S3 Blog

For anyone who doesn’t know blogging is another term for the phrase ‘web log’ which is very much like an online diary. However unlike a diary a blog can be seen by anyone as they are published on websites for other people to read. Blogs can be about anything and there is no limit to the amount of posts the owner of a blog can make each day or week. Many blogs have links within them which will direct the reader to another website which may be selling goods or services, often for the purpose of turning this visitor into a customer.

As the success of blogs is rapidly rising it is no wonder that businesses are recognising just how valuable a blog can be to promote themselves and create more customers in the process. If you are wondering what the benefits are for marketing your business with a blog here are some of them:-

1. Blogging is free – the only thing you have to spend on a blog is your time, or you could get one of your employees to run your businesses blog for you.

2. Blogging is easy – there are an abundance of blogging sites on the internet all of which are straightforward to use, the majority even have mini tutorials about how you go about setting up and running a blog.

3. You can reach a much wider audience then before – there is nothing wrong with having a great deal of presence online and the more people that read your blog the better. Research the market and see what other kind of blogs are out there.

4. Blogging is instant – you can write your blog in the morning and have it online almost instantly, so anyone who reads your blog will be able to see these updates.

5. Blogging can help you to build links with other websites and blogs – this means that your network can grow as you place more links on your blog all pointing back to your businesses website.

6. Blogs are one of the most popular forms of communication on the web and any business that has a blog is seen to be keeping up to date with technology and this is seen by consumers as a good thing.

As you can see creating and running a blog can be highly beneficial for a business as not only is it a very cheap form of advertising but it can quite easily generate more visitors to your businesses website who will hopefully spend money there.

So why not set up a blog for your business and see how many new customers it can create for you. Things might be slow to begin with but the more posts you have on your blog, the more chance there is that people surfing the web will see it and want to know more about what our business does. If for some reason your blog doesn’t do as well as you would have hoped don’t worry – you won’t have spent money to find this out.

Social networking is now big business and social networking sites are growing and growing – Facebook for example has around 90 million users who are classed as active and this gets larger by the day. There are other social networking sites and this list too is growing daily, more and more people want to be able to communicate with friends and family using the internet as it is easy and free to do this.

Businesses are now tuning into this fact and are now using social networking sites as a way in which to bring in extra customers which in turn generates increased profits. So how can a business go about using these social networking sites to bring in more customers?

1. Create a profile for your business – this is one of the methods that is getting popular right now. Create a profile based on your business and put information about your website and business in general on a social networking sites and start to send friend requests first of all to everyone you know that is one the networking site and then use tools to send friend requests to as many people as possible. Many businesses find that this generates custom and as it is free there is no loss to your business.

2. Find out which social networking sites are relevant to your business, join them and begin to place links in comments on different conversation threads. This can generate quite a bit of interest in your business and generate more visitors to your website which can be converted into profits.

3. Take the time out to join as many social networking sites as possible, this may take some time but it can eventually pay off in big ways, especially when you see your friend list grow which will create more customers. Remember the bigger your presence is online the more potential customers you are reaching, on the internet less is not more in this case!

4. If it seems worthwhile you should think about paying for ads on social networking sites. You will be surprised at the sheer number of people these ads will reach and your well placed ads will soon start to pay off when you start to have more customers. Check your ads every month and see which ones are bringing in the most customers and place more ads in this area, discontinue the ones that are not doing as well as you hoped.

If you use these few tips you will soon find that your business has more customers than ever before. You must make sure that once you have directed visitors towards your businesses website that you can then convert these into customers and this can only be done by having a website that showcases your business and makes visitors want to buy your product or service. Generating customers through social networking sites is only one part of the chain, make sure that your website is not the weak link of the chain or all your hard work will have gone to waste.

It is important for any business to keep ahead of the game and make sure that they utilise all the tools they have to maximise their revenue. Doing this can sometimes be difficult as many software packages are not designed to be integrated into a business and work as a total software solution like S3 CRM is. There are different ways in which using S3 CRM can help you to increase your average revenue per user and this is how:-

1. Go into the tools feature and take a look at the total revenue per customer section, this will tell you in an instant who your best customers are and when they order. This information can then be used in conjunction with customer details to provide loyalty discounts or other ‘special offers’ that are reserved for your best customers. Making customers feel valued is an excellent way to secure future orders from them.

2. Use your employees time better – the integrated calendar on S3 CRM enables users to see who is doing what, so if an important deadline is approaching you can see who you can take from other projects to lend a hand and make sure that work is completed on time. Similarly if you are planning an event or promotion and need to know when you have the maximum numbers of employees in work just check the calendar.

3. Cut down on time wasted trying to find contact information or documents by using the storage tool on S3 CRM. This is a way of putting all relevant information in one place where it can be easily found and retrieved, using the document storage means that employee efficiency will increase as will the average revenue per user as they are able to dedicate more time to important tasks.

4. See how many invoices are outstanding – as with the total revenue per customer feature you can see how many invoices you have outstanding on your system at any one time. You can then use S3 CRM to call up the customer details on the outstanding invoices and make arrangements for them to be paid. So no more missed unpaid invoices lingering around in filing cabinets, use this feature and see your revenue increase.

5. Access your S3 CRM account from anywhere in the world that has internet access, this will increase your revenue as you are able to check on your business where ever you are thanks to the software application being web-based. You will never have to take your laptop with you when going abroad and as all documents and information are stored for you on S3 CRM you will be able to travel light knowing you can see your business at a glance whenever you like.

6. As you can see these are just a selection of the ways in which you can increase your ARPU by using S3 CRM, so why not sign up and get started today and you will see just how easy it is.

Hi all,

Hope you are enjoying reading our industry articles

We have chosen a number of titles which we feel you will be interested in and may provide you with useful tips to incorporate in your business model.

We have lots more scheduled however as always, we are keen to hear from you, are they useful and are there any specific topics you would like us to address?

Hope to hear from you soon

Sarah

SaaS or Software as a Service is a web based method of accessing software remotely from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. This is not the only benefit of using SaaS, it is also much cheaper than paying for a licensed software application as you only have to pay a monthly fee rather than a large, one off payment to buy the software for your business. Additional hardware is done away with too as the software is hosted remotely, this makes for even greater savings and this is especially important if you have a small to medium sized business that has to watch its overheads. Finally, SaaS is also a great choice for businesses as not only is it cheaper than buying the software, but there is no installation or updates to think about as this is done on the hosted server.

As you can see SaaS not only cuts down on the amount of money that is spent on software but as it is remotely hosted all of the maintenance and upkeep that is usually required for software applications is not needed. This means you can concentrate on more important things – such as the running of your business.

Using SaaS in a business can help it to grow in many different ways. For example SaaS is crucial for the successful implementation of Customer Relationship Management. It allows you to keep a close eye on what is happening in your business from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. Previously if you wanted to access your businesses records and customer information you would have to be in the office using your PC meaning that you were tied to one location. SaaS provides users with a means of accessing and using information from any PC – all you need is an internet connection and your password.

SaaS is also a very useful tool when seeing your business at a glance, you can decide what areas you need to be able to view and customise your software to suit your business. For instance you can have a dashboard that will show you all the open projects for your business, which employees are in work that day, how many invoices have been paid so far that month and how many are outstanding and much more. Then using this information you are able to make informed decisions on various subjects.

Another way in which SaaS can help a business to grow is through utilising customer information many businesses miss out on opportunities as they do not have relevant customer information to hand. Using SaaS can make all the difference you can record everything to do with a customer on their contact information. Simply drill down into their file and see when they last paid you, how often they order from you, how they like to be contacted and more. This will show that your business is professional and can answer questions immediately, no more searching for old quotes and documents with SaaS.

Every business will have their share of good and bad customers, but how do you go about finding out which are good and bad customers? Obviously there are some methods that are quite straightforward such as taking a look at your customer statistics and see how much money each customer has paid your business, and how many orders they have made. This will give you quite an accurate indication of how is a good customer, it is also worthwhile checking outstanding invoices too to see how much money is outstanding for each customer.

Here is what to look for when using your software tools to determine who is a good customer and who is a bad customer.

Good customers

1. Will always pay their invoices on time, if there is a problem with a payment a good customer will contact you prior to it becoming due and make you aware that the payment will be slightly late.

2. Place repeat orders with your business and choose you over your competitors when choosing products or services.

3. Give you their contact details when you ask for them – i.e. telephone numbers and mobile numbers, should you ever need to contact them.

4. Respond to letters that you send them if they need to. Obviously there is no need to respond to mail shots and other such communications, but if you need to send them a reminder letter if an invoice is overdue they respond straight away and settle the matter. Often this is just an oversight and the matter can be cleared up.

Bad customers

1. Will not pay invoices on time.

2. Will not respond to letters or phone calls if you are chasing up unpaid invoices.

3. Will often complain for no reason in order to try to get money off services and products.

4. Will place orders and then change them at the last minute, this can sometimes happen as a one off but a bad customer will do this many times and fail to see that they are causing problems by doing so.

If you find that after looking at these lists that you do have some bad customers you need to do something about them. Bad customers can cause you and your business days of headaches in various ways. They will not pay their invoices on time and they will find reasons not to do so time and time again. This then leads to you or a member of your staff wasting time chasing them up to make payments. If you find that you have a customer who is like this you really don’t need their kind of custom so you need to tell them that if they continue to behave like this you will be forced to stop trading with them. If this continues you must then tell them that you unfortunately have to cut all

Everyone who has a business knows that increased productivity and lower costs bring about a healthier bottom line, but what are the best ways in which to do this? Here are the Top 10 ways in which you can do just that-

1. Utilise your staff correctly – one of the biggest mistakes in business is not knowing what your staff are doing, this does not mean spying on them but making sure that there are not too many people working on a project that doesn’t require them.

2. Use project planning tools – these can make all the difference to your business, by keeping an eye on all your projects and being alerted when deadlines approach you will find that productivity is increased.

3. Have all relevant documentation to hand – by having all documents related to a particular project or customer you or your staff will never waste time, and ultimately money, searching for missed invoices or other paperwork every again.

4. Record all customer contacts – by recording every time you telephone, email or send a letter out to a customer you will not waste money be repeatedly contacting someone who has already heard from you.

5. See all unpaid invoices at the click of a button – being able to do this means that you can see at a glance how much money your customers owe you. Add to this a feature which shows you which are the oldest invoices and you have the perfect tool for chasing up outstanding debts which will make your business more efficient.

6. Choose a fully integrated software solution – doing this will enable you to run all aspects of your business from one easy to use application which will cut down on time spent using slower and less efficient software programmes.

7. Be able to connect to your business from anywhere in the world. By using a web based application to run your business through you are able to access all areas of your business from staff calendars to project planning from anywhere that has an internet connection.

8. See all approaching deadlines and act upon them. If you are aware of deadlines you will be better placed to make sure that they are met, even if this means moving extra staff onto a project if it looks as though it might not get completed in time.

9. Store information in one place that is easy to access. Once again this will cut down on time spent searching for documentation for various tasks which frees up more time to work on the important aspects of your business.

10. Use good customer relationship management. In business nothing is more important than your customers and having good relationships with your customers is crucial to create profits. Use a software solution that allows you to record details of your customers from last contact to ongoing projects so that when you speak to them you and your staff have all the information you might need right there at your fingertips.

Customers are the life blood of any business, without them there would be no business, so you must make sure that you do all you can to make your customers happy. So how do you do that?

1. Make your customers feel valued – this can be done in different ways from newsletters to let them know what your business is doing at the moment to incentives such as discounts for regular customers.

2. Get your facts right – nothing turns customers off more than the wrong information when communicating with them. Is your customer a Miss or Mrs? Do they like to be address by their first name? Can you contact them on their personal mobile? Get the basics like this right and your customer will notice it.

3. Provide information quickly – if you are giving a customer a quote do it as a priority, don’t leave it as the last task on your ‘to do’ list – many people never get to the end of theirs and you will find that your customer has gone elsewhere.

4. Listen to customer feedback and problems – by doing this you can change any aspect of your business that customers are not happy with and when they realise you have implemented the changes they will feel as though they are listened to, and they will come back to you time and time again.

5. Offer rates based on loyalty – this could be anything from a 5% discount to 25% - give what you think is reasonable. It is better to have 10 repeat orders with a 10% discount than 2-3 at the full price.

6. Ask a friend or relative to pretend to be a customer and get them to obtain a quote from you – do they have anything negative to tell you about the process? Get them to be brutally honest even if it seems like nitpicking, they might uncover something you didn’t know about your business.

7. Make sure you deliver what you promise – don’t tell customers that a project that would normally take 2 weeks can be completed in 1 week to secure a sale. Often deadlines are set for a reason – trying to make your business look better without finding out if you can deliver what you say reflects very badly on you.

8. Be professional – make sure the phone is answered properly, send quotes when asked for, chase up outstanding invoices.

9. Allow customers to have their say if they are disputing something – too many businesses overlook what a complaining customer is saying, take notice and you might realise there could be improvements in working practises.

10. Be contactable! This may sound obvious but a lot of businesses, especially smaller ones have telephone numbers and email details on their websites but don’t have adequate phone cover or check emails enough, this makes customers think they are not important enough to speak to. Make these changes and see your business and your bottom line grow!

Small businesses all need software that will for them as well as with them and the new S3 CRM software meets the needs of small to medium sized businesses perfectly. With a wide range of features designed to make running your business more efficient is it any wonder that S3 CRM is the leader of the pack when it comes to software platforms.

Here are some of the features that makes this software the future for small businesses:-

1. Integrated calendars – this feature gives you the ability to see all of your employees calendars at a glance which makes project planning a breeze. You don’t have to spend time ploughing through holiday requests and sick leave documentation, simply log into the shared calendar and see who is where at any time.

2. Project planning – plan projects and store documents related to the project alongside contact details of the people involved so there is no more missed paperwork. S3 CRM has the facility to create new projects as they are discussed and set deadlines immediately.

3. Alerts – these alerts are essential if your business has several different projects running at the same time. Log in and see which projects deadlines are approaching, then check the project details to make sure that everything is one track to meet the deadline.

4. Quoting and invoicing tools – preparing quotes couldn’t be easier with S3 CRM, you can put separate items on separate lines and the invoicing tool will create the total for you. VAT will even be added as part of the feature, then once you have done you can save the quote to a customers record so all of their information is held in one place. Invoicing is just as easy as once a quote has been accepted an invoice will be created.

5. See your business at a glance – do you know how many invoices are outstanding for your business, or how many quotes you have sent out, who is your best customer, how many projects are approaching deadlines? Often to find out this amount of information time would be wasted going through files and checking data, but not with S3 CRM. On your dashboard you can see exactly what is happening in your business at any time without time being wasted.

6. Greater accessibility – S3 CRM is a web-based application so you can log in to your account anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. What could be better? Now you can leave the office but still keep in touch with the click of a button.

7. Document storage – S3 CRM also features a document storage tool which allows you to file documents online and retrieve them when needed – say goodbye to lost paperwork!

8. Customer records – customer relationship management is one of the keys to a successful business, with S3 CRM you are able to not only store customer records but attach photos of them so you will never forget a face.

Businesses of all sizes need an accurate way of keeping and maintaining customer records which hold details from quoting and invoicing to project planning and this is where CRM software comes in very useful. CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a way of identifying and understanding a customers needs whilst improving your relationship with that customer leading to increased profits and customer satisfaction.

There are many different CRM solutions available on the market but how do you pick which is the right one for your business? Here are the top 10 things that you should be looking out for in your CRM solution –

1. Ease of use – this is the most important aspect of any type of software, after all if you can’t use something quickly and easily it can eat away at your time, meaning precious hours are lost figuring out how to get your customer information on screen!

2. Does it fit into our business – if you are looking for a CRM solution you need to make sure that it will be easy to integrate into your business. Solutions that take too much time to set up and do not do everything you need them to are not worth it.

3. Features – features should be relevant to your business i.e. if you create invoices you should be able to do this on your software – the same goes for creating quotes.

4. Marketing tools – does your software solution offer marketing tools such as average revenue per customer? Such tools can help you identify where your custom comes from and make it easier to plan marketing campaigns from this information.

5. Financial planning – if you can see your best customers and see their pattern of re-ordering you financial projections are more accurate.

6. Accessibility – you might find that you need to access your customer data when you are not in the office, or even the country, so choose a CRM solution that will allow you access to your business information from where ever you are in the world – providing there is an internet connection.

7. Project planning tools – these are invaluable if your business has several projects open at the same time. Your CRM solution should have a way in which you can plan projects and monitor them to see that they are on target to be completed in time.

8. Staff calendars – these should be integrated into your CRM solution so you can see what your workforce is doing on one screen.

9. The ability to see your business at a glance – do you have to open up endless screens to see outstanding invoices, current projects, quotes to chase etc? Choose a CRM solution that will let you see an overview of what is happening in your business on one screen.

10. Reasonably priced – this is self explanatory, if you are paying too much for your CRM solution it is not cost effective, choose a solution that has all of the above and doesn’t cost the earth too.