5 ways an effective Sales Forecasting can help your Business

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

With the help of data and analysis, Forecasting helps you see into the future. Companies like Wal-Mart, Costco and many others focus on their sales forecasting to order their inventory and revise their strategies.

Implementing an effective sales forecasting system is a smart and cost-effective move for any business. With the streamlined data on your fingertips, you now have the tools to save money on inventory and stick to your budget.

How an effective sales forecasting help your business?

  1. Sales forecasting allows you to pinpoint exactly how many customers you need to gain, what sales you can expect from the average customer, and other important customer insight.
  2. Sales forecasting allows you to plan for the future. How many new hires should you have? What new projects you can take? What changes need to be made?
  3. Sales forecasting helps you see what customers really want and how you can fill their needs.
  4. Sales forecasting allows you to target your demographics. You can see the returns from each type of customer and re-strategize your efforts to gain maximum revenue.
  5. Sales forecasting allows you to distribute a sales target based on accurate data, not random speculation.

No matter what the size of your company, don’t underestimate the power of sales forecasting.

To find out how Soffront CRM Software can help you with an effective sales forecasting, call us at 1-800-SOFFRONT or take a free CRM test drive.

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How Do You Make Your Customers Love Your Brand?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

Every small business knows how hard it is to get customers, especially those first 10-20.  So besides the regular sales calls and marketing efforts, what can you do to connect with and then retain new customers?  Below you’ll find a few tips on getting customers interested and keeping them engaged with your brand.

Who are you?  Let your vision and mission statement take the center stage.  The customer purchase cycle has recently undergone a huge change; it’s all about informed decisions which depend heavily on word of mouth and feedback from others in the industry.  Mention it in your website, blog, and social media profiles.  Keep a web contact page that encourages people to ask questions and interact. They could be potential leads!

What do you offer?  Let them know about your products and what you can do to help them.  Collaborative effort helps businesses.  As a small business owner you should join communities, spread the word, attend webinars and seminars, try hosting your own webinars and seminars, and give away free e-books and whitepapers.  Share your knowledge and you will become a valuable thought leader in your industry.

Stay connected.  Newsletters are a great way to stay connected with your audience. Don’t fill it with industry jargon and repeated information on your company; instead keep it simple with useful information your contacts will appreciate.  In return for the valuable content you provide, you can expect referrals.  Always keep an option to sign up for your newsletter on your blog/website.

Write!  Your subject matter expertise is as good as your offering.  Write in company blogs, publish white papers, and volunteer to send contributions to award-winning blogs and websites. This will enable you to build a community that supports you and stays loyal to you.

Be thankful.  Thank your readers and customers—they are the reason your company is afloat!   Send thank you emails to loyal customers and also to interested prospects.  This will allow you to keep the conversation going in order to find out more about them and their needs. Be human; it’s not always about sales, and establishing a good relationship goes a long way.

Soffront’s marketing automation can help you stay connected to your customers and anticipate their needs with email automation and campaign performance tracking.  To find out how Soffront CRM Software can help you acquire and keep loyal customers, call us at 1-800-SOFFRONT or take a free CRM test drive.

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Is 2012 the Era of Customer Engagement?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

Listening to your customers is paramount, and there’s absolutely no doubt why Paul Greenberg , a thought leader in the CRM industry, thinks that 2012 is the era of customer engagement.  The most successful organizations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into their core processes.  How your customers feel about you and what they are prepared to tell others about you can heavily influence your revenue and profit, so it’s essential to examine various ways to ensure engagement with your customers.

Research firm M2 says that by 2016, the gamification market, currently sized at $100,000,000 will reach $2.8 billion, with 200% growth in 2012.  “Gamification describes the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change,” said Brian Burke, analyst at Gartner.  The goal of gamification is simply to achieve higher levels of engagement, change behaviours and stimulate innovation.

An integrated CRM system is another essential way to provide an interactive customer engagement experience.  With a fully integrated CRM system, you will be able to monitor customer suggestions, feedback, and customer interactions from start to finish through the entire sales cycle starting with initial contact to customer service and defect resolution.

Soffront offers an integrated CRM that spans sales, marketing, customer service, project management, defect tracking, and more.  To find out how Soffront can enable you to engage your customers, call us at 1-800-SOFFRONT or take a free CRM test drive.

Reference article:    2012 is the era of customer engagement

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A Human Touch is Key in an Automated World

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

With all the focus these days on automation of various tasks, it seems like a good time to reflect on when and why it’s a good idea to not forget the human element of good customer service.  Sure, automation of customer service functions can save companies money and resources, but there’s a point when the automation becomes too much, de-personalizing the customer service experience and possibly alienating customers.

It has been widely documented that when a customer has a good experience they will tell around 4 people about it.  Unfortunately for businesses, that number can double or triple when it comes to who they tell about a particularly bad experience.  And the worst part is that frequently customers won’t even tell you, the company—they’ll just go straight to complaining to their friends and family and you’ll be left in the dark as to why you are losing business.

So in a day and age where automation is king, how do businesses ensure they are still providing excellent customer service?  A human touch is the key.

While customer service automation is great to a point, make sure you have ways customers can escalate to a real human being when needed.  Sometimes people just want to make sure they are really being heard and not just getting canned messages from a robot.

So ensure that you have at least a couple ways people can connect to your customer service department when they are unhappy, such as a special email address, message board, or phone number that can be given out when regular customer service automation just isn’t cutting it for them.  They will be grateful for the human touch, and you will gain much-needed insight into customer frustrations.

Don’t forget that it takes much more time and resources to gain new customers than it does to maintain current customers, so it’s in the best interest of your business to make sure they are happy.

To find out how Soffront can help your business provide many ways for your customers to contact you, call us at 1-800-SOFFRONT or take a free CRM test drive.

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Hindsight is 20/20 but Foresight is the Key to Success in 2012

Posted on January 4, 2012 by

With 2011 in the rear view mirror, many businesses are taking this time to reflect on how they will drive their success in the New Year.  The New Year is always a time for resolutions and new beginnings, and with everyone still recovering from the holidays, it’s a great idea to use this lull to assess your business plan and figure out where you can make improvements.

Many companies use an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) solution to automate their business processes, which leads to higher employee efficiency and increased ROI.  So which type of CRM automation does your company need to excel in 2012?  Find out below.

Let’s take a look at a few of the main types of CRM modules:

Sales Automation

Allows you to track leads from initiation to closure within a single, easy-to-use application.

  • Forecast better and manage opportunities more effectively
  • Identify and focus on the most profitable opportunities
  • Create quotes and invoices, and e-mail or print them
  • All customer information such as addresses, contacts, notes, activities, quotes, POs, and invoices are available in one place for easy reference

Marketing Automation

Provides a closed-loop solution for campaign planning, execution, and results measurement.

  • Plan multi-channel campaigns with a configurable workflow for design, approval, and rollout
  • Collaborate with multiple departments and create a cross-functional action plan
  • Slice and dice information to optimize your marketing strategy
  • Execute personalized and targeted direct and electronic campaigns to acquire new prospects and strengthen existing relationships
  • Measure the results of the campaign in real-time to get a handle on campaign ROI
  • Monitor the results continuously and improve marketing ROI

Customer Support

Helps manage customer support tickets from submission to resolution.

  • Create tickets and assign them to support reps automatically
  • Dynamically generate action buttons that guide customer support reps through the defined process
  • Know where every ticket stands in the resolution process and ensure no ticket slips through the cracks
  • Access account and contact information related to the ticket
  • Send an electronic survey to measure customer satisfaction after a ticket is closed
  • Generate reports to measure CSR productivity and customer satisfaction

Project Management

Enables companies to improve utilization by keeping the right resources on the right project and provides a central location for managing the key aspects of projects, including their status and target completion dates.

  • Manage and plan resources based on skills and availability
  • Conduct team activities with a shared view of the project information, activity alerts, and a collaborative calendar
  • Resolve conflicts in project schedules and get better visibility into key project activities

So whether it’s sales automation, marketing automation, or customer support, use an automated, integrated CRM system to refine and improve your business processes this year.  Soffront Software offers all of these modules and more.  To find out more about how Soffront can help your 2012 be a success, visit www.soffront.com or take our free CRM test drive.

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Holiday Cards Bogging You Down? Let Marketing Automation do the Work!

Posted on December 22, 2011 by

Winter’s here and it’s time for the holidays! We know you are spending your evenings doing last minute shopping, gift wrapping, cooking and baking.  Even though you are busy with the holiday bustle, don’t forget to take a minute to think about your clients and customers that have made this a great year for your organization.

With just a few days left until Christmas, panic might be setting in as you realize the large amount of holiday cards you still have to send.    This year, don’t fret, let marketing automation do the work for you.

To create a great holiday card that your contacts will love, all you need is a holiday picture or photo of your office staff, and a well-written holiday template.  You can also create a video to link to within   the card to make it more interactive.

Once you’ve created your card template, marketing automation makes it easy by identifying the contacts you want to send the card to and letting you easily send it to them.

Soffront CRM and Snapshot CRM make email marketing automation a snap!  To find out more, visit www.soffront.com or www.snapshotcrm.com.

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Big Businesses’ Biggest Secret

Posted on December 14, 2011 by

What makes big companies so successful?  Is it product quality, customer service, cost?  These three things and many more definitely play a large role, but one thing you will find in common with all large companies is that they have their business processes down to a science.

Large companies have realized that they can be the most efficient by automating processes, saving themselves time and money, ultimately benefiting their bottom line.  Take a look at McDonald’s for example.  They have fine-tuned the art of running a fast food restaurant.  From cooking the burgers to measuring condiments, every single detail is measured and automated so the company is as cost-effective and time-efficient as it can possibly be.

Now, a small business owner might thing to himself, “I just don’t have the time or resources to automate processes like the big guys do.”  But that’s where he’s wrong!  A good CRM (customer relationship management) system can help small businesses automate and fine tune processes for relatively low to no cost, depending on the program they choose.  A CRM solution is vital for any business to grow because it helps automate many processes such as sending email responses, scheduling follow-ups, rescheduling calls and meetings, and measuring results.

To find out more about how CRM can help your business streamline processes and increase ROI, contact Soffront at 1-800-SOFFRONT or request a free demo.

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