Tag: Easy to use CRM

Unbeatable KPIs And Sales Metrics For Modern Sales Teams

In the present day’s highly competitive business landscape, small businesses and startups find it increasingly difficult to compete without the ability to find data-driven decisions, and therefore, sales metrics and analysis provided by modern technology like best small business CRM software solutions make it easy. In 2019 it has been observed that most small businesses are moving to an all-in-one easy to use CRM solution like ConvergeHub and others because they provide marketing, sales, support and also accounting modules all on the same platform.

In the present day’s highly competitive business landscape, small businesses and startups find it increasingly difficult to compete without the ability to find data-driven decisions, and therefore, sales metrics and analysis provided by modern technology like best small business CRM software solutions make it easy.

In 2019 it has been observed that most small businesses are moving to an all-in-one easy to use CRM solution like ConvergeHub and others because they provide marketing, sales, support and also accounting modules all on the same platform.

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

Which means that all data and information from every department within the organization can now be stored in one central CRM database that in turn help increase the accuracy and volume of the data and metrics at your disposal, allowing businesses to make enhanced data-driven decisions.

Key sales metrics to measure and analyze

A converged all-in-one CRM software like ConvergeHub (which is also the most popular QuickBooks CRM solution in the US markets) help track loads of sales metrics, which we will cover now that modern sales teams should leverage and embrace to drive more sales resulting in growth of their businesses.

  • Month-over-month total sales

Keeping track of overall sales by reps, every month, is not a new concept, as sales teams have been doing it since ages and it is still one of the most important sales metrics even today.

Best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub provides robust CRM reporting that allows you to easily keep a tab on how each of your sales reps are performing with regards to sales, against their monthly benchmarks.

Using CRM data once you find that your rep’s total monthly sales volumes are plummeting, you can easily identify the reason behind the drop, and use the information in the CRM database to help improve your sales rep’s performance and get them back on course.

  • Sales funnel flow

Another true and tried sales metrics that are critical to the success of modern sales teams is sales funnel flow that helps managers to view which sales-reps are moving leads through the sales funnel at an expected velocity and those who are falling back.

The great thing is that as data collection and analysis takes place automatically in most best small business CRM software solutions like ConvergeHub, you can easily check your CRM’s dashboard and simply check how many leads each rep have in their funnel.

This kind of granular details allows sales managers to find bottlenecks at any particular stage of the funnel and if needed makes changes to fix the issue and allow leads to flow smoothly through the funnel once again.

  • Conversion rates

Sales reps receive MQL or Marketing Qualified Leads from the marketers, for those leads that have shown a propensity to buy and are therefore ready for sales outreach.

However, once the marketing teams pass an MQL to the sales, they can get converted into a customer or even fail to do so.

Hence, by measuring your businesses’ conversion rate by taking the number of leads that you have converted to customers and dividing it by the total number of Marketing Qualified Leads you have received from the marketers you can easily find if your conversion rate is low or at-par with your businesses’ expected growth.

Low conversion rate could signify that your marketing teams are qualifying the leads too early, or your sales reps are not effective at closing deals, which can be analyzed easily by the sales reporting features provided by most easy to use CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub.

  • Outreach activities completed

Every sales rep engage in prospecting outreach, which consists of sending cold emails, making cold calls, etc.

Logically speaking, the more prospects your sales teams meet, the more likely they are likely to convert them to customers.

This is the reason why it is important to track the number of cold prospect emails, and the number of cold calls, done by the reps and set an outreach benchmark and measure each rep’s outreach against that to identify those reps that require support to improve their efforts.

Using best small business CRM like ConvergeHub, your reps can use inbuilt sales email templates to expedite their email sending process, or use auto-dialer and pre-recorded voice mail drop features to make more calls in less time.

  • Opportunities lost

Finally, the last but another most important KPI that needs to be considered is to track the number of opportunities that got lost, as well as the ratio of opportunities created to the opportunities lost for each of your sales reps in your sales team.

Since, if you find that your reps are creating lots of new opportunities but are also losing most of them, you need to look into it and understand the reason behind that.

In most best small business CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub, you can easily customize the CRM’s dashboard that can help sales managers and reps check in daily and find the right insight they require at a glance.

As a pro tip, you can use the call recording feature found in most easy to use CRM software platforms to record each sales calls made by individual sales reps so that your managers can listen to them and spot the weak points in the rep’s approach and instruct them to improve upon those areas.

Conclusion

Although most of these sales metrics and KPIs may not be new, nevertheless these are all tried and true parameters to be analyzed that can help modern sales teams to thrive and help grow their business by using information collected in the CRM database to make strategic and informed decisions for increasing productivity and bring faster revenue growth.

Therefore, by constantly measuring sales metrics and KPIs, you will see more deals won with data in front to validate those winning decisions, without making unrealistic expectations by overlooking the information stored in your easy to use CRM database.

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Upcoming Marketing Tactics For Achieving Massive Revenue Growth In 2019

Marketing is evolving rapidly, and so are the tactics and strategies that marketers must engage to lure prospects and customers for their business. This is because; you must always remain ahead of emerging marketing trends to remain utterly competitive in your respective industries. Here in this blog, we will cover a few selected marketing trends that we anticipate seeing in 2019 to make you remain proactive and stay ahead in the game.

Marketing is evolving rapidly, and so are the tactics and strategies using easy to use CRM, that marketers must engage to lure prospects and customers for their business.
This is because; you must always remain ahead of emerging marketing trends to remain utterly competitive in your respective industries.

Here in this blog, we will cover a few selected marketing trends that we anticipate seeing in 2019 to make you remain proactive and stay ahead in the game.

Account-based marketing will stay

ABM or Account Based Marketing has grown quickly in its popularity in startup organizations and small businesses.
ABM involves identifying real prospects who are the best fit for your offerings and thereafter performing extensive research on those prospective customers before you reach out to them.

This research most often includes the pain-points of the prospects along with their challenges, needs, interests and more.

If you are a user of an easy to use CRM software solution, you can use information in your CRM database to create buyer personas for your brand which is particularly helpful in leveraging the tactics used for account-based marketing.

ABM assists your marketing teams to focus and target on fewer but higher-value prospects, which proves far more effective than firing marketing campaigns in the dark to leads from a purchased email list and then keeping your fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

87% of marketers across the US, who measures marketing ROI, say that Account Based Marketing will outperform all other types of marketing investments. Click To Tweet

In fact, according to Information Technology Services Marketing Association, ABM is the future of B2B marketing across the globe.

Since 87% of marketers across the US, who measures marketing ROI, using an easy to use CRM software say that Account Based Marketing will outperform all other types of marketing investments, which easily indicates the reason for its growing popularity.

Chatbots will pave the way

You may know by now what is CRM , but do you know what is a chatbot?

Well, to put it simply, chatbots is a program feature, which is most often found in easy to use CRM software platforms that use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to interact with prospective leads and customers. These interactions take place in the form of a conversation, and so typically chatbots are implemented on the businesses’ websites.

Chatbots ‘learn’ over time, using data stored in the CRM database and so are able to provide required answers to the visitor’s questions, without any human interference, to coordinate the conversation.

Mostly chatbots appear as pop-ups on the company’s websites and it seem to the visitors that they are conversing with a real person, whereas in reality, any chatbot is a robot.

In a recent survey done by a major market research firm that provides advice on existing and potential impact of technology, to its customers and the public revealed that even more than 60% of the respondents in the survey have interacted with a chatbot in the last 12 months, which is a clear indication that the use of chatbots will further increase in 2019.

Native advertisement in social media will be on the rise

Native advertisement in social media is the act of putting an ad in a format that lines up with the normal experiences that the users get when they browse their preferred networking websites.

Unlike uploading a banner ad on related web pages that resonates with your offerings, native social media advertisements resemble a normal social media posting and appears on the social media feeds of your followers and their friends (like the rest of your posts), which makes it less intrusive.

So in 2019 do not ignore this big social media marketing trend, which is not only more engaging than traditional advertisement tactics but is also way cheaper and produce better results than legacy ads.

Mobile responsiveness will increase

Let us face the reality of the digital age looming upon us. Therefore, it is no brainer that nearly every one of us uses a mobile device today to check or send and receive emails, check social media platforms, view websites and others.

Therefore, if your marketing teams do email marketing or your company does have a website, it is a critical need of the hour that your email contents and your website must be mobile responsive.

Since you will lose your email reader’s and website visitor’s interest and attention in a flash if they have to do excessive scrolling or zooming to read your emails or view your website, rather to say, even any other contents that your audience cannot read on their mobile device.

Adoption of all-in-one CRM will rise

CRM software is widely used in all businesses today, since most businesses that know what is CRM, also accepts the truth that no business can remain competitive without the use of an easy to use Customer Relationship Management software.

Although traditionally CRM software platforms, just managed contacts and automated basic sales and marketing processes, like moving deals through the sales pipeline, however with the rise of all-in-one CRM software solutions like ConvergeHub the popularity of CRM platforms are steadily climbing high.

Modern-day best small business CRM software solutions like ConvergeHub not only includes the above-mentioned components of traditional CRM software platforms, but it also comes with inbuilt sales enablement, marketing automation, customer support, accounting, help desk,and collaboration modules- all in the same platform.

Therefore,all in one CRM software like ConvergeHub allow startups and companies to manage nearly every business activities from one easy to use system and even store all the resulting data in the same CRM database.

Moreover, cloud based CRM software solutions are also way cheaper than traditional on-premise CRM systems and provides a plethora of additional functionalities.

Hence it is no wonder that in 2019 small and growing business organizations will increasingly opt for adopting all-in-one CRM software systems.

Millennial(s) are taking over this year

In 2019 and beyond it is predicted that Millennial(s) are going to overtake the Baby-Boomers as the largest consumer demography in Canada and the USA.

This means companies will need to adapt their marketing efforts to cater to the growing needs of the Millennial(s) and change their marketing approaches in the following ways:

  • Millennial(s) prefer to buy from brands those that bear a strong sense of corporate social responsibility
  • Millennial(s) expects more from brands when it comes to responsiveness and engagements
  • Millennial(s) prefer communicating with chatbots, and messages over telephone calls
  • Millennial(s) use social media insanely, so brands need to strengthen their social media presence
  • Millennial(s) prefer viewing ‘how-to’ video over written contents

Conclusion

Therefore, to stay ahead of the curve, modern-day marketers must pay immediate attention to these marketing trends in 2019 and incorporate them in their marketing strategies for the growth of their businesses.

Do you want 2019 to be the year where you achieve massive revenue growth?

Then start planning NOW.

Create your revenue growth strategy for 2019.

If you would like to get some ideas or brainstorm on how ConvergeHub can provide the right technology to achieve your company’s marketing and sales goals, you can reserve a confidential consultation with one of our experts.

On this 30-45 minute call we will:

  • Take a deep-dive into your business process
  • Pinpoint areas with most growth potential
  • Discuss how to implement an effective marketing automation system that lets you focus on the most important tasks

Click here to check out how you can achieve your sales growth plans in 2019!

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Who Is Missing This Christmas From Your Easy To Use CRM Database

In today’s modern digital age, every important contact does not come necessarily through traditional channels. For example, a great lead might go through every blog that you publish but never choose to directly provide you with his/her email address. Hence, a great lead may come through three steps of references instead of simply ‘signing in’ in a way that creates a record of that lead in the CRM database. Therefore, to make the best possible use of your easy to use CRM, it is equally important that you must identify these missing entries and make them yourself on behalf of these leads and prospects in your CRM database.

If you know what is CRM or Customer Relationship Management solution, you must know that the most important data that your company possesses, is hidden inside the contents of your easy to use CRM.
Your CRM, in other words, is the most precious inventory of current customers, who may be ready to buy your products and services once again this Christmas.

There are several organizations that use their easy to use CRM software as a convenient record of business and industry contacts they work with today or would like to work with in the future days to come.

With revenues expected to reach over $80 billion by 2025, it’s no surprise that CRM is the fastest growing software market.- SuperOffice Click To Tweet

However, it must be remembered that your easy to use CRM, just do not contain contact information, but hopefully, a complete record of your past interactions with your customer whether it is on past meetings, notes, past purchase details, phone calls, and any other pertinent information that you would like to know and remember about a customer.

Additionally, no matter how you use your easy to use CRM, one thing is for certain, no one is there in your CRM database, who has not had an entry made for them.
Therefore, your customers only win a place in your CRM database by making an account and by completing a purchase of your offerings.
Even leads win a spot in the CRM by participating in the lead-qualification steps and presenting their contact information to your organization to find their interest in your products and services.

However, this process has one critical flaw, whereby any CRM software can leave out contacts those who do not go through the normal channel.

So who is missing from your easy to use CRM database?

In today’s modern digital age, every important contact does not come necessarily through traditional channels. For example, a great lead might go through every blog that you publish but never choose to directly provide you with his/her email address. Hence, a great lead may come through three steps of references instead of simply ‘signing in’ in a way that creates a record of that lead in the CRM database. Therefore, to make the best possible use of your easy to use CRM, it is equally important that you must identify these missing entries and make them yourself on behalf of these leads and prospects in your CRM database.

Here are four different categories of people who should be in your CRM this Christmas, but might not be there right now.

  1. Social Media Followers

In the age of digital E-commerce environment, social media presence is one most vital aspect of your business’s digital marketing strategy. Since, here is where hundreds, and potentially thousands of people can find your company and become a part of your brand “organically”. These are those people who may have joined a discussion thread, jumped into a contest, or simply liked and shared the blogs and GIFs that your team has created for social uploads. There are also certain people who even seek a relationship or customer support through your social media profiles.

While it is pertinent that not all the social media followers that you have collected are an important contact, however, some absolutely are.
There are many social media followers who become dynamic and pillars of your discussion threads, contribute by uploading appealing photos of your offerings, even offer service to other customers on social media when they have raised a question.
Therefore, your active followers on social media unquestionably deserve their own CRM entries, which they may not now have in your CRM database.
Hence challenge your sales, marketing, and support teams to identify these shining stars on your social media platforms this Christmas and manually create an entry for them, so that they are included in your best Holiday Sale offers, and even send them messages for various job opportunities in your organization in the days to come.

  1. Intermediate Business Contacts

The secretaries, personal assistants, assistant managers of the business world are often not only the gatekeepers but also act as true decision makers to the real decision making powers in any organization. Therefore, when seeking a new business partner, or customer, present-day marketers tend to focus on big names on the list.
They create an entry in the CRM for team leads, department heads, and procurement officers, whereby they can make far more headway by knowing these intermediate people to talk to. Since the CEO of an organization may finally sign the deal, but their signatures are usually based on the recommendations of their supporting staffs.

Hence, modern marketers and users of CRM software cannot just ignore the importance of the people who answer their calls, ask qualifying questions, or ultimately decides on who their bosses speak with, to consider what their organization purchase.

Do not let go of a simple opportunity.  Create a classified CRM entry for all these no less important intermediate decision makers, since this way you will spend less time on hold and find more time talking to the right people who can immediately put a good word, schedule a meeting, or pass your message to the right people you need without the corporate run-around.

With a well executed CRM strategy, you will always have a complete record of the right number to call and who to speak to in order to make things happen and secure your deals.

  1. Recipients of Gifts

Another shadow category of your brand’s social media communities (which we discussed above) are the people who received your offerings as gifts. These are all the people who enthusiastically expressed their joy, or may love your offerings, but have never created an account since they have never ordered anything directly from your website.

These people also act as secondary purveyors for advertising your products and services to their friends, families, and business contacts who might have never found your brand otherwise on their own.

The solution for finding these people during the Christmas season is surprisingly a simple one.

-ASK

During your checkout process, just ask a few non-intrusive questions whether the purchase is a business purchase or a gift, by presenting it as your standard post-purchase customer service procedure, ensuring the recipients of your offerings a full warranty even to the free users of your products as a part of the value of the offering that you are providing as a gift.
Next, enthusiastically include the provided names and contact information of these consumers of your products or services when it is provided in your easy to use CRM database list.

  1. Finally- Your Employees

Depending on your business, consider that your employees also could likely be your customers or at least sources of your referrals.
Always remember your employees are in a unique position to know just how useful and hence valuable your products and services are and therefore they can be a great source of referrals since they all have the best knowledge of your brand and your offerings.

Therefore, this Christmas, always remain sure that your easy to use CRM database includes all the entries on your consumers and never make the slip-up of accidentally dealing an ‘employee-customer’ as just another customer of your offerings.

Keep track of when your employees buy and use your products. There are several Salesforce Alternative CRM users those who are happy using ConvergeHub CRM encourage organic choice by creating a unique automated marketing category also for their employees, who choose to be their sources of referrals or customers during the Holiday Sales.

Takeaway

Does your easy to use CRM include every valuable contact?

If not, we have ways ConvergeHub CRM and customer management practices can help you to add these four hidden categories to your CRM, so that you are one step closer to better manage your contacts and optimize your marketing strategies.

Do you want 2019 to be the year where you want to achieve massive revenue growth?

Then start planning NOW.

Create your revenue growth strategy for 2019.

If you would like to get some ideas or brainstorm on how ConvergeHub can provide the right technology to achieve your company’s sales goals, you can reserve a confidential consultation with one of our experts.

On this 30-45 minute call we will:

  • Take a deep-dive into your business process
  • Pinpoint areas with most growth potential
  • Discuss how to implement an effective marketing automation system that lets you focus on most important tasks

Click here to check out how you can achieve your sales growth plans in 2019!

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Predictions And Trends For Customer Support In 2019 And Beyond

Customer support has come a long way, (especially if you are using an easy to use CRM software to assist you in the process), over the last few years and we all are sure that it will continue to evolve. Innovations in all best small business CRM software platforms will drive in new technology, which will allow organizations to cater better support and thereby continually improve the customer experience of their consumers.

Customer support has come a long way, (especially if you are using an easy to use CRM software to assist you in the process), over the last few years and we all are sure that it will continue to evolve.

Innovations in all best small business CRM software platforms will drive in new technology, which will allow organizations to cater better support and thereby continually improve the customer experience of their consumers.

80% of modern customers across all industries always attempt to resolve their problems themselves, before contacting customer support.- HBR Click To Tweet

Since the inception of call centers for delivering customer support in the 1960s, to the modern day introduction of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and chat-bots to lend a hand to the support teams, the face of customer support has changed drastically.

Therefore, looking back we are sure that as Best small business CRM software technologies continue to advance in the future days, small businesses and startups can expect to view even more dramatic changes to how brands manage to deliver impeccable customer support.

Hence, most successful business organizations of the future days will be only those that embraces these new technologies, and as consumer’s expectations are also evolving in the modern times, understand this shifting consumer’s needs. Since, those businesses, which are not anticipating and preparing for these emerging trends in 2019, will be for sure left behind.

As one of the pioneering vendors of CRM for small business, here are 5 trends from us that will define the upcoming opportunities in customer support in 2019 and beyond, which will help your business to understand and prepare yourself to remain competitive in the future times to come:

  1. Self-service support will be on the rise

According to a report published by HBR (Harvard Business Review) it has been found that more than 80% of modern customers across all industries always attempt to resolve their problems themselves, before contacting customer support.

It is no wonder; customers can always save their precious time, if they can easily find a resolution to their issues without having to open a help desk ticket or contact a live customer support rep online.

Therefore, as modern customers in this digital age prefer self-service, we anticipate to see more small business organizations and startups will adopt and implement technologies that will help in providing the desired outcome.

Creating a robust knowledge base on your business website is an effective means for providing self-service support for your customers. Using a small business CRM software like ConvergeHub, you can easily assimilate all the frequently asked questions by your customers. As easy to use CRM is a software application that helps in storing all your customer facing communications and interactions in its CRM database.

Furthermore, going one step forward, you can also consider developing ‘how-to’ videos and guides and make them accessible to your customers.

Providing easily reachable ways for the consumers to solve their own issues with your products and services not only saves time for the consumers of your brand, but it also means one less support ticket for your team to handle in their busy lives.

  1. Registering complaints on social media websites will increase

As Millennial(s) overtake the Baby-Boomer(s) as the largest consumer demography in 2019 and beyond, social media usage will for sure continue to be on rise.

Nearly all of us these days carry some kind of a mobile device, wherever we go be it near or far.
Therefore, if in case any consumer encounters a bad experience with your organization, they do not have to wait until they find a computer or get back home for registering the issue. Rather, they can visit your social media and share their experience publicly.

But how does this affect customer support?

Well, when a negative remark gets posted on the social media website, it spreads like wildfire. Therefore, using social media monitoring and listening tools, your customer support teams can easily receive any alerts when anyone mentions about your brand on these websites. Using a small business CRM software that allows the support teams to keep an eye on all social behaviors of your customers and react to any kind of negative comments before they become viral, can help in restoring the reputation of your brand.

Moreover, it has been noticed that there has also been a rise in asking customer support questions about their brands via direct messaging on social media platforms.

Hence, it shows that customer expectations for resolving their problems using social media is growing and will continue substantially as we move forward in the years to come.

  1. Community-based support will expand

By community-based support, we are referring to customers forming a community among themselves and aiding each other to solve issues.

When customers interact among themselves in this manner, it increases engagement with your products and services.

Therefore, in 2019 and beyond, there will be several businesses that will create forums, which can be only accessible with login credential by the customers through their business websites, where customers can get involved and answer questions and make their community grow in the days to come.

Customer support reps can also monitor their respective forums using an easy to use CRM software platform and chime in if any question remains unanswered for a day or two and thereby form a working relationship with their peers and consumers along the way.

  1. Bots will free up time for support reps

Customer support chat-bots have already arrived, as we all must have seen them by now on several websites, and they are continuing to pop-up everywhere.

With the rise in competition in nearly every industry, it is easier for your customers to leave your brand for a competition.

Therefore, with the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence) as chat-bots are becoming more adroit at resolving customer issues, you can now connect them to your knowledge base in the CRM database, so that they can answer basic questions asked about your products and services by the users of your offerings.

If you are using an all-in-one small business CRM software, which provides marketing, sales and help-desk functionalities, chat-bots are generally integrated in your easy to use CRM, so that bots can retrieve the information stored in the CRM and smartly solve customer support issues.

Using chat-bots does not necessarily mean that this technology will put back your support staffs, rather it implies that bots will enhance your support desk’s ability by freeing up your support rep’s time spent in handling common support related questions, which will help them focus on advanced support tickets and resolve those cases that essentially requires a human touch.

  1. Personalized support will become the norm

If you are a user of a Best CRM for small business like ConvergeHub, your easy to use CRM software can register and track all support cases, and even customer behaviors towards your brand like visiting web pages, opening emails, downloading contents and others.

Now, if you are using third-party integrations such as social media app, accounting app, and others, with your small business CRM software, the trail of this information mentioned above, expands further in the CRM database.

Therefore, using the information stored in the CRM database, your support teams can easily form an elaborate picture of the consumers and their customer journey, which includes who the customers have spoken to, products or services that they have purchased, or issues they have faced with your brand in the past.

In the days to come in 2019 and beyond as easy to use CRM technology expands, customer support executives will increasingly use this data to personalize their support they provide to the customers during their support interactions.

Hence, as customer expectations will continue to grow, catering personalized support will become the norm. Since, in the near future, personalizing the support efforts will empower support reps to deliver more pertinent replies that resonate with the exclusive needs of each customer and make the customers feel delightfully surprised.

Takeaway

According to a report published by a reputed marketed research organization it is found that more than 72% of organizations are recognizing the importance of delivering excellent customer support to their consumers as not delivering higher-quality support will result in greater levels of customer churn.

According to Walker Information, Inc. (a customer experience consulting firm, based in Indianapolis USA) it has been reported that by 2020 the customer experience will overtake product and price as it will become the main recognizing factor behind the consumer’s purchasing decisions across all industries.

Therefore, the bottom line remains, your business must maintain a reputation as an organization that can deliver world-class customer support, by using a easy to use CRM software for your business, else in 2019 and beyond if the customer loyalty for your business declines, it will directly impact the reputation and growth of your brand.

Are you a business leader poised to take your company to the next level, and looking for a software platform that can help you do that?

If so, ConvergeHub is for you!

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During the Rocket Launch session, we will do a deep dive into your business along with you, and brainstorm how ConvergeHub can help you acquire leads, automate your sales process, improve your conversion and customer experience, and get more referrals from satisfied customers for your brand.

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Change Management: Just, Do Not Utter “Change”

The word “Change Management” is definitely a necessary requirement for the growth of all organizations, but with a terrible name. To most employees, the very word “change” itself is burdened with hidden meanings- personal physiological interpretations and renditions that can be negative and can create innumerable roadblocks to the successful adoption of even the best small business CRM software for your company. Do you consider that this word “change” is not that important? Well, your employees who hear the word “Change” may think of the following.

The word “Change Management” is definitely a necessary requirement for the growth of all organizations, but with a terrible name. To most employees, the very word “change” itself is burdened with hidden meanings- personal physiological interpretations and renditions that can be negative and can create innumerable roadblocks to the successful adoption of even the best small business CRM software for your company.

Do you consider that this word “change” is not that important?

Well, your employees who hear the word “Change” may think of the following:

  • Fear
  • Power and Control
  • Unknown and New Resistance
  • Pressure etc.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress – Charles Kettering Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, certain perceptions and attitude about this word “Change” can be easily counteracted with a perceived and thoughtful approach.

Here are a few pieces of advice for helping you to find your best CRM for small business software adoption go more smoothly:

Perception #1: Your employees do not see the benefits

Most employees see “Change” as “more work”. Therefore, while adopting a new small business CRM software for your organization demonstrate the benefits (the actual advantages, not corporate-speak) of the application, so that they do not see it as an unnecessary solution and a waste of their valuable time.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Be ready to name complete benefits (along with drawbacks, if any)

-Have a clear vision of your business goals, and articulate it throughout the process

-Once and if there will be more work- say so to your employees

-Acknowledge that changes are difficult and provide adjustment period to your employees

-Do not obfuscate or lie- if there are risks involved, articulate it

Perception #2: Your employees feel that they were excluded from the decision

Change is always a disruptive process, even when you are adopting an easy to use CRM like ConvergeHub. There will always be a set of employees in any organization who will be more affected by the change as the impact radius of your change in the business process can be even greater than you expected. Therefore, never let your employees feel irrelevant, and remember that even the slightest of change in your business strategy or the new way that you want to run your organization can affect a wider group.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Share your decision making and vision for growth early in the process with all employees who will be affected

-Provide reasonable time for adjustment

-Include all stakeholders in Sales, Marketing, Support, Accounts teams, who will be affected right from the beginning

Perception #3:Change will be stressful

Like most of us, even your employees are led by habits. Therefore, we have seen employees abhor change as it interrupts habits and causes stress. Change takes people out of their previous comfort zones. If you can still remember your first day of high school, you will definitely understand why the uncharted and the unknown bring ‘un-comfortableness’ to many.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Allow time to your employees to adapt to the change

-Never dictate

-Do not spring surprises for your employees during a change

-Deploy baby-steps while implementation of your Salesforce Alternative CRM. Let your employees get a foot wet rather than casting them off into the deep

-Never criticize the old way; it can reflect insult to many

-Work with ALL the stakeholders, not just the employees affected by your new easy to use CRM

Perception #4: Your employees feel out of control

Your employees fear that they will not have any say and so they will be unhappy and out of control.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

Crowdsource decisions, and leave room for changes. It is rare that all important decisions in your organization like changing over to a Salesforce Alternative CRM software, for saving time, vital resources, and money will be blessed by the users of the new software, but then again there is a way to make everyone in your company feel included.

Although there are certain aspects of any new CRM implementation project that are set by management buy-in or technical requirements, all your other employees who will use the new Salesforce Alternative CRM software can have their say in other relevant details.

Therefore, whenever it is possible, let your employees choose from several equally acceptable options (i.e., Blue, Yellow, or Green? Include A, B, or C). That way there will be inclusion of ideas without chaos.

Perception #5: Status quo is better than innovative ideas

 “My current comfortable method is being discarded- is the way I have always done my job worthless?” Well, this can make people feel outdated and insecure. In a way, in any business or organization progress and advancements can make your employees feel alienated.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Create a culture in your office of embracing the new modern processes and making periodic updates

-Create an ambiance of rewarding those employees who are enthusiastic adopters of things new

-At times just saying “I know this might apparently be difficult at first”- goes a long way

Perception #6: Change will create the appearance of stupidity

There are many employees those who even think that they may look dumb since they are unable to comprehend that they will be able to learn new processes, systems, and ways of doing things.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Provide adequate trainingfor the new CRM system

-Provide the training documentation in different formats to address all learning styles

-Encourage the stakeholders to suggest improvements in the training

Perception #7:  Management may not know what they are talking about

Your employees do not consider you or your leaders bringing the change in their existing workflow credible since they might not consider the person trusted.

Here are a few more suggestions to counteract:

-Be prepared to provide s logical rationale for the change in your existing CRM platform

-List all the decision makers and remove hierarchy

-Demonstrate the factors that led to the decision to look for Salesforce Alternative CRM

-Combat employee distrust of conventional “top-down” hierarchy models, be able to defend the decision you took based on competent analysis of your previous CRM system

Do you have any tips for handling Change Management solutions while you adopted Salesforce Alternative CRM for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Easy To Use CRM Hacks That All Small Business Users Should Know

Organizations depend on personal relationships to convert their prospective leads into customers for delivering great customer experiences. For small businesses and startups, this process of personalization often has to rely on collecting customer-facing data from different sources- although that era may have come to a close. Thanks to the backlash faced by Facebook dealing with Cambridge Analytics, whereby millions of user data from the social media website was improperly accessed and used, which shows the vulnerability of purchasing, sharing, and handling third-party information on the internet. Since, there are several businesses across the globe that uses third-party data, to leverage their sales, marketing, and support teams, just because they are not properly leveraging data collected in their easy to use CRM systems.

Organizations depend on personal relationships to convert their prospective leads into customers for delivering great customer experiences. For small businesses and startups, this process of personalization often has to rely on collecting customer-facing data from different sources- although that era may have come to a close.
Thanks to the backlash faced by Facebook dealing with Cambridge Analytics, whereby millions of user data from the social media website was improperly accessed and used, which shows the vulnerability of purchasing, sharing, and handling third-party information on the internet.
Since, still there are several businesses across the globe that uses third-party data, to leverage their sales, marketing, and support teams, just because they are not properly leveraging data collected in their easy to use CRM systems.

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

As a matter of fact, Facebook’s changes in the policy might actually be a boon in disguise since small businesses and startups can even find better success using the data from their CRM database to access customer insights than procuring data from third-party sources across the globe.

The eternal fight between startups and better tech organizations

In an ideal situation, founders of startup organizations will always cherish and understand the tools that get them more businesses, but in reality, that is not the case every time. Even easy to use CRM software systems, can be very difficult to maintain, which can be annoying for small business entrepreneurs.

However, at times when this irritation translates into abandonment, customer data in the CRM database becomes segmented within the company. Making sales persons lose access to the information collected by the businesses’ marketing efforts, which can hurt their growth in sales with time.

On the other hand, by providing access to real-time data on customer and leads, best small business CRM software platforms, like ConvergeHub, helps startups to refine customer service and improve marketing and sales strategies within the organization.

According to Nuclear Research, it has been found that having a real-time access to customer data in the CRM database, shortens sales cycles by more than 14%.

Nevertheless, an easy to use CRM, in and of itself, is never the cause of frustration for small business owners. Rather, this frustration stems from using the CRM software inefficiently.

In a study based survey done by Opinion Matters (a market research group), an average sales rep spends approximately 15 full working days every year entering data like phone numbers into their online customer management system.
However, it is a known fact that most startup entrepreneurs do not want their sales reps to enter phone numbers, rather they want their salespersons to make calls.

Easy to use small business CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub provide automated features like many other Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions to help. However, if the sales teams do not understand or comprehend how to use these important tools, they continue to squander time plugging in data manually.

Proper use of small business CRM software solutions does not merely drive sales, but an easy to use CRM platform can also help executive teams in your startup and small business organizations to transform large sets of data into easy-to-read reporting formats, informing better strategies that lead to shorter meetings.

Therefore, it can be easily said that “smart” small business CRM software benefits everyone in the organization.

But what does usage of “smart” CRM looks like and how can small businesses and startups adopt this online lead management software without a headache?

Easy to use CRM software can be a source of critical insight that empowers small businesses and startups to see their data from all angles and thereby deliver more personalized services to their customers.

Here are four awesome tips which can easily help small organizations to get more from their CRM software platforms and turn this potentially confusing business resource into a powerful weapon for sales and growth of the organization.

  1. Tell the CRM software what to streamline

Manual processes are not only time consuming but they are always most often liable for creating mistakes. However, CRM automation with Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions like ConvergeHub can eliminate this barrier by importing data and information, compiling related data, and thereby help make smart schedules for your sales and marketing employees.

According to a study conducted by IBM developerWorks, it has been suggested that “ease of use” is the most demanding feature in a Salesforce Alternative CRM solution, as one of the biggest lacunae of Salesforce CRM is its steep learning curve for most CRM users across the globe.

One way to make a CRM software solution easy to use is by telling the software to group information together by prospects rather than by their activities. Doing this will help sales reps to easily find everything, on a specific lead or customer, right from emails to notes, which can provide a more comprehensive picture of the sales process, allowing the easy to use CRM user to identify weaknesses and strengths in their sales strategies.

Most easy to use small business CRM software can create lists that feature industry roles with job titles of the leads, and customers and store them in the CRM database, which aids salespeople to personalize their very first calls, and thereby make the cold-call process more productive.

  1. Learn to spot at-risk accounts

Research done by Bain and Company (a global management consultancy headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts) found that just by increasing customer retention rate by a mere 5% can scale-up profits by as much as 95%.
Easy to use CRM software is the perfect business tool to track engagements of the customers, as it allows employees to step-in to aid clients when thing look bad.

For example, let us assume a company regularly receives calls from its customers related to technical issues, but without an easy to use CRM system those complaints might go without any notice, especially if they were handled by different people.
Since, with efficient tracking, startups and budding businesses can easily identify those patterns and conduct proactive calls to resolve issues even before their customers abandon the ship.

Fortunately, CRM software platform like ConvergeHub makes this task easier, simply by setting up flags for different users (such as repeat complains) and can subsequently alert sales and support reps, when customers set off one of the triggers created in the software.

  1. Make marketing and sales play nice

All business organizations, new or established, runs better when marketing and sales work together seamlessly.

Altify (a globally renowned company that delivers enterprise sales methodology) found that businesses with aligned marketing and sales teams have 26% higher win rates and 18% shorter sales cycles than the companies that do not.

Larger business enterprises are presently walking up to the benefits that alignment in sales and marketing offers, which should signal a necessary shift even to the startups.

In an article written by the by the marketing manager of MNF Group (Australia’s largest telecommunications companies) Maria Wirth, said:

With the tidal wave of content marketing and lead nurturing initiatives, the seamless handover of leads back and forth between sales and marketing becomes a crucial key to success.

Therefore, never encourage your CRM system to become the exclusive property of just one team, but instead insist both sides to contribute to the customer data stored in the CRM database.

This way, you can aid sales and marketing teams to communicate with each other and help them close deals and also aid marketers to develop effective campaigns that provide sales that they need.

  1. Use robots to make the best small business CRM adoption easy

Virtual assistants, like voice-recognition devices and Chatbots powered by artificial intelligence, can work together with several best small business CRM systems to set up appointments, or add extra information on the customers to files, and even locate information without forcing the CRM users to sift through the CRM database manually.

A research conducted by Statista (an online statistics, market research, and business intelligence portal) estimated that from 2017 through 2021, the adoption of AI in the CRM sector could add $394 Billion in value over time.

Conclusion

Therefore, although most small businesses and startups know that they need an easy to use CRM software for their organization, nevertheless most often they just do not know how to use the system effectively.

Nevertheless, when a CRM system is used correctly it can be easily transformed from an operational necessity to a system that provides a competitive advantage and helps startups generate improved customer satisfaction and therefore create higher revenues.

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Why SMBs Have Embraced Cloud Based Easy to Use CRM Platforms

For all business organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses and startups growth is indispensable to meet up competition in the market. SMBs also have another factor; they mostly have a tight budget and a quick time frame for making their brand make a mark in the business world. As growth with a limited budget can be a hard task for any small organization, however, small and medium businesses are discovering Cloud based easy to use CRM platforms nowadays, which is making it easier for them to achieve this feat. Also popularly known as Software as a Service (SaaS), On Demand, or Cloud based CRM, it simply means that your information and data is stored in the Cloud, instead of, in your own server as in On-Premise CRM systems.

For all business organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses and startups growth is indispensable to meet up competition in the market.
SMBs also have another factor; they mostly have a tight budget and a quick time frame for making their brand make a mark in the business world.
Growth with a limited budget can be a hard task for any small organization, however, small and medium businesses are discovering Cloud based easy to use CRM platforms nowadays, which is making it easier for them to achieve this feat.

In 2018, 87% of the businesses are estimated to use cloud-based CRM, while a mere 13% are pegged to use on-premise CRM. Click To Tweet

Also popularly known as Software as a Service (SaaS), On Demand, or Cloud based CRM, it simply means that your information and data is stored in the Cloud, instead of, in your own server as in On-Premise CRM systems.

While it may sound very obvious that you would always like to store your data in your own server, but the truth remains that Cloud is actually more secure, requires less maintenance, and you are less likely to lose access to your data once it is uploaded on the Cloud.

According to a recent survey by CBR (Computer Business Review), it is reported that 86% of small and medium businesses found improvement in their business processes since adopting an easy to use CRM software platform that is cloud based. CBR also reported in the same research study that the SMB cloud services markets would escalate by approximately 17% by 2021.

Now if you are curious to know “why”, here are 3 compelling reasons to go for easy to use CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub that are built on the Cloud.

  1. It Is Cost Effective

Unlike traditional On-Premise CRM systems, with easy to use CRM solutions that are Cloud based Customer Relationship Management software platforms, you do not need to buy and maintain a private server. Rather in a Cloud based CRM, you can easily access a website that is created for the customers through a hosting service. Additionally, Cloud based CRM systems save time and money during CRM implementation process, as easy to use CRM software platforms, which are Cloud based CRM gets you up and running in few hours, without impeding your daily workflow.

  1. Your Data Is Always Available and Protected

As it was a decade before, when your CRM software lives on your personal server, it becomes solely your responsibility to make sure that your CRM database is consistently backed up, just in case your server may fail one day. Cloud based CRM software like ConvergeHub takes backups of your software’s data, and manages them using Cloud infrastructure that is used for building the easy to use CRM platform.

This way, you never have to worry and fret about how long it has been since you last backed up the data in your easy to use CRM database.

With Cloud based CRM systems even, a power outage also does not mean it is lights out for your business. Word class data centers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) used by ConvergeHub have redundant storage, power, and overflow of seamless internet connectivity all available to maintain your CRM system during the most challenging situations, all the time.

However, if your CRM’s server is On-Premise, it signifies that even a small power outage invariably signifies a loss of all access to your CRM database until power is restored.
Nevertheless, with a Cloud based CRM, since your information is stored in the Cloud, you and your employees can still access the data even during a power outage, from any location that caters to power and internet.

  1. Superior Security

Many small business owners may have an uneasy feeling about keeping their precious and sensitive customer data in the Cloud, remembering frequent headlines we often hear about hacking and data breaches. However, with Cloud based CRM software platforms, your data always remains in the hands of professionals. Cloud providers like AWS, MS Azure, and others provide their employs with state-of-the-art security measures so that they can obtain and keep their customers happy.

Any small business owner using an On-Premise CRM software can rarely afford such extravagant measures, and so users of Cloud based software platforms get enterprise-level security for their SMB with the Cloud.

In fact, Cloud companies and data centers also invest millions of dollars in professional security services to monitor and guard their servers 24 hours a day.

Moreover, user sessions with Cloud are also fully SSL encrypted, which helps in establishing highly secured end-to-end connections between the server and the points of use.

Conclusion                      

Therefore, although  it completely depends on the needs of your business whether you choose Cloud or On-Premise CRM software for your company, Cloud  based easy to use CRM software solutions indisputably have several benefits over On-Premise CRM software, which makes SMBs embrace CRM(s) like ConvergeHub, which is an award-winning Cloud based  easy to use CRM platform.

If you are new to ConvergeHub, the best CRM for SMB, click on the link below for a 14-day trial of the software.

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Steps To Stronger Customer Loyalty Using An Easy To Use CRM Platform

With the present time’s ever-expanding market, consumers have no dearth of options to choose from when determining their loyalty towards a brand. Therefore, when customer feedbacks are not asked for or not taken seriously customers tend to jump at the chance to find a brand that prioritizes it. We hope these four strategies will help you understand the feedbacks of your customers in a more evocative way, and thereby help drive greater customer loyalty by using an easy to use CRM and through your digital experience.

In modern times, customers have never-ending options when it comes to choosing new brands, products, or services. This means that the customer’s expectations are extremely high in the present times, which calls for immediacy, responsiveness, personalization, product quality that are some of the key reasons customers which will make the consumers choose to be loyal to a brand over another.
However, one major element that holds the key to solidifying customer loyalty and consequently increase earnings is correctly leveraging customer feedback with the help of a easy to use CRM for the growth of your business.

Therefore, here are 4 sure-shot tactics to help strengthen your customer loyalty through consumer feedbacks.

Customers who have engaged actively with a brand remain 4 times more likely to use the brand’s products and services even after three months following their initial contact.- ConvergeHub Click To Tweet
  1. Remain Proactive

Customers are hard-pressed to leave feedback in any form, but we often forget that there are real people on both ends of the exchange. Hence, though most brands think that they are building products and services around their customers, nevertheless in reality researches show that businesses only hear from less than 1% of their customer base (which we call as the vocal minority) and the rest 99% customers becomes the ‘silent majority’, whereby their feedbacks and loyalty are nor fostered or prioritized.

According to a study published by a leading market survey organization, it has been acknowledged that customers who have engaged actively with a brand remain 4 times more likely to use the brand’s products and services even after three months following their initial contact.

Providing a place for receiving feedback from the customer is a great way to start, although most consumers only reach out unprompted if they have an issue that needs help to be fixed. Therefore, to get in front of the customer, you need to make a proactive effort to show how important their customer feedbacks are for your business.

To do this, it is best to proactively engage the customers throughout their digital experience, whereby you can start with a simple survey asking a few questions about their recent experience with your brand, which can be easily done if you are using an easy to use CRM software, showing your customers that you care.

  1. Engage at the right moment

Now that we know that it is needed to engage the customers, let us discuss what is the ‘right moment” within a digital experience and how it actually looks like.

Encouraging feedback from the customers is all about starting a conversation with the consumers, and therefore, asking for a feedback at the right moment is needed to give this conversation the best opportunity to begin.

To do this it is crucial that you understand your customer’s journey and pick up the best point for communication (e.g. if they view a certain page, after a customer has completed a purchase, when they complete a level, etc.) and find the right time to ask for the feedback.

However, it must be remembered that you need to remain conservative on how often you ask for the feedback and that you should give the customers sufficient time to engage with their experience with your offerings, before you ask for their feedback using an easy to use CRM, for the first time.

  1. Listen (really listen) to feedback

It has been found that far too often; businesses do not take actions based on the feedback the customers provide to the companies.

Now, it must be remembered that a lack of communication can affect both brand loyalty and the customer’s willingness to provide feedback in the future.

Therefore, it is most important for customers to feel heard when they provide a feedback, which can be validated in the following ways:

Say thank you

Always reply with a big “thanking you” message even if you have heard the same feedback for a million times or the feedback was incredibly rude.

Follow up

Always follow up with your consumers after they leave their feedbacks, and consider providing them something free for their valuable time, for customers who may have larger issues.

Be honest

Sometimes it is not possible to solve a problem on the spot. Hence, if a customer leaves feedback around an issue that is in a low priority level or cannot be solved, be honest and tell them why.

Provide Credit

Always give credit where it is due by giving thanks to your customers who brought your attention to an issue with your products or services. Taking a step further by personally calling those who provided such vital feedbacks and offering them thanks privately, often makes even those customers who get their problems solved become some of your biggest fans.

Remember that whether the sentiment is negative or positive, customer feedback is critically valuable and should always be considered as an opportunity to know how you can make a better product for your customers.

  1. Measure your brand’s progress

Executing a strategy always helps in improving your customer’s experience with your brand, and therefore drives loyalty in the primary part of the battle. However, measuring success is also equally important, since without tracking your success you will never be able to measure the progress that you have made.

If you are using an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, consider following these five metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your customer’s experience over time.

– Average session length

-The bounce rate of various pages and email campaigns

-Frequency of sessions

-Track customer sentiment through NPS (Net Promoter Score)

-Activity per sessions

Conclusion

With the present time’s ever-expanding market, consumers have no dearth of options to choose from when determining their loyalty towards a brand. Therefore, when customer feedbacks are not asked for or not taken seriously customers tend to jump at the chance to find a brand that prioritizes it.

We hope these four strategies above will help you understand the feedbacks of your customers in a more evocative way, and thereby help drive greater customer loyalty by using an easy to use CRM and through your digital experience.

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If you have other ways that you have used for strengthening customer feedback, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

How AI and Easy to Use CRM Solution Can Change the Future of Sales

In the present times, several companies are proactively using both easy to use CRM solutions and AI in forms of groundbreaking ways to escalate their businesses. For an example, if you are watching Netflix, an AI (a recommendation algorithm) will undoubtedly be used for you to help you decide what to watch. Similarly, while shopping in Amazon your decision about what you might wish to buy is also influenced by an AI (through an association algorithm). Even if you ever wish to call an Uber, an AI (a location algorithm) is used to find and quickly book a car in your vicinity. Now, this same type of AI algorithms can also be used to empower any company’s business strategy or decision-making process, to help businesses to make better business decisions. Here are a few specific areas where AI algorithm can be ideally leveraged to help companies grow by helping your sales teams to increase their sales and revenue.

In the present times, several companies are proactively using both easy to use CRM solutions and AI in forms of groundbreaking ways to escalate their businesses.
For an example, if you are watching Netflix, an AI (a recommendation algorithm) will undoubtedly be used for you to help you decide what to watch. Similarly, while shopping in Amazon your decision about what you might wish to buy is also influenced by an AI (through an association algorithm). Even if you ever wish to call an Uber, an AI (a location algorithm) is used to find and quickly book a car in your vicinity.
If you ever had a thought about a product or a vacation, and like telepathy, it seems to suddenly appear on your email inbox or on your search page, we can assure you it was also based on an AI (a classification algorithm) that is monitoring your 24 hours online activities.

Now, this same type of AI algorithms can also be used to empower any company’s business strategy or decision-making process, to help organizations make better business decisions.

Companies that have pioneered the use of AI in sales rave about the impact, which includes an increase in leads and appointments of more than 50%- Harvard Business Review Click To Tweet

Here are a few specific areas where AI algorithm can be ideally leveraged to help companies grow by helping your sales teams to increase their sales and revenue:

  1. Providing Sales Teams with Pertinent Insights

Marketing automation in spite of all its technological advancements has its limits, as only a sales rep can finally have a 1:1 conversation with the customers and close a deal.  However, an AI algorithm can help marketing and sales teams by permitting them to make available valuable insights to their colleagues about prospects, throughout the sales cycle. Information about the customers like their preferences, buying patterns, price selections, brand preferences, preferred time of interactions with sales reps and marketing teams provides a positive outlook, since sales professionals can deal with this information and discover relevant and actionable insights.

AI-driven prescriptive sales tools work like a regular easy to use CRM platform with the exception that it is capable of tracking and analyzing billions of touch points and events, thereby identifying areas for constant improvement.

Manash Chaudhuri the CSO of ConvergeHub CRM and a thought leader in AI-driven Prescriptive Sales technology says:

“AI programs can fetch through billions of customer touch points and events to find correlations and patterns that we just would not be able to notice as human beings on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, it might notice a correlation between sending a specific sales campaign to a prospective customer before calling them, which results in a better conversation. It can also notice that sending a weekly follow up email can yield results up to 6 weeks after an initial contact, which are just example of small practices that sales reps might miss, but that can increase their performance over time.”

  1. Price Optimization

Knowing the amount of discount (if any) to be provided to a customer is always a tricky area for any sales representative. But then again no sales rep wants to leave money on the table. In the present AI based business scenario, an AI algorithm can easily tell the sales teams using a best small business CRM like ConvergeHub what this ideal discount rate should be. Ensuring that you are most likely to win the deal by analyzing specific features of past deals that were won or lost on that very product or service to the customers. These features can include:

  • New or existing client
  • Size of the deal in dollars
  • Product specification compliance
  • Number of competitors
  • Territory/region
  • Customer’s annual income
  • Level of decision-makers (influencers) involved
  • Timings of the past sale (e.g., Q1 vs Q3), and several others
  1. Quality and Quantity Leads

Improving lead generation has been the focal point of the buzz around AI. In a study conducted by HBR (Harvard Business Review), it was found that businesses using Artificial Intelligence along with online lead management software platforms for sales were able to increase their lead generation by 50%. Moreover, the lead quality, as well as the lead quantity of AI-driven leads, are superior as Artificial Intelligence has a keen potential of spotting the best targets for inbound and outbound marketing initiatives. Therefore, a large chunk of the longstanding friction between marketing and sales in a company can be eliminated with the growth of AI in sales.

In other words, AI-driven solutions can act as a blessing throughout the entire sales-marketing cycle, turning a magnanimous amount of information in the CRM database into actionable insights.

  1. Manage Performance

Sales managers in all businesses, have to evaluate the revenue pipeline of each of their sales representatives every month, with a vision towards nurturing deals that might have got stalled, or worse, fallen through the crack. Using an AI-powered best small and medium business CRM software platform, managers can now use the dashboard to visually perceive which sales reps are likely to accomplish their sales targets along with the number of outstanding deals that stands a good chance of getting closed.
An AI-powered easy to use CRM solution allows sales managers to concentrate their attention on key sales reps and their associated deals that can help the company to reach its forecasted sales objectives.

According to Shampa Bagchi, CEO of ConvergeHub CRM for small businesses, ‘using AI to uncover trends and correlate data is great, but customer data in CRM is only made valuable when you can take action on it.”

  1. Simplify Tasks

According to McKinsey Global Institute, as AI magically reduces tasks, therefore, 40% of time spent by sales reps on day-to-day mundane and menial tasks such as cold calling, replying to emails and others can be automated by adopting all the present technologies that AI has to offer for the sales teams.
As AI is capable of aiding professionals to commit to their jobs better, especially with the use of analytics and data science.

Embedding AI into CRM database, sales force automation software platforms, and other applications can eliminate a lot of crippling tasks and liberate the sales reps from monotonous tasks, which can uplift their efforts in sales to unprecedented new heights.

Conclusion

Therefore to conclude although AI is never going to be a replacement for sales and marketing in any business, nevertheless it is ‘The’ technology for now, and for the future, which is going to impel sales professionals to a ‘level-up’ in their game.

Al will allow sales and marketing professionals to base their decisions and opinions more accurately based on data (and since data never lies) focusing and unveiling the information trapped in the CRM database, making their choices more precise than ever.

10 Commandments of Customer Success Strategies with an Easy to Use CRM

Gone are the days of the uninformed customer. Today customers hold the cards, not the vendors. Now, you must be wondering what does this means for you and your business. Well, it means that just as your customer’s barrier to try your brand has dropped (e.g., through online signups, free trials, and monthly pricing plans); their barrier to exit has also dropped. Nowadays, customers are only committed to your brand as long as you are delivering value. Furthermore, customers are better informed and tech-savvy than ever before. Here are 10 key learnings we have gathered over time as customer success best practices, especially for small and medium businesses.

Gone are the days of the uninformed customer. Today customers hold the cards, not the vendors.
Now, you must be wondering what does this means for you and your business.
Well, it means that just as your customer’s barrier to try your brand has dropped (e.g., through online signups, free trials, and monthly pricing plans); their barrier to exit has also dropped. Nowadays, customers are only committed to your brand as long as you are delivering value. Furthermore, customers are better informed and tech-savvy than ever before.
Because of these trends, both traditional vendors and technology-based companies using easy to use CRM platforms alike are establishing customer success strategies and programs based on the simple concept:

“Make your customers successful, and your business success will follow suit.”

Below are 10 key learnings we have gathered over time as customer success best practices, especially for small and medium businesses.

By 2018, more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations -Gartner Click To Tweet
  1. The Customer Success Team Is Not The Only One In Charge Of Customer Success

Preventing customer churn is everyone’s job in an organization. Therefore, just like the members of your customer success team, the CEO of your business should greet as many numbers of customers as he/she can and have direct communication with the customers of your brand. Additionally, the salespeople that won the initial contract should also check with their customer base to up-sell and see how things are going, just as the head of your customer onboarding department should also touch base with the customers to make sure that they do not need any new refresher or information on your products or services.

  1. Make Your Customers the De-Facto “Head of Product and Services”

The feedback from your customers on products and services should provide the direction of your offerings. Always make sure that your customers know that their feedback is important for your business and make them feel the power of ownership. This will make the customers feel appreciated and therefore think about investing in your brand.

  1. Contact Structure is Important

All contacts should have an auto-renewal (with a small increase in pricing). Additionally, instead of paid pilots, provide your customers a 14-day trial when they sign up, which will lower the barriers of customer acquisition.

  1. Provide Free Onboarding If Needed

Although you must always try to charge your customers an upfront fee for onboarding, nevertheless, if your customer is not ready to pay then give them a free onboarding anyways. Remember customers are won and lost during onboarding, so make sure that they know how to use your product or service effectively. We as an easy to use CRM vendor have found from our knowledge gathered over time that 40% of those customers that did not receive proper onboarding churns out in 6 months.

  1. The First 3 Months Predicts The Next 9 Months

Your sales and support teams should especially remain in ‘high-touch’ with their customers during the first 3 post-sales months. This is because the customer’s experience in these primary stages, when the customers pay their greatest attention to your product, must necessarily go well. For this, remain especially proactive and attentive to the customers during these 3 initial months.

  1. Not Willing To Adopt Features Can Be Warnings

Remember a customer reaching out to you for help is always a good thing. Therefore, if a customer is not actively making use your product and at the same time not getting in touch with you with his/her questions, or if the customer is not adopting your brand’s new features after their purchase, reach out and make sure that nothing is wrong.

  1. The Rule of 40

If you are a SaaS-based company, (like us) with enterprise level customers, in general, we found that you need one customer success representative for every 40 customers. Therefore, do not overwhelm the customer success team with a ratio far outside 40:1.

  1. Educate The Customer

Make your customer better at using your products and services by providing them continued education, and share with them how other customers are using your tools. Customer feedback driven product road-map makes the customers feel like they have an ownership of the product.

  1. Your Old Customers Are Your Best New Customers

Remember you old customers are the cheapest source of your new customers. Therefore, you should always be exploring new ways to up-sell and cross-sell your current customers and make sure that you are maxing out their interest in your brand.

  1. Make Sure You’re Selling To The Right Customers

Not all revenues are created equally. Therefore, your sales teams need to make sure that the customers they are signing up for your brand are fit for buying your offerings.

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Bringing in sales, revenue, and customers just for mere growth, which then churns out, does not provide any value. Rather it just exhausts your onboarding resources and customer success strategy.

Takeaway

Finally, using a customer success management software like an easy to use CRM solution like ConvergeHub (one that is ideal for the members of your whole organization), can help your team to work better, create a more efficient customer success workflow, resulting in happier customers.

How Doing Business without Online Lead Management Software Can Kill Your Sales

Do you find your CRM or online lead management software as just another software tool for you and your team to log our sales in, but do not really understand the reason for doing it? If it is so, have you also experienced long stretches of low sales, squandered sales opportunities, and unsolicited small errors getting on the way of your sales performances? This is the very reason as to why the benefits of using online lead management software or a CRM solution should never be underestimated by the sales team. There are multiple ways even skilled sales reps miss potential sales prospects when their business does not adopt easy to use CRM software. Here are some of the most common reasons for underperformance in sales.

Do you find your CRM or online lead management software as just another software tool for you and your team to log your sales in, but do not really understand the reason for doing it?

If it is so, have you also experienced long stretches of low sales, squandered sales opportunities, and unsolicited small errors getting on the way of your sales performances?

This is the very reason as to why the benefits of using online lead management software or a CRM solution should never be underestimated by the sales team.

An Easy to Use CRM solution decreases sales and marketing costs by 23% -SmallBizCRM Click To Tweet

There are multiple ways even skilled sales reps miss potential sales prospects when their business does not adopt easy to use CRM software .

Here are some of the most common reasons for underperformance in sales:

  • Incapability to understand the customer’s needs
  • Ineffectual sales performance tracking
  • Too much of time being spent on focusing on back-end support activities and not making sales

How online lead management software works to improve sales

  1. Improve contact information

An easy to use CRM solution provides you and your entire team a complete 360-degree view of your leads and customers, giving everyone in your business access to the same information, and thereby helping them to remain on the same page.

When everyone in your organization access a single customer list, it becomes much more convenient to sort and analyze your lead and customer information. Additionally, an online lead management software solution also aids you to track where your leads are in the sales cycle with opportunity tracking abilities, which helps your sales teams to predict the likelihood of closing a prospective deal.

  1. Better interactions with the customers

A key feature of a cloud based CRM systems is tracking interactions with your leads, prospects, and customers. Being able to keep a log of outgoing and incoming emails, phone calls, visits, and more; allow your sales teams to remain updated with what is going on with their customer relationships. An online lead management software solution helps to keep your sales teams organized, speeds up their follow-up activities, and most essentially improve the quality of their communication with leads and customers. A CRM solution also ensures that no two sales professionals in your organization are approaching the same lead, which makes your sales team more efficient in closing their deals.

  1. Automate mundane tasks

One of the greatest benefits of using a customizable easy to use CRM (like ConvergeHub), is creating end-to-end workflow. With ConvergeHub, you can make your online lead management software work the way you do, and automate several mundane manual processes, such as sending a follow-up email after conversion of a lead, converting estimates to invoices, or even manage your businesses’ inventory.

By customizing your best small business CRM software solution to fit your business, your sales and support teams become more efficient, as they can free up their time, focus on closing deals, and thereby grow your business.

  1. Improve reporting and analytical data

Finding valuable insights into your customer data in the CRM database provides priceless information on what makes your leads get converted at a higher rate and also gives you an in-depth understanding of your customer lifecycle.

An online lead management software like ConvergeHub CRM also easily tracks the history of all the interactions your sales reps had with their customers, so that you are able to view, for an example, which are the leads that received a specific email marketing campaign converted to customers at a higher rate than those that did not.

Therefore, using a CRM solution you can easily find out and understand now which emails you should send to convert more leads and as a natural consequence grow your business.

  1. Increase time to make sales

By investing less time on tedious administration tasks in the office, using an online lead management software that has marketing automation capabilities like ConvergeHub CRM, your sales teams can focus a considerable amount of time tracking new leads, forging new relationships and thereby increase sales.

Using an easy to use CRM software solution, your sales team members need not request other employees in your organization to get a purchase history of the customers or reach a customer with outdated contact information, which allows your team to generate more sales.

  1. Create happier customers to encourage returning sales

By having a comprehensive 360° view of all your customers, you can easily view their entire history, making interactions between you and your customers easier.
As better perception of your customer’s needs results in more efficient customer service, that inspires your customers to return back for more businesses.

What should you do?

Therefore, if you find that the sales teams in your small business organization are desperate for perceiving a change in their sales strategies for escalating their plummeting sales goals, try ConvergeHub CRM software today.

ConvergeHub is an award-winning CRM solution for small and medium-sized businesses, which provides an online lead management software solution to startups and SMBs that have requirements as large business organizations but do not have the required budget to spend on several standalone software applications and their integrations for increasing their ROI.

Do You Think A Cloud Based CRM Solution Will Future-Proof Your Small Business?

It is unnecessary to say that in order to thrive in 2018, all small businesses must remain prepared to utilize the latest technology in hand. Whether it is sales forecasting with the help of a cloud based CRM solution, big data analysis, or even digital marketing and social media, it is technology that holds the key to communicating with the consumers on their individual terms. At that too possibly, in the least intrusive way, so that it provides the consumers a convenient and clear path that eventually leads to a sale.

It is unnecessary to say that in order to thrive in 2018, all small businesses must remain prepared to utilize the latest technology in hand. Whether it is sales forecasting with the help of a cloud based CRM systems , big data analysis, or even digital marketing and social media, it is technology that holds the key to communicating with the consumers on their individual terms.  At that too possibly, in the least intrusive way, so that it provides the consumers a convenient and clear path that eventually leads to a sale.

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

As modern technology is advancing at a breakneck speed, businesses can often find themselves unable to stay on trend or keep themselves updated on the latest technological developments.

It is true, that it takes a significant amount of money and time to implement a new solution across a company and this is the exact reason we cannot blame small businesses for being so skeptical of adopting smart business solutions when they remain unsure if this technology will stand the test of time. A critical problem that plagues prospective users of CRM solution systems in particular, since Customer Relationship Management has evolved a lot since its inception when the term was coined in 1995.

The Customer Relationship Management Paradox

A CRM implementation is perhaps one of the most complex yet at the same instance most transforming product adoption that a small business organization can undergo. Requiring all departments in the company to cleanse the data before migrating it, train the employees in getting used to the new software, and then most necessarily catch up with the backlogs of the works that have been delayed by the change in the organizational process.

Therefore, it might take some time before small businesses can really start to benefit from the new CRM solution, although it is well worth the sacrifice, especially if they understand that the product adoption is future-proofed.

Once a small and medium business has identified that it needs a CRM system, the primary obstacle it may encounter is whether its CRM solution should be an on-premise or a cloud based CRM system. Now, we know all businesses are different and so it would be an irresponsible act to advise either way. Since businesses should always adopt a product that best suits their individual needs.

Nevertheless, there are clear advantages and disadvantages of both these CRM systems as illustrated below:

Should You Adopt An On-Premise Or A Cloud-Based CRM Solution?

Those businesses having a long history in trade and commerce will surely be familiar with on-premise CRM solutions, which can be installed on local networks and is most commonly developed or administered by a permanent member of IT staffs, employed by the organization. On-premise CRM software platforms are generally unreachable for anyone out of the network, which makes it an ideal CRM solution for small business employees that do not need remote access to the software.

On-premise CRM also aids with security, as only permanent staffs working in the organization gets access to the CRM system.

Many businesses also prefer Capital Expenditure (CapEx) versus the modern day subscription-based model (OpEx) of the software for accounting purposes.

Therefore the decision to implement an On-Premise CRM or a Cloud Based CRM solution, not only lies in the hands of the marketing and sales, or IT and Ops, but also with Finance.

Moreover, on-premise CRM solutions can often be left behind with technological upgrades, since many small businesses may not choose to periodically upgrade their CRM platform due to lack of compatibility with their customized solution, as well as the fear of losing data or the disruption it will cause to the routine use of the software.

Additionally, with the CRM data stored in the local server, which is not accessible from outside the network, this can also create a bigger data risk than cloud based CRM solutions that can be accessed from online portals.

This is because, there are several instances when users are forced to share their customer data in CRM via external communicational platforms or emails for the purpose of networking or sales calls, thoughtless of the alarming fact that this data being sent could be compromised.

This where the real benefits of a cloud based CRM system come into play. Since a cloud based CRM solution is inherently future proof.

With live updates released on a regular basis, online cloud based CRM platforms are constantly optimized, as well as well guarded against all latest cyber threats.

Whether it is an improvement to be done on the user interface, an adherence to be made to the latest General Data Protection Regulation (EU) law, or even for a major product update, cloud based CRM platforms like ConvergeHub and others use regular and subtle updates. Therefore, unburdening the CRM users by guaranteeing them minimal disruption to their work.

Integrations are also made much simpler when the data is stored in the cloud, with several web-based systems making product integration as easy as ‘drag and drop’ functionalities, which is becoming increasingly useful given the value of marketing products and solutions via social media platforms.

Easy to use CRM platforms, especially those that boast of their marketing automation features, should always embrace the cutting-edge modern communication technology for the CRM users to get the most out of sales and marketing. Therefore, small businesses that still use on-premise CRM software that predate the advent of modern social media platforms, often find themselves stuck with outdated marketing strategies, as popular integrations are almost impossible to implement without a major product update.

Is future proofing CRM technology ever truly possible?

While adopting cloud based CRM platforms like ConvergeHub can help to future-proof your small business endeavors, honestly speaking, there is really no way to predict the direction in which technology will go.

However, as of date, cloud based CRM system merely offers us the option of constantly staying up-to-date, providing us with every possible advantage as CRM technology advances with time.

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Nevertheless, to sum up, small businesses that are capable enough to justify the time investment and financial outlay and benefit from the limitless product integration of a SaaS-based software should seriously consider using a cloud based CRM solution, which is also easy to use.
Since implementing a cloud based CRM for small businesses in the modern times will at least ensure future proofing your CRM solution until the next breakthrough in technology- as for what that will be, your guess is as good as mine.