Vital Lead Management Tips for Effortlessly Growing Your MCA Business

Keeping a track of what is happening inside the sales pipeline of your MCA CRM software is extremely necessary for the growth of your Merchant Cash Advance business.

This is because the sales pipeline of your Merchant Cash Advance CRM furnishes an insight into how and where your sales strategies are performing, and if any improvement is required to increase your sales.

Unfortunately, fence-sitting prospects and leads can get misplaced in the shuffle or unconditionally becoming inactive.

Hence, what can you do if you find the leads in your CRM database are dropping out or getting stuck for a myriad of reasons?

Here are some of the most tried tips on lead management strategies which can help you to make your MCA CRM sales pipeline going forward once again.

However, firstly for this, you need to comprehend what are the reasons that are causing your leads to get stuck in your sales pipeline?

Therefore, before you take any actions, the foremost thing that you need to do is to comprehend why leads are getting caught in the first place. Since, when you do a bit of pondering, you will most likely be able to link all your inactive leads to a few unambiguous causes for which they got halted in their progress, which include:

1. Not find the proper person

If you are not aware of the right or proper contact information and you are unaware of the right decision-maker(s) in the company, you will hardly be able to make any sales.
In addition, a prospective customer may enter an email that the person may not use often when they filled out a web-form on your website.

Both these issues ultimately may lead to not letting your messages reach the right people who need to see them.

Hence, measure your email’s bounce rate with the help of an MCA CRM software , and if they are considered high, find a solution to your problem, as this can be an indicator that you are not selling to the right person- or rather to say, not selling at all.

2. There is a problem with your alternative lending service

Another pertinent reason why a lead might get jammed is that your prospects are having issues using your services, or they assume that your services are too expensive when compared to other MCA businesses in town. Nevertheless, whatever the case may be, it is vital that you must find and fix the problems that are within your control.

Although it is true that you just cannot please every prospect, however, making the right change can have a rocking impact on your bottom line.

For example, if it appears to you that a greater number of your visitors are abandoning the account creation process on your website, do take up necessary steps to decrease friction in those steps in your account creation workflow.

3. Your buyer is not ready yet

It can always be that your prospects are not sure that they want to make a change and accept your service. It is a known fact that most of the visitors on your website will not be ready to buy your service the minute they enter your sales pipeline, and therefore, not doing so can leave some of your prospects fence-sit without the confidence to make a purchase.

If you find this to be an issue, increase the chances of making the leads move through your Merchant Cash Advance CRM pipeline by being proactively helpful towards your prospects.

Lead Management Tips To Get Prospects Moving

Now, once you are aware of what is getting your prospects stuck; you are faced with another new challenge.

So, how do you overcome these seemingly impossible bottlenecks and make your leads advance through your MCA CRM’s pipeline?

A piece of good news is that once you adopt the right lead management strategies and thereafter jump into action, you can easily get all your inactive leads gradually moving ahead once more.

Here are a few time-tested tips that we recommend for moving your leads through the pipeline:

1. Revamp your communication strategies

Are you aware of your communication strategies with your prospects in the different stages of your sales pipeline?

Now, just sending an email blast to every prospect in your CRM database once or twice every month is not going to cut the knot, if you want to steadily encourage every leads to move towards a prospect.

Primarily, recognize your sales process and imagine what is needed for qualifying and pushing your leads at every stage of your sales pipeline.
Next, use lead scoring tactics to segment your leads into different lists.

Hence, for this find a lead scoring strategy that addresses your lead’s concerns, curiosities, and pain points. 
According to an article published by MailChimp, lead segmentation plays a major role in the success of any email marketing campaign, since according to MailChimp, it has been found that email campaigns with segmented leads using a Merchant Cash Advance software , in alternative lending businesses gets 100 percent more clicks when compared to the non-segmented ones.

2. Know your leads better

Do you know if your prospective leads are casually considering your service or they are in urgent need of your solution?

Once leads get jammed in the sales pipeline, it can always mean that your leads do not require your services yet.

Maybe, they are doubtful if your answer to their pain points is a good solution for their needs. Hence, knowing the reservations inside the minds of your leads will allow you to nurture your leads properly.

Understanding the position of your leads are in their buyer's journey helps in marketing to them more efficiently.

You can always find out what your prospective leads are thinking by asking them to reply to your emails or by sending them out a survey using an easy to use MCA CRM platform.

If needed, you can even consider setting up a ‘Feedback Form’ for all your new leads so that you can without any qualms, collect all the information about your leads and their respective businesses and accumulate the data in your CRM database.

3. Lookout for stalled stages

Find out if most of your leads that are inactive or non-responding are getting stuck in one particular stage of your sales pipeline. If it is so, reevaluate the stages of your sales process. However, to understand how to fix these stages, you need to find an answer to these two most pertinent questions:

-What is happening?
-What should be happening?

Hence, find an answer to what are the specific goals for every stage in your sales process and next, try to evaluate how close your prospects and you are coming close to meet up these goals. Finally, try finding out what actions you can take to make it easier for your immobile leads to move seamlessly to the next step or fetch a decision to accomplish the deal.

4. Offer help

Now, if you are sure that a specific prospective lead is encountering issues in deciding or they are getting better signals from other alternative funding companies, ponder what can you do to offer them help?
Or rather to say, what can you really do to make your prospective leads generate enhanced trust in your business?

Well, to redress this issue you can offer free trials, eBooks, consultation, coupon codes, and other similar ‘at no cost’ resources. However, you should always make these offers are available to the right prospects and at the right time.

Again, the solution for finding this opportune moment is ensuring that your contact list is properly segmented. Per say, you just would not want to email a guidebook of ‘How Merchant Cash Advance Business Works And Its Benefits Over Conventional Bank Loans’ to a lead who is already in a decision making stage of the buyer’s journey.

5. Create urgency

In case your prospective leads are not finding a necessary urgency to avail your service, put an expiration date or offer a time-bound discount.

According to a study done by Experian, adding urgency to your email marketing campaign efforts can increase open rates of your emails by 14%, the CTR a.k.a click-through-rate by 59%, and double the number of completed deals.

To do these provide at the very onset the time limit and the offer in the subject line of your emails.

However, always make sure that your claims for urgency is based on things that are truthful and real, and is not a trial offer which is supposed to remain for a week but remains beyond that time, which is one of the quickest ways for losing credibility.

6. Ask questions

Start listening, if you cannot get a lead to close the deal. Ask your leads questions so that you can apprehend their hesitations. Since, if you ask your prospective lead any question that can get them engaged, you always have a fair chance that they will certainly reply, and you also can easily evaluate from their answers and replies what are the reasons that are holding them back.

If you are using a survey or sending a short email with questions to do this work, always send something that your prospects can answer effortlessly within a few minutes.

Bottom line

Therefore, you see, solving issues and pain points of your prospective leads are not as complicated as it apparently seems. 

This is because the key to finding you leads gliding ahead effortlessly through your MCA CRM sales pipeline lies in simply understanding and apprehending what is holding them back. Hence, make sure that the sales process in your Merchant Cash Advance software is set up to support your leads, and prospects and not just you as the owner of the software.

So are you prepared now to take the driving seat and control your Merchant Cash Advance CRM software’s sales pipeline now!

Learn more about how ConvergeHub’s enterprise-ready sales pipeline management and marketing automation features that can aid you and your team to get the right message to your prospects and leads at the right time.

Therefore to begin and kick-off, why not start a 14-days free trial of ConvergeHub- the award-winning MCA CRM software since you can never know the full capability of any CRM unless you use it. 

How In MCA Business You Can Fill Your Sales Pipeline Much Like A Pro

Sales prospecting is the number one challenge faced by business development teams, vetting on their ability to keep the sales funnel filled up on a consistent basis in Alternative Financing businesses. 

Small and medium Merchant Cash Advance businesses cannot be a victim to slow times, owing to seasonal occurrences or lack of events to capture leads.

Although theoretically, it is necessary to keep the sales pipeline filled with prospects, there is also truth in the statement that this is something that cannot be attained overnight. 

It takes immeasurable patience, dedication, practice, and hard work- but beyond all it requires consistent lead harvesting for keeping your sales funnel full. 

Therefore, it is needed that you must establish a set of processes that can be automated within a Merchant Cash Advance CRM , to lay down a foundation on how you should manage the sales cycle for unswerving growth of your company.

Here are 4 golden tips on how you can fill and manage your MCA CRM software’s sales pipeline like a Pro:

1. Use All Possible Modes Of Communication

Develop a timeline of touches that include phone, email, and also in-person contacts. Next, roll out that timeline as a set of tasks in your MCA CRM system with requisite time in-between each touch. This way you will be able to create a calendar of events for each of your prospects without forgetting the quite leads. Reminding your prospects who you are often can keep a cold lead warm, which may have been on a greater priority earlier in the year.

Apart from this, you should also remember that everyone learns through different means. There are leads and prospects those who like to hear (on phone), while there are others who prefer to see (on emails), and there is a growing population those who demand a more interactive learning experience (on video tutorials or demo). Therefore, adapt to your prospect's needs while using your Merchant Cash Advance software, and do not only stick to your preferred channels for communication.

2. Proactively Ask For Referrals

Let us now discuss referrals which can be used as a highly effective means that can boost your Cash Advance businesses’ sales pipeline. Alternative financing businesses must not wait for the referrals to come to them. Rather they should be proactive and ask happy customers for referrals to increase the sales.  

Now, once any of your customers send you a referral never forget to thank your connection for lending their help, and remember to keep them in the loop on the engagements so that your connection is capable of comprehending the significance of their actions. 

Therefore, send business cards to your customers reminding them after every few months about your MCA brand’s referral programs, and then if any conversion happens to ensure that you send them a token of appreciation (like a gift card) to keep the connections send more referrals to your alternative financing company. 

However, the most important thing is to remain sure that you must track all your lead sources in your Merchant Cash Advance CRM software so that you can find your reference back to the original referrer, whose efforts you mostly need to appreciate for vouching on your financing services.

3. People Do Not Like To Say No

As we spoke before, converting a prospect into a new customer takes efforts, time and patience, and so, most of the outcomes of your attempts for conversions are not usually seen on your first communication with a sales prospect. 

It has been found in several types of research on sales processes that lead, prospects and customers do not prefer to say no. So keep contacting the prospects in your MCA CRM pipeline until they negate your offering. This is because; you may never know your prospect’s present need for finding finance, budget, and timeline that change along with time.  

Too often sales reps deem leads as dead, just because they did not hear back on a proposal. 

However, what happens if a lead did not remember you and therefore contacted your competition? 

Hence, setting up a business growth technology once your buy CRM helps to remind you to contact all your fence-sitting prospects every month, just to make sure that you remain in their mind until the prospects tell you to go away. 

4. Do Not Try To Avoid The Gatekeeper

Decision-makers in any organization are always inundated with sales calls, therefore, the office managers and receptionists are most often tasked with keeping such solicitors at a bay. Mostly, these gatekeepers screen the sales reps so that their manager’s times are not disrupted by unsolicited sales calls. 

Hence, rather than trying to bypass or treating these gatekeepers as a barrier, befriend and educate them why their organization needs your alternative financing solutions. Performing this simple exercise might help you in reaching your prospects faster and closing your deals.

Takeaway

Filling your sales pipeline like a Pro does not have to be difficult or expensive; however, it needs consistency and a cutting-edge business growth technology and tools as the backbone to ensure nothing falls through the crack. 

There are many MCA CRM software solutions that will easily integrate with your Merchant Cash Advance software platforms and enable your sales team to do more.

If you found this article helpful, contact ConvergeHub for a live demo today. 

General Myths and Benefits of Leveraging QuickBooks CRM Software for SMB

Almost every time we implement a Customer Relationship Management system, our customers frequently ask: “Hey, is it possible to integrate our CRM platform with our Accounting system?” The answer is mostly “Yes”. But at what price?

Today’s cloud based CRM software, like ConvergeHub and others, enables integration with bookkeeping and accounting applications like QuickBooks.
There is no question about the truth in the fact that integrating your easy to use CRM application with an accounting platform by purchasing a CRM that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free is much convenient than it ever was.

However, QuickBooks CRM integration is not always a piece of cake. In fact, there are certain myths about integrating these systems to develop the best CRM software for QuickBooks, which you should know that include:

1. QuickBooks CRM integration is costly

This is not true, as long as it is already built. ConvergeHub QuickBooks integration (both for Desktop and Online versions) allows customers with paid subscriptions to see their records from QuickBooks and transfer data between the two systems. Even other good CRM systems already have their integrations already built with bookkeeping and accounting systems. Therefore, when this is the scenario, configuring these QuickBooks CRM integrations is reasonably simple and inexpensive. However, if the pre-built integration is unavailable then the integration options do become costly. 

2. Integration with an accounting system is easy

Like the example, we provided above, if something is pre-built, then yes integrating small business CRM software with an accounting system is easy. However, if you are using a bookkeeping and accounting software that is less popular in the market or it does not already have pre-built integration, then it is not easy at all. 

In such a case, you need a programmer or use an import/export tool to get the integration work seamlessly. Moreover, even once the integration is done, going forward, you need to be supported since the software; database and the environment will change. Therefore, purchasing the best CRM for QuickBooks online like ConvergeHub and others is a better option, than trying to integrate an unknown and rarely used accounting platform with your CRM for small and medium business.

3. You cannot integrate if you are not a programmer

This is also false. For example, if you want to integrate ConvergeHub with your non-QuickBooks online accounting system, there are even intelligent tools to help you do this. Like Zapier and PieSync, these ConvergeHub partners will help you to move data to/from ConvergeHub to other bookkeeping applications like FreshBooks, Xero, and QuickBooks. Apart from this Zapier and PieSync also aids you to create workflows to schedule reminders or send emails. 

This must be noted over here that good and easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, which is also known to be the best CRM software for QuickBooks has data-integration tools that even non-programmers can work with. 

4. Having the API solves your integration challenges

It is good, but having an API will not clear all your roadblocks. Application Programming Interfaces or APIs are wonderful tools for programmers, but you must know that is not a source code. Rather it is just another tool. Therefore, you may face challenges with what you can integrate once your requirements are complex. Therefore, always make sure that you do it with due diligence. Apart from it, if you are going to need an API that implies you will require a programmer to work with it. You need a developer familiar with API, having good communication skills, and needless to say, affordable to work on your project.  

Judging from our experience of working with developers, this is also not an easy task to do. However, a first-rated programmer and an excellent API can really perform wonders.

Now here are a few benefits of using QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub, which offers QuickBooks CRM integration free and is considered the best CRM software for QuickBooks:

1. Better Lead Management

Most businesses send a lot of estimates and other information to a significant number of leads and prospects, who do not purchase right away. Therefore, they need multiple follow-ups through emails, phone calls, demos, office visits, and others, until they are ready for the purchase. 

This type of lead management involving multiple touch-points is ideally performed through a QuickBooks CRM, which can help in creating better customer relationships apart from handling bookkeeping works in the organization. 

2. Cleaner QuickBooks

If you try to manage, every lead or prospect whom you have sent estimates in QuickBooks, it creates a lot of clutter and junk data in the accounting software. Therefore, handling your leads with a QuickBooks CRM helps to keep your leads in the lead management CRM tool and thereby keeps your accounting system clean, which makes your bookkeeping more accurate.

3. No Double Data Entry

Finally, as a prospect moves along its journey from being a lead to a paying customer, a multitude of information gets overlaps between sales, order fulfillment, accounting, and customer service teams. If all these different teams use diverse systems to manage their work, they have to enter the same data in different systems multiple times, which results in double data entry. 

As double data entry is a waste of time and effort, which even causes the system to have incorrect data for human errors. Hence using a business growth technology like ConvergeHub, which offers QuickBooks CRM integration free is essential so that your data does not get uncoordinated and your different teams do not end up working on different sets of data.  

Apart from this QuickBooks CRM for sales teams helps in automating sales process, which increases your sales efficiency, empower customer support and marketing automation once you buy CRM with high-level data security, so that you do not have to give access to employees who are not familiar with accounting software, but can still view invoices, estimates and purchase history of the customers.

The 101 Easy Lead Prospecting Guidelines for Beginners

Building your business can often be the toughest encounter you might face while running your own firm. Since, while doing business not only you need to handle your present customer base, but on top of that, you also need time to contact new customers and get them on board.

Now if you know what is CRM and it has been a while since you started a lead prospecting campaign but did not get the results that you would have otherwise expected, then it is high time that you must think of reassessing the way you go about finding prospects. Buy CRM that offers all the tools that you need to manage all your prospective efforts.

Hence in this article find out how some of the best companies acquire new leads using easy to use CRM platforms, which is mostly in the modern times an intuitive cloud-based business growth technology and tool, and also a lead management platform that can use automation to build your company’s sales cadence and thereby help to manage prospecting effortlessly.

Here is the list:

1. Find your ideal client by using 360-degree prospecting

When you start looking for customers, the primary thing that we all do is to create a more rigorous system to locate our ideal client.

Ideal customers are those who are interested in your products and services that you offer, are easy to work with and can be repeat customers. Apart from this, ideal customers in your CRM database can even be people who have a strong desire to provide you with referrals for your business.

The question here is where can you find these ‘ideal’ customers?

For this, the best thing that you can perform is to research every one of your currents customers thoroughly and design your ideal customer who has all the combination of each trait that all of your best customers share.

To create a 360-degree view, easy to use CRM pulls information from your own notes, web activities, and social media of each of your contacts in the CRM database.
This allows you to prospect more effectively and utilize your time more prudently, targeting just the audience that you know, will turn into real prospective leads.

2. Take Notes and Export Your Prospecting Knowledge to the Cloud

A big part of how you should use your easy to use CRM lies in taking notes on the leads that you generate for your business.

As a business person since you are dealing with a plethora of customers on a daily basis, you need to take notes seamlessly, which will allow you to efficiently track each prospect more closely, and provide you the knowledge that you require to make each contact with them meaningful and useful for your business.

Be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms that are mostly used by small businesses and startups, and are mostly popular lead management software solutions, effortlessly organizes these notes and other collateral documentations, so that you can find them at your fingertips, when you need to speak to your prospects, vendors, clients or anyone else who you can relate to your business.

3. Follow Up On Time, Every Time

Missing meeting or contacts are a threat for lead prospecting professionals. It depletes your money and time. Moreover, if you are not fixing your follow-up problems using sales cadence strategies, all your prospecting will dry up in the long run. Easy to use CRM solutions make this following up with your customers and prospects easier. Integrating the CRM system with your calendar software, to keep you informed of the meeting that you have, helps in tracking your point of contact with prospects more closely so that you can secure more deals.

Once you buy CRM, you can also set up an automation that sends notifications and flags contacts as per your businesses’ sales cadence for necessary actions.

4. Spend You Hours On The Right Prospects

Lead prospecting does not mean that you need to reach out to every would-be customer that could possibly want to create a relationship with your company. Not all deals are equal. So while some deals may fetch higher revenue, there are others which will easily close and some will develop as great leads in a couple of years, but are not so right now.

One easy way to work with this issue is by allowing the CRM to score each lead that you have generated, segment your lead pool, which will track only those leads you should be spending your time on.

Doing this exercise, will not only shorten your sales cycle, but it will also help in working with the right leads, and not just the ones that are right in front of you.

5. Track Your Prospect Using Numbers, Not Hunches

Peter Druker the famous educator, management consultant, and author once said, “What gets measured gets managed”. However, not many organizations adhere to these famous words. There are many salespersons who approach their lead prospecting from the goal of doing more each time they meet, but unfortunately, they do not have the numbers to track the metrics of these visits.

This is where again CRM comes into play as this business growth technology provides you with meaningful reporting and analytics that allow its users to create more structure around your goal settings, which if you are running a business with a sales team helps you to manage underperformance and reward the performers in your organization.

Endnote

To conclude, prospecting is not what is difficult in running a business, but for many of us, it can be hard if we are not using the right lead management tools.

Hence to conclude we would advise you to buy CRM that can help you to track your lead generation activities easily and with functions like lead segmentation and advanced reporting tools, CRM technology can make it easier for you to have all the necessary information in front of you when you want to reach out for the leads that you have not connected for a while.

Tip on Quick Adoption of Easy To Use CRM Software for Startups and Small Businesses

We are all aware that CRM is good for business. In fact, the truth is, while CRM increases sales by 29%, according to Nucleus Research the average ROI (Return on Investment) of any CRM is $8.71, for every $1.00 spent on this software platform.  

Therefore, as cost-cutting measures are the need of the day, for to survive nowadays businesses and brands have no other options but to do better than their competitors without amplifying their budgets, which has made easy to use CRM more important than ever nowadays.

To improve productivity and fine-tune business processes several small businesses and enterprises have accepted the gaining widespread popularity of business growth technology and tools like CRM for retaining and finding new customers, as cloud-based CRM software applications are pretty simple to use. 

Now, having said that, there is one important fact that we cannot choose to overlook- that not all implementations of CRM solutions, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions are successful.

The main reason behind lagging implementation of even easy to use CRM solutions is poor user adoption rate. 

Employee resistance, insufficiency in funds and time, lack of preparation and planning are certainly other reasons that escalate the poor adoption rate of CRM platforms for businesses. 

Moreover, as many CRM vendors have done a good job of touting the simplicity of their applications, many customers have taken the user-friendliness of CRM implementation of their Customer Relationship Management platform for granted.  

But, just because something looks apparently simple and easy you must not take it for granted. Since, if you do not learn to implement and neglect the best practices, it will almost inevitably lead to a failure in reaping the maximum benefits not only from your CRM but even from any other business growth technology and tools.

For example, although brushing your teeth is relatively simple, but if you neglect to brush or do it altogether in the wrong way, this can lead to several maladies and even tooth loss.

Similarly, once you buy CRM using the software inefficiently or not using it consistently can cause detrimental consequences for your business.

Ineffective use of any CRM may not only lead to failure in follow-up on scheduled tasks and appointments, but it can also mismanage customer relationships, fail to capture important customer data and insights and in severe cases end up with the loss of potential customers in your business.  

Here are some of the crucial low adoption rate statistics on easy to use CRM software platforms:

• According to CSO Insights, 43% of CRM customers use even lesser than half the features they have in their CRM.

• According to Really Simple Systems, 4 out of 5 senior executives say that their biggest challenge was getting their staffs to use the CRM consistently. 

Hence, before you buy CRM, remember employees of your business organization may always have different preconceived notions and perspectives about the CRM system. Whereby, while some may love it, others may hate using it too. 

Therefore, before most of your employees get reluctant towards CRM as one of the most popular business growth technology, it is best to make them understand the benefits of this software and show them how it will make their work a lot easier every day.

Here are 7 awesome golden tips to make your CRM implementation a success story once you buy CRM for your business growth .

1. Give Value To Business Needs And Requirements

To make your easy to use CRM implementation worthwhile for your business, you must not only possess a good understanding of your businesses’ workflows but also understand how your brand interacts to satisfy your potential customer’s needs. 

CRM is more than a mere software solution. Rather Customer Relationship Management is a process of dealing with your customers through intelligent communications that call for a holistic approach. 

In other words, CRM technology consists of people, processes, and technology that combine to manage business relationships with your customers. 

2. Involve Employees From The Beginning

Your employees are the ones who are going to use your CRM, and so they play the most significant role in the successful implementation of your CRM platform. Hence, it is always wise to involve your employees from the very first stage of your CRM implementation process. 

Exhibit to them how the new system is going to diminish their workload and make them understand how easy to use CRM is going to take their work on the upbeat. 

As an additional gesture for early adoption of your easy to use CRM, encourage your employees to provide their opinion and feedback on the system. This will not only help in trimming down uncertainties of the software but also help you to acquire necessary support for proper utilization of your CRM system.

3. Hire a CRM Project Manager 

It is always a good idea to get a CRM project manager on board in your company, who will act as a technical ambassador and a problem-solver of your employees with respect to your easy to use CRM system. As your CRM project manager is the one who will be responsible for overall implementation and management of your easy to use CRM platform, the person must possess good communication and IT skills. 

It is the project manager whose steps your employees must follow, as he/she will drive the project and even help measure the achievement levels of your best small business CRM solution related goals. 

4. Remain Patient And Move One Step At A Time

Once you buy the software, do not attempt to achieve too many tasks with your CRM at once or implement the customer relationship solution in a haphazard manner. As it is very natural, like many other buyers of CRM you may always find yourself being carried away and find it absolutely exciting to implement the new system which is capable of streamlining all your business processes but don’t forget all complex projects needs to be broken down into manageable and measurable phases with achievable goals. Hence, for successful implementation of your CRM, go slow with the platform and implement this business growth technology without hurrying, one-step at a time. 

5. Train Your Employees

As every employee in any organization has a different capacity to understand and accept changes, it is always advisable that you must arrange training sessions for all your employees. Also, make sure during the course of the training you must train each department, like marketing, sales, accounts and customer support reps, on their specialized needs. Appropriate training on the CRM’s functionalities often brings forth positive momentum of enthusiasm among the employees, for implementation of the easy to use CRM platform. 

6. Set Guidelines For Your Employees

It is really important that you must lay down guidelines in consultation with your easy to use CRM project manager, on what kind of data (as per your company’s goals), your employees should input in the CRM. Since, for proper utilization of your customer relationship management software, it is utterly necessary that you must manage all tasks and activities with proper reporting structure as a part of your guidelines.  

7. Make The CRM Available Anywhere

Last but not the least, in case your sales team also includes sales reps working in the field, you must buy CRM, which has a mobile application in addition to the web-based version of the platform. 

The user experience should also be taken into consideration while implementing mobile CRM app. As desktop and mobile environments of any app need to be different, the mobile version of your easy to use CRM platform should be intuitive and fast. It should also be data contextual, minimizing keystrokes and automating information as much as possible, to streamline workflow.

It is only when your sales team, see that the easy to use CRM helps them to sell, and there are little or no difficulties involved in using the platform, it will escalate the adoption rate of your customer relationship software.

Takeaway

Remember, like any other business growth technology and tools easy to use CRM adoption is a journey and not a destination. Hence by remembering the tips and guidelines given above, it will be easy for you to triumph over the initial hurdles to CRM adoption and make certain that your business reaps the best benefits offered by CRM for rapid business growth.

3 Preliminary Reasons to Buy CRM for Boosting Sales and Revenue

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is time-tested software, which is not just the application of technology but is also a strategy to learn more about your customer’s needs and behavior in order the build a stronger relationship. 

However, as it is true that getting an easy to use CRM for your SMB too early is a wrong thing, similarly you can inflict a negative impact on your business if you buy CRM and its implementation gets too long.

Even CRM guru Paul Greenberg the writer of the bestselling book “CRM at the Speed of Light” admits that it can be an accepted fact, like many others, your business may not be ready for CRM, for if that is the case, you will be wasting your money and efforts if you adopt easy to use CRM for your business growth. 

So, is your business ready for this business growth technology and tools?

To find an answer to this critical question, here are 3 indicators that can guide you to understand whether you should buy an easy to use CRM for your business right now or your company needs to grow further till you adopt this business growth technology for earning even better revenue. 

1. Are You Loosing New Sales?

Selling would have been a lot easier if none of the companies would have lost in their selling process. However, if you are losing sales because your lead and customer information got misplaced, or you failed to follow-up because your CRM database is disorganized, or your sales team is spending more time updating and managing their Excel spreadsheets than selling, then it is high time you should move towards implementing an easy to use CRM for your company. 

At the most basic level CRM is a tool where you can store all leads and customer information in the CRM database that allows the user to collect, store and use the data for alerts and future sales and customer service activities. 

CRM also allows rapid access to all collateral materials as and when they are needed, understand where sales may be going wrong and find an immediate solution to the problem. 

So the answer to what is CRM, can be summarized that CRM software is a technology that helps in performing actions that are hard to do with a pure manual, spreadsheet-based approach.

2. Are You Loosing Existing Customers?

Apart from gaining new customers, CRM is even more valuable when it comes to retaining existing customers. Hence, if you are losing existing customers because of failure to follow-up, it is the time that you must introduce ‘Sales Force Automation’ or SFA with the help of easy to use CRM, into sales and customer service operations in your company.

3. Is Your Customer Data Too Large?

The longer you retain your customers, the more you know them. However, it is impossible to carry all the details of your customers, such as their payment terms, buying patterns, things they respond to and even their personal information and others, in your head.

Therefore, when your organization needs to remember the large volume of data about your leads, prospects and existing customers, it is the time that you need a CRM database to keep your entire information safe in one central repository. 

Endnote

Although implementing CRM can be challenging, but if you are losing sales for any of these above scenarios, it is the time you must understand what is CRM , and adopt this most popular business growth technology for optimizing your organization’s sales and customer support efficiently. 

How Will Blockchain Transform Customer Retention And CRM For Business Growth

Blockchain is going to overwhelmingly change the world that we see today.

Well, this might be a profoundly bold claim- but it is one that we feel is justified.

This is because; even though so far Blockchain as a business growth technology has been the domain of Fintech industry but as of date this has started to change. 

It has been observed that some of the greatest opportunities of Blockchain are within ‘Marketing’. Since this latest business growth technology can be used to develop customer-centric relationships and propositions that might motivate and empower consumers while also delivering stellar efficiency and responsiveness for rapid revenue growth. 

However, unfortunately even today most marketers are not yet conversant with Blockchain and its opportunities.

Therefore, in this post, we have revealed exactly what this Blockchain technology is all about and how we assume Blockchain will fundamentally change our approach towards customer retention and the use of easy to use CRM platform be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions for boosting customer experience with brands all across the globe. 

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is defined as a database that takes into account a number of records and places them in a block (more like assembling them in a proper sequence on a single sheet of paper). Each block is thereafter “chained” to the next block, by using a cryptographic signature, which enables the chain of blocks to be used as a ledger that can be corroborated and shared by anyone with the appropriate permissions to access it.

Blockchain according to HBR (Harvard Business Review) published in May 2016 states that:

"The technology most likely to change the next decade of business is not the social web, big data, the cloud, robotics, or even artificial intelligence. It’s the Blockchain."

So Blockchain in layman’s terms is a business growth technology that aids in:

•  Distributing digital assets (music, money, loyalty points) across global ledgers

•  Post transactions across billions of computers across the globe

•  Create a block every 10 min. and link it to a time-stamped chain of blocks

•  Self-execute agreements among smart contacts between businesses and individuals that use the Blockchain

Blockchain(s) can be permission-less (open to all) or permissioned (closed access).

Now for every business according to its industry, the implications of using Blockchain are quite profound:

•  Blockchain is a disruptive technology as it gets rid of intermediaries and the costs involved with them (like consumers can transfer money directly without the need of banks)

•  Blockchain will allow consumers to monetize and own their data

•  Blockchain will help to make peer-to-peer (P2P) dealings become the norm

•  Blockchain technology is extremely secured and un-hackable owing to the distributed nature of Blockchain that will aid in protecting privacy

Why should marketers take Blockchain technology seriously?

Blockchain is no longer a theme that is being hyped by the industry neither an emerging idea, it is a reality.

According to research done by Deloitte, it showed that:

•  Venture capitalists have invested billions of dollar in more than 120 Blockchain-related startups.

•  Thirty world’s largest banks have joined a consortium to build Blockchain solutions.

•  Microsoft has already launched a cloud-based Blockchain service.

•  Nasdaq is designing a Blockchain-powered private market exchange

•  Blockchain prototypes, concepts, are emerging in every major industry

Therefore, it is evident that Blockchain, in reality, will create disruptive and viable opportunities for marketers to create and deliver customer relationship due to its peer-to-peer nature which will deliver genuine engagements that are customer-centric for businesses that are ready and interested to invest in long-term customer experience and loyalty.   

How will customer retention and CRM get disrupted by Blockchain?

Here is a wonderful illustration (inspired by Deloitte) of what Blockchain-enabled CX (Customer Experience) could look like:

Therefore we think that the following use cases subsist in customer retention and easy to use CRM space:

• Use of loyalty points as global payment economy

• Exchange of loyalty points among peer-to-peers in the marketplace

• Irrefutable customer database, where service issues and questions from the customers can be rapidly identified without any ambiguity

• Multiple customer programs can be managed from a single wallet

• A coalition of brands will offer the customers a more complete experience

The Implications

Now with such awesome opportunities also come profound implications that will decide which brands will be able to lead and will be able to distinguish their customer propositions by use of Blockchain.

Therefore one you buy CRM built with Blockchain capabilities it is likely to:

• Boost redemption of rewards, incentives, and promotions, which will be seen as a positive endeavor to brands that will recognize this technology for engaging customers. 

• Interactions and experiences will be increasingly controlled by modern customers and not by brands or businesses. 

• There will be little need for intermediaries who might add costs and dictate processes. 

• Brands will be able to get genuinely engaged for building long-term loyalties (not just promise great rewards that are never fulfilled by the companies).

• There will be less obscurity in terms and conditions which imply more transparency and accountability between consumers and businesses.

• For the first time businesses will be able to find a real-time view of the behaviors of their customers by offering traceable customer rewards. 

• Customer experience will be more responsive and much faster with increased demands on automated contact strategies and new business rules. 

Why Blockchain is a big deal for marketers?

Once you buy CRM built with Blockchain technology it will help in creating indisputable records of customer behaviors, relationships, and value exchange, as consumer-driven P2P relationships are becoming possible with this business growth technology in ways marketers can only start to imagine for better understanding their customers to build propositions that supports repeat engagements. 

Sales Hack for Small Business to Maximize Selling Time

Are you aware that only 35 percent of a sales rep’s time is actually spent in selling?

Well, we know these stats can be absolutely frustrating for sale reps and managers alike. Therefore, to stay successful, sales teams have to not only become an expert at organizing their time but also needs to maximize it.

Hence, here are some of the most simple tried and common hacking tips that you and your sales reps can utilize in your small business to maximize their selling time.

Simplify Your Easy To Use CRM Data      

As a manager looking after your sales teams, look for ways to streamline the quantum of information that you need your sales reps to collect and enter in the CRM database .

Well, we know it must seem tempting to track and evaluate an ever single piece of information about your salesperson’s deals. Nevertheless, in reality, doing this will not only steal invaluable time from your sales reps, but excessive data even in your best small business CRM software can bog down your team, and seldom provide any extra info that may revolutionize your sales process.

Automate As Many Activities As You Can

Irrespective of whether you are using enterprise-level CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small businesses in either case sales automation is becoming more and more sophisticated every day.

However when we talk about data fidelity it can still feel like a gamble, and so your sales teams must identify activities in sales that are not heavily tied to AI (Artificial Intelligence) and so can be automated easily.

For example, if you are using a separate software tool like accounting software to create proposals for your prospective customers, make sure that you are leveraging integration like QuickBooks CRM (software that integrates CRM with QuickBooks) to automatically pull data from your accounting software into your CRM database.

This is because automating tasks using Sales Force Automation (SFA) in a CRM means reducing errors that at the end save your sales teams countless hours of overtime.

Make Contents Easier To Find

It is hard to believe, but it is true that 60-70 percent of the contents created by B2B marketing teams, especially in small businesses are never used by sales.

Here is a solution:

Instead of your sales reps wasting their precious time searching for contents, use a smart folder in your easy to use CRM that provides discoverability or use dedicated content distribution applications like DropBox™ or OneDrive™ that helps in sharing assets by integrating it with your CRM database.

Avoid the back-and-forth scheduling              

There are several business application tools available in the marketplace these days that permit your sales reps to schedule meetings by sharing a link to your calendar instead of firing several messages and emails to verify each other’s availability and thereafter suggesting a time for the meeting.

Integrating online appointment schedules with your easy to use CRM aids in easily avoiding this time suck and therefore provides more time for doing sales for your sales teams.

Use data to your advantage

Leverage applications like PandaDoc™ and others for document management and automation provide extremely useful information like document viewing report, document forwarding report and eSignature notifications that leverages the sales rep’s power to understand when to follow up.

Moreover, integrating document management software with best small business CRM software provides instant access to this type of data that helps in completely eliminating the questions of whether or not contact or a proposal has been reviewed or received by the customers that boost the likelihood of winning the deals quickly.

Conclusion

Therefore irrespective of whether you are a team of 10 or 50, it is always beneficial and smart to dedicate some energy and time to leverage your sales operations and use sales enablement tools that helps in dramatically reducing the time spend by your sales teams on mundane admin works, so that your sales reps may find more time to sell, which directly translates to rapid business growth. 

 

How to Automate Your After Call Works and Boost Productivity

Remember the good old days of the early 2000s, an era before CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and automation were the key drivers for business growth.  

Everything in business operations and for maintaining customer relationship was manual and hence more time-consuming during those times. 

For example, while having a telephone meeting, sales reps had to fanatically take notes, and thereafter complete a lot of after call works to create a record for that call and even manually complete any follow-up tasks. 

These after call works included organizing your notes, saving the notes, preparing and sending follow-up emails, checking off the business calendar with any follow-up meetings, and more. 

Now the time spent on these above-stated activities involved a huge drain on your employee’s productivity, which even Forbes confirms by stating:

"Online systems save time, energy, resources and headaches for busy call-center representatives, allowing them to reach higher levels of productivity and efficiency. Over time, this often translates to better employee retention and enhanced profitability for the organization as a whole.”

It was not until the middle of the 2000s that the sales and marketing automation industry started taking shape, which could automate much of that after call works. 

In modern times, we have access to tools that can automate nearly most tasks involved in post-call administrative jobs.

Therefore, if you are not leveraging post-call automation to streamline your after call works; this article will guide you on how you can generate the most value out of sales and marketing automation tools. 

What is post-call automation?

Odds are you must be using a CRM like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM if you are a startup or a small business. 

Most companies nowadays are moving to an all-in-one CRM solution, because in addition to providing traditional CRM capabilities, all-in-one CRM software also includes built-in sales, marketing, and help-desk automation modules for their businesses.

That means once you use an all-in-one CRM you get loads of extra features and therefore do not need to invest in multiple silo software systems to accomplish various business functions required for your business growth, which even include post-call automation features that streamline your post-call tasks. 

Here are a few of the most important things you can do with post call automation tools:

Track call histories

When you are calling your leads, prospects, or customers using and telephony integrated easy to use CRM, you simply need to navigate to a person’s contact record in the CRM database and click on “Call”. 

After which the CRM system automatically dials the number and once the call ends it automatically attaches the call history for the contact. 

Therefore using this automation whenever you want to check the last time you spoke to the person, a complete list of all calls ever made to that person appears in the list with call records that include the date, time and even duration of those calls. 

Log call notes

Because you are working with your easy to use CRM, the system allows you to take notes on the screen while you are on the call. 

These notes can include requests for information, tasks that you need to complete, important needs of prospects, pain-points of your customers and more. 

Now using automation integrated into easy to use CRM , when you complete the calls, all these notes are automatically tied to the call record in that contact’s call history, which can easily remind you the key takeaways you took notes during the conversation. 

This way automation helps you to never misplace or forget any important information from the calls.  

Schedule meetings, tasks, and automated reminders

Once you finish your calls and your prospect or customer agrees to a follow-up meeting, easy to use CRM when integrated with automation functionalities lets the user enter time and date of that meeting and allows the system to automatically add it to the CRM calendar, and thereafter schedule an automatic reminder that will be sent to you at a specific time before the meeting.  

Using automation in a CRM, you can even opt to send an automatic confirmation email to the other party involved before the meeting which can be sent a day before the meeting, or any time you want. 

Attach call recordings

Another useful feature which is included even in most Salesforce Alternative CRM software platforms is automatic call recording, whereby the easy to use CRM will record the entire conversation, which is particularly useful for finding important key points of the conversation that you might have forgotten or missed as these recordings are automatically attached to the call record in your call history list. 

Doing this not only helps to reduce any conflicts that might arise between you and your customers, but also aids in creating a better customer experience for the users of your brand. 

Conclusion

These days’ smart business owners have realized that the more process they can automate, the higher their productivity levels will be. 

Hence if you are still using manual and traditional methods to manage your after call works, we recommend that you must right away look into implementing an easy to use CRM for your business with built-in post call automation tools, as there are several affordable Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions available today which will be worth far more than the cost of the system for finding rapid revenue and business growth. 

How to Re-Engage Your Alternative Financing Customers Using MCA CRM Software

Be it Merchant Cash Advance or any other business, customer retention is as critical for a company like customer satisfaction, if not more.
Therefore, to put things in the right perspective, it has been found in a research conducted by Harvard Business School, that increase in customer retention rate by just 5 percent can boost profits by 25-95 percent.

However, to retain a customer for a prolonged period of time does not just happen on its own. This is because; to retain customers it needs periodic re-engagement with the customers to remain on top of their mind.

Now that we have established the fact that your MCA business needs to retain its customers for long term success of your company, let us take a look at some of the ways you can keep your customers engaged to increase the chance of retaining them:

So how do you improve your customer retention plans?

1. Personalization Is Key

Although it might not be practical to compose a separate message for every single customer but segregating customers into groups using MCA CRM software (based on history, location, loan preference, business size, etc.) and thereafter sending group-specific messages can also go a long way in establishing an emotional connection with your customers.

Merchant Cash Advance CRM software systems make it easier for MCA businesses to not only retain important information about each customer in the CRM database , but it even allows businesses to send their customer personalized messages and emails based on that information.

2. Add rewards

One of the very first questions that pop in our mind when someone asks us to do a favor is: “What is in it for me”?

Even though attending to a small feedback-form most often takes nothing more than just a couple of minutes, most customers do not bother to write a review, or fill out customer feedback forms unless they get something in return.

Hence a great way to guarantee reviews or feedbacks from your existing MCA customers is by paring your request with a reward.

In fact, offering rewards to customers for their reviews and feedbacks helps in two ways:

• Primarily, customers feel more connected with your Alternative Financing business since once they are assured of the reward they feel it necessary to spend a few moments to think about your services and thereafter write the review.
• Secondly, the customer will return to your business once you make necessary changes in your workflow based on their suggestions, which shows your care and encourage a sense of responsibility towards your customers.

3. Great service assures higher chances of retention

The greater your service is to your customers the very first time, the higher are your chances of retaining your customers over time.

This is because when it comes to service, as always quality is a factor that beats speed.

This statement can be substantiated by the statistics that more than 86 percent of customers in any business are willing to pay more if that guarantees an enhanced customer experience, as reported by Oracle.

Another aspect that delivers great customer service is making customers feel that they are known by your organization.
Although casual conversation with customers might at times seem unnecessary, however, there are many experts those believe that customers like it when they are shown that they are important and are not rushed for accepting your services.

Choosing the right platform for customer service is also very critical. Since for certain businesses email might be still the acceptable means for communication, while for others, live chat may be an absolute necessity to conduct their business.

4. Share customer feedback on social media

Sharing contents that are engaging on social media networking websites play an important role in improves the chances of customer retention for your Cash Advance business.

Additionally, sharing reviews of the existing customers on social media networking websites have also proved to be a powerful tool for the purpose of engagement as customers find it more credible when hearing from people who have actually used your MCA service.

5. Schedule your interactions with your customers

You are most likely to make your follow-ups with your customers and if you have a schedule monitoring tool like Merchant Cash Advance software that allows you to set up follow-up emails and calls.

As a matter of fact, Merchant Cash Advance CRM software that comes with integrated appointment scheduling tools can go a long way in making sure that you meet the expectations of your customers.

Conclusion 

Therefore an MCA CRM solution not only makes life easier for Cash Advance businesses who are trying to enhance the CRR (Customer Retention Rate) of their firms, but it also helps in improving overall Customer Experience (CX) by providing valuable insights about the customers at a periodic interval for rapid business growth . 

4 Most-Essential CRM Integrations for Startup and Small Businesses

If you are a startup, large enterprise, or small business any good easy to use CRM software helps businesses to organize their contacts in the CRM database , follow-up with leads and prospects till you close the deal. 

Nevertheless, modern-day CRM platforms do a lot more. 

Therefore best small business CRM software solutions aids in generating leads, capture and nurture them and thereby make your business grow and prosper in a holistic manner. 

Now, if you are also an entrepreneur and understand what is CRM you must know what I am talking about since modern CRM platforms can help you do marketing, sales, and follow-ups with some key integration that can help you to perform your task that includes:

1. Email

When you are operating a business, you can save a considerable amount of time if you have one place where you can have your contacts and from where you can receive and send emails. 

This is because it becomes highly bewildering if you have to look back-and-forth between windows to synchronize contacts from your CRM. 

Add-ons such as one that integrates with best small business CRM software like Gmail, MS Outlook is most essential for seamlessly managing your email, task, meeting, and contact on a single platform by providing two-way sync to the user of the software.

2. Email Campaigns

Email marketing in the present times is one of the most useful means of communication that helps in qualifying after nurturing the leads. Therefore, it most necessary that you must have email marketing software platform like MailChimp working in complete harmony with your easy to use CRM. 

Integrating email marketing software not only saves time by working from within your CRM to design the emails and create targeted email lists, but it also reduces the trouble of maintaining two sets of customer data. 

Additionally, with proper integration of a CRM with email marketing software, it helps in even tracking how your campaign performed for business growth. 

3. Telephony

By integrating a software like RingCentral and/or Skype Call with easy to use CRM users can dial and log calls through the telephony software inside the CRM in a smarter way to enhance the productivity and enrich customer interactions. This integration is perfect for small businesses who want to have a reliable voice service inside their CRM for efficiently managing customer phone calls.

Moreover using this integration once the call is completed you can even add call disposition which will be directly associated with the lead, or contact, or account.

4. Accounting 

The main objective for integrating accounting with easy to use CRM software solutions is not to do better accounting but to boost your sales and grow revenue. 

Therefore integrating financial and accounting software like QuickBooks CRM software aids in unlocking the valuable data that is locked inside the accounting software and use it from your easy to use CRM to drive sales and customer engagement for business growth. 

Using this integration user of the software can continue using QuickBooks for the purpose of accounting and at the same time view invoice and payment information, products and customer details directly in the CRM, which can be thereafter utilized for creating reminders, follow-ups and customer service using business process automation found in most best CRM for small business. 

Additionally, QuickBooks CRM software platform also helps in avoiding double data entry as the prospect moves along the journey from being just a lead to a long-paying customer.  

Conclusion

Therefore if you a have CRM in place or about to select your best CRM for small business, using these four integrations will help your business to streamline customer interactions the right way. 

How to Choose the Right Sales Process for Your Business Growth

A one-size-fits-all kind of mentality has become the norm in the sale of SaaS solutions right now. In fact, this approach towards selling has become a scourge, and so businesses that adhere to this notion that a wonder drug process will work for their brand and business are in major danger of losing revenue now.

For an example, if you visit websites like YouTube and LinkedIn you will be able to view a torrent of prescriptive videos and articles from experts those who claim to know the secret sauce of growing sales for your company.
Now as everyone is claiming that their way is the only right way for creating a sales process that will usher a rapid business growth , it becomes really difficult for companies the perceive whom to believe for boosting their sales and revenue in a competitive business landscape of the present times.

Therefore, the only answer to this problem is: Trust your knowledge and your data.

What Is this “One-Size-Fits-All” Attitude?

Everyone desires to be an “Influencer”. This is because influencers most often find the opportunity to get invited to speak at conferences, which makes them socially taller and more attractive over the course of time.

However, whether a thought leader’s speech is worth listening to depends on whether they can back up their ideas with lessons they learned in real life. Since, if it is not, and they do not have real experience, they cannot be considered as leaders but can be marked just as “Promoters”.

On the other hand, a “Practitioner” is a teacher. Since it is only a practitioner who can speak about which process will work in a specific situation.
Practitioners are the ones who can explain why a process that promotes transactional sales, does not work for strategic sales, or why some types of sales require involving SDR (Sales Development Representative) and others don’t.

In other words, practitioners do not have to convince that their process is the best as they have nothing to profit from even if their audience accept and adopt their ideas.

Therefore, while a Promoter promises that their processes ‘will‘ work for your business, a Practitioner asks ‘whether’ a solution will work for your organization.

The Risks of a Bad Fit

Succumbing to the long believed myth of one-size-fits-all can be a crucial mistake for any organization, but small and midsize startup businesses have the most to lose.
This is because, startups and small businesses need quick wins, but their sales teams do not have enough experience to understand the best way to sell their specific product or service to a particular market, an uncertainty that makes them vulnerable to the latest sales processes that are making noise on social media platforms.
Since everybody might be saying that their latest sales process is the smartest method that will deliver 

big results and any business not using it is sure to fail and get doomed, therefore the temptation to squeeze your own organization into the template is strong.

For example, the latest buzz about ABX (Account Based Experience) about which we have written and spoken a lot is not for everyone, as ABX is not only expensive but it also requires a lot of time and resources to track and analyze its progress for successful sales. Hence ABX is great for high-dollar enterprise and strategic sales, although not all organizations require such an intensive approach.

Customers Cost Money

Now, there are two factors you need to ask yourself before deciding on your sales process.
Firstly how much does it cost for your business to acquire new customers and secondly what is the average value of your customer over its lifetime?

Moreover, you also need to think whether you are into B2B or B2C business, or what are your customer segments, whether you are practicing high-velocity or strategic sales, is your procurements mapped to your sales cycles, and many more variables that can provide you a direction that you need to build your sales process which is going to make sense for your company.

There are several startups and small businesses that do not think about the cost of acquiring new customers and prioritize top-line growth for their brands by just showing that they are signing up a lot of people for selling their offerings.
Therefore, when small and mid-sized organizations spend more on winning new customers than they can profit from their new business, profitability at an early stage does not always indicate success.

Although most small businesses and startups view this as temporary pain, the problem lies when this temporary pain becomes a long-standing habit and this costly sales process gets engrained into the company’s DNA.

Dirty Data Is a Culture Problem

Collect your own data and keep it clean.

We have seen that there are several startups and small businesses that do not have enough data since they do not use easy to use CRM platform. Although even those that have their best small business CRM software to track their accounts do not keep their data in their CRM database clean.

Mostly human errors are to be blamed for the accumulation of bad data in the CRM. Duplicate records, mis-keyed information, notes associated with wrong customers are some of the mistakes that are always going to happen, but businesses should have a process and necessary tools to correct these issues.

There is another more insidious problem which is most often bonded to the company’s culture. At the end of each quarter, the sales managers in any organization want to show that they have an impressive sales pipeline. Therefore, they pressurize their sales reps to close deals even before the month gets over, a pressure that drives reps to make aggressive predictions about sales that are not going to close before the quarter ends.
Now, when these deals do not close, the reps appear to fail in their job, whereas the truth was that the deal was never matured that far in the very first place.

Specialists Can Force You Into the Wrong Mold

Every startup and small businesses want to view big names on their company’s ‘About Us’ web page. This is because having endorsements from big names transfers trustworthiness to an unproven product or service by telling the leads and prospects “We may be new, but look who believes in our brand.”

Therefore, hiring people because of their pedigree can be a big mistake for startups.

Hence, if you hire a sales rep from a global enterprise, someone who brings expectations and make him sell a SaaS product that is priced $20 a month, this is dangerous as the sales rep just does not fit with the stage your company is in.

Most modern account executives today are specialist, and so since they have not got their hands dirty in a long time; they are unaware of how to build their sales pipelines.

Now when you put someone like this in charge of building your sales team, that leader is going to bring their old processes with them, which can make you get confused and wonder why you are losing customers so fast.

Therefore, it is best to hire smart people who understand what to focus on at the current moment in the company’s maturity which is the only way to harness stellar business growth. 

Always Be Assessing

Lastly, do not stop assessing, since just because you got it right today, it necessarily does not mean you should not be tuning and adjusting your sales machine tomorrow.

Hence, as your markets change, buyers change, and your products change, even if you found a perfect one-size-fits-all solution sales process for your business today, do not count on it to work for you tomorrow like a perpetual motion machine.