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.

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.

Owning a small business is a high pressure role which can and will take over your life, so it is crucial that you have the right tools to help you manage not only your employees but the day to running of your business. Too many business owners feel that as head of a company they must know all about what is going on within that business – and with good cause. However, the problems start if you are spending a disproportionate amount of your time getting information about new customers, chasing employees over holidays, finding missed and unpaid invoices not to mention keeping on top of the various projects that you have in the pipeline. In short if this is happening to you, you are in danger of taking your eye off the ball and losing valuable revenue – and you need to turn this around and regain control of your business.

Many owners of a small business try different ways of recording information and often turn to business solutions such as Salesforce and Sugar CRM. These whilst good applications are a little too complicated, meaning that they are usually not used to their full potential, leaving business owners in the same position as they were before. If you are looking for a business solution that is easy to use, is fully integrated with calendars has quote and invoicing tools and can be accessed from anywhere in the world you need to check out S3 CRM. S3 CRM is a revolutionary web based application that will take the hassles and stress out of running a small to medium sized business. Here are a few of the features that S3 CRM offers you –

1. Increased productivity – use the project feature to track projects from creation to completion and see who is responsible for it. No more missed deadlines due to deadline alerts.

2. Centralise your business – run your business from S3 CRM and be in total control where ever you are in the world with an internet connection.

3. Improve contact relationships – with S3 CRM’s address book you can store details of last customer contact through email, telephone or letter and attach a picture of customers so you never forget a face again.

4. Share the workload – as all calendars are fully integrated you can see at a glance which projects your workforce is working on and move resources if there is an approaching deadline that needs more work.

5. Increase cash flow – using S3 CRM’s quoting and invoicing tools you can create invoices and attach them to customer records. Invoices are created automatically and saved for ease of retrieval. Invoices that remain unpaid after a set deadline will appear on your unpaid invoices list for the appropriate action.

6. Never lose an important document again – thanks to S3 CRM’s document storage facility you can save documents either to their own file or attach them to a customer, meeting or project record so that the information you need is a just a click away.

Theses are just a few of the features you can expect from S3 CRM’s business solution. You can also use it to plan any email marketing campaigns that you have based on your current stats and customer buying trends as they can be accessed with ease. See at a glance who are your biggest paying customers and target the right email marketing group – say goodbye to wasted marketing fees targeting the wrong groups. For a business tool that is also a virtual assistant who will never let you down make the right choice – sign up for our free trial of S3 CRM today.