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September 1, 2019
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Simplify The Sales Process

How To Simplify The Sales Process

By | Education, Sales

Everyone who has spent at least a day in sales knows how hard sales can be. You’re constantly dealing with uninterested leads, juggling your time and trying to close sales as quickly as possible.

With constant pressure from their managers and unnecessary admin work that accompanies nearly every sales, salespeople are among the most overworked and stressful professions.

In fact, 73% of salespeople report experiencing high levels of stress and pressure on their work.

We could go on, but there’s really no need. It’s obvious salespeople need help relieving their workload and increasing productivity.

That is why we will focus on providing you with actionable tips on how to simplify your sales process and improve your work conditions.

However, before we move on and explain how you can better manage your stress levels on the job, we will briefly visit the most common sales process problems.

The most common sales process problems

You focus on the wrong things

The management always wants better results. Salespeople want more sales.

No one can ignore results and everyone wants more money.

However, contacting as many leads as possible in the shortest amount of time is far from the ideal strategy. In fact, it could kill your prospects with the best leads.

Many salespeople spread themselves too thin, trying not to neglect any potential leads. But that strategy simply doesn’t work well in practice.

Instead of providing you with sales from as many leads, you will end up with no sales, as every prospect will notice your lack of preparation and focus.

The optimal way to approach sales is to focus on your best prospects. Tie up the deals that are nearly complete and forget about all leads that are neither here nor there. You can always revisit them later.

You have no real strategy

When managers want their salespeople to hit their quotas, they often leave them on their own, allowing their creativity to seal the deals.

This is an understandable strategy, but it quickly leads to chaos, especially if you operate a large sales department. With everyone laser-focused on hitting their personal quotas, it’s easy to forget about the big picture.

Software tools can help alleviate this problem. However, most of them are made for managers, rather than for salespeople, because managers are the decision-makers in most companies. This means that salespeople need to deal with sub-optimal software solutions on top of their daily sales stresses.

Busy salespeople don’t have time to deal with complex systems and discover all the intricacies of management software programs. If you want to make their work a bit more pleasurable, you will need to find a solution that is easy to use and has a beginner-friendly interface.

Simply CRM provides a clear overview of all business operations and processes within the company. If you need a system that works equally well for sales, marketing and support teams, we recommend that you test the free trial version.

Your team is overworked

This is hardly a surprise.

Sales is one of the most unforgiving career paths that anyone can take in the current economy. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you make minor changes to your workflow, you can easily alleviate a lot of the pressures that your sales personnel is facing. For example, you can hire a virtual assistant that will deal with all the administrative work and enter sales into your preferred corporate software solution.

You can educate yourself and your team on the signs of stress and proactively address the most stressful situations to improve your work conditions.

How to simplify your sales process

The best salespeople in all industries share one common trait:

They all have a clear plan of action for their sales calls and pitches. They focus their efforts on only one activity, instead of spreading themselves to cover as many bases as possible.

However, this approach can be equally demanding as any other sales process. It requires a certain dose of belief and trust in your system. You need to trust the process and the actions you’re taking, and slowly guide your prospects down the sales cycle.

The best sales processes don’t put a heavy emphasis on the end results. Instead, they focus on the sales journey that will manifest itself when you perform the right actions at the right time.

However, we understand that simplifying the sales process is easier said than done.

That’s why we will present you with a few actionable pieces of advice that you can implement to improve your sales process today. Keep reading.

Assess your current sales process

Before you start changing anything, you first need to assess and evaluate your current sales process. Identify its weakest and strongest points.

This is important because you can’t make any improvements if you don’t know what works and doesn’t work.

Take your time to carefully analyze each aspect of the existing processes.

Then, try to simplify everything. Set simple, clear and objective key performance indicators (KPIs). To give each team member a clear overview of their priorities, we recommend that you examine the following metrics:

  • The total number of deals
  • The value of your deals
  • The percentage of deals closed
  • The time it takes to close a deal, on average

You can build your entire sales process around these four simple metrics. Make sure your team always understands them and allow them to prioritize the deals with the highest potential.

Focus on the best leads

Unqualified leads waste everyone’s time.

More worryingly, they frustrate your sales teams and cause them to lose confidence in their approach by decreasing their deal closing rates.

Setting up a structured approach to lead identification and qualification is crucial for the success of the business. You can do this by analyzing your existing customers and finding insights into their shared characteristics.

Considering developing buyer personas and distribute them to your sales team. Make sure your team always knows how to identify the best leads and know what prospects they should prioritize.

Automate the admin work

We already mentioned that admin work only piles more work on the stressed out and pressured sales personnel. The last thing they want is to manually research each potential lead.

Luckily, this type of work can easily be automated or outsourced.

As we suggested earlier, you can hire a virtual assistant or a data entry specialist to do the heavy lifting for the admin work. Alternatively, you can introduce Simply CRM into your business structure to create a database with the most important information easily accessible to everyone on the team.

Simply CRM will also help you automate many admin tasks, such as invoicing, sales orders, lead nurturing, customer support, etc.

Start exploring all the benefits of an automated system with a 30-day free trial. No credit card required.

Final words

There you have it! We have covered the most common sales process problems and explained how you can simplify sales by introducing a few changes to your business structure.

August 31, 2019
0
Customer Success

The Definitive Guide To Customer Success

By | Client relations, Education

All businesses require sales and marketing teams to attract customers.

However, marketing and sales are not enough to ensure the success of a business. Customers have more options than ever before and acquiring new customers can be very expensive.

This is why most modern businesses have teams dedicated to working with clients to improve their customer experience and increase their lifetime value.

These teams are usually called customer success teams.

What is customer success?

Customer success exists at the intersection between customer experience and customer support teams. Success managers constantly work on improving their company’s product or service by anticipating challenges, questions and issues that their customers might have.

However, they do not just anticipate these problems – their primary task is to solve them in advance, before they start troubling existing or prospective clients.

In other words, success teams are tasked with boosting customer happiness and retention, reducing customer churn and improving brand loyalty.

Who needs customer success teams?

As we already mentioned, the cost of acquiring new customers has been growing rapidly in recent years, and the trend is likely to continue in the near future.

This means that all businesses that rely on people purchasing their products or services need customer success teams.

Why is customer success important?

Customer success is important because it allows your customers to experience the best quality of service and enjoy using your product. You may be thinking that customer success is just a fancy new term for customer support.

However, although the two terms bear many similarities, they differ in one important aspect. Customer success teams are proactive and customer support is reactive.

In other words, customer success attempts to identify and solve issues before they’re noticed by customers who contact your support agents for help. They continuously work on improving the customer experience by aggregating data from existing clients.

If this has you confused, there’s no reason to worry. We will now explain how to execute customer success concepts in your company.

How to execute customer success activities

Although businesses can differ significantly, every customer success team breaks down their work into five basic steps. These principles remain the same across all industries, but you may need to tweak their execution or focus on certain specifics to better fit the needs of your particular niche.

Step 1 – Outline clear objectives

As with anything else business related, planning is the mother of success.

Develop a customer success strategy that your employees can follow to ensure that your customers are always happy with the service that you provide.

Make sure that your strategy centers around the needs and desires of your specific customers. Don’t box yourself into a specific set of tactics either – feel free to experiment to find the best solution. Your customers will know when you get it right.

Step 2 – Educate the customers

In the ideal world, every customer would spend hours researching each product and finding the best solution. In reality, many customers don’t want to spend that much time on a purchase.

To ensure that your customers are always happy with their purchase, you need to anticipate the questions that they may have. Educate them about your product’s features and benefits.

This is essential if you’re selling a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product. Consider creating a knowledge base and implement a live chat on your website to allow your customers direct access to the support team.

Step 3 – Provide customer onboarding

Getting used to a new product or service can be very hard for new customers, especially if they’re used to certain standards.

To ensure customer success, you need to guide your customers through the initial steps. Provide them with all the resources, tools, or training that they may need.

This way, your customers will know that you care about them and accustom them to a certain standard of service. It will also allow you to proactively deal with the most common objections and questions.

Great examples of customer onboarding include step-by-step tutorials or one-on-one guidance with company representatives.

Step 4 – Facilitate communication between all departments

Customer success teams can’t work on their own.

They require communication and help from virtually all company departments. Your staff needs to be have a clear line of communication with customer support, product development, sales and marketing teams.

This communication will allow them to identify the pain points of your customers and the weak points of your product. Marketing teams can collaborate with client success agents to develop promotional content that explains how to best use the product or outlines specific features that are often overlooked.

Customer support and customer success are two side of the same coin. They need to discuss their interactions with clients on a daily basis to ensure a consistent quality of service across the board.

The best way to facilitate this communication and ensure customer success is to implement a CRM system, like Simply CRM. CRM platforms offer an all-in-one solution that provides all team members with access to the same customer information, which can be used to guide their everyday work.

Step 5 – Promote loyalty

Customer loyalty is a direct consequence of their positive experience with a brand. You need to make sure that your customers always feel they’re getting decent value for their money.

The easiest way to promote loyalty is to create a customer loyalty program, offering discounts and special deals for long-term clients or customers who are making more than one purchase.

However, be careful with your loyalty programs. Do the math before offering any discounts and only provide deals that your business can sustain in the long run. You don’t want your loyalty program to generate losses.

Final words

All the most successful businesses have one thing in common: they ensure continued customer satisfaction and success. You can replicate their success by creating a customer success strategy and supporting your customers all through their customer lifetime.

Remember that the customer journey does not end with a purchase. If you want to run a profitable long-term business, you will need to find a way to keep customers coming back to your product and service.

August 31, 2019
0
Customer Journey Map

How To Create A Customer Journey Map

By | Client relations, Education

Understanding your customers can be quite a challenge.

You may find it incredible to see your customers spending hours choosing the product and adding it to their cart, only to close down the tab and never complete the purchase.

It may be surprising to see that customers take multiple steps to move from Point 1 to Point 2, when it should only take a single step.

The root of all these misunderstandings lies in customer journeys. More precisely, your lack of a customer journey.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey represents the process that your customers go through when they interact with your company. The end goal of each customer journey is a sale.

Where does a customer journey begin?

That’s a question that is hard to answer, because customers start their journeys in a variety of ways.

They may interact with your brand on social media, search engines, or emails. It entirely depends on the physical and lived experiences of your customers. This means that the only way to find out how your customers embark on their journey to a purchase is by asking them.

However, even when you pinpoint where the journey starts and ends, you won’t know much about your customer’s behaviors. You will need to create a visual representation of their actions and implement that in your marketing and advertising campaigns.

This graphical representation of the process that a customer goes through on their way to achieving their goal is called a customer journey map.

Why is a customer journey important?

When you understand the motivations and the behavior of your customers, you can structure your business to make it more user-friendly and encourage sales.

By systemizing your customer touchpoints, you can guide prospects down the most efficient and effective path towards their goal.

While this may seem like a simple, linear progression, a customer journey typically contains many turns and shifts. Prospects usually interact with your brand on multiple platforms, channels and touchpoints, which makes it hard to visualize a customer journey.

Simply put, the customer journey is important because it allows you to refocus your efforts on inbound marketing, create a new customer target base, and it nurtures a customer-centric mentality.

Let’s break down each of these points separately.

Inbound marketing helps businesses because it targets a specific audience, as opposed to outbound marketing, which focuses on a broad spectre of potential customers.

By developing a customer journey, you can acquaint yourself with the needs, wants and desires of your prospects. This way, you can tailor a custom strategy that will help customers find your business and make purchases more efficiently.

Moreover, you can publish content that is interesting and useful to your customers and allow them to find you, instead of the other way around. This means that your effectively creating an additional touchpoint between your business and your customers.

Similarly, a customer journey is important, as it allows you to develop customer target base. Without a customer target base, you are forced to target a broad audience and waste precious resources on people who are unlikely to ever purchase your product or service.

Most importantly, a customer journey map nurtures a customer-centric mentality in your company. As your company grows, it can be hard to coordinate all the departments and keep the focus on your customers.

A clear journey map can be shared throughout your entire company, which allows you to better organize the marketing, sales and support departments.

How to create a customer journey map

Now that you know what a customer journey map is and why it’s important, it’s time to get down to business and start working on your customer journey map.

Generally speaking, a customer journey map will require three basic steps:

  • Understanding your customers
  • Defining the customer paths
  • Examining the weak points

Let’s cover each of these steps in greater detail.

Understand your customers

If you want to create a customer journey map, you will first need to understand your customers.

However, we’re not talking about surface-level understanding of your customers here. You need to collect as much information as possible and develop detailed personas.

Personas are fictional characters that best describe your ideal customer.

Although personas rely on data, they’re more than that. They allow you to humanize your customers and stop viewing them as simple data points.

To develop a persona, you will need to consider the following:

  • Demographics (age, gender, occupation, education, income)
  • Location
  • Psychographics (interests, values, activities)
  • Behavior (patterns, benefits, product usage)

Now, you may be thinking that this is just too much information to collect and that there is no way for you to spend days working on it. However, that’s a common misconception.

Google Analytics contains all of this information neatly sorted into tabs and tables in the Audience option. Simply connect Google Analytics to your website and pull the data from it.

Define your customer paths

In the second step, you will need to assess your business.

Find all the touchpoints that your customers can use to find and interact with your company. Create a flowchart that explains how your customers do business with you.

To do this successfully, ask yourself this:

  • How do customers find my business? What channels do they use to locate my website?
  • How do they navigate through my site and make purchases?
  • What actions do the customers need to take to complete a purchase?

Focus on one path and go through it until you find your way to the purchase page. Imagine you are a customer who has never visited your website and try to make a purchase for a specific item.

Then, rinse and repeat until you cover all available paths.

Keep in mind that this can take a while, because customers have countless ways to interact with online business. They can find you through social media, search engines, referrals, etc.

Usually, customer journey maps contain several stages:

  • Awareness
  • Market research
  • Consideration
  • Purchase
  • Post-purchase

Examine the weak points

While you may develop a framework that works well in theory, practice often has the nasty habit of breaking down our theories. This is why it’s important that you test your customer journey and examine all of its points.

The easiest way to find and examine the weak points is to go back to Google Analytics and check the Behavior tab. Under Behavior Flow, you will find how customers actually interact with your website.

Compare the actual and the theoretical journey and you will likely find some discrepancies. Revisit your theoretical framework and edit it until it closely matches the actual journey of your customers.

If you notice that your customers are regularly leaving at specific points, you may need to redo that entire part of the journey. When people leave, it’s because your business can’t satisfy their needs adequately.

In case you’re unsure how you can improve specific stages of the customer journey, the best strategy is to look at your competition. See what the industry leaders are doing and replicate their tactics.

However, you should always look to go beyond your competitors. You need to have a competitive edge on the market or the customers won’t have any reason to replace the market leaders with your business.

Final words

While it may be tempting to ignore customer journeys and just go by your business feeling, it’s arguably the worst move that you can make.

If you plan to establish a long-term business, you will need customer journey maps. All niches are becoming more competitive and it’s becoming increasingly hard for businesses to remain profitable.

Customer journey maps are important because they allow you to better serve your customers. When you understand who your customers are, you understand what they want and need.

Ignoring customer journey maps is equal to ignoring customers.

No business that ignores its customers can expect to succeed.

August 24, 2019
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Workflow Automation

How To Use Workflows To Automate Processes

By | Automation

We have already covered the topic of marketing automation extensively in an earlier blog post. However, our previous article never really touched the subject of workflows and how to execute automation in a real work environment.

This article will focus on the implementation of workflows and detail how each business can improve its efficiency and productivity by automating tasks and processes. Before we deal with workflows, let’s briefly revisit marketing automation.

What is workflow automation?

Workflow automation refers to all technological solutions that use rule-based logic to automate manual and repetitive tasks. It’s primarily used to alleviate the workload placed on the sales departments, as it automates simple, but time-consuming tasks, such as data entry and collection.

However, other departments can benefit from workflow automation as well – especially marketing teams. For much the same purposes and goals.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. – Bill Gates

Businesses that use workflows become more efficient, their employees become more productive and they collaborate better. This creates a positive loop that enhances the benefits of automation and improves both the staff and the customer satisfaction.

The staff no longer has to deal with boring, monotonous tasks, while customers always experience the same degree and quality of service, regardless of who is handling their case.

The history of workflow automation

Automation has been around for almost a century. The term first appeared in the 1920s, when it was applied to automating work in manufacturing processes. However, the modern concept of workflow automation has been around considerably shorter – since the 1980s, to be precise.

In the 1980s, the theoretical foundation for the workflows was built, followed by a practical approach that would yield its first results in the early 1990s, when the first workflow automation systems were introduced. It’s worth noting that the development of workflow technology closely mirrored the rise of Internet.

Later, Business Process Management (BPM) was developed in 2005, bringing in the current era of workflow automation, which relies entirely on software solutions, such as CRMs.

Examples of workflow automation

Although workflow automation can be implemented on virtually all tasks and processes, it’s primarily used in fields that rely on a structure-based approach. This includes marketing, finances and human resources, which are typically based on a series of steps that can be automated.

For example, employee onboarding and offboarding, invoices and data entry can easily be performed by a digital tool that offers workflow automation, such as Simply CRM.

Similarly, workflows can be used to provide high-quality customer support and manage leads, as they enter the sales cycle. Further, you can create trigger-based email messaging workflows or rule-based lead qualification workflows to reduce time spent on these processes.

All of this creates a more efficient workplace and a more productive workforce, as well as creates a more systematic approach to all business operations.

The potential of workflow automation

We have already explained how workflow automation can help existing businesses reduce their workload. However, we need to describe the full potential of workflow automation to explain why it’s important for businesses to start implementing it as soon as possible.

Automation has already started utilizing the power of artificial intelligence to handle various tasks and process, and that trend looks set to continue for the considerable future. It’s expected that automated programs will soon be able to make informed decisions by analyzing enormous data sets, which will help companies create and execute the optimal business strategy.

Similarly, the development of AI will lead to the creation of advanced AI assistants, which will be able to perform tasks or delegate them to virtual assistants, if the task process can’t be fully automated.

In addition to that, as automation becomes more powerful, the digital platforms that provide companies with workflow automation will become more robust and consolidated. This means that business owners will start switching to all-in-one solutions, such as Simply CRM, in favor of multiple separate tools.

How to know if your business needs workflows

Each company represents a complex system and its optimization is often a daunting task that requires months of careful planning and deliberation. However, when it comes to workflow automation, it’s surprisingly easy to identify the signs that your company needs workflows.

In fact, a recent Forbes study found that salespeople spend just 35% of their time selling. The rest of their work hours are spent on repetitive manual tasks – most commonly, data entry. Workflow automation relieves the workload on the sales and marketing departments and save companies vast amounts of time and money.

To help you assess your business and its potential need for workflow automation, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Do your employees have a tendency to forget certain steps in the workflow, such as writing down customer information?
  2. Is communication between your employees and customers erratic and ambiguous?
  3. Do you find it hard to check and assign accountability?
  4. Are you unable to track all tasks and processes within your organization?
  5. Can you easily evaluate processes and identify potential improvements?

If the answers to these questions aren’t clearly positive, you may want to consider introducing workflow automation to your business. However, if you’re still uncertain whether your company actually needs workflow automation, here are a few more signs that your company badly needs to automate processes:

  • Your employees are spending a considerable amount of time working on manual tasks, such as data entry.
  • Your company has standardized processes and/or still uses paper forms.
  • The status of your tasks is often unclear.

If your business ticks these boxes, you at least need to try out automation and see if it can bring benefits to your organization. Luckily, Simply CRM offers a 30-day free trial that requires no commitment or credit cards.

The essential workflow automation features

To help you find the best automation tool for your company, we have researched the CRM market and created a list of features that each platform simply must have.

In other words, all of the functions listed below are essential for the success of a business that automates its work.

Graphical representation

As we explained earlier, workflows depend on highly structured processes that consist of a series of steps. Each step represents a task that needs to be performed to successfully fulfil the objective.

Since business processes can be broken down into a high number of small, incremental tasks, it’s important that your workflow automation software supports graphs and charts. This is because graphical representation helps you visualize the tasks, as well as plan and track the progress of your workflow.

Web forms

A workflow automation system should be easy to work with. This means it should rely on clear and concise web forms with a user-friendly interface.

Cloud-based technology

Cloud technology is vital for the success of a business. Companies can no longer rely on office-based systems, as they are considerably less secure and prone to malfunction. Cloud-based solutions, such as Simply CRM, provide companies with a platform that is accessible non-stop, regardless of the user’s location or device.

Regular notifications

Regular notifications come with cloud technology and they are another must-have when it comes to business operations. Simply put, a business owner or executive needs to be updated regarding all changes within the organization. To make decisions about the company’s direction and its priorities, they need to handle the latest information as soon as possible.

Access control

In order for workflows to be executed properly, you need to implement access control and determine access rights based on user roles. This will ensure that only accredited personnel can access highly sensitive data and edit the workflows.

Parallel workflows

Parallel workflows will allow you to perform multiple tasks at once – similar to how different departments often work with the same client, focusing on different areas of expertise to achieve the optimal results. This type of workflows will also let you track the progress of each individual task within the workflow.

Reports

While all other features are useful functions that can aid a business and allow it to perform to its full potential, none of them will be particularly helpful unless your automation tool doesn’t produce powerful reports, analyses and insights.

Before you start using workflows and automating your tasks, make sure to check out our article on automation mistakes that you should avoid.

Simply CRM provides all the essential features, as well as many other complementary options, that you can try out for free. Visit Simply CRM to learn more about this advanced platform or a book a consultation with a workflow automation expert.

August 24, 2019
0
Marketing Automation

10 Marketing Automation Mistakes To Avoid

By | Automation

By now, everyone already knows that automation makes marketing easier, better and more efficient. It improves sales conversions, shortens the sales cycle, extends the customer lifetime, increases ROI and creates a more cooperative work force.

However, for all its benefits, marketing automation can come at a heavy cost. Especially if it’s not implemented correctly.

In such cases, it’s not uncommon for businesses to lose thousands of dollars with almost no end result. Poorly designed automation strategies are especially common in small businesses and entrepreneurs who have to do everything on their own due to a lack of fund.

To help you design the optimal automation strategy, we’ve written the following post, which will cover the most common automation mistakes that you need to avoid to create successful campaigns.

We understand that you may still have some doubts about marketing automation. If that is the case, we recommend that you first check out our detailed guide on marketing automation and CRMs.

Now, let’s move on to the most widespread marketing automation mistakes and explain how to avoid and fix them.

The most common marketing automation mistakes

Mistake 1 – Not having a plan

You’ve purchased a marketing automation software and you can’t wait to start using it. However, before you start using your preferred software, you need to develop a detailed plan and strategy. Without it, your automation will amount to little and you will continue losing leads and prospects.

Mistake 2 – Not integrating your database

Another widespread automation mistake comes in the form of unused databases. If your automation software does not contain a database with the most valuable information, you’re essentially starting with a huge disadvantage.

Always make sure to integrate and incorporate your database into your marketing automation solution. This will help you make data-driven decisions and develop highly effective strategies.

Mistake 3 – Developing a grand strategy

Most entrepreneurs and business owners are too eager to automate everything within their companies as soon as possible. However, that is rarely the optimal solution.

While corporations such as Amazon and Google can automate entire systems, smaller companies need to approach automation more carefully. Start by automating small tasks and processes and slowly work your way up.

If you attempt to automate everything at once, chances are your automation will fail before it even kicks off.

Mistake 4 – Prioritizing quantity over quality

This is a common mistake among many online businesses. In an attempt to beat the competition, you may be tempted to prioritize quantity over quality and focus on churning out more content than anyone else in the niche.

However, low-quality content will not bring the desired results. Automation is designed to help businesses develop highly personalized solutions for your clients.

Invest more time in your content development strategy and make sure you’re only sending content that is exceptional in terms of sheer quality.

Mistake 5 – Not using your software to full extent

This is not a marketing automation mistake on its own, but it’s one of the most common oversights.

If you’ve purchased a marketing automation software, it’s likely that you had to invest handsomely to get the best solution for your company. These programs often come with tons of useful features that are easy to overlook if you focus too much on getting your content in front of the target audience.

We advise you to carefully go through your program and its documentation to identify all features that may help you grow the company. There is more to marketing than sending email campaigns.

Try out all the functions that your software can offer – you may be surprised to find out what you can do with it.

Mistake 6 – Playing set and forget

We understand that the purpose of automation is to relieve the work load and bring better marketing results. However, that does not mean that you can just set an automation campaign and forget about it.

Automation will undoubtedly save you countless hours of work, but you still need to guide the marketing campaigns and monitor its progress.

Further, you may find that your marketing efforts aren’t returning the desired results. This usually isn’t a reason for concern and it happens to all marketing campaigns over time, but it means you need to analyze your data and develop more optimal strategies.

Marketing is a dynamic field. If you don’t stay in the loop and continue to work on it, your campaigns will get progressively worse.

Don’t get lazy and fall into the trap of this common marketing automation mistake.

Mistake 7 – Testing more than one variable at a time

While many marketing teams forget about testing their campaigns, there is a surprisingly high number of marketing experts that go off in the opposite end. Too eager to improve their performance, marketers are sometimes tempted to test more than one variable at a time.

Of course, this type of testing can be beneficial and it’s far better to test more than necessary than to not test at all, but it brings a host of other potential problems. For instance, if you’re testing multiple variables, you will never really know what variable brought the results that you’re getting.

This means you will have to perform more rounds of testing to find the positive variable. In other words, you’re only losing valuable time because you will still have to test each variable on its own.

Mistake 8 – Spamming your contacts

Many businesses start sending emails in smaller intervals in an attempt to increase the total number of conversions. If you’re sending unwanted or spam emails to your contacts, you’re not only decreasing your conversion rates, but you’re also building a negative reputation for your business.

You can send emails more regularly, but always ask yourself whether you would be comfortable with receiving a certain number of emails per week. If not, it’s likely that your prospects aren’t either.

Even if they don’t unsubscribe, your messages will become more likely to end in the spam box. Email algorithms are very good at detecting spam emails – you probably won’t be able to outsmart them.

Mistake 9 – Using more than one automation platform

Marketers are sometimes too eager to automate tasks. This may require more than one automation platform, but we highly recommend against it.

Naturally, multiple platforms can bring more features than a single automation program, but it also brings a host of unnecessary and unwanted options. If you’re starting to automate your processes, a high number of features may be counterproductive and it may be hard to monitor and analyze the feedback.

Additionally, if you’re using more platforms, you run the risk of forgetting to check up on certain tasks and processes, which makes them more likely to malfunction or perform poorly.

We recommend that you do your research before you opt for any marketing software. If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that will help you guide your marketing efforts, we advise that you check out Simply CRM.

This powerful platform will allow you to store and process your customer data as well as automate all types of marketing tasks.

Mistake 10 – Not being GDPR compliant

If your business is operating within the European Union, you simply must ensure that your company is GDPR compliant. You need to protect your customer data and use it in accordance with the user agreement between your company and the clients.

Furthermore, you need to allow your clients to unsubscribe from your emails with a clearly visible link at the bottom of your message, accompanied by a physical address of your company.

Failure to do this may result in lawsuits, which could ruin your business.

Final words

There you have it. The ten most common marketing automation mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

Do you think we’ve missed a widespread marketing automation mistake? Let us know in the comments below.

If you need help automating your business, feel free to contact us and our teams will set up a powerful automation platform that you can use in your everyday work.

August 24, 2019
0
Why your business needs a CRM system

Why Your Business Needs A CRM

By | Education

Now that we have covered the basics of CRMs and explained what CRMs are, let’s move on to the next question that naturally follows: why does any business need a CRM?

It’s true that we have already mentioned certain advantages of CRM software in the previous blog post, but we haven’t really outlined all the benefits of a reliable CRM.

This article will describe the main advantages of CRMs as well as explain why companies need them to improve their businesses.

More available and affordable than ever

CRMs are no longer reserved for companies with large budgets. As the CRM market started its rapid growth in 2010, these systems gradually became more affordable and available to a wider range of businesses.

Today, small companies can easily afford a fully functional CRM for a very modest price. In fact, an increasing number of CRM systems are now offering free, basic versions for small businesses.

Additionally, the fierce competition that was borne out of this rapid market growth means that CRMs were forced to expand their list of features, offering more functional solutions at lower prices.

Now, almost all CRMs have optimized mobile versions or applications, which was a rarity even just a few years ago. This is especially important in light of the new research that shows that the number of salespeople that meet their sales quota rises by as much as 300% if they use a mobile CRM.

Improves the return on investment

Implementing a CRM is arguably the most foolproof way to improve your return on investment. Research shows that each $1 spent on CRM brings in at least $5 in revenue, with some estimates claiming that the figure can rise up to $8.71.

How does a CRM provide such exceptional results?

It streamlines manual tasks and processes, reducing the number of hours spent on repetitive tasks and allowing employees to focus on developing more effective business strategies.

By automating tasks, CRMs also allow employees and staff members to spend more time engaging with customers and improving customer relationships.

Provides better conversion rates

Cloudswave has found that a fully implemented CRM can significantly improve the conversion rates.

This is a direct consequence of the reduced workload that is made possible by automating tasks and processes. Employees spend considerably more time working with clients, nurturing leads and forming relationships.

When a salesperson collects customer data and stores it on a CRM platform, they can better understand the needs and desires of each specific customer as well as follow up with a personalized approach that can even increase the customer lifetime value.

Additionally, Cloudswave has shown that 75% of companies have no defined process for nurturing leads. This means that most businesses have a poor understanding of their leads, their position in the sales cycle and their expectations.

In other words, companies are losing a notable portion of leads due to their inability to assess them and differentiate them from uninterested consumers. A high-quality CRM software helps solve this problem by automating lead nurturing and marketing processes.

Integrated email marketing campaigns that can be run from CRMs such as Simply greatly improve the conversion rates and help convert leads to clients.

Streamlines marketing efforts

The best CRMs are designed with your clients in mind.

They revolve around collecting valuable data that allows you to find the optimal marketing strategy to reach and establish your target audience through automated tasks.

As mentioned earlier, CRMs improve the conversion rates by relying on the customer information collected through the system. This can be taken a step further through carefully tailored and personalized ads that help the marketing departments optimize their campaigns.

However, that is only possible thanks to the powerful platforms that most CRMs offer, as will be explained here.

Increases customer retention and satisfaction

According to Capterra, half of all CRM users think that the software helps them build more meaningful client relationships and increase customer satisfaction.

In other words, CRMs increase customer retention by improving the overall quality of customer support, as they allow the company to store valuable personal information from each client. Each staff member can easily look up a customer’s profile, their purchases and communication history to better respond to their needs and desires.

This is vitally important because satisfied customers are more loyal and likely to continue working with a business. They are essential for the long-term success of any business.

Offers a powerful platform

CRMs centralize all data on a single platform that is available 24/7, while comprehensive reports and analytics help managers make informed decisions about the company’s work processes.

While storing customer data on internal spreadsheets and documents can be beneficial when the company needs unique reports, their use brings far more negatives than positives.

Such documents are rarely stored using cloud technology, which greatly limits their accessibility. Even the unique reports that can be made from these sheets are far from the ideal solution, considering the fact that it can take days and even weeks to create them. Investing so much time into a single report is unjustified when CRMs such as Simply can create comprehensive reports within seconds.

On top of everything, the unique, manually created sheets can contain outdated information, which means that the reports can be practically useless, given that a significant portion of data in them can simply be incorrect.

As mentioned earlier, advanced CRM systems provide instant access from all types of devices with an Internet connection. This allows sales representatives to reduce the duration of the sales cycle by as much as 14%, according to Nucleus Research.

The all-in-one platform offered by CRMs provides staff members with a clearer overview of the most valuable customer information. This way, CRMs promote better cooperation between employees and improve alignment between the company departments.

Acts as a long-term solution for businesses

As explained in this article, CRMs offer various benefits to businesses and they are practically a necessity in the highly competitive global market, even though their adoption rate stands at just 26%.

Most users give up on the program, because they do not use the CRM platform regularly and consistently. This low adoption rate outlines the importance of staff training and education on the best uses of CRM.

While CRMs are undoubtedly a great solution, users should understand that they need to fully adopt them and make them the focal point of their work. People who do not use CRMs on a daily basis can easily forget all the processes, the metrics and task management options that are available to them. This eventually prevents them from successfully using their CRM.

Research from the Aberdeen Group has recently shown that the most effective sales teams are 81% likely to use a CRM software on a regular basis. The benefits of CRMs are clear, but they cannot improve your business unless you and your employees are willing to put in the necessary effort.

However, once you fully adopt the CRM, your business will have the potential to start growing exponentially.

If you have any questions or comments about CRMs, feel free to contact us. Our support team is available non-stop and they will be more than happy to help you find the best solution for your business.

August 24, 2019
0
What is a CRM

What Is CRM?

By | Education

CRM stands for customer relationship management.

It represents a sales management system that allows businesses to create long-term relationships with their clients and customers. A CRM lets you manage your contacts, handle the sales process and track data to acquire valuable insights into customer behavior.

This type of software also organizes and maintains relationships with individual customers allowing businesses to create personalized services and products.

Considering the wide array of CRM features, it’s hardly surprising that the CRM market value has already surpassed $40 billion. This rapid growth is largely fueled by businesses who are adopting customer relationship managers in an attempt to increase revenue.

How do companies use CRMs?

Believe it or not, almost all businesses rely on CRM concepts and ideas.

In the older days, companies used paper notes and clipboards to save and share information between employees. Later, spreadsheets and hard drives took over.

Today, web-based CRM solutions keep businesses in the loop and allow employees to access data from practically any location and device.

Modern business simply can no longer afford to operate without a complex system that organizes valuable and insightful data. The sheer volume of information has simply become too high to be tracked with traditional methods.

Additionally, the Internet may have brought many advantages for large businesses and corporations, but it’s also given people sophisticated tools that can easily crack down any outdated security system that protects spreadsheets and hard drives.

All customer data needs to be filtered to extract valuable insights as well as protected to hide the useful information from the competition.

The solution for all these problems comes in the form of CRM systems, which represent large-scale systems that centralize, simplify and protect sensitive customer data. The best systems can also help businesses become more efficient by automating tasks and streamlining the sales process.

Who should use a CRM?

Everyone. Everyone should be using it.

Each company, regardless of its size, can reap benefits from the implementation of a CRM, because it allows employees within a company to better coordinate their work and manage their relationships with clients.

Similarly, a good CRM can help every company become more efficient. A platform that unifies all valuable data and makes it available to all staff members is proven to increase the overall productivity of a company.

This increase is noticeable almost immediately, as employees no longer have to waste time searching for relevant customer information. Everything is just a few clicks away on your CRM system of choice.

In other words, all companies that want to improve their work environment and further their growth should look to implement a CRM.

How does a CRM help sales teams?

When you collect all your data on a centralized platform, the sales department can assess customer information and create detailed reports and analyses. The marketing team can later use these thoughtful reports to close more sales by creating customer-specific solutions and offers.

Furthermore, these powerful dashboards allow sales teams to track customer orders, behaviour and even social media accounts to create more meaningful, long-lasting relationships.

In the older days, it was easy for information to be thrown out with old notepads or remain hidden on forgotten spreadsheets. Modern CRMs have solved these problems by storing all data on cloud resources. This allows companies to always possess real-time data and act in accordance with their customers’ needs and desires.

Cloud vs on-site CRM

It’s been more than a decade since businesses starting implementing CRM technologies. A study made in 2008 found that over 88 percent of all CRMs were on-premise systems.

As new technologies evolved, this percentage gradually declined – more and more companies started switching to cloud-based systems. The debate on what makes a high-quality CRM soon started as older platforms fought to remain relevant in an ever-changing environment.

However, on-site systems quickly proved to be ineffective, as they limited the software’s usability to a single location. To stay connected with their customers, modern businesses needed platforms that are accessible 24/7, from virtually anywhere on the planet.

This necessity quickly gave us a rapid growth of cloud-based, mobile CRMs – highly efficient platforms that require no hardware components or parts in the company offices.

Unsurprisingly, businesses were quick to adopt the new cloud technology and switch to this new type of CRM systems. Today, it’s estimated that 87 percent of businesses utilize web-based CRM platforms.

Additionally, the CRM market literally started exploding in growth, as a recent industry study found that CRM usage rose from 56 percent to 74 percent in 2017. The same study also concluded that 91 percent of companies with more than 11 employees are already using a CRM within their organization. For companies with 10 employees that numbers is slightly lower, but still comes out to an impressive 50 percent.

Simply put, this is the age of CRMs.

No business can allow itself to fall behind on industry trends and continue working without a CRM for much longer. It’s only a matter of time before CRMs become an integral part of each company, regardless of size.

What are the key features?

The number of available CRM features depends on the nature of the system, its price and plans. Specialized CRMs are customized to fit a certain type of businesses and their features are usually limited.

General CRMs can have countless features and their features are typically divided into categories which correspond to the pricing plans. What follows is a breakdown of the most important features that each CRM should have.

If your CRM does not possess all these functionalities, you may want to consider switching to another, more complete solution.

  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Sales management – from leads to final sales and invoicing
  • Task management and automation
  • Access control
  • Custom fields and filters
  • Reports and analytics
  • Instant messaging
  • Easy integration
  • Multilingual support

Most CRMs have a satisfactory level of integration, but you should carefully assess the available integrations for each CRM. If you’re considering a specific CRM, make sure that it integrates with the most popular software tools and platforms, such as WordPress, MailChimp, LiveChat, G Suite, etc.

A CRM can have all the perfect features that your company needs, but if it does not integrate well with other programs, its usability and efficiency will be questionable.

Advanced CRMs, such as Simply, go even further and offer a complete solution that integrates with WooCommerce, Outlook and many other systems. What’s more, Simply also incorporates customer support services to provide clients with a cloud ecosystem that covers all aspects of a modern business.

Why do businesses need a CRM?

We have already illustrated the staggering growth of CRMs over the recent years. However, that alone does not prove that CRMs are a cost-efficient solution – maybe the companies are merely testing this new technology.

To further demonstrate why businesses need a CRM system, we have collected the following statistics that showcase CRM’s effectiveness.

  • Forbes estimates that the CRM industry is worth at least $36 billion. The same source claims that Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) on CRMs equals 15.1%.
  • IBM has found that the CRM market has the highest growth rates in the software industries. The year-on-year growth adds up to 27%.
  • The return-on-investment (ROI) of CRMs is incredibly high. Forrester estimates the ROI at 245%, while Nutshell claims that each $1 invested brings up to $8.71 in revenue.
  • CRMs are especially effective for small and medium-sized businesses. Up to 60% of small businesses use a CRM system for email marketing campaigns, which have a 300% increased conversion rate. (Cloudswave via IBM)
  • Cloudswave also found that leads cost around 20% less with a CRM, while the average purchase value can be increased by up to 40% if the company uses a CRM system.
  • CRMs improve customer relationships by 47%, according to Capterra. Meanwhile, Software Advice claims that 74% of business that use a CRM report better customer relationships with their clients.
  • A research study from Annuitas Group has proven that almost a half of all leads that start within a CRM convert and make at least one purchase.

The potential downsides

While everyone can benefit from a CRM, it’s worth mentioning that these systems can also bring in potential drawbacks.

Most notably, CRM systems can be hard to adopt, especially if the employees are not used to advanced technological solutions. Sometimes, the entire business may need to adapt to the CRM system, which can take a considerable amount of time.

Similarly, workers may require professional training and non-stop support from the CRM team. Most employees have no previous experience of using CRMs and the feeling of uncertainty that an entire new system can bring may sometimes be overwhelming. It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that the adoption rate of CRMs is as low as 26% across all industries.

Proper training and high-quality customer support from CRMs can help employees struggling with the system to overcome the difficulties and their importance truly cannot be overestimated.

A free trial version or a decent refund policy are arguably as important as support. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a CRM solution and lose everything if the system proves to be a bad fit for your company.

However, it’s worth mentioning that companies can also have unrealistic expectations from CRMs. Business owners should understand that a CRM cannot turn their company into a successful organization overnight. To acquire the benefits that CRMs undoubtedly offer, employees need to use the system for a prolonged period and work with it on a daily basis.

Inconsistent and irregular use of a CRM may still have a positive effect on the company, but its success will be limited.

Another downside to adopting a CRM comes in the form of limited features. However, that is only an issue with low-grade CRMs that are incredibly cheap. More comprehensive solutions have no such limits, but they typically require a somewhat higher initial investment, which can put off some businesses.

Should a business use a CRM?

In the end, it’s important to emphasize that the benefits far outweigh any potential downsides of CRMs, most of which can be avoided by simply researching the market before making a purchase.

However, the decision to incorporate a CRM within any organization shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s essential that you assess all of your company’s options before you settle on a CRM software.

If you need help deciding whether or not you need a CRM, consult our article on how to find the best CRM, schedule a free consultation or a free trial with Simply CRM. Our experts can help you by evaluating your business and recommending the best solution for you.

August 18, 2019
0
How To Choose The Best CRM for Startups

How To Find The Best CRM For A Small Business

By | Education

In our earlier articles, we covered topics that dealt with CRMs in general, when it’s the right time to invest in CRM software and why companies decide to implement such complex systems. In this piece, we will explain what to look for in a CRM and how to choose the best CRM for a small business or a startup.

You may think that a little bit of Internet research can do the job and help you choose the ideal CRM for your company. However, that’s a misconception that is common among small business owners and managers.

The reality is that there are more CRMs than you can imagine. The market has grown astonishingly fast in recent years and CRMs now cover an enormous spectre of online businesses and organizations.

With so many options available, it’s harder than ever to find the optimal solution that fits a specific business. This may cause you to look into general CRMs that can handle a wide variety of companies, but that is rarely a good decision.

While most CRMs should be able to do the job for a small business or a startup, general CRMs will require much more time and effort to run smoothly. For example, you will probably need to create lots of custom modules, features and records, if you decide to choose a CRM such as HubSpot or Microsoft Dynamics.

Needless to say, no business can afford to lose precious time like that.

Conversely, if you choose a CRM solution specifically designed for your niche, you will have most of the necessary features pre-installed and ready for use.This alone can save you days and weeks of work on your new platform.

So, let’s delve into the matter and explain how you can choose the best CRM software for your company as well as what you should look into before making the decision to buy a CRM.

What to know before you buy a CRM

Before you buy or even start looking for a CRM, you should outline your company’s goals and objectives, in both the short and the long term.

Consider how a CRM can help your business achieve its goals and don’t hesitate to consult your sales department before you make any decision.

Your sales representatives will spend the majority of their time working with the CRM software you choose. It’s important that they’re on board with the specific solution that you have in mind.

The next step is to specify your budget.

Be realistic. Evaluate how much you can invest and calculate whether or not the investment can help you achieve the goals that you outlined. This is arguably the hardest step for most business owners, because they often expect instant returns on the investment.

Keep in mind that it may take some time for your employees to fully adopt the CRM and your company to start reaping the benefits.

What to look for in a CRM

When you start researching CRMs, you’ll want to pay attention to what features and functions each solution offers. You should be looking for a solution that supports the widest array of options, which includes:

  • A customer database that allows you to save all the communication history with every client
  • Sales management tools that allow you to streamline the sales process and monitor your sales progression
  • Access control that will help you assign viewing rights and run multiple teams within your CRM
  • Task management overview of completed, ongoing and planned tasks and activities
  • Automated workflows that send out emails, updates, reminders, etc.
  • Powerful analytics that will let you assess your marketing efforts and adjust your advertising campaigns and strategies
  • Mobile support for smartphones and tablets
  • Integration with the most popular online services, including billing solutions, social media, marketing programs, etc.
  • GDPR compatibility
  • Free demo or trial version that will allow you to test the product for yourself.
  • Exceptional customer support and training program

Once you’ve covered all these features and functions, you may want to look for additional options, such as:

  • Niche-specific modules for your business
  • Mobile apps for Android and iOS devices
  • Integration with other CRMs (in case you need to switch CRMs in the future)

When you identify a few potential CRMs that could help your business, it’s time to read up on reviews. Check what others are saying about the CRM solution that you found interesting. Look into both expert and user reviews, but keep in mind that expert reviews may be sponsored and unreliable.

Similarly, don’t forget that large companies can easily buy fake user reviews.

This means that you should look up reviews on at least a few different tech review websites. If you’re unsure where to start, visit the following pages:

While you’re there, make sure to compare the different CRM solutions.

Many CRMs now offer countless features and it’s easy to get lost in the long lists of the available functions. That’s why it’s best to compare CRMs side to side and check what each of them offers to your business.

In the end, don’t forget that CRMs are a long-term solution. Always look to find a flexible CRM that can naturally scale with your company. Keep in mind that you may need to customize the system as your operations grow and your business increases in scope.

Lastly, never hesitate to contact the team behind the CRM and their customer service. This will help you in more ways than one.

Additionally, the support team should be able to tell you how your business in particular could utilize their software to achieve the optimal results with minimum effort. This is why the importance of a free consultation cannot be overestimated.

Without expert help, most business owners that have never used CRMs will struggle with the system. In fact, research shows that the adoption rate of CRMs is just 26%, primarily due to the lack of support in the installation phase.

Moreover, if you configure the CRM on your own, you will likely do a poor job of it, unless you have prior experience with it. At best, a poorly configured CRM will give only modest returns.

Recommended CRM systems

Now, in case you don’t have the time to do the necessary research and outline the best CRMs for your specific business, we will present you with three top-rated systems recommended by industry experts.

However, before we proceed, keep in mind that these CRMs may not be a good fit for your organization. There is no doubt that each of these systems is good on its own, but the harsh truth is that you can’t really find the optimal CRM for you without trying it out.

Simply CRM

Simply CRM is the first CRM that we would recommend for small businesses and startups. It comes with an intuitive user interface that contains all the essential features and it’s available at a fairly affordable price.

Moreover, it offers all of its functions within its single pricing plan, rather than lock away the most useful features behind multiple payment levels. This makes it more accessible than most CRMs.

Notable features:

  • Free phone and email support
  • Sales Force Automation
  • Access control
  • Mobile functionality

HubSpot

HubSpot is another powerful CRM system that is suited for small to medium-sized companies. This CRM is packed full of useful features, but it’s not the most affordable software on the market, as it will set you back at least $800 per month if you opt for the premium plan.

Although this sizeable investment will likely pay off, it simply prices out a large number of small businesses that can’t really afford it.

Notable features:

  • Pipeline management
  • Numerous integrations
  • Social media
  • Ad analytics

Microsoft Dynamics

Similar to most Microsoft products, Dynamics is a well-known CRM platform that has been around for decades. It comes with many features and integrations, but it’s interface is terribly outdated and incredibly hard to navigate.

This means it’s definitely not suited for beginners and people who have no experience working with CRM platforms. However, thanks to Microsoft’s unlimited resources, Dynamics is available in more than 30 languages, which makes it the most accessible CRM on the market.

Notable features:

  • Outdated interface
  • Microsoft flow
  • All-inclusive Microsoft platform
  • Available in more than 30 languages

There you have it! The best CRM systems that you can use for a startup company or a small business. If you need any additional help choosing the best solution, feel free to contact us.

August 18, 2019
0
CRMs and Marketing Automation

CRMs And Marketing Automation

By | Automation, Education

An increasing number of businesses is starting to adopt automation technology and it’s now expected that investments in marketing automation will reach $25 billion in the next five years.

In other words, automation is becoming an essential part of business and owners can no longer afford to wait around. Entrepreneurs and executives need to stay ahead of the curve and educate themselves on the proper use of marketing automation to propel their businesses.

To help, we have already written up extensive guides on what CRMs are and how they can help companies achieve their business goals. In this article, we will focus on the subject of marketing automation and explain how CRMs utilize automation to allow businesses to thrive.

What is marketing automation?

Generally speaking, marketing automation represents a software solution that automates repetitive and time-consuming tasks, relieving the workload on the employees. In marketing departments, automation is used to eliminate all types of manual activities, including:

  • Email campaigns
  • SMS campaigns
  • Social media posting
  • Ad placement
  • Data analysis and management

Why use marketing automation?

Marketing automation doesn’t just help you reduce the workload, it also helps increase your productivity and improve the overall work environment.

If your business relies on a list of leads, contacts or opportunities, it represents the ideal candidate for marketing automation. This means you can use marketing automation to:

  • Improve sales conversions
  • Shorten the sales cycle
  • Extend the customer lifetime
  • Improve engagement rates
  • Create a more collaborative work environment
  • Increase ROI

However, a CRM or marketing automation software can help your company in other ways as well. For example, it can reduce the amount of monotonous admin work, such as invoicing, writing proposals, etc.

In addition to that, it can streamline the hiring process by creating an email chain that will automatically recognize the best candidates and contact them. Similarly, it can improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns by segmenting your audience and creating trigger-based messages.

Further, it lets you plan multi-channel marketing automation and manage it on the go. This way, you can even create dynamic, personalized content for your landing pages and emails.

How to know if your business needs marketing automation

As with almost any technological solution, traditional businesses are notoriously slow to implement marketing automation. Despite the overwhelming evidence that automation reduces costs and creates a more efficient workplace, business owners are still reluctant to try it out.

If you’re thinking about testing marketing automation with a CRM, but you’re unsure whether or not you really need it, it’s probable that you should have tried it out a long time ago. However, it’s true that certain types of businesses are more suited to marketing automation than others.

This includes:

  • Companies that rely on predictable communication patterns
  • Organizations that have a high number of leads, contacts or customers
  • Businesses with at least $50,000 in annual revenue

Naturally, these are not requirements to use marketing automation. In fact, anyone can try it out, regardless of their company size. Still, companies that fall within one of the categories described above will experience the greatest benefits from automating their marketing processes.

If your company does not belong on the previous list, you will need to analyze your current state of operation. To help you identify the potential need for a CRM, we have collected the most common signs that mean your business is not fulfilling its potential.

If any of the following statements could be used to describe your company, you may need to consider implementing marketing automation.

  1. Your sales process is undefined.
  2. Your leads are handled irregularly and inconsistently.
  3. You’re not upselling to existing customers (or not upselling enough).
  4. Your company still relies on bulk newsletters.
  5. Your customer life cycle is relatively short.
  6. You’re still responding to all inquiries manually.
  7. Your sales and marketing processes are taking a disproportionately high amount of time that is constantly growing.

How CRMs and marketing automation interact

Now that we have covered the basics of marketing automation, let’s explain how CRMs and marketing automation interact in modern businesses.

Strictly speaking, traditional CRMs do not deal with marketing automation. They represent elaborate systems that are used to manage customer data and improve the communication between clients and company representatives to increase revenue through sales.

This means that a CRM platform assists sales people, who nurture the leads generated through marketing campaigns. Sales departments are equipped with marketing data collected in the system, which they use to guide the leads through the entire sales cycle and eventually close the sale.

Meanwhile, the primary function of marketing automation is to collect collect data and generate leads from marketing campaigns. As such, marketing automation is primarily used by marketers and marketing departments.

At their core, CRMs and marketing automation are complementary and businesses need both types of software to maximize their output. This is why advanced CRM systems, such as Simply CRM, incorporate marketing automation within their platforms to create a 360-degree view of each business and avoid the most common automation mistakes.

This way, Simply allows all employees to have access to real-time data regarding each lead, opportunity or contact.

Why incorporate marketing automation in a CRM?

You may be wondering why you should incorporate marketing automation in a CRM. Surely, it’s better to have a highly specialized program that deals only with automation and advanced software in the form of a CRM to generate the highest revenues.

While this may sometimes be true, it’s often misleading and incorrect. Moreover, it’s the wrong perspective. You should not be thinking about what marketing automation and a CRM can bring individually, but focus on what results they can bring combined.

When you integrate marketing within a CRM or you choose a CRM that comes with integrated marketing automation, such as Simply, you can enjoy the following benefits:

  • Reduced costs
  • Increased productivity
  • Centralized platform
  • Unified data management
  • Improved collaboration

Moreover, when you link marketing automation with a CRM, you will be able to better track your sales, ROI and revenue in real time. The improved collaboration between the different departments will lead to a better customer experience, which will result in more sales and profit. This is why marketing automation platforms integrate well with most major CRMs.

However, Simply CRM goes a step further as it contains its very own built-in automation system in the form of workflows within the platform that is priced at only $19/month.

Visit Simply to learn more about their platform and all of its unique features or schedule a free trial to try out marketing automation today.

August 16, 2019
0
Build A Sales Funnel

How To Build An Effective Sales Funnel

By | Education, Sales

One of the most common questions that new business owners and entrepreneurs ask is: What’s the most effective marketing technique that will get me leads?

However, this question is almost impossible to answer. It assumes that there is a technique or an approach that will immediately turn a complete stranger who has never heard of your business into a paying customer.

Even if you invest heavily in your marketing efforts to drive qualified traffic to your website, it’s unlikely that these visitors will buy your product or service right away. Instead of hopelessly looking for a technique that will instantly bring you customers, it’s better to consider how your business presents itself and guides your prospects to the sale.

You will quickly find that this leads to the creation of a sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel?

It’s hard to come up with a definition that covers all the intricacies of a sales funnel. We can represent it as the journey that your prospects pass through to become paying customers.

For example, your business markets its products or services to thousands of people, but only a fraction of them will interact with the ad and provide you with their contact information, becoming leads.

Further, only a small percentage of the leads will actually convert to paying customers. This is why the strategy is called a sales funnel. You need to funnel prospects down to acquire new clients and grow your revenue.

Why is a sales funnel important?

A sales funnel is important because it adds structure to your business processes. Without it, attracting new customers usually comes down to shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.

To succeed, a business needs a highly structured process that will eventually turn strangers to customers. Otherwise, the sales will depend on sheer luck and word of mouth marketing. Needless to say, that’s far from the optimal growth strategy for any type of business.

Similarly, a sales funnel is important because it lets you track and analyze the behaviour of your prospects and leads. This helps you identify potential weak points and improve your organization to capture more leads and close more sales.

In conclusion, a sales funnel is important because it:

  • Allows you to choose the marketing strategies and optimize them for the specifics of your business
  • Helps you relate to your customers and track their behaviour
  • Generates more revenue by allowing you to capture more leads
  • Provides you with a competitive advantage over other businesses in your niche.

However, it’s important that you understand that a sales funnel isn’t a fixed solution that will help your business grow. It’s actually a highly flexible inbound marketing technique that will require a lot of testing and optimization before it returns notable results.

The four stages of a sales funnel

A sales funnel can comprise of a number of different phases, but each funnel relies on the same basic stages that cover brand awareness, business consideration, product or service interest, and consumer action.

Now, let’s cover each stage separately and explain how they play into the funnel and direct the sales process of a business.

Stage 1 – Building awareness

In the first and the largest stage, your business is dealing with unknown people who are interacting with your product or service for the first time. They may or may not be interested in your business and this is why you will not be spending much money per person in this stage.

Instead, you should focus on casting a wide net and reaching the highest possible number of people to build awareness. The precise size of your audience depends on the size of your market and the marketing channels that you’re using.

Stage 2 – Business consideration

In this stage, your funnel is narrower and you should invest more per person. If the first stage contained the entire market, the second stage contains only people who are prospects, which means that they’re undoubtedly interested in the product or service that your company is offering.

They may have even interacted with your website or representatives, or left their contact information. This is why it’s essential that you invest more heavily in them – they’re almost halfway down the funnel and it’s up to you to direct them towards the final sale.

Anyone that doesn’t need your product or service, anyone that doesn’t have the budget for it or isn’t the decision maker should fall off in this stage.

Stage 3 – Specific product or service interest

As you may have assumed by now, stage three is even narrower than the previous stages and it’s the first stage in which the prospects are definitely interested in your specific offer.

Here, you’re dealing with people who are ready to buy, but they’re just not yet sold on your product or service. They represent qualified leads and you should invest handsomely to capture them.

If the first stage had thousands of people, the third stage will only have a handful of people. These people have already engaged with your business, either through email, social media or brick-and-mortar shops. They may even be following your website and waiting for the next big sale to hit before they buy your product or service.

The majority of people in stage three should pass through stage four as well. If that is not the case, your funnel may not be functioning properly and you may have a problem.

In case you’re missing out on a relatively high percentage of qualified leads, you will need to reconsider how your business presents itself to potential customers. Assess your competition and try to identify weak points.

For example, you may be asking for too much information or the process of sale closure may be too complicated for your target audience. This means you need to perform A/B testing and ask for customer feedback to better gauge how you can improve their experience with your business.

Stage 4 – Consumer action

This is the key part of the funnel. In stage four, all customer objections have already been cleared and the customer is ready to take action and purchase your product or service.

More importantly, they have everything they need to make a purchase decision and act on it. This stage is usually a formality, in which you sign the deal, get the payment information, etc.

If you’re losing customers in stage four, you have a major problem with your checkout process and you need to address it as soon as possible.

10 tips to build an effective sales funnel

Now that you know what a sales funnel is, why it is important and how you can structure it, it’s time for you to learn how to optimize your funnel and create a more effective solution for your business.

If your sales funnel isn’t performing as well as you had hoped or if you would just like to learn what marketing companies do to create better sales funnels, we advise you to go through the 10 tips listed below.

Each of them should help improve a sales funnel, if only marginally. Combined, they will develop a highly functioning funnel with incredible conversion rates.

  • Create a blog and publish regularly. A blog is a great way to organize all the important information that your potential customers should have. It will also help improve your SEO and drive more traffic to your landing pages.
  • Use a variety of marketing channels. The most successful companies utilize all types of marketing campaigns to drive awareness of their services. This includes on-page and off-page SEO, mailing campaigns, cold calling and pay-per-click marketing.
  • Analyze your marketing campaigns. To improve the use of your marketing budget, you will need to constantly analyze your marketing campaigns. Identify the best performing campaigns and allocate more funds to them.
  • Ask for feedback. You want your sales funnel to be customer-centric and the best way to ensure that you’re focusing on your clients is to ask them for feedback. Carefully evaluate their responses and adjust your funnel accordingly.
  • Include multiple call to actions within your funnel. Many of your visitors won’t be ready to make a purchase. To keep their attention and capture their email addresses, create multiple call to actions with free offers.
  • Use re-targeting to capture more leads. Re-target the website visitors that didn’t convert during their first visit. Most people will visit a website more than once before they make a purchase.
  • Develop a referral or affiliate program. This is arguably the easiest way to acquire new customers. Make sure to develop and advertise your referral or affiliate programs to your existing clients and motivate them to recommend your services.
  • Work on your brand authority. Most people prefer to stick with the largest brands. To ensure you’re constantly acquiring new customers, you need to build your brand by investing and sponsoring industry events and conferences.
  • Nurture your leads. Never give up on a lead, unless they unsubscribe or request that you stop contacting them. If they left their contact information to you, it means they’re interested in your product or service. Nurture the leads by sending them monthly or weekly newsletters and promotions.
  • Take immediate action. If you’re developing a sales funnels, you cannot allow yourself to waste precious time. Take immediate action and create a plan to slowly and carefully address all issues and optimize your funnel.

Now, you have everything that you need to start working on your sales funnel and improving its conversion rates. However, if you need any additional help with expanding your business, feel free to contact us.

Our team will be more than happy to help get your project off the ground with a unique offer for a versatile CRM system that can help you build sales funnels, landing pages, marketing automation and much more.

Ready to try Simply CRM? Schedule a free trial and start exploring a new way to manage and run your business.