Well organized sells better, but how do you do that?
As an entrepreneur or sales employee within a company, one of your most important tasks is to make sure that you find, keep and continue to attract customers in the future. Obviously. Then it is strange that this aspect of entrepreneurship is not at the top of the list of priorities. The fall is always the same: it runs smoothly, there is a lot to arrange to provide the existing customers with a product or service, and then attracting new customers is not considered so important by everyone.
An effect that can then occur is that there are all sorts of processes in a company that do not make it easier, but more difficult, to attract new customers. Then we are not only talking about a more effective approach to marketing (although this is often a stumbling block), but also about the approach of current customers. Satisfied customers are your primary word-of-mouth marketers and they are therefore extremely important. Everyone likes to talk about putting the customer first, but do you really do that as a company? If it is difficult to attract new customers, it is often wise to look at how happy you are existing customers and, above all, to look at how you can make their ‘ customer experience ‘ better.
Well organized sells really better
This often has to do with service, but also with organization. If the different parts of your customer device do not work well together, customers quickly get the idea that they are numbers and they do not feel taken seriously. Nothing more annoying than calling a company for an issue and calling up three days later to see what they can do for you, to name just one example.
That kind of blunders can easily be prevented by organizing your customer contact properly. A clear workflow in a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management ) tool helps, because it ensures that there is at least a clear log of who has communicated with whom and about whom. This lowers the risk of having an uncomfortable conversation or email exchange with about 95 percent. Not only does it make communication with your customers easier, the sales meetings are also a lot nicer and faster. If everyone knows what the status of projects, promotions and campaigns is, you do not waste anyone’s time and sales can do what they are good at.
Less red tape
Speaking about wasting time: in a small company, the administration is often also killing productivity. Quotations, invoices, these are all things that are important but all too often made from a standard Word template. This is going to cause copy / paste errors with all the misery, not to mention adjusting things like general terms and conditions in all versions. It’s a hassle, and that’s all done automatically with a good software package. You want a link between customer, quotation, order, handling and ultimately invoice that retrieves all data from the same source. Not only does this go faster, it also yields less lost time for correcting errors.
That sounds fantastic, but it’s not worth it if the package you choose is inconvenient to use. Especially as a small company you have to get started quickly. Ideally you can use a package without having to let half of the staff take a week on course. There is no time to find out everything and if there is no technical knowledge you do not want to have that. If a CRM package does its job well, all processes in a company become easier, without it taking extra time. Consultation, coordination, transfer: it takes less time and there is less chance of errors. That is what you want and that is what a good CRM package you should give. High time to invest, because the prevailing wisdom is that a well-chosen package earns you more than eightfold for every euro you spend!
If you are curious about what is involved in integrating a CRM package into the workflow at your company, check this free trial of Team Leader and see if it suits you.