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Looking for ways to reach local customers on Pinterest? Discover four tips to connect with locals via Pinterest without using promoted pins.
Read the full article at: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Do you use the same probability of winning for every stage of every opportunity? Are you tired of manually updating the “Probability of Winning” field on your opportunities when the opportunity reaches those stages? Well, with our new “Opportunity Stage Probability” improvement, you can do exactly that. All you have to do is define the “Probability of Winning” field when you’re defining your pipeline stages. Then, when your opportunity reaches each stage, the “Probability of Winning” field is automatically updated to the percentage you’ve set for that stage. (See screenshot below.)
With this improvement, you can ensure that consistent probabilities are used across all of your opportunities. As a result, you can have a better view into the expected revenue in your sales pipeline. (Remember, expected revenue is calculated as “Opportunity Value” * “Probability of Winning”.) So, not only will you have a better view into each opportunity, but you will also have a better view into how much value is in your sales pipeline by stage. And, the good news is that this improvement is available on all plans.
You can learn more about it in our help article or you can try it out in a free trial.
If you like this improvement, please be sure to like and share it on social media!
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!
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Streamline Lead Management with Insightly |
| Leads come from many places. Some call your office phone number. Others request more information from your website. Still others reach out through social media.
Regardless of the source, leads must be quickly and effectively followed up with. With each passing minute, you reduce the chances of successfully converting them to opportunities. Luckily, Insightly makes it easy to view, assign, and automate the lead management process.
Let’s say you wanted to view all of today’s new leads and then assign them (in bulk) to your sales guy or gal. You’re in luck, as Insightly has a prebuilt filter for that. Simply use the “today’s leads” filter, select all of the results, and change the responsible user. Presto! Your sales team now has an actionable plan for the day. As you get more leads (and sales reps), you’ll likely want to automate this process. Insightly has you covered here, too, thanks to its lead assignment rule feature. In a nutshell, lead assignment rules prevent you (or someone else at your organization) from becoming the bottleneck. Rather than waiting on a person to dish out new leads, Insightly does it for you – based on your predefined criteria, of course. To begin using lead assignment rules, you’ll need to upgrade to at least a Professional level Insightly account. Find out more about upgrading here. |
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Getting More Leads in Your CRM |
A guaranteed way to make your sales reps even happier is by flooding your CRM with high-quality leads. The more leads you provide them, the greater chance they have to maximize their commission checks. (Remember, when you’re paying big commissions, it also means that sales revenue is humming along.) Sure, this all sounds great. But, how can you do so without breaking the bank? As pointed out in this multi-part series, increasing lead flow may not be as difficult as first thought. It just comes down to your company’s dedication to solid marketing principles. Here are some basic steps for getting started with a lead-focused marketing strategy:
Obviously, this is a simplified version of the process. Each step above could require days or weeks of work, but at least you have a general game plan now!
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Ease Out of the Day |
It’s 5:29 pm. You just wrapped up that big project, and now you have one minute to check your email again before calling it a day. As you put on your jacket and walk out the door, you can’t help but feeling totally frazzled. Another intense ten-hour day is in the books, and now it’s time to go back to being a good parent and spouse. Sound familiar? With so many things to get done, it’s easy to work up until the very last minute. Although a highly efficient use of time, a wall-to-wall day can make transitioning back to your personal life difficult at best. Try this simple experiment next week. Open your calendar and block off the last five minutes of each workday. Don’t just ignore your calendar when it prompts you to stop working. Actually quit working and do something mindless, such as:
Ahhh…just thinking about these activities probably makes you feel more relaxed. Invest the twenty-five minutes in next week’s work plan, and you’ll find it much easier to transition out of work. Your family will thank you!
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Avoid Turf Wars with Better Communication |
In a perfect world, your sales department would happily accept the leads they’re assigned. Unfortunately, as with any other group of people, jealousy and hard feelings can develop if you’re not careful. How can you prevent such negativity from plaguing your company? For starters, maintain an open dialogue about how you assign leads. If you’re using Insightly’s lead assignment rules, you might consider publishing the criteria into a shared document somewhere on your network drive. This way, when your robotic lead assignments go out, everyone already understands the ground rules. Determining which criteria to use is equally important. There’s no magic combination and largely depends on your business model. Here are a few quick examples: Heating & Air Company Serving St. Louis – Given the localized footprint, it might make sense to break leads into two (industry) groups: commercial & residential. If you have more than two reps, consider using additional refining criteria such as ZIP Code or tagged info. Manufacturing Firm Supplying Auto Part Shops – Since this firm serves the entire US automotive aftermarket, it may be wise to assign leads based on region. Each rep would manage particular states or state groups, which creates clear distinction and expectations. IT Firm Serving Public K-12 Schools In Iowa – Some schools are much smaller than others, which means “IT services” could vary significantly depending on the number of students and employees. Since employee data is publicly available, it might be wise to pre-populate leads with this information to streamline lead delegation.
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Send Us Your Tips. Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us! If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card! Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.
About the author: Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.
It’s that time of year. The weather is chilly, holiday lights are donning trees and roof lines, and people around the world are pulling their favorite holiday sweaters out of drawers and off of shelves.
In honor of those beloved bits of holiday garb, we’ve launched our Tacky Sweater Giveaway. We’ll be spreading a little holiday cheer with a customer giveaway and donations to charitable organizations that are important to us. And we’re doing it with tacky sweaters!
You get a chance to win a great prize, too! Each vote submitted becomes an automatic entry to win an HP Sprocket Photo Printer. Read all of the details and the Official Rules on our main Giveaway page. Check back on Monday, December 19th when we’ll post photos of our VP’s wearing their winning sweaters and announce the giveaway winner.
Let’s Get Started: Vote today!
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Discover some amazing Cyber Monday and holiday deals on marketing tools, books and professional development opportunities.
Read the full article at: www.toprankblog.com
Do you feel like social media won’t work for your business? Discover three ways any business can use social media to reach customers.
Read the full article at: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Looking for ways to boost the visibility of your local business on Facebook? Discover four ways to reach a local audience on Facebook.
Read the full article at: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Do you use LinkedIn to find new customers and clients? Discover how to use LinkedIn to find and connect with your target prospects.
Read the full article at: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Much like the products you manufacture, your company has many moving parts. Customer engagement, order fulfillment, and business development are just a few of the tasks your team juggles each day.
For many in the manufacturing sector, it can seem overwhelming to keep everything organized. This is especially true without the right technology.
In this post, we’ll offer three simple ways to impress clients (with the help of a CRM).
When you first started your business, you knew every customer by name. Thinking back, you can probably still recall many of your early clients’ names. As you’ve added more clients and employees, however, customer name recognition has become nearly impossible.
A CRM (customer relationship management) system, such as Insightly CRM, can be your secret weapon for offering scalable personalization. In fact, 68% of the 465 manufacturing firms recently surveyed by Insightly feel that “contact management” is the most useful CRM feature.
Your field engineers, sales representatives, service department, and accounts payable manager are already interacting with customers each day. Without a well-structured CRM, each employee is left to manage his or her own contact records. When new people join your organization, there is no centralized database to start from. This can lead to awkward situations with clients and make your team look unprepared – or worse, uncaring.
A cloud-based CRM solves these problems by centralizing all customer contact information into a highly accessible database. Users can login from any web-enabled device (including smartphones) to search, sort, and update customer records.
No more handwritten notes, business card organizers, or embarrassing moments with clients. Instead, wow your customers with the personal attention they crave.
Your process engineers invest considerable time and effort into a more efficient production cycle. But have you ever examined your administrative functions through the same lens? Lead management, quoting, invoicing, and ongoing support present a tangible impact to your bottom line.
A CRM can bring clarity to your SG&A costs. For example, Insightly simplifies the collection of new sales inquiries. When a prospect calls your office, his or her information can be immediately inputted as a new lead record (instead of being written down on paper). As your sales team establishes a need, the lead record can be converted into an opportunity record. Opportunities are especially helpful for forecasting revenue, projecting an expected close date, and measuring potential return on investment.
Existing customers can also be better served through the use of a CRM (especially one that offers a mobile app). Going back to the survey data, when asked how the Insightly mobile app has most benefited their businesses, 42% of manufacturing firms surveyed felt it most improved customer responsiveness. Why is this so? There are likely many reasons, but accessibility to information is surely at the top of the list. Instead of being chained to a desk, staff can spend more time in the field engaging customers. As new needs surface, opportunities can be entered real-time from any web-enabled device. This type of approach reduces turnaround time and improves customer satisfaction.
If money were no object, your customers would gladly buy as much from your company as you could produce. Unfortunately, money is an object, which makes it necessary for your staff to listen and prioritize client needs (in relation to your capacity).
52% of Insightly customers in the manufacturing sector rely on their CRMs every day. It’s therefore no wonder that nearly half (43%) of those polled achieved return on investment within the first month.
Such data indicates the importance of a CRM for prioritizing client needs. Without the right tools, it can be nearly impossible to identify, sort, and track customer requests. With a system such as Insightly, your team can instantly evaluate opportunities based on:
This information not only helps you stay organized; but, more importantly, it can also assist you in your ultimate goal of customer success.
Impress More Customers with Less Effort
Your success in business is largely attributable to your track record of wise decisions. If you’re not currently using a cloud-based CRM, consider it an opportunity to make another intelligent choice. With a platform such as Insightly (which by the way offers a risk-free trial), you’re likely to find new efficiencies and impress even more customers.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.
In part one of my series about increasing inbound web leads, I shared a few introductory web marketing tips.
Now it’s time to familiarize yourself with the entire lifecycle of a lead. Where do leads come from? Which channels offer the best return on investment for your business?
Let’s examine each question and decide what to do next.
Where Do Inbound Leads Come From?
Despite what your analytics software seems to imply, each visitor to your website is a unique person with specific goals. Some visitors may be ready to engage with your company. Others might just be collecting information. Still others may be in the wrong place. Unfortunately, until they ask for more information (or leave without identifying themselves), it’s difficult to know for sure.
The good news is that most analytics packages allow you to gain partial insight (even for anonymous visits). An especially important piece of information involves originating lead source. As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to track what works, do more of that activity, and continuously repeat the process. Traffic source data is a fundamental metric that every business owner should consider before making any budgetary allocations.
In my experience, most inbound leads originate from the following sources. (For each source, I’ve included a simple example for illustrative purposes.)
Organic search results – A prospect types in a keyword (or your company name) into a search engine. After viewing the results, he clicks into your website and begins browsing.
Links from third parties – An industry analyst writes a blog post and links over to your website. Readers of the article can now click through and learn more about your company.
Paid promotion – Your company buys advertising on an industry website. Prospective customers click your banner ads and read about your amazing products and services.
Social media – A happy customer shares his positive experience with followers on social media. His friends and family like or share the post, creating a viral effect and increasing the likelihood of traffic to your site.
Forums & review sites – A forum moderator asks members to comment about their interactions with your business. Several people post favorable ratings and link to specific pages on your website. The thread is indexed by search engines, further compounding the effect.
Word of mouth referrals – An influential thought leader mentions your brand during a webinar. After doing some additional research, attendees find your website and request more information.
Which Lead Sources are Most Viable for Your Business?
If you’re starting from square one, you may not have much historical data to reference. This makes it difficult to make informed marketing decisions. With no source data to go on, which initiatives yield the most favorable results?
All businesses are different, so it’s impossible to say that one lead source will be guaranteed to be more effective. However, from my perspective as a technology consultant, I often see the following tradeoffs for each traffic source.
Spend time evaluating the viability of each lead source for your business. You may also consider hiring a marketing consultant (shameless plug!) to make sense of it all.
Your Next Logical Focus: Organic Search
After weighing the options, many business owners decide to focus initial lead generation efforts on organic search. Unlike paid advertising that delivers short-term value and minimal long-term gain, organic search results can provide new revenue for many years to come.
So, how do you increase your placement in organic search?
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.
