Starting and building a business takes more organisation than just haphazardly going out to market and finding clients in random places. Statistically you will stumble upon one or two that will keep you going for a while. However, to create a more stable foundation for growth you need to create a more systemised approach.
Once systemised you can set your goals and targets, and tweak daily, weekly and monthly processes to ensure you keep on track and hit those targets. Without any systemisation you end up not knowing what works, and what doesn’t, and end up going round in circles.
We have highlighted four key sales and customer relationship management areas that you need to implement from the get go to ensure that you remain on track.
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Invest In A Top Notch CRM Software
Investing in a good CRM is essential for growth. Not only does a competent CRM help you to track and communicate with existing customers, it can also highlight important information that will tell you exactly when to approach for renewals, upsells, subscriptions, and other opportunities such as the launch of a new product. Too often a customer gets ignored once they have bought – but they will continue to be a source of income provided you treat them well.
Additionally, the CRM is an essential source of data and information to help you build campaigns to attracts new customers.
Clear Glass Wipe Board For Daily Targets
While a cloud based CRM system is essential for automating client tasks, when working with a large team it is a useful exercise to have a tangible visual aid to help highlight targets and motivate sales teams. A large clear glass wipe board is an excellent tool which can be used as part of a morning sales meeting, tracking sales achievements from the day before and integrating them into targets for that day.
You can have a daily tally of who has made the most sales and use this to generate some healthy competition among members of the team, motivating them to put in that extra bit of energy to ensure that they head towards the top of the list.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is just the 21st century’s way of describing the process of generating sales leads and converting them into paying customers. As the world has moved online, this process has become more and more automated. If you do not have an automated way of generating sales leads, you can be assured that your competitors are – and they will be getting the lion’s share of the available market.
An effective marketing automation tool will enable you to systemise the whole process. Lead generation, lead qualification, campaign creation, communication, retargeting.
Some refer to this automation as sales funnels or pipelines – essentially it is a journey that a potential customer goes on, from being someone who is unaware of your company and product, to be a raving fan who not only repeat buys, but also refers on as well.
Automatic Scheduling Tool
An automatic scheduling tool should actually seamless integrate with your marketing automation software, and Is an essential part of how you are removing barriers to the sales conversation as a whole. The fewer the barriers, the less overall objections there will be along the process, and the more likely you will get that buy-in from a prospect.
In short, marketing automation is the one area that you need to ensure you make a good, long term investment in, as it will grow and evolve with your business.
