The ClinchPad Blog

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Integrate ClinchPad with over 350+ other applications via Zapier

Zapier is a popular tool that connects the web apps you use to easily move your data between them and automate tedious tasks. It uses simple, event-based automation to avoid repetitive tasks which helps reduce the time spent on data entry and makes it easier for you to manage your leads in ClinchPad.

We’re pleased to announce that with the new Zapier integration, you’ll be able to integrate your ClinchPad account with over 350+ other applications across the world.

Here are a few examples of what you’ll be able to do with this integration:-

Zapier will watch your Gmail account for new emails with the label you choose. Whenever an email comes in from a new contact, Zapier will copy their contact info and use it to create a new lead in ClinchPad.

Embed a Gravity Forms form on your WordPress site and Zapier will automatically create a ClinchPad lead when someone fills out the form

Create a new QuickBooks invoice every time a new lead is added to your ClinchPad account

Add a new Asana task for your team to complete every time a new lead is added to your ClinchPad account.

and many more...

Zapier is free to use if you have a limited number of tasks every month. Once you move beyond that number, you can check out their affordable pricing plans!

How To Use This Integration

Sign into your ClinchPad account, and make sure you have an app ready to use, as well as a Zapier account.

Connect your ClinchPad account to Zapier using your ClinchPad API key from ClinchPad's Settings.

Check out pre-made ClinchPad integrations.

Or create your own from scratch in the Zapier Dashboard.

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10 Tips To Get The Most Out of ClinchPad

1. Access notes, todos and files from the Pipeline View

Wish you could access your todos, notes & files directly from the pipeline? You betcha!

Instead of clicking on the lead card and navigating to their respective tabs, you can view, edit and delete notes, todos and files right from the Pipeline View itself by just clicking on the ‘x notes’, ‘x of y todos’ or ‘x files’ text on the lead cards. This will open up a popup window. This also works when you’re in List View.

2. Advanced Lead Creator

In case you want to enter multiple leads in succession, you can now create a lead along with additional information such as contacts, notes, todos etc without having to leave the Pipeline View. Clicking on the ‘+’ icon next to ‘Add Lead’ will open up a popup window.

3. Form Integration

Online forms are one of the most often used source for capturing leads. You probably have a Contact Us form on your website where you regularly get queries regarding your product/service. However, you then need to re-enter or copy and paste this data into ClinchPad to start tracking these leads.

You can now use our nifty form integrators to directly convert the data captured by your forms into leads in ClinchPad. We announced integrations with three of the most popular online form managers a few months back - Wufoo, Jotform, Formstack.

4. Set Default Todos

You can set default todos for each stage of your Pipeline. This feature allows you to set a list of todos which are automatically created whenever a lead is moved into the stage. This can be helpful in reducing repetition in creating the same todos for each lead that is moved into the stage and also assist in creating checklists for each stage.

5. Bulk operations in List View

I’m not sure if you noticed but our List View just got a makeover a few months back. With the redesigned List View you can perform certain bulk actions on your leads. Select the leads by ticking on the check box and then click on Actions button near the top left corner of the table.

Using this option, you can carry out the following actions on multiple leads at once - assignment & unassignment, merge, delete, change their stage & change their pipeline.

6. Creating filters to sort leads

“I’ve got too many leads in my pipeline!”

Searching for a way to manage them?

Why not create a filter for leads based on their products, sources, contacts, zones or assignees? For example, you would like to see all the leads from Washington DC which are interested in your product ACME.Just create a filter to match all conditions with Product as ACME and Zone as Washington DC. It’s THAT easy! :)

Filters are user account specific and both Admin and User level accounts can create and manage their own filters.

7. View leads assigned to a particular user

You can view the leads assigned to a particular user by clicking on the users profile picture on the bottom right corner of the pipeline. Clicking on the user profile picture will only show the leads assigned to the selected user.

8. Summary Emails

This is a feature particularly handy for managers & administrators who would like a crisp summary report to see what all activity happened the previous day, week or month. You can choose to set up email summaries for an individual team member and set it to be emailed to you every day, week or month.

There are three types of summary reports that can be generated

All the activities of a person with the ability to exclude certain activities.

A snapshot of the person’s pipeline

A list of all the todos assigned to a person which have missed their due date

Once set up, you should receive summaries in your mailbox that look like this

9. Set Goals & Track Goal Progress for Each Team Member

You can create weekly, monthly or yearly goals for the total revenue or the number of leads closed by the users. The goals can only be set by Admin accounts but the progress of the goal can be viewed by both the Admin & the User accounts associated with this goal.

10. Tagging Leads

You can now tag your lead cards in ClinchPad. Each pipeline contains five tags represented in different colors which can be edited and applied to leads. The tags can be used to associate desired information to the lead which will help you to classify the lead.

This provides an easy way to see important information about a lead at a glance. For example, If you’d like to know which leads are high priority leads or big customer leads from the pipeline in one view, you can attach respective tags to the leads. Oh and did we mention that you can filter your leads by Tags?

To get started, set up your tags and then add them. You can also set filters for tags. 

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Lead Generation Strategies for Local Businesses

In today’s competitive business environment, a good lead generation strategy can be the difference between success and failure. This involves creating an awareness and interest about your products and services in order to develop leads, which can be converted into actual sales.

Traditionally, lead generation has involved tele-marketing and advertising in print and television media. But with the rise of digital channels of communication, many new avenues have opened up allowing small businesses to compete on a more level playing field, even with their limited resources. Online and social media have thus been a real game changer for small businesses.

With a wide range of lead generation tactics available, it is important to try out and settle on the best combination of strategies that works for your business. Sticking to 2-3 traditionally known techniques isn’t going to keep you afloat for long, especially if you are a small business. In an era of fast paced change, you have to change with the times and leverage current tactics that play to your strengths.

Local businesses have a tendency to rely too much on referrals alone as a method of generating leads. While, referrals undoubtedly are a great tool for generating business, this needs to be combined with a mix of other tactics that work well for you. The options available are many.. and surprisingly cost effective too! 

The Changing Sales Paradigm

The buying process has been turned on its head since the advent of the Internet. Earlier, your sales personnel sought to initiate contact with potential customers and turn them into sales opportunities with the flow of information being one-way. 

With a wealth of information now available online, customers can do their own research about different products and services online and approach or simply buy the product from a company of choice. Consumers are better informed than ever before and are ready to interact with your sales personnel in a two-way exchange of information. Sometimes, consumers have already made a purchase decision before even coming into contact with a company’s sales and marketing force, just based on their own proactive research online. 

The transformation of marketing also means a more one to one and targeted approach as opposed to mass advertising campaigns. User preferences are tracked based on online activity and this makes customized ads based on those preferences possible.

Small businesses need to use this changing paradigm to their advantage and ensure that they have a sound digital presence. Instead of sending your sales force out looking for customers – let your customers find you! Use the variety of free online tools available for an effective marketing strategy that is customized to target and appeal to different kinds of audiences.  

Maintaining an online presence through a website, blog, social media page etc. is relatively cost effective as compared to traditional advertising media, so you don’t need to spend a bomb on lead generation activities any more. This is great news for small businesses.

Lead generation strategies for small businesses

While there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to lead generation, a few activities have emerged as generally productive and cost effective in the context of local businesses. 

Build your online presence

The rise of a more proactive and aware consumer, it is important for small businesses to put out clear and helpful information online that can attract customers. Having an informative company website is a crucial first step to securing a positive online presence.

Social media marketing is an extremely cost effective method of reaching a wide audience, given the amount of time people spend on networking sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Given the interactive nature of these sites, this is not only a great way to get your message across to large numbers but also to garner feedback from actual and potential customers. People who join your business’ Facebook page or follow you on Twitter are all leads, which can be converted to sales opportunities. The fact that they ‘like’ or ‘share’ your posts and tweets can be translated into an expression or interest, which makes them more receptive to your marketing efforts.

Having a company blog is another free and easy way to build online presence, establish credibility as an expert in your field/industry and generate leads. Build in a call to action to social media posts such as ‘Find out more by clicking this link’ or ‘Request pricing’ in order to get your engaged audience to the next step of being a ‘lead’ as opposed to a mere recipient of information. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Be easy to find

It is one thing to design and put up a slick, eye-catching website, social media page or blog. But visibility is another matter altogether. The impact of your site or page is lost if it isn’t optimized to show up on search engines. This you can do by using common key words or phrases, that people might use online to search for your type of product or service, within your website titles and copy so that you appear as one of the top results on any search engine.

For small and local businesses, local SEO is especially relevant because people often search for local listings online. Tools like Google Places enable your business to be found easily on Google.com or Google Maps and you can list your business on this for free.  You can even list the brands you sell and provide detailed information such as directions to your store and parking information to stand out and appeal to your target market.

Information capture

Use online forms on your website to capture information about visitors such as their names and email addresses to increase your lead database. You can provide incentives such as coupons and discounts in exchange for this information whether it is an online visitor or a physical visitor to your store. Capturing this information, online or offline, helps you to know who visits your website or social media pages and target them with promotional mailers and generate sales. Even beyond just names and email ids, you can gather other intelligence such as consumer preferences and get some valuable feedback that can help you align your marketing and promotional strategy for better results. 

Systemize referral collection

Since word of mouth and referrals are the backbone for increasing traffic to local businesses, you need to have a systematic strategy to ensure that you get that referral. Don’t simply rely on customers to spread the word or recommend your business to others. Instead, ask them to recommend their friends who may be interested in your products. The best time to do this is at the point of actual purchase or just after or as a follow up to a positive customer satisfaction feedback survey. You can even incentivize the process through reward points or discounts in exchange for referrals. 

Build local partnerships

Small businesses should focus on local lead generation through tying up with other local businesses that may offer complementary products or services. Small businesses can generate leads for each other and even go in for product bundling and co-promotions. This sort of ‘community building’ approach is appealing local customer base and encourages loyalty towards supporting community business. You can even rely on local chambers of commerce and other trade associations that can assist you with lead generation.

Building relationships online with local bloggers can also help you to generate leads. You can write guest posts on each others blogs and promote each other for a mutually beneficial partnership.  

How to get the maximum benefits from lead generation

So, you have a growing database of names and contact information. What next? The buck doesn’t stop at building a lead database.

Measure and monitor success

With online media, it is easy to track the results of your activity. For example, there are free analytics for blogs to monitor the number of visitors and page views. Similarly, there are free tools such as HootSuite, Social Mention, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics and Google Analytics that can help you track social media metrics such as hits/page views, repeat visits, number of followers as well as conversion rates (from lead to buyer). Analyzing the return on investment (ROI) of social media will help you to find out what is working for you and what is not and align your online lead generation strategy accordingly. 

Use the information captured

Analyze the information gathered based on forms completed by visitors, links clicked on etc. to learn more about the preferences of potential customers so that you can highlight relevant products and services in your marketing campaigns. Marketing approaches on the whole have become more individualistic in nature so targeted promotion has a much better impact and conversion rate today as compared to mass campaigns. Categorize your lead database according to preferences gleaned and tailor your promotional material accordingly for improved results. 

Keep the communication ongoing

Interaction with leads isn’t a one-time deal that ends once the lead is in your database or even once a sale is made. Keeping the communication ongoing is a vital step towards ensuring repeat visits as well as being recommended to others. So make sure to keep an ongoing dialogue through phone calls or emails with helpful information, updates, photos and videos.

Conclusion

The biggest marketing challenge for small businesses has always been the resource constraint. But the rise of social media has changed all that. You no longer need a huge investment into lead generation because there are a plethora of options available, which can be tailored and customized to suit both, your requirements and your budget.

Lead generation is a significant marketing activity that no business can afford to ignore. You need to use a mix of both online and offline strategies available (and there is no dearth of options to choose from). 

Not only is using multiple tactics important, but reviewing their performance from time to time and making the necessary changes is equally vital. Keep an eye on the ROI of your activities to ensure that you’re getting the right value for your dollar and decide whether it’d be better spent elsewhere.

Also, lead generation isn’t just a numbers game of increasing your database. A name needs to be qualified as a potential buyer in order to count as a lead. This is where information capture plays its crucial role in qualifying a lead. Ensure that you get relevant answers to smart questions that will help you to structure your business decisions in a profitable manner and that your online presence is geared towards gathering as much information about your potential customers as possible.

So, if you are a small business that has only been using 2-3 lead generation methods, sit and evaluate your current lead generation strategy vis-à-vis the cost effective methods available to even the most limited budgets. You might just hit upon the most successful lead generation formula for your business. 

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5 Ways To Break The Ice With Potential Leads

Meetings with prospects can take place anywhere. It could be a planned meeting that you’ve sought with a prospect so you have time to prepare. But it could also be a chance meeting at a conference, exhibition, cocktail reception or press meet. These networking events provide a great place to meet with people and generate leads.

Striking up a conversation with a stranger isn’t the easiest task for everyone. Especially in this day and age when you’re used to interacting with people online. But networking is a key aspect of lead generation and sales, so you better hone up those conversation skills if you want to get the most out of networking opportunities.

How do you start up a conversation that is engaging and memorable so that the stranger you just met becomes a promising lead for your business? Here are some tips to break the ice with prospects for a better business conversation.

Do the background research

For a first time meeting with a prospect, make sure you’ve done your homework on the firm and related news so that you can walk into the meeting prepared and with confidence. A prospect is sure to be impressed with your knowledge of his business and his needs.

If you are attending a conference, then have a look at who else has registered for the same and do some quick research in advance. Follow all the news related to the conference. These pieces of information will give you the necessary context to easily start up and carry on a dialogue.

If you remember some related news or information you read on LinkedIn or any other social media platform, this could be a great icebreaker to start a conversation. Or in the case of meeting at an event, talking about the forum itself could spark off an interesting discussion.

Winging it isn’t going to be of much help, so if you come across a person who’s business you genuinely know nothing about then don’t pretend. Instead, ask some insightful questions to understand their business better.

Show interest and listen

Show interest in the other person by asking a lot of open-ended questions. This usually invites a better response than a mere ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question would. It also allows the prospect to reveal information that lets you know your potential customer better. This is immensely helpful in letting you anticipate needs and providing better customer service down the line.

Asking open ended questions and then follow up questions will keep the conversation going without those awkward pauses and enable you to build a rapport with your business prospect. This tactic also enables you to draw out the quieter ones who may need a gentle nudge to open up.

But you shouldn’t have to feign interest. Actively listening to what your prospect has to say gives you great opportunities to learn and use the knowledge gained to enhance your sales.

So don’t try to be the star of the conversation. Let your prospect do the talking while making an impression as a good listener. But that doesn’t mean you stay totally silent. Add brief comments and words of appreciation or assent in response to what the other person is saying as a way of encouraging them to carry on.

Share your own views and stories

Conversation is not a one-way street. So while being a good listener is important, you need to share your own views and beliefs and contribute to the conversation otherwise you just run the risk of appearing to not have any opinions!

Do respond occasionally to what the other person is saying with comments, observations and suggestions. Since you are likely to be talking of subjects that are familiar to both, this shouldn’t be hard to do. Just remember to keep your responses brief and to the point so that you don’t monopolize the conversation.

Offer insights and solutions based on your understanding of the prospect’s business. Try not to make an overt sales pitch but focus on case studies and stories that would show your own business solutions in a better light.

Keep the conversation focused

Finding some common ground on the personal front may be a great way to break the ice and get the conversation flowing, but always remember that this is a business setting and that there is an agenda.

So while you may find great bonding ground over your common love for dogs or baseball, keep 3-4 agenda points in mind and always get the conversation back on track to those. Keep the interaction as professional as possible while allowing for some off topic exchanges to strengthen rapport.

You want to be remembered as ‘that person who had some really great insights about the business’ not as ‘that person that supports the Mets over the Yankees’. So stay on point.

Maintain a positive and respectful attitude

It’s probably easier to bond over misfortune or failure but for a productive business conversation it is far wiser to share positive stories and stay focused on future possibilities. Keep the tone of the conversation positive.

Instead of discussing problems, talk about solutions, innovations and changes that could improve the prospect’s business.

Also, don’t get drawn into arguments. Respect the other person’s opinion even if you disagree and change the subject for a more fruitful discussion. Interspersing the business conversation with non-business topics is great to keep things interesting but avoid bringing up any controversial subjects.

Conclusion

For those of us who are introverts and tend to be socially awkward, the prospect of networking especially in a public setting can seem intimidating. But it’s time to get over that fear and realize that having a conversation with another human being really isn’t the daunting task it seems.

On the other hand, if you’re confident in social situations then you need to guard against dominating the conversation and talking too much. Essentially a fruitful business conversation requires the right balance between talking and listening. Too much of either can be counter-productive.

Networking and personal interactions are essential to the lead generation process, so developing your conversational style is vital to successful prospecting for customers. You don’t want to lose out on the opportunity to add some leads to your sales funnel that exhibitions and conferences provide.

Don’t be fazed by awkward interactions. Sometimes, luck just won’t go your way and you may find the other party unresponsive. Know when to give up and move on to the next prospect. But don’t stop initiating conversation. That gives you some amount of control over the topic and flow of dialogue.

You don’t have to know everything but at least be knowledgeable about developments in your own field so that you always have something to contribute to the conversation. Stay updated on the latest news and trends in your line of business.

Managing customer relationships requires networking skills. So apply the tips and tricks we’ve outlined for you and initiate productive business conversations with your prospective customers.

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Create a Lead From an Unbounce Landing Page

Unbounce lets marketers build high-converting landing pages without requiring any technical knowledge. It offers 1-click publishing, A/B testing and a suite of best-practice landing page templates.

We're pleased to announce that you can now integrate your Unbounce landing pages with ClinchPad. After completing the integration, leads in ClinchPad will automatically be created whenever forms on your Unbounce landing pages are filled out.

You can find the steps for integrating your Unbounce landing pages with ClinchPad in this support article.

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Keep your subscription lists up to date with GetResponse and ClinchPad

GetResponse is an email marketing tool which is popular for sending and managing newsletters. It is a web based application. With a free plan, it is widely used by many to send periodic emails to their customers and prospects.  We’re pleased to announce that now you can add Contacts in ClinchPad to your GetResponse subscriber lists. This reduces the time spent on duplicate data entry and makes it easier to keep your subscription lists up to date. 

To get started with integrating your GetResponse account with ClinchPad, read this integration guide.

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The Essentials of Better Client Relationship Management

According to the findings of Bain & Company, a major American management consulting company, it costs 6–7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. This report attaches a numerical value to what is now common knowledge - it pays to keep customers happy. 

While battling tooth and nail to gain their share of the market acquiring new clients and venturing into new markets, many companies are also increasingly becoming aware of the importance of maintaining good relationship with their existing clients.

It’s the existing clients who bring in revenue from repeat sales, market referrals and most importantly spread the word about your company among their peers.

Moreover, it is quite likely that your competitors are vying to acquire your existing client base. You miss out on catering to your clients needs and chances are they will turn their backs to you pretty soon!

Another research points out that 55% of customers would pay extra to guarantee a better service. This further reinforces the need to invest time and resources to fine tune customer service strategies.

Companies are increasingly nurturing a team of professionals earmarked to maintain client relationship. These client relationship managers are required to constantly stay in touch with their set of clients, resolving their problems and addressing their needs as and when required. 

Build a Smart Team

Retaining customers is an uphill battle and it’s the men who fight from the frontlines who make all the difference. Make sure you have the right people as client relationship executives. The first step is clearly laying down what your relationship executives are required to do.

Once you define their roles and responsibilities, you know the exact set of traits you are looking for while selecting candidates. While recruiting, the focus in most cases remains on the technical expertise of the candidates and soft skills are often neglected.

It has been proven time and again that it is the communication skills and the attitude of the employees that impact customer satisfaction.

Make sure that you hire people with strong active listening skills and troubleshooting abilities as your client relationship executives. A soft skill training for your existing employees is also a good idea to boost their performance.

Communicate Often

The old adage of “Out of sight, out of mind” holds good when it comes to maintaining client relationship. Once you win a customer it is your job to make sure that the customer is kept aware of the latest updates in the product and service offerings. 

Of course, this does not mean you bombard them with incessant emails and phone calls. Most people find such tactics quite annoying and if you do so, chances are that soon your mails will end up in the spam folder.

The key to success here is the timing. Time your mails and calls such that your company’s offering and their needs align. Keeping your company blog active is another easy way to keep customers updated.

Also the content of the communication must be clear and precise. Invest time to script a message that will evoke an interest in your clients. 

Let Testimonials Speak

Get clients who are happy doing business with you to do the talking. Over the years, word of mouth has proven to be the most effective channel of creating goodwill. Prospects are more likely to trust your company if they hear someone like them speak your praise.

Internet has made it easy to get feedback and testimonials. To add some personal touch, you could organize a face to face gathering of your loyal clients and apprise them about the recent happenings in the company. Eventually, ask if they would be willing to be part of a case study or shoot a short video testimonial. 

A lesser expensive way to engage your clients would be to send them a questionnaire email and build a case study based on the answers they give. You could also use social networking to stay in touch with your community of trusted and loyal clients.

Build a Comprehensive Customer Database

In an era where companies of all sizes are busy designing customer loyalty programs, handing out purchase reward points and discount coupons to appease their customers, it makes perfect sense for you to do the same.

Know as much as you can about your customer. Their buying cycle, purchase patterns, budgets, anniversary dates and so on. These details can then be collated in a sales management software for planning your communication with them well ahead of time. 

The first step for this is of course is to build a detailed customer database. Keep a record of all the information available about your clients, be it their birthdays or their son’s birthday. 

You never know when you may come up with an opportunity to pitch your products! Moreover, a simple greeting on their anniversary or a message congratulating them on the new house they purchased can go a long way to make them feel special. 

Lend an Ear

According to White House Office of Consumer Affairs, happy customers who get their issue resolved tell about 4-6 people about their experience. Companies tend to lose out on their existing customers because their complaints were not resolved in time. 

A quick and timely redressal of customer grievances will bring in rich dividends. Make sure that you have a proper mechanism of lodging queries and complaints in place where your clients can express their grievances easily.

Regularly monitor for any complaints that are reported by many and work on a solution. Make sure to resolve a problem as soon as it crops up. If you don’t nip them in the bud, you may lose out your clients in the long run and they might take it up on social networks, making the situation far worse.

Keep Track of the Changes 

The modern day marketplace is subject to constant changes. Be it the client's requirements, his preference or the products that your competitors are offering, everything is constantly changing.

 In such an environment, it is advisable to keep track of new trends and changes so that you can prepare yourselves. Invest in resources to revise your product offering and redesign your products to cater to the new demands.

Keep yourself abreast of new trends so that you can seize the opportunity to serve your customers before your competitors make a move. Meeting your client’s changing needs, is a strong indicator that the company cares for them.

Motivate Your Workforce

Lastly, it’s your employees who make all the difference when it comes to retaining customers. Therefore, it absolutely is essential that you instill a culture of superior customer service and right attitude amongst your employees.

This is when building a customer centric business makes a lot of sense. You might have hired professionals with good communication skills as customer relationship executive, however, without the right attitude they might not prove to be effective.

Set down key responsibilities and clear parameters of performance measurement to enhance their efficiency.

It is true to a great extent that how an employee treats the clients reflects on how the organization treats him in the first place. If you can instill a sense of responsibility and loyalty amongst your employees you are sure to have more satisfied clients!

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Why Your Business is Better Off Using a Sales Tracking Software

It is a fairly well established fact that a successful lead generation strategy and increasing the number of leads that enter your sales pipeline can have a positive impact on sales. The question is, what to do with all the leads in your sales funnel?

If you have defined your sales funnel, then you know the different stages to guide your lead through to convert a raw lead to a prospect to actual sales and finally to a returning customer.

Filling up the top of the funnel is good news to your business, but at the same time, it is important to focus on the number of leads at each stage.

The Importance of Tracking Sales Leads

Sales pipeline tracking software is a must for a business to stay competitive. We have in the past discussed the use of sales metrics to improve the sales process resulting in increased sales, enhanced sales team performance and even customer retention. Now, it’s time to check out some of the major advantages of sales tracking:

Sales Forecasting

Pipeline tracking is vital to coming up with an overall sales forecast. You need to know the estimated value of your sales pipeline – this involves quickly filtering out the unlikely leads, focusing on prospective customers and evaluating the potential size of the deal.

Sales forecasting is important to help you set well defined goals for your sales team, identify the causes for shortfall, if any, and plan ahead for the future.

Streamline Your Sales Process

Tracking the status of leads as you guide them step by step through the various stages of the sales pipeline helps your sales process to become more efficient and organized. You can identify and remove those leads that are unlikely to become prospective sales and focus on actual prospects instead.

You can also identify where in the sales funnel leads are getting stuck and take measures for corrective action by examining why they are taking time to move from one sales pipeline stage to another.

Measure the Results of Campaigns

Say, you’ve just launched an offline promotional campaign offering a 20% discount coupon. You’ve also invested in online advertising with Google Adwords. Your sales has spiked, but, how do you know which campaign worked better for you?

It doesn’t make sense to blindly spend on any promotional campaign without measuring how much impact it had when it comes to improving your bottom line. To know the kind of value or return you are getting for your investment you have to start tracking sales leads.

Boost Sales Team Performance

Sales tracking enables you to know which of your employees are working on which leads and to measure their performance at different levels. This could spur healthy competition and boost morale when high performers are recognized and appreciated.

Customer Retention

By monitoring sales progress in a systematic manner you are unlikely to miss responding to a customer query or feedback. Satisfied customers help spread the word with positive feedback and eventually come back to for repeat business.

We can all agree that sales tracking is an important part of the sales process resulting in significant gains for both - profitability and productivity. So the question isn’t about whether to track leads or not, the question is ‘what is the best way to do so?’

Advantages of Using Sales Tracking Software

If you’re still using Excel spreadsheets for sales tracking then you really need to stop and consider using an automated sales tracking software. Here are some of the ways in which sales tracking software trumps Excel templates:

Ease of use

Excel spreadsheets are cumbersome to use and involve many manual operations such as setting complex formulae for calculations and jumping between multiple sheets to find the information you need.

A sales tracking software automates this process and breaks down the metrics that you need on a sales dashboard so that you are always on top of your sales operations. Your numbers are updated automatically without you having to worry about altering complex calculations.

The time saved by a sales management software can be better utilized towards closing deals and making customers happy.

Efficient data management

Data collection is so much easier when you have a software that tracks sales. Rather than typing out contacts yourself, you can just import contacts from your email account or automatically generate leads from users filling out forms on your website.

Managing data is a breeze thanks to the cloud sync offered by a capable online lead tracking software. You can easily move contacts from one place to another according to their status in the sales funnel and thus get rid of copy pasting across multiple spreadsheets.

Accessibility

Many online sales tracking tools today are cloud based so they are accessible from anywhere as compared to your excel template which is more likely to be stored on your computer’s hard drive. So you and your sales team can enter updates from wherever you are and from multiple devices.

This kind of on-the-go functionality is the USP of online sales software that makes it extremely popular for businesses especially when there is a lot of travel involved.

Better Customer Service

Using a sales pipeline tracking tool helps you to better serve your customers by providing the right information, ensure prompt follow ups, communicate promotions or discount to help move your leads to the next stage of the pipeline towards realizing the sale.

An automated process will help you systematically track customer queries or feedback so that you can respond faster and making a very positive impact when it comes to customer retention. In modern day sales CRM systems, sales tracking has now become an integral part.

Enhanced Team Collaboration and Communication

Since the tracking tool is accessible online, multiple sales personnel will have access to the data and be able to make updates and share information regularly and from multiple locations.

This improved communication flow can help the team work more productively by avoiding overlap and clearly defining responsibilities. There won’t be any confusion as to who is working on which lead and at what stage anymore

Some tools will allow you to generate and access sales reports as well for quick analysis of the progress. These sales reports offer valuable insights to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business. This allows the sales team to work as a more cohesive and efficient unit for better results.

Conclusion 

Ensure that you have well defined criteria to classify your contacts in order to accurately determine the stage of the sales funnel that the leads are in. Unclear definitions can lead to misclassification ending up cluttering the sales pipeline for everyone.

Also make sure that your entire team is dedicated to the cause of lead tracking by making regular updates and sharing relevant information in a timely manner. It might take a bit of motivation from a manager to get this going.

A systematic and automated sales tracking solution is often the ticket to ensuring that all stakeholders are committed to lead tracking and management. The upside is that it won’t cost you much to sign up for a sales management software because many of them offer generous freemium plans. 

So, why don’t go ahead and ditch that spreadsheet for a productive alternative that has the potential to make you more money?

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15 Great Apps to Track, Analyze and Manage Social Media

Social marketing is a beast to tame. From understanding the audience to keeping them engaged and benchmarking the results, the entire road is filled with pitfalls and landmines. Social is one marketing domain where smart work clearly trumps hard work.

Marketing campaigns are all about trial and error. Failing fast is always alright. However, you’ll need a bunch of metrics to benchmark and the right set of tools to track them to know if you are on the right track or not.  

SocialBro

SocialBro is among one of the very few social apps that can be called as a standalone Twitter marketing platform. They don’t leave any stone unturned when it comes to Twitter analytics and actionable insights.

The clarity in their user experience and the workflow is clearly lacking when it comes to pricing. You’ll be charged on the basis of how many users you follow and how many people are following you.

If you are tracking competitors, then their follower and friends count will also be taken into account when it comes to pricing!

There is a free desktop version of the app for you to give it a try. I can’t help but notice how identical their logo is when compared to Buffer’s!

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is an app from the house of Moz. It’s focuses on only one thing - helping you understand your audience. The app digs deeper into Twitter analytics and finds the common thread that connects your audience.

If you want to know who are your followers are, where are they located, the time at which they tweet among other such questions, then Followerwonk is the app to go with.

There is a basic free plan which gives decent analytics. If you buy a Moz app, you can get access to the pro version of Followerwonk.

Social Rank

Social Rank analyzes how valuable your followers are. It has a clean layout and the way they present the reports are amazing. The app essentially gives brands an opportunity to reward followers who are influential and engage with the brand often, constructively.

The free version of Social Rank is limited to list of 10 most valued followers and the most engaged followers. And, this report can be generated once a month. To get rid of these limitations you’ll have to subscribe to their $25 a month premium plan.

Tweepi

Are you very particular about unfollowing people who stop following you? Try Tweepi and you’ll know which accounts have to be kicked off from your list of friends. That’s not just the app is capable of.

It gives a list of people who need follow back love and is a great tool to unfollow accounts that have not been active or haven’t been engaging in productive conversation for a while.

The app has a free tier, but for extreme Twitter cleanup, you might have to go with the $7.49 monthly plan.

Tweet4me

Buffer is the reigning king of the social media scheduling landscape. Tweet4me is an interesting take on tweet scheduling. You can schedule tweets from any Twitter client! Isn’t that great?

Sign up for an account and send a direct message with a prefix that tells the app when you want to schedule the Tweet. Tweet4me will schedule the tweet and when the time comes, they'll post it and send you a push notification. Tweet4me is free to use!

Need Tagger

Search isn’t one of the strong suits of Twitter. Even with hashtags, the search results that Twitter delivers are chaotic and all over the place. Need Tagger capitalizes on this shortcoming and is pitching itself as a tool for you to find the right people.

Using powerful natural language filters in combination with the keywords that you supply, Need Tagger identifies people on Twitter that need your products, services, content and advice. Pro plans start at $19.95.

Favstar

Favorite tweets are the Twitter equivalent of dark horses. They are a compromise between retweeting and not giving a tweet that’s good, but not retweet worthy its due. The problem is, by design it’s hard to see how many people have favorited a tweet.

Favstar solves that problem. It is the leaderboard - literally and figuratively - for favorite tweets. It’s a great place to discover popular new tweets. There are quite a few creative filters available to locate the tweets that are making waves in Twitterverse.

Twtrland

Twtrland  visualizes social footprints to help you discover new people, understand their impact and find better ways to connect and increase your network. Their heavily visual interface with a generous dose of colorful charts breaks down insights in an easy to consume format.

Despite its misleading name, Twtrland is an app that gives you advanced insights on how your brand can improve on multiple social networks - Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

They have a free personal plan, but, to avail the business dashboard you’ll to choose a plan that starts from $19.95.

Topsy

Frankly speaking, it usually takes a good few minutes to understand what a social app does. The descriptions and the copy are usually filled with ambitious and ambiguous jargon. Well, it wasn’t the case with Topsy.

It’s Google inspired design clearly establishes that Topsy is a social search engine. The search results are pretty decent and the ability filter tweets that images and videos attached to them is an impressive addition.

RivalIQ

Manually tracking and analyzing the social marketing activity of your competition is not time well spent. The sheer volume of tweets and the real time nature of the conversation makes manual data collection obsolete.

RivalIQ tries to bridge that gap. It constantly monitors your competition, gathers and analyzes data so key insights like how often they tweet, what topics their cover, how wide their reach is are laid bare in a single click. Starting at $99 a month, RivalIQ’s paid plans are on the pricier side!

Tweetreach

The USP of Tweetreach is the way it presents the reach of your tweets in a crisp and concise format. All the vital insights that you need to know about the effectiveness of a Twitter marketing campaign is presented in one, neatly laid out page.

The estimated reach and exposure count might not be extremely helpful in real world scenarios. However, top contributors, most retweeted tweets etc. and the option to export them in popular file formats should be really helpful. At $84 a month, the pro plans are on the costlier side though!

Klout

A list of social media apps is never complete without adding Klout to the list. It started out as a Twitter reach measurement tool and is still doing a great job at that. To make things more interesting, Klout has expanded into the content curation and suggestion game as well.

Their content suggestion engine is extremely useful and the content filters do a great job digging up interesting pieces of content for your audience. Taking things one step further, the app lets you schedule the content to be tweeted at a time of your choice!

Agora Pulse

To balance a Twitter heavy list to some extent, we have Agora Pulse. The app offers a number tools to make your Facebook presence far more engaging than it currently is. With Agora Pulse, you can attract more fans to your page and engage them with fully customizable viral applications.

A real time dashboard tracks the engagement levels and compares them with your competitors side by side. The built in moderation capability should help your community management efforts as well.

Twitfox

The functionality of Twitfox might fall in a gray area if you go by Twitter API guidelines. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting effort that has cornered a niche of its own.

By auto favoriting tweets from topics that you specify, the app plays a key role in facilitating people to engage in a conversation. Their free plan allows you to favorite 5 tweets a day. Beyond that, you’ll have to pay up!

Respondly

Respondly is an interesting hybrid between a helpdesk and Twitter management app. The app makes it possible for teams to share a single inbox. It doesn’t matter if it’s an email inbox or a Twitter timeline, your team can access and respond to customers from a single account.

Unfortunately, their website is extremely secretive about the featureset. The demo video offers a sneak peek though. If you are interested, plans start at $9 per month!

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Keep your subscription lists up to date with Campaign Monitor and ClinchPad

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing tool which is popular for sending and managing newsletters. It is a web based application. With a free plan, it is widely used by many to send periodic emails to their customers and prospects.  We’re pleased to announce that now you can add Contacts in ClinchPad to your Campaign Monitor subscriber lists. This reduces the time spent on duplicate data entry and makes it easier to keep your subscription lists up to date. 

To get started with integrating your Campaign Monitor account with ClinchPad, read this integration guide.

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Keep your subscription lists up to date with Madmimi and ClinchPad

Madmimi is an email marketing tool which is popular for sending and managing newsletters. It is a web based application. With a free plan, it is widely used by many to send periodic emails to their customers and prospects.  We’re pleased to announce that now you can add Contacts in ClinchPad to your Madmimi subscriber lists. This reduces the time spent on duplicate data entry and makes it easier to keep your subscription lists up to date. 

To get started with integrating your Madmimi account with ClinchPad, read this integration guide.

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Keep your subscription lists up to date with MailChimp and ClinchPad

MailChimp is an email marketing tool which is popular for sending and managing newsletters. It is a web based application. With a free plan, it is widely used by many to send periodic emails to their customers and prospects.  We're pleased to announce that now you can add Contacts in ClinchPad to your MailChimp subscriber lists. This reduces the time spent on duplicate data entry and makes it easier to keep your subscription lists up to date. 

To get started with integrating your Mailchimp account with ClinchPad, read this integration guide.

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8 Ways to be a Better Conversationalist

“What do you think about the weather?”

A question like is not a conversation starter. It’s not going to keep the listener engaged enough to hear what you have to say anything after that. Having fresh and interesting things to say is key to an engaging conversation and a foundation of a great working relationship.

When you are in sales, it’s far more important to be great conversationalist and an expert on a wide variety of topics. The emphasis is on wide variety of topics for one simple reason - you don’t know for sure the topics that are of interest to your prospect. 

Sure, it takes a number of factors to be a good conversationalist other than a deep understanding of a gamut of topics. Not being an introvert and having great body language are a given. For the purposes of the article, I’m gonna assume that you have mastered those skills.

Do Some Research

By spending a few minutes searching about your prospect online, you’ll be doing yourself a big favor. A quick glance at his blog, social media profiles and other digital properties will throw some light about his or her areas of interest. 

The Facebook account might be locked down, but, the Twitter account should be a great source of information. Many people go to great depths when it comes to listing out their interests and passion in their Twitter bio. It’s a great place to start!

If you discover that a prospect is a mad lover of Chihuahua, then it’s time to understand what in God’s green earth is interesting about this ridiculous looking puppy. I’m not saying that you fake an interest - it’s totally hard to like them anyway - but, know enough about for a smalltalk.

Read a Lot

Reading is a great habit. From expanding your knowledge to killing some time on the subway, it serves a lot of purposes. Naturally, when you start reading a lot, you’ll have more things to make a conversation interesting than you’ll ever need.

There is a catch though. You’ll have to read books from a variety of genres to cover a significant ground when it comes to interesting topics to talk about. Limiting yourself to a specific domain or genre beats the whole purpose. 

One of my best friends is in sales. He is a great conversationalist and he said that he got good at it by reading a lot of books spanning a colorful array of topics.

When I visited his house, I saw a massive bookshelf with books ranging from the biography of Steve Jobs to the complete collection of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Yes, just like you, I was curious to know the what kind of conversations two professionals could have about the latter book. But, for some reason, I chose not to. The takeaway is, read. A lot. 

Stay on Top of Current Affairs

This is a pretty easy strategy to get started. All it takes is keep your eyes and ears open. See and understand what’s happening around the globe, in the technology space, in your core domain of expertise, sports and the like. 

It’s as easy as picking up a newspaper or a magazine and reading something other than the comic strips. Remember, current affairs don’t just mean coverage of political affairs.

These days breaking news happens in social media and if you could quickly subscribe to a few top news outlets online, you’ll be in the know even before the news breaks in TV. Take advantage of your smartphone or tablet to help you in the endeavour.

There are tons of sophisticated apps that report, curate and store news items that you might find interesting. Put them to good use so that you don’t forget those interesting nuggets of information.

The important thing to note here is that you need to have a story built around the news. There ought to be something more and something relevant that you add to the topic. Otherwise you’ll sound like a news reader instead of someone who has an interesting viewpoint on the topic under discussion.

Know More About Gadgets and Cars

If you feel overwhelmed by keeping track of the entire firehose of current affairs, there is still hope. Follow the gadgets and motor vehicles (cars in particular) beat and you should be able to cover a major chunk of your audience.

I don’t mean to be sexist, but, given the ratio of men to women in workplaces, having a grip on these topics is one way to get the conversation going. You’ll be able have a decent conversation with most men if you know about these two.

Gadgets in itself is a voluminous subject to cover. That’s when staying up to date about smartphones will come to your rescue. You can talk for hours about Apple-Samsung rivalry, the newest iOS update, the wonderful new app you’ve discovered and so on. 

Keep Track of Pop Culture

Tracking pop culture might not come in handy as often as these other topics. Still, it makes for a colorful conversation if you come across a prospect who shares the same interest.

The real benefit of tracking pop culture news is to sprinkle your conversations with interesting references. How cool it would be bring up a Han Solo or Darth Vader reference in the conversation? 

Try to be Humorous

Having a great sense of humor is a gift. If you have got it, then don’t hesitate to put it to good use. Topical jokes that are non offensive are a surefire way to warm up the prospect into a conversation.

You don’t have to perform a stand up act or try to be a tickle monster. Be your natural self and if you have got something funny say over the course of the conversation, feel free to do so.

The key is to make sure the humor doesn’t seem forced and is in the flow of the conversation. A couple of good jokes won’t hurt either. But, be wary of using them in the wrong places in the conversation.

Ask Relevant Questions 

Relevant and thought provoking questions have ability to break an impasse. Show real interest in the prospect and the business they are in by fielding a few well placed questions. It’ll ease them into the conversation and help them open up.

Asking the right questions is a great way to communicate to the prospect that you are taking a genuine interest in the conversation. By getting to know what kind of music they like, the books they read or the hours they spend at work, you’ll open up avenues for you to pitch in with some more useful information.

On the other hand, if the prospect isn’t really forthcoming with answers, try changing the nature and tone of the questions. Even after that if you find the prospect to be cagey with responses, it’s time to move to the next tactic! 

Listen and Talk Less

At times, talking less will end up making the conversation more meaningful. If the prospect is keen to share his thoughts, be a sport and cut down the fluff you have prepared to share.

When you have got nothing to go with, try listening to the conversation and see if you can build on top of it. Active listening is a valuable interpersonal skill and it will come to your rescue when your conversation starters are tapped out.

When you focus all your attention listening to what the customer has to say, you’ll be able to find ways to steer the conversation towards areas in which you can add valuable insights.

So, how do you get a conversation going? Got any pointers to share with the rest of us?

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How We Cut Lead Creation Time by 500%

The market for CRM systems is a huge one. Gartner reports predict the market size to grow exponentially to $36 billion by 2017. That’s a really sweet number if you are a CRM vendor! Truth be told, it’s a win-win situation for CRM vendors and their customers. The bottomline of businesses on both sides of the table tend to go up with CRM adoption.

In reality, the business of CRM is a very competitive vertical. There are a couple of CRM biggies who have already taken a major chunk of the market share and are being implemented in enterprises across the globe. The bigger the bloat, bigger is the price tag! 

However, our aim was to make ClinchPad the world’s simplest, fastest & most intuitive CRM system and to keep that philosophy at the core as we build our product and grow. Our ultimate goal is to create a CRM that doesn't relegate users into data entry robots. Keeping the sales software as invisible as possible when it comes to managing sales pipelines is what we strive for.

These are big ideas that drive product development at our company. We brainstormed on every little function of every feature in ClinchPad trying to somehow reduce the time being spent to add data to our lead tracking system.

Predictably, we use ClinchPad to track sales leads and to manage the various sales pipeline stages. When I joined Team ClinchPad few months ago, our lead creation time was roughly about 5-7 mins (to enter full details into a lead such as products, sources, contact details, tasks etc.).

Many of our users have given a thumbs up to our intuitive interface as it doesn't make using it for lead management such a chore. Still, we were on a quest to cut this lead creation time to a minute or two. 

The reason behind this decision was simple. Research suggests that one of the primary reasons for low CRM adoption rate globally, is because employees find the data entry part very time-consuming. In addition, they find CRM systems to be too complicated and complain that they don’t get adequate training. In fact, a survey showed that employees on an average spend about 1-2 hours/day on just entering and updating the data in their CRM system.

Now, the question in our mind was where to start? So, I decided to become a user of ClinchPad and observe/experience/discover the shortcomings that our users experience firsthand. In short, I decided to picture myself in the shoes of our user.

When I created my account, the first question I had in my mind was how do I transfer/migrate all my data to my account? Just like other small businesses, I too used spreadsheets to track my leads and thus all my data was stored there.

I was in no mood to type in my 1000 leads one after another in the system as it would take me roughly 5000 mins to add all my leads into the system without even taking a break! I could not afford to waste that much time in inputting my data and would rather return back to using spreadsheets to track my deals.

Boo! There. My customer just walked out. That was a shame as we’re getting users interested in our application by showing them the value and eventually losing them as data entry time is too high.

Therefore we decided to work on reducing the data entry time for transferring existing leads, contacts and organizations first. We built the bulk import feature wherein you’ll be able to import your spreadsheets (CSV/Excel) and create the leads automatically in your pipeline. So, in under a minute you’ll be able to transfer more than 1000 leads to our sales software. Now, it only takes 1 minute instead of 5000 to import the complete database of leads. Sweet, isn’t it?

tackling the data migration problem, we moved on cut down the time spent on inputting new leads. Initially in ClinchPad, a user had to create a lead, find the lead in the pipeline, click on it and then add the details of the lead in the respective page. There were just way too many steps.

We came up with a few ideas and even solicited ideas from our users. Based on inputs from our users, we arrived at a solution in the form of Advanced Lead Creator (ALC). With ALC, when you create a new lead, you can also add all the details relating to it such as tasks, notes, products, custom fields, emails etc., all from a single modal without leaving your pipeline. This ended up saving a lot of time when users were trying to add details to a new lead.

We also worked on another feature to complement the ALC. According to our analysis, the three most updated entities in a lead are - notes, todos & files. We decided to add the ability to add, edit or delete these entities from the pipeline itself. This enabled our users to save time by accessing their notes, todos and files without having to open up the lead page.

We didn’t stop there. In an effort to help our users do more with the data they have stored in other applications, we started building integrations with various third party vendors. Integrations with popular webform providers were the first in our list. The idea was that when the prospect fills a webform, the captured details be converted to leads in ClinchPad automatically in a pipeline of their choice.

Later that week, we introduced integrations with three online form building applications - Formstack, Jotform & Wufoo. Now, all the user had to do was create a form on any of these 3 services and integrate the account with their ClinchPad account. This new addition ensured that our users don’t even have to spend a second on redundant data entry. Instead, they can focus more time on clinching the deal, just like what we had envisaged.

On similar lines, we also integrated with Olark Live Chat integration so that all live chat sessions are automatically created as leads in ClinchPad.

So now, adding new and existing leads, contacts and organizations became much faster and simpler. But, we stumbled upon a new challenge. When you have a lot of leads, it could be cumbersome to make any changes to the list of leads such as assigning a set of leads to a new team member or moving them across stages etc.. The reason being the user had to individually make the changes to every lead. Thus, we started working on adding bulk operations features. With the help of this little tool, you could perform a number of operations in bulk, such as assigning, unassigned, merging, deleting and changing stages of leads.

Every feature and integration mentioned above counted! We were able to reduce our average lead creation time from 5-7 mins to less than a minute.

Because at ClinchPad, every second saved counts. As the great Mark Twain once said  'I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.' While other CRMs add unneeded feature after feature, we focus on solving the main pain point of reducing complexity and data entry time to deliver a superior user experience.

Create an account today and see the difference!

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How to Improve Your Sales Operations

The very first thought that occurs to you when your sales numbers arrive is, perhaps, “We could do better”. You ponder over the figures, trying to find out what is that one clot in the vein that keeps the sales from flowing smoothly.

You raise the targets for your sales force, push them to bag more deals, but you are possibly not even considering the fact that they may already be over burdened. Besides, if a salesperson could do all the tricks, there would be no need for people who support their efforts.

A sales operations team enters the picture at this juncture. It functions to provide the administrative and infrastructural support to the sales guys so that they can keep their heads out of administrative activities and simply focus on one thing - closing deals!

Let us take a look at what are some important functions performed by the sales operations team:

Managing customer data – Sales operation team is responsible for making sense out of huge amounts of customer data the company gathers during the course of its business. They use their analytical expertise to bring out patterns in large sets of data. The results are then used to forecast numbers and gives direction to sales heads who in turn set targets for their teams.

Formulating contracts and pricing strategy – This is one of the major functions of the sales operations team. They formulate contracts and proposals keeping in mind the company’s objectives and its competitor’s strategies. After all, a well priced product will take lesser time to sell!

Sales Forecasting – The sales operations team feeds in sales data in the CRM tools which churns out projected sales figures. The data gathered in a CRM tool is used to find trends in sales and forecast future numbers. It is this figure, which then guides the sales head to set targets for his team.

Maintaining sales dashboard and reporting – The sales operation team records relevant data in the CRM application. It maintains a sales dashboard which guides the sales heads to take quick decisions. A constantly updated sales dashboard results in insights that help to detect probable deficiencies in the sales process and ways to rectify them.

Analyzing sales metrics – The analytics that the sales operations team produces, goes a long way strategic and tactical planning. The insights gathered from the analysis of a pool of data often help leaders at the helm to find out what is working and what is not in their sales process and find ways to shorten it.

Although some might argue that at the end of the day it is the sales guy who wins a deal and brings in the revenue, the sales operation team is no less important.

It is these people who predict the trends, filters out good leads from bad and informs your sales personnel of the same so that their efforts bear fruits. Now, given the importance of this function, it is pertinent that one ensures that the sales operations team is efficient and effective.

I have attempted to list down a handful of tips to improve the efficiency of sales operations:

Lay Down Your Objectives

The success of any department in an organization lies mainly on how well it lays down its key roles and responsibilities and the goals it seeks to achieve.

A company should clearly lay down whether it wants its sales operations team to engage in the strategic decision making process or just to carry out the tactical operations.

In  most organizations, the sales operations team performs both functions. However, the activities it is required to perform both as a strategic as well as a tactical unit must be well defined. Too much focus on one may hamper the performance of the other.

Find the Right People

The skill sets desired in a sales operation guy is unique and quite different from that of a salesperson. The desired traits of a salesperson include good communication skills, product knowledge, aggressive approach and ability to work under pressure amongst others. However the same traits may not hold good for a sales operation personnel.

More than communication skills a member of the sales ops team is expected to have good analytical skills so that he can make sense out of a vast pool of data. He should have a knack when it comes to predicting trends and to forecast sales numbers.

Facilitate Co-Ordination

Sales operations is not an isolated function of your organization. It has to work in coordination with the other departments if it is to work effectively.

For instance, the sales operation team may require data regarding the sales revenue generated from a product line in specific geographic regions to understand demand and consumption patterns in the region.

Based on this data, the team can then predict market trends in each region. Such data can be obtained from the finance department. Therefore, it is advisable that there is a proper interdepartmental communication channel to facilitate a smooth flow of information and better coordination.

Measure Performance

It is absolutely essential that you know how much impact your sales operation department has made. Lack of performance measurement standards often hinders proper assessment of the effectiveness of a department. Make sure you set definite standards of measurement.

The parameters of performance measurement could be the number of new clients acquired, number of repeat sales made, the total amount of sales revenue generated over a period - the list is quite exhaustive. You are to select one of the parameters as a standard based on your long term business objectives.

Embrace Technology

When advancement in technology has made our lives easier in almost all aspects, why not use it to make sales operation more effective? There are many capable CRM systems in the market that are easy to use and economical.

These sales tracking software make the life of the sales operations team much easier. A CRM can not only be used to record large amounts of data, but also to churn out crucial metrics to track KPI.

Besides these, also remember to motivate your sales operation team just like you motivate your sales personnel. Carefully design the compensation package of your sales operations personnel because it is crucial to recruit and retain skilled employees with good analytical skills.

Follow these simple steps to boost the productivity of your team and see the sales figures soaring!

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Why It's Time to Ditch Your Rolodex

Contact management today is so much more than just saving and accessing contact information. Gone are the days when that Rolodex on your desk was all you needed to keep track of your business contacts.

In a world of multiple channels of communication, a more evolved system of contact management is the need of the hour. In fact, contact management has become an integral feature of modern day CRM systems.

Online contact management software allows you to store and retrieve not only the contact info of a lead but also the history of all interactions. And, this is just one of the many advantages on offer!

Benefits of an Online Contact Manager 

More Organized & More Efficient

A ready online database where information is truly at your fingertips lets you be more efficient. Most online contact managers automatically add a lead to your contact list if a potential customer fills out a lead generation form in your website.

You can then organize your leads by organization, by the stage of the sales process they are at or any other appropriate category that allows you immediate access to the information that you need, when you need it.

Since updating the system is easy to do at a moment’s notice, you can also be sure that you always have access to the latest information related to a particular contact.

Not only does this save valuable time by organizing data properly, but the backup feature of an online contact manager protects you against any loss of your vital data bank.  

Improved contact management also increases efficiency on all other spheres of business communication activity. Who would pass up this chance for an overall hike in productivity?

Improved Customer Service

An online contact manager allows you to record every interaction you’ve had with a contact - whether over the phone, via email or at a personal meeting. You can pull out all this information within seconds as and when required.

And since you can store all information relevant to a particular contact with ease you can track their profile and activities to know your customers better and thus anticipate their needs. This improves your ability to service clients and thereby enhance customer loyalty.

So the next time a client or a potential customer calls you, retrieve this interaction history and be completely prepared with all the relevant information to interact with your client.

You can really impress your leads by remembering your previous conversations. And this record also lets you anticipate the needs of your returning customers.

All of this translates into better customer service, which is key to customer retention and consequently - a profitable and thriving business.

Share Information Across the Organization

Business contact management solutions give you a centralized database accessible by all members of your firm. This allows greater integration across sales and marketing departments by knowing which employee has had contact with a lead in the past and what communication has taken place.

This contributes to greater efficiency, since you can avoid overlap in work and repeating the same communication that another colleague has already shared with a contact.

If an issue or a query related to a contact has already been resolved, that record is logged in a centrally accessible system for future reference. If your firm can function as a more cohesive unit through team collaboration, productivity and customer service can only improve.

And any worries you may have about not having enough control over the information flow are baseless because you can tweak the settings granting restricted access to some. 

Remote Access

You certainly can’t lug your Rolodex with you everywhere. But with an online contact manager, you can access your contact database from anywhere so long as you have an Internet connection.

So just because you’re travelling on the job, don’t let that stop you from updating your online address book or pulling up all the information that you need. Especially when multiple personnel are working together on an account, synchronization of data ‘on the go’ is the need of the hour.

Many contact management programs are based on the cloud and can be easily synced across multiple devices. So not only can you access and update the data from wherever you are, you can use your mobile phone or your tablet to do so. 

Workflow Management

Many contact management software programs offer additional tools such as task flow management, reports and pie charts, email integration, calendars and scheduling functions, which make the workflow much more streamlined and easy to monitor.

You can track meetings, emails and follow ups to get a picture of how an account is being handled. Monitor the task flow of your sales personnel and ensure that everyone is on top of their responsibilities. 

This feature of an online contact manager allows for a more efficient lead tracking with timely communication with contacts that can really go a long way towards boosting sales.

With an organized task flow system in place, you won’t ever forget to respond to a query or miss a deadline to send out a quote.  

Choosing the Right Contact Manager

There are many programs available out there for you to choose from. But there are some key factors to keep in mind while opting for an online contact manager.

1. Pricing: Many contact managers out there are free up to a certain limit of contacts and users beyond which they become paid. While evaluating price, keep in mind not just the cost per user/license but the duration of the contract and the ongoing costs to keep the program running.

2. Ease of use: Given that an online contact manager should be accessible and usable by many in the organization, it should be fairly easy to use across multiple devices.

3. Features: Figure out whether you’re just looking for a simple solution to store contact information along with notes on interaction with leads or add on tools such as email integration and workflow management. 

Evaluate your needs and budget and you can certainly find the right contact management software for your business. Read some reviews and look at a comparative analysis of features before making your decision. 

Conclusion

In today’s competitive environment, your business needs an edge to drive your sales and boost profits. Organizing your contacts, including potential and existing customers, and tracking the different stages in the sales process can be quite challenging and time consuming especially if you have to constantly compare notes with other employees working on the same account.

That’s where contact management software steps in and makes life easier. Not only does it allow you to organize your data in a secure manner it boosts the efficiency of your sales team’s workflow and enhances overall productivity. This further leads to cost savings and increased profits through better customer service and retention.

Managing customer relationships efficiently is a significant differentiator in today’s competitive business environment. Just ensure that you stay a step ahead with an online contact manager!

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Bootstrap Your Business with Google Apps

I’m a big admirer of bootstrapped businesses. Running a self sustaining business without ceding control to investors is a great way to experience entrepreneurship nirvana.

I’ve nothing against getting external funding for a business early on and avoid all the heartburn of juggling growth and revenue. However, from the point of running a business exactly the way you have envisioned, all the while holding on to the majority stake, bootstrapping is the way to go.

There is a catch though. Bootstrapping is an enamoring idea on paper. When you try to put it in practice, it might not be as appealing. The problem is, you’ll have to run a business that’s lean, agile and is extremely well budgeted.

Every business has it’s own set of expenses.  IT spending is something that’s common across all verticals. So, if you are small business trying to stick to a budget, you would be better off choosing the right, cost effective set of software to run your business.

We all love Google’s products and services to varying degrees. Their privacy policy isn’t something that’s very inspiring and they love tracking people online. Keeping that aside, they do offer a bunch of amazing tools to communicate, collaborate and run your business on the cloud. 

Team Communication and Productivity

Gmail 

Gmail is the undisputed king of the email inbox. It’s also a great example of stellar product development. New updates and UI refreshes are constantly coming in, making Gmail the most usable mailbox ever. 

You and your team can stay focussed on emails that matter by embracing the priority inbox. This way, you can ensure that an important mail from a customer doesn’t get drowned in a sea of email newsletters and B2B sales pitches.

Gmail excels in being your one true inbox. Push all the emails from your many personal and professional email addresses and manage them comfortably from a single inbox. Combine this with a powerful search box, you don’t ever have to worry about finding any email that has been sent to you.

Did you know that you can convert an email to a task in your to do list? Just dig into the “More” drop down from a message and convert an email to a task in your to do list. The related email is attached to the task for your reference as well! 

It’s not advisable, but, you could actually run a pseudo helpdesk by using filters and labels wisely. The fact that there hardly is any bloat unlike the modern day support software and the productivity boost that the familiar user interface brings to the table adds another point in Gmail’s column.

Another perk of using Gmail is the ability to extend its features. You can find a bunch of useful and quirky addons to super size your inbox.  If you are looking to supercharge your lead management efforts, try using Rapportive to learn more about a contact. Boomerang, which reminds you to follow up on emails, is my personal favorite though!

Collaboration and Cloud Storage

Google Docs

Microsoft Office is the best in its class. It’s loaded with features, we have all used it at some point in life and it’s very easy to use. Google Docs is absolutely no match to it in comparison. But, the twist is, not every business needs to buy Microsoft Office suite. 

Not all the features in the ultra pricey Office suite are business critical. For a small and medium business, most of the commonly used features are available in the Google Docs suite. Yes, you’ll need Internet access at all times, but, that’s doesn’t compare with the huge upfront licensing costs of MS Office.

The collaboration features that come with Google Docs is something even money can’t buy. Stop creating a business proposal and sending it as an attachment to seek feedback from your teammates. Instead, create a Google Doc and collaborate with the entire team in real time.

The comprehensive control over who gets see a document or a folder and what level of access they should have, make the case even stronger in favor of Docs.

The revision history in each document and the activity feed for the entire folder ensure that there is always a trail of all the changes that are made to files and business documents.

Google Drive

Choosing between Dropbox and Google Drive for cloud storage is a tough choice. Dropbox is unbelievably simple to use. Drive is a bit bloated in comparison. The Google Drive desktop client isn’t as awesome as Dropbox either. 

The amount of free space that comes with each Google Drive account is unbeatable though. Compare this to Dropbox’s tiny 2GB free space, the choice becomes easy. Besides, when you upgrade in future to buy more storage, Google Drive will be many times cheaper. 

Figuring out a workflow for storing all your files at a centralized cloud destination is a no brainer. Upload the files from the web interface or add it to the desktop app.

From there, it’s the same routine as sharing a Google Document. Mediafire and Box are two other worthy alternatives that you could take a look at.

Hangouts

Skype and Google Hangouts compete neck to neck in this space. They both have all the features and there are splendid mobile apps as well. Better yet, they both have a very generous free tier that’s more than enough for any small and medium business.

The one feature that tips the scale in favor of Google Hangouts is that you don’t have to leave your web browser to chat with your peers and friends. Just switch between tabs and keep working.

Add this to the seamless integration with Gmail’s threaded conversations that are extremely easy to search (searching for something in a Skype conversation is a major pain), Hangouts is a clear productivity booster.

Calendar 

Google Calendar is a shared calendar, work planning and task scheduling app rolled into one. Plan appointments with clients and prospects without disturbing the work routine of your team mates. 

Maintain calendars based on multiple time zones if you manage a remote team. It’s so easy to maintain a different holidays roster in that case as well. By scheduling events and tasks ahead of time, you are better positioned when it comes planning your manpower better.

Use the multiple reminders that the app lets you set to ensure that nobody misses something that’s vital. Almost all desktop and mobile apps support Gcal, so you might consider attaching maps to events and help the boots on ground find their destinations without a hassle. 

By using a combo of Gmail, Google Drive, Google Sites and Calendar you could skip getting a HR management solution till you outgrow this hack. 

Google Sites

Okay, you can create websites with extreme ease using Google Sites. But, you definitely shouldn’t do that. At least, not to design your public facing corporate website. The reason is they aren’t very good to look at.

Google Sites can be very useful for internal team collaboration. It lets you build sites to share and collaborate on documents, videos, schedules, and more. Sort of like a replacement for Sharepoint.

 One practical use case is to create a Wiki without having to spend a lot of time. Simultaneous editing capabilities are available out of the box and it’s very helpful if you are planning to create a knowledge base that you can share privately or publicly. 

Google Groups

Groups is one app that’s unappreciated. Be it for creating publicly used forums or to run an internal message board, Google Groups is a handy little friend. Threaded conversations are a major highlight and so is the ability to moderate comments.

Organize with favourite threads and folders, choose to follow along via email and find unread posts quickly. Email digests of varying frequencies offer you a way to be either hands on or picky when it comes taking part in the conversations. 

The shared email address that comes with each Google Group is an absolute gem. Every team member can now respond to customer queries from a collaborative inbox. You’ll be surprised how easily you can tag and categorize emails!

Conclusion

It isn’t humanly possible to cover the merits of using Google’s apps and services in one blog post. Even in this list, I have left out quite a few - Google Analytics, Alerts, Translate among others.

I’ll have to make one thing clear though. This post is not an endorsement of Google and it’s products. They have their own set of baggage and they come with their spotty track record on privacy. 

It’s all good as long as you are in Google’s good books. If you violate the terms and conditions of one app or service and you’ll be kicked out of the other ones too. It’s not something that happens very often, but, it has happened before.

You’ll have to factor into their tendency to sunset apps where they can’t plaster their ads as well (Google Reader, anyone?). So, it’s not a very good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

That said, you won’t find a better ecosystem to start your bootstrapping process. It’s just that you should have a roadmap for you to graduate to using highly focussed, third party apps eventually!