ARTICLE SUMMARY
Businesses who want to improve their performance should follow a plan that includes getting the most from their data as well as their employees.
Businesses that want to improve their performance should follow a plan that includes getting the most from their data as well as their employees.
Once you get a business up and running, how do you ensure that your business has what it takes to continue to grow and prosper? You will need to find ways to help your business grow and prosper because a business that has stalled out is a business that might not make it through the next quarter. To be profitable, businesses need to grow.
Below you will find some strategies for keeping your business on track and helping it grow.
Find the Right Customers
When you have a business, you have an established base of customers that you can rely on to buy your product or service. However, in order to grow, you also need to find new customers that need your product or service. Finding those customers is sometimes the most difficult part. There are software and tools, that can be used for a variety of purposes in your business.
One of the ways CRM can be used is as a lead generator, which means that CRM tools can help your business reach out to new customers who might be interested in buying from your company. The Sales management software can look at search histories of prospective clients and determine if your business’ products or services might be a good fit.
Also, the software enables you to conduct searches for clients not just around the corner, but in the rest of your town, across the state, nationwide and worldwide. These days, your clients could come from 20 minutes away, or 20 hours away –but they may be in need of the exact products or services you offer.
Maximize Upselling and Cross-Selling
While a CRM system can help you find new customers based on their searches and purchase histories, the CRM tool also allows your sales representatives to up-sell, which means that your salespeople could offer customers more exclusive or premium products that would augment the product or service they are currently in the market to buy.
Customers like being treated like a VIP and CRM software helps with that air of exclusivity and special offers. In addition to up-selling, sales representatives can discuss other possible products or services the customer might be interested in, called cross-selling. Amazon has made a fortune by highlighting cross-selling on its website, through its “Frequently Purchased With” feature.
CRM software keeps track of customer purchases, and items they may want or need, now and in the future. That way, when a sales representative is talking to the client, he or she can mention some of the other products the client might be interested in, which helps increase your profit margins.
Reduce the Cost of Sales
Because the CRM tool keeps track of a client, sales representatives can operate more efficiently and have all of the information about a client at their fingertips.
Because this information is shared on all computers, sales representatives who don’t normally work with the client can nevertheless find the client’s information and help them with a sale or a purchase.
Since all of the client’s information is easily accessible, it reduces the cost of sales by streamlining the process of selling and reducing the amount of time a salesperson has to look for sales information.
Discover New Insights from Business Data
CRM software allows for all customer data to be in one location, which allows you to look for insights into your business you may have never noticed before. You will be able to look at your data from every angle, which should help your decision-making process. Rather than operating your business based on your gut, you can begin operating it based on data and data-driven business outcomes.
This can lead to all sorts of different opportunities for your business. First, sales representatives can look at the data to make forecasts and track individual sales goals. Marketing might use the data to track the effectiveness of a social media campaign.
Service managers can use the data from the business to look at the volume of customers served, issues with customer service, and the percentage of successful customer problem resolutions. Although it is the same data coming from the same flow of information, each person in the business might use it differently which leads to data automation.
Increase Employee Productivity
CRM software also works to increase employee productivity and better internal communication between employees. For example, while in the past employees couldn’t work on the same document at the same time, now employees can be working on the same document simultaneously, with both employees able to view the changes.
Also, all of the work the employees do can be viewed all over the office, so that all employees can have access to it, which cuts down on the time needed for employees to get up to speed with someone else’s work. It also allows employees to share their talents and strengths with others who are not as strong in that area.
Offer Better Customer Service
One of the greatest strengths with CRM software is that it allows a business to offer better customer service. In business today, there is a paradox within customer service.
While customers want their product very quickly, and when they want a product or service, they expect it immediately, customers also want to feel needed and wanted by a company who appreciated that the customer could just as easily gone somewhere else.
The CRM tool allows businesses to form relationships with customers, and even small gestures, such as a birthday remembrance, could mean the difference between a sporadic customer and a regular customer.
Businesses need to use the most up-to-date business tools to be able to stay competitive in today’s cutthroat market. If a business is going to survive, the use of tools such as CRM must help them with the workload. CRM tools improve workflow and increase productivity, as well as allowing the business to stay connected to its customer base –the lifeblood of any business.
Implement Solutions
Nextiva says regardless of what business niche you’re in, you need a cloud-based phone system. This will let you increase your communications’ system’s efficiency, which will help your team be more productive too. If you’re still using an analog phone system, it’s time to catch up with the technology your competitors are already using.
With this phone system, you can stay in touch with everyone from anywhere and start using some features you’ve never had before – many of which will help you make faster, better-informed business decisions.
When you implement new productivity “hacks,” you must get your employees on board or they’ll quickly revert to their old habits.
