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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Do you want to unify your sales team? Unify your remote sales team. Here’s how you do that.

52% of employees work from home at least once per week. Working remotely comes with many different benefits as well. To begin with, you may find that you are able to get more work done while also giving your team an outstanding level of flexibility regarding their working hours. That being said, you have to remember that you also need to unify your team properly. If you don’t, then you may find that nobody is able to achieve their full potential and that you are not able to push past your competition. If you want to make sure that your remote team is working like a well-oiled machine, then this is the guide for you.

Encourage Healthy Competition

You have to make sure that you are fostering a competitive environment and that you are also encouraging participation as well if you want to unify your remote sales team. This can be done through weekly meetings that are done remotely. When you do this, you can make sure that the top efforts are being celebrated while also ensuring that you give people the chance to share their practices when it comes to securing sales too. If possible, you also need to try and encourage people to speak up when they are struggling as well as this will give them the chance to get the help they need to achieve their full potential.

Celebrate Wins

It’s vital that you recognise good work. Even when you do not see any of your team members in person, you should never overlook the power of incentivising. You have to make sure that your team feel important and that they also feel included. It may be that you recognise someone on a group chat when they make a large sale or when they close a deal. You can then have other team members join the chat and offer their praise. This is a simple exercise but at the end of the day it can help to boost morale and it can also help people to keep on selling too.

Create a Slack Channel

You don’t have to use Slack, but it’s one of the best programs out there for team communication. In-house offices tend to be bustling and busy, and a lot of sales executives often say that they thrive on a noisy sales floor. When you have your team working remotely, you may find that things end up being quiet. If you can open a dedicated channel, then this will help you to discuss progress and you can also give everyone a place where they can share in the miniature wins that they get. This can help them to stay motivated when it comes to pursuing big sales.

Support your Reps

The biggest tip that you could hope to take from this post to unify your remote sales team would be for you to make sure that your reps are supported. Your project manager should have a good relationship with every team member, and they should also feel supported in every way. If the sales team do not feel supported, then efforts can easily diminish, and you may find that your pipelines are impacted as well.

Don’t Micromanage

When it comes to managing your sales team, you have to avoid micromanagement. Keep everything focused on goals and how you want to achieve them. Sales team members tend to be motivated by their own success or through things like customer interactions. When they get motivated, you can then get out of their way and let them do their job. You will soon see that the results speak for themselves.

Offer Coaching

If you want to try and unify your sales team, then you also need to try and offer them coaching where possible. You need to make sure that you are always providing them with the appropriate guidance so that they can increase their set of skills. Your staff should have enough direction to help them generate even more leads on a day to day basis, and this is ideal if you want to boost your sales.

Set Good Expectations

You have to make sure that every single member of your sales team has very clear expectations. If you can do this, then you will soon see that it is all about communication. If possible, you need to step up how often you communicate. If you work in a traditional office, then you may find that it is easy for you to bump into team members from time to time, but if you work remotely you can’t do this. If managers set concrete and easy to achieve goals for their team, then you will find it easier to unify your team. You may also find that they are much more engaged and focused overall. Using a CRM software, like the one provided by Purple Potato is one of the best ways for you to ensure that your team are meeting their goals. It will also help you to ensure that each team member knows their responsibilities.

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.

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.

Are you looking to improve stagnant sales revenues? Find out our top 7 tips for increasing sales durably in small and medium-sized businesses.

As a small or medium-sized business, you know that sales are crucial for your survival. For SMEs, the priority of increasing sales is to create a stable financial situation for growth.

Unlike large companies, you can’t afford to hire a celebrity to promote your brand on TV. Similarly, time is of the essence, and the longer you wait, the more difficult it can be to maintain your operations. Therefore, it’s essential to consider cost-effective strategies that can impact your sales figures rapidly.

Focus on new sales training trends

The global pandemic has dramatically affected the way people choose to communicate and buy. As a result, your sales team needs to be trained to handle the virtual sales process. Remote sales activities can be difficult: Over 4 in 10 sales reps struggle to manage virtual sales effectively and find the process more challenging than traditional sales. In the long term, the sales shortfall can affect the business.

Virtual training methods have been growing in popularity even before the pandemic through e-learning and online workshops. It becomes essential to arrange for dedicated digital training for your team to boost their confidence for increasing sales in a post-pandemic, remote environment.

Maximise upsell & cross-sell opportunities

According to statistics, cross-selling and upselling strategies increase revenue by up to almost a third. Upselling and cross-selling opportunities can be highly effective as part of the offline sales journey and for digital businesses. SaaS, e-Commerce, and other online ventures can increase their revenues through strategic upselling and cross-selling.

What does it look like in practice? Cross-selling focuses on promoting related products or services, such as pairing socks with a pair of trainers on an online retailer site. On the other hand, upselling promotes a better model or added features to the product or service chosen. Both strategies increase sales revenues.

Encourage customers to turn advocates

Satisfied customers can turn brand promoters for the business. Indeed, satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your brand to friends. According to figures, 92% of people trust personal recommendations over advertising. Therefore, businesses that fail to encourage advocacy are missing out on a significant opportunity to increase sales. How do you best turn a customer into a brand advocate:

• Reward customers for referrals
• Create a loyalty programme to keep customers on board
• Encourage user-generated content
• Create a customer-centric culture
• Build brand ambassador programmes with popular social media users

Build your influencer marketing strategy

Popular social media users are social media influencers. They have a large and loyal follower base. Partnering with influencers can promote brand awareness, visibility and increase sales. You may not have the budget to work with an international influencer. However, local influencers can be not only more cost-effective, but they also have a more significant sales increasing impact for small businesses.

A local influencer is a popular social media user, blogger, vlogger, or Instagrammer whose influence is localised in a city or a small region. Because they have a smaller follower base, local influencers have high engagement rates with their audience, maximising sales potential.

Improve customer experience

Two types of customer experience will leave a lasting memory for your customers: an excellent experience or a bad one. Customers are more likely to leave a negative review if they are disappointed by the experience with your brand. Unfortunately, negative reviews are harmful to your business.

A positive experience can help turn satisfied customers into advocates and attract influencer partnerships.

Run special offers

Small businesses lose 5% to 10% of their customer base every year. Offers and incentives can stimulate repeat purchases from existing customers and attract new ones, effectively replacing churn out.

Some of the most effective offers to contribute to increasing sales are time-focused and bring more value to the customers:

• Buy one, get one free
• free delivery
• x% discount for existing customers or a specific demographic
• free product or service when you buy X
• Bundle offer
• competitions

Diversify inbound marketing

Your inbound marketing strategy is designed to bring visitors in, aka drive them to your website or your shop. Diversifying your inbound strategy means you can use multiple channels and best practices to reach a broader audience.

SEO is a popular marketing tool to increase online visibility and web traffic. However, you can also consider additional campaigns, such as paid search engine presence through PPC.

Social media advertising and management can drive brand awareness to your audience outside of search engine platforms.

Video marketing can be highly effective on specific social media channels such as YouTube and Tiktok, but it can also increase brand engagement for a broader reach.

The bottom line: Not everyone uses the same platform, so make sure to be everywhere your audience is.

How we can help

At Purple Potato Software, we are a dedicated team providing cloud CRM services to SMEs in the UK and the US to help them track their customers and manage their sales.

We empower you with the tools to track existing sales and implement strategies for increasing sales.

Looking to improve your customer relations with a modern CRM package for SMEs? Learn how to unlock the full potential of your software with this simple guide on Getting Started with a CRM.

Whether you’re about to launch a startup or want to take your business to new heights in 2022, keeping your clients happy will be a priority. Integrating the right CRM software will be one of the most beneficial steps to make it happen.

When used efficiently, CRM for SME packages can completely transform the way you interact with your clients to deliver a plethora of benefits. Here’s how you can get started with your CRM software in style.

First Up, Why CRM Software?

Customer Relationship Management is a concept that has dominated the business arena for generations, even if the term wasn’t coined until recent times. It defines the way you handle client interactions to inspire positive responses and increase engagement.

CRM software allows companies to track, store, and analyse all relevant data from interactions across all platforms and devices. This can include emails, phone calls, social media, in-store connections, and more. Here are just six reasons why companies need it in 2022 and beyond;

• Studies show that a huge 74% of consumers are influenced by customer experience.
• 52% of consumers would happily pay more for a better customer experience.
• Customer experience (45.9%) is the most common priority for business makers.
• Poor customer service costs UK businesses £37billion every year.
• 88% of customers read reviews, which can have a big influence on their opinions.
• There is a revenue increase of 80% for firms that master customer experience.

CRM for SME packages make it a lot easier to record and review all client-based data. In turn, this can boost everything from conversions to loyalty.

Five Steps to Starting Life with a CRM

Now that you appreciate the importance of using a CRM, you’ll be eager to get up and running in style. Focus on the following five steps and you won’t go far wrong.

Select the Best CRM

Naturally, the first step is to complete your market research and find a winning CRM package for you. The industry has witnessed an exponential rate of growth in the past decade and there are now hundreds of solutions available. To find the best option for your business, answer the following questions;

• Is it a CRM built with small businesses in mind?
• Does it suit your industry – such as being a CRM for construction firms?
• Can it be used across multiple devices and user accounts – if required?
• Is the software priced well and able to upscale with your need?

Purple Potato is a brilliant solution for the majority of SMEs across the UK. Get in touch to find out what it can do for your company today.

Understand the Dashboard

Once you’ve installed your CRM for SME solutions, you must focus on becoming familiar with the layout and navigation. Every CRM is unique but a host of universal tools and features have been central to the success of a sector that’s set to hit $80bn by 2025. Some of the key issues to consider are;

• Learning the navigation from the main menu to switch between sections like accounts and tasks.
• Becoming familiar with notifications and where they appear so that you can respond quickly.
• Understanding widgets, particularly customisable ones where you can choose the data you wish to show.
• Becoming familiar with using search features that help you find what you need far sooner.

The best way to get started with your CRM is to spend time using it. Everything from the colours and layouts to making sense of the available data will soon become clear.

Import Data

CRM software is ultimately designed to help businesses use data more effectively. Adding accounts is a crucial step, and possibly the most time consuming of the initial phase. You can add accounts from the navigation menu or complete a bulk data import if you already have the details stored elsewhere. But you must remember to;

• Confirm that any manually added data is full, accurate, and follows a structure.
• If importing data, be sure to convert the spreadsheet to a .CSV file.
• Delete the demo accounts that were showing on the software.

You cannot record or track data from leads and customers if you do not first have their data uploaded to the CRM. Once it is, you’ll be set to keep data from future interactions too.

Add Tasks

As you get more experienced with the CRM for SME system, you’ll probably start to create custom charts and use customer reporting to help understand data and client behaviours. For now, though, setting tasks will be the key feature. This allows you to assign jobs to team members, manage workflows, and close more sales. Examples may include;

• Offering a 3-month follow-up call to a client after completing their project.
• Sending notifications to clients that their service is due to expire.
• Using the direct email system to message leads who have requested info.

A completed task will be filed correctly while overdue tasks and incomplete tasks will be flagged up. You can quickly see which team member is responsible for each task.

Train the Workforce

Perhaps one of the most important things to remember is that you won’t be the only person to use the CRM. Customer support teams will need daily access while you may find that marketers and other employees will utilise the available data to spot trends or determine how to enhance the business. Training your staff can occur through;

• Following online tutorials on how to use your CRM software.
• Encouraging them to use the demo account before you integrate the full CRM.
• Hire an expert to actively visit your team.

Ultimately, the key is to ensure that all team members use a consistent approach and feel confident with the software. More work will follow, but this should put you on solid ground.

Final Thoughts

Getting started with a CRM may seem daunting, but it is a process that will begin to deliver almost immediate results. And by laying the foundations for better customer relationships, the software can be a wonderful tool for boosting your bottom line.

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.

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.

Increasing sales and customer relationships

Increasing sales and customer relationships as a business are more effective with CRM strategies. Although they are useful, there are some things about them that can be quite frustrating. Let’s take a look.

Increasing sales and profits is every businesses aim. Although money isn’t everything, it certainly helps a business attain greater success.

With CRM’s, it is made more possible to increase and enhance customer relationships with existing and potential customers.

Although they prove to be effective, there are some things that business owners will likely hate about CRM’s. Of which, most people will have these dislikes in common.

On that note, let’s take a look at the top 5 things we all hate about CRM’s.

What is a CRM?

A CRM is a customer relationship management system, which works to manage interactions with existing and potential customers. Its main aims are to manage sales, points of contact, and enhance productivity in a business.

A CRM works by utilizing tools that can help to build customer relationships, which will work to grow a business. There are various CRM tools that businesses can use to support customer relationship management. It all depends on your type of business and what pros you are looking for.

Speaking of pros, there are also some cons to CRM’s that we can all agree are pretty frustrating.

5 things we all hate about CRM’s

CRM’s can be highly beneficial to increase and maintain customer relationships. However, they aren’t always great. Here are the 5 things that we can all agree to hate about CRM’s.

When it isn’t connected to your email

When a CRM isn’t connected to your email then you will lack communication with your customers, which is the whole purpose of using CRM’s. They are designed to build customer relationships and make them easier. Therefore, when they are not connected to your email properly, there will be a lack of communication, which can hinder your customer relationships.

Around 60% of CRM users claim that the poor email connectivity process can make the tools a complete failure. After all, they are designed to make email communication much more seamless for a business.

When the system isn’t user-friendly

Some CRM’s are simply not designed to be user-friendly. Therefore, there offer a poor user experience, which opposes their aim.

Nobody wants to waste their time with a slow or confusing CRM tool, especially a customer. Therefore, it is reasonable to deem a CRM a failure if it doesn’t provide your customer with a good experience.

When you have to input excessive data

Using CRM’s in your business is useful to manage your time better and improve your productivity. Therefore, when you have to input excessive amounts of data into the CRM system for it to be effective, it opposes what it is designed to do.

The extra work will hinder your productivity and impact how much time you can spend on sales.

When it doesn’t cooperate well with other sales tools

Every business will likely use multiple sales tools in order to maximize the sales potential of their business. Therefore, if a CRM doesn’t cooperate well with other sales tools, then it will hinder your sales potential. It will create conflict in your business and increase your manual work, which isn’t fun.

The purpose of a CRM is to streamline your sales process and maximize your sales potential. If it doesn’t work well with other tools then it will make the sales process much more challenging and slow.

When they are difficult to use with complicated reports

Seeing as the purpose of a CRM is to make a business run more smoothly, it can be frustrating when the reports are complex and difficult to understand and learn from.

A complex CRM report can take a person hours to run through and understand, let alone use it to tweak the business in order to maximize sales. Therefore, it is understandable to hate CRM’s when they offer complex reports.

Moreover, when a CRM is difficult to use from the business side of things, it is even more so frustrating. They should be easy to implement and use so that you can go about your other business matters. They are designed to make processes easier and quicker, not slow them down. Therefore, it is best to use simple CRM’s that offer visual and quick to understand reports so that you can maximize your businesses potential.