Tag: CRM Database

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.

How Data In Small Business CRM Can Improve Your Sales Pipeline

One of the greatest advantages of using a small business CRM system is access to a centrally located CRM database related to your leads, prospects, and customers. In fact, more than 75% of CRM users say that CRM system indeed offers enhanced access to customer data. In the beginning, sales reps can be resistant to small business CRM implantation, because using a CRM may seem like a lot of work, which can disrupt their current processes. Nevertheless, having an access to historical CRM data pertaining to sales, such as, contact details, buying patterns of the customers, past orders, implies that the key intelligence from your sales pipeline will always be available to your sales team.

One of the greatest advantages of using a small business CRM system is access to a centrally located CRM database related to your leads, prospects, and customers.

In fact, more than 75% of CRM users say that CRM system indeed offers enhanced access to customer data.

In the beginning, sales reps can be resistant to small business CRM system implementation, because using a CRM may seem like a lot of work, which can disrupt their current processes. Nevertheless, having an access to historical CRM data pertaining to sales, such as, contact details, buying patterns of the customers, past orders, implies that the key intelligence from your sales pipeline will always be available to your sales team.

How Data In Small Business CRM Can Improve Your Sales Pipeline Click To Tweet

This key intelligence found from the CRM database is also important because it improves customer experience and therefore allows your sales team members to follow up on leads and prospects, quickly armed with all relevant information.

Here are 3 ways in which you can use your small business CRM data to improve your sales pipeline:

  1. Lead Nurturing

Your small business CRM keep a record of all transactions that will make your sales reps remain informed about the communications with current and potential prospects. It has been found that business establishments that excel at nurturing of the leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lesser cost and therefore the opportunity to follow up on leads and prospects is crucial for the growth of any business.

However, for success in lead nurturing, some type of lead scoring criterion is by and large needed that allows the sales reps to prioritize leads relying on how hot or likely they are to close, for without lead scoring often a lot of time is wasted by the salespeople as they chase unqualified opportunities.

Therefore, look for the best small business CRM to fit your organization that will help in simplifying the lead prioritization process, particularly by using automation, to gain control of your sales pipeline.

  1. Accurate Sales Forecasting

Not all CRM platforms provide the same functionalities, so discussing with your CRM vendor about your specific requirements is a critical part of the CRM selection process.

When selecting your best small business CRM, choose a system that comes with reliable reporting options along with good analytics that can aid you to predict sales growth, illustrate conversion rates, and help you to get an idea on the prospect’s journey through the sales pipeline.

Customer data from your small and medium business CRM database is more likely to make your sales forecast reliable and accurate.

This is absolutely necessary if you want to motivate your salespersons to reach their optimal yet achievable targets consistently. Your small business CRM system can not only escalate a sales rep’s productivity, but it can also make your sales process more efficient and therefore contribute to the continued growth of your company.

  1. Smarter Working with CRM Integrations

Proper CRM integrations with other third-party software can go a long way in assisting a busy sales team by aiding them to focus on the right thing at the right time. For instance, calendar, mail, and marketing integrations can automate previously complex tasks, eliminating the requirements for manual CRM data entry across multiple software platforms.

It must be remembered, that small business CRM system like ConvergeHub and others, which can operate nicely on mobile devices is also an added advantage for your sales team.

Research indicates that salespersons those who have mobile access to their CRM are 24 % more likely to achieve their annual targets, where remote access to CRM data is the key to their performance.

As for sales reps, having data from the CRM at their fingertips even when they out of the office and on the go, means that they can follow up on time-sensitive leads and thereby stay away from missed opportunities.

The long and short of it?

The access to sales data in real time by using a mobile enabled small business CRM is really valuable for closing leads at the right time, which is why mobile CRM technology and integration capabilities of any Customer Relationship Management software are the most sought after functionality of all best small and medium business CRM systems nowadays.

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

A Dozen Ways to Grow Your CRM Database and Email List

We all know that email marketing is still in vogue and alive. Despite the steady growth of social media marketing and other types of marketing outreach to grow the CRM database, email marketing stands as the bedrock of most marketing strategies used in tandem with online lead management software. However, to build up a powerful email marketing presence, it is necessary to build up a continuously expanding customer database in CRM to expand your email list. Here are some tips that will help you to grow your customer database in CRM easily.

We all know that email marketing is still in vogue and alive. Despite the steady growth of social media marketing and other types of marketing outreach to grow the CRM database, email marketing stands as the bedrock of most marketing strategies used in tandem with online lead management software.

However, to build up a powerful email marketing presence, it is necessary to build up a continuously expanding customer database in CRM to expand your email list.

74% of users said their CRM system gave them improved access to customer data.-Software Advice Click To Tweet

Here are some tips that will help you to grow your customer database in CRM easily:

#1. Have an Opt-In Form

It is really laborious to collect fresh names for your email list if you do not have a way for your prospects to opt into your email distribution system. Therefore, create a simple web form to make it easy for people to sign up. This is the primary necessity of an effective email list management plan.

#2. Keep Your Form Simple

Ask only for names and email addresses- or just the email address if possible. You can collect more information later on after you succeed in engaging them.

#3. Place Your Opt-In Form on Your Site

Place your opt-in form to increase your CRM database around your website, to make it visible in several places. Remember to place it on higher value pages that get the most traffic. Make it a point to make the form easy to see, because few people will search for an opt-in form on their own.

#4. Reassure Subscribers

Write a line on your opt-in page that can reassure your potential subscribers that will not sell their email addresses or send them any spam. This assurance will go a long way in bringing new subscribers as distressful spam emails are so prevalent these days.

#5. Produce a Killer Blog

Write killer blogs with click-bait titles. Since people will always take notice of your publications if you upload a blog that delivers helpful advice covering pertinent topics. The main objective here is to provide insights to your audience that can make their life easier following your suggestions, ideas, and advice.
Always remember to include an option for the readers of your blog to opt into your mailing list at the conclusion of each blog post on your blogging website.
It is imperative that if your blog contents are engaging, your readers will want to sign up and provide you with their email addresses, which will ultimately increase your customer database in CRM.

#6. Write an eBook

Publish an eBook that can educate your readers on any topic of interest in your respective market. Get the eBook with a web form that collects contact information. So that each of your eBook downloads, will provide you a new address and expand the email-marketing database in your online lead management software platform.

#7. Develop a White Paper

If you have required expertise and the capacity to produce a white paper on your products or services, you must do it. Make sure that your white paper presents a solution to any common problem that your prospects or customers are facing. Much like your eBook campaigning strategy, upload the white paper with a lead capture form to find new email addresses for each download.

#8. Reward Them Who Opt-In

Offer a coupon, time-bound discount, or some other form of motivation for opting to your mailing list. You will be really surprised to see how successful even a little incentive can be in return for making people happy with your trivial gifts.

#9. Use Web Pop-Ups

Use an easy to use CRM platform that has marketing automation capabilities (like ConvergeHub) that lets you place web pop-ups on your business website. Use the pop-ups to display your opt-in forms with a simple message telling your website visitors that they can stay tuned and up-to-date with your corporate discounts and what is new happening with your brand by signing up to your mailing list.

#10. Offer Free Demos

Provide your audience with the ability to view a virtual demonstration of your products and services, through your website. Ask them to provide their contact emails in exchange for the demo to enrich your CRM database.

#11. Use Exit Intent Pop-Ups

When any visitor is about to leave your website, make sure that an exit intent pop-up appears and offer a discount or some other form of incentive to the visitor for sticking around. Inform the visitors that all they need to do to receive the offer is provide their name and email address before leaving your website.

#12.  Promote Items of Interest on Social Media

These could be new offerings, discounts, promotions or anything else that is likely to pique the interest of your audience. Share your information on all social channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and others to expand your reach, and of course, let them know that you require their email addresses to take advantage of the offer.

Try ConvergeHub for Free

Takeaway

Lastly, you can also expand your CRM database; by downloading our most popular free application- The ConvergeHub Free Lead Generator Tool, which can help you to captures leads from popular social media sites, email and more.

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

Simple Ways to Build Customer Database in CRM

Businesses rarely start to build Customer Database in CRM software when they should. This means companies seldom start using CRM as soon as they start looking for customers. Therefore, by the time you actually get your CRM software, you have hundreds or maybe thousands of customer records that must be entered into your CRM. Here is a simple way by which you can build your CRM database.

Businesses rarely start to build Customer Database in CRM software when they should. This means companies seldom start using CRM as soon as they start looking for customers.

Therefore, by the time you actually get your CRM software, you have hundreds or maybe thousands of customer records that must be entered into your CRM.

30% of marketers say having disparate data sources is the main reason they cannot glean useful insights from customer - Cyber Sphere Security Click To Tweet

Here is a simple way by which you can build your CRM database:

Primarily, for businesses that are not yet using a CRM, make the spreadsheet the precursor to your CRM software. You new CRM system can replace the poorly maintained spreadsheet by your sales team, but then again, you need your sales team’s help in making the transfer, so help your salespeople to get their spreadsheets in order. Clean duplicate records; purge any images or other embedded filters or files out of the spreadsheets, and sort the columns to match the CRM software’s needs.

All CRM applications like ConvergeHub and others accept multiple formats for creating the Customer Database in CRM, but the spreadsheet is most commonly the first among all other choices. Hence, make the first column in your existing spreadsheet the unique identifier in your CRM. In general, this is the account or the company name. Else, you may also use your contact’s last name as the unique key.

Once you buy a CRM, the software will provide you a sample CRM database import template to follow. As spreadsheets are randomly customizable, none of the spreadsheets can exactly match the database structure provided for creating the Customer Database in CRM. Therefore rearrange the columns in the spreadsheet with the unique key field first, followed by all the remaining fields as instructed in your CRM. This order may be a company name, followed by a street name, street name #2, city, state, zip code, phone number, and company website address. Instruct your sales team members in your organization to arrange their spreadsheet’s columns in that order so that the heading across your existing spreadsheets database matches the CRM fields.

Many CRM applications accept the spreadsheet files in XLSX or XLS formats, while others require you to export the Customer Database in CRM in a text file. So, once you have the required file, go to the Import Data screen in the CRM, choose the file that you need to upload and click on the Upload button for transferring your CRM database.

Always remain prepared: It will not work right the first time. To purge this mess, go back to your spreadsheet, search for all the forbidden characters in the file. Like vertical bar (|), or angle brackets (<>), or double quotation marks or quotations in the file. However, after cleaning and saving the spreadsheet file, remember to keep the original file intact, just in case you need to backtrack further for uploading your CRM database.

Now once you have your hundreds or thousands of new records lodged inside the CRM software, you are just halfway done.

It has been often found that comments from the spreadsheets mostly do not make into the CRM, and even if they do it is utmost necessary that all these information needs to be verified and also cleaned up. The ideal way to get this task done (while building your Customer Database in CRM) is to hire an intern or a part-time data entry person to do this job.

You can always think, why is it necessary to hire outside help that your sales team members can input on their own? There are mainly two reasons for hiring external help.

Primarily, making your salespeople act as typists will affect your sales. Secondly, if your salespeople are forced to do the input themselves, they will add notes to the list of their present customers, meaning hundreds of previous records will never get transferred to your CRM. Hence, it is always worth the cost of hiring an outside typist to transfer all the customer notes from all customers off the spreadsheets into your CRM database.

Try ConvergeHub For Free

Conclusion

Now, that you have learned these simple ways to populate your CRM database, we are confident that it will take less time now to get your CRM database into the best shape possible for your start, as a better start always ascertains better results.

Following these simple steps mentioned above can transform your data into a driver of profits, as it has been often stated by many Customer Relationship Management stalwarts that your CRM is only as good as your database.

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

4 Ways Dirty CRM Database Can Hurt Your Marketing Efforts

Like it or not, are you spending your marketing budget on programs that bring poor or no results at all? Researchers have revealed that on an average 15% of a business’s annual profits are spend (read misspent) owing to bad data residing in their CRM database. And it is not just the money that gets us worried. Dirty data in the CRM database, like duplicate information, often results in erroneous lead scoring. Here are how dirty CRM database is hurting your marketing efforts and what you can do to fix them.

Like it or not, are you spending your marketing budget on programs that bring poor or no results at all?
Researchers have revealed that on an average 15% of a business’s annual profits are spend (read misspent) owing to bad data residing in their CRM database.

And it is not just the money that gets us worried. Dirty data in the CRM database, like duplicate information, often results in erroneous lead scoring. For when scores are shared between duplicate leads, it implies that neither of the records gets a high enough score to proceed down the sales pipeline.

15% of a business’s annual profits are misspent owing to bad data residing in their CRM database as CRM data degrades at a rate of 30% per annum. - Gartner Click To Tweet

Additionally, pitiable marketing results along with time wasted following up with the wrong lead drastically lower marketing and sales productivity, increase CRM’s and other marketing software costs, and finally damages the reputation of the company.

Here are 4 how dirty CRM database is hurting your marketing efforts and what you can do to fix them:

#1. Duplication

Data of the customers are gathered through several sources, which includes tradeshow lists, web forms, webinars or other third party sources.  Hence, duplicates of records end up on most marketing lists.

Cloud-based CRM system and marketing software charges are most often based on the amount of data that is stored in its database. Therefore, retaining too many duplicates in your system inflates the cost of storage. Duplicate records stored in the CRM database also skew performance reports, making it complicated to base critical business decisions on inaccurate results.

The Fix:

  • Boost the performance of your system with CRM database duplication prevention tools.
  • Make sure that the likely places for duplicate entry, like manual data entry and data import, are duly covered.
  • Create a duplicate-free workflow for all teams in your organization, not just for marketing and sales departments in your company.

#2. Lead Scoring

There are several prospects who often use more than one email addresses or interact with your business in different ways (downloads, trail requests, email opens etc.) causing the CRM system or other marketing automation tools to create innumerable duplicates.

Duplicate entries in the CRM database affects lead scoring by:

  • Score sharing between duplicate leads, whereby neither of the leads scores high enough points to qualify either of the leads.
  • By treating each and every email addresses as a unique record in the CRM system, a score actually referring to the same lead can be split between two different emails of the same entity.
  • Shared email addresses, when they are shared between different members of the organization, all the addresses are saved to one unique lead.

The Fix:

  • Assess the quality of your CRM database and persistently track down all new duplicate records in the database.
  • Be thorough in cleaning your bad data and make sure that no duplicate records are left behind on a recurring basis.

#3. Inaccuracy

It has been found that CRM data degrades at a rate of 30% per annum. Hence, remember your CRM database’s quality always changes over time.

Outdated contact information, organizational changes, errors during entry, and also external data sources affects the quality of your existing CRM database.

Bad data unnecessarily stored in the CRM database, escalates storage costs, which results in creating a devastating effect on your marketing plans. This is because; multiple communications with the same prospect or lead and wrong targeting can have a crucial effect on the reputation of your brand.

The Fix:

  • Verify and then enrich all customer data.
  • Verify all third party data sources before adding the contacts or other related information in the CRM database.

#4. Limited Visibility

Most businesses depend on several systems for gathering their customer data, where CRM is just one of these sources marketers use in building the customer profiles that help them in targeting.

To access the customer information across, on-premise, cloud and also third-party systems, marketers need to be capable of finding data easily and quickly, regardless of errors or differences in form (like acronyms, nicknames, or misspellings).

The Fix:

  • Find a 360-degree view of your customers using a Converged CRM (like ConvergeHub) for creating more personalized campaigns resulting in better targeting of your customers.
  • Integrate every customer-based data into a unique workflow.
  • No matter where it resides, make data easy to be located in your sales, marketing, and support teams.

Conclusion

Are your campaign rates dropping?
Evaluate the current state of your CRM database with data quality report of your database from professional CRM data cleaning services in your city.

Try ConvergeHub For Free

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

5 Approaches To Get Your Hands On New Sales-Ready Leads

What is the most effective and best way to generate fresh sales-ready leads? Well, we have spoken to some people over the years that swear by social media, while there are also others that prefer a more traditional approach. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain that like many other sales tactics, the just cannot be one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to lead generation strategy. However, if we are to consider all the answers and reactions that we got from people on what works the best, these would be the most popular top 5 approaches (in no particular order).

What is the most effective and best way to generate fresh sales-ready leads?

Well, we have spoken to some people over the years that swear by social media, while there are also others that prefer a more traditional approach.

Nevertheless, one thing is for certain that like many other sales tactics, the just cannot be one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to lead generation strategy.

ConvergeHub Free Lead Generation tool ranks within 20 Google Chrome extensions in Small Biz Trends website. Click To Tweet

However, if we are to consider all the answers and reactions that we got from people on what works the best, these would be the most popular top 5 approaches (in no particular order).

# 1. Search Marketing

Search engines, more specifically Google, are most often the primary place people go when they seek information. Depending as to where a person is in the sales cycle, they can search for information about any product or service, or they can also look for user feedback and reviews.

Does your brand show up when people search for you? Search marketing is one of the most valuable digital tactics, which can provide you with a plethora of inbound leads.

Search marketing includes Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEM is commonly described as Paid Search or Pay-per-Click (PPC).

For those you are new to search marketing tactics, SEO is more of a long-term strategy, for it takes a long time to establish your brand’s online presence as an SEO-friendly website.  Hence, do not expect your website to show up on the first page of the organic search results by just changing or adding few keywords to your website.

This is where SEM comes into play- as it is a great add-on to leverage your brand’s name in the search results as you continue working on your website’s SEO.

PPC and SEM allow the users to bid on long-tail phrases and keywords that are relevant to your business. Therefore, if someone looks for a keyword that you want to bid on, your brand’s advertisements may show up (depending on a couple of factors) on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) that increases the likelihood of receiving more leads as your target audience finds your products and services online.

#2. Word of Mouth

This remains to be another most effective lead generation strategy for customer acquisition. Do you want to know why? It is simply because people trust their peers and friends more than they can trust an online advertisement or any other marketing collateral developed by the company itself. Moreover, now with the advent of social media, it has become easier than ever to spread the news as to how awesome your product and service is, compared to other brands in the market.

Here are 4 golden points by which you can increase your customer referrals:

  • Offer great support.
  • Treat your customers well and get engaged with them on the social channels like Twitter and Facebook.
  • Always provide your customers with the information they want, not what you like.
  • Create a formal referral program for your brand.

#3. Content Marketing

By content marketing, we do not mean developing junk load sales-y contents that push the online audience to purchase your products and services. Rather by contentment marketing strategy, we mean developing contents that are authentic and helpful for your prospects.

You can always think, “I am not doing business to circulate valuable information for free”. Maybe you are right. However, in today’s world earning the trust and respect of your consumers is an utterly powerful thing that pays its dividends in the end.

According to IDG and Google, B2B consumers go through anywhere between 10 to 14 pieces of content (on an average), before making any purchase. Therefore, developing the right kind of content that can help guide your consumers towards educating them for making a perfect purchase decision can be the crucial difference between getting a sale, or losing the opportunity to your competitors.

Some of the most useful content types that help inform buyers to make their purchase decisions are:

  • Blogs
  • Whitepapers
  • How-to videos
  • eBooks
  • Webinars
  • Product demos
  • Case studies

#4. Event Networking

Attending, conferences, industry events, and trade-shows are all excellent ways to generate leads. Even better than just visiting these networking events, actually speaking in such events brings in results that are more positive. There are many events where you have “calls-for-speakers” and there you can propose someone, as well as yourself, to speak on a topic of your liking to the conference attendees. Hence, this can be an excellent way to build thought leadership and therefore gain visibility for your brand.

#5. Social Media

Before you land on social media platforms for generating leads, remember not every social media channel are right for all businesses. For example, if you are an owner of a local restaurant and is looking for right patrons, you may find more success leveraging social media channel like Facebook rather than LinkedIn. But, if you are into B2B marketing, LinkedIn may prove to be a more valuable channel to get your brand in front of the relevant audience.

Here are some tips that can help you to extend your reach on LinkedIn and other social media websites:

  • Publish content:

LinkedIn nowadays allows users to publish their contents, such as blogs and articles on the LinkedIn website. Hence, when your posts find traction among your networks, you may even be lucky enough to earn more visibility on the social media website, which can eventually help you in generating new leads.

ConvergeHub Free Lead Generation tool ranks within 20 Google Chrome extensions by SmallBizTrends website.

Actually, this absolutely free “social lead generator” captures contacts from the popular social channels including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus and more.

Hence, this free lead generator tool helps you to add captured contacts to your CRM database with just one click for easy prospecting.

Here is how it works:

-Primarily navigate to Chrome Extensions in your browser. (You can also access this by clicking on the Chrome menu on the top right side of the Omnibox, hovering over ‘More Tools’ and selecting ‘Get more Extensions’.)

-In the Chrome Web Store, type ConvergeHub Lead Generator in the Search bar.

-Once you find the ConvergeHub Lead Generator, click on Add to Chrome and complete the installation.

– After successful installation of the extension, which appears on the side of the address bar, open any of the social media sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus) and view the desired profile that you want to target for your lead.

-Once the profile is open, clicking on the lead generator will extract all the necessary information of that profile and save it in the browser.

-You can even edit the saved data on the lead generator window by typing additional information regarding the lead.

-If you are a user of ConvergeHub CRM, you can save the information automatically into the CRM database for email campaigning and nurture of the lead.

-If not, you can copy the information from the lead capture form and manually enter the data into your CRM’s database.

Conclusion:

Of course, this is not the end or an all-inclusive list of lead generation processes. Here are some other tactics, which you can also use for harvesting your leads:

  • Reseller programs
  • Affiliate marketing
  • PR/media relations
  • Guest blogging

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!

Free Lead Generation Tool for CRM Integration of Social Media

According to Google, Facebook is quickly closing in on its 2 billion users mark and it had 1.86 billion users per month at of the end of 2016. LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft and Twitter has 500 million and 330 million users per month respectively, as of the third quarter of 2017. This ever-increasing multitude of potential buyers presents the small and medium business community with easy opportunities to score. Hence, we can easily say that the CRM integration of Social Media is one the decisive factors that presently determines how much revenue and growth your business will experience in the days to come.

According to Google, Facebook is quickly closing in on its 2 billion users mark and it had 1.86 billion users per month at of the end of 2016. LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft and Twitter has 500 million and 330 million users per month respectively, as of the third quarter of 2017. This ever-increasing multitude of potential buyers presents the small and medium business community with easy opportunities to score. Hence, we can easily say that the CRM integration of Social Media is one the decisive factors that presently determines how much revenue and growth your business will experience in the days to come.

The unique thing that social media platforms offer to its users is an arena to boost their sales in a clever and restrained way- by hearing rather than talking and answering rather than hawking and pitching their products and services directly on these platforms.

ConvergeHub allow single click accumulation of information through personalized lead capture application with Free Lead Generator Tool. Click To Tweet

Is integration to social media important for a CRM?

In the recent times, we have witnessed several CRM giants like Oracle and Salesforce acquiring social media startups. While Oracle (ORCL) purchased Vitrue, Salesforce (SFDC), another leading vendor of CRM technology bought Radian6 and Buddy Media, which are sentiment tracking and social media performance evaluation companies.

Therefore, not only big organizations have realized the importance of CRM integration of Social Media, but also for small and medium businesses, having a social media presence is vital for several reasons.

People nowadays like to understand more about the products, services, or brands they use and the companies they purchase their stuff from. In a recent study conducted by Forrester, it has been noted that apart from checking out on the websites, buyers also prefer to look into the internet to search on social media sites about their vendors online.

Social media platforms open up new vistas of interaction between the companies and their customers, be it in terms of lead generation, publicity or in the field of customer support. In a gist, businesses use social media based CRM for reaching out a wider array of audiences in lesser time as compared to brands that use traditional CRM systems for their business needs.

Traditional vs. Social CRM

Customer Relationship Management software primarily comprises of three basic elements: Marketing, Sales, and Post-sales Customer Support. The basic purpose of CRM is to move the leads, prospects, and customers through a pipeline, repeatedly. Hence, traditional CRM essentially focused on data that the software collects from its leads and customers, as all decisions or strategies regarding marketing, sales and support activities are based on this data.

However, CRM integration of Social Media has recently changed the whole paradigm. In the recent times, the crucial point of an organization’s operation is the customer itself. Hence, instead of accumulating data by pushing messages or marketing to the customers, business establishments nowadays collaborate directly with their customers to solve the customer’s issues, which empower the companies to build stronger customer relationships that make an ideal selling scenario for small and medium businesses.

The alliance between email marketing and social media

To help almost any type of businesses be it a large or small, to achieve its goals, email marketing, and social media makes a killer combination.

With the advent of new technology, brands can share their email campaigns on social media platforms in order to reach out even to people who are not on their mailing list. Additionally, this also increases the chance of more people signing up for their emails. By encouraging people to share the emails with their followers and fans, companies can widen their reach of reaching out indirectly. Apart from this, there is also another option of adding social buttons on your website and app, through which people can like or follow your brand’s social page.

How does it work?

Different CRM has different approaches when it comes to CRM integration of Social Media platforms. However, the most used approach is, seeing updates and capturing information from your contacts, prospects, and social circles, right into your CRM’s dashboard.

Normally, primarily you have to authorize the CRM system to extract data from different social media websites.

More advanced CRMs like ConvergeHub allow single click accumulation of information through personalized lead capture application e.g. Free Lead Generator Tool, that once activated from your web-browser pulls in details like name, phone no, address, company information, other personal data of the targeted leads and more into the CRM.

Some of the Web 2.0 sites and social media apps include Flicker, GitHub, YouTube, etc. However, most CRM platforms like ConvergeHub focus on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Gmail, Yelp and Twitter for lead generation to increase customer base and revenue.

Steps for setting up ConvergeHub Free Lead Generator Extension in Google Chrome:

  1. Navigate to the Extension in the Google Chrome App Store

For adding the Lead Generator Chrome extension, navigate to “Customize and Control Google Chrome” in top right corner and click on “More tools”. Next click on “Extensions” to see all the extensions installed in your Chrome Browser.

  1. Search “ConvergeHub” and then install or “Add to Chrome” the ConvergeHub Lead Generator plug-in

In the Chrome Extension tab, click on “Get More Extensions” and search for ConvergeHub or ConvergeHub Lead Generator. After the search is done, select the extension “ConvergeHub Lead Generator” and then click on “Add to Chrome”.

How Small Business Can Manage Their CRM Database

Customer related CRM database provides an insight on the customer behaviors not only to enterprise users of the system but also is a vital piece of information for users of CRM for small business. Rather to say, the database is the foundation on which the CRM software strategies work. As for all businesses, the customer-related information base is one of the most important characteristics that impart the customer-based tactics and strategies needed for optimal use of this system.

Customer related CRM database provides an insight on the customer behaviors not only to enterprise users of the system but also is a vital piece of information for users of CRM for small business. Rather to say, the database is the foundation on which the CRM software strategies work. As for all businesses, the customer-related information base is one of the most important characteristics that impart the customer-based tactics and strategies needed for optimal use of this system.

Hence, the database is one central prerequisite that supports all types of best CRM solution that are available, such as CRMs used for Strategic, Analytical, Operational or Collaborative purposes.

What is the meaning of Customer-Related Database?

Be it a Server based or Web CRM, for all kinds of infrastructures, the customer-related database is the collection of customer-related information, which focuses on current and future opportunities along with historic sales data of an organization.

The maintenance and updating of this database are done by a number of functional departments in an organization, such as sales, channel management, product management, customer support, accounts, and others.

Information those that are stored within the CRM database are customer information containing fields like:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Contact details
  • Contact preferences
  • Age
  • Marital status
  • Birthday
  • Anniversary
  • Professional and social status
  • Purchase history
  • Customer support information and others

For example, a sales manager who is using sales CRM can ideally record past transactions, opportunities, product preferences, customer support issues, accounts data and others vital information using a Customer Management System platform. Similarly, channel managers can record online retail information, details of business-owned retail outlets and product managers may document product preference, and product category explored, products within a specific price band sold and others.

Types of CRM Database

Irrespective of whether you are using a Server based or a Cloud CRM, based on respective purposes CRM database is classified into two types:

  • Operational Database
  • Analytical Database

This means operational data of a CRM resides in OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) database, while analytical data of the system resides in OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) database.

How Can You Develop and Maintain Customer-Related Database?

The database in a CRM is a storehouse of a collection of files (or tables), which contains a series of records (which are rows of the table) that in turn incorporates a number of fields (which are columns of the table). In each of these files information such as of customer, products, sales, and others are stored within the CRM system.

Here is a visual illustration of the steps that are followed for creating and maintaining a customer-related database:

All best CRM vendors suggest that this database always needs to remain up-to-date for maintaining the accuracy of the data.

Types of Customer Data

Be it a Sales CRM or a Customer Support CRM meant for an enterprise solution or a CRM for small business, there are principally 2 types of CRM data:

  • Primary
  • Secondary

This ‘primary’ data in a CRM is the data, which is collected initially for the first time, while the ‘secondary’ data is the information that has been collected previously.

The users of the CRM generally collect the primary data by conducting surveys, inviting customers to subscribe to newsletters, holding a skill competition or while registering their customer’s purchases and others.

All modern CRM software works on Relational Database architecture that is composed of tables that incorporate rows and columns. In this, the tables are connected to other tables with the help of a unique identification number, which is named as the ‘primary key’ and is stored in the ID field.

Database Management for CRM

Several database management systems are available in the market today. Some of the most popular DBMS are:

– Oracle

– Microsoft’s SQL Server

– DB2 from IBM and others.

These systems help to administer and update the CRM’s database.

Hardware Needed For CRM Database

The parameters of the hardware platform on which the CRM database will reside is chosen based on the following criteria:

  • The existing technology used in the business
  • The size of the database
  • The location of the users of the CRM

Data Attributes

The CRM data stored in the CRM’s database must comply with the following attributes:

  • It must be shareable (as several people may need to access it from different geographical locations)
  • It must pertain to a given purpose and so must be relevant
  • It should be accurate (For this data should be reviewed in a timely manner while acquiring and entering data into the system)

Data-Warehousing (DW)

All CRM database consists of Data-Warehouses, which are a huge collection of customer-related data, which are received from several sources. The Data-Warehouse repository can be as big as a few Terabytes.

There are a plethora of global businesses operating from several continents and countries that generate a gigantic volume of data. However, this data needs to be converted into useful information for subsequent operations and analysis.

A Data-Warehouse does this work by:

  • Transforming the data into a required format before loading it into the database
  • Organize the data chronologically and according to the subjects of the business
  • Standardizing the data into a single format which are coming from various sources
  • Conduct periodic updates of the data (This is not performed in real time)
  • Provide updated data for the purpose of data mining, analytics, and reporting

Data Access and Interrogation

CRM is a system that allows users to interact with the database.

This data access and interrogation are performed in the following 3 ways:

Data mining

In the context related to CRM database, data mining is the application of predictive analytics that supports sales, marketing, and services. It finds an association among different datasets and classifies the customers according to their business value to answer the following questions:

  • Which customer your business should target?
  • What is the cost of your customer acquisition?
  • Which customers are buying and not buying your products?
  • Why some of your customers are becoming defaulters regularly?
  • Who are your low, medium, and high margin customers?
  • How can you segment your business market?

For organizations that use CRM for small business and even for large enterprises data mining is an excellent tool that can provide relevant data to the marketing and sales team of a company for marketers’ analysis, which is required for generating sales volume, and subsequently increase ROI.

Database Queries

The queries are tools that help you to access and modify your CRM’s database. SQL (Structural Query Language) is used as a standard language for relational database management system. These SQL queries come in the form of statements such as:

  • SELECT
  • ADD
  • DELETE
  • UPDATE
  • DROP, etc.

Reports

All Customer Relationship Management applications generate reports on a regular periodic manner for analyzing the quality and traits of performance, sales, and many other related activities. The management of an organization, for performance assessment, mostly accesses these CRM generated reports.

OLAP (Online Transaction Processing) technology used by CRM is capable of depicting data at the lowest levels that of a sales rep or of a complete region, which aids in assessing the performance of the champions and question the underperformers in a company.

Try-ConvergeHub-For-Free

What is the position of the CRM system in respect to its Database?

While analytical CRM does work most strongly with the customer’s database, the strategic CRM do work furthermost from the system’s database.

Here is a visual illustration to elaborate the statement:

If you have found this article useful in understanding the CRM database structure, which works for your CRM for small business as well as for large enterprises, we would be happy to know of your comments below.