Some sources are claiming a newer customer maintaining tool, CXM (Customer Experience Management) will take over for CRM, making it obsolete. I, however, think they are wrong. Businesses simply cannot operate without CRM. The customer experience might be important but it doesn’t make the customer relationship disappear or unnecessary. Here’s why:

CRM software builds a customer base by deepening the relationship between business owners or management and customers. One of its focuses is on customer service; addressing concerns if they happen to reconcile the situation and making the overall business encounter pleasant leading to word of mouth referrals and good reviews. CXM was founded on the idea that if businesses are created preemptively trying to prevent any customer problems, the overall experience would be better and CRM wouldn’t be needed at all. However, as a business owner you will have thousands of customers and each one is going to have very different needs. It is impossible to predict every situation that could go wrong.

CXM was created on the concept that previous marketing strategies were going wrong. It’s intended to combine major focuses of customers, products and sales. By definition, marketing the whole customer experience seems to make sense but what some businesses are missing out on is the concept that focusing on the experience includes CRM. CXM might be a big part of the future but it’s not ready yet, especially since many businesses don’t understand the full aspect of it. They have made it into a competition of CRM or CXM when in fact, they aren’t meant to compete but instead work side by side. Call centers are notorious right now for using software and databases to define and predict their customers. Rather than realizing the customers are individuals, everything is about numbers to this type of business. They think they can use a formula to predict what the customer is going to need. Many attempt to save money on CRM training by skipping that step since the computer has figured everything out for them. But this leads them to bad reviews and a bad reputation because they leave out the personal piece.

Handling customers from the outside still presents a lot of opportunities and it’s definitely something to keep in mind but building those relationships from the inside is a key to success and it will always remain that way. CXM seems all powerful right now because it is new and different but don’t get caught up in the hype. CRM concepts are built on a strong foundation of growing your business. A good CRM helps you find your best potential customers so you can grow your business.  CRM has continued to adapt with the business world and will always be there for owners to rely on. Keep a strong focus on these relationships to keep long term customers.

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Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. 

Constant Shift of the Sales Environment

It has never been easyto pin down accurate sales forecasts.  Today, in the tug-of-war between growing pessimism of buyers and eternal optimism of sales staff, it seems impossible to predict what might happen next.   With the right automation tools, sales forecasting

becomes an added benefit to your CRM software.  In addition to knowing about your customers and managing their experience with your company, you can manage a whole lot more.

Sales forecast reports are a large part of sales managing.  They are used for many things such as monitoring an individual sales person’s performance and coaching for improvement.  It also opens ways to enable competition between sales people.  Many companies can miss may not realize how beneficial these numbers are on the executive level of business.

Cash Flow Projections and Business Growth
When a business is growing, keeping cash available for expansion is the number one concern for the entrepreneur and CFO.  The more you grow – the more cash you need.  To adequately plan for growth, the business needs to make projections about the cash position of the company 30-90 days in advance.

The more accurate your sales forecast, the quicker your business can grow.  A projection that is too low may leave you under resourced and keep you from capitalizing on opportunities.  A forecast that is too high could cause you to allocate too much resource and leave you with too much staff or inventory.  Profits will be down either way.

What Should be Measured?

Typically, profit improvement comes from three areas of a business.  You can cut costs, increase prices or manage productivity.  CFOs call the third way the “magic bullet”.  If you can get more done with the same resource, profits and cash flow improve.

One good way to improve productivity is to measure the steps in the sales process.  You can start with

very basic numbers like number of leads compared to number of sales.  Real improvement comes when you measure each step of the sales process.  With a good online CRM, you can break down each step.  Here is a simplified example:

• Number of cold calls made or emails sent
• Number of appointments or proposals
• Number of closings

With these three key numbers, you can begin tracking your sales process.  If you know that 100 cold calls lead to 10 appointments and 5 of them close, this is great data to use in your sales forecasting.

Take data gathering to the next level and measure the six or ten steps of your sales process and the predictability of your forecasts become very useful.  It becomes easy to detect the weak points of the sales process and put corrections into place that can greatly increase profits.

Sales forecasting can give business owners eye-openers for business growth.  It is really powerful information that can easily increase revenue by 10% or more with just a few adjustments.  As part of our Business Growth Series, we have dedicated an entire segment to discussing ways to use your sales forecast information at the executive level of your business.  You may even learn a few things about getting more money from the bank…check it out.

Using an online CRM– from a raw sales lead to a loyal repeat customer – it is possible to maintain a 360 degree view of the customer.  Lots of companies do not fully use the tools in their CRM software to add this highly valuable approach to a customer relationship.  In most companies, sales and marketing gathers information useful to the sales process.  In many, during the vital information gathering stage, it is only the individual sales person  who has most of the data about the prospect.  Then, when the sale closes whatever customer information has been shared goes to other departments such as operations, support or delivery.  There is no visibility of data between departments and the customer relationship suffers.

A Way to Win More Customers

The customer’s primary need at any point of the relationship is useful and timely information.  They want to get exactly what they want and nothing more.  They want to have that information given to them without being passed from one person to the next or waiting on someone to return their call.

If your company is being compared to a competitor, customer responses can make or break the sales.  Every interaction with your company needs to show the customer relationship to be at the heart of your business.

We all know about situations where just a few minutes can make all the difference in the world.  If the company’s internal communication makes response time inconvenient to the customer, you are losing sales and damaging the customer relationships that are already in place.

Improve Service and Responsiveness

If you are the owner of your business, do you have access to this kind of information without getting the sales person involved?

• The documents put together by the sales rep.
• A presentation showed to a customer.
• An email that was sent or an email with a proposal attached.
• Or just some notes about a conversation with the customer.

How about your support manager or operations manager?  Without this information, you can’t immediately respond to your prospects and customers.  You are not giving them solutions at the time of their inquiry.  This one shortfall may be jeopardizing all the time, money and effort put into your lead generation and sales lead follow up.

Information Silos

Your staff cannot act without proper information.  Everyone needs to know what commitments have been made, the current status of any ongoing support tickets and everything else.  When you have a 360 degree customer view, the customer is placed in the middle and around them are all the different members of your team.

A web based CRM is an effective solution for allowing access to all the members of your team.  Many see CRM software as only a tool for making sales.  In our recent Sales Growth eBook series, we talked a lot about marketing automation, lead generation and qualifying sales leads.  But, your CRM can do much more to win and keep the customer relationship fine-tuned.  The 360 degree customer view will reap many rewards over the lifecycle of the customer relationship.

It turns out though, even with these promising numbers, there are still hundreds of thousands of businesses who are not taking full advantage of everything email marketing can do for them. The success rates published this week could be doubled or even tripled if business owners enlisted the help of email marketing professionals. It’s time to stop trying to do it all on your own and get a grasp on this marketing of the future.

Here are three common mistakes businesses make with their email marketing:

1. Chasing After Quick Money: There is no such thing as instant gratification in the business world. Same goes for email marketing. You will not suddenly become a millionaire from one campaign. Focus on getting the right message out to your customers. A successful first campaign won’t mean a huge ROI, instead it will bring a foundation for your next campaign to grow on. The first email is the seed. You have to keep watering that seed to get your sale out of it.
2. Ignoring Your Target Market: Sending out 1,000 emails will do you no good if those emails aren’t to the right demographic. You should work on quality and purpose over quantity in your emails. Also, watch your timing. When will your target most likely be receptive to your communication? And not just specific hours of the day, watch the actual days and weeks themselves and be conscious of the season. All of these things matter. Your email needs to be relevant to your target.
3. Marketing A Specific Sale: It may seem like a good idea to email potential customers and try to entice them with an upcoming event but what happens when that event is over? Your customer forgets you ever existed. Instead, focus your efforts into writing an effective marketing email by making mention of your sales. Include coupons if you wish but make the body of your email campaigns about something more, something memorable and lasting. The point is to make sure you are not forgotten. You do not want to put a deadline on when customers can give you a chance by posting about a sale that ends 7 days from now. It may take them weeks or months to finally show up. (Remember #1 about getting that momentum growing.)

Marketing “the right way” is never easy. If you’ve done any of these things in the past, don’t fret. Luckily, these aren’t high crimes in email society. You should however make note and revamp your strategy if you’ve found you aren’t having as much email marketing success as the studies say you could be having. Small business owners need to be aware that great email marketing exists and they don’t have to settle with mediocre results. Take your business to the next level. Keep thinking outside the box and keep building on that momentum to grow that tiny seed.

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Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. 

The system has be simplified into a program we call the “Magic 5 of Content Based Email Campaigns that Drive Sales”.  In a series of five articles, we will dig deeper into this tried-and-true system.  We will begin with how to increase the number of ideal prospects in your pipeline.

Sales people always want more leads.  Then they complain about the quality of leads.  It can seem like a hopeless cycle with no solution.  Sometimes the problem is the way sales people approach today’s skeptical buyers.  The sales techniques from a decade ago are sales repellant for the skeptical purchaser.

What if the quality of the leads is bad?  What can you do to improve your sales results with the best leads possible?

One – Clearly Define Your Ideal Customer

Having a huge number of leads and dumping them on a sales team is a quick way to dispose of both your marketing budget and the time of your valuable sales personnel.  Get a smaller number of leads that precisely duplicate your very best current customer and it is much more profitable.

Spend time digging into the data from CRM database to define that ideal customer.  What is the specific industry, level within the organization, geographic location, gather even age and gender demographics.  Continue to dig deeper to find all the common characteristics your most profitable clients share.

Make this persona description the smallest niche you can deduct from the data.  Start there.  Sure, you may have lots of great clients outside this small niche.  Don’t worry; you can get to them later.  For now, make sure your “ideal” is clearly defined.

Two – Find Prospects that are Like Your Ideal Customers

The internet has many ways to get targeted lists of prospects.  Some are very costly.  Some only offer general descriptions.  Most do not give you email addresses or social media contact information.  We prefer Lead Ferret.  They offer more than 10 million contact records and all of them include email addresses.  You can find prospects that fit even the smallest niche of ideal prospects.

Three – Nurture the Prospects That are Not Yet Qualified to Purchase

According to Forester Research, “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.”

In the next four parts of this “Sales Growth Webinar Series, we will give you very specific information about how to tease out the prospects that are ready to buy right now.  We will outline the steps to identify your prospects pain, create content that addresses the pain, and qualify the prospects that are currently ready to purchase.

The biggest majority of the leads will be placed into a model that builds relationships.  The fifth segment of this series will help you get started with providing the type of educational content that your ideal prospect wants.  Instead of trying to “sell” your solution, you become a trusted source of information.  The prospect often comes to you ready, willing and able to purchase after you have nurtured the lead.

That sounds good too.  You may be asking how in the world you can know what your sales leads want from you.  Often they resist even talking to a salesperson.  How in the world can you get them to tell you what they want have done to them that will help them learn about your product or service?

Dig Deep Inside Your Market

The best way to read the minds of your sales leads and think like they do is to use the data in your Customer Relationship Manager (CRM).  If your CRM is married directly to your email marketing, it makes the process much easier.  The goal is to see through your customer’s eyes to understand exactly what appeals to them.  Your CRM can be a virtual gold mine for such insight.

Who are your best clients?  What do they want?

When you know the answers to these two questions, you can carefully tailor your sales process to meet their needs.  Imagine if you could crawl inside the minds of some of your best customers to know their pain and struggle.  If you clearly understood those aspects of their life, you can create an appeal that really makes a connection to them.

You also want to know how they want to receive your message.  That is the secret to finding sales leads that are hungry for your product or service.  Start by measuring a few of the action steps taken in your buyer’s process of interacting with your company.  Reveal the ratios of different activities such as incoming calls, referrals, web leads and trade shows compared to the number of closed sales.  We recently created an eBook called, “Manage a Sales Process of Actions that Lead to Sales Growth” to take an in-depth look at what should be measured.

With time, you can add new defined steps such as what big things you are doing such as proposals, presentations, appointments, responding to RFPs and other things.  The process is unfolding every day and you benefit by carefully considering each step that the buyer typically goes through to determine the best return on your investment (ROI) of time, money and effort.  Your current customers will tell you through their actions how they want to receive your message.

Make it Easy and Painless to Work with You

The last thing your sales leads want to experience is more pain and struggle.  Yet many companies do not use information about their current customers to determine ways to deepen the customer relationship.  A web based CRM with integrated email marketing can give you access into the minds of the customer.  If you don’t know these answers, you may end up selling to the wrong market or to one that may be a good market, but not the one most hungry for what you offer.

Recently, we developed a Sales Growth eBook series that simplifies a process for using cutting edge lead generation methods that are customer centric and quite effective.  We hope you will benefit from learning these methods.

Access all the ebooks free here – http://www.salesnexus.com/sales-growth-webinar-series

So, by identifying your customers’ common “pains” and offering them solutions, they will look forward to your emails and calls.  Building a sales process that gives each customer solutions that are particularly appealing to them isn’t hard.  You know your products, services and customers like no one else.  All that’s required is mapping out a process to organize how you share what’s already in your head!

How do you convert sales leads and drive sales without doing the same thing to our prospects that we hate done to us?

Know the New Customer

The buyer of today is fundamentally changing and evolving with the wealth of information that they can get on their own.  In fact, a recent survey states that more than half of C-level buyers use their own research to begin the buying process.  Many will restrict purchases to established vendors or lean heavily on recommendations of colleagues.  They trust the comments found on the internet more than what the professional sales person shares with them.

To be successful in B2B sales, it is your job to begin educating the buyer when they first start the buying cycle.  When you succeed in this task, you are able to frame the discussion and develop a level of trust for your company in the minds of prospective customers.  If they see you as a trusted advisor that knows their pain and struggles, they will trust that you can help resolve them.

Simplified System for Establishing Trust

Email marketing can be a mine field for those who have not tried it before.  Many sales leaders get stuck on how to engage the sales leads without the sales pitch.  We have developed a five step system called the “Magic 5” to help get started with email marketing.

1. Identify five pain points that your product or service addresses for your customers.
2. Send an email campaign that leads the reader to content built around those pain points.
3. Create five qualifying questions for people who respond to the email marketing content.  Your sales team will follow up with these questions to fully qualify them before much time is invested.  Make appointments with all who qualify.
4. Place those who do not qualify for immediate attention in a lead nurturing system within your CRM.
5. After qualification, send a second email campaign that answers frequently asked questions.  You probably have these FAQs on your website or in your sales tool box.  Simply use them to develop an informative email follow-up system.

The purpose of using this type of email marketing is to generate interest, engagement or a sales lead.  Even with carefully crafted marketing automation, you still need to keep your sales staff involved in the buying cycle.  They enter the process after the buyer has responded to a targeted, content-driven email.  The email campaign does not generate orders.  It does generate conversations between people.

This entire system is developed around what the customer needs to stop pains being experienced in business.  It is heavily dependent on determining the specific pains and creating content that educates them how to resolve it.  Recently we developed a Sales Growth eBook series that gives an in-depth look at each step in the process.  It involves much more than we can cover in this article.  Yet the process is really simple at the core.  We want to help you take your business to the next level.  There are 6 webinars and eBooks waiting for you here.

After a minute or two indulging in the sweet sense of self-pride, it is time to get back to work.  You pick up the sales forecast reports and laugh out loud about what you see.  Not only have sales results soared, these are reliable numbers that you can trust.  You can literally “take them to the bank” and easily get a line of credit to support continued business growth.  To think it all came from learning how to use marketing automation.

You may think that a marketing system can’t multiply your revenue and divide your effort.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of B2B companies are discovering that there is a dependable way to make this vision a reality.

Adjusting to the New Buyer

If you are like most business, you have been slapped with the reality of a new sales environment.  Buyers no longer trust the information provided by even the best sales professionals.  This pervasive skepticism can make the sales cycle much longer and unstable.

In fact, the majority of buyers have already done research before they come in touch with your sales experts.  They trust what they read online more than the person who might earn a living selling them your product or service.  Even if the internet information is totally wrong, it can create an adversarial dynamic between your people and their best prospects.

Your company must become the source of good information about your product and service.  With the lack of trust in the buyer, you can’t force-feed the information to them either.  So how do you get the correct information into the minds of your prospective buyers?  Do your own research and automate lead generation via email marketing.

Adjusting to a New Area of Expertise

You are already an expert on the features and benefits of what you offer.  That is a given.  The buyer does not care about that anymore.

You must become an expert on the buyer, their struggles and how you can resolve the pain they have when not using your product or service.  You need to know what keeps them up at night with worry.  You need to know their age, gender, level of education, level in their organization, industry, geographic parameters and anything else you can determine as your ideal client.

Insert the Adjusted Data into Automation

This sounds unrealistically simple for a reason.  The reason is that these two steps are only a beginning.  Without these two adjustments you are not likely to succeed in the new buyer landscape.  With them, you have the basis for a totally new way of conducting business within a proven, statistically-driven system that you can implement for your own business.  It works for every type of business.  From the solo entrepreneur to mid-sized manufacturers, the system is something you can duplicate with success.

I can feel you bracing for the price tag.  It sounds like one of those “to-good-to-be-true” stories.

How does FREE sound?  Get access to a system that can give you step-by-step instruction about how to make the adjustments mentioned here and implement some of them at almost no cost.  We know the power of this method and have created this 2013 Sales Growth Series to introduce it to a larger audience.  There is nothing to purchase.  You don’t have to give any of your contact information.  Just go to this link and learn what is shared.

We hope you soon have a Monday morning like we described earlier.  Let us know.

With a busy social and work life, many people today are now using services like TIVO and DVRs to record their favorite shows, which is making it harder to measure TV viewership. With little time for extras these days, recording devices make it easy to cut your TV watching down by nearly 30% by fast forwarding right through the commercials. Consumers rarely think of the consequences of this action but are businesses suffering? Is it still beneficial to market products on TV?

A few years ago The Atlantic published an article that claimed nearly half of DVR users actually left the commercials playing,

 citing that TV watchers were there to relax and did not want to be bothered by having to actively use the remote.

TV marketing isn’t like email marketing. It’s much more subliminal. Email marketing has to spell out the details and draw in your attention, but a television ad can be vague. It can be confusing. It doesn’t have to do much of anything other than place a brand name in your mind.

For consumers, watching commercials is actually beneficial. A TV commercial can inspire, motivate and educate consumers about products, services and organizations they did not previously know existed. And it is up to the consumer to make the choice of what to do with that new information. Many suddenly have a craving for that juicy and delectable-looking burger or find cars or clothes or services they want to buy as a result of viewing a TV spot. And sometimes a small child sees that cool toy and adds it to his Christmas list. That’s not harmful, right? Not a waste of time either.

Taking it a step further, primetime and big money commercial markets are actually sought out. Think about the most recent big event: the Super Bowl. Even non-football fans tune in for the big game and although the game is important, Americans are obsessed with the commercials long after the last down is played. There is an entire class of viewers that watch the Super Bowl ONLY for the commercials. Companies pay top dollars for these prime advertising spots. CBS News reported these ads costing businesses up to $3.8 million for just 30 seconds. This is just the cost to purchase the spot and doesn’t even include the cost of actually making the commercial.

So yes, there is something for consumers in the TV ad business—but with such a hefty price tag, is this sort of outlet beneficial to businesses? With watchers choosing recorded programming over live and busy viewers leaving the room during live commercial breaks to multitask, is it work it to spend thousands and even millions of dollars on an advertisement if only half of your audience is even paying attention? Well, for live viewers alone, there were over 108 million people watching the Super Bowl. So yes, I think it is well worth it.

Now I’m not saying to jump right into TV advertising by purchasing a spot during the Super Bowl. What I am saying, though, is to not be afraid of TIVO or busy consumers. More people are seeing your commercials than you may realize. It is important to still focus on your target market when advertising. You wouldn’t advertise a kid’s toy at 10 p.m. just like you wouldn’t advertise a masculine product during a female-oriented TV show.

It’s essential to remember that TV advertising will not lead to an immediate return. It is an investment. Your ad is just to get that idea in consumers’ minds, make them remember your name or your brand. Of course the end goal is to get a sale out of the idea but the first step is planting the seed.

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Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

This decrease means the post office will no longer be delivering first class mail on Saturdays. Normal delivery will continue Monday through Friday at this point. Priority mail and packages with expedited shipping will still be delivered on Saturdays. Bulk mail will be discontinued over the weeks as well. It’s hard to predict what this will mean for businesses and their marketing plans. Is it good news? Bad news? Does it even impact businesses at all? What’s next for direct mail marketing? And further, how does this change affect its competitor email marketing?

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the average cost of sending out marketing by email is $0.40 apiece. That same piece of marketing sent by direct mail through the United States Post Office though can cost upwards of $1.53. The price difference is obvious but even more so than the price is the time saved and the immediate delivery to consumers. The DMA also included in their study the typical responses to each form of marketing. Email marketing sees an average of 10-15% return (when permission based emails were used) where direct marketing may only see 1 to 2% return. And with an almost constant increase in postage rates, the benefits of direct mail seem to continually decrease.

Is email marketing definitely the way to go than? Well with substantially lower costs, higher returns and delivery immediately and any day of the week, it would seem like a no brainer. Keep in mind though that an estimated 294 billion emails are sent per day. The amount of these that are filtered into spam folders or stopped by virus blockers is shocking. If you don’t take the proper time and care to ensure your email is of good quality, you could be spending your marketing budget on a message that never gets seen. Legitimate, tangible emails account for about 1.9 billion messages a day.

Comparatively the USPS processes about 165 billion pieces of mail per year. It’s hard to say what percentage of this mail is marketing, promotional or sales related versus letters, cards, gifts, bills, payments, etc. but even just putting the two numbers side by side is enough to show that you simply cannot reach the same amount of people the slow way. Ever heard of the tortoise and the hare though? A study done by Epsilon Targeting says that Americans actually prefer getting marketing by postal mail. It’s unclear exactly why this is, especially when the DMA’s figures seem to dispute this but with marketing physically in their hands, people can take their time, do their research and make a decision on the business they use. With so many emails going to one person each day, it can be too overwhelming. Many get deleted with barely a first glance. A physical piece of mail though, only two or three pieces come along. Consumers can take the time to look it over thoroughly, set it aside, post it on the fridge, etc. They can make the choice later where the mail won’t get lost in an inbox.

This news isn’t really about which form of marketing is better. If your business uses direct mail campaigns you’ve seen the benefits. You pay out more but you hopefully see more in return. Will you suffer because mail isn’t going to be delivered on Saturday? It is highly unlikely in my opinion. Shuffle your strategy to give the mail a little more time to get delivered but don’t expect a drastic decrease in response just because of one day. Direct mail still is and will long be a competitor for email marketing, Saturdays or not.

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Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.