The Need For Going Beyond CRM To Find Rapid Business Growth

Several major changes have happened over the past quarter-century.

Music has gone from spool tapes to CDs and pure digital media and while cabs are still operational, ridesharing services have made hailing a ride much easier nowadays.

During this same time period, how modern companies interact with their customers has also come a long way.
Although still, today telephones retain a certain level of popularity, nevertheless, emails, chats, and social media have all gained significant grounds in modern times.

Advanced technologies like Chatbots which are powered by AI and machine learning are also nowadays adopted by businesses and customers alike.

In the past customer service teams documented their customer-facing interactions in a basic manner. Twenty-five years ago, call tracking systems might have been nothing greater than an off-the-shelf, customized database used for collecting customer details and record their problems (if at that time companies bothered at all).

Thereafter in the late 1980s, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems were born and with the introduction of easy to use CRM software solutions customer-facing teams (sales, marketing, and customer support) no longer had to struggle to work with data stored in disconnected and silo business applications as all-in-one CRM presented a 360-degree united view of the customer’s purchase and service histories, which in turn could drive new insights into businesses for taking appropriate actions.

Although as this above-stated concept was a step forward at that point in time, but the limitations of CRM are apparent right now.
Even in the present times an easy to use CRM does nothing more beyond catering an individualized view of sales, marketing, and service department in an organization, and therefore do not provide any urgency on solving customer-facing problems, which makes it difficult to improve customer experience even with renowned brands across the globe.

Hence for customer support, it is time that they must seek an approach that is different, (one that highlights refining customer experience, by applying a service management approach which is the upcoming evolution in modern business workflow today.

Engage Other Departments

The main concept behind building easy to use CRM is to consolidate customer information in a unified repository, which promises greater visibility into prospects and customers, their activities, and history during their journey with any company.

Now although easy to use CRM definitely helps companies with their sales and marketing efforts, nevertheless it does not offer a route to improve service and customer experience even today.

With customer management, solving customer issues becomes the priority.

There when a service management platform is integrated into a CRM, it captures customer information and thereafter identifies, classifies, and documents the issue. It even easily identifies issue trends and shares them with other departments in the organization.

Per se, integrating service management platforms with easy to use CRM software solutions not connects the teams using the CRM’s unified database but also provides those departments outside customer service with enhanced awareness of customer-facing issues and the outcomes they have on the customer experience when problems occur with their brands.

Assign work with built-in accountability

When integrated with the functionalities of a CRM software modern customer management platform’s workflow capabilities are the key to enabling the entire company to work together on customer-facing issues.

Now as problems are recognized, customer service allocates problems to other departments within the organization and thereafter collaborates with them as they investigate and resolve those issues, which was not possible with earlier traditional CRM software platforms that lacked this visibility and collaboration and accountability that service management offers, which affected the customers resulting in deterioration of customer experience as customers had no idea of the timeframe needed by brands for resolving their issues.

Deliver proactive service

The ease of collaborating across teams using a service management platform integrated into a CRM also offers an additional benefit- the quickest path top permanent resolution of issues.

This is because by working with other departments in the organization service management platform integrated into easy to use CRM helps in identifying the root cause of a problem and therefore can aid in fixing it permanently without offering a temporary workaround.

A modern service management platform integrated into easy to use CRM be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce alternative CRM software for small businesses even helps in simplifying the delivery of solutions to the affected customers in the self-service channels they prefer (like chatbots, knowledge-based articles and videos, automated email notifications and more).

Now, by addressing the root cause of the problems it implies that future customers will never face the problems, which in turn improves the customer experience of the brands proactively.

Drive a better customer experience

Finally, as Forrester and other market research firms have pointed out that today’s competitive business environment in the marketplace places high stakes on providing world-class customer experience, and silo CRM software solutions for customer services are not cutting it, therefore it is time for implanting a new tool, one that does more than just taking down customer details which modern service management platform integrated into easy to use CRM does aptly by better engaging the entire organization in solving customer-facing issues.

Conclusion

Therefore in a gist, while legacy CRM software solutions can still benefit marketing and sales, but to boost customer satisfaction and drive world-class customer experience easy to use CRM software solutions that integrates with customer service management tools is the next evolution in customer service as it assigns the customer’s issues to the teams who can affect a permanent solution to the problems and ensure that subsequent customers will never encounter that issue.

Why You Must Do A Weekend Cleaning Of Your Best Small Business CRM Platform’s Database

Is your weekly cleaning done and over?

Well, as one of the most popular vendors of  the best small and medium business CRM software in the cloud-based CRM space, we guess not.

 
This is because while you may feel frightened to think about the overflowing inbox with respect to your emails, another area that can yield substantial profits from a bit of squaring up is your CRM database. Since if you do not stay on the top by sorting the CRM data constantly that you keep collecting inside your easy to use CRM , it can very soon become overwhelmingly unorganized.

Hence, why not take a weekend and spend a few hours with your easy to use CRM and ensure that your CRM database is in shape so that you can stay efficient and organized that results in revenue and business growth .

Irrespective of whether you use a robust enterprise-level CRM or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software, these tips should help:

1. Sort Through Customer Contacts

It all happens this way- you enter customer-related information in the CRM and another of your employees enter a new record for the same lead or customer. Now you have got duplicates, which makes it harder to find the right data and other notes around the customer.

Hence, spend some hours sorting through the list of contacts in your CRM database to get rid of redundancies, identify duplicate entries, de-dupe the information inside the database, and consequentially make it convenient and speedy to find what you need at the right time.

2. Update Customer Information In The CRM Database

You do bear in mind squirreling away an email that a customer sent you three months ago, with his new address, nevertheless, you never updated that in your CRM records.  Hence, if it is really so, now it is time to do it. Even though it may take a little longer to view and read through each and every customer data in a CRM, nevertheless it is an activity that is worth doing since performing this exercise will help you and your organization in the long run.

Additionally, for any consumers of your offerings that you have not conversed or interacted for a certain time, make sure their email addresses and the links in their files are still working and let this be a great reason to see how things are going as part of your weekend-cleaning agenda.

3.  Stay On Top Of Events

Irrespective of whether as a startup organization using your best small and medium business CRM software or a multinational organization with offices and employees spread across the world sharing information with your team members is especially crucial if you are not the only one using your easy to use CRM system- and that even includes events.

You got an urgent sales call and you need one of your sales reps to participate? Make sure all similar douse-the-fire situations go on the calendar and that he is available.

Encourage your sales team members to update their calendar to reveal their sales activities, so that you can see at-a-glance, what is going on in your organization.

4.  Make Certain Emails Are Affiliated with Contacts

Most cutting-edge business growth technology solutions like CRM makes it easy to attach email chains with contacts as per their email addresses. Therefore, make sure you have the right email address of your leads, prospects, and customers in your easy to use CRM software.

Since being able to log into your CRM and view pertinent emails saves you the hitch of laboring through your piled up email records.

5. Tag Every Records Smartly

Another feature that even most Salesforce Alternative CRM is proud of are - ‘tags’, which help you to stay organized based on any criteria that you consider important for your business. You can tag your files in the CRM database by demography, association, their interests, industry and job types, and others. By which you can conveniently sort the type of contacts you want to reach for performing a given task.

Takeaway

While this week weekend-cleaning is your alibi right now to organize your CRM database to make it more effective, do not take months to do it once more.

Hence, as a piece of end advice, we would suggest you put this activity as a recurring event in your calendar for a bi-weekly check to look at duplicate entries and update information in your easy to use CRM platform.

This way, you will not only always find the most relevant and recent information in your CRM database, but cleaning your CRM platform’s database on a regular basis will even set your business up for success in the long run. 

How To Select The Best Small Business CRM For Your Startup’s Business Growth

Selecting an efficient and best small business CRM platform has become more difficult over the last few years, as several CRM for small and medium businesses vendors have upped their game, and has thereby made the playing field more level than ever before.

Now, if you are still at a loss in understanding what is CRM software, here is your answer is a gist:

What is CRM software?

Customer Relationship Management or CRM means a mishmash of business strategies, software and business processes that aids in building long-standing relationships between organizations and their consumers. 

While healthy competition ultimately benefits the consumers, nevertheless those tasked with selecting the right best small business CRM solution for their organization, the selection process by signing up for free trials and by rounding up leading vendors of CRM for securing demonstration, can take a lot more time than you practically want it to be.

Now, as there is always a hidden cost involved in an extended selection timeline, and choosing the wrong CRM can result in substantial multi-year expenditure with little returns, here are five steps to accelerate your best small business CRM selection process.

1. Interview End Users and Stakeholders

Now that you know what is CRM software, the primary thing you need for a successful CRM selection is to address the requirements of both the management and the end-users of your easy to use CRM platform. 

Especially inputs from the would-be end users of the software solution is highly valuable for the selection process since when the right type of questions are asked, areas of customer dissatisfaction and operational inefficiencies will often emerge, which the management may not have even been aware of. 

Moreover, when the ends users feel that they have are a part of the easy to use CRM software’s purchasing process, they will naturally be even more willing to participate in using the tool, once the solution is rolled out. 

2. Assemble and Analyze Input

Once the information from the end-users and the management staff has been gathered, you need to organize and analyze the user inputs in reasonable detail. 

Additionally, relevant details about the existing systems in your organization, ranging from shared spreadsheets to ERP systems (if any) and how these solutions are currently working or not, should also be a part of the analysis. 

Since, the output of this step, once you are aware of what is CRM, will become an integral part of the next step.

3. Develop a Vendor Ranking System

After prioritizing the list of all the requirements, this information should be organized in a manner that the participant of the best small business CRM selection process can rank the CRM vendors on their abilities to meet the documented needs.

Moreover documenting the requirements of your organization also helps the CRM vendors to address the highest priority requirements first and the rest in a logical sequence of the data.

4. Select the Easy to Use CRM Solution

After the demonstrations by the CRM vendors, now that you know what is CRM software all about, there will inevitably be follow up questions for the CRM vendors regarding specific functionalities and deliverables of their CRM software platforms. 

Remember to consolidate all the participating CRM vendors’ rankings in a single document, so that they can be further scrutinized easily in case of a close call.

Additionally, as a part of this step, ask for the implementation timeline from the selected CRM vendors at this stage, which will help the management of your organization to find a solid basis for their initial estimates of implementing the solution in your company. 

5. Negotiate and Procure

Once you have finalized on the chosen easy to use CRM vendor, there are additional works now, which needs to be done. For example, the CRM chosen by you may have several editions, so the vendor of the CRM may allow you to mix, and match functionality licenses within your CRM edition, to tailor the solution as per your company’s needs. 

It is best and it also makes financial sense to purchase a limited number of user licenses for all departments in your organization, during the roll-out and then purchase additional licenses in the near future once all the departments in your organization get well adapted in using the software. 

Also, check the contact duration before rolling out your CRM, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms (mostly used by several small businesses and startups) which should be determined at this stage.

Takeaway

Now that you know what is CRM, as a parting note can we assure you that a formal process for choosing the best small and medium business CRM software solution help a lot than just randomly buying the CRM software. Since this perspective that you will gain about your business by gathering this valuable information can be used also as inputs for planning and strategic thinking for the further growth of your business.  

Three Most Basic Lead Scoring Techniques For Small Businesses And Startups

The importance of leads lies in the fact that in order to make effective sales in any organization, you must have qualified leads. Lead generation is the process by which you can establish interest in services and products among the people in a targeted market for business growth .

There are more than a few steps in generating leads, just as there are quite a few ways for lead tracking to find the right people who need what you are offering. However, most lead generation technique requires businesses to buy CRM to achieve some level of lead nurturing by which marketing and sales teams can make a lead into a prospect and then a customer of your brand.

Hence for lead tracking and lead nurturing most of the organizations, those who have adopted 

easy to use CRM software for lead management use lead scoring techniques for measuring how likely a person is expected to get converted into a customer, based on their individual characteristics.

For lead scoring, individual scores of the leads are indicated by the information they provide to a business via conversation or forms and their behaviors like interactions with your website or emails.

It must be remembered that not all collected leads by any business are equally interesting and so not all leads become your customers, as most of them, you shall find is not ready to buy.

According to a Research by MarketingSherpa, whenever any new contact is added to a 

CRM database , just only 27 percent of those leads will qualify to the point where they will be ready to get engaged with sales. Hence, the rest 73percent of the leads must be nurtured and qualified.

Here are some of the key lead scoring techniques that have worked for many:

Technique # 1

Increase The Lead Score Based On Interactions

It is considered that people are having a high interest in your product or services once they read several emails or download multiple white papers from your website.

Here is a view of an incremental lead scoring system based on the lead’s interaction with your brand:

• +1 point- Lead visited your website
• +5 points- Lead clicked on your email 
• +10 points- Lead downloaded your free guide
• +20 points- Lead completed your free capability assessment
• +30 points- Lead viewed contents meant for the paid members
• +40 points- Lead viewed your payment form

Technique # 2

Diminish Lead Score As Per Interest Level

Although many organizations believe in only increasing lead scores, nevertheless it is also another best practice to decrease lead scores if the prospect has not interacted for a long time.

Therefore, once a prospect or a lead has not interacted for more than 30 days, you can decrease the prospect’s lead score by 10 points. However, once the prospect re-engages again, you can increase the lead score based on their current interactions with your brand.

Technique#  3

Increase Lead Score Based On Disclosed Preference

Finally, this is just like scoring a lead by asking the prospects questions to know them better. Once you know when the prospect may become your customer, by asking direct questions while lead tracking like “are you willing to buy within the next 1 month or in the next 3-6 months?” you can grade the lead accordingly.

Conclusion

Now that you know the importance of leads, you can also change the threshold scores of the leads while doing the lead scoring, once you buy CRM as a business growth technology and tool if you want to develop the lead generation technique which suits the best for your business.