Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or administration, when arrive at work in the morning chances are you’ve got a long list of “to do’s” for the day. Unfortunately that list sometimes resides solely inside your mind, leaving other people in the dark when it comes to accessing important information. In fact, 44% of sales executives think their organization is ineffective at managing the sales pipeline, yet companies with effective pipeline management grow 15% faster (Vantage Point Performance).
Lead by example with specifics
Manually assigning leads is a tedious administrative process which takes time away from other more important tasks which will actually grow a business. And, manual processes are always subject to errors. So, manually assigned leads will likely be mis-assigned, not assigned at all, or assigned when the lead has already gone cold.
With Insightly you can build out and maximize an efficient workflow by creating lead-flow processes that are both logical and repeatable. If your sales team is generating solid leads, for example, you can use Insightly to help qualify their potential. Likewise, if you’re collecting prospect information through a web form, you can flow that information right into Insightly using the Leads tab.
We’ve recently added a new feature to lead management with the release of Lead assignment rules. Lead assignment rules automate the process of assigning leads as they are added to Insightly. If you’re a sales manager, this makes it faster and easier to distribute leads evenly or according to specific criteria, including:
Geographic area, by selecting fields like Postal Code, State/Province, or City.
Number of employees, by selecting the Employee Count field.
Your own custom fields that you’ve set up in Insightly.
Round robin, by selecting a team or multiple individuals to receive leads on a rotating basis.
By automating the lead assignment process, your sales reps stay informed in real time which helps them to more accurately schedule their daily sales activities.
To create a more comprehensive picture, Insightly Lead Forms are now also supported bycustom fields. Custom fields give you the flexibility to create fields for non-standard information such as billing ID numbers, birth dates, contract renewal dates, project types, and referral information.
Meet in the middle
When used correctly, one of the many benefits of a CRM solution like Insightly is that it takes the burden off of your brain by minding the details for you. You have to meet in the middle, however, by taking the time to input information consistently. If you remain consistent, at the end of a busy day, you can stop worrying about the “herding cats” aspect of managing your team’s activities, knowing that you’ve got the end-to-end support you need to take a hot lead and turn it into a sale.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
It sounds great on the surface. You have a new tool in your business to help your sales team inch the needle forward and grow your business. But how does it all work? How do these features translate into real dollars and cents?
Insightly is one of the easiest small business CRMs to use. It’s also one of the most robust. There are many features that will help you close more sales and help your company profit. Here are eight of the best ways to get more out of your CRM and see the profits roll in.
Become a Magnet for New Leads
Leads are the catalyst to new business. Without them, your sales will flop. Still, in today’s digital age, it’s hard to know when someone is looking at your website. How do you reach them? How can you capture every lead landing on your website so you never miss an opportunity?
The answer is found in Insightly’s web to lead and web to contact form.
This unique feature of your CRM creates an attractive form to put on your website. When a customer fills it out, your CRM automatically collects all the pertinent information. All that’s left for you to do is determine if the lead is qualified and decide how you can convert this prospect into a sale.
Move Leads Through Your Sales Funnel With Finesse
It takes finesse to turn a hot lead into a sale. You want to make it looks seamless as the lead inches through your sales funnel toward signing a final deal with your business.
Insightly makes this process effortless for your team. From defining the value of the new business to setting up the necessary activity sets, your team can take full advantage of incoming sales opportunities.
Retain High Paying Customers
Congratulations! You signed a new customer. Now you can kick up your heels and celebrate, right? Not so fast.
Consider the signed contract the sound of the gun at the starting line of a race. You can’t sit at the starting line and not attempt to make it around the track. You still need to run the race and sail through the finish line to win.
Much of the sales process happens after the contract is signed. Customers are spending good money with your business and they want to feel important. It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current customer, so retention is vital.
Nothing helps retain high paying customers better than a strong relationship. Use your online customer relationship management tool to build the connection. Create a communication plan and have an account manager follow up with customers regularly. The more you reach out, the faster you can address any misunderstandings, nipping a potentially harmful situation in the bud.
More importantly, reaching out to check in with your customers shows you care. This isn’t something customers are used to these days. The more you communicate, the more your customers will feel appreciated and respected.
Beat Expectations
Regular communication and outreach is great. Still, one of the fundamental ways you can retain your current customers is by exceeding expectations.
When your customer starts working with your business, he or she is expecting a certain deliverable, wants a seamless experience and wants to be impressed by whatoffer.. If you don’t that customer will go to the competition. If wowed by what you had to offer, he or she will become loyal to your company for the long haul.
Gather customer feedback in Insightly and use it to continue improving your product or service. Pay close attention with a goal of learning how you can exceed expectations.
Beating expectations can also lead to more sales. When a customer has a lukewarm response to what you deliverthey move on without thinking much about your business. But, when impressed by what you have to offer, that customer is more likely to tell a network of friends and spread the word about what you did.
Dig Deeper Into Your Customer’s Life
People’s lives are more public than ever these days. Profiles on social networks expose the details a person is the most proud to show off. Tapping into these profiles is customer relationship gold.
With Insightly, you’re able to use your contact’s email address to detect every social media profile related to that person. See what your customers are tweeting. See what they’re posting on LinkedIn. Watch their Facebook newsfeeds to see what they find funny, interesting or infuriating.
By keeping a steady pulse on your customers’ public social chatter, you continue to strengthen the relationship and loyalty. When it comes time for your customer to renew with your business, you can bet you’ll win the contract without much effort because you’ve already built such a strong connection.
Always Be Prepared
Sometimes, meetings happen when you least expect them to. You run into a customer at a coffee shop and need to show you’re tuned in to his world. What do you do?
Insightly’s mobile CRM is a lifesaver in these situations. Instead of fumbling through your brain before your first cup of coffee, you can take a quick glance at your notes. You’ll appear genuinely tuned into your customer’s personal and professional life without much effort.
Train Your Team
All of this sounds great, but what happens if your team doesn’t jump on board as quickly? Change is hard. That’s why Insightly put together a team of customer success specialists. They’ll walk you and your team through the important steps of setting up your account, training key players on how to use these features and getting everyone up to speed on all of the important features.
The Insightly support team takes a hands-on approach so you don’t have to. Consider this your golden ticket to sail past the awkward introduction period and move straight into better sales and support.
Get Detailed Reporting
These features sound great, but how do you know they’ll work for your business?
With Insightly’s data-driven SMB CRM, you can always get the reports and insights you need to see how well your sales and support teams are doing. Get real time snapshots of your business and break down insights about your customers. These reports help you keep a pulse on your current customer relationship status while also helping you identify new opportunities to attract more business moving forward. Advanced Reporting is now even more robust with the recent release of its connectivity with Microsoft Power BI, a suite of business analytics tools to analyze data and share insights. You can monitor your business and get answers fast through visually-detailed dashboards that are available across multiple platforms,
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
