How can Managers Help their Teams with Sales Stress?

If you’re into sales, you know it’s a high-pressure job. Almost every sales team constantly works under a significant amount of pressure. Every time a goal is set for the team or any individual, stress is triggered in some way or the other. Contrary to popular belief, stress can actually work both ways… positive & negative. When taken in your stride, it can really push you to fulfill your full potential. On the other hand… frequent stress may also result in frustration amongst the employees.

As a team manager, it’s your responsibility to make sure your team remains stress-free. Here are a few steps you can take in this regard:

Set Realistic but Challenging Goals

It’s always wise to analyze factors such as earlier sales stats, market competition, current trends etc. before setting up a target for your sales folks. They should be challenged to push themselves & yet feel they can achieve the goal. Missed targets create a dent in the team’s confidence. Breaking the long term target/goal into smaller weekly or monthly targets is another good step towards making your team feel comfortable.

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3 Customer Service Trends Driving Success in 2019

The basic goal of keeping customers satisfied has always been at the heart of Customer Services. Back in the days, it meant taking occasional phone calls from an upset customer & assuring them of resolving their issues. Things aren’t the same in the modern days.

The biggest change in customer service is the sheer number of channels through which people can contact your business. Instead of just phone calls and emails, customers can now reach you via social media, video call, text message, or even live chat.

The rate at which it’s been accepted across the corporate world, you can’t simply overlook it. It’s no more an option to update your skills and use the latest tools and technology in order to provide the best customer service to the customers. You’ve got to stay in the game! Here are a few customer service trends that I think will rule this year & beyond

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Accelerate your Marketing! Integrate Your Prospect & Client Info into a CRM

Keeping track of all the customer info is a major pain point for most businesses. Let’s discuss how to accelerate your marketing using a CRM

For every small business, customers are much more than just a list of names connected to previous sales. Loyal customers are extremely valuable because they will bring you recurring sales and referrals. Each of them is a valued contributor to your company’s growth. Hence, their information should be treated with utmost care.

Keeping track of every prospect/customer and their details without a CRM can be a major pain point for most businesses.

Being a marketer, you might be using a bunch of tools like virtual documents, spreadsheets, tracking apps etc. to run your marketing campaigns & monitor the progress.

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4 Ways a CRM Helps Startups Flourish

One thing that’s constant with a startup is that it will grow, in most cases at an exponential rate. And contrary to popular belief that a CRM is only for medium & large enterprises, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM Tool) infact works wonders for a startup. 

Let’s talk about how a CRM software can help startups get a head-start:

• Streamline all the Information

It’s very common for startups to get confused with constant surge in flow of customer information. Very often they tend to miss out on relevant information too.

Imagine having a thousand leads & having to search for the one from a particular city with whom you had an appointment the next day! It’s scary.

With the use of a CRM, startups often get an organised visual representation of all the customer data available, so that everything they need is at their disposal all the time.

They are better prepared while interacting with a prospect & don’t miss out on even a single piece of information.

This is absolutely important for a startup, for whom every single customer matters.

Note: Wakeupsales CRM offers a series of features that help streamline customer information for businesses across the globe. The lead management module along with Kanban (pipeline) view is easy to use & gives out all the important information at a glance. No wonder, it’s called the ideal ‘CRM for Startups’ by our users.

1. Effective Contact Management

A smart modern-day CRM will make each one of your employees look like a Customer Success Champion. That’s a fact!

Customer fragmentation is one of the major challenges faced by business managers everywhere across the globe & all they need to avoid it is use a CRM that suits their work flow.

All the important information about a contact is fed to his details page and all the conversations, activities, notes & tasks are logged right in there for the ease of the CRM user. 

Note: Wakeupsales CRM offers a comprehensive contacts module with smart filters, quick actions & so much more. All our users love working on this one. 

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How to deliver lasting Customer Experience?

Customer experience when delivered right can work wonders for your business. Irrespective of your industry and market segment, seamless customer experience and customer delight must be at the heart of your sales strategy.

We all know that to attract and retain customers is always an uphill battle. It takes lot more than just bulk emails, cold calls, discount coupons, seasonal offers and other traditional selling tactics.

The key lies in listening and understanding your customers.

Sure, we all have heard it a zillion times and know it all.

But when it comes to practice things go haywire.

Take a look around your current customer touch-points and processes thereof. Identify if each of these touch points function optimally i.e. do your customers get what they want from these touch-points.

Some common touch-point examples would be:

• your website
• live chat
• customer care
• support inbox
• google groups or forums
• GitHub

Each of these interfaces present added opportunity for you. The question becomes, how resourcefully are you utilizing them to your advantage?

Here is how we can leverage the interfaces we have for a “total customer experience (TCE)”.

Website & Social Media Pages

Never forget that your website is your most important product or offering & your visitor’s attention span in less than 10secs.

Thus be extra judicious with your messaging.  You cannot be everything to everyone.

Focus on that one or two pain points or benefits that you solve & meet the best.

Be very clear about who your target audience is, what exactly are they looking for and ensure your messaging is in 100% alignment with it.

A quick glance on your homepage must excite and generate enough interest in your offering for your visitors to take the next step. Be it a signup, download or contact form.

You’ve won 50% of the war if you manage to nail it successfully.

Avoid information overload, be precise & establish a direct link between the problem and your offering.

Make it easier for your visitors to find the information they need. E.g. a robust context search.

Today’s visitor are smart and rely on self-help rather than hand-holding. The easier it is for them to get to what they want, the higher you rank on their shortlist.

Live Chat and Customer Support

These 2 are a great source of lead generation and conversion for your business.

Chat bots and AI Bots have made it a lot easier for us to prompt and initiate a chat with our visitors.

However, do not overdo or make it obtrusive. Keep in mind that if not used wisely, you are causing distraction for your visitor and he may end up losing interest and just leave your site.

Stick to the basics. The whole idea of a live chat is for your customer to communicate with you for instant answers.  Hence, make sure those answers are readily available.

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4 Ways a CRM Software Helps Small Businesses Grow

If you’re a startup or small company… it’s highly likely that you will have your plates full; from setting up the company, to hiring the right people, building a product/service, finances, marketing, legal aspects and so much more.

On top of all that, the most important activity still remains to bring in customers & retaining them. 

Customer relationships are the most crucial parameter in any business & something that has to be managed in the best way possible.

Gathering all the customer information & managing it takes a lot of effort. That’s where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Apps come in really handy.

They make your job a lot easier by getting the work done efficiently. 

What’s a CRM?

CRM is a sales process management software that helps businesses manage their sales pipeline & solidify their current & future business relationships. 

CRMs enable effective sales & client management, thus improving productivity & revenue.

Here’s how a CRM Software brings the best out of a company, by connecting them better to their customers: 

1. Reduce Sales Costs

“It’s up to 4x times easier to sell your new product/service to your existing customers, than to new leads.” 

Getting new customers is absolutely important for any business, but they don’t come easy or cheap.

Hence, especially for small businesses… It’s absolutely important to give significant efforts towards cross-selling / upselling to existing customers, so that they can afford to spend on generating new ones. 

Here’s how a CRM comes into play:

• Better Prioritization & Efficiency

Prioritize opportunities that you think have higher chances of converting & know the right time to get in touch with those customers to enable meaningful interactions. 

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6 Things to Consider for a Successful CRM Implementation

Gone are those days when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications were only meant for enterprises, or just for storing contact information of prospects & customers.

Over the years CRM tools have grown by leaps & bounds, becoming the backbone of every company’s sales & marketing team.

From big corporate to small businesses & startups, everybody’s in the need of a CRM software to streamline their sales process, boost efficiency & gain higher client engagement, deal conversion & customer satisfaction.

However, choosing the ideal CRM for your business is easier said than done. Higher pricing doesn’t always relate to better capabilities.

What matters the most is, how well the CRM tool fits your style of work.

Matter of fact, research says that more than 70% of CRM failures are due to wrong choices or misfit w.r.t established processes.

Hence, it’s very important to discuss some of the points you should consider before investing in a CRM software.

Taking any of it for granted may have adverse impact on your business growth at a later stage.

 1. User Friendliness/Adaptability

Every CRM tool claims to be user-friendly, but that’s far from true.

You don’t want to choose a CRM that’s too complex for your team members or takes too much time to get used to.

Look for a CRM software that offers simpler navigation, easy user-interface & has the minimum learning curve. Signing up for a FREE Trial is a good way to start with.

Pro Tip: Make sure the CRM offers onboarding, demo/training or support on request. It really helps in shortening the learning curve at the beginning. Click here to schedule a demo of Wakeupsales CRM.

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Top 4 Data Driven Strategies to Increase Sales

Everybody likes to see higher sales figures or better productivity from the sales team. What if I tell you, it’s possible without expanding your sales team or stretching your budget?

We surveyed more than 500 of our CRM users to compile statistics that we thought will help you guys make better decisions backed by data. Based on their usage, we gave special attention to certain actions you should also take to ensure optimum performance from your sales team. Here are some of the strategies you should consider:

Let Your Sales Team Focus on Sales Only!

Surprisingly, an average sales guy spends more than half of his time not-doing sales but performing admin duties, data entries, managing all his records & preparing reports. No wonder the sales team’s potential is not being fulfilled.

Implementing strategies to boost your sales team’s productivity should always be on top of your to-do list. And I am not even talking about allocating higher budgets for them or increasing the headcount. Things like stricter scrutiny during lead qualification, creative team building & training, setting clearer objectives using ideal customer personas or best is to simply start using a CRM application that’ll do most of the mundane jobs for you… saving you loads of time to focus on actual sales.

Create a Clear-cut Sales Process

Research says that more than 80% of the companies accept the fact that an inconsistent sales process or lack of it results in below-par sales figures.

It’s actually very difficult for sales folks to move customers or deals through your sales pipeline if there’s no pre-defined sales process for them to follow. Hence create a simple sales process for everyone to follow. The most common stages in a sales pipeline usually are new, prospecting, qualified, quote, won/lost. Define the significance of every stage clearly, so that your sales folks are able to plan their activities accordingly for better sales results.

Do Your Homework on the Customer

There’s no short-cut to this, neither any work-around. A survey tells that more than 85% of the customers feel sales folks don’t understand their needs. This is a very harsh truth to sales folks. How much do you try to understand your customers or prospects?

In order to build a rapport & convince the prospect of buying your product/service, you really need to understand their needs, bottlenecks, values or even likes-dislikes. Knowing your prospect inside-out also helps you cater to people who are more likely to be in need of your offerings.

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