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Moving to an online CRM system: How does it work and what are the benefits?

Online CRMs offer a host of benefits over their on-premise predecessors, including better customer services, greater transparency, and improved reporting.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been around in one form or another since the 1950s. In the old days, clerks would write down customer information on bits of paper and then store them in Rolodex files.

In the early 1990s, though, computer technology started to play a more important role. Firms began digitizing their customer data by entering it into PC software and storing it on floppy disks and hard drives. This innovation made data more searchable and organisation members to share it with each other.

Of course, this approach was still cumbersome. If you wanted to update distant offices with new customer data, you had to physically send storage drives to them in the past.

In the late 1990s, though, the first software-as-a-service solutions hit the market. These promised to revolutionise the way CRMs worked by making it possible for anyone to connect to these systems anywhere via the internet. This new way of doing things cut the administrative burdens on firms and reduced their costs significantly. All of a sudden, anyone could share information, as long as the files were small. 

Of course, this wasn’t the end of the story. The 2000s saw the development of cloud-based CRMs. These got rid of the need for workers to occupy particular physical locations. Anyone with the right credentials and an internet connection could perform their sales function.

The Benefits Of Moving To An Online CRM

If you’re still using older methods to manage your customer relationships, you’re missing out. Keeping everything on-premise has major disadvantages.

In this section, we take a look at some of the benefits of moving to an online CRM and why we think it’s a good idea.

Access Your CRM Anywhere

On-premise customer relationship management tools require you to be at the office to interact with them. But with an online CRM, that’s not the case. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on a plane or in the bathroom, you can still communicate with clients and record details of your conversation, as long as you have internet access.

Monitor Remote Teams

Related to this is the ability of managers to monitor remote teams, regardless of where they are. As before, it doesn’t matter if they’re at your main offices or on the other side of the planet, as long as you have an internet connection, you can see what they’re doing.

This kind of oversight is invaluable for firms operating remote or hybrid working arrangements. It makes it much easier to track productivity and sales successes compared to traditional systems.

Provide Better Support To Customers

Online CRM systems also provide radically improved customer support. In the past, it was challenging for agents to share information between themselves, particularly if they operated in different locations. However, with cloud technology, that becomes trivial. Distributed computing stores all data centrally, eliminating the need for information transfer.

On a practical level, this means that when customers call you, they don’t have to repeat the same information a second or third time. All the data you have about them is right there in front of the rep.

It also means that they can contact you any time of day if you have global offices. For instance, a U.S. customer calling in the middle of the night could get through to your Singapore or Perth office while one calling at lunchtime could speak to local agents.

Collaborate With Your Team More Easily

Online CRM systems also have the benefit of making it easier for your teams to collaborate because everyone can see customers’ current inquiry status. Managers can easily assign jobs to suitable agents, manually routing calls if necessary.

In turn, this approach lets teams offer customers a more bespoke service. Even if clients don’t have dedicated account managers, the software makes up for the shortfall by making all their information available to anyone in the firm with permission to view it.

Get Proactive Reminders

Online CRMs also have the benefit of providing agents with proactive reminders and notifications, telling them what they should be doing next. For instance, the software can prompt idle agents to make follow-up calls, tender deadlines, or make inquiries using new phone numbers recently entered into your system.

Send Emails With Ease

You can also send emails with ease when you use online CRMs. These let you set up your SMTP to redirect emails directly from the CRM, avoiding the need to keep switching between tabs or silo data, and simplifying workflow significantly.

See An Overview Of Customer Status With Helpful Dashboards

Lastly, online CRMs provide you with helpful overviews of customer status, both for reps and managers. You can see helpful statistics showing you how well team members are resolving issues by week, month, or year.

How To Move To An Online CRM

Moving to an online CRM is considerably easier than installing and running an on-premise equivalent. In most cases, you need nothing more than suitable terminals (personal computers, smartphones and tablets) and access to the internet.

Once you choose your subscription, you’ll get access to all the services offered at that level. These might include accounts for up to 30 staff, 24/7 phone support, and integrations with other software. Generally, the more you pay, the more comprehensive the service will be. Today, most online CRM developers provide solutions all the way up to the enterprise level, letting you manage thousands of reps and tens of thousands of customers.

Once you get set up on an online CRM, the vendor will provide you with ongoing support. If you need to change the number of users, you can usually do so relatively fluidly. Just tell your supplier that you need extra capacity, or you’re downsizing and they’ll adjust fees accordingly.

Wrapping Up

Switching to an online CRM can have a tremendous impact on your organisational strategy and structure. Many firms find that they can abandon the office altogether, provide staff with more flexible working options, save money, and improve customer service all by adopting a single solution.

With that said, firms need to do implementation correctly. Fortunately, we have the team for the job.

Get started today with the Purple Potato CRM.

How to get teams using your CRM

Is your sales team resistant to CRM software? Here’s how to get teams using your CRM and improve the adoption rate.

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There’s no point in having CRM software if your employees aren’t using it. While you’ll know that incorporating CRM into your business can bring a lot of value to your sales teams, if there’s a low adoption rate, then your company won’t be in a position to take advantage of all the benefits that it can bring.

There are many reasons why a sales employee may resist CRM, the biggest being that they’ll already have their own methods and working processes. But it’s worthwhile working to increase the adoption rate. In this blog, we’ll look at some of the most effective methods for getting more of your team to use CRM.

Involve Them In The Process

Ideally, you’d lay the groundwork for getting your employees to use your CRM software before you implement it into your business. Your staff would be much, much less resistant to the software if they were part of the decision-making process in the first place.

There are a few ways to do this. One is to actively look at different CRM options with your remote sales teams. You could also discuss how and when you’re going to implement it into your business.

The main takeaway? Involve them in the process.

Outline the Benefits

You probably wouldn’t change your routine unless you knew how those changes were going to positively impact your life. The same goes for CRM software. Your sales team will already have its own ways of operating. If they have to use CRM, then their current methods will have to adapt to a new environment. It’s understandable that people would be a little hesitant! The solution? Outline the many benefits that the software will bring to their life. They’ll be more willing to embrace CRM once they see all that it can do.

Offer Training

Of course, it’s not just enough for your team to see all that it can do. They’ll need to actively know how to use the software so they can make use of its awesome potential.

Your sales team may be computer literate, or they may not, but it’s always worthwhile offering training. Even the most basic CRM software will have powerful capabilities, and the more complex ones can do virtually everything except make the bed. Spend a few days showing your team how to use the software, and you’ll find that they’re much more willing to use it. If you need help figuring out how to use the software, get in touch with the creator.

Use It At Top Level

The principle “do as I say, not as I do” has never really been a good approach for anything. Employees always look to the senior members of staff and use their behaviour as the basis for their own behaviour. If the top executives at the company are not using the software, then you can’t have too many complaints if other employees aren’t either.

Plus, nothing will get people rushing to their CRM software more quickly than an email from the CEO that says something like, “I was looking in the CRM but couldn’t find….”

Checking In

You wouldn’t throw someone in the deep end without checking in to see how they’re getting on with their swimming. The same applies to CRM. Once you’ve got your employees using the software, make a habit of periodically checking in to make sure that everyone’s happy with how they’re using it. They may say that everything’s fine, or they might have a few questions.

Go Slow

Finally, look at going slow. Or rather, at least avoid rushing into CRM at breakneck speed. There will be reasons for your team to be hesitant to avoid using CRM software, and those reasons won’t be entirely invalid. Rather than expecting everyone to switch to a new way of working overnight, look at taking things a little easy in the early days. You might use your CRM software for some things in the beginning, with the idea that you’ll slowly transition to having your CRM do everything at some point. This will help to ease your staff into the new way of operating.

Conclusion

CRM can be a powerful tool that can unleash the potential of your employees and your company as a whole. The goal will be to ensure that your staff knows how it can help them to reach their full potential, rather than seeing it as something that they need to rebel against. But that’s achievable. And when you do, you and they will enjoy plenty of benefits!

Get started today with the Purple Potato CRM.

10 Best Practices for Customer Retention

Customer retention is as important as getting new customers. Here’s the 10 Best Practices for Customer Retention and how you do it.

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It takes a lot of effort to gain a customer, and once you’ve got them, you won’t want them to slip out of your grasp. That’s why it’s important to focus your energy not just on getting customers but also on customer retention.

In this blog, we’ll run through ten of the best practices for doing just that.

Get Feedback

It’s much easier to give your existing customers what they want if, well, you know what they want. By taking the time to collect feedback from your customers, you’ll have an in-depth insight into what they like, what they don’t like, and what they hope to see in the future. And that, of course, is one of the best business reports that you can have!

Getting feedback won’t only help direct the future of your customer experience. It’ll also show your customers that you care about their thoughts and opinions. And that’s something that everyone appreciates.

Take a Stand

It’s questionable how loyal customers are to specific brands. In reality, they’re probably more loyal to the ethics and principles that guide the company. People like Patagonia, for instance, because of its deep commitment to environmental issues. If the brand suddenly became disinterested in the environment, then the loyal customers would quickly go away.

Long story short: show the world what you stand for, and make sure you genuinely do stand for those things. You’ll find that people that want to support those types of companies come on board — and stick around, too.

Loyalty Programs

It feels like many companies give away all their best deals to their new customers. That makes sense from their perspective, but it’s a bit, dare we say, rude to the customers they currently have. Could you start a loyalty program? Nothing will make people think twice before moving companies, like knowing they’ll be rewarded for loyalty. Think of it like the ‘Buy 9 Coffees, Get One Free’ card that cafes hand out, then adapt for your own business.

Excellent Customer Service

It doesn’t matter how awesome your products and services are: if your customer service is awful, then people won’t just think about leaving; they’ll positively run out of the door. Investing in your customer service does take time, effort, and money, but it’ll pay off in the long run — and cost you if you don’t invest.

Use CRM Software

Don’t put the strength of your customer relationships in the hands of intuition and paper documents. Make it more professional. In this day and age, all of the world’s leading companies rely on CRM — customer relationship management — software to manage their customer cycle. Software like Purple Potato can function as your one-stop shop for ensuring your customers are happy from beginning to end.

Continue to Innovate

No one’s going to stay on a sinking ship when there’s a liferaft available. If you can continue to innovate and improve your products and services, then people will pay attention. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they’ll certainly notice if you’re taking your eye off the ball.

Smooth Processes

It’s not just the products that your customers buy from you that count. Everything around that purchase is crucial, too. For instance, if they’re paying online, how easy is it for the customer to get through the checkout process? How long do they typically have to wait for the package to arrive? If the answers to those questions are “not easy” and “longer than normal,” then your customers will soon be casting flirtatious glances at other companies.

Throw in a Surprise

Who doesn’t love a surprise from time to time? It can be enough to bring a failing relationship back from the edge. There’s no shortage of surprises you can throw in for your customers. It could be an unexpected discount, a freebie in their package, or any other type of much-wanted bonus that they haven’t asked for.

Social Media and Email Marketing

You’ll have worked hard to get your customer’s attention in the first place. Don’t let it go without a fight! By having engaging social media accounts and investing in your email marketing, you can ensure that you’re never too far from the forefront of their minds.

Go Above and Beyond

Finally, the best method for keeping your customers? Make them happy. To do that, just look at going above and beyond whenever possible. There’s nearly always something you can do that’ll help ensure your customers have a positive experience. Live with that in mind, and you won’t lose many!

Get started today with the Purple Potato CRM.

How reports can drastically improve your business

Business reports offer an array of benefits for companies of all sizes across multiple industries. In this guide, we’ll discuss how reports can drastically improve your business.

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An introduction to business reporting

Business reporting is a tool, which can be used to drastically improve your business effectively to monitor and track progress and development, identify growth opportunities and highlight shortfalls and weaknesses. When business reports are compiled, interpreted and utilised in the right way, they can offer incredible advantages for company owners, team leaders, employees and customers.

There are various types of business reports. Some reports, for example, financial records, are legally required. This article will focus on using additional reports to guide and inform decision-making, track progress, identify, investigate and address problems, increase sales and plan and implement change.

How can businesses use reports?

There are multiple ways in which businesses can use reports to drive growth, maximise profits, boost lead conversion rates and sales and identify new opportunities. Types of reports company owners may wish to consider introducing include:

  • Financial reports: financial reports are essential for budgeting and forecasting. They are compiled regularly to ensure that businesses are hitting markers and operating in a viable, sustainable manner.
  • Sales and enquiries: sales and enquiries reports can be incredibly helpful for sales team leaders and business owners looking to analyse individual and group performance. With intuitive, real-time reporting, it’s possible to track sales and enquiries to gauge how well employees and teams are working and highlight strengths and weaknesses. Statistics show that sales enablement tool usage has increased by over 560% since 2017 (source).
  • Performance reports: monitoring performance involves analysing the performance of individuals, teams and departments, or the business as a whole, in line with key performance indicators, objectives and goals.
  • Customer activity: if you run a sales team, or your business sells products or services to clients, customer activity reports provide valuable information and insight into relationships between your business and individual customers.

What are the benefits of business reports?

There are several benefits of using business reports. For company owners and small and medium-sized businesses, it is possible to drastically improve your business by using reports in the right way. Here are some of the most important benefits:

  • Tracking and documenting progress

One of the primary benefits of using business reports is being able to track and document progress. With reports, you can gain an accurate insight into how well your business is performing and ensure that you understand what is happening within the company from month to month or year to year.

  • Guiding decision-making and strategising

Making decisions in business is not always easy. With business reports, company owners and team leaders have the opportunity to access and utilise data to help them to make the right calls at the right time. Collecting and analysing data and feedback and collating reports can help business owners to adjust and improve strategies to optimise outcomes and set new goals. For marketing campaigns, for example, you can use reports to see which techniques, channels or platforms are most effective and lucrative for you.

  • Highlighting problems and weaknesses

No company is perfect, and there is always room for improvement. Business reports provide an effective means of identifying and highlighting problems and weaknesses. Once you are aware of the issues that are holding your team or business back, you can address them and reduce the risk of repeat problems affecting you in the future.

  • Identifying opportunities

Business reports can help companies to identify opportunities to expand, increase sales, create and convert better quality leads, tap into new trends and enhance customer relations.

  • Customisation options

Innovative software and modern-day data collection and evaluation techniques enable business owners and sales teams to take advantage of customisation options, which provide opportunities to achieve more through using data. If you specialise in sales, for example, you can use custom reports to obtain detailed information about specific customers or enquiries.

  • Updating information

The world of business never stands still and companies have to evolve and adjust continuously. Using business reports is an excellent way to keep data up-to-date and fresh. Reports should be regular, accurate, reliable and accessible.

Conclusion

Business reports can offer company owners and teams access to an array of benefits. If you don’t already use reporting, it could make a huge difference to your sales figures, the way you run your organisation, the relationships you have with your customers and your potential to improve, grow and explore new opportunities. Reporting is a way of tracking and evaluating performance, improving efficiency, highlighting and addressing problems, finding out more about how your business is functioning and ensuring that operations align with key objectives and targets.

Technical engineering sales – how to streamline your process

Knowledgeable technical engineering sales can contribute to increasing sales. Here are tips to streamline your process for better customer support and sales.

Technical sales engineers are instrumental in promoting and selling specialist equipment and services to business clients. They provide leads with expert technical knowledge in sectors such as biomedical and manufacturing industries. Their knowledge and expertise are at the heart of the sales process, enabling the business to identify new potential customer targets, negotiate new dales, and assist lead throughout the sales journey.

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But, at the same time, your technical engineering sales process is also a commercial operation that requires targeted customer support, strategic marketing and follow-up activities, and transparent communication with a variety of technical and non-technical teams within the business.

Needless to say, delays and frictions can arise before, during, and after the technical engineering sales process as a result of:

  • Inaccuracy in content
  • Slow lead generation strategy
  • Loss of leads between sales steps
  • Lack of customer follow-up information
  • Conflicting goals

At Purple Potato Software, our team of experts is dedicated to helping you maximise your technical engineering sales potential. That’s why we’ve produced the following guidelines to help you streamline your process and reduce frictions.

Communicate clear strategic goals and plans

Regardless of your industry sector, it is essential to clarify goals related to your sales process. These goals will affect both the marketing and the sales teams. Indeed, each team plays a crucial role in increasing sales revenues at a business level.

The marketing activities focus on raising brand and product awareness to create leads. The technical engineering sales team is charged with nurturing leads and generating sales.

Challenges arise when the goals set for each team are conflicting. This can happen for different reasons:

  • Lead identification criteria vary between the teams
  • Unrealistic goals drive poor quality leads
  • Lack of cooperation between teams leads to confusion and duplicate tasks
  • etc.

To ensure both the marketing and sales team can be productive and effective together, meaningful goal setting is a priority.

Centralise all customers information in one place

How do you know if a contact is a first-time lead or if they are already part of the lead nurturing process?

Picture the situation: A prospective buyer who has already been in touch with a qualified technical sales engineer contacts your customer service team for more information. Unfortunately, the agent finds no trace of the contact in their system and, therefore, handles the call as if they were talking to a new lead. As a result, the prospective buyer is frustrated, which can slow down or cancel the sales process.

How can this be avoided? Using a reliable CRM tool that can reflect all business operations related to each contact will make a big difference. Indeed, the customer team could track individual leads’ journeys and avoid costly confusion.

A similar situation could arise when a lead who has already received a quote gets in touch with the sales team. In the absence of the sales rep who worked with them, the sales team might miss the opportunity to close the deal.

Develop automated lead sales path

Lead nurturing is a time-demanding process, especially when it comes to technical engineering sales. Within the technical sector, there is no such thing as a shelf product that can meet the needs of all your customers. Indeed, unique industries, trends, and operations will require unique tech standards and implementations. As a result, a technical sales engineer can’t rely on automated emailing campaigns that blast the same product to hundreds of clients.

On the contrary, unique customers will need tailored solutions. From a lead generation perspective, this means individual communication, a bespoke quotation system, and custom follow-up. But, there are strategies to automate even a custom sales process:

  • Identify and assign tasks to the right interlocutor
  • Produce custom templates for emailing
  • Create lead reminders
  • Attach relevant files to each contact
  • Collect and store information for each contact
  • Mark each lead generation stage

Provide enhanced customer support

The last thing you need is to delay a potential sales deal through inaccurate information. Therefore, whether an existing client or a lead gets in touch, providing excellent customer support is essential. However, when your teams aren’t equipped with tools that let them see the customer journey, they can struggle to provide the best customer service.

Are the right tools enough to do the trick? The answer is no. Using the right tools without appropriate training at a business level could also cause delays and frustration for the customers. At Purple Potato Software, we are committed to providing you with the educational resource you need to make the most of your tools. We also encourage businesses to embrace transparent communication at all levels by updating relevant customer tabs and integrating with everyday operations.

In conclusion, avoiding friction in your technical engineering sales process requires transparency in your business strategy, tools, and communication. Our CRM solution is designed to improve transparency and flow for your sales process.

Improving Customer Support with a CRM

Customer care is a central ingredient in the recipe for business success. Contact Purple Potato to discover how a CRM can help you do better for your clients by improving customer support and bank balance.

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What are your business goals for 2022? Whether it’s increasing sales, inspiring improved loyalty, or developing cost-effective ways of keeping clients happy doesn’t matter. Investing in your customer support protocols will deliver stunning results.

The best way to boost customer care is through a dedicated CRM package like Purple Potato.

The Importance of improving customer support

Customer care has always been an essential aspect of running a successful business. However, it has taken on an even greater significance in recent times because consumers can now access a global network of brands and companies within seconds from the palm of their hands. As such, their demands are at an all-time high. Thankfully, businesses that satisfy them are set to achieve fantastic rewards.

The following stats give some insight into the reasons why customer care should be a priority;

  • 96% of people believe customer support levels play a key role in their decisions regarding brand loyalty.
  • Up to 87% of customers who have enjoyed a positive customer experience will be happy to buy another product from the brand.
  • Over half of all consumers agree that they have higher expectations than they did just 12 months ago.
  • 84% of companies who work to improve their customer experience report an increase in revenue.
  • The average person will tell up to 15 people about a bad experience, which could indirectly cost you more sales.

In short, upgrading your customer support game will bolster the brand image, encourage loyal fans to come back, and turn clients into advocates. It subsequently leads to more conversions and fewer lost opportunities to boost your bottom line.

Boosting Customer Care with a CRM

The company’s commitment to customer support is a philosophy rather than a piece of software. Nonetheless, using a CRM package for your SME is essential.

While a CRM will help your business in many ways, the focus revolves around enhanced customer experiences and the aforementioned rewards it will bring. Most companies try to provide quality customer care and friendly, knowledgeable employees are a central feature. In today’s world, though, the need for speed makes CRM the best choice.

Whether contacting through email, social media, live chat, or telephone, a fast response is deemed necessary. Even when a solution isn’t found, it lets clients know that they are valued, which encourages them to stay patient. They’ll forgive mistakes or faults, but won’t forget being made to feel like a number rather than a person.

Aside from giving new customers what they want before they convert, it encourages client loyalty. Given that a 5% boost in customer retention can lift profits by at least 25%, any tool that allows your company to perform better should be grabbed with both hands. CRM will send notifications when customers make contact while clarity will be retained throughout every step until the issue is resolved.

Furthermore, a CRM allows you to collect data relating to customer interactions with you. in turn, the reports you generate can provide valuable insights into client trends and issues like bounce rates to guide your next steps. Therefore, you’ll be able to actively improve the customer experience relating to issues that they know about as well as some that they don’t even realise are affecting their time on your website or with the company.

CRMs don’t only empower individual workers to provide a faster and better service when dealing with customers. Perhaps more importantly, CRMs use real-time data and cloud collaborations so that consistency can be delivered even when a client deals with several support teams. 72% expect the agent to know about them and their history with the business. The fact that a CRM does this and stops them from having to repeat themselves to different people is key.

A good CRM will automate some aspects of your customer care while also collating and presenting data in a way that helps your team help its clients. When added to faster responses, clearer answers, and added consistency, it has to be a better solution than outdated manual methods where communication mix-ups and missed steps can cost you dearly.

Master Customer Care with Purple Potato

By now, it should be clear that a CRM can improve your client interactions – including those that do not require speaking to an agent – to ultimately boost their opinions of the brand and boost your hopes of securing conversions or repeat sales. For the best results, though, you will need to choose the right CRM package.

Purple Potato is ideal for SMEs and boasts a range of tools to aid interactions where the customer has contacted you as well as items where you take the initiative, like email marketing. To find out how it can help your company and workforce, get in touch today.

CRMs for a Construction Firm

Customer relationship management is important for engaging clients and establishing long-term relationships. Here’s how a CRM for a construction firm can help your business.

For many years, construction firms have followed a relatively straightforward business model. You find clients, you discuss a project, you carry it out, then you finalize the payment. However, as the construction industry evolves, firms are finding more and more ways to secure profitable contracts while also squeezing out every bit of efficiency possible from their processes. This helps to optimise every project, resulting in much faster completion times, less wasted resources, and ultimately more profit.

One new trend that’s starting to transform the industry is the use of sales software that is specifically made for the construction industry. Let’s take a look at what customer relationship management (CRM) software for a construction firm can do for you.

What can a CRM offer a construction firm?

Before adopting any kind of software solution, it’s vital that you understand exactly what it can offer you. This helps to set your expectations and gives you an idea of what the software is capable of. In the case of a CRM, here are some of the benefits that you can expect:

  • Clear and concise tracking and storage of customer records. This includes message and project history, ongoing communications, urgent enquiries, and so on. This helps you get a better overview of your client relationships so you can focus on looking after your top customers and nurturing strong long-term relationships.
  • Set up tasks and reminders to help nurture your relationship with each client. These alerts can be linked to your current projects and clients to remind you of outstanding work.
  • Automatic business reports are generated with data that you enter. This can help you forecast sales, identify busy periods, and also analyse marketing channels that work best for your needs. Performance monitoring is also a huge consideration when it comes to business reporting as it can help you better understand who your top-performing employees are and what teams are currently working on.
  • An effective CRM can also be used to improve collaborative processes. Since construction involves many different specialities and skills, it’s normal to work with multiple employees and specialists. Some of these people will work in their own time and use their own processes, so it’s a good idea to have a standardised system to help align everyone’s goals.

These are just a few examples of how a construction firm can use a CRM to its advantage. By better understanding your audience and your most valued clients, you can grow long-lasting relationships that will help provide you with a steady flow of work. This can also help you grow your name, giving you access to even more opportunities in the future.

Adopt a CRM for your construction firm today

CRMs for a construction firm can help you gain a much deeper understanding of your clients, their needs, and future opportunities. If you’re looking to grow your construction firm then it’s important to start adopting effective software solutions as early as possible.

Increasing Efficiency for Manufacturing Companies

Efficiency is important for any business. It helps to reduce the operating costs of a business while simultaneously increasing productivity and product output. It doesn’t matter how big or small a business is; increasing efficiency for manufacturing companies should be a key metric that you should focus on.

But when it comes to increasing efficiency for manufacturing companies, every little process can and should be scrutinized. Small details can make a world of difference in the manufacturing industry, especially when you’re dealing with high product volumes and economies of scale. So what are some of the things you should be looking out for if your manufacturing company is looking to increase efficiency?

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1. Training competent staff

Human error is usually taken into account when it comes to mistakes in production. Companies will typically sacrifice a few per cent of their efficiency because they know that mistakes are inevitable and often unavoidable. However, that doesn’t mean you should just let it be.

Training your staff may seem like a big investment, but it’s one of the best ways to help you reduce the frequency of human error. It also reduces the chances of an accident happening, such as injuries occurring due to repetitive strain or incorrect usage of machinery.

2. Cutting down on waste

Waste can mean a lot of things, but in the context of manufacturing it usually boils down to two areas; materials and labour.

Material waste can occur in several different ways. It usually happens as a result of too many materials being used to create a product, resulting in wasteful processes. By optimising the methods used to create a product, it’s possible to cut down on material waste which means each product is cheaper to make and takes less power.

Waste may also refer to labour. When there are too many staff members crowding around the same task, then it reduces efficiency because there are other bottlenecks that form. It could be due to a lack of machinery to create products, or you might just not need so many staff members and could save a lot on salary costs.

With so many definitions of what waste is, it’s important to take a good look at your business to understand where you could be reducing waste to optimise your manufacturing processes.

3. Make ample use of software to track and optimise processes

Software is a major help when it comes to increasing efficiency for manufacturing companies. For example, a manufacturing CRM can be used to track customers and their orders, and also help you simplify reporting processes so you know exactly what’s going on with each batch of orders and the manufacturing processes around them.

In short, manufacturing software gives you a much wider overview of your business and how it’s currently operating. If you’re serious about optimising your processes, then it’s important to get a good understanding of how your business runs so you know where the inefficiencies are.

Purple Potatoes – The Surprising Benefits To Your Health And Business

What are the health benefits of purple potatoes? Prepare to be converted thanks to our fact-filled blog post on your new favourite potato variety.

Colourful food keeps life interesting. A classic ‘beige buffet’ may be full of the naughty treats we all enjoy, but when it comes to eating a healthy and balanced diet, it pays to add some colour to your plate.

Blueberries, tomatoes, broccoli – these colourful foods are known to bring us a range of health benefits. But can a firm (beige) favourite, the potato, also have its health benefits? Well, let us introduce you to purple potatoes. They could be just what you need to boost your health, and your business too.

Wait… a purple potato?

No, we haven’t made a mistake, there is such a thing as a purple potato. And no, it’s not a beetroot.

Purple potatoes are similar to your simple spud, but they have a dark outer skin and purple flesh that retain their colour after cooking. They have an earthier taste compared to a white potato, and a denser texture.

The health benefits of purple potatoes

Adding purple potato to your dish will certainly add colour, but they also bring a lot of health benefits, including:

They’re rich in antioxidants

Most colourful fruit and vegetables are rich in antioxidants. And the bright purple hue of purple potatoes signifies a lot of antioxidants. In fact, purple potatoes can have up to two to three times the antioxidant content of white potatoes.

Antioxidants can help maintain regular blood pressure levels, improve vision, reduce the risk of diabetes, cancer and other diseases.

They’re packed with nutrients

Don’t believe the myth that the majority of a potato’s nutrients are found in the skin. Purple potatoes are rich in fibre, are mostly fat-free, and contain protein too. They also contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, which can help improve your body’s immunity and energy levels.

They’re better for your blood sugar

While carbohydrates, like those found in potatoes, can impact blood sugar levels. Purple potatoes, have a lower GI (glycemic index) of 77 compared to 93 in white potatoes, meaning they could be a better choice if you’re trying to maintain low blood sugar levels.

They could improve your heart health

There have been studies into the impact of purple potatoes on heart health. Purple potatoes could help reduce blood pressure, helping to avoid many common cardiovascular problems. 

Purple Potato – the healthy choice for your business

We’ve told you about the benefits of purple potatoes for your health. But what about the health of your business. That’s where Purple Potato comes in. Our effective, feature-packed CRM software has everything your business needs to run smoothly, taking sales software to the next level.

Let Purple Potato help you maintain your business health with innovative CRM software that will help you meet your customers’ needs.

Sounds too good to be true? Take a look at our 7-day free trial and see the difference Purple Potato can make to your business’ health.

Increasing Your Conversion Rate Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated

Is boosting your conversion rate something you need to do? We’ve got the information that you need down below.

Is your conversion rate not where you want it to be right now? It might be the case that you have a high amount of website traffic, but your conversions are still lacking. There are a number of reasons that this could be happening, and you need to start putting measures in place to ensure that this doesn’t continue. Down below, we’re going to take a look at some of the things that you can do to boost your conversion rate, so keep reading down below.

Follow Up

The first thing that we are going to recommend is that you should be following up with any enquiries into your business. For example, if someone is browsing your site and they add something to the basket but don’t check out, this can be because they have forgotten about it, or they decided against it. However, you’re not going to know which it is, so you should follow up. Have an automated email ready to go to remind them that they had something in their basket. Try to use phrases like ‘forgot to checkout’ as this makes it more likely for them to head back. Also, in this email, try to ensure that you include the product or products that they placed in their basket.

These abandoned cart emails can be extremely helpful when it comes to picking up some sales that may have been forgotten. On average, companies who send abandoned cart emails manage to recover between 4-5%. While it might not seem like much, it’s much more than the 0% that you will recover if you don’t employ this method.

You can also call the customer and talk to them about the item that they were looking at. Ask them if there is a reason they decided not to purchase it, or if they plan to purchase it but haven’t done it just yet. Make sure you are friendly and polite, otherwise you’re going to get the phone put down on you and you can kiss the conversion goodbye.

Keeping Organised

You should also make sure that you are keeping all of your enquiries organised. Things are much easier to manage when they are laid out clearly for yourself or the team to browse through. This will make your life that little bit easier, and if you use crm software, it will remind you to follow up where needed. This can be a massive help, ensuring that you don’t miss out on potential conversions simply because you were unorgainsed.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you can do to boost your conversion rate. Take the advice that we have given above, and you are going to find your sales going through the roof. We wish you the very best of luck.

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