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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

Reasons you require CRM software to manage data and boost sales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therefore, what does all this ultimately means?

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

THE TIME TO GET ORGANIZED- IS NOW!

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

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

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

STEP #1- SIGN UP

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

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

STEP# 2- INPUT YOUR DATA INTO YOUR CRM SOFTWARE

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

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

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

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

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

STEP#3- OBSERVE YOUR BUSINESS GROW

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

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

Is your business stuck with mediocre or no growth?

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

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Here is what ConvergeHub can do for your businesses:

    • Acquire leads through structured marketing campaigns

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

    • Drive sales with efficient sales automation

    • Turn your customers into raving fans through efficient customer support

    • Grow revenue through single click Quotes and Invoices

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

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

    • Automate your workflow to increase team productivity

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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.

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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7 Factors To Evaluate Merchant Cash Advance CRM For Financial Services

If you are in financial business, before making a decision as to which Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to go with, you need to consider a few factors that include: 360-degree view of the customer, Intelligent cross-selling/marketing campaigns, Tracking buying behavior, Auto alerts and reminders, Collaboration capabilities, Size and scope of your business, Integration with other systems.

If you are in financial business, before making a decision as to which Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to go with, you need to consider a few factors that include:

  1. 360-degree view of the customer
  2. Intelligent cross-selling/marketing campaigns
  3. Tracking buying behavior
  4. Auto alerts and reminders
  5. Collaboration capabilities
  6. Size and scope of your business
  7. Integration with other systems
There is currently $80 to $120 billion dollars worth of unmet funding needs among SMB, and MCA companies are in the best position to meet this demand.- Oguz Konar Click To Tweet

360 Degree View of the Customer

One of the primary factors to look at while adopting a customer relationship management software for cash advance business is what type of information the Merchant Cash Advance software can collect and display for each of your customers and if it is easily available around the clock. Moreover, you also need to find if the CRM solution can display a holistic view of the customer to all the stakeholders in your company, which can assure quick response in crucial circumstances.
When working for a cash advance industry in the financial sector, businesses need to collect a large amount of information of their customers for compliance and for serving the customers better in the longer run. So apart from tracking basic information such as name, address, and phone numbers, in alternative funding industry, you need to track other vital information and analytics, if you want to provide better service to your customers. For example, in cash advance business, you have to keep track of conversations you had with your customers about specific investments, their risk appetite, and goals. Storing this information in your Merchant Cash Advance CRM software allows alternative funding businesses to readily refer to these data before offering any advice and therefore helps in cross selling its products to its customer base.

Intelligent Cross Selling/Marketing Campaigns

Most of the easy to use CRM software allows the users to send customized marketing messages to their customers on the information collected and analyzed by the CRM platform. For example, if you are promoting cash advance, you can also scan through customers who are interested in mutual funds and bonds or looking for other investment opportunities, based on the discussion you had with them in the past.
At this point, Merchant Cash Advance CRM software can send out customized emails to each of your customers in the CRM database with pertinent verbiage using customized templates prebuilt in the software.
You can also send monthly newsletter related to various investment scenario and other key financial trends to any specific mailing list, using a mail-blaster from within the CRM.

Tracking Buying Behavior

Another functionality that you may want to look for in your MCA CRM solution for finance businesses, is the ability of the Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to track customer decisions and activities. For example, like most cash advance firms if your company is also selling small business loans and investment products to your customers, you need to keep track of what products or which loan each customer prefers and purchases from your financing organization. By tracking this data, you can create a profile for each customer and ascertain what type of investment or loan he or she likes. This way, when you have a new product available in your portfolio, you can easily select the list of customers that may be interested to purchase your new offerings. Tracking the customer’s past purchase decisions will provide you with an idea of how much they might be willing to invest in the future and the most appropriate product that you can offer to them, which might pique their interest.

Auto Alerts and Reminders

When choosing a Merchant Cash Advance CRM for your alternative funding industry business, you also need to find an easy to use CRM software that generates reminders on the basis of configurable settings. Like any other business, one of the most vital factors of being successful in the financial service industry is to develop relationships with your customers. Most Merchant Cash Advance CRM software like ConvergeHub and others nowadays incorporates exiting social networking features to help view comments, profile information, and mutual friends. It reminds you of important dates in your customer’s lives such as his or her birthday, anniversaries, and other, which can go a long way in helping you to grow your relationships. By using automation functionalities in the CRM, you can even program the software to automate mailing services to send birthday cards and other greetings to your customers.

Apart from this, you may approach a customer about a particular product that you want to sell and the customer tells you to check back after a fortnight. If you are using CRM software, you can easily input this data into the CRM program and set a reminder for the appropriate data and time, whereby you can get an alert a few hours before the scheduled task. Therefore equipped with all up-to-date information you can now call on the prospect, which increases your chances of winning the sale.

Collaboration between All Stakeholders

Depending on the size of your cash advance business, you may need to be able to collaborate with multiple partners, departments, and customers. If your MCA CRM solution offers the ability to allow multiple users to input and access information, this will not only boost synergy in your business but even help to serve your customers in an effective and efficient manner.

Ideal Business Size

Your business size also plays an impact on the type of Merchant Cash Advance CRM software you should implement. While in large alternative funding company, where scalability, integration, and processes are more demanding and complex than small and medium-sized businesses you may require on-premise CRM.
However, for small and medium cash advance firms, cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub is more popular and effective as it considerably reduces cost and implementation time of the software.

Integration with Other Systems

Last but not the least, before choosing a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, you must find out whether it integrates with other programs that you are currently using to store important customer and product related information.

For example, if your MCA CRM allows you to integrate with Google Calendar, Gmail, MS Outlook, DocuSign, QuickBooks, Box, Zapier, and other third-party software seamlessly it will help you to integrate your billing, call management, e-signature solution, and others, for a complete customer data and smarter selling.

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Takeaway

Therefore, in a gist CRM software, not only has the potential to improve user experience by making the marketing and sales processes easier and effective, but CLM CRM also helps in Customer Lifecycle Management to keep your customers coming back for more.

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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Why Your SME Needs Small Business CRM Software or a Lead Management Platform

Lead management is a procedure of working with leads starting from the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline. It is a process to track, manage, and thereafter qualify the leads, with the ultimate goal of turning them into a sale. It all seems so very simple- right? But what happens if you have hundreds of leads pouring in every day? How can you nurture each of them individually? You cannot just do it manually, and so that is the exact reason you need a lead management platform like a small business CRM software to help your sales team stay organized and prioritize on hot leads by nurturing them towards a sale. However, before we discuss how this small business CRM platform works and can benefit your small business, let us talk over the basics of the lead management workflow.

Lead management is a procedure of working with leads starting from the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline. It is a process to track, manage, and thereafter qualifying the leads, with the ultimate goal of turning them into a sale.
It all seems so very simple- right?
But what happens if you have hundreds of leads pouring in every day?
How can you nurture each of them individually?
You cannot just do it manually, and so that is the exact reason why you need a lead management platform like a small business CRM software to help your sales team stay organized and prioritize on hot leads by nurturing them towards a sale.

Why Your SME Needs Small Business CRM Software or a Lead Management Platform Click To Tweet

However, before we discuss how this small business CRM platform works and can benefit your company, let us talk over the basics of the lead management workflow.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management consists of four key elements, which include:

  • Lead Generation
  • Lead Capturing
  • Lead Organization
  • Lead Nurturing

Each of these four components aids the procedure of converting a lead to a sale.

To understand more of this framework, let us dig deeper into each before we talk about small business CRM software.

Lead Generation

From a higher perspective, the lead generation process primarily gets started in the marketing department of any organization. The purpose of lead generation is to attract prospects who match your ideal customer persona or profile for your business.

Lead generation is further classified into inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Campaigns can include anything from blog posting, social media advertisements, e-book and whitepaper distribution, email campaigns, cold calling, referrals, and others.

Lead Capturing

When any prospect responds to the advertisements or a marketing campaign sent from your best small and medium business CRM software, the next step is to learn more about them.
This process is known a ‘lead capture”, and generally occurs on the internet using a web form.

Some of the most common lead capture strategies are to offer a free trial, e-books, or a registration to a webinar in exchange of personal information like a contact information, name, company information and others. As this information gets captured these individuals’ moves through the funnel from being a prospect to a lead.

Lead Organization

Once the lead’s information and data have been captured, the distribution process initiates. The lead distribution process sorts and categorizes the leads based on their potential to become a sale. Marketing and sales team members mostly use “lead scoring” technique to ascertain which leads should be passed on to sales, and which among them demands future nurturing.

Lead Nurturing

With the end goal of turning them into a sale, the process of lead nurturing depends on how the initial contact goes with the leads to determine whether it needs to be followed up before transferring the leads from the marketing department to sales.

Therefore, while lead management makes marketing and sales team more efficient, it is extremely hard to control or complete the process without the aid of a secondary organizational platform.

This is where lead management platform like best small and medium business CRM software comes into play.

What is Customer Relationship Management software?

A small business CRM or Customer Relationship Management software for small businesses helps SMEs to manage and streamline their lead management process.  This lead management software helps organizations to organize their prospects, leads and, sales and keep track of them as they move down through the funnel.

While different small business CRM software vendors have their own unique features built into the software, they all come with the same blueprint, which consists of certain basic functionalities that include:

Tracking Leads

The best small business CRM software is a platform that will allow you to tag where the leads are coming from when they are initially captured into the CRM database. Ideally, any good small business CRM software should allow you to demarcate the origin of the leads on a geographical level as well as how the leads found your brand or how they filtered on your website. For example, did the leads come from a trade show, or from e-book download web form etc.

By performing this documentation of registering the point of origin of the leads, companies can better assess how to use their marketing channels for getting more leads into their pipeline.

Assign and distribute leads

Another essential feature of all best small business CRM is the ability to assign leads to the members of the sales team. With the help of CRM software, you can easily monitor each sales rep’s track record as well as their current lead to sale conversion rates providing a better picture as to how you can improve the performance of your sales team.

Status tracking

Once the marketing team passes on the matured and qualified leads to the sales team, CRM software helps to track the leads as they move through the sales pipeline. Most best small business CRM software allows the sales reps and the management to view the status of where the different leads are in the sales process, as well as when and how long they are taking to turn into a sale.
Most small business CRM software provides the user with the ability to view and track the complete lifeline of any lead- from the start to the end.

Therefore, if you see that your leads are starting to drop off, you can set the software to put in certain lead nurturing method to keep the leads alive before they culminate in a sale.

Conclusion

Hence, to conclude, lead management is a powerful tool that helps you to track and guide your prospective leads through the marketing and sales funnel into a sale.

Therefore, investing in lead management platform such as a best CRM for small business is an ideal decision that helps to improve your lead management results and make your marketing and sales team members much more efficient at their job.

You can even start by trying out ConvergeHub’s free 14-day trial since you never know what you are missing unless you give it a try.

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How Data In Small Business CRM Can Improve Your Sales Pipeline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Lead Nurturing

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

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

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

  1. Accurate Sales Forecasting

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

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

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

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

  1. Smarter Working with CRM Integrations

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

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

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

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

The long and short of it?

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

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