Tag: CRM for small businesses

Working With A Reduced Sales Team? 5 Reasons Why You Need A CRM For Small Business

The entire global economy has slowed down because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sales have fallen, and businesses have to work with reduced Sales Teams. 64% of businesses are reporting a moderate decrease in sales pipeline while 16% are reporting a significant reduction. The top reasons for the shrinking sales pipeline are businesses compelled to reduce their Sales teams due to budget compulsions and sales personnel working from home.

And, It’s a lot worse for small businesses.

If your business is facing a similar situation too, there’s a way to make your smaller sales team better and mightier than any sales team and bring your sales pipeline to life again.

With a CRM for Small Business.

“But do I need a CRM? We are managing fine with our excel sheets and mobile phones.” Well, there’s a reason, and not one but five, why your team needs a CRM for small business more than ever.

5 Reasons Why A CRM For Small Business Is A Must

1. Drives SalesForce Automation

You may be working with a small team but you don’t want to miss out on available sales opportunities, do you?. According to Mckinsey, over 30% of sales-related activities can be automated. Automation can help you do more in less time with lesser efforts. A top CRM software can help you automate a lot of your activities and ramp up your productivity even with a reduced sales team. Activities like generating a quote, checking the past buying history of a customer or previous orders, etc., that take your sales team hours to do can be done in a few minutes.

Sales force automation with CRM

2. Convert Leads Faster

When leads are difficult to come by, you need to improve your lead conversion rate and convert them fast. Sales responsiveness is key to converting your leads. Research shows that 50% of buyers choose the vendors that respond first. A CRM software can enable creating alerts to your Sales Reps whenever a new lead enters into your system. This way he can respond faster and convert the prospect into a customer.

A CRM also allows you to build a lead management process to convert leads better.

Sales CRM for Small Business

3. Run Highly Targeted Campaigns

As sales opportunities dry up, every company is aggressively pursuing the prospects. A one-size-fits-all lead generation method will not deliver expected results. You need to run focused and personalized campaigns to reach prospects with higher potential for conversion.

A CRM for small businesses can give your team capabilities to process volumes of customer data, segment them into various categories, and then run highly targeted email campaigns. You can use ready-to-use email templates, schedule your campaigns and automate them.

And the results can be surprising!

Email open rates CRM

4. Improve Engagement With Existing Customers

In our quest to find new customers, we often forget the value of our existing customer base. These are people who have tested and trusted your product. Happy customers can give you repeat business. But more than that they can promote your business to their friends. A real treasure trove!

Most of the small businesses are not able to drive engagement with their customers. An occasional phone call from your sales reps is not enough. A CRM can help you regularly engage with your customers so that whenever there’s a need for your product/service, your company name is at the top of his/her mind. You can even run and manage a referral program using a CRM and convert your customers into brand advocates.

5. Prepare For The Future

Businesses were adopting various digital technologies before Covid-19. The pandemic has only accelerated the digital transformation of businesses. The same is with Sales. Most of the sales activities have gone online and experts believe it will be the new normal. A CRM can be the backbone of your digital transformation journey and help you go digital faster.

A good small business CRM allows you to integrate it with other software and apps such as billing, accounting, and even telephone systems. You can make it the central hub of your Sales Teams.

Ready to try a CRM!

We have something better for you! Convergehub- The complete Customer Lifecycle Management Software. It is more than a CRM for small business. It does all the things that any of the best Enterprise CRM software available in the market does. Additionally, it helps you automate and manage your marketing, billing, payments, and customer service. One software to manage your entire business!

Recently, global IT News Magazine ZDNet has named ConvergeHub as one of the Top 10 CRM Software in 2021.

To know more about how ConvergeHub can help your business, click here.

For a 14-day free trial, click here.

Key Features Of Sales And Marketing CRM Tools – That Can Save Your Startup Today

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, is circumventing nine to five jobs, and throwing them into the bin. Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money. Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real problems and issues that can stall your super ideas and how adopting the best sales and marketing CRM tools can change that for you and make your company find business growth.

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, is circumventing nine to five jobs, and throwing them into the bin.

Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money.

Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real problems and issues that can stall your super ideas and how adopting the best sales and marketing CRM tools can change that for you and make your company find business growth.

Paying attention to your customers is important since 14% of startups fail due to not regarding customers’ needs. - Fundera Click To Tweet

What is CRM?

CRM is both a technology and an awesome strategy that integrates into itself several dimensions of customer relations, which helps to convey real value to the customers and retain the same for businesses. With CRM related IT solutions, world-class customer relations can be easily attained and utilized to create brands in the marketplace.

In other words, best business CRM is a tool that helps one understand their target customers, their needs, and how brands can sustain that customer relationship to propel your startup on the basis of that relationship.

Now there are three types of easy to use CRM software that is available in the marketplace:

1. Strategic CRM

This is a CRM software that is based on delivering value to the customers, better than the rest of the competitions, and integrates the same in product development and structure of the business.

2. Operational CRM

This CRM software focuses on the automation of sales, production, and service as per the requirement of the consumers.

3. Analytical CRM

This CRM software focuses on gathering, storing, distributing, and thereafter integrating and analyzing consumer-facing data to cater value to both customers and businesses.

There are several models of sales and marketing CRM tools available in the marketplace. Nevertheless, in this article, we shall discuss the IDIC model which aids businesses to ascertain the customers who are of high value and loyalty towards the brands.

Identification: Find out who is the customers and understand them well.

Differentiation: Identity which customer has the greatest potentiality and thereby have more future prospects.

Interaction: Makes sure that businesses can perceive the customer’s desires, and understand the customer’s possible relationship with other brands.

Customization: Personalize offers and means of communication to make sure that the customer’s desires can be fulfilled.

So now that you are aware of what is CRM let us move on to the five most important reasons as to why you must buy your best sales and marketing CRM tools for your startup organization and stick to this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.

5 KEY PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS (FOR STARTUPS)

1. CASH CRUNCH

According to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that more than 29 percent of startups fail because of cash crunch and more than 18 percent for cost and pricing issues.

Therefore it is important for any startup business to keep their pricing compatible and yet generate enough profits to keep the krypton of cash crunch at a bay.

This is over here small business CRM software comes into play as it can help customers to understand the customer’s choices and buying patterns to integrate the same in product development and provide pricing that predicts good business growth.

2. POOR RELATIONS WITH THE CUSTOMERS

Relations with its customers is the spine of any business, especially startups as they are more consumer-based models of business and this is why more startups are in need of incorporating CRM strategies for their growing businesses.

According to reports among all startups that fail more than 17 percent are those that failed to develop and deliver a user-friendly product or service and another 17 percent failed because of inappropriate business models that underlined their offerings.

Therefore, this data even illustrates the growing importance to adopt the best all in one CRM in developing a consumer-based model for business that can help in building user-friendly offerings.

3. NEED FOR THE RIGHT TEAM

The idea of delivering a customer-friendly offering, for any startup is a challenging task, which needs the right team to pull that off.
As per statistics and data that we referred to before about 23 percent of startups fail due to their team’s inefficiency in catering a customer-friendly offering to the consumers in the marketplace.

Therefore as a startup entrepreneur, you need extensive staffing and training programs that can aid you in employing the right team to focus on providing value to the needs of your customers.

This is over here CRM for small business once again comes into play as it can help you to identify the right persons for your job and even train the same marketing, sales, and support strategies to reach customers and sustain them over a long period of time.

4. NEED FOR RESEARCH

Just as there is no way that we can write an article without any proper research, similarly the same applies to any startup, as comprehensive market research is most important and a must for the growth of any startup business across the globe.

According to research, it has been found that 42 percent of failed startup ventures were not successful since they did start their business after performing any market research about their proposed offerings.
Additionally, 13 percent of startup businesses failed and are so ill-fated because they launched their business at a bad time, statistics which show the extent to which startup organizations ignore real-time market trends while starting their businesses.

Therefore, as one of the most recognized vendors of software solutions in the Salesforce Alternative CRM marketplace, we can assure that it is the business growth technology that is capable of storing, integrating, and analyzing consumer data which aid startups to find and focus on the right market at the right time to launch the right product or service in the marketplace.

5. MARKETING WOES

As per statistics and data that we referred even before 14 percent of startups fail due to poor or ineffectual marketing and another 14 percent for ignoring their customers.

But why do startups fail at marketing or while conducting their after-sales service?

Even though there can be multiple factors that can make it happen but one of the most important of all these factors is not knowing well your customers.

CRM for SMB and startups helps growing businesses to understand their customers thoroughly so that they can cater to their customer’s needs.

This is exactly where Analytical CRM comes into play which aids in gathering consumer-related data and with Operational CRM that can ensure faster services to their customers and Strategic CRM that can help in marketing their offerings strategically to target relevant consumers based on their behavioral and purchase patterns which can be easily collected, stored and thereafter analyzed once it is hived inside the CRM database.

Conclusion

Therefore now that you know why your startup needs to adopt the best sales and marketing CRM tools and implement CRM strategies for your business growth, and the right type of CRM to go for to overcome each of these hurdles at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, it remains without any doubt that small business CRM software is that much-needed firepower which your startup needs as the next big weapon for victories ahead in this competitive global marketplace.

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Business Growth Training: Why Inbound Marketing Is Required For Lead Generation In Startups

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers on your businesses’ website. Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads. What Is Inbound Marketing? According to Wikipedia: “Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding.” Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites. In other words, inbound marketing nowadays as a business growth training is the best way to attract, engage, and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity.

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers on your businesses’ website, which is why we want to discuss on this topic as a part of business growth training in this blog.

Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads.

Inbound marketing is the primary marketing approach for 74% of marketers worldwide. Click To Tweet

What Is Inbound Marketing?

According to Wikipedia:

“Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding.”

Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites.

In other words, inbound marketing nowadays as a business growth training is the best way to attract, engage, and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity.

This is the reason why organizations (especially startups and small businesses) in modern times are using various tools to implement their inbound marketing strategies which can help them to enhance their business growth.

Now, before implementing any strategy is most important you should also know about its benefits.

Hence, let us take a look at the various reasons that will help you to understand “Why you need to implement inbound marketing for your business?” and learn it as a part of your business growth training.

Cost-effective

The primary focus of marketing in this digital era is to drive more traffic to the websites and also save a huge chunk of money.

According to research studies it has been found that content marketing strategy costs 60 percent less as compared to other traditional marketing approaches.

Therefore, marketers, these days use content marketing for boosting their inbound marketing approaches for attracting more customers on their business websites and thereby at a far lesser cost than traditional marketing help generate more marketing qualified leads.

In other words, inbound marketing is really a blessing for small businesses as it helps them to generate leads at an affordable price.

Convert your blog into a valuable resource

If you are not able to generate leads and traffic to your website through your content marketing endeavors and are not aware of the reasons, let us help you out to find the desired outcome.

There are primarily two main reasons that your blogs and contents are not finding enough leads.

Firstly there is no back-link(s) in your blogs and secondly, there is less search potential for your content.

Therefore, to overcome these two major obstacles you can use inbound marketing approaches to convert your blogs into valuable lead generation resources.

This is because according to studies done on business growth training it can be said that inbound marketing is the best way to boost engagements, increase customer retention rate, and thereby scale-up business revenue steadily.

Make better marketing decisions

By using inbound marketing tools in startups and small businesses, you can easily analyze all your business practices and thereby make better decisions using an easy to use CRM software solution, like the number of landing page conversions, email clicks, customer interests, and more.

Best business CRM software, when used for inbound marketing practices also helps in analyzing customer journey at each stage of your sales pipeline and thereby helps SMBs to take effective decisions that result in amplifying revenue growth.

Boost your brand awareness and social media presence

There is no doubt that in this era of digital growth, most target audiences for any business remains active on social media websites.

Therefore, if you are thinking of a marketing methodology to strengthen your social media presence to build stronger relationships with your customers, inbound marketing is the tool that helps to create your brand awareness and increase your social media presence that translates to a growth in your ROI.

According to studies it has been found that in more than 89 percent of businesses used blogs in 2019, to engage more customers in their social media websites.

This is because; the higher is your website traffic, the more leads you generate for your business.

Aids in creating customer-focused contents

To build trust and acquire the interest of your prospective customers, you need to provide them with real engaging content, which primarily focuses on the interests and fluctuating demands of your leads and customers.

Inbound marketing when done with easy to use CRM software, helps to streamline all your marketing campaigns and so aids in proving your prospects what they are looking for.

Moreover, when inbound marketing is done with the best small business CRM software it helps SMBs to create customer-centric content and helps businesses to send messages to the right prospects at the right time.

This is because; once you can create contents that are reliable to your audience you can easily remain ahead of the competition and find rapid business growth.

Conclusion

Therefore in a gist inbound marketing strategy when done in the right manner using a CRM for small business as a tool, it not only helps to increase your website search results and generate more leads but also aids in automating repetitive tasks and therefore deliver world-class service to your prospective leads and customers that aids in creating sustainable long-term growth.

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How Can Businesses Inspire Their Customers To Share Personal Data Effortlessly

It is of little surprise that there is a gradual shift happening in terms of the consumer’s attitude to the value of the data they are willing to share with brands and businesses. Since, as the digital economy is growing and expanding consumers and people, in general, are becoming less sensitive about sharing their data with brands for their business growth. This is because, many consumers have learned by now that sharing their data can make them benefit through offers and rewards and so brands should feel themselves presently empowered to request data from their customers, or use information by a prospect’s interaction with a brand’s website, to inform their marketing teams if the persons in their email campaign’s list have actively opted-in to their marketing efforts.

It is of little surprise that there is a gradual shift happening in terms of the consumer’s attitude to the value of the data they are willing to share with brands and businesses. Since, as the digital economy is growing and expanding consumers and people, in general, are becoming less sensitive about sharing their data with brands for their business growth.

A recent survey revealed that for companies that use a CRM, the average return on their technology investment is $8.71 for each dollar spent - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

This is because, many consumers have learned by now that sharing their data can make them benefit through offers and rewards and so brands should feel themselves presently empowered to request data from their customers, or use information by a prospect’s interaction with a brand’s website, to inform their marketing teams if the persons in their email campaign’s list have actively opted-in to their marketing efforts.

Hence for brands that are willing to stay ahead of the pack, here are some of the top tips that will help businesses to build strong relationships with their customer base, and implement effective methods for building motivations among their customers which even help create brand loyalty in the long haul resulting in business growth.

Be clear about how personal data will be used

Extracting valuable information and insights by requesting the customer to understand their likes and pain points and thereafter define their requirements is most important when it comes to boosting their relationship with your brand.

However, the framing, and context of this request are vital, as it provides clarity on how this information most often stored in the CRM database will be used if you are a user of an easy to use CRM system.

In a recent survey conducted by a popular vendor of CRM for small business, it has been found that while many consumers are willing to share their personal info with a brand or company they trust, there are also others that proclaim that they are ready to do it if they are aware that parting with their information would make them receive rewards or discounts in exchange of their data.

Therefore, ensuring your customers and making them learn why you are requesting their personal data, and what they can expect in return, is incredibly necessary for building trust and credibility of your brand for consistent business growth.

Use data in a timely manner, and use it effectively at regular touch-points

You must take adequate care to avoid dropouts during the registration process with your brand, and also make sure that any information shared is effectively and swiftly deployed into a nurturing process. Hence, once the information about the leads and customers is collected in your CRM database , it must be acted upon quickly to decrease the risk of losing that customer forever.

According to a survey it has been found that 84% of participants said that they would not register with a business if they are not subsequently contacted more than twice, which amply implies how necessary it is for the information to be used instantaneously and thereafter at regular intervals.

This is because, like with any other relationships, the primary stages are extremely critical for building a long-lasting impression on your leads and customers.

Hence after a new customer or lead signs up for your newsletter send a tailored offer in an email to the customer or send a helpful post-purchase email containing further information about your offerings that will aid in creating engagements at every touch-point and reflect the present context of that relationship by anticipating the customer’s needs.

Follow and match your customers’ communication preferences

While well-established channels for marketing like email are still adding value for the brands but presently according to studies even less than 10 percent of customers feel that their favorite brands are ‘excellent’ at anticipating and understanding their customer’s needs.

Therefore, modern marketers must gain and manage insights from all touchpoints at all times for their business growth.

Businesses are also required to bring in continual refinement to their marketing and support strategies so that they can reflect and understand how their customers are adopting new behaviors.

This is because; influential contact points and emerging channels such as SMS, and social media are becoming more important nowadays which is especially true for the younger audiences in today’s B2C and B2B marketplace.

Therefore, to be able to identify how to effectively engage a customer across this mix, and understand the complications of today’s data-driven customers is the key to creating relevance nowadays.

Hence it is only be orchestrating channel preferences you can improve the customer experience of your brand by building upon each contact points, which is capable of generating seamless interactions that lay the foundation of an effective and impactful nurturing program through deeper customer interactions, a process which can be aided by using an easy to use CRM software platform.

Reward and measure

Discounts and vouchers are one of the leading triggers to purchase for all cash-conscious customers.
According to a survey some 74% of the surveyors that used vouchers while shopping, proactively engaged to access them in several ways.

Therefore, after looking at this redemption behavior, ensure that you must continue to optimize the impact of offering rewards and offers, whilst creating a parallel control group in your organization that must provide a true test of the purchase’s uplift value that your email campaigns have driven for business growth.

However, while providing offers and discounts you must also remain sure that you are not just encouraging promiscuous buyers who only shop with incentives and for that ensure that all your communication with the shoppers adds high potential value and relevance to their purchasing experience.

Keep on top of your data

Finally, according to a survey, it has also been found that more than 81% of the consumers welcome and like brands that make their decision to buy easier, by suggesting inspirations for future purchases based on their previous shopping- as long as these recommendations are accurate and appropriate.

However, the essential part in achieving this success lies in assimilating and updating your customer data and integrating it across your channel mix, by using technology systems like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions that facilitates centralized and automated analysis across all touchpoints.

Conclusion
Therefore, balancing trust and data sensitivity through contextual and meaningful customer interactions is most needed to ensure that your prospects and customers will continue to view the benefits of data exchange, as nowadays “Average” experience in an age where customers can pick from a growing number of alternative options will not cut with the demanding shoppers that rule the modern marketplace.

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Salient Features Of A CRM That Can Really Save Your Startup

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, circumventing nine to five jobs and throwing them into the bin. Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, on business growth it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money. Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real Kryptonite of your super idea and how buying CRM can change that for you.

Startups all across the globe are glorified as the ultramodern way of taking control of your life, circumventing nine to five jobs and throwing them into the bin.
Nevertheless, according to a report published by Small Business Trends, on business growth it states that approximately 40 percent of startups are profitable, while 30 percent of them are at break-even points and the rest 30 percent losing money.

About 79% of leads do not convert without CRM - ThomsonData (2019) Click To Tweet

Therefore if you are having any second thoughts on your big idea, read through this article as we unravel the real Kryptonite(s) that can stall your super ideas and how buying CRM can change that for you.

What is CRM?

CRM is a business growth technology and a strategy that integrates several prospects of customer relation to convey value to the customers and retain the same for businesses. With IT solutions, world-class customer relations can be easily achieved and utilized to establish brands in the marketplace.

In other words, CRM is a tool that helps one understand their target customers, their needs and how brands can sustain that customer relationship to propel your startup on the basis of that relationship.

Now there are three types of easy to use CRM software that is available in the marketplace:

  1. Strategic CRM

This is a CRM software that is based on delivering value to the customers, better than the rest of the competitions and integrates the same in product development and structure of the business.

  1. Operational CRM

This CRM software focuses on the automation of sales, production, and service as per the requirement of the consumers.

  1. Analytical CRM

This CRM software focuses on gathering, storing, distributing and thereafter integrating and analyzing consumer-facing data to cater value to both customers and businesses.

There are several models of CRM tools available in the marketplace. Nevertheless, in this article, we shall discuss the IDIC model which aids businesses to ascertain the customers who are of high value and loyalty towards the brands.

Identification: Find out who is the customers and understand them well.

Differentiation: Identify which customer has the greatest potentiality and thereby have more future prospects.

Interaction: Makes sure that businesses can perceive the customer’s desires, and understand the customer’s possible relationship with other brands.

Customization: Personalize offers a means of communication to make sure that the customer’s desires can be fulfilled.

So now that you are aware of what is CRM let us move on to the five most important reasons as to why you must buy CRM for your startup organization and stick to this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.

THE “KRYPTONITE(S)” TO YOUR SUPER IDEAS

  1. Cash Crunch

According to a report published by Small Business Trends, it states that more than 29 percent of startups fail because of cash crunch and more than 18 percent for cost and pricing issues.
Therefore it is important for any startup business to keep their pricing compatible and yet generate enough profits to keep the krypton of cash crunch at a bay.
This is over here small business CRM software comes into play as it can help businesses to understand their customer’s choices and buying patterns to integrate the same in product development and provide pricing that predicts good business growth.

  1. Poor relations with the customers

Relations with its customers is the spine of any business, especially startups as they are more consumer-based models of business and this is why more startups are in need of incorporating CRM strategies for their growing businesses.

According to reports among all startups that fail more than 17 percent are those that failed to develop and deliver a user-friendly product or service and another 17 percent failed because of inappropriate business models that underlined their offerings.

Therefore, this data even illustrates the growing importance to buy CRM in developing a consumer-based model for business that can help in building user-friendly offerings.

  1. Need for the right team

The idea of delivering a customer-friendly offering, for any startup is a challenging task, which needs the right team to pull that off.
As per statistics and data that we referred before about 23 percent of startups fail due to their team’s inefficiency in catering a customer-friendly offering to the consumers in the marketplace.

Therefore as a startup entrepreneur, you need extensive staffing and training programs that can aid you in employing the right team to focus on providing value to the needs of your customers.

This is over here CRM for small business once again comes into play as it can help you to identify the right persons for your job and even train the marketing, sales, and support teams with strategies to reach customers and sustain them over a long period of time.

  1. Need for research

Just as there is no way that we can write an article without any proper research, similarly the same applies to any startup, as comprehensive market research is most important and a must for the growth of any startup business across the globe.

According to research, it has been found that 42 percent of failed startup ventures were not successful since they did not start their business after performing any market research about their proposed offerings.
Additionally 13 percent of startup businesses failed and are so ill-fated because they launched their business at a bad time, statistics which show the extent to which startup organizations ignore real-time market trends while starting their businesses.

Therefore, once you buy CRM, it is a business growth technology that is capable of storing, integrating and analyzing consumer data which aid startups to find and focus on the right market at the right time to launch the right product or service in the marketplace.

  1. Marketing woes

As per statistics and data that we referred even before 14 percent of startups fail due to poor or ineffectual marketing and another 14 percent for ignoring their customers.

But why do startups fail at marketing or while conducting their after-sales service?

Even though there can be multiple reasons that can make it happen but one of the most important of all these factors is because of not knowing your customers.

CRM for SMB and startups helps growing businesses to understand their customers thoroughly so that they can cater to their customer’s needs.

This is exactly where Analytical CRM comes into play which aids in gathering consumer-related data and with Operational CRM that can ensure faster services to their customers and Strategic CRM that can help in marketing their offerings strategically to target relevant consumers based on their behavioral and purchase patterns which can be easily collected, stored and thereafter analyzed once it is hived inside the CRM database.

Conclusion

Therefore now that you know why your startup needs to buy CRM and implement CRM strategies for your business growth, and the right type of CRM to go for to overcome each of these hurdles at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, it remains without any doubt that small business CRM software is that much-needed firepower which your startup needs as the next big weapon for victories in this competitive global marketplace.

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How Easy To Use CRM Can Help Sales In Small And Medium Businesses

CRM software can help your business grow by managing several sales processes, starting with lead scoring to creating long-term customer relationships. In a study done by Aberdeen Group in 2010 revealed that, many organizations that are growing at a rapid pace use Customer Relationship Management technology to convert more leads into revenue. In the same study, it was also shown that 63% of organizations, which has very high annual growth rates, from sales leads, use easy to use CRM technology for their success. Here is how easy to use CRM software helps in the growth of your organization.

CRM software can help your business grow by managing several sales processes, starting with lead scoring to creating long-term customer relationships. In a study done by Aberdeen Group in 2010 revealed that, many organizations that are growing at a rapid pace use Customer Relationship Management technology to convert more leads into revenue.
In the same study, it was also shown that 63% of organizations, which have very high annual growth rates, from sales leads, use easy to use CRM technology for their success.

68% of CRM solutions will become cloud-based in 2019. The social CRM market is expected to reach $10 billion this year - ThomsonData Click To Tweet

Here is how easy to use CRM software helps in the growth of your organization:

Sales Planning

Easy to use CRM software can provide you with an overview of your projected sales targets for a specific period of time. This can help you plan marketing campaigns use using the forecasted data and prepare your sales teams for an increase or dip in the volume of sales in your business.

You can also use the information retrieved from your CRM database, to manage sales territories more efficiently. Best CRM for small and medium business allows your sales managers to view the schedules of your sales reps out in the field, along with the potentials of various territories, so that you can decide upon entrusting the right members of your sales team to the locations where they are most needed, which results in optimizing your sales team’s performance.

Improve Lead Conversion

Once you buy CRM it helps to shift the focus of your sales reps (from other mundane tasks) so that they can spend their time more in selling. The data gathered in the CRM database of your CRM for small business and startups can also help in finding deals that have not yet been closed, monitor sales quotas, and build strategies for shortening sales cycles which results in the generation of faster revenue.

CRM software solutions is a business growth technology and tool that can also track incoming leads and after assessing them, distribute the leads to the representatives most likely to close the sale. Easy to use CRM applications can also help to foster efficient collaborations with your employees in sales, marketing, support, and accounts by coordinating tasks among your employees.

Build Customer Relationships

Maintaining relationship with existing customers is just as important as acquiring new ones. Easy to use CRM platforms can store detailed information from each interaction with your customers. Customer information stored in the CRM database also helps in anticipating the customers’ needs, which helps in providing personal customer service that aids in creating loyal customers.

In fact, once you buy CRM this tool can manage sales processes as well as monitor and develop your long-term customer contracts, by sending automated reminders using SFA aka Sales Force Automation for renewal of your services.

Track And Analyze

Best sales CRM software be it Salesforce or even Salesforce Alternative CRM  used by small businesses, it also enables you to track lead data, so that you can easily calculate the returns on your investments on lead generation and on marketing campaigns on an ongoing basis. This helps you to see, which among your lead sources are generating the most revenue and adjust your strategies according.

Easy to use CRM even lets you access data for each of your leads individually, which is always a valuable asset for your sales teams.

According to us, the sales analysis aspect of any CRM software helps in monitoring the overall health of your business by proactively monitoring sales pipeline management, creating accurate forecasts, effectively manage the budgets and intelligently allocate resources to meet your company’s revenue goals.

Pricing And Order Fulfillment

Best easy to use CRM software, that allows QuickBooks CRM integration free ensure accurate pricing and quotes, by capturing customer order, confirming availability of the products and expediting order fulfillment.

Therefore the main purpose of CRM software is to:

“Provide employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers understand and identify customer needs, and effectively generate long lasting relationships between the company, its distribution partners, and its customer base.”

Conclusion        

Therefore, in a brief, most easy to use CRM solutions are created to help sales and marketing teams succeed. As when the information that these customer relationship applications collect are applied as an essential part of the sales strategy, it helps to benefit the organization as a whole, in terms of revenue generation and growth, by determining which marketing efforts and sales strategies are most effective for the development of the company resulting in consistent business growth.

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5 Rocking Tips To Build A Steadfast Relationship With Your Prospective Leads

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”. Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust. So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”.
Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust.
So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics. Click To Tweet

Hence, instead of fighting hard to be always liked, it is high time that you should refocus your attention for building deeper connections with your leads and prospects, which is built on belief and respect of your leads, prospects, and would-be customers.

Therefore here are 5 rocking tips to help you learn how you can do so, right away:

  1. Curtail the phony enthusiasm

All sales reps and managers had been taught at some point in their professional run to display enthusiasm about their brand.
They had been mentored, that in order to sell their offers, their enthusiasm must shine through first.
Nevertheless, this old school thought has in fact resulted in all salespeople trying to give the identical over-the-top introduction to prospects, which is undoubtedly wrong.

It sounds more like this: “Hi, how are you? I am really so excited to meet and explain to you all about what my organization does and can do for you right now.”

Now, if you think this sales-y intro sounds perfect, try recording your next few phone calls and check if your voice becomes louder, over the pitch, when your prospects answer the calls.
If it is so, hang on, that is exactly the “fake-enthusiasm” we have been talking all along.
This is the fake enthusiasm that you need to drop off.
Hence lower your tone, speak slowly, and be authentic in your presentation.
Remember, fake exuberance sounds extremely very sales-y, but an authentic tone of voice pulls together both trust and respect.

  1. Focus only on your prospect

This might sound obvious, but it is startling to find that most salespeople start their conversations with their prospects by talking about their company, or what are the offerings they can provide to their prospects.
Now, before you make a guess and think, “I don’t do that” just grab a pen and paper and answer the question “Why should a prospect do business with you?”
Next, read what you wrote.
Did it look like you just talked about your offering(s) – or did you concentrate exclusively on your prospects, how they may profit and find advantage from working with you?
Always take it as thumb rule before you talk with your prospects in your easy to use CRM that prospects only care about themselves. Hence, make them the center of your conversation, so that it can help your prospects to find a connection with your offerings.

  1. Offer some value

Make a difference, set yourself apart from other salespeople, enhance your knowledge base, and try to offer some value right out the gate.

For small and midsized businesses that use CRM for small business, the customer relationship management software it provides a unique 360-degree holistic view of the prospect to the salesperson using the easy to use CRM software.

Therefore, use this knowledge provided by the CRM application software to list a few challenges that are common among your prospects, challenges that you can solve, and also share what you have observed in your prospect’s industry during your lead nurturing phone calls.
However, as a matter of caution, do not blab and jump into your solutions too quickly, but rather utilize the conversation as an opportunity to share helpful insights with your prospects while getting your prospect talking about their own pain point, inhibitions, and challenges for fortifying your relationship.

  1. Create a transition with a question

After you have asked your prospect about a few recurrent challenges that you have seen in your prospect’s line of business it is time to get the prospect talking. Hence, try to simply ask your prospect, “Do any of these challenges ring true to you?”

Although this approach may sound a bit provocative, where you stand the chance of coming out clear, this question will immediately ring the bell with a prospect that is going through those same challenges.

You can always think, “What may happen if they say no?”, but if your prospect does not have the challenges that your business solves, then considers those prospects simply misfits.
Rather let go of those prospect in your CRM database and move on with the next call, and find someone who truly needs what your business has to offer to its customers.

  1. Get your prospects talking about their challenges

Once you have successfully offered your prospects some value, elaborated a few key challenges and transitioned the conversation with a question, it is the time that you must keep your prospect talking. After all, prospects will only have faith in you if you can really show them that you have an ability to resolve their key challenges, and you can never do that unless you understand their pain points.

Probing the prospect with multiple questions in most cases will prompt the prospect to open up. As an apt analogy, it is like acting like a doctor who needs to know about all the symptoms of the patient’s malady to properly diagnose and offer a treatment plan.

Using this approach, you will be seen as an expert or a ‘doctor’ in the eyes of your prospect, which can easily build a connection between you and the prospect and so make the relationship move further on and surely close the deal.

Conclusion

We are very sure that by following these tips you will not only start building deep connections with your prospects and customers but holding on to these approaches will help you to connect prospects with better conversations and subsequently move towards fetching in more sales that lead to rapid business growth .

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Top Reasons to Use Inbound Marketing For Lead Generation of Your SMB

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers in your businesses’ website. Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads. Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites. In other words, inbound marketing nowadays is the best way to attract, engage and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity. This is the reasons as to why organizations (especially startups and small businesses) in modern times are using various tools to implement their inbound marketing strategies and help them to enhance their business growth.

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers in your businesses’ website.
Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads using small business CRM software.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

According to Wikipedia:

“Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding.”

Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites.

Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices. Click To Tweet

In other words, inbound marketing nowadays is the best way to attract, engage and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity.

This is the reasons as to why organizations (especially startups and small businesses) in modern times are using various tools to implement their inbound marketing strategies and help them to enhance their business growth .

Now, before implementing any strategy it most important you should also know about its benefits.

Hence, let us take a look at the various reasons that will help you to understand “Why you need to implement inbound marketing for your business?”

Cost-effective

The primary focus of marketing in this digital era is to drive more traffic to the websites and also save a huge chunk of money.

According to research studies it has been found that content marketing strategy costs 60 percent less as compared to other traditional marketing approaches.

Therefore, marketers, these days use content marketing for boosting their inbound marketing approaches for attracting more customers on their business websites and thereby at a far lesser cost than traditional marketing help generate more marketing qualified leads.

In other words, inbound marketing is really a blessing for small businesses as it helps them to generate leads at an affordable price.

Convert your blog into a valuable resource

If you are not able to generate leads and traffic to your website through your content marketing endeavors and is not aware of the reasons, let us help you out to find the desired outcome.

There are primarily two main reasons that your blogs and contents are not finding enough leads.

Firstly there are no back-link(s) in your blogs and secondly, there is less search potential for your contents.

Therefore, to overcome these two major obstacles you can use inbound marketing approaches to convert your blogs into valuable lead generation resources.

This is because according to studies it can be said that inbound marketing is the best way to boost engagements, increase customer retention rate and thereby scale-up business revenue steadily.

Make better marketing decisions

By using inbound marketing tools in startups and small businesses like CRM for small business , you can easily analyze all your business practices and thereby make better decisions like the number of landing page conversions, email clicks, customer interests and more.

Best small business CRM software, when used for inbound marketing practices also helps in analyzing customer journey at each stage of your sales pipeline and thereby helps SMBs to take effective decisions which result in amplifying revenue growth.

Boost your brand awareness and social media presence

There is no doubt that in this era of digital growth, most target audiences for any business remains active on social media websites.

Therefore, if you are thinking of a marketing methodology to strengthen your social media presence to build stronger relationships with your customers, inbound marketing is the tool that helps to create your brand awareness and increase your social media presence that translates to a growth in your ROI.

According to studies it has been found that in more than 89 percent of businesses uses blogs in 2019, to engage more customers in their social media websites.

This is because; the higher is your website traffic, the more leads you generate for your business.

Aids in creating customer-focused contents

To build trust and acquire the interest of your prospective customers, you need to provide them with real engaging contents, which primarily focuses on the interests and fluctuating demands of your leads and customers.

Inbound marketing when done with easy to use CRM software, helps to streamline all your marketing campaigns and so aids in proving your prospects what they are looking for.

Moreover, when inbound marketing is done with the best small business CRM software it helps SMBs to create customer-centric contents and helps businesses to send messages to the right prospects at the right time.

This is because; once you can create contents that are reliable to your audience you can easily remain ahead of the competition and find rapid business growth.

Conclusion

Therefore in a gist inbound marketing strategy when done in the right manner using a CRM for small business as a tool, it not only helps to increase your website search results and generate more leads but also aids in automating repetitive tasks and therefore deliver world-class service to your prospective leads and customers that aids in creating sustainable long-term growth.

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Time-Tested Steps For Finding Accurate And Quality Data In Your CRM Database

Your easy to use CRM database is home to some of your businesses’ most important and valuable information, like selective information about your leads, customers, prospects. The information stored in a CRM database is invaluable for your company’s marketing, sales, and customer support teams- but only and if only it is of high quality and is up to date. According to a research done by Gartner in 2018, it was found that: More than 25% of information and data within a given organization is likely flawed. Therefore, what are these vital things you can do to help clean and improve the performance of your CRM database?

Your easy to use CRM database is home to some of your businesses’ most important and valuable information, like selective information about your leads, customers, prospects.

The information stored in a CRM database is invaluable for your company’s marketing, sales,and customer support teams- but only and if only it is of high quality and is up to date.

According to a research done by Gartner in 2018, it was found that:
More than 25% of information and data within a given organization is likely flawed.

It is a known fact that most employees in any organization across the globe probably do not particularly cherish entering data and even reflects on it as a total waste of time, but inputting data (and the entire data) into your CRM database upfront will definitely help to save resources and time in the future days to come.

64.2% of companies rate CRM tools as impactful or very impactful- LinkedIn (2018) Click To Tweet

Therefore, what are these vital things you can do to help clean and improve the performance of your CRM database?

  1. Input your data in real-time (or as close to it as possible)

Never let your employees wait until the end of the day to log information and interactions that they had with their customers and prospects. This is because, it is absolutely normal for many people to overlook and not remember things, and so it is only by entering information in real-time, can stop the potential threat of leaving out valuable information on the table.
Since, with the growth in mobile CRM technology, your employees nowadays can even feed in data into the CRM database on the go.

  1. Remove duplicate records

Finding multiple records for the same contact can not only distort important information, but it can also easily cause inconvenience for salespersons and customers alike. Therefore, to stop this error, try to identify duplicate data and merge them, and thereby create one single record for each customer.
Performing this exercise will help ensure the insights that you have gathered inside your easy to use CRM software platform’s database are accurate and effective.

  1. Missing data? Add it!

Be sure that you always remember to include complete data in your CRM platform. Therefore, fill in all the fields in your easy to use CRM solution without leaving behind any information about your leads, customers, and prospects.
Since, once you are lacking information, the efficiency of your CRM data will instantly become less important and valuable to your employees and your visibility into your leads and customer’s profiles will also become blurred and incomplete.
Therefore, if you are using lead capture forms for sustaining your marketing efforts, be sure to collect all the information that you need to fill into your CRM database.

  1. Keep CRM data up-to-date

Once more we reiterate, this is absolutely critical for optimal performance of any easy to use CRM platform. Since, outdated data in the CRM database can cost sales, marketing, and a support person’s time and at times even a sale.
It is a natural phenomenon that individuals and businesses often relocate or alter their contact information, which can make the data stored in your CRM database inaccurate.

Therefore, it is always a good idea to continuously monitor and update your CRM database with the most up to date information you have for the growth of your businesses’ sales and revenue.

Now if you would like to strategize your business growth in 2019, we have opened up a few 1-on-1 Rocket Launch Sessions where we will:

–   Take a deep-dive into your business process

–   Pinpoint areas with most growth potential

–   Discuss how to implement a system that lets you focus on the most important tasks

See what Rocket Launch Session can do for you!

On this 30-45 minute call, we’ll discuss your business goals, what’s currently NOT working and then help you craft a comprehensive plan to get more customers into your business as quickly as possible.

So why wait, limited slots are still available, sign up now! What have you got to lose?

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The Importance Of A Clean CRM Database To A Successful Sales Team

Regardless of what industry you are in, growing your business to new heights can really be a challenging up-hill job. In any business, its sales teams achieve success for a number of reasons, and so it is often tough to exactly pinpoint why one business or a sales team is more successful than another. Nevertheless, there are in general two important factors that most thriving sales teams employ for success and growth of their businesses- the right easy to use CRM software and proper data management of their CRM database.

Regardless of what industry you are in, growing your business to new heights can really be a challenging up-hill job.
In any business, its sales teams achieve success for a number of reasons, and so it is often tough to exactly pinpoint why one business or a sales team is more successful than another.
Nevertheless, there are in general two important factors that most thriving sales teams employ for success and growth of their businesses- the right easy to use CRM software and proper data management of their CRM database.

Why?

This is because to move ahead in this modern competitive marketplace, businesses need to have the right people and essentially the right tools to work hand in hand.

ConvergeHub's ROCKET LAUNCH 2019 can help you acquire leads, automate your sales process, improve your conversion and get more referrals from satisfied customers. Click To Tweet

Therefore, when businesses use the data utilized by their sales teams on a day-to-day basis (which includes actions taken by the sales teams to turn prospective leads into customers) and input that data into the CRM database, it creates a potent business model that provides any business an edge over its competitions.

After all, there is simply no point in adopting a robust and easy to use CRM software , if you cannot use it to its full advantage- manage all your businesses’ data, and streamline the sales process for your marketing and sales teams.

Since, proper and effective CRM data management in combination with an intelligent and intuitive CRM software not only escalates your businesses’ marketing, sales, and customer relationships, but it also keep your sales teams working efficiently, which in turn boosts revenue growth inevitably.

Reasons you require CRM software to manage data and boost sales

Are you still using pen and paper or a spreadsheet to track your customer’s sales history and not using an easy to use CRM software to manage your customers or track your sales data and business processes?

Do not worry! If your customer data management is still stuck in the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, there is no better time than now for an upgrade.

With incredible CRM software platforms now available like ConvergeHub CRM for small business and others, your business can easily organize and integrate not only all your lead and customer data, but even your entire sales process (from managing leads and prospects to closing deals). In addition, CRM also provide comprehensive data analytics, and customer relationship management that are acceptable to your entire sales, marketing, and support teams.

This means, even if one sales rep in your company picks up where another sales person left off, they can find complete customer communication and interaction history, which in turn makes the customer feel important and valued.
With a small business CRM software platform like ConvergeHub, important information, and data is seamlessly updated across all networks, which allows every person in your organization to stay focused and up-to-date on what that matters the most- THE CUSTOMER.

Inputting your business data in the CRM database in an easy to use CRM software can even free up time spent on analyzing customer data for generating leads, sending follow-up emails, or setting up appointments for your sales teams. Since, these tedious tasks can kill time that takes away critical opportunities for harvesting revenue, away from your sales teams.

Easy to use CRM software when used efficiently acts as the heart of your organization and helps your sales teams to streamline data and sales processes. By managing and tracking all sales and customer-facing interactions, easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, provides everything that you need to close deals and keep your customers happy at your fingertips, which is the true driving force behind any successful business.

By organizing your customer data in the CRM database into helpful categories like Customers, Lost deals, Influencers, Potential partners, and many more, an easy to use CRM platform ensures that your sales reps never fail to meet the requirements of every person that contributes to the growth of your business.

Beyond this, CRM software also offers robust analytical tools that can help your organization to make strategic sales, and budget decisions, by viewing wins-losses, rep performances, and analyzing gaps in your sales processes.

Therefore, what does all this ultimately means?

The answer is- Happier customers, happy sales teams, and therefore, more sales and revenue.

THE TIME TO GET ORGANIZED- IS NOW!

According to a research conducted by a reputed global agency in 2017, it was shocking to find that an astounding 40% of businesses nationwide do not use any data management software and still rely on spreadsheets to mange leads and opportunities, before turning to more often than not cloud based CRM software platforms.

Therefore, by now we guess that must be saying to yourself: “I am in- but how do I get started?”

Well, actually it is all very simple.. So here we go!

STEP #1- SIGN UP

If your small and medium-sized business does not already have an easy to use small business CRM software, it is time to sign up now.

With all the options, that are on-hand these days, you might feel a bit inundated and overwhelmed, but with a little research, you can quickly find which robust small business CRM software, might work best for your business and your sales teams.

STEP# 2- INPUT YOUR DATA INTO YOUR CRM SOFTWARE

Primarily, once you begin, you need to be really careful about how you input your data in the CRM database, so that it matches your sales processes and help you to track your customers exactly as you would like it to do.

Luckily, most easy to use cloud based CRM software like ConvergeHub, comes with systematic, and explicit tutorials that will ensure that all your data is entered in the most appropriate ways, which can efficiently help you to drive your sales teams, and keep them organized.

All best sales CRM software solutions out there offers features to manage all your customer data in the CRM database, through the sales process, including:

  • Leads
  • Campaigns
  • Products
  • Pricing
  • Opportunities
  • Invoicing and Quotes

In all fairness, while even an easy to use CRM software is incredibly useful for businesses, nevertheless, it is not a perfect system.
Hence, inputting data in the CRM database, may initially have some pushback from your sales reps and make them feel that their time could have been more profitably spent making sales (and not inputting data), but in this case, remind your team that ensuring input of quality data in the software is vital for long-term success of any sales team.

STEP#3- OBSERVE YOUR BUSINESS GROW

Once your sales and customer data in the CRM database is organized and is used efficiently, you can expect to see a flourish in the growth of your sales revenue and hence your sales teams will finally find time to focus on their customers- which is the “numero uno” method for improving sales and profitability.

Remember, in today’s competitive marketplace, adopting an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub for growing sales and getting your customer data organized is no longer an option, but an absolute necessity for taking your business to the next level of success.

Is your business stuck with mediocre or no growth?

See how ConvergeHub can skyrocket your revenue growth in 2019 and beyond.

Just click here to schedule a 30-minute ROCKET LAUNCH Session to scale your business to next level.

Here is what ConvergeHub can do for your businesses:

    • Acquire leads through structured marketing campaigns

    • Build your own sales process to follow up and nurture leads

    • Drive sales with efficient sales automation

    • Turn your customers into raving fans through efficient customer support

    • Grow revenue through single click Quotes and Invoices

    • Get 360-degree customer view to provide highest customer satisfaction

    • Multichannel touch points in real time with all prospects and customers

    • Automate your workflow to increase team productivity

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The Ultimate Benefits Of Keeping A Centralized and Clean CRM Database

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database. Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database.

Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Bad data sources result in 30% of all leads failing- Cyber Sphere(2017) Click To Tweet

Inbound marketing strategies have altered the fate of hundreds of business establishments (for the better) all across the globe. However, this is also true, that not all the leads generated are useful. Moreover, in addition to your prospective leads and customers, you will also find many competitors filling out your forms, just to find the feel of your services and eventually try to bulwark a way into your customer database in your online lead management software system.

Additionally, vendors those who have the singular objective of promoting your company something may also break into your CRM database and remain there without ever thinking of being your customer.

Therefore, over a span of time, if you do not periodically clean your customer database, it will eventually accumulate unsought for data that can become a problem in the long haul.

Here are a few steps that you can take in the attempt to make your CRM database cleaner and therefore more optimized.

  1. Delete Inactive Contacts

Implementing an easy to use CRM solution is indeed a step in the right direction, however, in order to maximize upon customer relationships, and productivity, you should always keep a tab on your customer database in CRM. Contacts, that have remained inactive and silent for an extended period of time should be essentially pruned, if and when it is viable to delete their records. Since, hopelessly following leads that are clearly not interested in your offerings can be very damaging for your company’s reputation over time.

  1. Identify Duplicates

Your marketing database software is the golden key to your company’s success, and that is why it needs to be kept clean and efficient at all times. Therefore, it is most needed that you must ensure that every single duplicate identification is removed from your CRM database. It is a common fact that as soon as your business grows and gains a reputation, it is inevitable that duplicate information will start piling up in your customer database in CRM.

Therefore, it is advisable that you must run a periodic check on your CRM database to find and remove duplicate entries or scrutinize both the lead and customer records and after finding out which entry has better information, merge both the records for optimal performance of your customer relationship software system.

  1. Set Up Alerts

Any good easy to use CRM database software allows its user to set up alerts that trigger when certain actions take place so that you keep everything under check. For example, with ConvergeHub CRM you can use time-saving tools like “Manage Duplicates” and “Merge Duplicates” that can prove to be essential in a scenario where two customers or leads have the same name, last name but different phone numbers or emails.

  1. Uniformity Is Key

A CRM database cannot remain clean if uniformity is not maintained- and by no means is it a child’s play. For an example, let us assume that you allow your leads to type their country where they reside instead of allowing them to choose from a drop-down list. In this case you will eventually find a lot of inconsistency in your database, as people hailing from the United States of America, will provide you entries like “USA”, “US”, “U.S.A”, “U.S” and others which will be a sucker blow to your CRM database’s uniformity that can only be rectified by manual correction of data.

  1. Say No-No to Junk Contacts

Your CRM database will inevitably have anonymous leads that will enter fake email addresses like asdfglkjh@gmail.com or blahblah1234@hotmail.com. These junk lead data often pollutes the CRM database, which a good CRM software can run a search and identify and thereafter remove or suspend the information from the online lead management system.

  1. Monitor Email Campaign Results/Feedback

Lastly, it is also recommended that you should keep a close watch on your email campaign’s results and look for opt-outs and, bounced emails. Because based on your findings and observations, you can clean your CRM database after every email campaign is fired for optimal utilization of the resources in your CRM database.

Now that we have learned how to keep a CRM database clean, let us talk about some of the tangible benefits of why you must do so, and what payback a clean CRM database can offer for the growth of your business.

  • Cut Costs

One of the most pertinent benefits of having a clean CRM database is that it saves your business a lot of money. No one wants to send emails to addresses that do not even exist. Therefore, when you run a periodic check on your CRM database to maintain a clean repository, your email list delivers positive results.

  • Precise campaign stats

If your contact database in CRM contains erroneous email addresses, several emails that you send will never be opened, or engaged, which as a result will never be able to paint an accurate result of email campaign’s statistics or your marketing efforts. Whereby, a clean database in CRM, which is devoid of any unwanted lead and customer records, will go a long way in ensuring that your campaign stats are authentic and thereby help you to create your business strategies accordingly.

  • Sender reputation protection

Spam complains, and bounce rates determine how good your reputation is as a sender of your emails, which plays an important factor in email deliverability. Therefore, keeping a clean CRM database ensures that your sender reputation remains protected and trusted by email marketing services.

  • Elevate Revenue And Conversion Rates

Finally, a clean CRM database helps in avoiding a bad sender reputation whereby the chances of emails being placed in the spam folder (instead of the inbox) more frequently is reduced to a lot extent. Therefore a clean database, which engages people, is bound to increases conversion rates and thereby revenue which is the bottom-line for the growth of any business today.

Conclusion

Therefore, implementing an easy to use CRM system, which ensures that the customer database in CRM remains devoid and clean of any unwanted errors can be a real asset to the organization. A Converged CRM like ConvergeHub can easily bring an end to all data management worries as ConvergeHub is the one-stop-solution for online lead management that can save your resources by targeting the most deserving leads.

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