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Posts Tagged ‘CRM’


Web.com Small Business Toolkit: Highrise (Customer Relationship Manager)

February 8th, 2013 ::

Highrise

Keeping your customers’ relevant information updated and handy shouldn’t be a cumbersome endeavor. In fact, many CRM solutions exist to make this task a no-brainer. Highrise is one such solution. You can save and organize notes and email conversations for up to 30,000 customers and contacts. The program also allows you to keep track of proposals and deals, share customer status with your sales team, and schedule texts and emails to remind sales members to follow up. There are different price plans for different-sized teams, starting at $24 per month for up to six users.

 

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Posted in Business Development, Resources, Sales Process, sales process, Sales Teams, Small Business, small business, Technology | 2 Comments »

Web.com Small Business Toolkit: PipelineDeals (Sales Tool)

October 19th, 2012 ::

PipelineDeals

If you find yourself missing out on sales opportunities because your sales team is disorganized, you may just need PipelineDeals so you don’t miss out ever again. Import and track all your contacts, then organize contacts by status, source, tags and more. Set recurring tasks to remind your team to follow up, then collaborate between team members. You can even customize deal stages to suit your process. Dynamic charts make it easy for everyone on your team to see the big picture and set priorities. You’ll have a complete overview of the whole process so you won’t miss anything.

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Posted in Business Development, Resources, Sales Process, sales process, Sales Teams, Small Business, small business, Social CRM, Technology | No Comments »

Small Biz Resource Tip: Nimble

August 10th, 2011 ::

Nimble

If you’re not using social media in your business, you’re behind the times. And if you are using social media, your marketing efforts have amplified, but are you losing control of the situation? So many platforms, so many conversations to keep track of—it’s easy to get disorganized. Nimble’s social business platform for small businesses can combine your social networking, contact management, and sales and marketing tools into one simple interface, and the application is not available in the Google Apps Marketplace. Nimble helps capture leads, organize them and build relationships. Then it keeps the conversation going through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Resources, Sales Process, sales process, Small Business, small business, Social Media | No Comments »

Bringing Customer Service Into Sales

June 22nd, 2011 ::

If you have ever owned a car, it is pretty much guaranteed that you have at least one car-buying horror story.  A couple of weeks ago, I came across this post by Peter Shankman in which he took down Infiniti of Manhattan.  Read the blog post, which is hilarious and shocking at the same time, and you’ll see how richly they deserved a public dressing-down.

(What’s funny is that poor customer service seems to be a plague among luxury car dealers, at least on the East Coast.   My most recent horror story is courtesy of Audi of Tysons Corner.)

Which brings me to the point of this post: Salespeople need to be trained in customer service.  I think too many people in sales are so hellbent on closing a sale no matter what that they forget they are dealing with a person.  It doesn’t take much to shift the focus from sales to service.  Here’s how to do it:

Personalize messages

If you learn nothing else from Peter’s blog post, this is it:  Whenever you email or snail mail a customer or potential customer, don’t be lazy and use a generic message.  Add their name, obviously, but don’t stop there.  Your CRM and customer files should be full of information about them.  Use it!  You’ll be able to acknowledge where they are in the buying cycle, what products or services they’re using, what else they were interested in, etc.   No one wants to be treated like a number; this helps ensure they don’t feel like one.

I write about a lot of startups at Tech Cocktail, and as editor, I get a lot of pitches and press releases from companies and PR people.  Most of them also add a personal message that shows they’ve done their homework.  They know what I tend to write about, how I angle my stories, and my style.  And these emails read like they were written by a person with a personality.  That’s really cool, and it makes a big difference in how quickly I jump on the story.

Don’t underestimate the power of a thank you

In sales, the focus is so much on getting, giving sometimes gets thrown by the wayside.  A simple thank you is great, but don’t stop there.  An enthusiastic thank you that is full of appreciation is better.

When I publish a post that was pitched to me, I often receive a thank you.  For some companies, it’s only the first or third time they’re getting press, so it’s a pretty big deal for them.  When the thank you comes from a PR person, I will be more likely to make room in my editorial calendar for their clients.

Follow up and keep in touch

Once you close the sale, improve your chances of keeping them as a customer for life by following up with a call or email to see how things are going.  It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort, but it’s worth it, as it is far easier to keep the customers you already have than to find new ones.  Plus, you never know how many referrals you might get.

Image by Flickr user woodleywonderworks (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Business Development, Customer Service, Sales Process | No Comments »

Small Biz Resource Tip: Gist

April 22nd, 2011 ::

Gist

Small business owners are everywhere in the normal course of a business day—including everywhere online. Gist can help you gather and organize all your contacts from your different email inboxes, online address books, social networks and other sources. More than just having everyone in one place, Gist will create a business profile of each contact that consists of the person or business’s most recent news, status updates and blog posts. And the information is automatically updated so you don’t have to search multiple sites and services over and over. You can also use Gist to share information with your contacts and to gather personalized information for your next meeting.

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Posted in Marketing, Networking, Resources, sales process, Social CRM, Social Media, Technology | 1 Comment »

3 Lead Generation Case Studies: How Content, SEO, Social Media, and Lead Nurturing Can Increase Sales

March 30th, 2011 ::

Lego sales meetingOne of the hardest things for most small business owners to do is generate leads.  Doing so effectively and efficiently is key, but of course that’s easier said than done.  However, if you don’t do something, your sales will growth might plummet, just like it did for the Legos at left.  Because it is best to learn from others than to make mistakes that can be avoided, here are three case studies, courtesy of an eBook co-written by HubSpot and Marketing Sherpa, that illustrate B2B lead generation problems and their solutions.  The results are outstanding!

Makana Solutions

What they do: Subscription‐based software that helps organizations perform sales compensation planning.

Problem: The software is a new concept (this task is normally done manually) and their target market is composed of companies with 50 or fewer sales reps.  Because prospects don’t know this software exists, they are not actively looking for it; therefore, creating demand and awareness are key to generating leads.

Solution: Makana transformed their website into an online destination for sales compensation planning best practices and practical advice.  To do so, they added educational content, such as sample plans and webinars, they optimized their website for search using high-value keywords, and they used paid search to generate additional leads.  They also added all Web leads to a customer relationship management program for follow-up.

Result: After three months, website traffic increased 200 percent, lead generation rates tripled, and lead conversion rates doubled.

BreakingPoint

What they do: Provide cyber-security solutions

Problem: They are a startup with limited funds and a target audience of security and quality assurance professionals in R&D laboratories who hate marketing.

Solution: A social media strategy that would create strong relationships with hard‐to‐find prospects and turn them into leads.  BreakingPoint took a multi-pronged approach that included:

  • Starting a blog
  • Scanning social media for relevant conversations to follow
  • Using Twitter to share info, post fun stuff and conduct informal polls
  • Creating a LinkedIn group that focused on the industry, not the company
  • Tweaking their press releases by adding links to their website and distributing them via Qeb-based services more frequently
  • Promoting their social media channels on their website and in e-signatures
  • Measuring everything

Result: After six months, leads from the Web shot up to 55 percent of all leads.

IBM Cognos

What they do: Business intelligence software

Problem: Longer sales cycles and buying committees composed of more people were making traditional tactics less effective at driving sales.  Email marketing, for instance, saw click-through rates (CTR) plummet.

Solution: IBM Cognos put lead nurturing processes in place that positioned the company as a thought leader, generated demand, and supported the sales team.  To read these goals, they overhauled their website to provide useful content, such as white papers and demos, and they organized all the content and information by product line and industry.  They also created a lead‐nurturing program based on the prospect’s profile, and they analyzed and tested the program to ensure they were getting results.

Result: Open rates increased from 13.2 percent to 33.3 percent, CTR increased from 0.09 percent to 15.5 percent, response rate increased from 0.05 percent to 17.5 percent, and costs‐per‐lead decreased by 30 percent to 40 percent.  Better alignment between sales and marketing goals allowed the marketing team to generate 30 percent of all leads per quarter.

Image by Flickr user Mark Anderson (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, Social Media, Thought Leadership | 4 Comments »

Want to Increase Sales? Give Lead Scoring a Try

March 7th, 2011 ::

Baseball scoreboardIf you’re spending a lot of time nurturing potential customers whether or not they are ready to buy, ranking leads could help you determine who is ready to buy, who is still in the decision-making process, and who is just looking around out of curiosity.

Ranking leads is officially called lead scoring, and though it’s a sales and marketing methodology that is commonly used by large companies to determine the sales-readiness of leads, the basics of lead scoring are applicable to small companies, too.  Lead scoring will help you learn how interested someone is in your business, if they fall within your target market, and what content they need in order to make the decision to become a customer. In other words, it will make your lead nurturing process more organized and targeted so you can spend more time on leads that matter.

Marketo published an excellent and really useful eBook on lead scoring that contains best practices and lots of worksheets to get you started.  Here are the basics, which I adjusted for small businesses that do not have a large sales team:

1. Gather information

Look through your list of potential customers (which should be in a customer relationship management, or CRM, program, and not on a spreadsheet, piece of paper, or, worse, in your head).  Look at:

  • Past deals and current opportunities
  • Online activity log: What pages did prospects visit, and where did they come from (search engines, other websites, etc.)?
  • Previous contact: Have you spoken or emailed in the past?  Did a past marketing or promotional campaign catch their attention?

2. Determine your ideal target

Now you’ll score leads based on the information they share with you and their online behavior.

Explicit scoring is based on the information shared by the potential client, usually in a form they fill out.  It includes demographic and firmographic information like job title, industry, company size, and annual revenue.

Implicit scoring consists of tracking their online behavior, such as downloading white papers or eBooks, subscribing to your blog, filling out a form, etc, to measure their level of interest in your products or solutions.

3. Establish a lead methodology

Assign points to each piece of information and behavior.  You can also just use letter grades or the terms “hot,” “warm,” and “cold”—whatever works best for you.  Then determine the score that will indicate a “sales-ready” lead.

Image by Flickr user BOLTandK2 (Creative Commons)

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Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Sales Process | No Comments »

Small Biz Resource Tip: ZOHO

February 21st, 2011 ::

 

ZOHO

Looking for a way to track your customer support, sales, marketing, inventory and more in one single business system? Check out ZOHO CRM, a sales solution for companies with from one to 100 salespeople. You can start small and simple and then expand your options and tools as your company grows. The Web-based solution means there’s nothing to download, and information can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. Share account information with your sales staff, receive detailed financial reports and even have Web conferences when needed. And, if you have only three users, you can try a free version of the application.

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Posted in Business Development, Resources, Sales Process, sales process | No Comments »

CRM: Five Tools that Can Improve Your CRM

February 23rd, 2010 ::

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of using a good CRM tool for your business. Anything you can do to make it easier to stay in touch with your customers, as well as connect with new customers, is worth while. Customer relationship management software can give you the added edge you need, by bringing together information about your customers as well as helping you track when you’ve communicated with them. These days, there are plenty of different options including robust CRM options like Salesforce or ACT! But a few tools can help more than others, especially if you have specialized needs when it comes to contacting your customers.

  1. Gist: In addition to standard CRM features, Gist can go out and find more information about your contacts. It can automatically important information from your email and online networks, as well as conduct searches to help you find news about your customers.
  2. Highrise: If you have a few other people in your business, Highrise can help you coordinate your communications. It’s got a shared company-wide address book, along with task management features that allow you to delegate and follow up on communications.
  3. Relenta: Email marketing is crucial to small businesses and there are CRM tools built with your business newsletter in mind. Relenta can pull in contacts from Aweber, Constant Contact and a variety of other sources to make sure that you can market your product or service effectively.
  4. Aplicor: Need some analysis done on your customer list? Aplicor provides a suite of tools that will help you get a clearer picture of who your customers are and what they want. This tool can also integrate your informationwith productivity and accounting tools.
  5. PlaybookIQ: If your biggest concern is identifying leads and following up on them, PlaybookIQ can help you organize your contacts. Built with leads in mind, this toolgets your sales team all on the same page.

While it seems like cost should be the first consideration for a small business owner choosing a CRM solution, this can be one of those situations when spending a little money now will pay off down the road. It’s more important to choose a tool that will not only allow you to communicate with your customers and earn repeat business, but will also help you grow in the future. Switching to a new CRM system can require re-entering the whole database of contacts you’ve built up over the years if you choose an option that doesn’t have an easy import or export option — not something you’re going to want to do every time your business gets bigger.

It’s also worthwhile to check what tools can be integrated with the software and hardware you’re already using. For instance, Gist offer an iPhone application, as well as an Outlook plugin to help you stick with the tools you’re already using. Not all CRM tools offer such features, of course, but the more steps in your process that your tool can automate, the more time you have to spend on marketing.

Image by Flickr user Macinate

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Posted in Email marketing | 1 Comment »

For Start-up Businesses, CRM Software is Not the Answer

October 9th, 2009 ::

Instead, it is the question.  Small businesses, new businesses, unintentional businesses are still looking for the answers.  When you are still concocting the winning sales strategy, determining the right pricing structure, exploring service channels and developing your company’s voice, you can’t plug a handful of purchased leads into a preexisting  sales pipeline and expect a reliable return.  When your business is growing  1 or 10 or maybe  100 customers at a time, you need to be able to follow each relationship where the customer leads it.  Not where the software dictates it go.

At this stage of the game you need to understand your customers including who they are, why they buy your product, how much they can afford to pay for it, when they like to use it and why they tell their friends about it.  Then you can start determining some sales and marketing strategies.  If you are selling kids clothing online, you might see your mommy customers spreading the word on Twitter. If you are selling live bait to seasonal  tourists, Twitter might not be the way to go . There are no magic growing beans for new businesses.  The fun part is figuring it out as you go.

With this in mind I have a few suggestions for building a small business CRM (customer relationship management) tool  that will grow with your business:

-          Collect as much information as you can about your customers.  At every point of contact reach out to them and be sure to save every nugget of information they are willing to give.  Have an e-mail list sign-up in your retail shop. Keep detailed records of all purchases and decisions behind them (how they found you, what they bought etc).  If they send an e-mail to your support team, add their signature data (phone number, address, company web site etc.) into your CRM as part of the  logging process.

-          Ask for their personal or business web site address.  Or glean it from any e-mail messages sent in to your sales or support teams.

-          Periodically surf the web sites of your best customers and collect any information that might be helpful market research (their business type, location, personal interests, etc.). Save it all in your CRM system so that you will start to notice trends (my 9:00 AM coffee clients are apparently all chess players, all our customers in Australia are service businesses, etc.)

-          If they include any information about social media profiles, capture that in your CRM.  Look for a link to any blogs they contribute to, their Twitter account, their LinkedIn account, etc. You may not be networking in social media, yet, but when you do it will be nice to have some friends there to reach out to. And it is a great way to learn more about the things your customers want you to know about them.

-          Periodically survey your customers or potential customers about your product or service.  Limit the demographic questions to 1 or 2 short questions (i.e., “what type of business”, “annual sales”, “number of customers”, etc.) and have the rest of the questions focus on ways that you can help them (ie feedback on your product, pain points they are experiencing, ideas for new features, etc.).

-          Keep your data clean.  Right now it might be easy to scan an excel spreadsheet and read through the business categories your survey respondents typed in themselves.  But if you make that field a multi-select form (rather than a text field) in your web form then you will be able to more easily spot trends over time as you slice and dice your data with custom reports and graphs.

-          Integrate your CRM with as many of your other applications as possible – with your mobile phone, your e-mail software, your invoicing software, your web forms, your shopping cart software, etc. You do not have time to do double, triple, quintuple entries for your growing network. And it is helpful to know that John Doe bought one of your products, but the real insight comes when you see that he has bought the same product every quarter for 3 years, always pays promptly, has recommended it to his friends on Facebook, always reads your newsletter and rarely needs customer support.

I’m Pamela O’Hara (@pmohara on Twitter) the co-founder and owner of BatchBlue Software, the maker of BatchBook small business CRM product and host of #SBBuzz, a weekly Twitter chat discussing small business technology.  We’ve designed our  CRM product to be as flexible and agile as the entrepreneurial businesses that are using it. We understand the importance of a CRM solution that helps you ask the right questions and manage the answers.

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Posted in Business Development, Entrepreneurs, Marketing, sales process, small business, social media, Technology | 8 Comments »