Tag: CRM

Why Do You Need A Scalable Business CRM Software Tool In SMBs For Finding Rapid Growth

The number of startups and SMBs in the US since 1982 (according to the U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 48.7%. New businesses are starting every other day by ambitious businesspersons who want to lead a company and run it on their own. But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles. Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth? Many SMB owners make business growth tougher than it is. This is because, they complicate their products and services, over-think their strategies, and fear too much about the stability of their employees.

The number of startups and SMBs in the US since 1982 (according to the U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 48.7%.
New businesses are starting every other day by ambitious businesspersons who want to lead a company and run it on their own.
But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles.
Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth?
Many SMB owners make business growth tougher than it is. This is because, they complicate their products and services, over-think their strategies, and fear too much about the stability of their employees.
It is beyond any doubt that these are indeed important issues, but these problems pail out when compared to the one area that contributes most to the success of any business: Sales.
Now sales teams in SMBs that follow a rigorous and methodical sales process or a business CRM software tool on average according to CSO Insights, make more than 33 percent growth in their production and revenue than the sales teams that do not.

CRM applications can increase revenue by up to 41% per sales representative – Finances Online Click To Tweet

Therefore to find rapid growth, small business owners have to invest enough time every day in ‘Sales’ and so businesses that have adopted easy to use sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform experience seamless and better growth.

The Importance of Best Small Business CRM Software for SMB

The importance of small business CRM software is the need to address the ever-growing size of the business.

This is because today’s small business is tomorrow’s enterprise, and therefore successful startup owners that have adopted a CRM solution that grows with their business are the ones that realize stellar business growth.

The proof is in the pudding:

According to an infographic published by Bizhumm, sales CRM solutions have been known to boost revenue by 41 percent per salesperson, increase lead conversion rate by more than 300 percent while decreasing the cost of sales and marketing by 23 percent.

Therefore to empower sales and grow revenue small businesses need to implement the right resources and business management tools to do it.

Now if you are shopping around for your best CRM for small business, to help in your business growth, you need to accept the fact that a business CRM software goes well beyond just record-keeping.
This is the reason top-performing establishments use their CRM to its fullest potentials for automating tasks, such as marketing and customer support while ensuring that as their number of employees grows so does the capability of their CRM platform to manage its load.

Hence in this article let us explore a few key areas that best small business CRM software solutions help startups and small businesses to grow:

Improves decision making

Easy to use CRM technology delivers visibility into vital customer data. Since the more comprehensive and detailed are your reports, the better you will be able to measure sales activities, forecast sales, and track your business performances.
It has been found in certain research that most sales-oriented organizations are 38 percent more likely to use CRM for collecting sales analytics and customer information for getting informed on their ongoing customer interactions and touch-points.

Without the information gathered from analytics found in your best CRM for small business, you will not be able to focus on the big picture solutions for your company or empower your sales, marketing, and support teams to focus on opportunities.

Enhance productivity

With business CRM software solutions, your marketing, sales and support reps can seamlessly and safely automate their tasks apart from gaining quick access to customer information as CRM ensures all critical information remains stored in a single place within the CRM database.

Therefore as your business grows, you can significantly boost your brand’s productivity by having a scalable CRM platform that grows along with your prospering business, and also keep all records of your customer’s data which includes all customer history and buyer journey information stored in its database for boosting cross-selling and up-selling activities.

Promotes teamwork        

Growing small businesses and startups requires a scalable business CRM software platform in order to make marketing, sales, customer support work in a more aligned manner since it has been found in research by Aberdeen Group, that companies that have strong marketing and sales alignment achieve more than 20 percent increase in their annual growth rates.

Now if you are using a QuickBooks CRM solution, which even integrates accounting with your best small business CRM software when it is combined with sales and customer service modules in the CRM, it not only boosts productivity but also increases customer experience and promotes seamless teamwork that is needed for rapid business growth.

Therefore an all-in-one CRM makes it possible to open up lines of communication between your teams.

Improve calling services

Easy to use CRM, helps businesses to make outbound calls, receive incoming calls, record calls, create personalized calling scripts, automate voice mails and create many other telephony-based activates, which helps employees using CRM to quickly manage, assign and resolve incidents when these processes are automated.

Therefore, scalability in a CRM becomes a necessity when small businesses have ever-growing data of customer information in their CRM database.

Provide mobile access to data

In the present times, key data no longer can remain confined to the office. Therefore mobile CRM technology provides your team instant access to data which helps them to view sales and customer support activities in real-time.

This is because, with a complete view of customer history, pricing history, and several other types of lead intelligence data which can be seen from any mobile device, the best small business CRM software makes it possible to gain access to information that is needed for any growing business.

Conclusion

Therefore, in a gist business CRM software is a scalable business tool that not only provides small businesses with the commitment to sell better than their competitors, but it also enables collaborations across departments that results in providing world-class customer experience which helps to create grounds for new business and aids in finding rapid revenue growth.

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New CRM Metrics To Explore In This Era Of The Customer

Most activities in businesses are tracked, used and measured to evaluate the performance of the departments and its staffs. While this is useful and necessary, most, if not all of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) metrics are internally oriented. This implies that most KPIs are targeted on improving internal performances instead of finding out whether customers are happy with their services. Here are some of the top legendary KPIs that most businesses look for in their easy to use CRM software, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions available in the CRM space.

Most activities in businesses are tracked, used and measured to evaluate the performance of the departments and its staffs.
While this is useful and necessary, most, if not all of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) metrics are internally oriented.
This implies that most KPIs are targeted on improving internal performances instead of finding out whether customers are happy with their services.
Here are some of the top legendary KPIs that most businesses look for in their easy to use CRM software, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions available in the CRM space:

  • FCR (First Contact Resolution)
  • Number of transactions handled and offered by channels
  • AHT (Average Handle Time)
  • CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score
  • NPS (Net Promoter Score)

However, in the present times, digital transformation initiatives will make businesses to change how they treat their customers.

Therefore, the KPIs and metrics used to evaluate the performance of sales and support teams must also change to make them more customer-centric.

91% of businesses with over 11 employees now use CRM, compared to 50% of those with 10 employees or less. Click To Tweet

As a matter of fact, these new customer-centric metrics should focus on identifying how customers view the brand and determining what needs to be enhanced to improve their customer experience.

This is where CJA (Customer Journey Analytics) comes into play, whereby the new challenge for businesses is to come up with a set of new metrics that can help to evaluate what matters the most to the customers and thereafter provides actionable insights using easy to use CRM software, so that businesses can use this information gathered in the CRM database to determine processes and systems that can aid in fixing the customer’s needs.

We as one of the best vendors of award-winning small business CRM software have identified the following five metrics for businesses to use and evaluate their performance from the customer’s perspectives:

  1. Ease of conducting business– The perception of the customers of how hard or easy is it for them to conduct business with your brand.
  2. Emotion and Sentiment Score– How your customers feel when they conduct business with your brand (happy/unhappy, enthusiastic/blasé, satisfied/displeased, fulfilled/frustrated, etc.)
  3. Transaction profile– The amount and type of activities that customers do by category with your brand
  4. Wallet share– What proportion of your offerings the customers are using
  5. Repeat business– The number of times and the dollar value of purchases made by each customer of your brand after their initial transaction with your company

How to calculate customer-centric metrics?

The greatest challenge with metrics that are customer-centric is that they cannot be calculated using the old system as required for calculating traditional KPIs as listed above.
Hence in the present times, businesses and brands need different processes and systems to accumulate customer-focused data.

Moreover, there are different ways to calculate some of these metrics, which makes it difficult for performing external benchmark comparisons with these new metrics in the line.
Therefore these new metrics should not matter within a business as long as they are measured on a consistent basis.

Hence, companies, in order to calculate these metrics, need to create new processes to apply to the findings of these metrics, which signifies a substantial change for brands that have been using the same legacy KPIs for close to 20 years.

However, while this is difficult, it is a necessary step in any digital transformation.

It is true that businesses will still continue to need many of the same systems and processes they have been using for decades, like easy to use CRM , IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, quality management, workforce management, recording systems and more. Since these systems are needed and should be still used to keep support centers operating properly.

However to calculate the performance of the brands from the customer perspective, businesses now requires VOC (Voice of the Customer), IA (Interaction Analytics), Predictive Analysis, CJA (Customer Journey Analytics) as well as input from other systems already used by the company, like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and more.

This is because data from all these solutions are required to be analyzed on a stand-alone basis as well as in combination with data found in the CRM database to fully understand what is happening with the customers.

Hence, all these relevant data from these disparate solutions must be entered into a CRM solution, so that the information can be used holistically to gain a proper understanding of what is happening to the customers at every touch-point of the customer journey.

Conclusion

Therefore, in brief in this era of digital transformation businesses needs to change how brands view and treat their customers, which we hope by using the five customer-centric indicators mentioned above should definitely be a step in the proper direction to aid organizations to acquire the information they require to meet their modern day customer’s high expectations and succeed in reaching their business goals.

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Ways Invoicing Can Improve Business Processes and Customer Service with QuickBooks CRM

As businesses grow and expands, billing becomes more time-consuming and complex. This is where companies can resort to end-to-end invoicing and billing solutions. Specialized technology providers such as QuickBooks CRM integration for free not only offers automated solutions for generation of invoices, but it also helps in customer intimation, and the billing processes. In reality, easy to use CRM software, simply adds an extra layer of analysis to the entire invoicing and billing process. In general, invoices and bills are not considered as a part of the communication process with the customers and are hence not analyzed. However when invoice data gets automatically store in the CRM database after being integrated with an accounting software like QuickBooks, this can be a great starting point for studying purchase and payment behaviors of the customers for cross-selling and up-selling of products and services by relying on QuickBooks CRM or the best CRM software for QuickBooks.

Even if you have not heard about QuickBooks CRM, you must be aware of these expressions:

“Our Customer is the King.”

“We do not consider customer satisfaction. We believe in customer delight.”

“Our customer is at the center of our business model.”

You surely must have heard many of these sayings, or have read them in the annual letter to the investors. Since there are many executives who like to associate themselves with the team of customer-friendly business leaders.
However, this is also true that according to Shep Hyken (a renowned Forbes contributor) businesses lose as much as $65 billion every year because of inefficient customer service.

There are many who think that customer service is all about sending that extra email to receive feedback or assure customers with certain additional discounts. However, in reality, that is not even close to quality customer service, which only happens when communication between a brand and its consumers is such that the consumers completely feels satisfied with the value that they get from their purchases when they compare it with the value they paid for buying that product or service.

Businesses lose as much as $65 billion every year because of inefficient customer service- Shep Hyken Click To Tweet

This implies that every minuscule of conversation and communication that occurred between the brand and the consumer should have just one core focus- to provide the consumers with a positive perception of the value received by the customer.

The communication between a company and its consumers begins with the marketing channels, and then graduates to sales and winds-up as a bill sent to the customer, ending the loop until the next time. This makes billing and invoicing a vital aspect of the communication process. Still it is astonishing to see that despite the advanced business models of the present times; many establishments still use primitive invoicing and billing technologies.

Nevertheless, if you do not want the communication loop with your customers to remain outdated, here are a few steps that you should consider to improve your billing and invoicing processes:

Use technologies like cloud computing and automation

Many small and even medium businesses still find using handwritten bills helpful instead of electronic ones. To the owners of these business establishments, this can seem to be a cheaper short-term option, although it can result in a negative effect on the long-term business goals of the company.

On the other hand, when online billing is used instead of handwritten ones by using QuickBooks CRM or a best CRM for QuickBooks online like ConvergeHub that seamlessly integrates an accounting and bookkeeping software with customer management system, both these platforms increases efficiency in the business process and even reduces costs and increases customer retention in the long run.

As businesses grow and expands, billing becomes more time consuming and complex. This is where companies can resort to end-to-end invoicing and billing solutions. Specialized technology providers such as QuickBooks CRM integration free not only offers automated solutions for generation of invoices, but it also helps in customer intimation, and the billing processes.

In reality, easy to use CRM software, simply adds an extra layer of analysis to the entire invoicing and billing process. In general, invoices and bills are not considered as a part of the communication process with the customers and are hence not analyzed. However when invoice data gets automatically store in the CRM database after being integrated with an accounting software like QuickBooks, this can be a great starting point for studying purchase and payment behaviors of the customers for cross-selling and up-selling of products and services by relying on QuickBooks CRM or the best CRM software for QuickBooks.

Maintain consistency

Consistency is an element that should be present in everything, like, the look of the invoices and bills, their format and the carrying effect of the bills. Per say, the format of the invoice and the bills, which refers to the branding, typography, the contact details; when they are uniform, it communicates to the customers that the company handles even the minutest of details with exceptional care.
Finally, by using a QuickBooks CRM, you can also bring uniformity of the carrying effect of the invoices and the bills, which means terms of payment and any other conditions present in the invoices and the bills, which are needed to be clearly laid down on each of these financial documentations of the company.

This consistency in invoicing and billing should be maintained for each and every leads, prospects and customers through all business processes, which by using a QuickBooks CRM make it easy to find relevant data and documents of the customers, when needed.

Establish a timeline

 

Most small and medium businesses have a standard rate at which accounts receivable are to be collected from the customers. However, how does a company puts special emphasis on its key accounts? Is it by providing its key accounts with a flexible timeline? Well then to put it into a perspective, a company must have a clear policy on the tenure on its accounts receivable laid out for its key customers. These timeline policies of accounts receivable should be explained in the details of the bills that the key customers receive. Customers who have been with the brand long enough to prove their reliability.

Treat your customers like humans and not just account numbers

When starting a fresh business relationship with your customers, make it amply clear that you have performed your due research on the new customer before setting up the payment terms, which can include extended credit lines or lump sum payments. Therefore, once you use an automated invoicing and billing system by using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams , like ConvergeHub, you can create a unique relationship with every customer that will be reflected on their payment terms.

Additionally by using a QuickBooks CRM, you can send a polite reminder to your customers by using its automation feature, if any customer misses their payment.

At the end of the day, you must always remember that your customers are human and so it is natural that they can make mistakes, just like everyone.

Use an invoice like marketing collateral

Billing is the last stage in the entire communication process with your customers. A bill shows the product or service provided, along with price, quantity, and taxes levied on the sale. Therefore, you can always use it as marketing collateral as well. A bill, in general, contains the all the essential information of your customers. Hence, you can leverage the bill as marketing collateral by putting a social button within it (once you generate an electronic bill by using QuickBooks CRM), which allows the bill to provide all the necessary closure to the entire sales process and your communications with the customer.

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6 Things to Do Before You Buy Your Easy to Use ConvergeHub CRM for Yours SME

Getting your very first easy to use CRM software is a lot like getting your first automobile. You just cannot hop into it and go speeding around, you have to get a license plate first, buy insurance, buckle up your seat belt, adjust your rear mirror, check the controls and so on. Similarly, there are certain preparations you need to do before diving into a brand new company-wide software platform, which is your gateway for generating better sales volume by nurturing enhanced customer relationships.

Getting your very first easy to use CRM software is a lot like getting your first automobile. You just cannot hop into it and go speeding around, you have to get a license plate first, buy insurance, buckle up your seat belt, adjust your rear mirror, check the controls and so on. Similarly, there are certain preparations you need to do before diving into a brand new company-wide software platform, which is your gateway for generating better sales volume by nurturing enhanced customer relationships.

CRM software returns an average of $5.60 for every dollar spent. Click To Tweet

Small business CRMs are in vogue among SMEs, to put it mildly. In a recent CSO Insights research study, it has been found that 80% of sales organizations in small and medium businesses are now using best small business CRM software, which is nearly double the adoption rate that was a decade before. However, easy to use CRM usage does not just end with sales. Innumerable other verticals and niche markets from customer service to car wash companies are also adopting CRMs to track and manage their customer relationships.

Nevertheless, there yet remains a widely held belief that CRM initiatives are plagued by instability. If you look into the web, you will easily find that analysts quote precipitous fail rates for CRM software, which is as high as 68% in certain instances. Although these statistical findings are somewhat based on thin evidence, even partial accuracy would be a cause for such an alarm.

However, the truth be told, there are more than a few opportunities between purchasing a new easy to use CRM software and achieving successful returns on your investment.

So, how do you protect your investment in your best small business CRM software?

To do this, you need to create an environment that optimizes the value of your new customer relationship management system through impeccable preparation, effective use, and precise performance measurement of your CRM data.

For this do not forget to do these six most essential things before make your CRM go live in your business establishment.

#01. Consider the alternatives

Maybe you have already selected a specific brand for you are confident that it is the best small business CRM in the market. One that is ideal for your needs. Still, as a rain check, never sign a contract until you have considered other easy to use CRM solutions. The CRM market is notoriously competitive, which implies for every “best of breed” options, you are likely to find one or two more online lead management software systems with similar features and pricing.

#02. Create executive buy-in

Getting your leadership team on board with the new customer information database software or your CRM can have a great impact on its long-term success. However, it necessarily does not just mean getting your CFO to sign off on the purchase. What we mean over here is that you must sit down with your future stakeholders (CMO, Director of Sales, CIO/CTO, etc.) and let all of them unanimously agree on the business need for your new CRM and accept your game plan for the project.

According to us, the ideal way to build a business case is by showing your executives the value your best small and medium business CRM software will add to their respective departments.

For an example, best small business CRM is obviously a financial incentive, as it is a known fact that CRM software returns an average of $5.60 for every dollar spent.

#03. Negotiate a safe contract

Whether you are selecting an on-premise or an easy to use cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub, most vendors will be willing to compromise on certain points. Your contact with the CRM company will serve as a map for your future and ongoing relationship with the vendor. Therefore, it is most important that you must read the fine prints on fees and pricing, CRM data ownership, renewal terms, updates and security measures laid by the vendor of your easy to use CRM. In case you find anything that unfairly favors the vendor, lay down your concerns. You should also ask for a copy of the SLA (Service Level Agreement), as the SLA will define your expectations for support and performance of your purchased system.

#04. Train your employees

End-user adoption is one of the most widespread and most exasperating reasons for the failure to launch a CRM initiative. According to a study done by Forrester, it has been revealed that 22% of the CRM adoption problems arise because of slow user adoption, unsuccessful training, and for challenges which lie in adapting to the new workflow. Therefore, your easy to use CRM software training program should focus on the value gains (e.g. automation, time saving features) of the new system. The length of the application training should be determined and measured by the CRM system’s complexity.

#05. Customize the software

Although a formal training is truly a top-down approach for proper adoption of your best small and medium business CRM software, however, you can balance the scales also by taking a bottom-up approach for the implementation of your online lead management software.

In other words, customize your new CRM software to match the user’s preferences. For example, is there a specific pipeline procedure your sales teams prefer? If it is so, recreate the process in your new easy to use CRM software.

Another important aspect of customization includes creating role-based access controls and integrating any third party programs (like QuickBooks Online for accounting, Dropbox for file sharing etc.) through the CRM provider’s API. All critical integrations should be set up and made alive before your CRM goes online.

#06. Establish a framework for evaluating ROI

The only assured way to find whether your easy to use customer information database software is failing is to carefully track the ROI (net gain as a percent of the overall cost). This is exactly where most businesses feel uncomfortable, as “cost” is much more complicated than the CRM’s price tag, and “net gain” is much more complex than revenue.

Therefore establish a baseline before your CRM implementation and then compare the new data against the previous baseline.

 Here are some metrics that you should consider while doing your calculations:

Total Cost

  • Upfront or subscription licensing
  • Vendor service and support fees (implementation, data migration, consulting, maintenance, etc.)
  • Paid upgrades
  • IT maintenance costs
  • Cost for adding/removing users

Net Gain

  • Overall revenue
  • Average revenue per sale/account
  • Number of new accounts
  • Cost and time savings from increased productivity
  • Cost savings per lead
  • Cost savings from increased customer retention

Takeaway

Setting up your first easy to use CRM software system can seem to be a daunting task, but this process depends more on the scale of your business’s needs than on any inherent complexity of your best small and medium business CRM software.

In fact, if your small business deploys a cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub, it can be up and run in less than a day.

Just keep it in your mind, that the more planned your strategies are on the front end, the more value you will get out of your customer information database software on the back end.

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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.

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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.

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Easy To Use CRM Software Training (A Dozen Best Practices)

Most easy to use CRM software training consists of daylong, instructor-led courses that cover application capabilities. Research on software training courses show; normally the attendees of these courses recollect less than 17 percent of their course contents beyond 72 hours. However, luckily as a vendor of CRM for small and medium businesses, we have found that there are certain proven best practices, which when adhered to, can considerably improve CRM software training results instantaneously.

Most easy to use CRM software training consists of daylong, instructor-led courses that cover application capabilities.

More often than not, participants of these training sessions even on the best small business CRM training get bored, become diverted, find ways to check their emails, and then check anything that comes to their mind on the mobile devices that they find more exciting than the curriculum of their online lead management software training course.

Research on software training courses show; normally the attendees of these courses recollect less than 17 percent of their course contents beyond 72 hours.

91% of businesses with over 11 employees now use CRM, compared to 50% of those with 10 employees or less. - SuperOffice (2018) Click To Tweet

Luckily as a vendor of CRM for small and medium businesses, we have found that there are certain proven best practices, which when adhered to, can considerably improve CRM software training results instantaneously.

Here are some of the golden ways by which you can improve your CRM training, which we mostly implement while training our customers after their purchase of ConvergeHub Merchant Cash Advance CRM or our Quickbooks CRM software, which comes with several unique functionalities that are beyond just CRM platforms developed for customer information database software applications.

# 1. The primary pre-requisite to a successful easy to use CRM software training is keeping aside a pragmatic budget. In a study done by CIO magazine, it was found that an ideal training program’s monetary allocation should comprise of 10-13 percent of the project’s budget. However, from our experience, we have found very few training project allocations reaches anywhere near to this figure.
The curriculums for a successful training which is needed for customer information database software like CRM are for software adoption, the utilization of the software and the technology payback. Therefore, plan accordingly.

#2. A CRM software system built on usability is the next and another most necessary pre-requisite to successful user training. Easy to use CRM software that is designed for simplistic intuitive navigation and purpose-built user experiences can be adopted without long training. It has been noted that best small business CRM systems that leverage on consumer technology, have a lower learning curve, better user adoption, greater software utilization and faster to find value out of the CRM platform. The main point over here is that designing usability of a CRM platform during the implementation process pays greater dividends during the training.

#3. When it comes to training, one size does not fit all. While training people in various organizations once they have adopted our Merchant Cash Advance CRM or ConvergeHub Quickbooks CRM software, we have seen that while there are many that responds to classroom training, there are others who find themselves more comfortable with computer-based training, by using self-paced manuals or mobile-enabled videos. Hence, using both these training options will certainly help your organization to better connect with more staffs working in your company.

#4. While imparting training for the easy to use CRM software, training instructors must advise the company employees, why the company is adopting the new customer information database software system. Trainers of the software must make the employees understand that the goal of adopting easy to use CRM software is just not to provide the users a different place to enter their customer data, but instead, CRM is a software that has been engineered for better business outcomes by the use of cutting-edge new technologies.
These business outcomes may include:

  • Lesser manual processes
  • More process automation
  • Enhanced customer experiences
  • Faster time to market the product
  • Better information reporting
  • Greater support for more agile business strategies that leads to continuous process improvements

It has been seen that employees are likely to remain more committed to the CRM training programs when they understand the strategic importance of their new online lead management software system.

#5. It is an accepted fact that short, bite-sized training work better than the long ones. To put it in other words, less is always more when it comes to any type of training for retention of the contents taught in the training. Research done on training processes suggests that an average adult can concentrate no more than 15-20 minutes before getting distracted. However, this figure can marginally increase with an engaging instructor, personalized stories and by creating role-based contents. Nevertheless, any training sessions beyond 60 minutes of classroom instructions produce diminishing returns.

You can still schedule training for your easy to use CRM software for a whole day, but always remember to break up the training classes so that the sessions are short and are progressively built upon each other. It can also be helpful if you allocate half-day for the courses and assign the rest of the training period for conducting homework-like assignments in hands-on exercises, whereby the retention factor climbs sharply as the attendees apply to what they have learned.

#6. Another way for imparting training for customer information database software is not to provide training for functionalities that the attendees may use 3-6 months down the road. Instead, it is more useful to adopt a JIT (Just-In-Time) training with ad-hoc training programs that can be learned and adopted when they are required. Even better, you can also deliver these training on the staff’s mobile devices for their individual consumption of the training materials as when and where they are needed.

#7. It is always a good idea to invest in support collaterals, presentations based on role-plays, and handout materials to support the training curriculum. It is a general mistake to always use the software company’s standard training resources. Instead, for easy to use CRM software training, you can use tailored curriculums that focus on use cases, expected outcomes, and inject real users and company stories as course pre-requisites that attendees can personally relate.

#8. Training for best small business CRM software should flow according to the role-based business processes and not as per the instructor’s software screen. Users understand the best when their training is presented as a part of their daily job’s contexts. This makes the staffs learn how they can perform their jobs easier and better. Therefore, do not follow the step by step sequences as easy to use CRM platforms are quite flexible, which normally permits multiple navigation options that help the users to find their own preferences.

#9. Always keep the training simple. Concentrate primarily on the core responsibilities and never try to make your employees technology experts- it just will not work. Empower your staffs not to become technology gurus, but to understand the necessity of CRM automation, and other basic information regarding the functionalities of the CRM.

#10. Avoid using demo data. Use real information and spend most of your time training in live applications. Real user scenarios, which focus on relevance and expected benefits of adopting an easy to use CRM software make the CRM applications seem more familiar, which improves the training experiences. It is okay to start with a standard demonstration of the customer information database software, but that necessarily must be followed with the staffs operating the CRM applications, as there is no substitute for the users typing on their keyboards.

#11. Make the training a part of your change management program. Training is one of the best approaches and the most effective tools to get hesitant and unwilling staffs get off their fences and into the software. When training is combined with other change management stuff such as business impact analysis, employees start to understand the organization’s go forward plans and how they can fit into the bigger picture of the company’s goals.

#12. Finally, it is most vital to understand that easy to use CRM software training is a process and not an event. Therefore, avoid one-time training and go for continued training programs even after the go-live event, which will increase the user adoption and utilization of the CRM software. It is best to design recurring training cadences that are aligned with new software releases of the CRM so that the users of your easy to use CRM software are capable of identifying training shortfalls and find necessary remedies as a part of a defined learning process.

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How Best Small Business CRM Software Help Close More Deals

We all are on the lookout for the best small business CRM software because doing a business is all about creating and nurturing relationships. However, doing business with numerous people requires keeping track of multiple interactions, which occurs at different stages of the sales pipeline. This is a constant challenge that many businesses face today, and that is the exact reason why more and more business establishments are turning to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. Indeed the best small business CRM software (like ConvergeHub) can be one of your most valuable assets for your SMB. According to Gartner, the estimated CRM software’s global market is now worth $26.3 billion and this figure is projected to reach $36.5 billion by the end of 2018.

We all are on the lookout for the Best Small Business CRM software because doing a business is all about creating and nurturing relationships.

However, doing business with numerous people requires keeping track of multiple interactions, which occurs at different stages of the sales pipeline.

Around 55% of top-performing small businesses are now investing in sales enablement technology like CRM software for generating better revenue. Click To Tweet

This is a constant challenge that many businesses face today, and that is the exact reason why more and more business establishments are turning to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.

Indeed the best small business CRM software (like ConvergeHub) can be one of your most valuable assets for your SMB.

In fact, in a study done by Brainshark and Forbes last year, it was found that:

Around 55% of top-performing small businesses are now investing in sales enablement technology like CRM software for generating better revenue.

Moreover, this rise in CRM sell is showing no signs of slowing down.

According to Gartner, the estimated CRM software’s global market is now worth $26.3 billion and this figure is projected to reach $36.5 billion by the end of 2018.

This increasing growth in CRM software, especially by businesses looking for the best small business CRM software, is an undeviating reflection of the ability of this platform to create sales and bring a return on its investments. Although, even the best small business CRM software will only be useful for revenue as users make it.

Therefore, to show how priceless this software can be for your sales and marketing team, we have put together 5 ways to secure more deals with your CRM.

Let us get started.

Invest less time on data entry

Perhaps the greatest ability of the best small business CRM software (from the perspective of sales) is that it helps the salespeople spend lesser time on menial tasks and therefore they can utilize more time working with customers and prospects since CRM has an aptitude for automating data entry.

For example, instead of physically reporting every lead captured through a webinar or trade show, you can use your CRM software platform with its integrated web forms and other data importing tools that can record all data and information automatically.

This provides your sales team members more opportunities to work directly with the customers and push the customers slowly and steadily towards a sale, in addition to improving their ability to quickly follow-up with leads.

Get your timing down

Timing can often make a big difference between loosing and closing a deal. Understanding where your potential buyers stand in relation to their final sale is the decisive point in knowing when and how you should engage them.  There will be many prospects who will just be interested in gathering information about your brand, while there will be also those who are ready to receive a price quote and iron-out a contract or make a purchase from your brand.

This is truly a delicate balance.

Best small business CRM software can keep your reps from being too eager or too sluggish from developing a lead. By illustrating the sales pipeline and highlighting, where your prospective customers are placed in the sales funnel, your sales reps can clearly understand when or when it is not the ideal time to get engaged with their leads, prospects and customers.

With most CRM software you can create custom stages based on the level of qualification such as leads, inquiries, MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads), SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) and opportunities.

Use analytics to improve your strategy

Your best small business CRM software is just not for storing customer data. CRM is also an extremely advanced tool that helps your sales track their performances and adjust their tactics accordingly. Most CRM platforms come along with a variety of built-in reports, such as:

  • Financial forecasting report
  • Profitability and revenue report
  • Sales cycle reports
  • Progress to goal report
  • Win/loss reports etc.

By keeping an eye on the metrics of these reports your sales managers can easily isolate the bottleneck and weaknesses in their sales processes.

Markets can also use these metrics to find which marketing campaigns generated more customers that are new and find their attributed revenue for generating more sales.

Understand your buyer’s needs

CRM can help to show you not only when your buyers are ready to buy but also the best way to engage them. Therefore, by integrating your CRM with a marketing automation platform you can collect metrics of the pre-sales stages that can help your sales reps deploy their skills more advantageously to close a deal.

This data can be:

  • Where your prospects are in the sales pipeline?
  • What channel you prospects came from?
  • What online materials they downloaded or read from your website?
  • Which selling techniques have been successful or have not been doing well with them in the past?

Build better relationships with customers

Your best small business CRM software is, therefore, a highly effective tool for improving the relationship between your brand and your customers.

According to a report published by American Express:

“Three out of four consumers say they have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences,” whereas over half of consumers “intended to conduct a business transaction or make a purchase, but decided not to due to a poor service experience.”

Therefore, understanding the modern buyer and their requirements is the key to any B2B (Business-to-Business) sales in this digital world.

As a customer database, best small business CRM software is a platform that can hold invaluable information for understanding buyers, through their digital body languages, purchase history, communication logs, company data, and others, which helps in improving customer relationship and thus close more sales.

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Conclusion

Although the traditional way to close deals has always been the handshake, but as your business grows in this digital world, you need tools like best small business CRM software that helps you scale up your outreach and develop your sales. It gives your sales team enough data that can help them make intelligent decisions, which are the keys to effective sales.

If you have liked this article, feel free to share any tips you have in the comment section below.

Choosing an MCA CRM? Avoid these mistakes!

Let us face the reality; you do not want to make the mistake of picking up the wrong MCA CRM just like others. MCA CRM software can save a lot of your precious work hours, but then again, it comes at the price of a learning curve. A learning curve that can make you shell out a lot of money, in case you have to change the MCA CRM platform down the line. For the convenience of such buyers of MCA Customer Relationship Management platform, we have put together a few ideas to mull over when choosing a CRM. Let us review them one by one now and we are hopeful that these suggestions will help.

Let us face the reality; you do not want to make the mistake of picking up the wrong MCA CRM just like others.
MCA CRM software can save a lot of your precious work hours, but then again, it comes at the price of a learning curve. A learning curve that can make you shell out a lot of money, in case you have to change the MCA CRM platform down the line.

For the convenience of such buyers of MCA Customer Relationship Management platform, we have put together a few ideas to mull over when choosing a CRM.

There is currently $80 to $120 billion dollars worth of unmet funding needs among SMEs, and MCA companies are in the best position to meet this demand. Click To Tweet

Let us review them one by one now and we are hopeful that these suggestions will help.

Not finding whether or not you are looking for a specific solution

A specific or a niche solution may be perfect for your business if you are wishing to use the CRM solution at its optimal level. Now, if you are just utilizing your CRM platform for basic data input, you will definitely not benefit from such a high-powered customer relationship solution with myriad bells and whistles. However, if you are using the CRM solution to track multiple areas unique to your kind of business, such as retail, MCA, legal and others, you should consider using the appropriate niche CRM solution that fits with your business’s modus operandi.

Not understanding the needs of all the users

Once you purchase a CRM platform, it is most likely that you are not going to be the only one who will use the CRM system. Therefore, before buying a CRM, you will have to take time out to consider the needs of the other users who will use the CRM along with you in your company. Never run into a risk of fully investing in a particular software solution that will only reward you and your executives, but your evaluation of the CRM platform should take into consideration the cross-section of all the users who will collaborate with the software.

Picking the solution that will not address the problem

This statement may seem clichéd and obvious, yet it is one of those critical issues that are mostly overlooked. For example, let us take that the most pressing issue for your urgency in buying a CRM is to facilitate communication with your customers. Therefore, communication should be the make or break feature for purchasing your CRM system. Therefore, do not get caught up with other fancier aspects of the CRM software if you find your desired CRM lacks the ideal communication features while purchasing the CRM.

Always keep in your mind that the software solution that you select for your business must be accurate and effective in addressing your problems. However, we have seen that it is not uncommon for companies to select CRM solutions that do not necessarily address their pressing issues. Hence, the primary problem the software solution is expected to resolve should always be there at the top of your checklist before buying your Merchant Cash Advance CRM.

Opting for a CRM that does not save time

In any sort of businesses, most companies can very quickly identify at least two time-taking business processes when it comes to managing their customer relationships. Therefore, before finalizing carefully map these burdensome processes and match the ideal CRM solution that is capable of streamlining these cumbersome issues. Remember, you selected CRM must always save your business resources and time to justify its ROI to the company.

Not being thoughtful about ongoing IT needs and anticipated resources

There can be several scenarios and you can be a part of any one or more of these issues. Like, you can have access to manage an in-house team of IT professionals or you may have limited access to reliable professionals and resources that can solve your IT problems as they arise, or you may even have access to IT resources but they do not align with the particular needs for a given CRM solution. Therefore, when selecting your CRM system, always take into account the potential support requirements of the skillsets that you require from your technical team before purchasing the CRM software.

Not testing the software

Last but not the least, the most common mistake that businesses make while opting for a CRM system is to make a selection even before scheduling a demo of the software. Ideally, you should consider evaluating several CRM solutions simultaneously before selecting your preferred CRM software. Most CRM brands offer a walkthrough or a free trial to their prospects.

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Conclusion

Remove guesswork before selecting your CRM. We are confident that if you are capable of avoiding these common pitfalls in choosing your CRM, this article will help you to find the right CRM solution for your Merchant Cash Advance businesses.

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5 Ways To Increase Sales Productivity With Mobile CRM App

Every company wants their salespeople to be successful, which means- close more deals.
However, as the completion rises, it is crucial for your sales reps to remain on the top. So how do you do that? What can you do to improve the conditions of your sales and support people, with mobile CRM app so that they can close more sales?

Statistics have proved that easy to use CRM can become one the greatest productivity booster for your sales team.

Mobile CRM increases sales volume and business growth by 15%. - Nucleus Research (2016) Click To Tweet

Sales and marketing CRM platform can not only save hours out of your busy week but also help manage and follow up on your prospects and leads.

According to a study by Gartner, a well-implemented and affordable CRM software can increase business revenue by a whopping 41% for every sales rep working with any business.

How to stay productive while being away from office

Those work in sales would all agree that there is one magic formula for closing any deals. It is about being in the right place at the right time.

To get most out of your CRM, it is important that you log every single information and interactions with your customers, as you will certainly benefit from accessing those data when it is needed.

But what happens if you are away from your office desk?

As a successful and active salesperson, it is natural that you can mostly remain out on customer calls when a prospect reaches out to you. Turning on your laptop for browsing on information while you are on the go is not an option, which is convenient nor is it advisable to tell your prospects that you get back to them after you return back to your office.

Surely, you as a businessperson or as a salesperson will never want to consider your traveling hours as a nonperforming downtime or a window of complete ‘communication brownout’. Rather, you will always want to come up at a meeting equipped with all relevant and vital information that you require to nail down a sales-ready prospect, as well as be capable to update and record actions while traveling.

If you find this true, then say “hello” to a Mobile CRM app, which allows you to stay on the top.

Hence, having your team prepared with a mobile CRM provides flexibility and it is even a great way to enhance the numbers of your sales.

According to a research done by Innoppl Technologies in the USA, 68% of salespersons who work with businesses that have said yes to Mobile CRM adoption have reached their sales targets, as opposed to 21% of sales team members from non-mobile CRM oriented companies.

Moreover, in a study done by Nucleus Research, it has been found that mobile CRM increases sales volume and business growth by 15%.

Aided by a Mobile CRM app, you not only get the access to all CRM data you require but also with cloud based CRM tool you can speed up your abilities to act, respond and increase your conversion rates,

If you are still thinking about how this can be done, then here are 5 key benefits of using a mobile CRM on the go:

#1. Stay well prepared and focused all the time

You can always assume that you have everything under your control. Yet, this cannot be refuted that having your dairies, calendar, and contacts integrated into the mobile CRM is a huge time-saver. Using a mobile CRM, you can not only get yourself notified of an upcoming meeting but also have all the notes and information on the customer on the palm of your hand.

Mobile CRM gives a direct access to your customer’s database in the CRM so that you can get an immediate access to all the vital information that your company has on the customers, partners, prospects, suppliers and even your colleagues.

With a Mobile CRM, you can confidently leave your office knowing that you have access to all information that you might require whenever you need.

#2. Close more sales in less time

Mobile CRM helps you to close more deals with lesser interactions, which can provide you more time to work on new prospects or new sales opportunities.

Imagine you are out of your office and a prospect calls you whom you have been chasing down for a month and the prospect is willing to close the deal, provided you can give a quick summary of all the options that you can offer to the prospect before closing the deal. In this case, “I will email you the details tomorrow” will certainly not be a good way to respond. You know you have all the prospect’s offers and quotes stored in the database at your office, but unfortunately, you are miles away from your office desk right now. So when you are on the clock and trying to close a sale ASAP, having a mobile CRM system where can find all the vital information of the prospects is an ideal weapon to win the sale, as the CRM software can take care of the entire process via your mobile device.

#3. Capture new opportunities

Mobile CRM is an excellent tool to interact with customers and update all their information at the source. When you are in a middle of a meeting it may not be that convenient to open your laptop, but then again if you are incapable of entering the data immediately, there are chances that you may forget several crucial information at the end of the day.

Moreover, if you are on the go, and receive a phone call from your prospect or from your office staffs about changes regarding the sale in progress, you can even update the quote as you go. There is no need to delay it until u get back to your desk.

In the same manner, if you meet someone important on the road, you can add them to your contact list, create networking events, book appointments, or plan activities using a mobile CRM straight away.

#4. Share information across your team

Mobile CRM helps you to share information across your sales, marketing, billing, and customer support departments when contacting a customer or a lead.

For example, if you come across some important information or discover new opportunities during a customer meeting and then the information needs to be circulated quickly to your team, just in case the new prospect decides to contact you or your colleagues, having a mobile CRM can be extremely helpful under this circumstance. Since if your colleagues at the office do not know what you are doing, you may miss out on your next big opportunity.

#5. Stay on track and keep your management informed

With every new sale and contacts, you are gathering valuable information. Mobile CRM app lets everyone involved in the sales and marketing process to access information that they need and most importantly in real-time. Moreover, it also helps the user of the app to organize and present the data in a clear way.

Hence, Mobile CRM enables both the sales reps and their managers to take control over the sales pipelines and update sales forecasts with a few clicks, making you always ready to plan and answer the question about your sales targets at any moment or provide valuable sales coaching to your team on the go.

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Conclusion

Therefore, to conclude, mobile CRM helps the users to keep in touch with a higher number of prospects and use the same tools that you have on your office desktop, which increases your own productivity with ease while you are away.

Do you use a mobile CRM app? If so let us know by leaving a quick comment below.

The Only Reason Why Small Businesses Fail to Grow Without CRM

According to a report published on non-CRM adoptors by Small Business Trends, it has been seen that more than 50% of small enterprises fail in the very first year, and greater than 95% small startups fail within the first five years. Therefore, businesses, regardless of their size, are regularly challenged with finding unique means to capture new customers, improve their up-sell and cross-selling opportunities, increase sales and along with it keep their existing customers happy so that they return times and again.

According to a report published on non-CRM adopters, it has been seen that more than 50% of small enterprises fail in the very first year, and greater than 95% small startups fail within the first five years.

Here are some greater surprises for you:

  • 40% of SMB are profitable
  • 30% of SMB reaches break even
  • 30% of SMB are constantly losing revenue
  • 9 % of SMB gets the chance to survive beyond 10 years

Businesses, regardless of their size, are regularly challenged with finding unique means to capture new customers, improve their up-sell and cross-selling opportunities, increase sales and along with it keep their existing customers happy so that they return times and again.

Make your customer the center of everything that you perform and everything will fall into place - Superoffice Click To Tweet

Apart from this above-mentioned fact, small businesses also experience added challenges that inhibit their growth. These are varying causes around issues such as, management, leadership, cash flow, which sometimes can or even cannot be changed.

However, the primary reason that makes a small business fail is that the establishment does not care about their customer service. This is a surprise since providing good customer service is one thing that all businesses can always do something about, regardless of their size.

 The Cost of Bad Customer Service

In today’s competitive market, where social media is the channel for venting out our satisfaction, as well as our discontent, the cost of not providing optimal customer service is paramount.

Let us look into some of the facts we discovered in some of our few in-depth customer research surveys:

  • 78% of customers have bailed out from making an intended purchase because of inferior service experiences.
  • 12 positive experience is needed on an average, to make up for one negative experience
  • News of bad customer experience reaches more than thrice as many ears as news of praises for good customer service experience
  • For every complaining customer, there are 26 other who remains silent
  • Only 4% of dissatisfied customers are heard by any typical business ( and we do not want to think what happens to the rest)

Easy To Use CRM System Is One of the Secrets to Making Customers Feel Special

More than 72% of buying experiences are related to how the consumers feel they are being treated. We guess you will be surprised to know that although more than 85% of companies say that they deliver “excellent customer service” but only 8% of their customers think that these businesses really deliver “excellent customer service”.

However, it is not too time-consuming or difficult to close this gap and make your customers feel special. It is all about centralizing your customer related data and making use of this information by understanding what is a CRM database in a smart way to improve the relationship and find growth.

In other words, every small company needs a CRM software for small business and make use of the best CRM tools to centralize your customer’s information.  Therefore, if your business is already not using a CRM system, we think it is a good time to consider getting it. With today’s Cloud CRM solutions, which are available as a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, adopting a CRM for small business is completely affordable, while its benefits are priceless.

Here are 4 benefits that your small business can find by using an affordable CRM software:

  1. Collect all your information in one central place

Many small businesses keep all their customer information scattered in various places. It can be in Excel spreadsheets, Rolodex or in their Emails. Although at the time the information was captured you can remember the customers but three months down the road becomes hard to remember where you stored the information and why even kept that note on a specific customer in the first place. Moreover, since the information is probably kept on your personal PC, others in your organization may not have an access to that data and communication trail and that will eventually create problems. Having an easy to use CRM software can help you to forgo all that pain.

Best customer management software like CRM provides you the ability to store several communications with your customer like calls, emails, meetings, in a central place and let everyone in your business retrieve the information instantly. Therefore using a customer service CRM software not only creates a better experience for your customers, but best CRM tools also save a lot of time and headaches.

  1. Help to keep you more ‘in sync’ with your customers

We all like immediate gratifications. Therefore, there is nothing more annoying than having to repeat your issues to different departments for resolving your problems. A customer relationship management software actually helps you to become more ‘in sync’ with your consumers, because Converged CRM systems such as ConvergeHub combines all sales, marketing, customer support and billing data in one database.

CRM system help improves the quality of customer communication and your support staffs level of responsiveness by connecting different departments in your organization by using this software.

  1. Help improve trustworthiness of your brand

We all know that people get busy and consequentially forget things, especially sales and customer support reps in the company. However, when the market is as competitive as it is today, your word should be your bond. Commitment and trust create a solid foundation for customer relationships. CRM software for small business is a valuable tool that helps you to forge a trustworthy relationship with your customers. Using CRM tools you can create follow-up activities on your customers and can monitor the stages that your open sales are at, and so can be easily warned if you are about to lose any customer due to lack of attention on your side. Therefore, once you use an easy to use CRM, you do not have to use age-old yellow stickers and your customers will never feel that they are neglected.

  1. Offer relevant products easily to your customers

Generic offers and messages often do not make your customers feel that they are special, which a targeted and personalized content does.

Sales and marketing CRM lets you slice and dice customer data, in thousand different ways, so that you can create and send messages and offers towards specific customers, showing that you care about their needs.

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Conclusion

There are several reasons as to why a small business can either make or break within a few years or months. However, for this while some reasons are truly out of our control others like providing awesome customer relationship is something that can be easily controlled and improved by all small enterprises.

Concisely, the business success mantra is simple- Make your customer the center of everything that you perform and everything will fall into place.

Small business CRM certainly does not have to expensive. If you are on a tight budget download the free trial version of our ConvergeHub CRM software and let your business, bloom successfully.

 

4 Key Regions Your CRM System Needs to Excel In 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#1. Intuitive user experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

#2. Workflow automation

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

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

#3. Process alignment

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

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

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

#4. Platform and built

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

Conclusion

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

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