S3 Blog

Happy New Year!
We thought we would kick start the New Year with some tips on starting a blog.

Blogging is one of the most popular ways that many businesses use to reach a wide audience and get them to find out about what that business does and keep their readers up to date with anything new. So what are the top 10 things to remember when starting a blog for your business?
1.What is your blog about – this may seem a little obvious as you would think “My business” but you need to decide what you want your blog to tell people about your business.
2.What is your aim – if you want your blog to bring you more customers then add special offers for blog readers, make people want to read it by giving them a little something back for doing so.
3.Who is your audience – once you have decided on your audience you can then write the content. If it is aimed at your customers you don’t want to bog it down with too much industry jargon and things that only someone in the same business would be interested in so keep it relevant to your readers.
4.Keep it relevant – all blogs tend to be on a certain topic and this is why people read them as they have an interest in that particular topic. Going off on a tangent on your blog will make people wonder what you are talking about – so keep all your blog posts relevant and suited to your audience and they will come back for more.
5.Keep posts short – blog posts should aim to be around one page long at the most, the majority of people do not like to read endless paragraphs when they sit down to read a blog so make sure that you do not ramble on in your posts.
6.Have reciprocal links – these are links to and from other blogs and websites that can help to drive more traffic to yours. To many people this seems like a way of giving custom away but it is not – you don’t have to link with other sites that do exactly the same thing as yours, just have something in common. Have reciprocal links and see your traffic soar.
7.Post regularly – this will keep people coming back for more. Irregular postings will lead to disinterest and a fall in traffic to your blog.
8.Allow comments – these can help you refine your blog and improve on it. It also helps to build a mini community around your blog which generates even more interest.
9.Link to your own website – some people do not have blogs on their own website and if this is the case make sure that there are plenty of links back to your website on it. Otherwise all your hard work will be for nothing!
10.Enjoy yourself – writing a blog should not be a chore, it should be something that you enjoy doing and if you do this will show in your posts – and once again this will lead to more readers.
Happy blogging!

There are always more things to do than time, so you need to prioritise your workload to ensure you are focusing on the correct things.  Some things to think of are:-

Customer Knowledge & Understanding

Update any missing data on customer records to fill in the gaps and provide them with a better service when you contact them. Often vital information is not recorded by businesses and this can be their downfall. For instance what happens if customer X is not contactable on certain days of the week and they have informed you of this, yet these are the days when one of your sales reps is trying to contact them? The answer is the customer gets frustrated at the number of missed calls they have regularly had from your reps even though they know they have informed you of their unavailability. This in turn makes the customer believe that you and your business do not listen to their needs and this will lead to lost custom. It is always vitally important to record such details even if they seem irrelevant at the time as it will lead to increase customer loyalty. S3 CRM also gives you the opportunity to add pictures of customers and employees to their records so that you will never forget a face again.

Workload & Office Productivity

See at a glance who is the user with the most outstanding tasks, if you spot someone who appears to be overloaded with work and has several deadlines approaching you can divert extra users to help out. This will prevent any missed deadlines and customer dissatisfaction, something that should be avoided at all times.

Employee Overview

With the fully integrated, business wide calendar you can easily see who has booked holidays and when, meaning that you can schedule meetings and launches when you have the maximum number of employees in work.

Regards

Dean

Dear All,

It has been a very busy year at S3 CRM.  Since the launch of the service in July this year we have been constantly releasing new functionality and making improvements based on feedback from you the customer.

Our biggest launch, this year has been our email marketing tool which enables you to connect with all your customers at the click of a button and at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing techniques

Our roadmap for 2009 is just as exciting as 2008 has been.  Our first  development will be the integration of S3 CRM with the IPhone.  As always please let us know your thoughts on this and also your requirements

I want to take this opportunity to thank all our customers for their support during this period and to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Kindest
Sarah

There are a number of useful reports within S3 CRM which can help maximise your business opportunity.

Total Revenue per Customer

Total revenue per customer which can be used to help identify loyal customers and give them discounts if necessary. Using this tool can help to further build better relationships with your customers as when contacting them you will be able to inform them accurately when their last order was and for how much etc, this shows the customer you value them and know about their ordering patterns.

Conversion Rates

Check out the conversion rate for quotes, this can help to see which of your sales staff is performing the best. It can also be used when looking at pricing to see if any products or services are incorrectly priced if they are not high converters.

Outstanding Quotes

See in real time the number of quotes that are reaching their validation period, by using this informationyour sales reps can make calls and chase up these quotes to see if customers would like to go ahead with them. By informing customers that their quote is about to run out can often give them the incentive to place an order – increasing your revenue as they do so.

Regards

Dean

Reason No. 10

“S3 CRM is very reasonably priced – Why pay through the nose for CRM solutions that were created for someone else’s business, with S3 CRM you can customise your dashboard to show what you need to know in your business and change it when necessary.”

S3 CRM costs less than 21p per day and for that 21p you get everything included.

Can you afford not to be using S3 CRM?

Regards

Dean

Hi all,

Hope you are all looking forward to Christmas

With Christmas less than 2 weeks away we have been busy at S3 CRM launching new functionality and improving the existing application.

This week sees the launch of the ability to import your contact information via CSV file into your S3 CRM address book.  This has been requested by a number of you so we put it to the top of our development stack to ensure we brought the functionality to you as soon as possible.

Have a look and let us know your thoughts.  You can either post on the blog, on our forums or email me at;

info@s3crm.com

Hope to hear from you soon.

Sarah

With the advent of the Internet and the continual advancements in communications it is no wonder that remote working is becoming more and more popular for many reasons. Remote working means that a business or organisation have workers who are not actually based on site, instead they work from a non central location (often their own homes) and log into the website or web based application that their business operates and runs. From there they will carry out their duties in their role as they would if they were on site but without having to travel to another place of work.

Obviously remote working carries benefits and drawbacks however for the majority of businesses who choose to let their employees work remotely the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks. If you have a business that uses remote workers or you are looking to allow your employees to work remotely you need a software application that can assist and able this to be done. S3 CRM is ideal if you are in this position for many reasons such as:-

1. S3 CRM is web based – this first and foremost is the most crucial aspect of remote working – you and your employees need to be able to access the same software application as each other and this needs to be web based. Web based applications have the benefit of not being installed onto one (or more) particular computer as with many other software applications. This means that as long as you or one of your employees has a username and password they can access the application from wherever they are in the world and work as though they were in the same building as the business.

2. S3 CRM updates are carried out in real time – this is another benefit if you are remotely working as you need to know that the information that you have in front of you is correct and up to date. Information that is old and incorrect is an absolute no-no in business as to be misinformed is to be left behind. S3 CRM puts an end to incorrect and old information and lets you and your workforce use information that is accurate and up to date.

3. S3 CRM has amazing document storage features – one aspect of many businesses that can cause problems, especially when working remotely is where to store important documents relating to customers and projects. S3 CRM allows you and your employees to attach and store documents, files, meeting notes and more so that nothing goes missing ever again. If you or an employee needs information on a certain order or customer simply log into S3 CRM and retrieve it – what could be easier?

S3 CRM also incorporates a business wide employee calendar so you can see at a glance who is doing what and which projects are approaching their deadlines. This gives you, as the business owner, a greater control over what is going on in the business even if all of your employees work remotely.

Reason No. 8

“Fully integrated employee calendars – These can then be accessed by anyone to see who is in work, on holiday, off sick or on a business trip in order to provide a better service by utilising employees that are in work on any given day.”

Every had the issue where Sue in Accounts or John in the back-room has been ill or on holiday and they held an important piece of information that the customer wants right now?  With online calendaring and associated tools you wont ever have to be in this position again.

Regards

Dean

Today more and more people are adopting a Green lifestyle, they will recycle items, use energy efficient appliances, think about the type of car they have based on their carbon emissions and much more. Businesses too are beginning to realise that they must adopt Green behaviours in order to contribute to the wellbeing of the environment. This can be anything from ensuring that all waste paper from the business is recycled to signing up to other Green initiatives such as only using certain products from certain sources within the business.

It is not only the products and services that a business uses that can be seen as Green – technology can also play a large and vital role in helping a business to be Green and here’s how they can do it:-

1. Turn your office into a paperless office – this can easily be done now due to the storage capabilities offered by new computers and storage devices. By storing all information, documentation, files and so on electronically paper is saved in great quantities, which helps your business be Green by saving paper which saves trees.

2. Use video interviews whenever possible for first round interviews – this is one of the newest advances in technology as more businesses now are using video interviews rather than having face to face interviews with candidates in the first round. This not only saves time for the candidates and businesses but it is a very Green way of conducting interviews as there is no travel involved to the interviews which cuts down on carbon emissions.

3. Use webcams as a form of communication between businesses – this is a very useful way of having meetings as each person can stay in their own office and by using a webcam they can have meetings or conferences with others without having to travel, once again saving carbon emissions.

4. Choose new energy efficient computer hardware and peripherals – doing this will help your business to save energy which can also lead to money being saved also which is an added bonus.

5. Have ink cartridges refilled – doing so will not only be another money saving option for a business as refilling cartridges is much cheaper than buying brand new ones but it also reduces the amount of old empty cartridges that are being thrown away each week.

6. VoiP calls (Voice over Internet Protocol) do not use regular telephony technology as calls are made over the Internet, in this way technology helps businesses to be Green as VoiP shares Ethernet copper which is actually toxic and is already in place to complete an Internet connection.

As shown using such new technologies can seriously help businesses to be more Green and as more businesses are making positive changes towards being Green it is a very good sign for the environment. Being Green was once quite difficult for businesses but today it is commonplace and technology supports this, so if you want your business to help improve the environment try a few of the methods mentioned.

Blogs and blogging explained in the commoncraft animation format.

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Regards

Dean