Sadly, just over 50% of small businesses flop within four years of opening. In light of this shocking statistic, we want to help the C-Suite increase their profits by improving in-house visibility- more specifically in the areas of finance, sales, and marketing.
Does that sound good? If so, continue reading to find out more.
1. Marketing
These days it’s essential for business leaders to use data to fuel their marketing campaigns. As such, it’s critical you and your marketing team have access to this kind of info. More specifically, you need to compile info on the following metrics and data points to target your ideal customers better:
- Consumer purchasing habits
- Average disposable income
- Their preferred mode of transport
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Feedback about your current products and services
- Their preferred payment methods
- Whether they shop with your competitors
You get the idea. To enhance your marketing campaigns you want to know anything that could help fulfill your customers’ needs and demonstrate that in your communications.
For example, if you’re running an independent butcher shop, info on how customers rate the importance of free-range meat could come in handy. If you then find out the majority of your customers feel passionate about this issue, you can market yourself accordingly to satisfy the needs of your target demographic.
Luckily for you, there are tons of different CRM solutions that enable you to manage this data more effectively. Some of the more popular programs include HubSpot, Salesforce, and InfoFlo.
For example, if you’re using email marketing to engage with customers, you need to ensure every message is tailored to suit the demands of each individual customer.
Using various data points, a CRM solution can help you target customers while taking into consideration multiple patterns in customer behavior. Needless to say, this works wonders for improving the way you engage with prospects and thereby bolsters your conversion rates.
This aptly leads on to our next point; these days consumers expect personalized email communications. This means addressing the customer by their first name. A top-notch CRM software will do this for you, so you don’t have to edit each and every email you send to your list.
In short, the more personalized your email marketing is, the more likely it is you’ll enjoy an increase in response rates, a boost in brand awareness and ultimately, a rise in profits.
Last but not least, once you’ve found a winning marketing campaign you can then save it as a template to your CRM platform. That way you can go back and reuse it time and again. It’s critical that business owners focus their attention on techniques that provide the best results, and when a CRM is used correctly, you’ll soon understand which activities make you money and which…don’t.
2. Managing Sales Staff
Business owners need the option of monitoring the progress of their staff. This is essential for ensuring you’re providing your team with the support they need to thrive.
This includes keeping an eye on their current workloads. That way you can see whether you’re under or overstaffed for the kinds of activities you need completing. From there you can make the necessary adjustments to your work schedules.
You’ll also want to see how your team members execute their daily tasks. A decent CRM will enable salespeople to prepare either weekly or monthly reports for you to peruse. Then as time goes on you can analyze which strategies provide the best results. From there you can train your team in procedures that are most profitable for your business.
Last but not least, your CRM solution should help your sales team optimize their schedules to prioritize tasks that require a greater sense of urgency. For example, it helps to ensure your most important clients get a response in a timely fashion.
3. Financials
You’ve probably heard it before; ‘knowledge is power,’ however, this couldn’t be truer when it comes to monitoring your business’s financials.
In light of that, it’s imperative you’re able to track your incoming transactions in real-time. This is even more essential for companies with staff working out in the field- as a lot of sales are made in a variety of locations, which naturally makes it harder to keep track of.
This is where using a service business solution like ServiceTitan which facilitates integration with QuickBooks, comes into its own. This is a cloud-based program which enables users out in the field to enter financial info, send invoices, and export customer purchases to your Quickbooks account while they’re on the go.
This then automatically syncs with the rest of the system. That way, your in-house finance team can safely receive and file away on-the-job payments without confusion.
Take this example for instance:
Say, you run a business that manages a variety of home services. Perhaps you don’t insist your customers pay until the work’s completed? As such, you’ll have plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc., taking payments that then need to be logged. With this kind of real-time accounting software you can ensure your technicians meet their sales targets and if they’re not, take steps to rectify the issue.
Final Thoughts
In short, if you want to improve in-house visibility within your finance, marketing, and sales departments, then you need to invest in good quality dispatch software and CRM.
Once your team gets to grips with these solutions, you’ll eventually reap the rewards. Yes, it will take a little perseverance as you learn how to make the most of these programs. However, over time you’ll improve the overall efficiency of your business operations, develop more effective marketing campaigns, and ultimately make more sales.
