A new form of CRM, Social CRM often referred to as CRM 2.0, has grown from social networking and web 2.0.
Are you maximising the tools available to you to communicate with your customers?
S3 CRM is working with networking platforms such as twitter, linkedin and facebook to integrate its customer relationship management tools with social media offering a new branch of communications with your customers.
CRM (customer relationship management) tools are fast becoming one of the most well used and useful tools that a business can utilise. They can help to streamline tasks and processes and enable excellent customer service. With this in mind all the smart businesses are using CRM tools to enhance the service that they provide. When it comes to choosing the right type of CRM tool it can often be a tricky process. After all this tool will be instrumental in creating customer relationships that will be retained long term and which will help the business to increase its profits.
As there are so many CRM tools on the market right now it pays to think about the needs of the business before selecting one. So think about the following areas.
If your employees spend a lot of time on the telephone chasing leads and making sales you need a CRM tool that is easy to use and can be updated in real time. It also helps to have a quoting and invoicing feature as standard as this can make your employee’s jobs a little easier.
Can you afford for yourself and your employees to spend a long time getting to grips with the new CRM tool?
If the answer to this question is no (and it should be) you need a CRM tool that is easy to learn and easy to use. It is pointless opting for a tool that might be the latest ‘big thing’ but if it takes too long to learn how to access and use and it is overly complex to use on a day to day basis it will cost you too long in working hours. Go for a CRM tool that can be learnt in a couple of hours and which can be used whilst your employees are on the telephone and you will not regret it.
The cost of tools and applications should always be a factor for any business. Don’t be tempted to go for the most expensive package that you see thinking that it will be the best, as often this is not the case.
If you want to have access to your business from anywhere in the world (with internet access) you need to choose a web based tool. With this you will be able to keep in touch with the business and see what your employees are doing at a glance.
If you want to expand your business you need to be able to add new users as needed. Select a CRM tool that will enable you to do this easily if needed, otherwise you could find that you CRM tool is letting you down.
These are just a few of the things that you should consider when you are choosing your CRM tool. Make sure that you choose the right one first time and you will find that it works for you.
CRM (customer relationship management) tools are fast becoming one of the most valuable applications that a business can use. One of the problems that many businesses encounter when they are looking for a CRM solution is that there is just so much choice on the market. This can lead to indecision when it comes to choosing the right one.
Businesses need an effective CRM solution that will meet their needs and continue to do so into the future. To ensure this here are some tips which will help:
To be effective a CRM solution must first be easy to use and access. A CRM solution that is difficult for end users to integrate into their working day should be avoided at all costs. It is also useful to opt for a CRM solution that can be easily mastered within a few hours. Business owners simply do not have the time to spend sending their employees on courses to learn how to work new applications. As far as accessibility is concerned it is wise to opt for a CRM solution that is web based. Having a web based solution means that users can access it from anywhere that has an internet connection. So in effect home working becomes possible with this type of CRM solution – something that is becoming more popular at the moment as it means flexible shifts and lower costs.
Cost is also important for an effective CRM solution. If a business is paying for a CRM solution that is not delivering it is not effective. Make sure that what you pay for a CRM is vastly outweighed by what you get out of it for it to be cost effective
Does the CRM solution enable a good customer experience? If it allows users to easily access customer information, attach documents to customer details and create quotes and invoices quickly it all goes to creating good customer experiences. CRM solutions should help you to add value to your customer’s experiences and enable accurate and fast communication. It should not slow these transactions down or make them overly complex.
CRM solutions should also provide effective reporting. If a businesses owner can see their best customers at the click of a button it is effective. Similarly if the CRM solution enables users to see which customers have outstanding payments or missing information it is effective. If users are able to quickly access important information at the click of a button then the CRM solution that they are using is effective.
An effective CRM solution should also allow for users to be added without any fuss and with minimal charge. Too many solutions charge a small fortune for extra users and this is not practical if you are a small to medium sized business that is growing. CRM solutions need to enhance your business and not drain its resources so this is one tip that you do not want to overlook.
Retaining customers as well as gaining new ones is a crucial aspect of a successful business. To achieve this there are various applications and techniques that can be used to increase sales figures and retain customers. S3 CRM is a customer relationship management application that can help any business to retain their customers through careful customer management.
With so many businesses competing in all areas retaining customers becomes even more vital. Here are a few ways in which S3 CRM can help you to retain customers and give them excellent customer service.
Think about giving discounts to your best customers. When you use the reporting tools you can see which customers have paid your business the most money. This will then show you which of your customers have spent the most money with you. Then you can use this information to send out offers to these customers which can give them discounts or extra products with their next order. By giving out these types of offers you can retain customers as people like to be rewarded for loyalty.
Give your customers excellent customer service – be knowledgeable about previous calls and have all documentation to hand. This can be done by attaching documents to customer records and utilising the recording contacts feature on customer records. By ensuring that every time an employee that speaks to a customer they can see all information relating to that customer the business will provide a first class service. Customers want to feel recognised and this method will ensure that and will, in turn help to retain customers.
Make sure that when you give a customer a quote they receive it in a timely manner and it is saved with their contact details. S3 CRM enables users to create quotes and invoices in real time and send them out straight away. Providing this level of customer service will also help you to retain customers as quotes which are late to be produced or which go missing do not help to retain customers. Make sure that your quoting and invoicing is done correctly with S3 CRM.
Make good use of the email marketing feature on S3 CRM. This enables even a novice to plan and send email marketing campaigns with ease. By sending out quality emails to your customer which are informative and interesting can help to retain them. One good idea is to make sure that your newsletter or information sheet goes out at the same time each week and is always worth reading. Do this and your customers will come to expect it.
By thinking about some of the ways in which S3 CRM can help you to retain customers it is clear that it can be done without too much fuss. Make sure that all of your staff get the very best from the application and it will pay dividends. Customers will be retained and they will return to your business as you provide an excellent service.
Expenditure is always important in a business and with this in mind it pays to have a CRM solution that will enable you to do more for less, such as S3 CRM. S3 CRM is not just a customer relationship management tool, it is a whole lot more. In fact it is possible to run the majority of your business through S3 CRM. For one monthly payment you can do the following with S3 CRM:
Create a business wide calendar that is fully integrated.
Use the project planning feature to create new projects and assign them to employees. You can also use this feature along with the calendar to see which of your employees is free to take on additional projects.
Project monitoring in real time by setting deadline alerts in the form of emails, SMS and calendar alerts. Utilising this feature means that you will never have to chase up deadlines again as anyone working on a project will get an alert when the project deadline is up to three days away.
Create customer contacts and attach any documents relating to that customer to them. No more missing paperwork or lost quotes. S3 CRM also has the ability to tell users which of the customer contact details are missing information, so the next time someone speaks to that customer they can fill in the blanks.
Use the financial planning features to chase up outstanding payments, see who are your best customers and more.
Quoting and invoicing is made easy with S3 CRM. All quotes can be created in minutes and users are able to split quotes into items on various lines. The quoting tool will even add the VAT onto the quote for you. Once this has been done you can then save the quote with the customer’s contact details for easy retrieval at a later date.
Document storage. Wave goodbye to missing documents, with the document storage feature on S3 CRM you can save all documents and access them wherever you are.
Use the route optimisation tool to plan routes and work out their cost. This helps anyone who regularly travels as part of their working week. Not only can you plan and save routes, you can also get an estimate of how long the journey will take and get an indication of how much the petrol will cost.
The email marketing tool can be a massive help to any business owner who wants to start creating email marketing campaigns. These are easy to create and send and by using the reporting tool after a campaign has been sent you can check the success of each campaign. It is even possible to create campaigns and schedule them for release at a future date.
There is even a recycle bin, so if any documents are deleted by mistake they can be retrieved.
S3 CRM is also web based, meaning that it can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. With this in mind you can see how you can do more for less with S3 CRM.
Emails are one of the most popular forms of communication today and people spend a great deal of time reading their e-mail each day. In order to get the most from your e-mail marketing you need to make sure that you are following the 10 best e-mail marketing practices, which are:
1. Be consistent - regardless of what type of business you are if you frequently e-mail your customers you need to keep the look of your e-mails consistent. This will help to imprint your brand image into the minds of your customers and will keep your subscribers coming back for more.
2. Think about the Tuesday / Wednesday response time - this is the theory that the best time to send a business e-mail is on Tuesdays or Wednesdays as people are more responsive to e-mails on these days.
3. Utilise a sign up confirmation - in order to avoid your e-mails being classed as spam you should go for a double process for your customers to opt in. So after a customer has entered their e-mail address on to your website you should send them an e-mail to confirm their subscription. It also appears to contain a link to your e-mail marketing program within the e-mail which will help to verify that your customer signed up to your e-mail subscription.
4. Give subscribers a one click unsubscription option. If subscribers no longer want to receive your e-mails allow them to opt out using a one click unsubscription.
5. Be personal - make sure that you address your subscribers by their name in the first line of the e-mail. Doing this helps to build customer confidence in your brand as they feel as though they already have a personal relationship with your business.
6. Avoid spam filters - spam filters will take any e-mails that they consider as spam and either put them into a spam box or block them totally. So when you’re writing your e-mails try to avoid words such as discount, free, save or any monetary symbols.
7. Half second subject line - make your subject line of your e-mail is short and punchy. When we e-mails subscribers usually spend approximately half a second reading the subject of each e-mail, so make sure you capture their attention with a short subject line.
8. Offer a free bonus - although many e-mails claim to offer something for free many fail to deliver. So for your customers a money off coupon or even a free e-book if they subscribe to your subscription - and make sure that you give it to them.
9. Always have a signature on the bottom of your e-mails - by providing your name company details, a link to your website and the cover how to unsubscribe your e-mails will be more attractive to your subscribers.
10. E-mail based information /learning -why not offer a 10 part in learning course which will be e-mailed to subscribers? This type of e-mail is hugely popular and can help your subscription list to grow substantially.
During a credit crunch it can be very tempting for a business to almost refuse to spend money on investments and these can be seen as quite risky. No business want to lose money and during a credit crunch businesses bottom line is the key to the business succeeding. As a result many businesses will not invest and this can actually be to their detriment as it is possible to invest your way out of trouble.
Whilst it may seem quite foolhardy to invest money during a credit crunch investing your way out of trouble can sometimes be the most sensible move for a business. This can be for several reasons, such as:
1. Often making investments in small, up and coming new businesses which have massive potential, can be a very wise decision during a credit crunch - if the business can afford it. Investing money during a credit crunch usually works out cheaper than investing during a time of financial stability. So in effect a business can invest less money and still benefit in the same way once a credit crunch is over.
2. Making wise investment during the credit crunch can be a lifesaver for many businesses. Just make sure that if you choose to invest in the business capital that you have done a great deal of research on your potential investment before parting with any money.
3. Some businesses find that by investing money in a certain way they can actually offer customers more options. So instead of weakening the business by spending money, investing money works out as a preferred method of strengthening the business.
4. Investing should always make the business money in the long run, if your investment has this potential then you should take it with both hands.
5. Maybe your business actually needs to invest to survive a credit crunch. If this is the case and that is all that is standing between your business succeeding or failing then investment is the obvious choice for any smart business owner.
6. Investing doesn’t necessarily have to involve money - your business may need to invest time in a project to succeed. As a business owner if you can see that some of your employees time could be invested and could produce healthy profits then this is an option that you should certainly consider.
7. Look at the long-term when thinking about making investments - to make sure that your business can survive a credit crunch you need to look into the future. If you can see that an investment could stand to make a massive return in two or three years this should be appealing. However before you invest make sure that your business can stand to be without this money for a set period of time, otherwise your investment would be in vain
Investing your way out of trouble certainly is possible but it is essential that a business owner knows that the business can afford to invest any money before any transactions go ahead.
The Internet contains a wealth of information and millions of people use it as a resource to find out more on thousands of subjects. Different groups have seen just how useful the Internet is for community based learning and sharing information and are actively engaging in this each day. So how can the Internet be used for this type of information sharing?
1. Internet-based groups, these are like online mini communities that come together using websites on which comments and ideas can be posted. This type of group also tend to use chat rooms and instant messaging to speak to each other. Information can also be posted on to the group’s website and these tend to be updated regularly. Internet-Based groups are so popular that there is literally a group for every kind of topic on which people regular contribute and visit frequently.
2. Community-based learning sites, a slightly different and often involve actual learning. People are able to take online learning courses to further their knowledge on a particular subject. These are very useful for anyone who would like to get back into education but are reluctant, for whatever reason, to attend classroom-based activities. One of the advantages of learning online is that an individual can do as little or as much as they like each time they login and it can be done at any time of the day or night.
3. Social networking sites are also used as a place to share information between people. This could be in the form of messages are photographs and even videos. There are also social networking profiles which are related to businesses or other activities which people can also join and share further information on this topic. Using social networking sites is not an easy it is also a very fast way of communicating with many different people within minutes.
4. Educational institutions also use the Internet to help people to share information and learn. Many people benefit from these types of websites as they are able to access information quickly and easily and can further their learning this way.
5. Business websites are another way in which people can learn and share information although these do relate to particular businesses.
There are of course other ways online which relate to community-based learning and sharing information. If you want to use the Internet for this purpose it is quite easy to do so. Simply go online and do a little research on the subject you are interested in, soon you’ll be able to find Internet-based groups that you can join and information sharing sites. As the majority of these offer free membership you will not have to pay to join and you can start sharing information and start learning almost instantly. If you want to be involved in community-based learning and sharing information go online and see what is out there.
In business there are always going to be ups and downs – but what would happen if the unthinkable happened? To really be able to answer this question it is a good idea to firstly decide what this unthinkable event is – so let’s say that it is severe economic crisis, even more so than the current credit crunch. So how would a business function?
Firstly, a business would need to make sure that they had some sort of strategy in place to be able to weather the economic storm. Without this a business simply would be able to stay afloat. So if you are the owner of a business make sure that you plan for the bad times as well as the good times or you could finds yourself in a very difficult position should the economic climate turn cold.
Secondly, it pays for a business to get the very best deal when it comes to the CRM (customer relationship management) software that it uses. Doing this will help to keep costs low so that should the unthinkable happen the business would still be able to function and not have to lose any software. Too many businesses spend vast amounts of money each year on keeping up costly software licenses and this can run into thousands of pounds, especially if the business has many employees.
Thirdly, a business owner needs to be on top of the businesses cash flow and know exactly what is being spent and where. Having this kind of knowledge will enable a business owner to quickly and accurately identify where money could be saved within the business. If you are a business owner who cannot say that they know exactly where money is spent it is time that you found out. Whilst you are doing this consider giving your business a financial makeover and see if you can highlight any areas where money can be saved or better spent.
Fourth, find which areas of the business are the most profitable and concentrate on those. Doing this will focus attention on more profitable areas of the business which will help to keep money rolling in, something which is crucial during a financial crisis. Forget about any ventures which were on the backburner, they can be looked at when things start to look brighter. Similarly, look at any areas which require a great deal of work and are not very profitable. When they have been identified consider dropping them as they are not working for the business.
No business owner wants to think about the unthinkable – but planning for it is essential as it can sometimes happen. Having strategies and procedures in place to deal with it should it happen is what every business needs. Failure to do this will result in the business folding and folding fast. So if you value your business and want it to survive should the unthinkable happen start to put measures in place to deal with it, should it happen, right now.
During times of crisis it can be difficult for anyone to see anything positive and it is very easy to focus the negatives, particularly when you are in business. When negativity strikes, in the form of a recession, falling sales and so on finding anything to be positive about can be a real struggle. However it is possible to turn negativity into positive action, you just need to know how this can be done effectively.
Turning negativity into positive action is not about ignoring bad times when they occur it is about not letting them decide how things are going to continue in the business for the next 12 months or more. Whilst it can be incredibly hard to find anything to feel positive about when sales have dropped, a business can use this as an opportunity to be positive and think about their sales process, their costings and their CRM solution. It can be easy to panic when sales start to fall (especially during a recession) and this can lead to business owners to think that they soon be out of business – but this is jumping the gun somewhat. Negativity happens in life and in business and it needs to be dealt with without panicking and making hasty decisions.
Instead of seeing falling sales figures as a sign of imminent doom for a business it should instead be a sign for a business to revue their internal processes. When this happens turn the negativity into positive action by finding out the reason behind the falling figures. Many might argue that during a recession there is little point in doing this as the recession is to blame but it there is every chance that this is not the real reason. Sure, a recession will alter customer’s spending patterns and habits – but there could be an underlying reason for the drop in sales. So do a little probing and find out why your customers are not returning to you. You could find that your customer relationship management is letting the business down, or that your sales team are not following up on quotes in a timely manner and losing sales. Perhaps your customers no longer feel engaged with you due to something that the business has done – make use of all the options that are open to your business and find out what is going on.
Negativity will always be an issue in business, but it is up to business owners to decide how to handle it. By remaining calm and finding a way through negative and trying times positive action can occur and this will benefit the business in the long run. So the next time that negativity strikes your business spend some time thinking how this has happened and how it can successfully be avoided in the future. Doing this will help business owners to focus on the processes and practises of their business and will play a large part in turning negativity into positive action.