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How Technology Is Changing Sales Forever

Technology has shaped the way we do business, especially in the last fifteen years. Over the course of its transformation, the sales and marketing aspect of business has evolved from one mode of customer engagement to the next.

This paradigm shift has had a lot of implications in many of today’s small to medium enterprises. Accessibility to products and services coupled with the growing number of online users also meant that the competition for customer attention will be more relentless than ever.

There are number of ways our recent technology in sales and marketing has affected the business sector. However, our focus will be the most prominent ones and have the greatest impact to customer engagement and sales on a global scale.

 

Major Shift from Traditional Marketing to Omnichannel Marketing

Before PCs and smart phones were adapted for consumer use, customers had no way of interacting with the businesses since everything was basically a one-way communication between the company and the audience (also known as traditional outbound marketing).

But as more people are starting to gain access to online services, this type of customer engagement had slowly become a thing of the past.

Some companies took their old marketing approach and moved it online (YouTube commercials, online ads, online stores, etc.). However, unlike traditional media, online consumers are able to make their voices heard through the social media, comments section, forums, online reviews, vlogs, and the list goes on.

This sparked a new era of customer engagement and the birth of omnichannel marketing. Businesses are continuously harnessing the potential of social media, blogs and online sites, using the latest CRM technology to manage their contacts and maintain customer relationship.

 

Bigger Opportunities for Small to Medium Enterprise

Big companies used to occupy a large portion of the market until the Internet reached full status at the turn of the 21st century. They stayed top-of-mind through promotional ventures and ads, while small businesses struggled to make an impact.

But with the major shift from traditional marketing to online customer engagement, things are about to change. Today, it is not uncommon to find multi-million dollar businesses with a solid online presence coming from the lower echelons of the business sector.

Social media, email marketing, content marketing — to name a few — enable business owners to expand their borders far beyond the reaches of traditional marketing.

However, unlike TV ads and other promotional material, it is by far the most cost-effective method when it comes to promoting brands and maintaining customer loyalty, so much so that even long-established companies followed suit and retrofitted their businesses with online marketing strategies.

 

More Businesses Competing for Online Space

Competition is the natural outgrowth of this technological innovation in customer engagement.

During its infancy the Internet relied heavily in physical servers to create a virtual space for users worldwide.  When cloud computing went full swing, this limitation was done away with.

Consequently, competing businesses have also grown by the millions using the Internet as the battleground for online supremacy.

To see just how much competition we’re dealing with, try searching the word ‘car’ in the Google search bar and you’ll find over 5 billion search results just for the word.

Assuming that you’re doing car sales, this meant that establishing your online presence would be an uphill battle unless you have the technical know-how to outmaneuver and bury your competitors.

Because competition is so fierce, businesses must continue to innovate and find new ways to stay relevant. Content marketing has become a buzzword and now businesses are flooding the market with blog posts, podcasts and videos. But because there is so much content, it is hard to stand out with a simple 500-word post.

Kijiji featured some up-and-coming rap artists in one of its campaigns. A Montreal rapper made a song called “Gotta sell my stuff” which received over 830,000 views on YouTube.  This is the type of content marketing that will be successful — fun, entertaining, and inclusive. Content marketing is not about talking to your customers. It’s about including them into the conversation.

 

Improved Customer Service through CRM

Since the advent of customer relationship management tools, customer service has improved by leaps and bounds. Companies don’t have to pull numbers out of thin air when trying to figure out their customer’s specific ‘pain points,’ creating value for their customers, and improving customer experience.

Mobile CRMs such as Small Business Dream features customer acquisition tools, including sales funnel, card scan function, survey engine, Google Analytics, coupled with an efficient follow-up system to keep track of every customer engagement, upcoming calls, or scheduled appointments.

By emphasizing a customer-driven approach to sales and marketing, businesses are able to keep a steady flow of qualified leads and repeat customers.

Visit our site at www.smallbizdream.com and experience the power CRM technology for your small business.

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Stay in the Lead – KNOW Your Customers Better

As a business owner, spending some time to know your customers can make a big difference in reaching out to them and improving your sales. More people — millennials especially — are starting their own businesses, whether it’s home-based or a small brick-and-mortar store.

Starting up a business is never easy, much less running it. But with the right tools and know-hows on how to get the job done, you can accelerate your growth and not be left behind.

One of the most effective ways to achieve phenomenal growth in any kind of business is by taking a customer-centric approach to marketing and by putting the customers first.

What’s at Stake

Companies who fail at communicating with their customers have been known for making the worst marketing flops.  They assume customers will like a certain kind of product or service when the fact is, they want something else. The result is often a totally useless product that completely misses the target market.

To make up for this, companies will try every trick in the book just to get people to like it. They would spend millions of dollars on ads and promotional materials to no avail in hopes of recouping their investments.

If all people care about is how they can take advantage of the business opportunity with little or no regard to customer satisfaction, they have to stop and rethink their strategy; otherwise they go out of business.

The key is to know your customers first and foremost, and define your unique value proposition. Spending some time to know your customers and making them your priority will always pay off in the long run.

Why Businesses Fail

The vast majority of businesses that failed are those that are just starting up. Bloomberg reports that for every 10 startups, 8 will crash and burn within the first 18 months.

In a study conducted by Peppers and Rogers Group, 70 percent of the customers leave a company because of poor service and 60 percent fail to convert into customers because they felt customer service is indifferent to their needs.

Some of the reasons why businesses fail include:

  • Failure to innovate

Customers can grow tired of the same old stuff.  If you’re stuck with just one particular product or style, your chances for growth and expansion is very slim.   When it comes to your marketing strategy, innovation is also key. If you don’t have a web portal, a landing page, or even just a social media account to your brick-and-mortar business, you’ve already lost a substantial amount of potential customers to your competitors. The time you stop innovating is the time you start losing ground to them.

  •  Failure to differentiate

What is your unique value proposition? Customers tend to remember brands or companies because they are among the few who stand out from the rest. If you’re trying to compete with an already existing market, you’re going to have a tough fight ahead of you. Find your own niche, do something new from time to time, but try not to go overboard. Otherwise, you might actually get the opposite of what you want.

  • Failure to communicate

This, perhaps, is the most crucial part and where most companies would either float or sink to the bottom. The majority of traditional outbound marketing practices are just one-way communication. They don’t care if you’re listening or not; they’ll just say what they want you to hear. We all know how that turned out in some companies — and it’s never cheap.

Keeping your lines of communication open for your customers enables you to stay ahead of the competition by knowing exactly what they want and by giving them the right products and quality service that they deserve. To be successful, you need to have the right tools to bring your business closer to them and  accomplish the task much faster.

Small Business Dream’s Survey Engine is an amazing feature that allows business owners to create their own customized surveys with very little effort. Or, they can interact with their customers via email, social media, or on the phone using its automated and semi-automated features.

Small Business Dream simplifies the work for you by providing a CRM designed specially  for small business owners like you. We provide you with a suite of tools to know your customers better and boost your sales in ways you never thought possible.

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What Sales Experts Do to Keep Their Sales Pipeline Up and Running

Businesses have been constantly evolving for the last twenty years and are starting to adopt a different approach to lead conversion. Unlike traditional outbound marketing, ‘soft sales approach’ involve several stages in the customer’s journey which lead to a sale or repeat business.

This process can be seen in a company’s sales pipeline. Sales pipeline can be viewed in different ways but the basic idea is the same: “How do I get my leads from point A to point B, and what does it take to get them there?”

Stages in a Sales Pipeline

Companies differ as to the exact number of stages in a sales pipeline. However, most companies will agree that six to seven stages hits the sweet spot. We’ll go through each stage and see  how experts lead their prospects from one point to another.

Stage 1 — Generate High Quality Leads

Sales and marketing experts would often use the social media, invite people to a social event, or use an effective content marketing strategy to get as many potential customers as possible.  Making the sale at this point is the least of their concerns.  It’s more about getting people interested in what they have to offer.

Stage 2 — Educate Leads about the Benefits

What’s in it for them? Leads should be able to see clearly how a  company or a specific product can help solve their ‘pain points’ through opt-in subscription to weekly posts or monthly newsletters.  Email automation and autoresponders  can help accomplish the task via drip emails.

Stage 3 — Get Feedback from Viewers and Subscribers

Being able to collect information from opt-in viewers and subscribers allows businesses to refocus their strategies and be able to address individual needs.  Some  CRM applications like Small Business Dream enable business owners to collect information from online subscribers and viewers using a survey engine, similar to Google Surveys offered in Google Analytics Solutions.

Stage 4 — Qualify Prospects

This stage will assess the possibility of converting leads to business opportunities,  by weighing certain factors such as viewing activity (click and open rate), specific interests, occupation, income, and so on. The result will determine whether they would eventually turn into opportunities or if they needed more time in the previous  stages (Stage 2 and 3).

Stage 5 — Assign Lead Scores

Each qualified prospect receives a lead score which indicates his level of interest. Investing more time and money on  a qualified lead is considered profitable since the likelihood of conversion is very high. Those who received higher scores are given more priority while those at the lower end can be cycled back to Stage 2 or 3.

Stage 6 — Close the Deal

This stage provides the end-result of all the marketing efforts  to win a potential customer. Some of the best-known practices at this stage include upselling and cross-selling. Others will include a ‘post-sale’ where customers are encouraged to patronize their product through follow-ups and having them sign up for loyalty or point cards.

Maintaining a Healthy Sales Pipeline

Maintaining a steady flow of leads, opportunities, and sales is critical in any business. If at any stage the sales pipeline gets bogged down and fail to meet their goals, the company could take a hit and seriously affect their bottom line. Some ways to keep the sales pipeline up and running include:

  • Checking the conversion rates by stage
  • Making constant improvements on every stage
  • Closely monitoring the sales cycle
  • Holding regular sales pipeline meetings

Running a business shouldn’t be too overwhelming with today’s modern CRM that can store, analyze, and keep businesses attuned to the customers’ needs.

At Small Business Dream, we give you the most up-to-date CRM software to keep track of your customers and provide you with the right information to stay in business.

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Simple Ways to Increase Your Website Sales

If you’re looking for simple ways to increase your business bottom line, you’ve come to the right place.

You might think that you already know what your customer wants. But how sure are you? Instead of assuming that you know, why not listen to the customer and ask questions to find out what it is that he REALLY wants.

1. Tell your customers about benefits, not features.

Your customers don’t want to know the ins and outs of your products or services, they want to know how those products or services could benefit them! Save the details of the product for a secondary page on your website that’s NOT on your home page. You can give some main selling points, but keep the minor details off of the home page. This spot is reserved for benefits of your products and/or services.

Let’s say you’ve got a strategy to get your clients out of debt. Don’t give them the nuts and bolts on the front page on how it works. Instead, give them the abbreviated version and save the small print for another page. Tell them the specific benefits of a life with ample funds and freedom from debt. Would that get YOUR attention if the shoe was on the other foot?

2. Keep communication consistent with potential buyers.

They say that it takes at least 7 views of your products or services to get interested parties to buy them. They’re obviously interested if they’ve managed to get to your site and request information, especially if they’re checking you out more than 7 times. So why not inform them regularly about your news and updates to the site? You may already have a future customer.

It’s also a good practice to use a “bookmark this page” and “tell a friend about this page” tool, to make it easier to get potential buyers in the future. Just because they’re not buying yet doesn’t mean they’re not coming back.

3. Encourage your site visitors to ask questions.

Some people might think you’ll be bothered by them or waste your time answering their questions. Extend your arms to each and every visitor that comes into your site, and encourage them to ask questions.

If you see the same question coming from those visitors over and over again, you should probably create a “Frequently Asked Questions” or “FAQ” page. People usually want immediate answers to their questions, and a “FAQ” page keeps your site visitors from having to ask the same questions over and over again.

4. Make the buying experience easier.

Don’t ask for information that you don’t need. Ask for the bare minimum information from the customer so they can ‘get in, and get out’. Then later on, you can send them a quick ‘thank you’ note and a follow up to see how they liked your website.

5. Don’t make your customer jump through hoops to buy your products.

It will only frustrate them, and make them put off buying for later – and that ‘later’ may never come!

6. Use a good CRM tool to help keep customers in the loop with your business.

Utilizing a good Customer Relationship Tool goes a long way to keep you organized when it comes to communicating with your customers. If you’ve got a sale or special on your products or services that you want them to know about (and they should), your CRM is an invaluable way to bring customers to your business with the click of a button.

Going one step further, utilizing a powerful mobile customer relationship tool like Small Business Dream will allow you to keep in touch with those valuable customers on the fly!

By keeping these lines of communication open with your site visitors and potential customers, you’ll find it easy to gain more trust and credibility with them and in turn, more sales!

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How To Increase Sales by 100% With Almost No Effort At All

There once was a little carpet store in Richmond, BC (Canada) that hired a family member, (let’s call him John, name is changed to protect the awesome!) to come in and try to help with the carpet store’s sagging sales.

The carpet store was one of the smallest in a larger carpet store franchise, and things just weren’t going well for it. A much larger sister carpet store in the same franchise kept bringing in the big sales numbers, but his poor little carpet store just kept plodding along with very little sales growth, or improvement in profits.

Now, John joined the carpet store to help out, and he had extensive sales experience. The rumour was that he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. (Canadian joke eh!)

For months and months John tried and tried, but just couldn’t change the carpet store’s pitiful sales numbers.

He had a friend named Dennis who owned a small business consulting company, that offered to provide John with a “secret weapon” to turn sales growth ON and increase profitability FAST!

During the conversation, Dennis told John that he could save him time in the sales process during his day as well.

Low on belief, but trusting of Dennis, John agreed to learn more. He didn’t tell his family he was doing this, just in case the “secret weapon” didn’t work.

So what was the secret weapon he was offered? Sorry, not so fast! Let me start by telling you about the magic that happened to sales as a result of this “secret weapon”!

The carpet store franchise is quite organized as far as giving recognition for both the stores, and to their salespeople for being outstanding.

John went from nearly a year of obscurity in the carpet store franchise sales rankings, never once making the top of anything, working in a carpet store in the smallest category that also never made it to any of the top performer lists, even against the carpet stores of the same small category, to accomplish some truly amazing things.

John became the top selling sales rep in all the top level carpet stores, and the other salesperson in the carpet store who also secretly used the ‘secret weapon’ became 2nd! This was within 60 days of employing it on the retail floor of their carpet store!

The store became one of the TOP 3 performing carpet stores in the chain! NOT just in their weight group!

How?

What was this secret weapon?

It’s much simpler than you might think.

It comes from thinking outside the box, and doing something that many would say is NOT recommended as a carpet store sales strategy!

The “secret weapon” was Small Business Dream, a mobile and web app. Not just any old mobile or web app, but a mobile app AND a web app. Quite a simple yet comprehensive sales and marketing automation and mobile CRM software suite.

John set about to secretly increase the carpet store’s sales using Small Business Dream. He spent a few days tweaking and playing to establish a good sales method, funnel, flow, and follow up that included comfortably getting carpet store customers to take a short survey and agree to give their email address to get more information and stay in touch with John and the carpet store.

He had configured a number of email auto-responder follow up series to follow up with people interested in particular items like Carpet, or Hardwood Flooring, or Linoleum etc.

A week later, John had about 35 contacts who had gone through his simple survey. He had automated emails based on their chosen flooring interests that were triggered based on what they indicated their interest was in the survey questions.

John did NOT give his mobile phone to the prospect, he filled in the Survey for them to keep it frictionless. When the carpet store was too busy, he had them fill in a small 1/8 size piece of paper asking the same things and collecting their data to enter into the mobile CRM later.

The following week he had made 3 sales he knew he never would have chased or followed up with without the sales automation due to the small order size or feeling the person wasn’t serious about purchasing. (This is a critical error of any salesperson, NEVER prejudge, we ALL know it as sales professionals, but we all still do it!)

More exciting, was that suddenly a lot of communication had opened up by email vs. needing to try to contact each other on the phone. Quick AND efficient.

He started to use Small Business Dream to follow up on in store visits, measures, installations, and the whole 9 yards of the carpet business. Suddenly John was the “Go To” guy in the carpet store for anything, as the carpet store’s paper based systems were so impossible to use, and finding quotes or previous paperwork was close to impossible.

Due to the Small Business Dream mini CRM that John was using, all of that info was at his fingertips, in real time. He even got calls on his days off to answer carpet store questions as only he could get the answer quickly in his mobile app!

His carpet store sales were up year on year and month on month, from the very first month that the app was secretly employed. The carpet store owner couldn’t figure it out.

Fun things started to happen!

A guy walked into the carpet store on John’s day off and says to the other rep on the floor that day…”I don’t remember who I talked to over a month ago when I got a quote for $2900 worth of flooring from your store, but he has followed up with me by email constantly to see where I am at. Please sell me that flooring!!” So cha ching… John on his day off closes a $2900 deal at 9% for an unexpected extra commission of $261 and decides to have steak and lobster for dinner!

As things progressed, John kept talking to Dennis, and Dennis suggested John push the email follow ups further than the few weeks that John had done so far. Dennis suggested a 3 month and a 6 month follow up email to be sent on each category.

John wasn’t sure, and put up some resistance, saying nobody in Carpet or Flooring waits 3 or 6 months to buy, so it’s a waste of time. Dennis suggested to add a few emails which would only take 20 minutes to write and upload, so what did John have to lose?

Dennis also knew that in Vancouver, a building permit could take 4 to 6 months in some cases, so if the renovation that needed the carpet or flooring was delayed due to the permit process, it was logical that a 6 month later follow up could possibly yield results. And guess what?

IT DID!

Within a week of adding the 3 and 6 month automated follow up emails to the series, a customer came into the store asking where the guy that kept emailing him was. John felt like hiding, the guy seemed angry. The other sales rep, not wanting to be mistakenly singled out immediately pointed at John and said, it must have been John!

The guy walked up to John, re-introduced himself, and said he was ready to go, that the permits had finally come in on that $14000 carpet job. Almost ½ of John’s monthly quota for the very slow month that the sale came in! $14,000 x 9% = $1260!

He then also said very clearly that John was not the cheapest carpet store he got a quote from, but he was the only salesperson still following up, and he felt if the service before the sale was so great, the service after must be excellent.

So, John simply took a little time to get prospect and customer data and put it into a mobile CRM, by actually taking the customer’s time to do it right in front of them. Many say you shouldn’t do that.

John’s experience? Customers loved the follow up, they loved that they got emails from John which reminded them of questions they had to ask, and could easily ask vs. having to phone John.

They had a “Truckload Sale” on area carpets, imagine the family’s surprise when by they time they got in, the truck was empty as John had sold every single one by sending out a simple email blast to the 620 or so previous customers, and existing prospects with a time limited sale offer for that truckload of area rugs.

Now John’s carpet store is rabidly awaiting the Small Business Dream add on app called myCarpetStore to allow their customers and prospects to connect directly to them, and receive updates, specials, and follow up directly to their mobile device by push notification in addition to email!

DATA = POWER

DATA in a usable format, and the creativity on how to use it = Sales and PROFIT GROWTH.

What do you have to lose?

Furniture Stores, Industrial Supply, Electronics stores, Shoe Stores, Hair Salons, Spa’s, Financial Planners, Real Estate agents, and the list goes on and on who could benefit with similar simple strategies and the app called Small Business Dream.

With Small Business Dreams you can dramatically increase your sales.  Build your sales funnels, email marketing campaigns, automated, and semi-automated social media follow-up campaigns and much more with the most flexible tool on the planet. Sign up today!