Tag: QuickBooks CRM

Key Features That You Need In Your Best Small Businesses CRM Software

When it comes to the best small business CRM software, every organization requires different features. However, in general, there are a set of key features that all small and medium-sized businesses, should make sure to include in their CRM that will work for now and also in the future days to come. Since the very last thing you want to have to deal with as an owner of a small business is a messy integration into a different system. Now, that being said what are the core features that all small businesses need to have in their CRM platforms? The core features, which all small business need in their easy to use CRM platforms are as follows.

When it comes to the best small business CRM software, every organization requires different features. However, in general, there are a set of key features that all small and medium-sized businesses, should make sure to include in their CRM that will work for now and also in the future days to come. Since the very last thing you want to have to deal with as an owner of a small business is a messy integration into a different system.

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

Now, that being said, what are the core features that all small businesses need to have in their CRM platforms?

The core features, which all small business need in their easy to use CRM platforms:

  1. Lead Management and Sales

The purpose of purchasing CRM software, not just for small and medium-sized businesses, but even for larger organizations, is to manage their sales processes and build efficiencies in their customer-facing areas.
You will be hard pressed to buy a small business CRM software that does not include some sort of contact management and sales functionalities since CRM is a software that is specifically designed to do so.
We as an award-winning vendor of small business CRM platform would recommend you to look for an easy to use CRM solution like ConvergeHub that has a robust lead and sales management functionalities that permit your teams to track leads and contacts by creating automated and customized campaigns, which will allow you to more easily scale-up your business.
We also as the creator of ConvergeHub know that the last thing any small business owner wants to implement is a CRM that meets the features they need now but does not have the required capabilities to grow with their business.

Therefore, primarily, sales pipeline management is an absolute “must have” feature for all best small businesses CRM software platforms.

  1. Flexibility and Integration Capabilities

Saying that one of the core features that all CRM needs is flexibility may sound a little vague in the first place; however, it is an absolute must for the growth of any small business.
This is true, as when your business grows, you may not have any idea what are the new software platforms that you need to include for the convenience of your business.
Per say, one day you may choose to use a CRM based on its integration capabilities with your present tele-calling software RingCentral and then maybe you make a switch to NexInteractive predictive dialing software later on. Now if you do not choose a CRM system for your growing organization that features the ability to integrate with different software applications, and is easily customizable to support your teams, your business will suffer and so would your growth.

Therefore, purchasing best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub, which seamlessly integrates with more than 30 business applications, including most popular integrations like Zapier and QuickBooks, is absolutely critical for supporting your sales, marketing, customer support, and accounting teams.

  1. Project Management

Gone are those days when every different business needed a different point of solution to solve their different pain points. Times have changed and so has technology.
Therefore, now the world of CRM has grown so much that you can find a plethora of features out there- which is again just another critical factor what makes it so difficult to choose a CRM system.

As a cloud based CRM vendor recognized and recommended by many, project management is one of these new features that we shall recommend for all small and medium-sized businesses.
Why?

This is because, in a growing business landscape, most small businesses establishments have different facets of businesses and project management functionality. Small business CRM software, helps the employees to keep track of their active projects and tasks, and provides a detailed workflow of their projects for their customers, which includes taking care of multiple resources, costs, and milestones.

  1. Mobile Support

When it comes to startups, and small and medium-sized businesses, we all know that the job does never stop just because you stepped out of your office. Practically, SMB employees and owners in most cases works round the clock, doing anything and everything to make their business grow.
This is the reason for having a cloud based mobile CRM for small business like ConvergeHub (now more than ever) is crucial for any growth-oriented small organization.

Being able to log projects, access prospect data from the CRM database, send messages, and track all customer data, anytime from anywhere, is, therefore, a must for all best small business CRM software, which can be only be done with seamless mobile support.

  1. Invoicing and Order Management

This may seem like a new recommendation for many, but as a small business entrepreneur, you are always going to have to sell your products or services- right?

Well, how much do you assume that your life will be easier if your sales teams can quickly create invoices and quotes and track client billing from a single system?

Having this functionality as a part of your best small business CRM software means that when your sales and customer support executives can look up your customer’s account details, they can easily see an entire history of the customer’s billing and also track the customer lifetime value. Doing this can make your teams aware of how much value each of your customers may bring in a lifetime, which in turn increase their potentiality to up-sell or cross-sell based on the history of the offerings that your customers have purchased in the past.

Order management and invoicing are not common features you will find in most of the outdated CRMs, but it is a feature that modern-day CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub include in its software, and so it is also known as QuickBooks CRM.
ConvergeHub the best small business CRM software allows QuickBooks CRM integration free and is therefore considered as the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

Conclusion

So do you need all these 5 Features in your CRM for SMB?

Well, the answer is ‘Yes’.

This is because, in today’s working environment, all these 5 features are an absolute must if you want to run your business as efficiently as possible to cut the cost associated with running multiple software systems for the growth of your business.

This cost factor we mentioned above, not only includes paying for multiple products, but also the time-cost that is associated with the time wasted in entering and tracking data in multiple platforms, which even forebodes the fear of creating duplicate and erroneous data entries.

Using a CRM like ConvergeHub that provides a low cost entry point and also a free trial for 14 days not only allows you to see how we would fit within your business processes, but we the best CRM for small business, fits with your existing workflow and enhance them as your business grows in the days to come.

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What Is CRM And How It Can Unlock Massive Sales Enablement Benefits For Your Business

You may know by now what is CRM software, but are you aware of the term ‘Sales Enablement’ and what it means to your business? Well, in general, sales enablement refers to a process of providing your sales teams with the most effective tools they need to sell your offerings successfully. Therefore, sales enablement provides your sales teams with the right technology and content to better engage their prospects in the buying cycle. It is a tool that can unlock significant benefits that in turn will increase your sales and drive more revenue.

You may know by now what is CRM software, but are you aware of the term ‘Sales Enablement’ and what it means to your business?

Well, in general, sales enablement refers to a process of providing your sales teams with the most effective tools they need to sell your offerings successfully. Therefore, sales enablement provides your sales teams with the right technology and content to better engage their prospects in the buying cycle. It is a tool that can unlock significant benefits that in turn will increase your sales and drive more revenue.

Leads that are nurtured in the CRM system convert 47% of the time- Annuitas Group Click To Tweet

For example, ConvergeHub small business CRM software is a sales enablement tool that can empower your sales teams to convert more leads and prospects into customers in a much lesser time.

Therefore, with a small business sales enablement tool like a CRM in place, your business has the potential to provide more ROI rapidly.

However, what are these benefits that you can unlock with a best small business CRM like ConvergeHub?

Now that we know what is CRM software, let us dive in see!

Automating manual tasks

A sales enablement CRM for small and medium business drastically increases the efficiency of your sales teams by automating their day-to-day tasks. Therefore, when you use a Converged CRM that includes sales, marketing, customer support, and also accounts (if you are using a QuickBooks CRM), your efficiency increases dramatically.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Data Entry

Lead data is captured successfully when you leverage lead-generation forms. That means, your sales reps do not need to enter data manually, and they can use that time to focus on more important issues.

  1. Appointment scheduling

CRM helps to automate the process of scheduling the appointment process. This allows prospects and customers to schedule meeting with reps with their convenience, freeing them from having to conduct the actions manually.

  1. Lead Scoring

This process helps sales reps to take actions by viewing the propensity of the buyers. Lead scoring methods help in improving the quality of the leads. Hence, small business CRM software that includes lead scoring capabilities helps reps to focus on other things and at the same time have an insight into, leads, which are sales-ready, and those leads that need more nurturing.

  1. Telephony

If you easy to use CRM provides telephony integrations, like Ring Central and others, it helps your sales reps make more calls in less time. Using telephony integration you can select a group of leads to call and let the software call them in sequence without your sales reps having to call up each of the dialed numbers manually, resulting in increased productivity.

  1. Voicemail Drop

Another great benefit of using telephony integrations with your small business CRM software is the ability to leave pre-recorded voice mail drops. Hence, when your sales reps call someone and get sent to the prospect’s voicemail, they click the voicemail drop they want to leave, which thereafter gets delivered automatically.

  1. More Insight Into Customers And Prospects

A CRM software that provides sales enablement stores extensive data on customer and prospects, which includes demographic and personal data of the prospects and the customers. For users who know what is CRM software and its capabilities, can easily track such data for finding behaviors such as clicking on an email, attending a webinar, or viewing a content, which can help sales reps to leverage sales enablement software to maintain more insights into who the customers are and what they need.

  1. Understanding past buying behavior

Sales enablement software like ConvergeHub software helps to track all deals that have been created by your reps.
Once you are using a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, which offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, your reps can easily open a contact’s records in the CRM database to see which product has been bought by the customer in the past. It can also show which products the prospects and customers have been interested but did not purchase, which allows reps to understand which types of offerings the customers are interested in that in turn drastically increases up-selling opportunities.

  1. Knowing customer’s pain points

When you use a Converged CRM like ConvergeHub, you can track all the customer support tickets, and easily see which problems a customer has faced with your offerings by reviewing their ticket history in the CRM database. Therefore, before up-selling to any customer, using a CRM you can see if the customer is having an issue, and up-sell until the customer is satisfied again.

  1. Arming representatives with the right resources

Sales enablement is also about sending the right resources and content to the leads, prospects, and customers at the right time. Therefore using easy to use CRM software platform, your reps can check where each lead are in the sales funnel, and provide them contents that correctly aligns with the sales process, which can be leveraged by using marketing automation functionalities of the CRM software.

  1. Automated tasks and alerts

You can use small business CRM software to send alerts to sales reps instantaneously when leads become sales qualified that help to remind reps that they need to reach out immediately and start a conversation with the prospect. It is like striking when the iron is hot.

Moreover, using CRM software when speaking to a lead that would benefit from a particular resource, sales reps can simply open the saved email and hit send, which lets them quickly provide the resources and content that leads need at each stage of the sales funnel.

  1. Understanding results

Sales and marketing teams need constant insight into their efforts to improve their results. With a robust sales enablement software like ConvergeHub CRM , you can use its powerful reporting functionalities to view how they are performing against their goals. Sales CRM software helps in checking the health of your sales pipeline, see growth reports, check your rep’s call rates and much more, to identify areas that need improvement or fix broken processes and make data-driven decisions they need to improve to close more deals.

 Conclusion

Now that you know what is CRM software and how it can help you as one of the most efficient sales enablement tools, use ConvergeHub the award winning CRM platform for small businesses, to unlock the benefits described above to make your reps work faster, smarter, and convert more leads into customers in less time.

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Myths About Using A QuickBooks CRM For Sales Teams Exposed

Customer Relationship Management solution or CRM software has been around for decades. However, over the past few years the usage of CRM has skyrocketed and today both small and enterprise level businesses use CRM for sales, preferably a QuickBooks CRM that is capable of offering QuickBooks CRM integration free. Here are some of the some of the primary myths debunked about sales CRM software like QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

Customer Relationship Management solution or CRM software has been around for decades. However, over the past few years the usage of CRM has skyrocketed and today both small and enterprise level businesses use CRM for sales, preferably a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams that is capable of offering QuickBooks CRM integration free.

CRM technology has evolved considerably over the years, but still, there are several misconceptions what a CRM solution actually is, or what it does, remains in the minds of the prospective buyers of CRM. Especially, customer relationship platforms that integrate with software solutions like QuickBooks, which helps integration with financial and accounting software platforms, and therefore, aid the sales teams to do their work more efficiently.

We will call them CRM myths.

Here are some of the some of the primary myths debunked about sales CRM software like QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

A CRM software can greatly help in cutting costs, and using one can lead to reduced marketing costs by 23% - Cloudswave Click To Tweet
  1. Sales CRM is too complicated

During the early days, sales CRM software was non-intuitive, clunky, and complicated, which came with an extremely steep learning curve. The market took notice of this issue and hence CRM software gained a reputation that it is a complicated piece of technological marvel that requires advanced computing skills to manage its functionalities.

However, those days are gone, and CRM technology has evolved by leaps and bounds. Today easy to use CRM software platforms have intuitive drag and drop interfaces like ConvergeHub that allows even the most non-technical users to quickly learn and use the platform.

This is the exact reason CRM systems like ConvergeHub, which are built to be accessed by small and growing businesses, have an extremely short learning curve.

  1. CRM is too expensive

Another prevailing myth about CRM systems that were born during the early days of the technology is that CRM solutions are prohibitively expensive. Since, at that time, businesses would have to normally spend more than $1000 per month or even a larger sum for CRM implementation in a company.

Unfortunately, this perception still exists and is as-of-date believed by many.

However, the truth is that prices of CRM software solutions have dramatically dropped in the recent years, which has happened primarily because of the growth in cloud based CRM software and the exceeding numbers of many new vendors that have entered the CRM marketplace.

For example, ConvergeHub CRM not only offers a 14-day free trial of the software but also allows you to use ConvergeHub on a pay-as-you-go subscription-based service (quarterly or annual), with its Starter Pack billed as low as $9 per user/month if it is billed annually.

  1. If I buy a CRM, I must still purchase a marketing automation system

In the present times, an innovative and new type CRM technology has entered the market. It is known as the Converged all-in-one CRM software, which includes full customer relationship management for sales, marketing, customer support, and even accounting on the same platform. Therefore, once you buy a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams like ConvergeHub, you no longer need to buy different automation systems for customer support, sales, marketing, or accounts, as they are built within the CRM.

This means all data centrally stored in the CRM database, be it from sales, marketing, support, or accounts is for all to see, which help align your various teams and makes everyone in your organization work more efficiently.

  1. CRM is only used to store contact information

Easy to use QuickBooks CRM software that supports marketing, sales, accounts, and customer support is used for a plethora of activities. Therefore, when you bring a Converged CRM like ConvergeHub into the picture, the list of processes that can be automated with best CRM for QuickBooks online grows exponentially, which include:

  • Billing and Invoicing
  • Email marketing
  • Drag and drop landing page and web form creation
  • Multichannel campaigning
  • Lead generation and lead scoring
  • Online appointment scheduling
  • Creating advanced metrics and analysis to drive data-driven decisions
  • Creating eDocs and electronic signatures
  • Advanced telephony for streamlined sales calling
  • Helpdesk and customer support automation
  • Social CRM and social listening capabilities
  • Creating project management workflows
  • And much more

  1. CRM for sales will not integrate with my other systems

This is absolutely a myth in the present times, since on the contrary most CRM solutions like ConvergeHub are sold as SaaS (software-as-a-Service) systems.
This means, most cloud based CRM have open APIs, which lets you integrate almost any third-party applications like QuickBooks and others that you want with your easy to use CRM.

These integrations opens the door for the users to complete most complicated tasks using the right plugin and API, like accounting, invoicing, billing, and creating eSignatures, and others, without having to leave the CRM. Modern CRM solutions, not only allows you to integrate billing and invoicing apps like QuickBooks, but also combine emailing, telephony, social media apps, and others with the CRM platform.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the legacy CRM software of the late 90’s and the early 2000s are gone and obsolete in 2018.
As most customer relationship management software solutions like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM live in the cloud, they are extremely cost-effective, and highly intuitive that empowers your business to be more competitive in your field, which in turn increases productivity while decreasing costs, and enables your sales teams to spend more time closing deals.

New to ConvergeHub? Click below to start your 14-day free trial right away.

How Best Sales CRM Software Plays A Vital Role In Building Your Sales Strategy

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

Best sales CRM software can help your business grow by managing several sales processes, starting with lead scoring to creating long-term customer relationships.
In a study done by Aberdeen Group in 2010 revealed that, many of the fastest growing organizations use Customer Relationship Management technology to turn more sales leads into revenue.

In the same study, it was also shown that 63% of organizations, which has very high annual growth rates, from sales leads, use best sales CRM software technology for their success.

63% of organizations, which has very high annual growth rates, from sales leads, use best sales CRM software technology for their success- Aberdeen Group(2010) Click To Tweet

Here is how best sales CRM software helps in the growth of your organization:

Sales Planning

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

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

Improve Lead Conversion

Best sales CRM software like ConvergeHub CRM and others helps to shift the focus of your sales reps (from other mundane tasks) so that they can spend their time more in selling. The data gathered in the CRM database of your best sales CRM software can also help in finding deals that have not yet been closed, monitor sales quotas, and develop strategies to shorten sales cycles resulting in the generation of faster revenue.

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

Build Customer Relationships

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

In fact, best sales CRM software solutions can manage sales processes as well as monitor and develop your long-term customer contracts, by sending automated reminders for renewal of your services.

Track And Analyze

Best sales CRM software like ConvergeHub also enables you to track lead data, so that you can easily calculate the returns on your investments in lead generation and in marketing campaigns on an ongoing basis. This helps you to see, which among your lead sources are generating the most revenue and adjust your strategies according.

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

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

Pricing And Order Fulfillment

Best sales CRM software, especially CRM platforms like ConvergeHub that allows QuickBooks CRM integration free ensure accurate pricing and quotes, by capturing customer order, confirming availability of the products and expediting order fulfillment.

According to SearchCRM, the main purpose of best sales CRM software is to:

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

Conclusion                                                  

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

Signs That Your Business Has Outgrown QuickBooks Customer Manager in 2018

In life and in business, it is hard to leave old habits and walk away from what we already know, since it is always easy to tread the same path. Nevertheless, although holding on to routine practices may be comfortable and familiar, but is it always the best way to go? More so, when it comes to new customer management software, it can be specifically difficult to cut off ties with traditional software solutions those that no longer serve your business needs. Now, if you are presently using QuickBooks Customer Manager, you must be aware of what we mean. While QuickBooks Customer Manager has a loyal user base, the platform has not been updated over the years, and Intuit has even discontinued support for this platform.Therefore, even though it may a comfortable and familiar, Intuit’s customer management software, may not help your business to grow. Here are 5 reasons as to why it may be the time to move on.

In life and in business, it is hard to leave old habits and walk away from what we already know, since it is always easy to tread the same path. Nevertheless, although holding on to routine practices may be comfortable and familiar, but is it always the best way to go?

More so, when it comes to new customer management software, it can be specifically difficult to cut off ties with traditional software solutions those that no longer serve your business needs.

Now, if you are presently using QuickBooks Customer Manager, you must be aware of what we mean.

Indeed, QuickBooks Customer Manager was a great platform when it was primarily launched since it allowed the users to integrate QuickBooks Desktop customer data so that you never miss a sales opportunity.

68% of small business owners regret looking back on the first year is that they didn’t spend more time learning about financial management- Intuit Click To Tweet

However, while QuickBooks Customer Manager has a loyal user base, the platform has not been updated over the years, and Intuit has even discontinued support for this platform.
Therefore, even though it may a comfortable and familiar, Intuit’s customer management software, may not help your business to grow.

Here are 5 reasons as to why it may be the time to move on:

  1. You need a more effective way to manage your contacts

Let us just accept the fact that QuickBooks Customer Manager is a pain in the neck. While the best small business CRM should make it easier to manage information on leads, prospects, customers, and sales, Customer Manager, needs a lot of manual work to keep customer data clean.
Per say, even for accomplishing a small action as simple as updating a company address you need to update the individual contacts for each person in the company’s list.

Your CRM should make your life easier. Therefore, using a CRM software like ConvergeHub which offers QuickBooks CRM integration free is an ideal choice under this circumstance, if you are spending hours updating and cleaning up data, and you think it is time to move on.

  1. Your team needs to access customer data on the go in their mobile

Technology in the present times is constantly growing at a rapid pace. However, as Intuit has not updated Customer Manager, it is still stuck in time as a ‘desktop-only’ software. Although, still this software serves its purpose if you need customer information while in office, nevertheless, this is 2018 and you need cloud-based and mobile software solutions for your business’ needs.

In fact, in a research conducted by Innoppl Technologies, it claimed that 65% sales representatives who have started using mobile CRM have achieved their sales targets, while merely 22% of sales reps using non-mobile CRM platforms have reached their quotas in the same span of time.

Remember, your customers rely on you to be flexible for their needs, and therefore you need an easy to use CRM platform that does the same for you like ConvergeHub, which is considered by many as the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

Since, being tied to a desktop application is the farthest thing from flexibility, which can hold your business back in these modern times.

  1. You have reached maximum user access

QuickBooks Customer Manager does precisely what it meant by ‘being held-up’ to your sales teams. By limiting your business endeavors to an upper limit of just four users, your team will without any doubts end up sharing accounts, leading to duplicate contacts and bad data.

Moreover, even if your current sales team is lesser than four sales reps, it is always best to think bigger and make your plans for a better tomorrow. Besides, it is more convenient to switch when your team is small, rather than re-train your sales reps once you have outgrown Customer Manager customer management platform.

Therefore, if you plan to expand the size of your sales team, you need a QuickBooks CRM solution like ConvergeHub that not only grows with your business but also makes your business grow as one of the best CRM for QuickBooks online.

  1. You are trapped in a software platform older than Windows 2000

Let us think back to the year 2000, when Gladiator and Cast Away were topping the box office, and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP and NYSYNC’s No Strings Attached was the top selling albums on the list.

There can be no excuse in 2018, to still rely on a software that only supports Windows 2000 since if someone tries to sell you a car, phone, or a computer from 2000, would you not laugh them out of the room.

Therefore, adhering to the same logic, should you not be using easy to use CRM software that is compatible with your phone, computer, and tablet.

Using ConvergeHub CRM, which is one of the most popular QuickBooks CRM, helps your sales team to have a full access to your customer and sales info, since using QuickBooks for accounting, and at the same time viewing the customer details, products, invoice and payment information directly in your CRM helps in follow-ups, reminders, customer service and business process automation.

  1. You need a software solution that will support you

Even the best pilot all across the world needs a copilot. However, if you are in the cockpit with Customer Manage, you will not get any technical help, since the software is presently discontinued.

As your small business grows in size, you will undoubtedly need to customize your easy to use CRM platform to suit the ever-expanding requirements of your team, and with that comes the need for support.

Therefore, for better lead management, access to cleaner QuickBooks software, zero double entry errors, data security, automated sales processes, enhanced sales efficiency, empowered customer service, robust marketing automation, and unparallel customer support you need a QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub, which provides you customer engagement that businesses strive for in the present times.

Takeaway

ConvergeHub CRM is rated as the #1 QuickBooks CRM software, which allows you to sync all your data in real-time with QuickBooks Online and relieves the stress of managing customers and leads with an easy to use, and comprehensive user interface.

Try ConvergeHub For Free

So why wait, click here for a 14-Days FREE Trial of ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM , and find the efficiency of both these software solutions that will help your business to grow, if you are seriously considering having an integrated CRM with your QuickBooks accounting platform.

12 Most Essential QuickBooks CRM Buying Guidelines for Startups

Customers are the most essential element of any business. Therefore, it is equally important that we must look after them. Now, if you are busy guessing how you can do that, because it may seem to be a breeze in the beginning, but as your business expands the multitude of your consumer base springs up with time. Therefore, before you decide and square-up upon finalizing your favored QuickBooks CRM software, here are twelve best practices that according to him, small business owners should recognize before purchasing their first CRM solution that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free.

Customers are the most essential element of any business. Therefore, it is equally important that we must look after them.
Now, if you are busy guessing how you can do that, because it may seem to be a breeze in the beginning, but as your business expands the multitude of your consumer base springs up with time.
To shed some light on the subject, we are here to speaks in this article about some of the best practices small businesses should adopt when they look for a QuickBooks CRM platform to run their businesses.

Therefore, before you decide and square-up upon finalizing your favored QuickBooks CRM software, here are twelve best practices that according to us, small business owners should recognize before purchasing their first CRM solution that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free.

QuickBooks operates in the SMB market, sized at approximately 29 million businesses in the US, and it has more than 80% market share with small businesses that use financial management software. Click To Tweet
  1. Choose A CRM Vendor That Offers Support

No two organizations require the same functionalities while implementing an easy to use CRM software. This is why, it is so critical that you must select your QuickBooks CRM vendor who is capable of providing you with the right support your establishment needs. Finding the right kind of support for your best CRM software for QuickBooks can be as significant as the functions that constitute the solution.

  1. Think About The Set Up Time And The Ease Of Use Of The CRM

For startup owners and beginners who are in need of implementing QuickBooks CRM for their organizations, the last thing that they want is to face a complicated CRM system that will take weeks to install. Instead, think about adopting a CRM solution that requires limited set-up time and is easy to use for most employees in your organization.

  1. Grow With The CRM Solution

Instead of just adopting a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams , since it does not cost much or is free, ensures that you find a CRM solution for your business that is unlikely to outgrow your organizational expansion. Therefore, opt for a CRM solution that can help your business grow effectively, keep up with your employee performances, and make your organization grow with the program.

  1. Read Reviews On Various CRM Systems

Before you commit yourself to a particular customer relationship management solution, carry out in-depth research on your preferred QuickBooks CRM platform. As, the more information you have on different best CRM for QuickBooks online, the more informed choices you will able to make while purchasing your CRM solution with integrated accounting and invoicing module.

  1. Check If Your CRM Helps Throughout The Customer Lifecycle

Make sure that your selected QuickBooks CRM for sales teams is capable of offering support to every department in your business. Right from Marketing, Sales, Support, and Accounting team members, with what they need to help your leads and customers at every phase of the customer lifecycle with your brand.

Best QuickBooks CRM solutions, not only aids in finding prospects but also helps in turning them into loyal customers and keep them through the long haul, by providing them unflinching services and great experiences.

  1. Avoid Selecting Just for Big Names

It is natural that you can decide on big names in QuickBooks CRM as their reputation and credibility outreach others. However, always remember as each organization’s CRM requirements are different, so select the QuickBooks CRM tailored to your needs, rather than going for the “biggest names” other companies use and recommend online.

  1. Go Beyond Just Features

While choosing your best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, pick the right CRM tool by “thinking ahead of just the features” in the software. Instead, look for other important aspects of CRM integration, like the amount of available data storage facility in the CRM and pricing flexibility of the solution.

  1. Go Mobile

In the present times, with more and more people using handheld devices, choose the best CRM for QuickBooks online , which can be accessed seamlessly across multiple devices over the Internet, including Windows Phone, iPhone, and Androids.

  1. Look for Personalization

It is important that your selected QuickBooks CRM is capable of providing the personalization that modern consumers crave. Buy a CRM that can send personalized emails and other individualized bespoke communications, which are based on the acquired customer data. Since doing so can significantly enhance your marketing campaign’s, click-through rates and further increase your revenue.

  1. Find who is accountable for Recovery, Backup, and Data Security

All businesses, be it big or small, can find themselves irrevocably crippled once they fall a prey to security breaches and cyber threats. Hence, it is absolutely critical to measure the security of the CRM software and understand the party responsible and involved for the software’s data backup, and information recovery.

  1. Check Policy for Regulatory and Compliance Requirements

Before selecting your CRM software that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, make sure that your CRM vendor’s data policy and contact guarantee are compliant in handling customer information, especially, when you are buying a cloud-based SaaS CRM solution for your business.

  1. Consider API Calls

Modern day businesses mostly integrate multiple customer oriented business applications with their CRM. Therefore, make sure that you understand the confines on API calls into the easy to use CRM solution for integrating third-party business applications, other than QuickBooks such as Evernote, MS Outlooks, Gmail, RingCentral, Zapier, DocuSign, MailChimp, and others.

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Takeaway

For more information or for a 14-Day free trial on QuickBooks CRM software, call ConvergeHub the award-winning best CRM software for QuickBooks.

CRM with Invoicing and Billing: QuickBooks CRM- Big Advantage and Efficiency That Means Money

A CRM working all alone in a silo is not enough to bring business to the next level for all small and medium businesses. However, easy to use CRM software with billing like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM, connected to other aspects of your business, can provide your business with that extra push. The growing use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools by small and medium businesses have created a cliché for the modern digital age- if you want your SMB to grow and succeed you are going to need a CRM. As banal as it is, nevertheless the declaration rings true. Relationship with your consumers is crucial, and the tools that you deploy to manage these are just as important for the better performance of your business.

A CRM working all alone in a silo is not enough to bring business to the next level for all small and medium businesses. However, easy to use CRM software with billing like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM, connected to other aspects of your business, can provide your business with that extra push.

QuickBooks has more than 80% market share with SMBs that use financial management software. Click To Tweet

The growing use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools by small and medium businesses have created a cliché for the modern digital age- if you want your SMB to grow and succeed you are going to need a CRM.

As banal as it is, nevertheless the declaration rings true. Relationship with your consumers is crucial, and the tools that you deploy to manage these are just as important for the better performance of your business.

Let us take the thought a little further. Many businesses realize quickly that just an easy to use CRM for small and medium businesses, working alone, is not enough to get your business to the next level. Although a CRM with billing and invoicing, connected to other aspects of business like a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, would be much better.

Here are some of the critical reasons why a CRM with invoicing and billing is a good idea for the growth of your business:

 1. Efficiency and Cash Flow

Every company owner acknowledges and knows that cash flow is the terra firma of businesses. You can always argue that the more efficient your invoicing and billing is, the healthier your cash flow position can become over time. As for whether you are running a multinational establishment or one-man operating out of your garage, you need money to empower your business and ensure that it keeps running smoothly.

Therefore, when the best small business CRM and billing systems are not integrated, small businesses can find themselves losing track of billable items and unpaid invoices, which seldom happens when your CRM software provides QuickBooks CRM integration free .
For not doing so, mostly makes expenses fall through the crack, discounts being offered too liberally, employees forgetting to log time sheets or invoices being not followed up methodically on time.

All these inefficiencies in any small and medium business organization can add up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in lost revenue, which can be the difference between a profitable business and a costly one- especially if you are in small businesses.

2. Tracking Every Billable Dollar (Do not Lose the Money You have already Earned)

Let us delve deep into those missed billable items. Businesses often miss out on the revenue that they should have generated, not because of incompetence of their employees, but as sometimes there is just too much information to track manually. This is one of the reasons we have developed ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM software the best CRM for QuickBooks online.

A robust easy to use CRM system helps you to consolidate all your business data in one central application, making it easier to keep track of customer and prospect related information without having to slog through tons of disconnected spreadsheets, emails, and sticky notes.

Moreover, if your CRM system like ConvergeHub can track projects and support customer tickets on top of that, you have got a full-on business management suite.

For integrating CRM with project management (along with help desk) and billing features lets you take your business several steps further, as doing so, you can automatically capture all revenue related activities across your entire business using only one central app.

Therefore, use QuickBooks CRM to track every dollar you make, be it in projects, sales, or support- and see that everything is billed accurately and on time.

3. Save time and make money

 

Having a system for handling easy to use CRM, projects, billing, and support also implies that you do not have any risk of making potential and costly mistakes due to double entry or miscounting.

Let us assume you are running a digital marketing agency.

Now if all your employees are required to keep close track of time they are spending doing work for your company’s customers and you are using a separate time tracker for your agency’s projects, you will have to transfer all their data from an app to another billing app in order to generate invoice for your clients.

Would not it be great if these two applications were ready to integrate since it should only take a few seconds to do this task (as it is with ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM)?

Now if everything is handled by one central software system, your employee’s time sheet can be easily accessed by the bookkeeping and accounting system module to generate accurate invoices and on time.

Therefore, if you can find a CRM that can integrate your business management with your billing app that you can cut down on your operational costs by replacing half a dozen separate apps with one centralized software- why would not you.

4. Keep clients happy by helping them better and faster

 

Your business does not just revolve around you; it is also about your customers. A QuickBooks CRM that includes invoicing and billing functionalities not only help your business to get paid faster, but it will also help your employees to understand the customers better and therefore build more meaningful relationships.

For example, one of your customers calls your support team and asking about an overdue fee on their latest invoice. With a QuickBooks CRM that integrates customer relationship management with financial software, your support can instantly look into the integrated invoicing and billing module to find information regarding the question been asked by the customer.

Similarly, sales and marketing can easily see what products and service your customers bought from your company in the past using a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, letting them tailor their marketing materials and sales pitches to address the customer’s needs.

Customers might not like being sold, but they certainly value being assisted by anyone in solving their issues, which consequently increases your sales and support rep’s up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.

So what are you going to do?

As a QuickBooks CRM with invoicing and billing make sure that, you are being paid for every moment’s worth of revenue that you rightfully deserve; it sets your business up for success.
Since using QuickBooks CRM software you are not spending your time working on disparate tools, your employees will also find more time to spend on what really matters to your business- your products, your customers, and your services.

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ConvergeHub support many different types of businesses and our customers love us.
If you want to find out why and what we can do for you please get in touch or schedule a demo!

5 Critical KPIs To Track As A Small Business Owner Using ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM

The fact remains, however, that your profits are one of the several factors, which affects your company’s balance sheet. If you are a user of QuickBooks CRM for small businesses, your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) refer to the values used to assess your business’s success in reaching its goals. Over the course of time, tracking pertinent KPIs can aid you in making critical decisions about your business’s development and growth. Here are 5 most important KPIs to track with the best CRM for QuickBooks online as a small and medium business owner in your industry.

The fact remains, however, that your profits are one of the several factors, which affects your company’s balance sheet. If you are a user of QuickBooks CRM for small businesses, your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) refer to the values used to assess your business’s success in reaching its goals.

Over the course of time, tracking pertinent KPIs can aid you in making critical decisions about your business’s development and growth.

65% of businesses adopt a CRM within their first five years.- Software Advice Click To Tweet

Here are 5 most important KPIs to track with the best CRM for QuickBooks online as a small and medium business owner in your industry:

#1. Cash Flow Forecast

Cash flow forecasting is an important KPI that let businesses assess whether their sales and margins are appropriate. To make this forecast, you need to add the total cash your small business have in savings to the anticipated cash value for the upcoming four weeks, and then subtract the anticipated cash out for the same period of time.

Intelligent small business owners using QuickBooks CRM software perform day-to-day cash flow forecasts, whereby they can identify upcoming financial problems in their nascent stages and then make necessary changes accordingly.

In addition to aiding small businesses foresee expected surpluses or shortages in the revenue, a cash flow forecasting is also most vital for proposing upcoming business loan applications, and for tax planning of your enterprise.

#2. Gross Profit Margin as a Percentage of Sales

No small business can achieve success if it is paying more to the suppliers than its gross monthly sales revenue. Gross profit margin as a percentage of sales is a financial expression that illustrates total profit margin of a business compared to its revenue.

Therefore, primarily to find your businesses’ GPM (Gross Profit Margin) divide your gross profit by your sales. Thereafter multiply the result, by hundred and you will then get your businesses’ GPM as a number in percentage.

Next, to determine the extent your GMP contributes to your overall sales turnover, divide that integer with your sales amount.

Here is the math for your easy reference:

 ( Gross Profit/Sales x 100) / Sales

The usefulness of using this performance indicator consistently is that this KPI helps you to easily quantify how much cash you are keeping against the amount paid out to your suppliers.

The GMP increases as your business retain more cash, and similarly, a decline in gross profit as a percentage of your sales could be a sign that your business is excessively spending on the suppliers.

As a small business owner using QuickBooks CRM accounting platform, you need to reduce overhead expenses or increase the price of your products or services to compensate for the decrease in gross profit as a percentage of sales.

#3. Revenue Growth Rate

It might seem obvious; however, the revenue growth of a business refers to the rate at which a business’s income or sales growth is increasing.

Therefore, to evaluate a revenue growth rate, start by calculating your business’s total revenue for the whole year, which is very easy to find using a QuickBooks CRM platform. Next, divide the current revenue by the total revenue from the previous year to find your present rate of growth.

By calculating RGR (Revenue Growth Rate) as an ongoing process, you can easily assess whether the growth in your business is increasing, decreasing, or is it in a plateau state.

#4. Funnel Drop-Off Rate

The funnel drop-off rate illustrates the number of visitors, who have left your sales funnel, or abandoned a conversion process, prior to its completion.

In a sales funnel (for laymen, envision a sales funnel as a real funnel pointed downward) there are many conversion steps along the way, while the prospects and leads move from the crest of the funnel to its bottom, where the prospects exit or get converted into a sale.

Therefore, the funnel drop rate is the number of prospects that move away from the funnel prior to sale.

To calculate funnel drop rate, begin by calculating the number of visits of a particular sale conversion step and then subtract the number of visits of the first step in the funnel. Next, divide this new value by the visits of the first conversion step.

In the recent times, for users of easy to use CRM software, the funnel drop off rate KPI has become one of the most important performance indicators that businesses must track using a CRM platform for finding growth or decrease in its sales activities.

#5. Accounts Payable Turnover

A business, especially if it is a small business cannot keep its establishment open for long if it runs out of funds to pay its outstanding suppliers. Accounts Payable Turnover is a KPI that measures the rate at which businesses pays for its required goods and services. It reveals the amount of fund spent on the supplying vendors over a given period of time.

Once you are using QuickBooks CRM software, to find this KPI, sum up the cost of your total purchases under supplies, and then divide it by AAP (Average Accounts Payable). Now, once you are aware as a business owner how much you are spending on your suppliers, you can find out if steps are necessary to reduce your spending that can boost long-term profits for your small and medium businesses.

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Takeaway

It is impossible to make any adjustment to your businesses’ strategies and procedures if you do not know how your business is trending.
For it is only by tracking KPIs on a regular interval, entrepreneurs can measure the factors, which are affecting their business growth and thereafter make necessary corrections that in the long run gives businesses the best shot at success.

Reasons Why Easy To Use CRM Software Help To Amplify Small and Medium Businesses

When evaluating any software for business, we always want to accomplish the most out of the application, so that we do not end up with the necessity of implementing and accessing multiple software. Our elementary goal of using any software for business is to consolidate processes, business intelligence, and data into a single application, which can either by itself or through integrations, create efficiencies previously unknown. An easy to use CRM software is commonly this solution, which once adopted successfully becomes the nucleus of an organization. So, exactly how does easy to use CRM platform amplify your business? Well, there are hundreds of real-world examples to pull from but here are our top 5 to consider.

When evaluating any software for business, we always want to accomplish the most out of the application, so that we do not end up with the necessity of implementing and accessing multiple software. Our elementary goal of using any software for business is to consolidate processes, business intelligence, and data into a single application, which can either by itself or through integrations, create efficiencies previously unknown.
An easy to use CRM software is commonly this solution, which once adopted successfully becomes the nucleus of an organization.

So, exactly how does easy to use CRM platform amplify your business?

80% of all sales, occur after approximately 5 followups- Gartner Click To Tweet

Well, there are hundreds of real-world examples to pull from but here are our top 5 to consider:

 #1. Understanding the Client Relationship

If you are an owner of an SME (Small and Medium Enterprise), you will always consider the best small and medium business CRM for your business that integrates well with the emailing, documentation, and financial software of your organization. Per say, since QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software for businesses in the U.S. customer relationship management software that allow QuickBooks CRM integration free help to find an instant snapshot of client relationship lifecycles. Using a QuickBooks CRM , you can easily see in one centralized location, what your customers have purchased, when they purchased, how often they purchase, or if they faced any problem while purchasing your products or services. Easy to use CRM software records every touch in the client management processes.

#2. Easy Collaboration

 

When we have an online lead management software solution like an easy to use CRM it becomes simple for anyone in your company to have an access to specific information at a moment’s notice. Since most best CRM for small business is located in the Cloud, anyone in your organization (at any time, and from anywhere) can find access to their desired information, provide feedback, make additions to the CRM database and more. Cloud based CRM systems ensure real-time data and allow seamless collaboration among employees.

#3. Easily Manage and Maintain Tasks

When running a business organization it is most essential to have a clear visibility of what tasks has been completed and jobs that remained outstanding. Using the best small and medium business CRM software like ConvergeHub, you can easily view your progress reports as well as notes contained within the customer database in CRM.
This CRM database is updated instantaneously; hence, there is no need for making second guesses if you are wasting time, resources, or money on tasks that have already been completed. Easy to use CRM software even provides visibility into bottlenecks that needs immediate attention for resolving the issues.

#4. Track KPIs

Key Performance Indicators or KPI can be tracked within the best CRM for small business as the data is pulled from the CRM database. With the help of this data, you can easily evaluate the health of your business by viewing the key performance indicators, which include:

  • Monthly number of unconverted leads
  • Sales conversions to leads
  • Email click-through rate
  • Email response rate
  • Number of lost opportunities
  • Funnel drop off rates
  • Average collection period
  • Number of complaints per month
  • Installation problems per unit sales
  • Time to first call response
  • Time to complete problem resolution
  • On-time delivery
  • Average time to problem resolution
  • Cost per call
  • Call length
  • The volume of calls handled
  • Number of customer complaints
  • The volume of calls handled
  • Customer ratings of service
  • Number of escalations and others

You can also view extended KPIs using easy to use CRM software like:

  • Average customer retention period
  • Average time to last follow-up (sales)
  • Customer attrition rate
  • Average customer lifetime value (by using a CLM CRM)
  • Post sales per unit sold
  • Average profit per customer
  • Survey ratings
  • Upsell revenues etc.

Therefore, while CRM software helps to keep track of all your touch points with the customers, KPIs are measurement benchmarks you can use to assure your product and service delivery remains consistent.

#5. Improve Sales Conversions

Finally, if you are looking to amplify your business, increasing revenue should always remain at the top of your list. When working with an easy to use CRM software, you can increase sales as more data on the client gets tracked and tasks that your employees would have to perform manually gets automated, providing sales reps more time to focus on what they do best- Sales.

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According to a report by Gartner 80% of all sales, occur after approximately 5 follow-ups. A QuickBooks CRM for sales teams , not only helps the sales reps by showing previous purchase and transaction histories of the prospects and customers, but it also makes sure to remind your sales team of all the necessary touches and therefore an easy to use CRM does not let any appointment fall through the crack.

5 Time-Saving Ways To Use Your Easy To Use CRM For So Much More Than Just Sales

Your easy to use CRM can do tasks greater than just monitoring and managing sales. For most, typically you would use your easy to use CRM tool to manage your sales activities. Nevertheless, you should not just think of your small and medium business CRM as a tool designed for daily monitoring of your prospects and leads. There are so many ways you can use your best small and medium business CRM software! Therefore, whether you are looking for competition tracking, accounting and bookkeeping, HR support, or even any task as uncomplicated as making a content calendar- a proper CRM system can carry out all these jobs for you and more.

Your easy to use CRM can do tasks greater than just monitoring and managing sales.

For most, typically you would use your easy to use CRM tool to manage your sales activities. Nevertheless, you should not just think of your small and medium business CRM as a tool designed for daily monitoring of your prospects and leads.

CRM applications can help increase sales by up to 29%, sales productivity by up to 34% and sales forecast accuracy by 42%.- Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

There are so many ways you can use your best small and medium business CRM software!

Therefore, whether you are looking for competition tracking, accounting and bookkeeping, HR support, or even any task as uncomplicated as making a content calendar- a proper CRM system can carry out all these jobs for you and more.

Here are 5 other ways to use your CRM system to help you automate time-taking manual works.

#1. Integrate Email Marketing Processes

Any monotonous email marketing task can be automated and enhanced with the help of CRM platform. You can use an easy to use CRM like ConvergeHub to gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Here is a snapshot of what you can do:

  • Fully sync your inbox to any major email provider
  • Send emails to your contacts directly from ConvergeHub, which will then be synced back to your inbox
  • Use customizable templates to save work time preparing recurring communications
  • Look at a specific deal or contact and see all emails associated with that deal or person at-a-glance

#2. Account Management

 

There are many who think that they can only track their primary preliminary sales in the CRM, but you can also use your small and medium business CRM software to up-sell or create stronger relationships with your customers over time.

Remember your job is not done once you make a sale or sign a deal. Churn is the enemy of sustainable growth in any organization. Therefore, you must use your CRM software to handle the customer’s complete buyer journey, to aid you in growing higher revenue per customer and keep up that ever-necessary average-lifetime-value of your purchasers over time.

#3. Accounting and Bookkeeping

By integrating QuickBooks Online with your best small and medium business CRM software you can use your CRM for allowing your employees to create new transactions (such as sales orders, estimates, invoices, and payments) in your CRM- without requiring direct access to an accounting software like QuickBooks.

QuickBooks CRM like ConvergeHub helps you to find a measurable increase in convenience, efficiency, and productivity, whereby users can view any customer payment status and history within the CRM platform.

Moreover, by creating QuickBooks CRM integration free with your CRM software you can get rid of dual data entry by linking payments, invoices, and estimates to opportunities, customer contacts, or projects.

#4. Deal and Commission Tracking

If you are using Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, which is customized for Alternative Funding industry, you can track deals from leads to underwriting, through collection. Support refinancing of existing funded deals and syndication of deals with individual investors and other funders.

Additionally, you can also administer commission payout to brokers and other funding companies. Easily compare scheduled amounts to settled amounts both within your organization and with external sources.

#5. Create and Store Files

Many CRM systems like ConvergeHub and others can create, organize, and store files for things like applications, contacts, briefs, and more.

Once these documentations are in your easy to use CRM, you can easily categorize and thereafter use them to suit your marketing, sales, and support processes. Storing files in the CRM help find any of the documents quickly without trawling through your computer or depending on your email service provider’s basic filing system.

Conclusion

This entire article is dedicated to helping you learn how you can make your easy to use CRM software your new virtual assistant since there are plenty of practical ideas to inspire you to use your customer relationship management software in more innovative ways.

Per say any business procedure that needs a well-thought-out series of actions, and steps can be managed and automated with ConvergeHub CRM.

Therefore, whatever be your business necessities, CRM is a tool that will be able to help you in making all areas of your business operations more proficient.

Just remember, your best small and medium business CRM software is not only for sales, but almost every department in your company can benefit from it.

However, the question is- are you making the most out of your best small business CRM?

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

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

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

“Our Customer is the King.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use technologies like cloud computing and automation

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

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

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

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

Maintain consistency

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

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

Establish a timeline

 

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

Treat your customers like humans and not just account numbers

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

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

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

Use an invoice like marketing collateral

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

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

Missing Important Goals with your QuickBooks CRM for sales teams? Here Are the Sales Objectives You Need to Track

Building the perfect sales team is always the first priority and the highest challenge for any organization. Since, tracking your leads, customers, and prospects using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, and measuring your sales metrics are close to redundant, if you do not have the right salespeople who are capable of using your sales process. The best sales managers in all organizations across the globe always understand the human inside the sales reps and trust in the spectrum of emotions involved in the day-to-day roles acted by their salespeople in the team.

Building the perfect sales team is always the first priority and the highest challenge for any organization. Since, tracking your leads, customers, and prospects using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, and measuring your sales metrics are close to redundant, if you do not have the right salespeople who are capable of using your sales process.

The best sales managers in all organizations across the globe always understand the human inside the sales reps and trust in the spectrum of emotions involved in the day-to-day roles acted by their salespeople in the team.

Integrating QuickBooks and CRM helps your business deliver a better customer experience. Click To Tweet

We all know, each stage of the sales process comes with its own distinct challenges and anxieties that sales managers must factor in while making decisions around the sales metrics, which you want to track.

Therefore, even after using the best QuickBooks CRM making sure that you pick the right people for your business, which is of utmost importance. For, it is the personality, ability, and determinations of your employees, which are the most crucial factors that will directly determine the growth and success of your business.

Once you have the right salespeople in place and you are using the best CRM software for QuickBooks, it is up to the management to create the right environment for the people to thrive with the flexibility, opportunity, and support to perform what they do best.

In other words, the clarity around your employee’s performance, your expectations, and motivation are the main parameters that will deliver the arena your team needs to make the most out of their professional skills.

Simplifying your sales tracking and structure

You can never get the optimal performance out of your salespeople even if you are using the best small business CRM software if you are too bogged down with useless tracking.

According to a user of our Merchant Cash Advance CRM, stripping things down and getting back to the basics will always help you to create a simple sales process that aids your sales team focus on their primary objectives. This simplicity in the sales process should also combine with a powerful corporate ethos that you must communicate constantly. Therefore, keep reminding yours sales team to focus primarily on selling and make them find the assurance in your words that it is your task as an employee or a manager to make sure that the rest is taken care of.

However, it does not mean that you should neglect and ignore the CRM data you receive from your QuickBooks CRM or Merchant Cash Advance CRM software.

What is really implies, is that you need to expend your efforts focusing on what can really make a difference for your sales team and thereafter filter all the most important and actionable insights from your CRM software that integrates with QuickBooks.

Rather you need to refine your tracking and focus on a few (or just one) key metrics from your CRM data, at each stage of your sales process.

This will help your salespeople using your small business CRM from clogging their work with reporting and other administrative tasks.

Focus on the “Indicator” rather than the result

Once you are a user of QuickBooks CRM or a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, you just cannot escape talking about KPIs, however, we too often ignore the real meaning of KPI- that it should not be viewed simply as a result.

KPIs are indicators of performances. Elements that should be taken into consideration to find a better understanding of how certain results are being achieved and how things can improve in the future to grow your business.

According to some of the veteran sales managers those who use our Merchant Cash Advance CRM, to them, they found that salespersons too often get obsessed with the result, rather than focusing on getting their process right.

Here is one of the most commonly used CRM metric in sales:

Wins

When we talk about wins, we specifically talk about closed deals against a monthly or quarterly quota.

Clearly wins in sales helps you to know how your team is performing in a broader sense, but nevertheless, this metric in your QuickBooks CRM or any other small business CRM software provides very little insights into the “Why”.

Wins are an outcome and not an indicator, for they can never tell what your sales reps can do differently or how you can optimize your sales process to achieve better results.

Therefore, knowing the number of wins is just a CRM data without any insights, since knowing the results does not help you drive more sales.

Sales metrics that you should focus on:

Therefore, these are certain sales metrics that you should be spending your time, which can measure what develops the action at each stage of the sales process, as opposed to simply focusing on the results.

  • The total quantity of deals in your sales funnel
  • The average size of the deal in your pipeline
  • Close ratio (Average percentage of the deals closed)
  • Sales velocity (Average time taken to close a deal)

Sales reporting of any small business CRM software provide a detailed look at every stage of your sales pipeline. As each of this reporting is generated automatically in the QuickBooks CRM, it becomes easy to visualize your sales process and pinpoint the areas, which requires immediate improvement.

Most best small business CRM like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM and MCA CRM software, allows visual display to view the above metrics that helps in simplifying the sales process, enabling you to proactively measure the performance of your sales team and make necessary changes as and when it is needed according to the nature of your business.

More specifically, you can evaluate the following sales metrics of your sales team:

  • Sales Pipeline Coverage
  • Opportunity Win Rate by individual sales reps
  • Historical Sales Cycle Velocity

What is Opportunity Win Rate?

Opportunity Win Rate details the percentage of the closed deals that were won.

Simply speaking, if you can increase this metric, you will be able to bring in more revenue for your business.

With this metric, you can:

  • Measure the impact of new business development initiatives
  • Look into sales strategies that you have implemented across customer segments
  • Compare the performance of different sales reps in your sales team

Most importantly, if you look at the different stages of your sales funnel and analyze where the opportunities are being lost for your sales reps individually, using a QuickBooks CRM software you can recommend training plans for them to improve their skills in certain areas, which include:

  • Rapport building
  • Improving product knowledge
  • Improving demo skills
  • Improving negotiation and closing skills

By deconstructing the sales funnel and having the CRM data in your hand, you can work with your sales reps on a personal level, to build their confidence and skills in their weakest areas of performance.

Remember to always think in this logical path:

  • Data
  • Analysis
  • Action

Working with your sales team using a QuickBooks CRM in this manner is more pertinent, pragmatic, and useful than merely tracking the number of dials, measuring talk times, or demos scheduled, and then asking your sales team to “do more”.

What is Sales Cycle Velocity?

Sales Cycle Velocity is the average time taken by your sales to win any deal. You can also measure the average time taken by your sales reps for individual stages in the sales process, which is termed as “duration in stage”.

Looking into the average historical sales cycle can help you to build a picture of the likelihood of closing your current deals and understand likely buyers and at-risk opportunities.

This metric can help your sales reps to understand which deals need their time and efforts.

Using this CRM data you can also create a weighted sales pipeline when forecasting (opportunities with higher likelihood are assigned more value), enabling you to forecast your sales results more accurately.

Simplify your metrics to help your team focus on selling

Now using the metrics of a QuickBooks CRM, since you are aware where your team is, you can evaluate each stage of the sales pipeline, forecast more accurately, and coach your sales reps individually in specific areas where they are weak.

Therefore, use your Merchant Cash Advance CRM or QuickBooks CRM to assign just one key metric to measure the performance at every stage of the sales process and start un-complicating your sales metrics so that your team focus on one primary thing that matters for any sales managers and representatives- Selling.

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