Tag: CRM Adoption

Sales (do not) hate an easy to use CRM- Yet why they do not want to use it?

If you are deciding on implementing easy to use CRM software for your small or medium business, chances are you had come across several blogs, articles, and statistical reports discussing the various reasons why even the best small and medium business CRM software implementation fails. Nevertheless, easy to use CRM solution is one of the most crowded markets and even a competitive one, with more than 100 vendors in the race. Moreover, Gartner’s prediction on this market being a $36 Billion market in 2017, only prove that Customer Relationship Management solutions are going to continue growing even in the long run, as relationships with the customers will always remain critical to the future of any business.

If you are deciding on implementing easy to use CRM software for your small or medium business, chances are you had come across several blogs, articles, and statistical reports discussing the various reasons why even the best small and medium business CRM software implementation fails.

Some of these myriad reasons are so common, that you can find them in almost all discussions, like:

“We do not want to learn another business tool.”

“CRM is just too complex.”

“Our sales teams just do not want to use it.”

Now, let us be pragmatic. Nobody likes using software applications that are complex, which slows us down, or are difficult to get started with. None has patience in this modern world anymore. Especially salespersons, those who are always pressed for time and therefore perceive the idea of using another tool to manage their work, as an unhappy means to monitor their performance and change their work routine.

91% of SME with over 11 employees now use SaaS CRM platform- BuyerZone Click To Tweet

This is exactly the reason there are so many writing on the Internet that talks about salespeople hating to use even an easy to use CRM.

But do they?

Easy to use CRM solution is one of the most crowded markets and even a competitive one, with more than 100 vendors in the race. Moreover, Gartner’s prediction on this market being a $36 Billion market in 2017, only prove that Customer Relationship Management solutions are going to continue growing even in the long run, as relationships with the customers will always remain critical to the future of any business.

Additionally statistics like the increase in CRM usage from 56% to 74% (an 18% jump) in small and medium businesses, only proves that CRM adoption in SME companies has not slowed down between 2016 and 2017, and shall grow even higher in the years to come.

Dividing these stats even further in terms of the number of staffs in a company it has been noted that 91% of SME with over 11 employees use small and medium business CRM software, while 50% of companies with less than 10 employees even use an easy to use CRM.

These stats are enough to make us think positively that salespeople probably do not actually have an apathy in using CRM software – not anymore.

Not if they use the best small and medium business CRM software, like ConvergeHub that helps sales reps to prospect better, follow their potential opportunities and track sales conversations, never let them miss a task or appointment, and at the end, boost their overall growth and productivity.

Per say using an easy to use CRM software is faster than searching through a pile of old business cards, hunting though fading sticky notes, updating spreadsheets or trying to turning your memory into a high-speed computing system.

Even another statistics on an interesting study done by Gartner shows that a well-implemented small and medium business CRM application can increase a business’s revenue by 41% per salesperson. – that indeed sounds promising.

Why sales reps will not use CRM

The decision to adopt CRM or change an existing customer relationship software usually comes from the top brasses in the company, because there are process and budget involved while implementing it. Most of the time the management of any small or medium business ends up choosing a SaaS CRM that is either well-known in the market, or one that provides insights on the sales trends or helps monitor sales performance to aid the management structure a better sales strategy- an application that is not apparently helpful for any sales rep.

This chosen CRM can involve a lot of customization to get up and running and there can be an even longer learning curve to coach the entire team and get them onboard.

Salespersons do not really have a say in this CRM adoption’s decision-making process, while at the end, all they are forced to do is to update the CRM platform so that the management can generate insightful and complex reports.

The hard fact is that traditional CRMs are dead, in these modern times. For on its own, legacy CRM software neither automate all that much nor does it provides the required context needed for effective selling.

Therefore, ever burdened with targets, sales reps sooner or later start looking for sales productivity tools that can help them make sales. Mostly, these sales tools come with an expensive price tag, and so businesses eventually start spending on multiple sales applications, and at the same time jeopardize sales productivity- by making the sales reps waste their time juggling between these tools.

Just think of, nobody forces salespersons to use phone and emails. Since, sales reps are naturally aware that it aids them to get in contact with their prospects, build connections with their leads, and eventually make sales.

This is exactly how a CRM software should be. Easy to use CRM needs to be smart, provide invaluable insights to the sales reps, which should eventually help the sales team to sell more in less time.

An ideal easy to use CRM should remind the reps of what they should be doing, help them to recall their last conversations with the customers and provide a ‘history’ with the customers, which include:

  • Communication
  • Issues
  • Wins

After all, the secret of success in sales is working with people, and an easy to use CRM software should act as an essential sidekick for the sales team.

So here is what we say to all sales reps out their- if you are using a CRM software that is not helping you to get better at your skills and make more sale, but is just there to measure your tasks, you should never accept it.

Yes, you should never use a CRM, which is not built for you, and hence it is not in a position to help you sell.

Here it leads us to the crucial question, which CRM software should small and medium businesses put their funds on?

Investing your money in the right pot

This is the age of value selling. The customer does not like to be sold, rather they prefer to work with someone who can help them to accomplish their objectives and goals, and, sales is just the result of good help offered to the leads.

Therefore, sales teams always have to remain equipped with the right insights, about their prospect’s expectations and goals, so that they can offer the right help and value to the customers.

Sales need an easy to use CRM system, like ConvergeHub, which is designed with them in mind. A CRM software, which is not only simple but also intuitive. After all, when the sales teams are happy and have the necessary tools to increase their productivity, the management will be happy with profits rolling in.

Here are some factors to look out for when selecting the best small and medium business CRM software:

#1. One with less data entry

Sales reps hate manual data entry. They abhor typing the same email repeatedly, filling up endless forms, updating profiles in multiple systems, saving emails from the inbox folder to CRM and creating reports. According to a Forrester data, sales reps spend just a little over 35.9% of their work hours selling, while the rest is consumed by these menial tasks.

Therefore, your easy to use CRM software should be able to automate most of these time-wasting activities so that the sales reps can focus on what they do best- Sales.

#2. Communication tools within the CRM

Sales and marketing practically live within their system’s inbox. So why not purchase an easy to use CRM software that brings the inbox into the CRM. This way all sales reps will find complete control to access the customer’s data along with all the sales conversations from the CRM, which will aid them in nurturing their prospects more efficiently.

#3. Help add value to conversations

In 2015 in an interesting report published by Forrester, titled “Death of the B2B Salesman” (after Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949), brought to light one useful piece of information- sales reps those who provide value-added information becomes more important to their prospects and customers over time.

Hence, your easy to use CRM should be equipped with advanced features that cater to essential context, which includes:

  • Insights on the customer’s buying process
  • Interaction with your emails
  • Experience with your product or solution

That will make your sales team members better prepared to provide a valuable experience to the prospects and customers on their next sales call.

#4. Easy to get started and use

Save yourself and your sales teams from languishing in utter frustration by choosing a small and medium business CRM that is quick to configure, aids in seamlessly migration of any form of data (without help of a consultant), easily adapts to your existing sales processes, and most essentially one that does not call for endless hours of training.

Always make sure that your easy to use CRM integrates with all your existing tools like project management, customer support, marketing automation and so on.

#5. Scalability

Your business may be very small now, but this not how it is going to stay after a few years. You might triple your sales team, invest substantially more in marketing activities, and generate more leads. Therefore, make sure that you buy a CRM that is scalable in the end and is fit to grow along with your company.

Conclusion

Let us face it. Sales hate changes, which can disrupt their productivity. Hence, for once give the baton to your sales team, by making them a part of your CRM buying decision making process, and let them decide which easy to use CRM would work best for them.

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You can remain sure, once the members of your sales team select a CRM, they would not want to switch to another business management software for a long, long time.

Proven Methods for Using CRM Database Driven Sales with Best Small Business CRM

Whether you engage with your leads through organic search, social media engagements, or your sales team prefer cold calling a list of prospects- there are multiple ways to drive sales through your best small business CRM. However, when we get down to the real fact, it all comes back to data. In fact, making use of data to facilitate sales is on the biggest foolproof methods for collecting leads and closing those deals. To understand how we collect data to boost our CRM database, here is what we do to create a data insight cycle for escalating sales.

Whether you engage with your leads through organic search, social media engagements, or your sales team prefer cold calling a list of prospects- there are multiple ways to drive sales through your best small business CRM.

However, when we get down to the real fact, it all comes back to data. In fact, making use of data to facilitate sales is one of the biggest foolproof methods for collecting leads and closing those deals.

As businesses will continue to increase investments in CRM solutions CRM sector is projected to become a $40 billion industry by the end of 2018- SuperOffice Click To Tweet

To understand how we collect data to boost our CRM database, here is what we do to create a data insight cycle for escalating sales.

Using the data insight cycle, you can not only track your data, but you can also analyze the CRM data in order to gain insight into the buying patterns of your leads. Therefore, this process can be effectively used to inform improvement in marketing, help in product development and even coach your sales team.

Here is a rundown as to how you can gather data to increase the CRM database in your small business CRM and how you can use it for the betterment of your business.

COLLECTING YOUR DATA EFFICIENTLY

Collecting data for your CRM database can be a cumbersome procedure. Fortunately, you can aid to streamline the discovery process by focusing on the metric that you need.

For example, if you want to collect information on what your prospects are willing to pay for. In this case, your sales reps can collect information you need by talking to them that can include:

  • Whether your prospects are willing to pay for quarterly, monthly, or annual payment plans?
  • How much they are willing to pay per seat?
  • If there are any training or implementation services they demand as an addition?
  • What are the values of those services?

However, for everything else you can use an automated system like the one that is found in most small business CRM software, to capture the data, which in turn aids in speeding up the data collection path. This way, sales reps do not have to waste much time on data collection for your CRM database and instead they can focus on their sales processes.

The automated system in your best small business CRM will capture things like:

  • Which industry vertical the prospect or lead is in
  • Their geographical location
  • The source of the lead (email campaign, marketing events, blog, eBook downloads, etc.)
  • Whether the leads came from your affiliates (sales consultant organization, referral partners, etc.)

CRM DATA AS A COACHING MECHANISM

Once you collect your data in your CRM database, you can use it to find trends around your product. You can use it to ponder at what is working, what you can do to improve your sales process, your product, and thereby your business.

For example, the data that you have collected can help you to implement better educational content on your business website. Similarly, the information gathered about your client’s locations can help you to identify trends related to where the leads are coming from, and so assisted with the information collected and analyzed in your CRM database you can better assist your sales team with optimized leads.

You can also use this data to take a look at your sales statics, like how many sales were closed over the month and how you can implement better selling practices. So that, by looking into each sales rep’s performance stats, you can create a better picture of how you can assist your organization and improve as a team.

BOTTOM LINE

To conclude, if you want to remain efficient with the CRM database that you have collected, make sure that it aids in identifying the pain points within your sales process, by recognizing your salespeople’s area of strengths and weaknesses.

CRM database in best small business CRM software solutions is also necessary to identify trends around your clients and make them make better investment decisions, which all lead to a successful closing of a sale.

Therefore, it is needless to say that CRM data is an extremely powerful tool, however, it is also true that you must understand how to use it.

Try ConvergeHub For Free

Now, if you are keen on getting your hands wet and explore more about how data-driven sales work in reality, sign up for a 14 day free trial of our ConvergeHub CRM software, which is one of the best small business CRM platforms in the Customer Relationship Management software industry.

Signs That It Is Time to Switch from Spreadsheets to an Easy To Use CRM Software

Sales are up, your business is doing well, and your customers seem happy. Nevertheless, in the back of your mind, an itch is bothering you recently. It is your sales process. Ever since you have started your business, you have always depended on spreadsheets for managing your sales pipeline. Leads in one spreadsheet while your customers in another. If it is so, let us explore 5 signs in this article, which can show you that whether it is time to get off of your spreadsheet and adopt an easy to use CRM software for your business.

Sales are up, your business is doing well, and your customers seem happy. Nevertheless, in the back of your mind, an itch is bothering you recently. It is your sales process.
Ever since you have started your business, you have always depended on spreadsheets for managing your sales pipeline. Leads in one spreadsheet while your customers in another. You use your spreadsheets instead of an easy to use CRM software, even for tracking projects, tasks, and revenue forecasts.

You always tell yourself as an entrepreneur- “If it is not broken, do not fix it.”

However, sometimes in the back of your mind, you keep on wondering, do you have a broken sales process and somehow just do not know about it.

Signs That It Is Time to Switch from Spreadsheets to an Easy To Use CRM Software Click To Tweet

If it is so, let us explore 5 signs in this article, which can show you that whether it is time to get off of your spreadsheet and adopt an easy to use CRM software for your business.

#1. Your Staffs Perform More Admin Work than Engagement

“Keeping busy” at the office is never a guarantee for success. In fact, wasting too much time on doing wrong things can contraindicate success ratio and subsequently hurt your revenue. You must apparently know this, which can be evident from the growth and escalation of your business.

Nevertheless, as you impartially scrutinize your sales activities, it is possible that you can discover that your team is spending time on erroneous things- at the cost of customer engagements.

Now, if you are like many other companies that use spreadsheets, these administrative tasks are certainly consuming too much of your staff’s workdays:

  • Scrolling through innumerable rows to find the right record
  • Shifting close-won leads to customer tracking sheets
  • Keying in every new leads manually
  • Achieving or deleting closed-lost leads
  • Reformatting column and row sizes
  • De-duplicating overlapping records
  • Groping with chart wizards to find meaningful business intelligence
  • Troubleshooting formatting issues
  • Training new recruits on what to do and what not to do

Evidently, your team has good intentions and they are trying to make your spreadsheet system work, but they are spending less time on selling and more time on other non-sales activities.

Do you want your top sales reps to spend the majority of their time on data entry?

If it is not what you want, it is time that you need to move away from spreadsheets and invest in an easy to use CRM software for managing your customer database in CRM.

#2. Your Records are Always Inaccurate

All businesses rely on timely and accurate information. However as time pass by, do you find that your data is becoming less dependable. Well, although some of this may be a part of natural circumstance in today’s rapidly changing marketplace, but is it that some of this data-reliability issues are caused by your spreadsheet-driven workflow?

Do these common mistakes sound familiar?

Typos: With so many cells to update in so little time, spreadsheets are the breeding grounds for typos.

Accidental Overwrites and Deletions: The moment you share a spreadsheet on your network drive or via the cloud so that your entire team can access it, you expose your data to accidental overwriting and deletions.

Double Record Entry: As it is easy to add new rows to your existing spreadsheet, a double record entry is most common when a lead talks on the same day to two or more members on your sales team.

Issues With Formula: Not all in your organization is a wizard on spreadsheets. Therefore, although you may have built all kinds of display formulas and intricate tabulations on your spreadsheet, as your team adds, appends, and edits on the records, your formulas break, which creates disruption in your workflows.

If you are facing any of these issues, it is time that you should move away from spreadsheets and invest in an easy to use CRM software for managing your customer database in CRM.

#3. It is Painful to View Your Pipeline

In a perfect world, things such as seeing the open opportunities for your top performing products, broken down by city, states, sales representatives, is an easy task. However, the same chore may seem impossible while using a spreadsheet.

If you are wondering why, here are just a few reasons:

Data Overload: Consider your lead tracking spreadsheet, finding the right data point within so many rows and columns of data can seem like more of an effort than it is worth. Data fields that are really needed, such as the probability of sales close, projected close date and product interests of your leads and customers often get lost within a myriad of other data of your prospects stored in the spreadsheet.

New Sales vs. Upsells: Since your customer data is siloed in different spreadsheets, you have to merge multiple data sets to the get the answers that you seek. Spreadsheets can never deliver a 360-degree view of your sales activities, whereby you lose the opportunities of selling to existing clients, which is as important as winning new businesses.

Therefore, if you are facing any of these issues, it is time that you should move away from spreadsheets and invest in an easy to use CRM software for managing your customer database in CRM.

#4. Your Forecast is Always Wrong

No sales forecast is ever perfect, but surely as a business owner, you would always feel nice to get close to your sales forecasts once in a while. However, spreadsheet-based forecasts can be notoriously unreliable and wayward, since this inaccuracy involves accessibility of the spreadsheet itself.

Unlike an easy to use CRM software, which can be most often updated even from your mobile device (if your software has mobile CRM functionality), spreadsheet-based business processes require users to be physically present in an office and use a computer to update the file. Therefore, during busy weeks, several days may pass by, before your reps find time for making such updates.

#5. Everything Just “Feels” Disorganized

Even if you are capable of making your sales spreadsheet work for your business, there is one thing that it definitely cannot do.
Spreadsheets can never organize all your sales collaterals like:

  • Proposals
  • Invoices
  • Quotes
  • Customer business cards
  • Presentation decks
  • Technical drawings
  • Brochures and whitepapers
  • Email histories
  • Spec sheets etc.

Conclusion

Would not it be nice to have everything indexed by customer, prospects, or leads, build links between a contact and all its related correspondences and files?

Would not it be comfortable for your sales reps not to endure the harrowing necessity of digging through countless folders and inboxes but instead use a software that will help them find all the right information at their fingertips?

Try ConvergeHub for Free

If all these are true, then your spreadsheet-based system is definitely not holding up its end of the bargain and it is time to switch to an easy to use CRM software, a cloud-based CRM system like ConvergeHub, which makes it easier to find and organize your important sales information even on the go.

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4 Key Regions Your CRM System Needs to Excel In 2018

Modern CRM solutions like ConvergeHub delivers workflow management, sales and marketing automation, customer support, and other essentials that help provide an end-to-end business platform for managing all aspects of the customer journey. It supports a variety of third-party tools and technology to refine your broader customer engagement ecosystem. However, as these varieties of extensions in the system can be overwhelming when adopting a CRM system for your business, it is best to consider your needs to these 4 critical areas while buying a CRM.

A cumbersome and outdated CRM system typically offers you with just a simple storage of customer data and along with it, a few relevant fields for keeping track of tasks for your sales team to follow up. Most of the times with these fields in the outdated CRMs are overwhelmingly confusing and unstructured in their appearance. In other words, legacy CRM platforms are not at all up to our modern day business standards as they simply put, do not fit the requirements of most people in the modern day organization’s workforce.

The user interface has become mission-critical, even though you might not think of it as an ordinary part of CRM selection. - Paul Greenberg Click To Tweet

Fortunately, not to worry about CRM has come a long way since its inception. Modern CRM platforms deliver consumer-grade system interfaces to render best-in-the class user experiences, which are specifically tailored to the different departments in an organization.

According to many of our customers, they do not even think ConvergeHub as CRM but look at it as a comprehensive business platform to enhance productivity, ROI and customer experience.

Modern CRM is a platform that will do more than just assist businesses to organize their customer data. Per say, today’s Customer Relationship Management technology has grown to become a proactive and integral piece of your customer engagement strategy. A system that apart from just being a central location for storing customer data is also a platform that helps automate data collection, data analysis and more importantly helps find customer insights.

Modern CRM solutions like ConvergeHub delivers workflow management, sales and marketing automation, customer support, and other essentials that help provide an end-to-end business platform for managing all aspects of the customer journey. It supports a variety of third-party tools and technology to refine your broader customer engagement ecosystem.

However, as these varieties of extensions in the system can be overwhelming when adopting a CRM system for your business, it is best to consider your needs to these 4 critical areas while buying a CRM:

#1. Intuitive user experience

The largest challenge with most CRM deployment is user adoption. According to Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research:

It’s important to simplify the focus, to put just the information in front of the user that they need to make the most effective decision or to make the next best action.

Hence simply speaking, if a CRM is not easy to use, it will never help your employees to perform their jobs better, but instead make the tasks more complex and harder to complete and consequentially people will not use it.

Therefore, to streamline your employee’s processes and optimize customer interactions, CRM solutions need to provide different ways to interact with the system. Whereby, you need to purchase a CRM system that helps create different user types and roles, which will allow the users only to view information that is relevant to them for their respective activities. Moreover, insights should be delivered visually whenever it is possible to help the users act decisively. The CRM platform must also have an intuitive interface (for both desktop and mobile) so that your field staffs can find the same experience of using a CRM platform regardless of location or device.

According to Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light:

The user interface has become mission-critical, even though you might not think of it as an ordinary part of CRM selection.

#2. Workflow automation

Any modern day CRM platform must excel at automating processes (whenever possible) for outshining in workflow management. Advanced automation in CRM systems help enforce best practices in an organization, improve performance and productivity indices, and hence reduce cost. Intelligent workflow can deliver unparallel value across the organization in several key areas like:

  • Intelligent call routing facility
  • Predictable cash flow
  • SLA (Service Level Agreement) compliance in the entire service resolution lifecycle of the prospects and customers

#3. Process alignment

Businesses that use CRM as a platform in their organizations are capable of aligning their business processes across their entire organization to manage the following areas of work, which includes:

  • Contact management
  • Order management
  • Service delivery of goods
  • Claim process management
  • Purchase request management

Enabling workflow in the post-sales processes ensures timely alerts and to enforce other critical parameters around sales, returns, billing and payment and many more purchasing activities.

#4. Platform and built

Modern-day CRM solutions for SMBs are typically SaaS or in other words, Cloud-based. However, if your organization has a team of IT staffs you can also think about CRM vendors who offer hybrid hosting options and freedom of choice on Cloud storage. Moreover, some of the CRM systems are built on open standards, while others use proprietary codes.

Conclusion

Hence, as you evaluate your current CRM system, or even if you are in lookout for a better one, keeping these four areas in your mind will help you for these are critical factors are which that will ultimately affect the value you will be getting out of your CRM  and on your ability to reap a better ROI.

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How to Find Salesforce Alternatives- As Bigger Is Never Always Better For Your Business

Salesforce CRM is a first-rate cloud-based CRM solution, but several businesses are also there those that are not that happy using Salesforce and hence they look for Salesforce alternatives, as- ‘Salesforce is not for everyone.’ So if you are considering replacing Salesforce or just starting out on your search for buying a Customer Relationship Management platform, but is not sure of which one will be the best for your business, it is a good idea to try our several Salesforce competitors available in the CRM marketplace.

Salesforce CRM is a first-rate cloud-based CRM solution, but several businesses are also there those that are not that happy using Salesforce and hence they look for Salesforce alternatives, as- ‘Salesforce is not for everyone.’

The main reasons why small and medium businesses looking for Salesforce alternative are:

  • Cheaper prices
  • More customizability options
  • Simplistic features for easy adoption and learning
  • Ease of use to meet their CRM requirements.

So if you are considering replacing Salesforce or just starting out on your search for buying a Customer Relationship Management platform, but is not sure of which one will be the best for your business, it is a good idea to try our several Salesforce competitors available in the CRM marketplace.

Much like Salesforce, there are also several (practically all) Salesforce alternative CRM that provides a free of cost trial of their services. Some of them even offer a free account. Hence, go ahead, use these risk-free and safe alternatives, and attempt to evaluate as many Salesforce competitors as you like, and then after your search, select the winning CRM that fits your sales and marketing team.

Salesforce CRM holds just 21.1% share of the global Customer Relationship Management software market.- IBM developerWorks (2017) Click To Tweet

Here are some of the parameters that can help you to find the right CRM that you need for your business:

Price

Of course, for all businesses understanding your budget is an important element of any purchase. Moreover, do not always consider the upfront cost, but do your research on the long-term costs versus the benefits that your CRM solution is going to deliver over time. Consider the cost of upgrades, training, and ongoing services, which generally comes out of the same fund allocated for the initial payment. Apart from this, you also need to take into account the cost of software customization, system integration, and the price of additional equipment, like PCs, server or notebooks. Avoid buying a cut-rate Customer Relationship Management application that may suddenly inflate your overall price tag while looking for Salesforce alternatives in the marketplace.

Clearly-Outlined Business Objectives

Before purchasing your CRM, involve your sales, marketing, and customer service departments to provide you a compilation of wish lists and their mandatory requirements so that they can champion and support your decision. In addition to the IT department, you should secure buy-in from one of your C-level executives for your selected CRM platform, so that the person can provide the required capability needed for the yet-to-be-acquired software.

Apart from these, create a checklist of weighted, measured, and prioritized requirements for your CRM software selection, which can act as a benchmark for follow-up analysis of the success of the new software and its return on investment before looking for Salesforce competitors in the marketplace.

Scalability

While finding a CRM for your business always measure the scalability of the software, to ensure that your present choice will not become next year’s lament. You need to understand that you are buying the CRM for helping it to make your business grow, and so the CRM also needs to grow unless you are ready to buy a replacement system a few years down the road.

Ease of Use

Consider the expertise level of your office staffs before purchasing your Salesforce alternative CRM platform. Since, if your chosen CRM software is extremely complex and cumbersome to operate, your employees may shy away from using the software that will at once decrease the software’s value and therefore hit hard on your ROI.

Vendor Strength and Reputation

Scrutinize the reputation of your selected vendors on your short-list. Check into social media networks which give user reviews and independent analysis of CRM software. You can also speak directly to existing customers of your short-listed CRM software and know about the brand’s strength and weaknesses; especially how well the CRM support staffs helps their customers by keeping them in the loop on future developments and updates of the CRM platform.

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Conclusion

Therefore, in a gist, never be in a haste to clinch a new CRM solution. To find your Salesforce alternatives, always carefully consider your objectives, expectations, and requirements and then meticulously plan your purchase to ensure your purchasing decision delivers both savings and improvement in your business’s workflow, by truly living up to its promises and benefits until the end.

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5 Secrets of Marketing and Business Automation with ConvergeHub CRM

The more your business can cultivate leads and succeed in creating long-term relationships even before your prospects are ready to purchase your products or services, the more likely you are to win your lead’s approval and thereby increase your sales pipeline’s conversion rate. To help cultivate and nurture leads to move through the marketing funnel you need marketing and business automation software which helps you to take the tedious work out of connecting with leads as they move through the customer journey.

The more your business can cultivate leads and succeed in creating long-term relationships even before your prospects are ready to purchase your products or services, the more likely you are to win your lead’s approval and thereby increase your sales pipeline’s conversion rate.
To help cultivate and nurture leads to move through the marketing funnel you need marketing and business automation software which helps you to take the tedious work out of connecting with leads as they move through the customer journey. Nevertheless, marketing and business automation should not be dealt with a “set-it-and-forget-it” manner. Since for correct utilization of marketing and business automation you are required to properly setup and maintain the objective of your marketing campaigns to achieve specific objectives and goals.

On average 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation. With more than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology.-Emailmonday Click To Tweet

Let us take a look at 5 secrets of successful marketing and business automation below:

#1.  Prepare and Organize Your CRM

Make sure that you clean your CRM database since it will synchronize with your marketing and business automation software. Hence, if your database has a lot of outdated or duplicate information, you are sure to land up with a bad problem on your hand.  Always go through your CRM database, clean up the names of your contacts, delete duplicate entries, and associate contacts with the right accounts.

#2.  Validate Email Addresses

Another vital step in making business and marketing automation software work for you is to verify all the email addresses in your CRM’s database. For this, you can run all your email addresses through an email verification service and fix the emails those are not approved. In several instances, these are small errors that can be easily fixed (i.e., gmil and gamil to gmail). In other circumstances, you may find many emails those that may no longer be active. So be careful about deleting them before importing your emails into your marketing and business automation platform.

#3. Get Everyone on Board

Before doing your marketing campaigns using business and marketing automation software, address how the software will affect your marketing and sales processes. Will it change the way your leads are presently assigned? Will it take the place of your sales outreach strategies? For this, you need to check out with the other resources in your business, including your IT department, webmaster, marketing and creative team leads, SEO team, and your CRM administrator. Since, to make your business and marketing automation software work most efficiently, you need the help of these teams with tasks such as creating contents, make email authentication, track codes, and integrate the software, if it is a third-party application with your CRM database.

Take to your automation provider if you are not sure with the answers, but answer questions early on, so that you can you can fetch the maximum from your business and marketing automation system.

#4. Test, Analyze and Update

When your business and marketing automation system is up and running, it is necessary that you continue to test and analyze the output of the software. Every aspect of your lead nurturing and marketing campaigns to your lead scoring can be a lot improved when you are aware what results you are expecting to see out of the software. Therefore, by testing, analyzing and updating the results, you can make the necessary corrections and create better strategies for your business growth.

#5. Continue Education

We are sure like most of us; you will not learn everything about business and marketing automation and its best practices in your first few months. Therefore, in order to continue getting the most from your business and marketing automation experience, you must continue to educate you staffs and yourself on the latest updates and best practices and more. There are several places wherefrom you can find this information, which includes forums, webinars, and user groups of the software.

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Conclusion

Business and Marketing automation is a wonderful tool that can easily bring success to your business. We are sure that by following the above tips, you will be well on your way to accomplish a successful business and marketing automation experience.

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Reasons for a Small Business Need of CRM to Survive

Small Business’s Need of CRM or Customer Relationship Management platform enables small and medium business owners to manage operational challenges, such as client attrition, sales decline, misalignment between corporate revenue targets and their salespeople’s commission policy and others. Therefore, if you are a small business owner, there are various ways that a client-tracking tool, can affect your company’s bottom-line. Check out our top 7 tips on why small business needs CRM.

Small Business’s Need of CRM or Customer Relationship Management platform enables small and medium business owners to manage operational challenges, such as client attrition, sales decline, misalignment between corporate revenue targets and their salespeople’s commission policy and others.

Recent studies show that companies with a fully utilized CRM system can increase sales by 29%.- Forbes Click To Tweet

Therefore, if you are a small business owner, there are various ways that a client-tracking tool, can affect your company’s bottom-line.

Check out our top 7 tips on why small business needs CRM:

  1. Be Organized

As a small business owner, you can claim that you are managing your company’s task management systems, business emails, calendar system, but in reality, unless you organize all your information in one system, you are missing the big picture of your business. CRM integrates all these activities and much more in one easily maintainable and managed place, which can help you learn things about your business you never knew before. Hence, understanding the small business’s need of CRM, and being organized will never ever be a detriment to the success of your business.

  1. Client Management

Another most vital reason why small businesses are in need a CRM is that CRM is a tool that provides more visibility into your client base. It helps small business owners to ponder on different strategies and tactics that are needed for formulating better plans and thereby break new grounds for long-term profitability.

  1. Track Profitability

CRM is a tool that can help ease-up the work of your accountants. Once you adopt a CRM like ConvergeHub, you need not worry about tracking your billing processes and instead concentrate on activities like strategizing on product discounts, client returns and shipping costs. Converged CRM platforms provide small businesses with a speedy bookkeeping system and can produce accurate financial reporting, which is a crucial process in the corporate value chain.

  1. Sales Strategy

As an owner of small business, the last thing you must be wanting is to lose income by targeting the wrong customer. Client administration programs, which are the core utility of a CRM, can provide small business owners with extremely valuable intelligence about future sales trends that can aid them to adjust their present corporate sales strategies and drive higher revenues.

  1. Never Lose Your Data

Do you store all your business and client relationship information on your laptop? Then the odds are high that your laptop can be damaged or stolen.  Small business’s need a CRM system helps you to get rid of notepads, calendars, memo-books, and other outdated systems for tracking your data. A web-based or SaaS-based CRM system such as ConvergeHub lets small businesses to protect their data from being lost. With a Cloud-based CRM, as your data remains on the Cloud Server, it guarantees data safety and so provides you a protective cover against data loss.

  1. Statuses Are Important

Are you aware which of your clients are ready for a quick callback and who is not? Knowing which of your prospects are showing interest in your products and services, and which clients are presently on a hold will surely help businesses to improve or modify their sales strategies. A CRM at its most basic level lets you see the statuses of your customers. Small businesses need CRM for every time you make a call, contact the customer or your prospects and leads by email or SMS you can easily update all your customer related information along with their current status in your CRM. This way by mapping your customer journey, you can avoid following up on cold leads and instead mature the hot ones.

  1. You Need Metrics

Do you remember how many successful conversions of your leads-to-customers you had in the past weeks or months? Can you provide a quick data of your conversion ratio or explain the most fruitful method that helped your sales reps to reach your customers? Metrics are critical for the growth of any business. You can always figure out these statistics to some extent using Excel formulas in a spreadsheet, but then again, the odds are high that you may make mistakes while calculating your result. Most people do. CRM software is capable of providing you instant metrics on several aspects of your business and generates reports which are specific to your needs.

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Conclusion

Finally, small business’s need of CRM is highly recommended, as this software is capable of improving an organization’s customer service practices. It helps your support staffs to respond to client’s queries quickly apart from providing insight into customer’s order trends, which ensures that your support staffs never mess up with order related questions from your customers.

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Tips to follow for achieving 100% CRM adoption and engagement

We are all aware that CRM is good for business. In fact, the truth is, while CRM increases sales by 29% (SalesForce), according to Nucleus Research the average ROI of any CRM is $8.71, for every dollar spent on this platform. However, having said that, one fact we cannot choose to ignore, is that not all CRM implementations are successful. The main reason behind lagging implementation of CRM is poor user adoption rate. Employee resistance, insufficiency in funds and time, lack of preparation and planning are certainly other reasons that escalate the poor adoption rate of CRM.

We are all aware that CRM is good for business. In fact, the truth is, while CRM adoption increases sales by 29% (SalesForce), according to Nucleus Research the average ROI of any CRM is $8.71, for every dollar spent on this platform.

Therefore, as cost-cutting measures are the need of the day, in order to survive in businesses companies has no other options but to outperform their competitors without inflating their budgets, which has made CRM more important than ever nowadays.

To improve productivity and fine-tune business processes several small businesses and enterprises have accepted the gaining widespread popularity of CRM for retaining and finding new customers, as cloud-based CRM software applications are pretty simple to use.

However, having said that, one fact we cannot choose to ignore, is that not all CRM implementations are successful.

The main reason behind lagging implementation of CRM is poor user adoption rate.

Employee resistance, insufficiency in funds and time, lack of preparation and planning are certainly other reasons that escalate the poor adoption rate of CRM.

Moreover, as many CRM vendors have done a good job of touting the simplicity of their applications, many customers have taken the user-friendliness of CRM implementation of their Customer Relationship Management platform for granted.

But, just because something looks apparently simple and easy you must not take it for granted. Since, if you do not learn to implement and neglect the best practices, it will almost inevitably lead to a failure in reaping the maximum benefits from your CRM.

For an example, although brushing your teeth is relatively simple, but if you neglect to brush or do it altogether in the wrong way, this can lead to several maladies and even tooth loss.

Similarly, using your CRM software inefficiently or not using it consistently can cause detrimental consequences for your business.

Ineffective use of any CRM may not only lead to failure in follow-up on scheduled tasks and appointments, but it can also mismanage customer relationships, fail to capture important customer data and insights and in severe cases end up with the loss of potential customers in your business.

Here are some of the crucial low adoption rate statistics on CRM:

  • According to CSO Insights, 43% of CRM customers use even lesser than half the features they have in their CRM.
  • According to Really Simple Systems, 4 out of 5 senior executives say that their biggest challenge was getting their staffs to use the CRM consistently.

Hence, before you buy a CRM, remember employees of your business organization may always have different preconceived notions and perspectives about CRM system. While some may love it, others may hate using it too.

Therefore, before most of your employees get reluctant towards CRM, it is best to make them understand the benefits of this software and show them how it will make their work a lot easier every day.

Here are 7 awesome golden tips to make your CRM implementation a success story.

Give value to business needs and requirements

To make your CRM implementation worthwhile for your business, you must not only possess a good understanding of your business but also understand how your business interacts to satisfy your potential customer’s needs. CRM is more than a mere software solution. Rather Customer Relationship Management is a process of dealing with your customers through intelligent communications that call for a holistic approach. CRM consists of people, processes, and technology that combine to manage business relationships with your customers.

Involve employees from the beginning

Your employees are the ones who are going to use your CRM, and so they play the most significant role in successful implementation of your CRM platform. Hence, it is always wise to involve your employees from the very first stage of your CRM implementation itself. Exhibit to them how the new system is going to diminish their workload and make them understand how CRM is going to take their work on the upbeat.

As an additional gesture for early adoption of your CRM, encourage your employees to provide their opinion and feedback on the system. This will not only help in trimming down uncertainties of the software but also help you to acquire necessary support for proper utilization of your CRM system.

Hire a CRM Project Manager

It is always a good idea to get a CRM project manager on board in your company, who will act as a technical ambassador and a problem-solver of your employees in respect to your CRM system. As your CRM project manager is the one who will be responsible for overall implementation and management of your CRM platform, the person must possess good communication and IT skills. It is the project manager whose steps your employees must follow, as he/she will drive the project and also measure the achievement levels of your CRM related goals.

Remain patient and move one-step at a time

Once you buy the software, do not attempt to achieve too many tasks with your CRM at once or implement the customer relationship solution in a haphazard manner. As it is very natural, like many other buyers of CRM you may always find yourself being carried away and find it absolutely exciting to implement the new system which is capable of streamlining all your business processes but don’t forget all complex projects needs to be broken down into manageable and measurable phases with achievable goals. Hence, for successful implementation of your CRM, go slow with the platform and implement the software without hurrying, one-step at a time.

Train your employees

As every employee in any organization has different capacity to understand and accept changes, it is always advisable that you must arrange training sessions for all your employees. Also, make sure during the course of the training you must train each department, like marketing, sales, accounts and customer support reps, on their specialized needs. Appropriate training on the CRM’s functionalities often brings forth positive momentum of enthusiasm among the employees, for implementation of the CRM.

Set guidelines for your employees

It is really important that you must lay down guidelines in consultation with your CRM project manager, on what kind of data (as per your company’s goals), your employees should input in the CRM. Since, for proper utilization of your customer relationship software, it is utterly necessary that you must manage all tasks and activities with proper reporting structure as a part of your guidelines.

Make the CRM available anywhere

Last but not the least, in case your sales team also includes sales reps working in the field, you must buy a CRM, which has a mobile application in addition to the web-based version of the platform.

User experience should also be taken into consideration while implementing mobile CRM app. As desktop and mobile environments of any app need to be different, the mobile version of your CRM platform should be intuitive and fast. It should also be data contextual, minimizing keystrokes and automating information as much as possible, to streamline workflow.

It is only when your sales team, see that the CRM helps them to sell, and there are little or no difficulties involved in using the platform, it will escalate the adoption rate of your customer relationship software.

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Takeaway

Remember, CRM adoption is a journey and not a destination. By following the tips and guidelines given above, it will be easy for you to overcome the early hurdles to CRM adoption and make certain that your business reaps the best benefits offered by CRM.

If you have found this article helpful, let us know about your CRM adoption success story in the comments below.