, Pre-sales, Sale, Post-sale, support, and others)

  • How do your personas interact with your brand?

(Marketing websites, Review sites, Support portal, Social media, and others)

  • What are the different types of customer interactions?

(EBook downloads, Website visits, Trial requests, Blog comments, Social media comments, Support tickets, and others)

  • Where you will get the data needed for accurate answers to these types of questions?

(Easy to use CRM, Website analytics platforms, Data warehouses, and others)

  • How do all these fit into the context of the journey?

Now as you begin to ask these questions you will soon realize that your idea of finding your brand’s “ideal” customer journey is a farfetched idea that is miles away from reality.

This can be for a number of reasons, like:

Perhaps your digital marketing teams are slow to respond to unsolicited lead inquires.  Or your support team is more responsive to customers who are especially vocal, resulting in prolonged waiting time for customers who are polite.

Nevertheless, do not allow this misalignment to snub you down, as you must always remember that there is no such thing as an unblemished and ‘perfect’ customer journey, especially in today’s world of the self-guided customer journey as Lori Wizdo at Forrester recently pointed out:

“The evolution toward a self-guided journey is changing the role of B2B marketers and sellers, which is why sales and marketing need to better align, share information, and work hard to keep the buyer’s attention throughout the journey.”

Continue The Journey

Hence seek to continuously elevate your brand’s understanding of the customer and strive to structure internal conversations in the context of a journey and thereafter align your teams (relying on data-driven analytics) at every step of the process.

Be sure, in time this approach will surely pay a big return- both for your business and your customers.

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