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CRM software has revolutionized the way sales teams and marketing teams communicate with each other as well as clients. The software makes the sales process more objective and data-based, so future investment is based off of statistics and rather than intuition. And according to a recent Gartner report, the software is growing in popularity.

The report, titled “Market Trends: CRM Digital Initiatives Focus on Sales, Marketing, Support, and E-Commerce” explores into the latest trend of CRM software. According to the report, CRM software revenues will grow to $80 billion by 2025.

This forecast indicates that CRM software has been successful in improving sales and client relations for companies. The software was designed to make the entire process more efficient, and according to the recent forecast, it's apparently effective.

In addition, the report notes that most companies are now transitioning to mobile CRM software. Mobile software makes companies more flexible in the way they deal and communicate with clients. A recent ZDNet article quotes Vice President Ed Thompson, who explains the importance that large corporations are placing on mobility:

“The key area at the moment is mobile. Large organisations especially have their hands full with trying to understand how to make the most out if mobile technology.”

While CRM software can't entirely drive sales on its own for a company, it can certainly have a considerably positive impact on a company's sales. CRM software provides sales teams and marketing teams with the data and information they need to make informed decisions pertaining to the company's future sales. Such software is becoming more popular because companies are realizing the importance of tracking and analyzing client trends in terms of what they buy and when they but it.

If you would like more information about CRM software, contact us.

CRM Software

CRM software is most effective when used in conjunction with email marketing. It helps businesses stay away from their bad habits and send effective timely emails. Here's everything you need to know:

Don't send emails arbitrarily

Email marketing just isn't effective without a strategy. And even if you have one, it won't work unless you stick with it. Unfortunately, most businesses have proven incapable of doing so. There are consequences which sometimes outweigh the benefits of email marketing.

Use CRM software to send timely emails

With CRM software, businesses can send emails when they're most effective, i.e., right before a returning customer places an order. This helps you get more out of your email marketing campaign, and thus increase its ROI.

This Marketing Land article explains why basing your emails off of CRM software rather than an arbitrary schedule is preferred:

"It’s not uncommon for marketers to set all-encompassing limits on the number of emails customers receive per week. This is a mistake. Assuming every subscriber doesn’t want to receive more than two or three messages per week neglects your highly engaged subscribers who may be waiting impatiently to receive the next offer. Avoid making blanket statements about your subscriber base and focus on drilling down on the subscriber level."

How could you possibly know how often a particular customer wants to receive emails without analyzing data? CRM software answers this question for you.

Evaluate your campaign

Although CRM software is a good complement to an email marketing campaign, it's not a solution for all your problems. Running a proper campaign requires testing, and lots of it.

This applies to your CRM software as well. You might find that it's better to change exactly when you send a customer an email. Still, this process of trial-and-error is much simpler and more effective than the alternative.

To talk more about CRM software, or anything else, contact us today.

CRM Software

CRM software is all about data. The longer you use it, the more data you'll compile for your marketing and sales teams. In that light, we'd like to share three important statistics regarding CRM software.

ROI (Return on Investment)

At the end of the day, all businesses really care about is the ROI. In the short-run, you might improve internal and external communication, convert leads, and increase engagement, but in the long-run, you want to increase your profit.

According to Nucleus Research, CRM will help you on your journey. Their study states that for every dollar you spend on CRM software, it will return $8.71.

"Companies continue to make new investments in CRM to take advantage of new analytics, social collaboration, mobile, and other capabilities – and with good reason. In analyzing Nucleus ROI case studies on CRM, we found the average returns from CRM have increased since 2011, from $5.60 to $8.71 for every dollar spent."

That's an incredible ROI for an investment, especially since this is sustainable long-term.

Email marketing

The most common application of CRM software is email marketing. You can use marketing automation to send targeted emails to subscribers who are ready to place another order.

According to research by Marketing Charts, 6 out of 10 businesses use CRM software for email marketing. If the majority of your competitors are enhancing their marketing campaign, then you'll have to follow suit to keep up.

Sales representatives

Sales representatives benefit the most from CRM software. They can refer to the data to prepare for meetings and study up on specific clients.

CRM software helps sales representatives hit their quotas. According to Innoppl Technologies, 65% of sales reps who use mobile CRM achieve their quotas, which is almost double the amount that sales reps accomplish without the software.

The statistics back CRM software as much as it backs your sales representatives and marketing advisors. To talk more about CRM software, or anything else, contact us today.

 

CRM Software

CRM software has many practical applications in regard to business operations, the marketing process, and the sales process. When implemented correctly, just about every employee can use it as a reliable resource.

In addition to serving a practical purpose, CRM software also answers more big-picture questions that businesses must answer. According to a recent Business 2 Community article, just by having the software, you can know the answers to these questions:

 

"What do you know about the prospective customers who have filled out forms on your website or who are on your email list? How often does your sales or marketing team interact with them? Is your customer information compiled in a database that is up-to-date, as well as easy to access and navigate? If a possible investor wanted to see your sales growth throughout the past few years, how easy would it be for you to provide that information?"

 

It's important to know how you're doing with lead conversion and if your marketing and sales teams are aligned. Moreover, it's critical to stay organized so it's easy to communicate and work with investors.

In addition to just answering those questions, CRM software helps you hear the answers you want. With it, you're more likely to find out that you're converting a high percentage of your leads and keeping your customer information nice and organized.

Not knowing the answers to these questions leaves your business in the dark. In all likelihood, it also means that you wouldn't want to know where you stand anyway, since you're more likely to hear bad news. If that's your current situation, then it's crucial to focus on these areas as soon as possible. They're essential for the long-term health of your business operations.

If you implement CRM software today, then you can start using it tonight. That's how practical and applicable it is. But there's another benefit of using CRM software, which is that it helps you manage some very serious aspects of your business.

To talk more about CRM software, your marketing campaign, or anything else, contact us today.

CRM Software

Data plays a critical role in regard to CRM software. It's the key to nurturing leads, sending personalized emails, and getting in touch with customers right when they're about to place an order.

Of course, to enjoy all these benefits, you need to know how to use the data correctly. This applies not just to your analytics and applications, but to the way you input it as well.

Business 2 Community explains why so many businesses don't know how to input CRM data correctly. According to the article, because many employees have access to the software, it only takes one person to mix up information:

 

"If you don’t know how to use your CRM as best as you can, it could result in staff aimlessly plugging in data. One of these common CRM mistakes involves putting in data incorrectly. Wrong or misplaced data inevitably becomes useless data (especially if you can’t find it). Don’t let that happen to you, or your employees could seriously confuse customer information, ultimately risking losses."

 

CRM data is specific to each individual customer. It's essentially worthless if it all gets scrambled. To avoid this, you need to teach each employee how to input the data correctly. It's a simple process, but there's no room for error. In addition to the initial round of employee training, you should also host regular sessions so they remember the exact steps.

The analytics and applications are a different story. It's up to management to decide what to do with CRM data and how to incorporate it in their marketing strategy. If you're not sure what to do, then you can always reach out for help in this area.

Data is everything when it comes to CRM software. If it's inaccurate, misplaced, or not used correctly, then you won't enjoy the benefits you should. To talk more about CRM software, or anything else, contact us today.

 

 

CRM Software

If you use CRM software the right way, it can be an essential tool for helping your business with the following:

•obtaining access to customer data easily

•increasing the efficiency of the sales

•improving marketing campaigns

•improving customer satisfaction by providing better customer service

•creating and maintaining better relationships with current customers and future customers

In order for you to get the most out of your CRM software, there are some things you will need to do.

Get Your Employees Prepared

Since your sales team and other employees will be the ones using this software, you have to make sure you train them well enough.

You will need to have the budget, time, and energy to make sure they are getting the best training sessions you can provide. You may need to spend months on getting your employees adjusted to the software so they will feel comfortable when it is actually time to put it to good use.

Put The Software To Good Use You are not going to spend your time and money on a software and not actually use it, are you?

You will need people to actually use the software if you want to improve your business.

We understand that some of your employees may be a little hesitant to use something different, but once you implement the training session you can ensure them it is for the best. You can even offer rewards to the employees who agree to use the software. You can also offer more rewards to those who actually use it and constantly improve their sales with the software.

Have you been wanting to use a CRM software, but are not sure which one will work for your business? Contact us today to find out how you can find the best CRM software for your business operations.

 

CRM Software

There are lots of different CRM software out there and it can be hard to know what's right for your business. Here are a few things you should look for regardless of your goals:

Easy access

CRM software, like ACT! or HubSpot, should be easy to access in multiple ways. First of all, it shouldn't take lots of training for your employees to learn the software. They should be able to find their way around it easily enough. In addition, employees should be able to access the software from their mobile devices. The greater access there is, the more data they'll input, and the more effective the software will be.

Clear reports

Data is one of the best things about CRM software, provided that you can actually understand it. It's important to have software that produces clear reports.

According to this Event Industry News article, you should choose CRM software that helps you visualize your results:

"In-depth statistics and analysis can offer huge support for driving your hire business forward. However, if the reporting functionality of your chosen CRM system is difficult to understand or interpret, it’s useless. Be sure to choose a CRM that easily visualizes your results in a way that’s digestible and, most importantly, usable."

Don't just look for statistics and analytics. Make sure there are graphs that can help executives understand your findings.

Good support

Finally, there are going to be issues at some point with your CRM software. When these occur, it's important that you have good support to fall back on.

Good support goes beyond basic troubleshooting. An agency should also explain what went wrong and how you can avoid it in the future.

Other examples of support include helping you understand your CRM reports, providing employee training material, and scheduling regular maintenance. This will all vary from agency to agency. To talk more about CRM software, or anything else, contact us today. 

CRM Software

Some businesses stand to gain more from CRM software than others. Not all business owners know which signs indicate that they should implement sales software, so we came up with a list for you:

Your sales have plateaued

Plateauing sales is never a good sign for growing businesses. It could mean several things, including that you've already maxed out your market or that you're not attracting new customers to your business.

Either way, your business won't be able to grow for long if your revenue is fixed. One way to increase your sales is to implement CRM software. It gives sales representatives more chances to communicate with past and prospective customers.

You don't when your customers are due for another order

The time when a customer realizes he needs another order is crucial for businesses. If he's a past customer of yours, then you want to bring him back before he even considers your competitors.

If you have no way of knowing when your customers are ready for their next order, then you can't prevent them from going to your competitors. With CRM software, you can track patterns in their order history to predict new purchases.

Your brand has minimal customer loyalty

Your business can only grow for so long without developing customer loyalty. It's cheaper to bring customers back as opposed to recruiting new ones, so it's imperative to foster customer loyalty from the start. With CRM software, your sales representatives can manage relationships with customers better. This plants the seed for customer loyalty.

Your sales and marketing teams are out of sync

Discord between marketing and sales teams is detrimental for businesses. By implementing CRM software, your marketing and sales teams will refer to the same data, and will therefore be more aligned than they were in the past.

To talk more about CRM software, or anything else, contact us today.

It's common to see businesses struggle with their marketing process today. The rise of digital marketing and data and analytics hasn't been easy for everyone to adjust to. If you find yourself in this position, then consider trying out these three things: 

Incorporate CRM software

One of the best ways to improve your marketing process is to incorporate CRM software (ACT!, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho). If your company has already done this, then just make it a point to involve the marketing team. If not, then strongly consider implementing CRM software. In addition to improving your marketing process, your sales team will also benefit from it. 

Work together with sales

The gap between marketing and sales teams is a black hole for productivity. There's just no reason to keep these two teams separate anymore, and if you do, then you're just hindering your own success. 

According to a recent Business 2 Community article, you can blend the two teams together by implementing CRM software: 

"As Sales and Marketing departments come closer together, they are both beginning to learn new things. Sales are deepening their understanding of the brand equity of good communications, while Marketing adopt the precise metrics used by the sales team. Both teams are using CRM to manage the entire customer relationship, from first tickle to project engagement. That’s the way the future of CRM should be. "

Base your strategy on data

There are two kinds of people: those that love data and those that don't. Even if you want to keep its role small, there's no denying that data can improve your marketing process. You'll rely less on intuition and more on statistic evidence. At the very least, your marketing efforts will become more consistent. 

Don't let your marketing process hold your business back. Incorporate CRM software in your process for better efficiency and consistency. 

To talk more about your marketing process, or anything else, please contact us. Thanks. 

Employee training for CRM software is important, but there's a limit as to how much training is really necessary. For CRM software to be effective, it's true that employees need to understand the system and incorporate it in their daily tasks. Yet with all of the different CRM software providers on the market today, there's no reason not to choose a system that's intuitive and easy to grasp.

A recent Enterprise Apps Today article discusses several mistakes that businesses make with CRM software. According to the article, many businesses waste too much time and money on employee training, when they could have just selected a more straightforward system instead:

"Though many analysts emphasize the importance of upfront user education, Wettemann advises buying CRM software that is intuitive enough that most users won't require a great deal of training. Then rather than scheduling mass classroom training sessions, conduct small-group sessions with individuals or groups that need a little extra help, offering usage tips geared to their specific roles."

There are many important aspects to consider when selecting CRM software (ACT!, Salesforce, HubSpot) and employee training certainly isn't at the very top of the list. Businesses first need to consider the size of their company, their client base, and their budget.

But how intuitive a CRM system is should definitely have an impact on a business' final decision. CRM software is designed to make customer relations easier for the company and sales representatives in particular. There's no need to make them go through months and months of training to try and understand a complicated system.

When considering how much employee training for CRM software is necessary, keep the cost-benefit relationship of the purchase in mind. If training is starting to seem too costly and strenuous, then search for a more straightforward program.

If you would like more information about CRM software that doesn't require extensive employee training, contact us.