In today’s digital-first business landscape, decisions can no longer rely on intuition or outdated processes. Organizations that consistently win—regardless of size—are those that transform raw data into clear, strategic action. Google Sheets has evolved into one of the most accessible and powerful platforms for doing exactly that.

This updated guide gives you a streamlined, modern, and SEO‑optimized walkthrough of how to use Google Sheets for data-driven decision making, advanced analysis, and clear reporting. You’ll also explore when specialized tools like Teamgate CRM provide deeper capabilities that spreadsheets alone cannot match.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Make Better Decisions with Data: Learn why moving beyond intuition leads to more predictable, profitable outcomes.
  2. Google Sheets as an Analytics Hub: Discover how to use Sheets for cleaning, analyzing, and visualizing complex datasets.
  3. Build a Solid Data Foundation: Import, structure, and validate data for accurate insights.
  4. Unlock Advanced Tools: Use QUERY, pivot tables, add-ons, and Apps Script to automate and scale your analysis.
  5. Create Insightful Dashboards: Design reports that influence stakeholders and communicate insights clearly.
  6. Explore Alternatives: Understand when tools like Teamgate CRM offer a more strategic analytics environment for sales teams.

Contents:

Understanding Data-Driven Decision Making

Data-driven decision making (DDDM) represents a transformative approach in the business world, moving away from intuition-based strategies to ones rooted in empirical evidence and analytics. This pivotal shift enables organizations to navigate the complexities of the modern market with precision and insight. Let’s delve deeper into the essence of DDDM, its differentiation from traditional decision-making processes, and the significant advantages it offers.

Traditional vs. Data-Driven Decision Making

Traditional Approach:

  • Relies on experience, intuition, and subjective observation.
  • Highly vulnerable to bias and inconsistent outcomes.
  • Slow to adapt to evolving market conditions.

Data-Driven Approach:

    • Uses real-time data and analytics to guide decisions.
    • Enables objective evaluations of trends, performance, and opportunities.
    • Supports strategic planning, forecasting, and more accurate risk management.

The Benefits of Data-Driven Decision Making

  1. Greater Market Agility: Respond to market changes quickly using live data.
  2. Improved Customer Experiences: Tailor offerings based on behavioral and demographic insights.
  3. Operational Efficiency: Identify bottlenecks and waste to optimize processes.
  4. Continuous Innovation: Use insights to spark new product ideas and uncover untapped markets.

By embracing data-driven decision making, organizations can transcend the limitations of traditional approaches, leveraging data to unlock unparalleled opportunities for efficiency, growth, and innovation. This strategic pivot is not just about adopting new tools and technologies but about fostering a culture that values data as a fundamental pillar for decision making.

Introduction to Google Sheets as a Data Analysis Tool

Google Sheets stands out in the modern data analysis landscape, offering a dynamic and flexible platform that caters to both novice users and seasoned data analysts alike. This introduction aims to unpack the multifaceted nature of Google Sheets, spotlighting its role as a pivotal tool for data analysis and reporting within contemporary organizations.

The Appeal of Google Sheets

At its core, Google Sheets combines the ease of use with sophisticated analytical capabilities, wrapped in a cloud-based package. This unique combination ensures that data is not only accessible from anywhere but also facilitates an environment where collaboration and up-to-the-minute data analysis thrive.

Comparing Google Sheets to Alternative Tools

  • Accessibility and Collaboration: Google Sheets sets itself apart from traditional desktop-based spreadsheet software through its inherent design for collaboration. Multiple users can engage with the same dataset in real time, offering a transparent and unified approach to data analysis that is hard to replicate in standalone applications.
  • Integration and Add-ons: Beyond its native features, Google Sheets boasts an expansive ecosystem of add-ons and seamless integration with the broader suite of Google services. This opens up a realm of possibilities, from automating data import from various sources to enhancing data visualization and analysis capabilities, making it a highly extendable platform for specialized analytical needs.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: One of Google Sheets’ most compelling attributes is its affordability. Available free of charge with a Google account and part of the broader Google Workspace for organizations, it provides a cost-effective solution without compromising on functionality or performance.

Empowering Data Analysis and Reporting

  • Real-Time Collaboration: Google Sheets eradicates the barriers of traditional spreadsheet tools, promoting a culture of cooperation and shared insights. This real-time collaboration functionality not only speeds up the data analysis process but also fosters a more inclusive and dynamic decision-making environment.
  • Advanced Analytical Tools: With support for everything from simple arithmetic calculations to more complex statistical analysis, Google Sheets is well-equipped to handle a broad spectrum of data analysis tasks. Pivot tables, conditional formatting, and an array of built-in functions allow users to dig deeper into their data, uncovering insights that might otherwise remain hidden.
  • Visualization Capabilities: Google Sheets excels in transforming raw data into compelling visual narratives. Its robust charting and graphing tools enable users to create a variety of visual data representations, from simple bar charts to intricate scatter plots, making it easier to convey complex data stories in an understandable and engaging manner.

In summary, Google Sheets is not just a spreadsheet application but a comprehensive data analysis solution. Its blend of accessibility, integrative capacity, and advanced analytical and visualization tools make it an indispensable asset for any data-driven organization looking to harness the power of their information for strategic decision-making.

Setting Up Your Data Environment in Google Sheets

Initiating your journey into data analysis with Google Sheets begins by laying a robust groundwork. This essential phase involves preparing your spreadsheet for the intricate tasks ahead, ensuring your data is accurate, organized, and primed for analysis. Here’s how to effectively set up your data environment in Google Sheets.

Importing and Organizing Data

  • Data Importation: Google Sheets supports importing data from a multitude of sources, streamlining the transition of information into your spreadsheet. Whether you’re working with CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, or extracting data from web pages, Google Sheets simplifies the process. To import data, utilize the “File” menu, select “Import,” and choose from the available options to bring your data directly into the platform. This seamless integration ensures that your starting point is solid and comprehensive.
  • Organization Techniques: The initial setup of your spreadsheet is pivotal. Begin by applying clear naming conventions to your sheets and ranges to avoid confusion later on. Organize your data logically, using separate tabs for different datasets or stages of analysis. Consider categorizing your data to facilitate easy navigation and analysis. Proper organization from the start enhances the clarity and efficiency of your data analysis process.

Cleaning and Preparing Your Data

  • Data Cleaning: The integrity of your analysis hinges on the quality of your data. Start by scrutinizing your dataset for inaccuracies or inconsistencies. Utilize Google Sheets’ functionalities to identify and correct errors, eliminate duplicate entries, and address missing values. Tools such as “Find and Replace“, conditional formatting, and simple formulas can aid in detecting and rectifying common data issues. Ensuring your data is clean not only improves the accuracy of your analysis but also prevents misleading results.
  • Data Validation: To maintain the quality of your data throughout the analysis, leverage Google Sheets’ data validation tools. These features allow you to set specific criteria for what data can be entered into a cell range, such as restricting inputs to numbers, dates, or selections from a drop-down list. Data validation acts as a safeguard, minimizing the risk of errors or inconsistent data entries as your dataset evolves. It’s a proactive step towards preserving the integrity of your analysis.

By meticulously importing, organizing, cleaning, and validating your data in Google Sheets, you lay a solid foundation for insightful and accurate data analysis. This preparatory phase is crucial for transforming raw data into meaningful insights, setting the stage for advanced analysis, visualization, and ultimately, informed decision-making.

Analyzing Data in Google Sheets

Once your data environment is meticulously prepared in Google Sheets, the next step is to harness the platform’s robust analytical capabilities. From basic calculations to intricate data manipulations and visualizations, Google Sheets offers a comprehensive suite of tools for deep data analysis. Let’s delve into how you can leverage these features to uncover insights.

Utilizing Formulas and Functions

  • Basic Calculations: The foundation of any data analysis involves understanding and applying fundamental formulas. Functions like SUM(), AVERAGE(), and COUNT() are essential for performing basic calculations that aggregate your data, providing a quick overview of your dataset’s numerical landscape.
  • Advanced Functions: For more nuanced data manipulation and analysis, Google Sheets supports a variety of advanced functions. VLOOKUP(), INDEX(MATCH), and conditional functions such as IF() and SUMIF() allow for sophisticated data queries and condition-based calculations. These functions are instrumental in filtering data, matching and looking up values across different datasets, and performing complex conditional analyses.

Leveraging Pivot Tables for Data Summarization

  • Creating Pivot Tables: Pivot tables are powerful tools in Google Sheets for summarizing, analyzing, sorting, and presenting large datasets. They enable you to dynamically rearrange data, making it easier to compare and contrast different variables. Setting up pivot tables involves selecting your data range and navigating to “Data” > “Pivot table report”. This initiates a new tab where you can define rows, columns, values, and filters to organize your data summary effectively.
  • Analyzing Trends: With pivot tables, you can effortlessly identify trends, patterns, and outliers within your dataset. They are particularly useful for breaking down complex data into more manageable summaries, allowing for a clearer understanding of the underlying trends and facilitating data-driven decision-making.

Visualizing Data with Charts and Graphs

  • Chart Selection: Visual representation of data can significantly enhance the comprehensibility of your analysis. Google Sheets offers a myriad of chart types, including bar, line, pie, and scatter plots, among others. Selecting the appropriate chart type is crucial for effectively conveying the insights you’ve derived from your data.
  • Customization Techniques: Beyond basic chart creation, Google Sheets allows for extensive customization of charts and graphs. This includes adjusting chart elements like axes, labels, and colors, as well as applying advanced options such as trendlines or error bars. Customizing your charts ensures that they not only accurately represent your data but also resonate with your audience by highlighting the most pertinent insights.

By mastering these analytical techniques in Google Sheets, you’re equipped to perform comprehensive data analysis, from straightforward calculations to advanced data manipulation and insightful visualization. Whether you’re summarizing large datasets with pivot tables or illustrating trends through customized charts, Google Sheets facilitates a versatile and powerful platform for making data-driven decisions.

Advanced Google Sheets Features for Deeper Analysis

For users ready to elevate their analytical workflows, Sheets offers advanced tools that help automate, scale, and refine insights.

1. QUERY: SQL Power Inside Sheets

QUERY lets you filter, sort, group, and aggregate data using SQL‑like syntax.

Example: Summarize total sales by product:

=QUERY(A:C, “SELECT A, SUM(C) WHERE A IS NOT NULL GROUP BY A ORDER BY SUM(C) DESC”, 1)

2. Add-ons for Extended Functionality

Popular options:

  • Supermetrics → Marketing and analytics imports
  • Google Analytics → Website performance data
  • Power Tools → Bulk cleanups and transformations

3. Automate Workflows with Apps Script

Apps Script allows you to:

  • Refresh data automatically
  • Build custom functions
  • Push/pull API data
  • Trigger workflows based on time or user actions

By mastering these advanced features, you’re not just using Google Sheets as a spreadsheet tool; you’re leveraging it as a powerful platform for data analysis and automation. The QUERY function, along with strategic use of add-ons and custom scripts with Google Apps Script, can transform your approach to data analysis, making it more efficient, dynamic, and tailored to your unique requirements.

Crafting Insightful Reports and Dashboards

The final step in data analysis within Google Sheets involves distilling your complex data into digestible, actionable insights through well-designed reports and dynamic dashboards. This section outlines the best practices for creating these essential tools, ensuring they are both informative and engaging.

Best Practices for Designing Reports

  • Clarity and Conciseness: The effectiveness of a report hinges on its readability. Use clear headings to structure your content, concise descriptions to explain your findings, and bullet points or highlighted text to draw attention to key insights. This approach ensures that readers can quickly grasp the essence of your analysis without getting lost in the details.
  • Data Visualization: A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in data analysis. Select charts and graphs that best represent your data, considering the story you want to tell. For example, use line charts to depict trends over time, bar charts for comparisons among categories, and pie charts to show proportions. Properly labeled axes and a legend are must-haves to make your visualizations comprehensible.
  • Customization for Audience: Tailor your reports and dashboards to the specific needs and expertise level of your audience. Decision-makers might require a high-level overview with strategic insights, whereas technical teams may need detailed data to implement changes. Customize the depth of information and the complexity of data visualizations accordingly.

Sharing and Collaboration Features

  • Real-time Collaboration: Google Sheets excels in facilitating collaborative efforts. Utilize its sharing features to work on reports and dashboards with team members in real time. This collaborative approach not only enhances the quality of the final product through diverse inputs but also ensures all stakeholders are on the same page.
  • Access Control and Sharing: Google Sheets allows you to manage access rights meticulously, ensuring data security and controlled collaboration. You can set permissions for who can view, comment, or edit your documents. This level of control is crucial when dealing with sensitive information or when coordinating between different departments or teams. The idea is to prevent data harvesting without consent and with wrong intentions.

Exporting and Publishing Reports

  • Export Options: Google Sheets supports various formats for exporting reports, including PDF, Excel, and CSV, among others. Choose the format that best suits your needs or the preferences of your report’s recipients. For instance, PDFs are ideal for distribution, while Excel files may be preferred for further analysis.
  • Publishing to the Web: For broader dissemination or public access, Google Sheets offers a “Publish to the web” feature. This option allows you to share your reports and dashboards with people outside your organization without compromising the integrity of your original data. It’s an excellent way to provide stakeholders with live, interactive access to your findings.

By following these best practices, you can leverage Google Sheets to create reports and dashboards that not only communicate your data-driven insights effectively but also foster a culture of informed decision-making within your organization.

Exploring Alternatives: Teamgate CRM’s Sales Insights and Analytics

While Google Sheets serves as a versatile platform for a wide array of data analysis and reporting tasks, the specialized demands of sales-focused organizations often necessitate more tailored solutions. Teamgate CRM emerges as a compelling alternative, offering a suite of features specifically designed to enhance sales tracking, customer relationship management (CRM), and analytics.

Introduction to Teamgate CRM

  • Overview of Teamgate CRM: Teamgate CRM provides an all-encompassing solution for sales teams, blending seamless sales tracking capabilities with robust customer relationship management. Its platform is engineered to streamline the sales process, offering intuitive tools for every stage of the sales journey, from lead capture to deal closure. The integrated analytics feature goes beyond mere data collection, delivering deep insights into sales performance and customer engagement.
  • Sales Insights Features: At the heart of Teamgate CRM’s value proposition are its advanced sales insights features. These include comprehensive lead scoring systems that help prioritize prospects based on their likelihood to convert, detailed sales pipeline analysis that offers visibility into every stage of the sales process, and performance tracking to monitor sales activities and outcomes. These features empower sales teams to make informed decisions, focus their efforts where they are most needed, and continuously optimize their sales strategies.

Analytics and Dashboards in Teamgate CRM

  • Customizable Dashboards: Teamgate CRM stands out with its highly customizable dashboards, providing real-time visibility into critical sales metrics, team performance, and customer interactions. These dashboards can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your sales team, allowing for the monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your organization. The ability to customize views and reports ensures that every team member has access to the insights they need to drive sales effectively.
  • Advanced Analytics Tools: Beyond standard reporting, Teamgate CRM offers advanced analytics tools designed to elevate sales strategy with forecasting, trend analysis, and actionable insights. These tools enable sales teams to anticipate market changes, identify sales opportunities, and make data-driven decisions to propel growth. The analytics suite in Teamgate CRM is both powerful and user-friendly, making sophisticated data analysis accessible to all team members.

Efficiency and Integration

  • Streamlining Sales Processes: Efficiency is key to sales success, and Teamgate CRM addresses this by automating repetitive tasks, managing leads more effectively, and facilitating seamless communication with prospects and customers. This automation not only saves time but also reduces the likelihood of errors, ensuring that sales teams can focus on building relationships and closing deals.
  • Integration Capabilities: One of Teamgate CRM’s strengths is its ability to integrate with a wide range of tools and platforms, including email marketing software, social media platforms, and customer support tools. This ecosystem approach ensures that sales teams have a unified platform that encompasses all aspects of the sales and marketing process, enhancing collaboration and driving more cohesive sales strategies.

Teamgate CRM offers a specialized, feature-rich platform for sales-focused organizations looking for an alternative to Google Sheets for their sales insights and analytics needs. With its comprehensive suite of CRM features, advanced analytics, and emphasis on efficiency and integration, Teamgate CRM is well-positioned to help sales teams achieve their objectives and drive business growth when transitioning from Google Sheets.

Conclusion

As we wrap up our exploration of data-driven decision making with Google Sheets and the potential of specialized tools like Teamgate CRM, it’s clear that the landscape of business intelligence and analytics is both vast and varied. The choice between Google Sheets and other platforms depends on specific organizational needs, the complexity of data, and the depth of insights required.

Whether you’re just beginning your journey with data analysis or looking to enhance your organization’s sales strategies with advanced analytics, the tools and techniques discussed here offer a solid foundation. Embrace the power of data to unlock new opportunities, drive efficiency, and foster a culture of informed decision making within your organization.

FAQs: Google Sheets for Analytics

1. What are the key benefits of data-driven decision making over intuition-based methods?

Answer: Data-driven decision making offers several advantages over intuition-based methods by providing a more objective foundation for decisions. These benefits include enhanced market responsiveness, enabling organizations to quickly identify and capitalize on emerging trends; improved customer experiences through personalized services; increased operational efficiency by identifying and addressing inefficiencies; and fostering innovation by uncovering insights that can lead to new product developments and market opportunities. This approach minimizes biases and errors that can arise from relying solely on intuition.

2. How can I import and clean my data in Google Sheets?

Answer: To import data into Google Sheets, you can use the “File” menu and select “Import,” where you have options to upload files, connect to Google Drive, or even import data from the web. Cleaning data involves several steps, including removing duplicates using the “Remove duplicates” tool under the “Data” menu, fixing errors manually or with functions like TRIM() for removing extra spaces, and handling missing values by either deleting rows, filling them with a placeholder, or using formulas to estimate values. Data validation features can also help maintain data quality by restricting the types of data entered into specific cells.

3. What are the most useful Google Sheets formulas for data analysis?

Answer: Some of the most powerful formulas for data analysis in Google Sheets include:

  • VLOOKUP() for finding data in a table or range by row.
  • INDEX(MATCH()) for more flexible lookups than VLOOKUP.
  • QUERY() for running SQL-like queries on your data.
  • Aggregate functions like SUM(), AVERAGE(), COUNT(), MAX(), and MIN() for basic statistical analysis.
  • Conditional functions like IF(), COUNTIF(), SUMIF(), and AVERAGEIF() for performing calculations based on specific criteria.

4. Can Google Sheets handle large datasets for analysis?

Answer: Google Sheets can handle datasets up to 10 million cells. For most users and use cases, this is sufficient. However, performance may slow down as you approach this limit, especially if using complex formulas or functions. For very large datasets or more complex data analysis tasks, you might need to consider using more robust data analysis tools or databases.

5. How do I create and interpret pivot tables in Google Sheets?

Answer: Creating a pivot table in Google Sheets involves selecting your data range and then navigating to “Data” > “Pivot table.” From there, you can add rows, columns, values, and filters to organize your data summary. Interpreting pivot tables is about understanding the summarized data – for example, sales data could be summarized by product and month to easily see which products perform best over time. Pivot tables are powerful for spotting trends and making comparative analyses without altering the original data.

6. What are some advanced features of Google Sheets for data analysis?

Answer: Advanced features of Google Sheets include the QUERY function for complex data manipulation, Google Apps Script for automating tasks and custom functions, and the extensive library of Add-ons that can extend its functionality for specific analysis needs, such as data visualization, project management, and integration with external data sources like Google Analytics.

7. How does Teamgate CRM complement data-driven decision making in sales?

Answer: Teamgate CRM complements data-driven decision making in sales by offering specialized tools for managing customer relationships, tracking sales processes, and analyzing performance through sales insights and analytics. It provides customizable dashboards for real-time sales metrics, lead scoring for prioritizing prospects, and detailed analytics tools for forecasting and trend analysis, making it easier to make informed decisions and strategize effectively based on data.

8. Are there any limitations of using Google Sheets for sales data analysis compared to Teamgate CRM?

Answer: While Google Sheets is versatile and powerful, it has limitations compared to a specialized tool like Teamgate CRM, especially in handling large volumes of sales-specific data, automating sales processes, and providing real-time insights and analytics tailored to sales teams. Google Sheets requires manual setup for sales tracking and analysis, whereas Teamgate CRM offers out-of-the-box solutions designed specifically for sales efficiency and analytics.

9. How can Teamgate CRM’s analytics and dashboards improve sales performance?

Answer: Teamgate CRM’s analytics and dashboards provide a 360-degree view of sales activities, customer interactions, and performance metrics. By offering real-time insights into sales pipeline, lead quality, team performance, and customer behavior, it enables sales teams to make data-driven decisions that improve efficiency, prioritize efforts on high-value prospects, and ultimately drive higher sales performance. Customizable dashboards allow for monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with sales goals and objectives.

10. What factors should be considered when choosing between Google Sheets and Teamgate CRM for data analysis and reporting?

Answer: When choosing between Google Sheets and Teamgate CRM, consider factors such as the specific needs of your sales team, the volume of data you’re managing, the complexity of the analysis required, and your budget. Google Sheets is a great low-cost, flexible tool for various data analysis tasks and is ideal for businesses just starting with data analysis or those with limited needs. In contrast, Teamgate CRM offers specialized sales insights, analytics, and dashboard capabilities that are better suited for organizations looking to streamline their sales processes, automate tasks, and gain deeper insights into their sales data.

In this comprehensive guide, we delve into CRM analytics, its evolution, components, benefits, functioning, and implementation strategies. We also explore the top CRM analytics tools, best practices, success stories, and glimpse into its AI-infused future.

Key Takeaways:

  1. CRM analytics is a powerful tool that transforms raw customer data into actionable insights, driving informed business decisions.
  2. Contact analytics, customer analytics, sales analytics, marketing analytics, and service analytics form the core components of CRM analytics.
  3. Implementing CRM analytics enhances customer service, streamlines marketing efforts, and boosts sales performance.
  4. Effective implementation of CRM analytics involves preparing your team, choosing the right tool, setting up the system, training the team, and continuous monitoring for improvements.
  5. The future of CRM analytics is bright with the integration of AI and machine learning, promising more accurate predictive insights.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction to CRM Analytics
  2. Evolution of CRM Analytics
  3. Key Components of CRM Analytics
  4. Benefits of CRM Analytics
  5. How CRM Analytics Work
  6. Implementing CRM Analytics: A Step-by-step Guide
  7. Best Practices for CRM Analytics
  8. Case Studies: Success Stories of CRM Analytics
  9. The Future of CRM Analytics
  10. Conclusion
  11. FAQs

Introduction to CRM Analytics

In the ever-evolving landscape of business, CRM analytics emerges as the lynchpin that binds customer relationships and data-driven decision-making. At its core, CRM analytics is the detailed examination of customer relationship management (CRM) data. It transforms raw data into actionable insights, helping businesses predict customer behavior, understand market trends, and improve overall customer service.

The importance of CRM analytics in business cannot be overstated. It offers a deep dive into customer data, revealing patterns and trends that pave the way for personalized customer interaction, informed decision-making, and strategic business moves. Simply put, CRM analytics is the compass that navigates the vast ocean of customer data.

Evolution of CRM Analytics

The roots of CRM analytics trace back to the 1980s, with the advent of database marketing. Early CRM systems were simple, focusing primarily on collecting customer information. As technology advanced, these systems evolved into comprehensive tools that not only stored data but also provided valuable insights into customer behavior.

Modern CRM analytics, powered by technologies like big data, AI, and machine learning, offer real-time insights and predictive analytics. They have transformed into intelligent systems capable of forecasting customer behavior, optimizing marketing campaigns, and enhancing customer service.

Key Components of CRM Analytics

CRM analytics encompasses various components, each contributing to a holistic view of customer behavior.

  1. Contact Analytics: This component dives into contact data, revealing insights about customer touchpoints and interactions.
  2. Customer Analytics: It analyzes individual customer behavior and preferences, helping businesses customize their offerings.
  3. Sales Analytics: This focuses on sales data, providing insights into sales trends, pipeline performance, and sales forecasting.
  4. Marketing Analytics: It optimizes marketing efforts by analyzing the success of marketing campaigns and customer response.
  5. Service Analytics: This component analyzes customer service data to identify service gaps and improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of CRM Analytics

The strategic implementation of CRM analytics reaps numerous benefits. It enhances customer service by providing personalized customer experiences. By streamlining marketing efforts, it ensures the right message reaches the right customer at the right time. It boosts sales performance by helping businesses understand and predict sales trends. Moreover, CRM analytics improves overall business strategies by providing a data-backed foundation for decision-making.

How CRM Analytics Work

CRM analytics involves a systematic process:

  1. Data Collection: It begins with gathering customer data from various sources, including sales, marketing, and customer service.
  2. Data Integration: The collected data is then integrated into a single platform, ensuring a comprehensive view of customer behavior.
  3. Data Analysis: Using advanced analytical tools, the integrated data is analyzed to identify patterns and trends.
  4. Data Interpretation: The analyzed data is interpreted to derive meaningful insights about customer behavior, sales trends, and marketing effectiveness.
  5. Actionable Insights: Finally, these insights are converted into actionable strategies to improve customer relationships and business performance.

Implementing CRM Analytics: A Step-by-step Guide

Successfully implementing CRM analytics requires a systematic approach:

  1. Preparing Your Team: Begin by creating awareness about the benefits of CRM analytics and how it can transform business operations.
  2. Choosing the Right Tool: Evaluate different CRM analytics tools and choose one that aligns with your business needs.
  3. Setting up the System: Configure the selected tool, ensuring it aligns with your business processes and captures necessary data.
  4. Training Your Team: Provide comprehensive training to your team, ensuring they can effectively use the CRM analytics tool.
  5. Continual Monitoring and Improvement: Regularly review the system’s effectiveness and make necessary improvements to ensure it continues to meet business needs.

Best Practices for CRM Analytics

To maximize the benefits of CRM analytics, follow these best practices:

  1. Ensure Data Quality: The insights derived from CRM analytics are only as good as the data fed into it. Regularly clean and update your data to maintain its quality.
  2. Integrate Data Sources: To get a holistic view of customer behavior, integrate data from all customer touchpoints.
  3. Leverage Real-time Analytics: Real-time insights can help you respond promptly to customer needs and market trends.
  4. Prioritize Security: With the increasing threat of data breaches, ensuring data security should be a top priority.

Case Studies: Success Stories of CRM Analytics

Several businesses have reaped the benefits of CRM analytics:

  1. Amazon: Amazon’s recommendation engine, driven by CRM analytics, has significantly increased their cross-selling success.
  2. Starbucks: Starbucks uses CRM analytics to understand customer preferences and personalize their offerings, enhancing customer satisfaction.
  3. American Express: American Express uses predictive analytics to anticipate customer behavior and tailor their services.

The Future of CRM Analytics

The future of CRM analytics is ripe with potential. With the integration of AI and machine learning, CRM systems will become even more intelligent, capable of predicting customer behavior with unprecedented accuracy. It’s a future that every business should aspire to be a part of and adopt.

Conclusion

In the era of data-driven decision making, the importance of CRM analytics cannot be overstated. It serves as a powerful tool that transforms a multitude of customer data into actionable insights, enabling businesses to enhance their customer relationships while making strategic decisions backed by solid data.

In the modern world, the use of CRM analytics is not merely a nice-to-have tool but rather a business imperative. It offers a strategic advantage by providing deep customer insights, improving customer service, optimizing marketing efforts, and enabling informed business decisions. Investing in CRM analytics today will undoubtedly yield significant dividends for businesses in the future.

At Teamgate CRM, analytics is second nature. For this reason we offer the most powerful, out-of-the-box sales analytics and insights on the market. With zero setup required, your business could be well on the way to becoming data-drvien. Reach out to our team today for your free trial.

FAQs

  1. What is CRM analytics and why is it important?
    CRM analytics is the analysis of customer data to improve customer relationships and business decision-making.
  2. What are the key components of CRM analytics?
    The key components are contact analytics, customer analytics, sales analytics, marketing analytics, and service analytics.
  3. What are the benefits of CRM analytics?
    CRM analytics enhances customer service, streamlines marketing efforts, boosts sales performance, and improves business strategies.
  4. How does CRM analytics work?
    It involves data collection, data integration, data analysis, data interpretation, and deriving actionable insights.
  5. How can I implement CRM analytics in my business?
    Implement CRM analytics by preparing your team, choosing the right tool, setting up the system, training your team, and continually monitoring and improving.
  6. What are some best practices for CRM analytics?
    Best practices include ensuring data quality, integrating data sources, leveraging real-time analytics, and prioritizing security.
  7. Are there any success stories of businesses using CRM analytics?
    Companies like Amazon, Starbucks, and American Express have successfully used CRM analytics.
  8. What is the future of CRM analytics?
    The future lies in the integration of AI and machine learning for more accurate predictive analytics.
  9. How does AI and Machine Learning impact CRM analytics?
    AI and Machine Learning enhance CRM analytics by enabling predictive analytics and providing more accurate insights.

In this article, we’ll delve into the concept of Customer Success strategies, primarily seen in SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses, and how these strategies can be adapted and implemented in non-SaaS enterprises. Through the use of various metrics and engagement types, even businesses outside of the subscription model can harness the power of customer success to optimize their client interactions and overall business growth.

Key Takeaways:

  • Customer Success is not solely for SaaS companies; non-SaaS businesses can also benefit from its strategies.
  • Metrics such as Churn, Customer Lifetime Value, and Net Promoter Score are essential tools to assess and improve customer experience.
  • Segmenting customers based on factors like their Customer Lifetime Value or onboarding status can drive more tailored and effective engagement strategies.
  • Engagement types, ranging from on-site visits to best practices meetings, can be customized based on the value and needs of the customers.
  • Achieving Customer Success is rooted in truly understanding your clients and building a foundation of trust.

In the previous our blog we have been talking about how to Guide Your Customers To Their Desired Outcome.

Customer Success is the SaaS answer to some of the challenges that the subscription model presents. Can non-SaaS businesses benefit from Customer Success strategies as well?

In the subscription model, the need to keep customers successful and happy throughout every single interaction with the company is urgent. In addition, there is a high focus on using customer data to implement key metrics in order to improve the product and customer experience. How does this translate for non-SaaS?

What gets measured can be managed

Metrics

The use of metrics is not exclusive to SaaS companies. Granted, the cloud unlocks significantly more data to assess than that available for non-SaaS businesses. However, through sampling, surveys, automation and precise measurements, non-SaaS businesses can benefit as well.  Here are some metrics to consider:

Churn:

Gainsight reports that “On average, companies with a dedicated Customer Success team have a 24% lower churn rate than companies without Customer Success”.

It’s completely normal for any business to have some customers leaving, but it’s important to monitor it closely to prevent it from getting higher.

The basic formula for monthly churn is: Number of churned customers divided by total number of customers.

churn teamgate (1)

Customer Lifetime Value:

How much are your customers worth? Are you spending more to acquire new customers than they are worth to your business? How can you tell if your customer success hacks strategies are increasing customers’ value?

CLV is one of the most common metrics used to asses Customer Success and customer retention. A customer who achieved their desired outcome is more likely to stay longer with your business and purchase more services.

CLV TEAMGATE (1)

For example, the CLV of a customer who spends $50 per month for 5 years would be:

$50 x 12 months x 5 years = $3000 in total revenue or $600 in yearly revenue.

Net Promoter Score:

NPS is a metric used to measure customer advocacy. Although the effectiveness of this metric has been subject to ongoing debate, it remains commonly used in the corporate world.

Of course, churn, Customer Lifetime Value and Net Promoter Score are few example of the myriad of metrics that can be implemented. The folks at Groove have written extensively about the metrics they use to optimize Customer Success. Groove remains a SaaS startup, but their methodologies can be applied to any non-SaaS business as well.

net-promoter-score-teamgate-1

How We Measure and Optimize Customer Success Metrics in Our SaaS Startup

How One SaaS Startup Reduced Churn 71% Using “Red Flag” Metrics

Segmentation

As we previously discussed  on our blog, segmentation is essential to seamless integration of CRM into business workflows. Similarly, segmentation is key to managing customer success. However, the segmentation strategies that work for sales and marketing automation might not have the same result for customer success.

For example, it’s possible to segment customers according to their Customer Lifetime Value. By doing so, a business can determine whether a low-touch or high-tough approach to engagement would be appropriate.

It is also possible to segment customers according to their onboarding status. Let’s consider a gym offering free two weeks membership for example.  It’s possible to segment leads/customers in this example into various categories:

  • Customers who redeemed the offer.
  • Customers who didn’t.
  • Customers who used more than 4 sessions.
  • Customers who used less than 4 sessions.

This would allow the gym owner (or customer success manager) to uniquely target each particular segment for potential trial-to-paid conversion. Leads who haven’t redeemed the offer might be worth pursuing, but the ones who have used the trial extensively are more likely to convert into paying customers. In addition, those who have used the gym but not frequently present a good opportunity for customer surveying/interviewing.

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Engagement Types

Engagement refers to the way and the frequency with which your customers will be contacted.  There is obviously no one-size fits-all approach to engagement, but some models persist throughout businesses.

For example, high value customers might warrant a high touch approach. In a Gainsight article, the following engagements are suggested for high-value customers:

  • On-site visits
  • Quarterly Business Reviews
  • Annual Health Checks
  • Monthly Best Practices meetings

Customer Success, after all, remains about knowing your customers  and earning their trust.

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In this article, you’ll get a comprehensive guide to 100 powerful inbound marketing tools that can skyrocket your business growth. We’ll explore a variety of tools to automate, optimize, and enhance every facet of your inbound marketing strategy, ultimately leading to more leads and prospects.

Key Takeaways:

  • Learn how to streamline your marketing efforts using a multitude of automation tools.
  • Discover the importance of analytics and the top tools to get the most detailed insights into your marketing performance.
  • Uncover the potential of blogging and SEO tools in increasing your online visibility.
  • Understand how design and visual resources can play a pivotal role in your inbound marketing strategy.
  • Get introduced to the best tools for managing leads, social media, and streaming.

Nothing makes a marketer happier than seeing their efforts and hard work pay off. And there’s little we wouldn’t be prepared to do to see those leads trickling in.

We’ll write eBooks, spend weeks chasing influencers for three-line quotes and comb through pages and pages of data to string together sleek-looking infographics to get the prospects to notice us. Because every lead counts.

So let’s face it, if there was a way for us to amplify our inbound marketing efforts and raise the lead gen game, we’d snatch that opportunity with no questions asked.

And as the luck has it, we’ve gathered one hundred powerful tools that will help you automate, optimize and enhance your inbound marketing strategy and win more business.

Make yourself happy, dig in.

Research tools

  1. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a powerful tool for content marketing and is particularly helpful with finding trending content by any topic. It saves a lot of time that you would usually spend on browsing and googling popular topics. Buzzsumo will also show you many convenient statistics, like how many people are talking about a specific subject.

  1. Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a completely free tool created by Google that researches the best keywords for your ads, video ads, etc. With this tool, you can build a completely new campaign or improve an existing one. It is an effective tool for both experienced and completely new advertisers.

  1. Looking for a new Entry

This used to be Klout.

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  1. Mention

Mention makes sure you keep track of all the real-time social media mentions and always stay in the know of what people are saying about you online. It also lets you follow and analyze your competitors and similar businesses. Mention also has some awesome features like Custom Insights and Find Influencers.

  1. TrustRadius Trustmap

The TrustRadius marketing TrustMap is a two-dimensional chart that compares marketing products based on end-user satisfaction ratings and research frequency by prospective buyers. You can use the tool to compare different marketing tools and read authentic reviews from real users.

  1. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is one of the best online survey tools used by millions. With this tool, you will gather useful information and insight about your target audience and clients by creating original surveys. Choose from more than 15 different question types, branding options and much more.

  1. AYTM

AYTM is another survey tool that provides professional market research. The main key components and features include the survey platform that lets you host, program and analyze your surveys, a proprietary panel with an access to 25 MM all over the world and the research services.

  1. Quora

Quora is a well known question-answer type of website that makes any research much easier. Here, questions and topics can be organized into boards that can be followed – this will help you keep up with your competitors and news in your market. With Quora, you can also follow relevant questions and discover many other ways to do research.

Analytics tools

  1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a very popular and effective analytics tool provided to you by Google. When integrated with Google AdWords, it becomes an even more powerful tool that lets you analyze and track your website and conversions. The main analytics data is displayed on the main page of Google Analytics, but you can also find and use such features as Advanced Segments, Location Demographics and much more.

  1. Hotjar

Inbound Marketing Tools Hotjar

Hotjar is an amazing tool for analyzing the online behavior of your users by studying heatmaps, visitor recordings, feedback polls and conversion funnels. This tool combines two most important things – feedback and analysis to make the analytics as accurate as possible.

  1. SumoMe

SumoMe is an extremely user-friendly WordPress plugin that can serve as an efficient analytics tool. The main goal of this tool is to help you grow your website traffic and email list. It offers many free tools for you to choose from, so by using them, you can analyze your content, users, visitors and much more.

  1. Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is a part of Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC) that offers many online marketing tools. With Adobe Analytics, you can assemble, coordinate, organize and analyze your customer’s activity. Real-time analytics, segmentation, and predictive marketing through all Adobe channels.

  1. Ubersuggest

Want more traffic? Ubersuggest shows you how to win the game of SEO. Just type in a domain or a keyword to get started.

  1. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is another brilliant online application to analyze user activity on your website. This tool suggests useful features like heat maps, scroll maps, overlay reports, and confetti, which lets you determine all the clicks that have been made on your website and analyze them by search term and referral sources.

  1. Matomo

By choosing the ethical alternative, Matomo, you won’t make privacy sacrifices or compromise your site. You can even use Matomo without needing to ask for consent

  1. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a very advanced analytics tool that gives you the opportunity to analyze every action your user takes – not just the clicks. With this tool, you can also see when someone uploads a picture, shares a post, etc. Here you can also experiment with the A/B testing to reach the best results.

  1. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a universal tool for any insights – both web and app. It works with a wide range of sources to receive as accurate data as possible and convert it into useful insights. SimilarWeb offers website analytics, industry analytics, and app analysis. Besides all this, you can also see traffic and engagement data and much more.

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  1. Quick Sprout

Quick Sprout suggests a direct connection with Google Analytics to offer you a reliable and accurate information and data. This tool will help you understand and use Google Analytics to the maximum – you will be informed about important activity on your website every day and receive personalized website alerts.

Blogging tools

  1. Triberr

Triberr is both a tool and a community to help you grow the traffic on your blog. It is segmented into categories called “Tribes” that are differentiated by topics. You can follow the tribe you are interested in to see all the newly published posts, interact and engage with other bloggers.

  1. WordPress

WordPress is a very popular and widely used tool for website and blog creation that has a wide range of templates and plugins for you to choose from and use for your own benefit. It is a very powerful tool, yet very user-friendly and easy to use. It is so huge that it supports more than 60 million websites.

  1. Grammarly

Inbound Marketing Tools Grammarly

Grammarly is a proofreading tool that can also be used as a plagiarism-detection application. Besides creating content and driving traffic to your website, it is also crucial to make sure that your content is free of grammar mistakes, so this super simple tool will help you out with that. Its AI-driven engines check plagiarism and detect AI text patterns to improve your texts’ structure and readability. Multiple features and stellar user-friendliness make Grammarly one of the best tools for content creators on the market.

  1. Yoast

Yoast is a SEO tool for WordPress users. Its main cause is to help people with their website optimization through many different courses, e-books, software and plugins like Yost SEO, Video SEO,  Local SEO, News SEO, Local SEO, Yoast WooCommerce SEO and other analytics, metric, comments, and functionality plugins.

  1. Readability Test Tool by WebpageFX

Readability Test Tool is an application to check the readability of a specific article, post or the entire website. You can check it by entering the URL of your content and clicking the button “Calculate Readability”. The tool is useful not only for bloggers but also for SEO experts, copywriters, and other specialists.

  1. Portent Title Maker

Portent Title Maker is a great tool when you need to come up with an original idea for your article title name. Simply enter your subject in the field and choose one of the generated titles. To get the best results from this tool, don’t capitalize keywords and use singular version of your keyword.

  1. Hubspot Blog Topic Generator

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator helps you create great titles for your post. When you visit the website, you will have to enter three nouns that describe what you’re writing about (or what the article is about) and press the button below. You will then be given a few popular blog topic ideas that you can use for your piece.

  1. Toggl

Toggl is a perfect tool for busy bloggers who like to keep on track with their time management. With this tool, you can see how much time you spend on each task and discover what is most time-consuming. Here you can also track how many time you spend on different projects, clients and analyze reports.

  1. Hemingway App

Hemingway App is an advanced text editing tool that is also available as a desktop app. It highlights your sentences in different colors that indicate sentences that are too hard to read, phrases that have simpler alternatives, etc. In the online mode, you can also edit your document and the desktop version offers such cool features as publishing directly to WordPress and much more.

Design tools

  1. Picsart

Picsart is an all-in-one platform where users can create, customize, and share images and videos with ease. It combines powerful editing tools, AI features, and a wide range of creative assets to help bring any idea to life—whether it’s for social media, marketing, or personal projects.

  1. Freebiesbug

Freebiesbug is a website where designers can find a number of free graphic resources for their designs. It is full of app designs, icons, mockups, website templates, illustrations, fonts, sketches and much more. You can browse by the category, use the search field or upload a freebie of your own.  

  1. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a tool by Adobe Systems that offers three different design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. Here you can create social and website graphics like Travel Journals, Quotes, Announcements, Advertisements, Pitches, Animated stories and much more.

  1. Xtensio

Xtensio is a platform every team or business needs to create beautifully crafted online presentations, reports, slides, or any documents. It functions with an easy-to-use drag and drop feature so users can do customization, living up to their brands.
Apart from being user-friendly, it ensures real-time collaboration and privacy of shared documents.

  1. Marvel

Inbound Marketing Tools Marvel

Marvel is a prototype creation tool for apps and websites. You can create straight in Marvel or transport your images from the cloud storage, Sketch, or Photoshop. The tool has a user-friendly editor that lets you link your designs and create prototypes for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Desktop, and Android.

  1. Ceros

Ceros is a cloud-based tool with a digital canvas that can be accessed by the entire team. Ceros allows you to create amazing, interactive infographics and animated designs. The tool is very convenient for both designers and marketers. After creating a unique design, you are able to see the insights of its performance.

  1. Figma

Figma is a collaborative design tool that gives you the ability to work on a design together with your team. Here you can create icons, interface design, responsive layouts and much more. Figma is very easy to use so you won’t waste your time trying to understand the tools and it also allows the integration with Sketch app.

  1. Fuse

Fuse is a design tool for creating apps on Android and iOS. An effective and quick way to create for teams, developers, and designers. With Fuse, adjust animation, UI, layout or anything else you like and test changes in real time. It makes it easy for people that are new to app development and is also very useful for the experienced ones.

  1. Placeit

Placeit offers more than 2500 mockups and demo videos. It is super quick to use and works as a great substitute for Photoshop when you want to place a screenshot of your website on a screen of a computer or a phone. You can choose between many different devices or simply use the search field.

  1. VSCO

VSCO is a very popular photo editing app available for both iOS and Android. It lets you edit your photos and images, add many different trendy filters and share it with other users of the app. The app is widely used by photographers and the youth and constantly updated by its developers.

  1. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is an online tool for design making and photo editing. It has some paid features, but even without them, the tool is pretty powerful. Besides designing and editing, you can also create beautiful collages, or use the “Touch up” feature that can whiten teeth or remove wrinkles in a photo.

  1. Infogr.com

Infogr.com is an application meant for creating stunning, interactive charts and infographics. You are free to choose between more than 35 charts, over 500 different maps and over 20 ready-made templates for infographics. Besides that, you can edit the style, colors and many other things in your design.

Visual resources

  1. Unsplash

Unsplash is a photo stock library that lets you download, edit and use all the photos for free without any copyright. The website is believed to be one of the leading photography websites in the world. Here you can browse new photos, view collections or simply use the search field.

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  1. Pixabay

Pixabay is an international website that offers more than 870,000 stock photos that are completely free. Here you will also find vectors, illustrations, and videos of high quality. All of the content you will download on this website is completely copyright free, so feel free to edit and distribute it the way you like.

  1. StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io is full of beautiful stock photos in high quality. It is also copyright free so no contribution to the author is required. When you visit the website, you can see the most popular searches that are displayed as tags under the huge search field. You can also view the trending and recently added photos or add them to your favorites.  

  1. Life Of Pix

Life Of Pix is another brilliant place to find free stock photos. Some photos are features, so you can browse them straight away when you visit the website or choose to use the search field. If you find it time-consuming to preview photos on a big display, you can simply switch to a different viewing display.

  1. SplitShire

SplitShire is a great resource of visual content: free images, photos, and videos. Besides the search field, you will also discover many convenient categories to choose from: animals, fashion, landscapes, mockups and much more. In free videos section, you can scroll down and view all the amazing video content that you can easily download.

  1. Death To Stock

Inbound Marketing Tools Deathtostockphoto

Death To Stock has a lot of content you can use for your creative projects and designs. It has a very convenient feature where you can subscribe to receive a monthly email with beautiful photos. On the website, you can also browse themed photo packs on a specific subject.

  1. PhotoPin

PhotoPin is a completely free tool that might come in handy both for designers and bloggers. In PhotoPin you will find millions of photos with Creative Commons licensing. A very neat feature that this tool offers to its users is that when you download a picture, you receive a contribution link at the same time, so there’s no need to search for it separately.

  1. Freepik

Freepik also offers some free stock photos but is mainly focused on free vectors, icons and PSD files. This website is probably one of the most popular free graphic resources among experienced and new designers. You can use the search field, or browse the vectors by popularity or recency.

  1. Flaticon

Flaticon is probably the biggest database full of icons in PSD, EPS, SVG, PNG and BASE 64 formats. Here you will discover more than 310,000 icons that can be customized to a specific color code before downloading. If you are working on a specific project and you need your icons to have the same style, you can find some icon packs as well.

Automation tools

  1. IFTTT

IFTTT is an amazing tool that lets you connect and create chains of applets. Applets are useful features that different apps are able to offer to their clients. For example, using a certain applet, you can set it up to receive an email when an Instagram picture with a chosen hashtag is posted.

  1. Zapier

Zapier is a great web automation tool for busy people that seamlessly connects one’s apps and automates the processes. Apps are linked in seconds and when data is shared, Zapier passes the data to “Zaps” that represent your workflows. This will help you to finish your tasks and processes faster than usual.

  1. Moosend

Moosend is a powerful email marketing and marketing automation tool. Its features are easy-to-learn and easy-to-use and it promises a minimal learning curve with maximum potential, due to its sophisticated automation, personalization and analytics features.  From designing beautiful email newsletters and landing pages with zero code knowledge to segmenting your email list and making educated decisions through data and analytics, this all-in-one marketing platform gives your business more for less.

  1. Skyvia

Skyvia is a tool that offers a cloud data integration service. It also lets you backup, manage and access your data from all your apps by using only one tool. Cloud data management is processed through SQL so you don’t need to bother about native web API’s of different cloud sources.

  1. Looking for new tools recommend

This used to be Hooks

  1. CloudHQ

CloudHQ synchronizes your apps and your data and lets you integrate your apps with cloud platforms you are using at the moment, including Google apps, like Google Drive and Google Email. The tool offers real-time backup of any data that is in your cloud. It also lets you integrate your dropbox with Evernote, Gmail, Sharepoint, and Basecamp.

  1. Automate.io

Automate.io is a tool that is able to connect all the apps that are located in your cloud. This helps you to automate such processes as marketing, business, and sales. Automated processes include sending automated emails, automate follow-ups and much more.

  1. Looking for new tools to recomend

This used to be CloudWork.  

  1. Integromat

Integromat is a powerful workflow optimization and automation tool. With it, you will be able to connect different devices, apps, and services. The main advantage of this tool is that it can integrate and automate almost any app that’ been created. It can be used in various fields: social media, online stores, customer support and project management.

Management tools

  1. Teamgate

Inbound Marketing Tools Teamgate

Teamgate is a powerful CRM tool that can be developed especially for you and your team – no matter whether you work alone, run a small business or manage a big team. It helps you curate and plan daily tasks, schedule your calls and appointments, create individual goals and view how close you have gotten to your goal. It also has a neat feature where you can view insights of your team’s sales score and an evaluation on how much better or worse you are doing compared to last year, month or week.

  1. Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a widely used management tool because of its many features and other tools like CRM, task and project management, document and time management, calendars, chats and much more. It also offers a telephony service so you can call anywhere – domestically or internationally.

  1. Copper

Coppers CRM is a user-friendly, simplistic management tool that is focused on teams and interactions. It makes it really easy to keep on track with what your team is working on and keep an eye on the sales.

  1. Zendash

Zendash makes tracking your marketing performance simple and efficient. With its user-friendly dashboards and seamless integrations, it brings all your analytics into one place. Use Zendash to gain valuable insights, optimize your inbound campaigns, and make smarter, data-driven decisions to grow your business.

  1. Salesflare

Salesflare is a CRM that stands out due its focus on technological development. The tool is integratable with Office 365, Gmail, iCloud, Zapier and Exchange. It offers useful insights on sales and assists you with follow-up opportunities. The Salesflare takes care of all the data input so you can focus all your attention on sales and profits.

  1. Act!

Act! is a CRM and a brilliant management tool for managing customer relationships and contacts. This CRM is mainly meant for individuals, sales teams, and small businesses. Here you can choose between three different plans to suit your needs: Act! Pro, Act! Premium and Act! Essentials.

  1. Insightly

The name of this CRM tool speaks for itself – it can offer you many useful insights on your sales, team workflow and many other aspects. The tool is also packed with an array of great features, such as contact and lead management, task, events, reports, email integrations and so much more.

Lead collection tools

  1. AeroLeads

AeroLeads is one of the most powerful prospecting software on the web used by over 5000 businesses. It finds all the details of a business or person that includes Email, Name, Phone Number and social profiles. It also provides you with the service of giving you the email list or email database as per your requirements.

  1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is an amazing and very popular lead generation tool, especially for WordPress. It helps you convert visitors into subscribers by creating convenient and smart signup forms. It works with MailChimp, AWeber, Infusionsoft, GetResponse, Constant Contact and many eCommerce platforms

  1. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a simple lead collection tool that helps to turn your visitors into subscribers. It is mainly focused on the B2B market and works by connecting to your Google Analytics account where it collects useful data about your website visitors. Offers integration with MailChimp.

  1. Leadpages

Leadpages will generate leads through social media, emails, web and text messaging. Here you can choose from a selection of high quality and performance templates and then customize them to your own taste. The customizable templates are mobile friendly and the tool itself can integrate with MailChimp, Salesforce, Infusionsoft and many other tools.

  1. Leadformly

Leadformly is a website that lets you create interactive lead generation forms and use them to capture more leads. After you choose a template you like, you can redesign it as you wish, then simply add the embed code to your website and wait for the results. It integrates with Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, HubSpot, Marketo etc.

  1. Lead Forensics

Lead Forensics is a tool that will turn anonymous traffic into leads. With this tool, you can identify the leads in real-time and reveal such information as contacts, business name, financial data, demographics, etc. It also lets you analyze each case from the first click to sale.

  1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has a special tool called Sales Navigator that is packed with features focused on social selling. It gives you custom lead recommendations, imports Salesforce data, constantly informs you with real-time sales updates and lets you measure your social selling stats and efforts. On their website, you will also find success stories and useful resources.

Social media tools

  1. Buffer

Inbound Marketing Tools Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+. It will help you to save loads of your precious time and focus on your strategy.  You can easily schedule by using the website, installing the browser extension or on the go – with apps for iOS and Android.

  1. Quuu Promote

Quuu Promote enables you to share and promote your generated content via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. The entire system consists of three steps: first, you create a post using URL address, second, you select the most relatable topic and lastly, monitor and track your promotions via Quuu.

  1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is social media management tool that works with more than 35 popular social networks. It has many different tools that include Publisher, Engagement, Analytics, Insights, Campaigns, Platform, Amplify, and Ads. These tools are best for fields, such as social selling, marketing, customer service and Employee Advocacy.

  1. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a tool for social media planning and scheduling. One of the cool features of MeetEdgar is that it does not throw away your published posts, but keeps them in a safe library so you can analyze, edit and repost them later. Here you can also place your scheduled posts in different categories.

  1. Looking for a new tool

This Used to be Mentia

  1. Tagboard

Tagboard is a social search platform based on hashtags. It searches through social media content and finds relevant content in seconds. The tag search is processed through such platforms as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr. A very convenient feature is that you can automatically promote any posts you like.

  1. SharedCount

SharedCount is a very simple service and a tool for social media analytics. Its main feature is to quickly track URL shares and likes across the internet. After you enter the URL of your post, you will see how many shares, likes and comments it has collected on Facebook and how many times it was shared on Google+, Twitter, Diggs, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Delicious.

  1. Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse is an amazing yet simple tool for social media management. It brings all the most popular social media networks to one place where you can easily track and manage the engagement. The tool offers many useful stats and insights and has a feature that allows you to run contests and promotions.

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  1. EveryPost

EveryPost is a simplified social media publishing platform and an app for both iOSand Android. With this great tool, you can manage your content, edit your posts, collaborate, schedule, publish and study the social media analytics to come up with even greater solutions for your business.

  1. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a powerful social media management tool. It has many advantages to offer: Smart Inbox, Monitoring, Social CRM, Publishing, Analytics, Collaboration, Account Structure and Mobile – all these features in one simple tool. Sprout Social works perfectly for social customer service and social media marketing as well.

  1. Bitly

Bitly is a widely used and well-known URL shortener. Nothing is uglier than a long URL on social media or your website. Besides its main features, Bitly lets you optimize and share the links via Bitly, API or other partner integrations. With this tool, it’s also possible to track link analytics and stats.

  1. Tailwind

Tailwind is a free scheduling platform for Pinterest and Instagram. With this tool, you will be able to discover new interesting content, schedule your social media posts in advance, curate conversations and study analytics to reach better results in the future. You can use the free version or choose from plans meant for small businesses and large organizations.

  1. Tweepi

With Tweepi, you can Tweet faster and more efficiently. This tool was specially developed for one social media channel only with a greater focus on it and its capabilities. In the year of 2017, it already has more than 1,500,000 users. With this tool, you can follow relevant users, follow back, schedule tweets and much more.

SEO tools

  1. Übersuggest

Übersuggest is a tool that generates loads of keyword ideas for you. Simply enter one of the main keywords that describe your business and receive hundreds of similar suggestions. Besides that, you can also choose other options, such as browsing in the web, images, shopping, YouTube, and News section.

  1. Moz

Inbound Marketing Tools Moz

Moz is a great SEO tool and a software that performs 5 billion searches each day. It has two main services: one is called “Moz Local” and focuses on local searches by using your location information. The other service is called “Keyword Explorer” that lets you find the best keywords and offers many intuitive suggestions.

  1. SEMrush

SEMrush is another tool to help you find more keywords that are relevant to your business. Besides this useful tool, SEMrush can also offer SEO audit, position tracking, semantic core collection, backlink audit and much more. Next to SEO, the company also works with paid traffic, social media, content management and PR.

  1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a tracking tool for mentions across the internet, keywords, and backlinks. By using Ahrefs, you also gain access to other tools, such as position, size and content explorers, position tracker, crawl report and alerts that make sure you never miss a new mention.

  1. Backlinko

Backlinko is a place where you can find many marketing and SEO tips, tricks, guides, ebooks and blog posts about it. In general, the website helps you master the link building process, lift up the user experience, optimize and promote your content. You can also sign up for free updates and the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

  1. Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a tool with the main focus on longtail keyword search. While researching the keywords, you can choose a specific time period and region so that the result would be more relevant. This tool also lists some advantages why it’s better than Google Keyword Planner: not grouped keywords, results are not banded, SERP comparison and much more.

  1. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is a substitute and an alternative for the Google Keyword Planner. It finds the most searchable keywords that your potential customers type into Google Search Box. Every search term is estimated to receive at least 750 keyword suggestions, it is absolutely free and you can freely use it without any registration.

  1. Looking for new Adition

Used to be Keyword Eye

Streaming tools

  1. Crowdcast

Crowdcast is a simple and dynamic streaming tool that lets people share content via webinars, live courses, summits and Q&As. It’s very quick and easy to get started because you don’t have to download any files, the setup is very easy and there’s only one URL.

Livereacting is a platform that helps to boost your social media presence by creating and scheduling an engaging 24/7 live stream. It provides tools to automate interactive content, such as polls and quizzes, to maintain continuous audience engagement.

  1. Bambuser

Inbound Marketing Tools Bambuser

Bambuser is an interactive platform for live streaming. It benefits from another tool called “Iris” that focuses on simple mobile live videos. This tool can help you to create professional live videos, organize and manage them via Content Dashboard, and publish them through Player SDKs.

  1. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is a very popular streaming tool provided by Google. Through this tool, you can message your team or a single person, make a video or an audio call. In one chat, you can connect up to 100 people which is a pretty large number. To make your interaction even more fun and accurate, you are free to use emojis, maps, photos, stickers, and GIFs.

  1. Tinychat

Tinychat is a simplistic live video chat platform that can also be used as an app for iOS and Android. It is called a video chat, but it does not obligate you to participate in a conversation, you can just observe and watch. To start a chat room, simply click on the bright blue button that says “Instant Room”.

  1. Livestream

Livestream is a powerful and a highly developed live streaming tool. It has a high-tech live video solution with tracking and analytics so you can track the engagement, end to end hardware and software, 24/7 support and many different product solutions, developed for distinct needs.

  1. Twitch

Twitch is a streaming website with more than 9.7 million daily users and mainly focused on video game streaming. It has a few listings that show the most recent top live channels, Top PS4 Channels and Top Xbox One Channels. To start streaming, you can try a free trial to test out the features. 

  1. YouNow

YouNow is a broadcasting tool where people can stream live. On the left corner of the website, you will always find trending topics and in the middle section – trending broadcast that you can view freely. It is completely free and available both for iOS and Android as an app.

  1. Youtube

Youtube has a live streaming section called “Live” where you can stream videos of your own and watch other live streams of people gaming, playing music, racing, etc. You can choose between two different streaming options: “Stream now” that lets you send content and stops it at the right time and “Events” that gives you more over the content.

While working on these outstanding tools, you also need the right peripherals. One of the key things you need while working on marketing tools is AirPods. Whether it’s about watching marketing tutorials on YouTube or editing a sales video, good sound quality is necessary. Buy Airpods online or from a store and to make the buying easier, this guide on AirPods generations is important. From AirPods first generation in 2016 to the latest fourth generation in 2024, there have been major changes in them. Knowing how things have changed and what the key differences are between various generations is an important factor to consider before buying.

Final Thoughts

Growing a business is a day-to-day mission and we should take all the help we can take. Leveraging the right inbound marketing tools is crucial for the success and growth of your business. These tools not only help streamline processes but also optimize and enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Make the most of the insights you’ve gained from these 100 powerful inbound marketing tools and watch your business soar to new heights.

Now that you’re armed with this knowledge, take the next step to further boost your marketing efforts – try Teamgate CRM.

It’s an innovative solution designed to perfectly align with your inbound marketing strategies, ensuring you harness the full potential of every lead and customer interaction.

Discover the power of sales metrics in driving business growth with our comprehensive guide. Explore key metrics, setting targets, monitoring progress, and optimizing sales performance to achieve success.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Track essential sales metrics such as revenue, activity, efficiency, and customer relationship metrics.
  2. Set realistic targets for your sales metrics by considering historical performance, industry benchmarks, and market conditions.
  3. Monitor progress with sales dashboards and tools like CRM systems for data-driven decision-making.
  4. Improve sales performance through training, sales process optimization, and leveraging technology.
  5. Sales metrics play a crucial role in driving business growth and enhancing sales team performance.

Contents:

  1. Introduction to Sales Metrics
  2. Key Sales Metrics to Track
  3. Setting and Monitoring Sales Metrics Targets
  4. Tips for Improving Sales Metrics
  5. Conclusion


1. Introduction to Sales Metrics

In the fast-paced world of sales, measuring performance is crucial for success. Sales metrics provide invaluable insights into your team’s effectiveness, highlighting areas of strength and uncovering opportunities for growth. By understanding and analyzing these metrics, you can drive improvement, foster a culture of accountability, and ultimately accelerate business growth.


2. Key Sales Metrics to Track

To harness the full potential of sales metrics, it is essential to track the right ones. In this section, we’ll explore four categories of sales metrics that cover the breadth of the sales process.

2.1 Revenue Metrics

Total revenue

Total revenue is the lifeblood of your business, representing the total amount of money generated from sales activities. Monitoring total revenue helps you gauge the overall success of your sales team and identify trends in performance.

Revenue growth

Revenue growth measures the increase in revenue over a specific period. By analyzing revenue growth, you can assess the effectiveness of your sales strategies and the overall health of your business.

Revenue per sales rep

Revenue per sales rep is the average amount of revenue generated by each team member. This metric enables you to identify top performers, understand individual contributions to the team, and allocate resources more effectively.

2.2 Sales Activity Metrics

Number of calls, emails, and meetings

Sales activities are the building blocks of the sales process. Tracking the number of calls, emails, and meetings helps you understand the effort put in by your sales team and identify opportunities to optimize their workflow.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. A higher conversion rate indicates that your sales team is effectively engaging and persuading prospects, while a lower rate suggests room for improvement.

Sales cycle length

The sales cycle length is the time it takes for a lead to progress through the sales funnel, from initial contact to closing the deal. Analyzing sales cycle length can help you pinpoint inefficiencies in your sales process and strategize ways to shorten the cycle and close deals faster.

2.3 Sales Efficiency Metrics

Average deal size

Average deal size is the average revenue generated from each closed deal. Monitoring this metric can help you understand the types of deals your team is closing and identify opportunities to upsell or target larger accounts.

Sales quota attainment

Sales quota attainment measures the percentage of sales reps who achieve or exceed their sales targets. This metric highlights the overall performance of your sales team and helps you determine if your targets are realistic.

Win rate

Win rate is the percentage of closed deals out of the total opportunities pursued. A higher win rate signifies a more efficient sales process, while a lower rate indicates areas for improvement.

2.4 Customer Relationship Metrics

Customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing, sales, and other related expenses. By monitoring CAC, you can ensure that you’re investing wisely in customer acquisition and maintaining profitability.

Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the total revenue a customer generates throughout their relationship with your business. Tracking CLV helps you identify high-value customers, prioritize resources, and optimize your sales and marketing strategies.

Churn rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who discontinue their relationship with your business over a given period. A high churn rate can signal dissatisfaction with your product or service and warrants immediate attention to improve customer retention.


3. Setting and Monitoring Sales Metrics Targets

Establishing realistic targets

Setting targets for your sales metrics is an essential step in driving improvement. Ensure that your targets are realistic, achievable, and aligned with your business objectives. Consider historical performance, industry benchmarks, and market conditions when setting targets.

Regularly reviewing and adjusting targets

Regularly review and adjust your sales metrics targets to account for changes in your business environment and sales team performance. This dynamic approach ensures that your targets remain relevant and challenging, motivating your sales team to continuously improve and strive towards goals and sales forecasts.

Sales dashboard and tools for tracking progress

Implement a sales dashboard and use tools like CRM systems to monitor your sales metrics. Visualizing your data in an easy-to-understand format enables you and your team to track progress, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.


4. Tips for Improving Sales Metrics

Training and coaching

Invest in training and coaching to develop your sales team’s skills and knowledge. Regularly assess their performance and provide constructive feedback, ensuring they have the necessary tools and resources to succeed.

Sales process optimization

Continuously evaluate and refine your sales process to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Identify bottlenecks, eliminate redundancies, and implement best practices to streamline your sales operations.

Leveraging technology and automation

Embrace technology and automation to boost your sales team’s productivity. Utilize CRM systems, sales engagement platforms, and analytics tools to automate repetitive tasks, enhance communication, and gain deeper insights into your sales metrics.


5. Conclusion

In conclusion, understanding and improving sales metrics is crucial for driving sales performance and achieving business growth. By tracking key sales metrics, setting realistic targets, and implementing strategies to optimize your sales process, you can empower your team to reach new heights of success. By harnessing the sales analytics and insights functionality of Teamgate CRM, your business is taking the first steps towards driving real business growth and performance. Ready to master the metrics? Explore Teamgate CRM’s powerful features today with a 14 day free trial.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most important sales metrics to track?

The most important sales metrics to track vary depending on your business objectives and industry. However, some key metrics include total revenue, revenue growth, conversion rate, sales cycle length, average deal size, sales quota attainment, win rate, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and churn rate. By monitoring these metrics, you can gain insights into your sales team’s performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

How do I set targets for my sales metrics?

Setting targets for your sales metrics involves considering historical performance, industry benchmarks, and market conditions. Ensure your targets are realistic, achievable, and aligned with your business objectives. Regularly review and adjust your targets to account for changes in your business environment and sales team performance, maintaining their relevance and challenge.

What tools can I use to monitor my sales metrics?

To monitor your sales metrics, you can use sales dashboards, CRM systems, and analytics tools. Sales dashboards provide an easy-to-understand visual representation of your metrics, while CRM systems allow for the efficient tracking and management of customer data. Analytics tools can help you dive deeper into your metrics, uncovering trends and patterns that inform data-driven decision-making.

How can I improve my sales team’s performance using sales metrics?

To improve your sales team’s performance using sales metrics, first, identify areas of strength and weakness by analyzing your metrics. Then, implement strategies such as training and coaching, sales process optimization, and leveraging technology and automation to address these areas. Continuously monitor your sales metrics and adjust your strategies as needed to ensure ongoing improvement.

What is the role of sales metrics in driving business growth?

Sales metrics play a critical role in driving business growth by providing insights into your sales team’s performance and the effectiveness of your sales strategies. By tracking and analyzing these metrics, you can identify areas for improvement, set realistic targets, and implement strategies to optimize your sales process. This, in turn, leads to increased sales, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, business growth.

How would you describe your sales CRM?

  • Easy to use?
  • Insightful?
  • A great time saver?

Probably not, right?

The fact is that most CRMs are a pain to use.  They suck valuable time from your day-to-day and are rarely kept up to date.

In fact, 87% of salespeople believe the reason they’re forced to update their CRM is so that their manager can police their activities.

This often results in salespeople just checking boxes, and doing the bare minimum to pass off as having completed their “obligatory CRM update”.

use-of-crm-systems-amid-increasing-b2b-pricing-pressures

However, companies who adopt a Sales CRM as a tool for Sales Enablement achieve some pretty impressive results…
Check this out:

crm-results

These results from Aberdeen Research prove that by having the right mindset to use a CRM effectively, impressive results can be achieved… and consistently!

Sadly though, an estimated 25-60% of CRM projects fail to meet expectations.

But fear not…

In this article, I’m going to share seven CRM best practices for 2017.  After reading all the way to the end, you’ll be able to identify the right sales solution to guarantee 2017 as your best year yet.

So let’s get into it:

#1 – Clean, Reliable, and Up-To-Date Data

clean-reliable-and-up-to-date-data

Having clean, reliable, and up-to-date information in the CRM is essential for team collaboration.

But let’s be honest… do you really want to spend your time checking through last month’s data, and cleaning it up?

Of course not…

This is why it’s essential you choose a CRM that does this automatically.  Some beneficial features that’ll save you time and keep things in check automagically include:

  • Duplication Prevention
  • Lead Age Indicators
  • Deal Movement Tracking – more on this later.

Unless you enjoy data entry, I urge you to check whether your CRM is capable of all of the above.  It’s 2017 and it’s about time your CRM acted like it!

Related: CRM Segmentation: Knowing Your Customers Better and Preventing Data Clutter

#2 – Company Wide Snapshot

company-wide-snapshot

Another CRM best practice for 2017: Clarity.

“Clarity affords focus.” – Thomas Leonard.

Your CRM dashboard needs to be the first thing you see every day.  It’s the central control and pulse of the company.

At one glimpse you should be able to achieve full clarity over your company’s most important metrics.

As a salesperson this may include:

  • Your sales goals
  • Current leads you’re working
  • How those leads are responding to communications you sent the prior day

As a sales manager you need to be able to see:

  • Your team’s goals
  • Lead sources and their conversion rates for accurate forecasting
  • Top loss reasons so you can support your team in areas of weakness

Ultimately having this kind of clarity and visibility over the company’s performance brings everyone that much closer together, and highlights areas of weakness that you can focus on improving for the most impactful uplifts in performance.

Without it, you’re simply lost at sea.

Related: Sourcing Data from All Angles for Valuable Market Insight and Your Rally Road Book Is Your Sales Forecast.

#3 – Segmentation

Segmentation is the first step towards personalization.  But taking a step back, lead segmentation is about organizing your data so that relevant contact information is never more than a click away.

A CRM best practice for 2017 involves the automation of lead segmentation.

What do I mean exactly?

Let’s say you’ve just finished an initial Online Meeting with a new prospect.

You’ve spent 15 minutes on the call via your CRM’s SmartDialler, and have managed to successfully qualify them into the next stage.

As such, you simply drag and drop the prospect from the “Online Meeting” column to the “Push Column”.

Segmentation

The lead gets automatically tagged, a follow-up task is created, and an email is triggered thanking the prospect for their time on the call.

Automagical.  This is 2017.

Related: Make and Receive Calls Without Leaving Your CRM: Introducing Teamgate SmartDialer and Beyond Sales: How To Make CRM Work For Any Profession

#4 – Source Tracking

This is by FAR the latest and greatest CRM best practice for 2017!

Source Tracking is a great way of accurately predicting sales forecasts based on where a new prospect has entered your CRM from.

For example:

  • Facebook
  • Google
  • LinkedIn
  • Bob’s DIY Podcast

….you get the idea.

source-tracking

At Teamgate we’re huge advocates of the Inbound Sales process.  This means we typically generate the majority of our new leads via web forms.

(By the way, you should be too!)

Now, based on where that lead has come from, we want to know the likelihood of that lead converting to a sale.

Fortunately for you and me, it’s 2017 and the top CRMs will track this automatically for you.

I can’t stress enough the importance of making sure your CRM has this capability.

It’ll highlight the lead sources that are most lucrative for your business so that you can invest more in what’s working, and less in what’s not.

Deal? Good.

Related: Networking and Capturing of New Leads with CRM

#5 – Deal Movement Tracking

Ever had a deal slip through the cracks?

Look, I know – we’re busy salesmen and it happens all the time, but there are measures we can take to ensure it doesn’t happen to you and me.

Deal movement tracking is brand new for 2017 and essentially allows salespeople to see the active movement a deal has gone through from stage to stage.

deal-movement-tracking

Why is this important?

With a quick look at your CRM’s Deal Movement board, you’ll be able to see in an instant which deals haven’t moved an inch.  Allowing you to jump right on them and move them forward.

No more deal slippage!

In fact, Deal Movement Tracking is a real timesaver if you return from a vacation, and want to see what’s happened whilst you’ve been away.

Simply fire up the Deal Movement Board and see all the progress that’s happened whilst you’ve been away – obviously great for sales managers, and highly motivating for salespeople!

Related: How to Stop Being the Second Best in Sales?

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#6 – Geographical Insights

Does your current CRM allow you to see where all of your contacts are based on a map inside your deals view?

Ok, so this one may not be relevant to all businesses.  However, if you’re an international company it’s a great way of quickly visualizing which countries are performing best for you.

Not an essential one in my opinion, but a great insights tool that requires no additional input on your part.

Seriously though, it’s very cool.  Just take a look at this example taken from Teamgate:

geographical-insights

#7 – Personalisation

Lastly, and probably one of the most important features of our CRM, as we move into 2017, is the ability to get personal.

As salespeople, we sometimes fall guilty about making our prospects feel like a number in a system.  Cold callers (yes, some businesses still sell like it’s 1982) have probably a lot to answer for on this front.

However, 2017 is the year to pay extra attention to personalization.

Why?

It makes our prospects feel like we care because we take the time to care about what’s important to them.

This is a quote I like to use a lot when talking about influential sales tactics.

“People don’t buy when they understand.  They buy when they feel understood.”

Like that?  It’s so true though, right?

So how can your CRM best support this in 2017?

Your CRM should have a contact timeline where all calls, emails, website, and link clicking actions are recorded automatically.

personalisation

 

This means anytime you communicate with a prospect you can see the specific user journey they’ve been on all right there in front of you.  And as such, you can speak to them in a way that fits the experience you know they’ve had so far.

Conclusion

Like anything, there are two types of people in regards to Sales CRMs.

  1. Those who blame it for their inability to perform to their highest level.
  2. Those who embrace is it as a Sales Enablement tool.

Hopefully, these CRM best practices for 2017 have got you thinking about all the things you could be leveraging from a modern-day sales tool in your own sales team or business.

In summary, our top performers are going to be capitalizing on all of the following:

  1. Clean, Reliable, and Up-To-Date Data
  2. Company-Wide Snapshot for instant Clarity
  3. Contact Segmentation
  4. Deal Source Tracking
  5. Deal Movement Tracking
  6. Geographical Insights
  7. Personalization

Let’s make 2017 your best year yet!

SaaS, or software as a service, is a type of subscription software that allows users to access and use the software from a remote location. The SaaS model has become increasingly popular among startups and small businesses that want to avoid the high upfront costs of traditional software licenses.

However, there is one important rule that all SaaS professionals need to be aware of: the Rule of 40. The Rule of 40 is based on the premise that for a SaaS business to be healthy, it must have a combined growth rate and profitability percentage (margin) of at least 40%. This may seem like a simple rule to follow, but in practice, it can be quite difficult. In this blog post, we’ll explore what the Rule of 40 means for SaaS businesses and how they can ensure they are meeting this important metric.

What is the Rule of 40 and why is it important for SaaS and Startups?

The reasoning behind this rule is that if a SaaS company can accomplish a combination of steady growth and increasing customer loyalty, then it’s likely on track for a strong, long-term performance. The importance of the Rule of 40 for startups lies in it being an important health check to help them decide whether they’re onto something that could become successful — if their total retention and expansion come close to or meet the Rule of 40, then they’re more likely to have created an attractive product offering and strong customer base. It’s an ideal way for them to assess the business’ health while still focusing on economic objectives.

How can businesses use the Rule of 40 to increase their chances of success?

The Rule of 40 involves taking into account both profit and growth margin, with the objective of achieving over 40 percent. By using this tool, businesses can determine how they can legitimately achieve a higher level of success through adjusting aspects such as staff salaries, budget allocations and product or service prices. Consideration must be given to how successful businesses have achieved above the Rule of 40, which can be determined through analysis techniques such as competitor benchmarking. With this data in hand, businesses are better equipped to make more profitable decisions that encourage improved profitability and customer satisfaction.

How is the Rule of 40 calculated and continually tracked?

The Rule of 40 is calculated quickly and easily by taking a company’s Gross Profit Margin and adding it to their Revenue Growth Rate—if this combined number is equal to or greater than 40, then that business has met the Rule of 40. Ongoing tracking of this rule helps to ensure sustainability, scalability, capital efficiency, and overall positive financial health. To track the Rule of 40 continually, many businesses set up regular KPI meetings with their investors or other stakeholders, where they evaluate short-term as well as long-term performance metrics and make necessary adjustments as needed. Additionally, staying abreast of market trends can help companies understand how external factors such as consumer demand and competition might affect their Rule 40 calculations. In this way, businesses can stay on top of the health of their own operations through ongoing monitoring of the Rule of 40.

Historical Success When using the Rule of 40

Many businesses have used the Rule of 40 to great effect and have experienced tremendous success. The Rule of 40 is a financial benchmark that focuses on the combination of gross profit margin and total addressable market growth rate – the two components should add up to roughly 40%. Studies indicate that those companies who follow this rule demonstrated statistically significant correlations with strong valuation results, providing fantastic opportunities for top-line growth. Examples of companies that have used this strategy include Intuity Medical, Zscaler, and Slack Technologies. All three reported substantial revenue surges after implementing the Rule of 40 in their business plans. Organizations who aspire to similar successes can learn a great deal from these case studies and discover valuable insights into how dedicated focus on this principle can drive sustainable returns in today’s competitive market.

The benefits of using the Rule of 40 in business decision-making

Using the Rule of 40 in business decision-making can help a company achieve a greater level of success. A major benefit of this practice is that it encourages alignment between growth and profitability. By adding together a company’s revenue growth rate and their operating profit margin, the Rule of 40 can tell you whether your business strategy supports healthy growth in both areas. This means that businesses can make decisions with confidence, knowing that they can hit their target goals for both revenue and profits. The Rule of 40 also simplifies budgeting and forecasting, as it gives companies an automatic check to determine if their proposed initiatives will help them reach their financial objectives or not. By leveraging the Rule of 40 into their decision-making process, businesses are taking a proactive approach to ensure long-term success.

How businesses can get started with implementing the Rule of 40

In today’s increasingly competitive business environment, success often comes from the tiny details. One strategy that can help businesses achieve their goals is the Rule of 40. A tool designed for executives to measure their company’s long-term performance, this approach combines overall revenue growth with operating margin to generate an optimized value percentage. To get started with implementing the Rule of 40, businesses should thoroughly evaluate their internal metrics before devising a plan showing how current resources can be best utilized. Once equipped with solid data, management can set up financial models projecting future outcomes and providing a solid foundation for investments and operations decisions. With goal-oriented insights generated via the Rule of 40, businesses have access to accurate yet easy to interpret guidance that can demonstrate their potential for optimization and allow them to truly maximize their efforts on a road towards lasting success.

In conclusion, the Rule of 40 can be a powerful tool to help SaaS and startup businesses succeed in their industry. Not only does it set a benchmark for performance, but it provides business owners with an extra layer of insight into their key performance indicators. By tracking the Rule of 40 carefully over time, businesses can more easily make informed decisions that have a meaningful impact on their growth. With real-world case studies and examples demonstrating how companies have leveraged the Rule of 40 for success, there’s no doubt that this simple concept could be transformative for your own business. So don’t wait any longer – get started with implementing the Rule of 40 today to see your ROI climb and customer satisfaction skyrocket!

If you’re ready to become data-driven in your day-to-day operations, Teamgate CRM is here to help give you the insights needed to take your business success to the next level – join us today!

Every company looks for the different ways to increase its revenues. How are you planning to edge past your competitors?

The amount of revenue you generate depends on upon different factors, including the strategies used, the product you’re selling, as well as your marketing efforts. It’s the sales team and the sales marketing strategies that you use that can make a considerable difference at the end.

Understanding Sales Metrics – Making Informed Decisions

As a business, you would see your sales increase and decrease at times. If things aren’t going the way it should be, it’s important to identify the problem.

And that’s exactly where your sales metrics can help. Understand how you could improve the parameters to boost your sales. Here, we have listed some of the most important sales metrics that will help you in analyzing your performance.

1. Optimum Time Utilization

Your customers wouldn’t wait for you. You need a marketing team, which can reach out to your customers and close in on the deal as soon as possible. The lower the time, the better.

Monitor the time spent by the sales representative (rep) on the deals. If the rep successfully closes the deal, analyze the time needed for it.

Check the number of opportunities handled by a rep in an interval. This will help you in allotting more leads to the sales rep.

The response time for a query is equally important. According to a survey, if you answer the query within an hour, it increases chances of converting lead by seven times. The more time you take to respond, the lesser are the chances for a conversion.

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2. Sales Cycle

It is directly proportional to the time taken to close the deal. You can analyze different deals. Some deals will take more time to close while others will take less time – check on the parameters responsible for the deal to close.

Your aim is to close the deal sooner than later. When you analyze a sale cycle, you will know the number of leads to send a sales rep to help them perform to their best.

Related: Could The Traditional Sales Model Really Be Hurting Small Businesses?

3. Analyzing Results

The results help us to take decisions regarding the future deals. Some deals are easier to close while others can be more difficult. Understand the common problems so that you can address them.

This includes understanding the strengths. Remember, different deals require a different amount of time investment. Consider working on the opportunities according to the time requirements.

Some of the sale reps are better with certain types of deals, and take less time. Some sales reps perform better with small deals while some are good at bigger deals.

Analyzing the types of deals a sales rep closes quicker will help you to assign similar deals to them, to enable faster conversions.

Allot deals according to the ability of the sales rep. In addition, identify the weaknesses, and work on them. It will strengthen your team, directly or indirectly, for the future dealings.

Teamgate has a perfect insight tools for all the most important metrics your business needs.

Related: Your Rally Road Book Is Your Sales Forecast

Teamgate Insights

4. The Deal Size and Amount

If you find that the majority of deals are smaller amount deals, it’s important to identify the problem. You need to work to bag in bigger deals. That’s where Teamgate can also help you – with the most important deals view, you can see a clear picture of deals you need to focus on the most.

While the deal size is important, the other question is the number of deals you have in queue. You don’t want too many to avoid missing deadlines – but you do need some to keep your employees engaged.

As a manager, work hard to attract as many deals as possible. If you’ve too many deals in queue, it’s a happy problem that you can deal with and increase your team size.

5. Cost to Revenue Ratio

Don’t just look at generating revenues – instead, look at the cost to revenue ratio as well.

Calculate the costs of your inputs like salaries, expenses, marketing costs, commission rates, and the total revenue you earned from all the deals. This will provide an insight on how to manage your investments.

Optimize your investments – it will help in boosting the efficiency of your team and garnering maximum productivity.

Doing More by Looking At the Sales Metrics Data

The aim is to be able to harness the power of your sales representatives. You can achieve this by managing your time efficiently, allotting opportunities according to rep’s capability, boosting the morale of your sales team, and maximizing net revenue.

There are other factors as well including the lead response time. The quality of leads will always matter and the marketing team can help you get the perfect leads who are interested in your products. You can even keep a track of the number or percentage of opportunities you are winning. For every ten opportunities that you are getting, how many have you been able to successfully convert? Aim to improve the opportunity win rate.

No matter what business you’re in, focusing on these metrics will surely yield better results and help improve overall performance.

Related: How CRM Helps Companies in Logistics Industry to Improve

Inbound organizations are 4 times as likely to rate their marketing strategy as effective. (HubSpot)

Inbound lead generation is the holy grail of marketing. No business can survive without leads and almost every business struggles with keeping their sales funnel full and happy. Why is that?

Mostly because there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy that can guide marketers through the process of attracting, connecting and converting prospects into paying customers. That would be too easy. 

There is, however, a skeleton of the most effective ideas that can be used to drive sales for any type of business. So, if you’re like any of the passionate marketers who find themselves in deep waters when leads dry up, take out your ideas book because you’re about to get inspired. 

#1 Develop and automate your sales funnel

Mapping inbound lead generation to your sales funnel will enable you to effectively target prospects in every stage of the buying journey by producing relevant and engaging content in the form of blogs, guides, videos, infographics and more. Inbound lead generation is only effective when it’s targeted to specific segments and optimized to progress prospects towards a conversion and ultimately, a sale. It will help you to address and overcome common objections, attract qualified leads that have a genuine interest in your product and prioritize higher value prospects.

Once you develop your sales funnel, you will immediately spot the drop-off points that indicate optimization opportunities and get a deeper insight into your customers’ mindset — what’s driving their actions, what problems they’re trying to solve and how close to a purchase/conversion they are. Marketing automation will give you the means to automatically send the right content to the right customers at the right time, resulting in reduced sales cycle complexity and conversion time. According to Pardot, 77% of buyers want different content at each stage of their research. What’s more, studies show that nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

Good news is that almost every marketing effort can be automated. For instance, Buffer lets you schedule your social media content in advance, Zapier makes it easy to connect different apps in order to automate workflows, while IFTTT brings the apps and devices you use every day together, streamlining your experiences. Email automation is also a crucial part of inbound lead generation strategy, so ensure it’s implemented with your sales funnel in mind and creates maximum value for prospects. 

#2  Make data-driven decisions

Effective inbound lead generation campaigns are highly reliant on customer and market data. Acting on a hunch in the marketing world can be a really costly mistake. If you produce content that’s irrelevant to your target audience or is undiscoverable due to low-quality keywords, you will not only waste your time and energy, but also clog your sales funnel with unqualified leads.

Inbound lead generation often focuses on feeding the top of the sales funnel, which represents the awareness stage and deals with prospects that have no knowledge of your brand or don’t even know (yet) that they need your product. The only way to get in front of this crowd is to aim broad, targeting various angles and pain points that could grab their attention. Before you begin crafting your inbound lead generation strategy and producing educational content, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or Semrush to establish the most valuable keywords with high search volume and conversion potential. For example, creating content around generic, popular keywords like ‘blogging’ or ‘sales tips’ will put you in direct competition with thousands of other content creators who are exploring this subject. But if you dig deeper and discover narrower, longtail keywords that concern a specific, niche topic, your chances of getting to the top of the search results and staying top of mind increase significantly.

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A rich list of target keywords will help you generate ideas for your content campaigns and tools like Buzzsumo will help you identify what type of content performs well for any topic or competitor. Making well-informed decisions is a stepping stone to inbound lead generation campaigns — your content must solve a problem for your customers, not fill a gap in your editorial calendar.

#3 Sharpen your copy to tap into emotions

Lots of people take copywriting for granted. Just because you can put a sentence together, doesn’t mean you’re a copywriter. Crafting highly converting copy is a skill that takes a lot of honing and can lead to significantly higher conversions when done right. In turn, a bad copy is a surefire way to lose prospects immediately after they land on your website or your landing page. Copy that’s too vague, salesy or misleading can even hurt your brand and earn you some bad karma.

Focusing on benefits rather than features is one of the most important rules of good copywriting. What’s the difference between the two? Benefits-focused copy strives to answer the question “what value will my customer get out of using this?”. Features-focused copy, on the other hand, tackles the more technical questions, such as “what part of my product lets the customer get that value?”.

Unless you’re targeting a very niche, technical audience, your prospects won’t care much about the specifics — you’ll need to connect with them on a deeper level and evoke emotions to prompt them to take the desired action. Packing your copy with action verbs and focusing on storytelling rather than plain selling is guaranteed to lead to better engagement and higher conversions. 

Remember that writing for the masses will weaken your copy. You should focus on trying to convert a smaller number of better-suited people rather than trying to please every visitor. Ensuring your copy is peppered with the right amount of attention-grabbing CTAs will help you generate more leads through the content you create.

#4 Use natural imagery and avoid stock photos

inbound lead generation with natural imagery

Image credit: Stocksy

Finally, someone has stopped the awful, cheesy stock photography from infecting every blog and website on the planet. It’s been proven, time after time, that human brain processes and engages with visual information much better and faster than any other medium. Inbound lead generation campaigns often involve highly visual content, such as videos and infographics, in an effort to lock people’s attention and generate enough interest to influence their decisions. 

Thanks to the rise of the new generation free stock images libraries, such as Unsplash or Stocksy, embellishing your content with high-quality, natural imagery is easier than ever before. Great-looking images can have a massive impact on lead generation efforts if they’re purposefully woven into the rest of the content, adding an additional motivation for consumers to click through, share or buy.

However, keep in mind that the images you use should follow your brand guidelines (more about this later) and contribute to your brand identity. If you illustrate your content with random photos that look great but add little to no value, you’ll risk losing consumer’s interest as soon as they realize the content doesn’t match the visual they chose to click on. 

#5 Design smart opt-ins

Imagine walking up to a stranger at a grocery store and asking for their email address because you’d like to send them something you think they’ll love. Would you be more surprised if they happily shared their personal contact details with you or if they gave you a finger? The same rule applies to online communication, especially when it comes to the buying/selling relationship between a business and its customers.

Inbound lead generation campaigns often focus on capturing email addresses – whether you’re inviting people to register for your webinar or download a free ebook, the ultimate goal is to get into their inbox and send personalized follow-ups in order to bring them back to your site and ultimately, convert.

In the digital age, email address is a powerful currency whose value grows over time. It takes more than a boring signup form to convince people to exchange their email address in return for something particularly valuable to them. Tools like Sumo and OptinMonster will make email list building feel like a walk in the park — you can create beautiful pop-ups that appear on clicks, timers and before visitors exit your site, add sliding bars or sidebar forms and watch your traffic and mailing list thrive. 

#6 Make your lead generation forms friendlier

People are growing really impatient with long, poorly designed lead capturing forms. The immediate gratification that all online users seek is an extremely powerful factor when it comes to lead generation forms. People want what they want and they want it fast. The form is a hot spot for turning visitors into leads for your business, so making sure it’s optimized to cause as little frustration as possible is key.

If you’re not having much luck with getting visitors to fill in your forms, try reducing the friction by removing unnecessary form fields and cutting down on the number of required fields. Adding a prominent call-to-action button, placing the form above the fold and reassuring visitors that their personal details are in safe hands should also contribute to boosting your conversion rate. Make your forms look less like forms by using non-standard user interface elements, such as clickable images or toggle sliders, and use conditional logic to get more information from your users and be able to target specific audience segments. 

#7 A/B test everything

inbound lead generation using ab testing

Image credit: mobileseopros

Crafting a stellar landing page from scratch can require serious design and copywriting know-how. You will make mistakes, and that’s fine. What’s not fine is to think that once a campaign or a landing page is launched, you should hurl yourself at building the next one. Wrong.  

Sometimes, a tiny, seemingly insignificant tweak, such as changing the color of a CTA button, can skyrocket your conversions. A good rule of thumb for any business that’s experimenting with online marketing techniques is to A/B test everything. Running targeted experiments will give you unprecedented insight into your customer base, their preferences, and habits. It’s the only way to ensure you’re always running the best performing version of your website or campaign.

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is one of the best A/B testing tools for marketers. It lets users tweak, optimize and personalize their website with minimal IT help and takes the guesswork out of conversion optimization. You can also use Google Analytics (GA) to track and measure the impact of changes that you make, but bear in mind that it’s only a basic feature, so your findings will be limited.

#8 Provide value and overdeliver

“Promise an atlas, deliver the world” is a killer advice for those seeking to take their inbound lead generation to a higher level. The only way to earn your customers’ trust is to continuously provide value without asking for anything in return. In a similar way that online retailers run merchandising campaigns to entice their shoppers to come back and spend money with them, businesses invest in educational inbound lead generation campaigns to deliver value-packed content in the form of free ebooks, video courses, cheat sheets, workbooks, and more, to nurture the leads that aren’t ready to make a purchase yet.

Giving top quality content away for free is a reliable way to build rapport with your visitors and position yourself as an expert in the field. If you keep releasing genuinely useful content on regular basis, you will be able to build a loyal and engaged customer base as well as attract more top-of-the-funnel traffic. 

And if your content hits a sweet spot with your customers, chances are they’ll share it with their social networks, giving you extra exposure and potentially driving more traffic to the site. Long-form content is also an excellent way to build links and get some SEO juice, so if you do it right, the benefits of over delivering are crystal clear.

#9 Establish brand guidelines and stay consistent

You may have spent hours crafting the perfect logo, spent a lot of money on a copywriter who crafted the perfect tagline and even printed a ton of beautifully designed business cards – but none of this will stay consistent if you have not established your brand’s guidelines. A brand guideline is a set of tools and design rules on how to use your brand’s elements. The brand’s guideline usually comes in a book or PDF format, laying out how your brand works and how different design elements come together to form your brand’s identity. The brand’s guideline is used by anyone working on your brand – a designer, a copywriter or anyone else creating marketing material for your brand. 

The elements in the brand’s guidelines will differ from business to business, but every guideline should have the following: 

  • Color palette – a set of colors used throughout all your brand’s graphics
  • Tone of voice –  are you funny, persuasive, informative?
  • Typography – a typeface for headings and body of text associated with your brand (you may create your own typeface)
  • Different versions of the brand’s logo – video, social media, print
  • Content style – is your content image-heavy? Longform? Bite-sized?

It may be tempting to adjust the color of your logo for a certain marketing piece, but the change may be unrecognizable to your audience or client and so it will not generate any leads. The guideline will put in place a set of rules, which will ensure your brand’s elements are used consistently and effectively.  

Luckily, you can easily create your guideline yourself. Fortify and Canva both offer free templates to get you started right away or create your own original templates, Hemingway app will help you write impactful and consistent content and Adobe Spark will provide you with all the tools you need to create your logo and other graphics.

#10 Use analytics

inbound lead generation using google analytics

Analyzing your data will allow you to better understand your consumers and how to reach them. Invest time and effort in getting to know your users’ journeys through your site, which will help you to benchmark marketing campaigns that are not working. Among many analytical tools, FullStory offers the unique opportunity to not only get to know your consumers on a deep level by tracking their engagement with a new feature or analyzing campaign conversion rates, it also allows you to see (in video format) their journey on your website – where they went, what issues they encountered and what prompted them to make a purchase or drop off. These insights are made available across your whole team, which will help you to make executive decisions how to best use your resources. 

Analytical tools may also be a key to generating a significant amount of new leads. For example, use tools, such as Hotjar, to identify the hotspots of lead generation on your website. Hotjar offers click and scroll heatmaps (among many other great features) to measure the most engaging and capturing content. The data may reveal that certain keywords are generating a large number of leads, as a result, you can focus on those keywords when writing content for your site or marketing campaigns in order to generate more leads. 

Use Google Analytics (GA) to measure and increase your ROI and drive more traffic to your site. GA is a very robust tool and provides you with an enormous amount of data on your social media traffic referral, page visits and average time per page. Use the tools provided to identify content your consumers enjoy and which channel reaches them best, and produce more to generate new leads. 

#11 Optimize your content for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO)

The foundation of your inbound lead generation efforts is the content you produce. Produce valuable and relevant content to attract and engage your target audience. Ensure your content is impactful and drives your audience to share it. High-quality content will help you break through the noise and generate more leads.

Content with value is important in increasing your SEO, because search engines equate high-quality content with a high-quality website. Keep track of your content and conduct a content audit to see how much of your content falls into the following categories – informative or promotional. Ensure that you produce a good mix of content, including visuals, and start sharing it on social media. Identify the keywords you want your website to be associated with in search engines and use tools such as Google Keywords to increase your SEO. The more popular your content is on social media, the more Google considers it to be of high value, so it boosts your SEO rankings.

Increasing your SMO will automatically increase your SEO, so it is important you optimize your content for that. Since SMO is all about your presence on social media, start by engaging with your audience. You must comment, like and share your own, as well as others’ posts. Include a CTA button at the end of your posts and encourage people to share, comment and like. Become a leader and provide well researched, high-quality content, which will add value to your readers’ lives. Make it easy for your followers to share your content by providing share buttons, ensure all your social icons are clearly visible on your site and provide subscription options (email, newsletter, RSS).

#12 Use social proof and testimonials to build credibility

In order to successfully generate more inbound leads, you must produce content that your followers will trust. One way of building credibility is using social proof. It can be anything from a recommendation from a friend to an expert’s review. If you can get an expert from your field to recommend your product, make sure you make it loud and clear on your website – people always seek for advice and reviews before making a purchase. Having a well-known figure backing you can be a great way to secure those inbound leads. 

Don’t forget to include and ask for testimonials from your clients. Testimonials are among the most persuasive forms of social proof, as those are the words of a consumer and not an expert and so are perceived as more relatable/trustworthy. Allow the newcomers to make decisions based on what others like them have experienced. Include a high-quality photo to accompany each testimonial, as recent research has shown it makes the testimonials more believable.

Another way to increase your credibility is by increasing the engagement on your content. The volume of engagement (likes, shares, comments) indicates the value of your content. If your post receives a thousand retweets it is more likely that more people will click and read your content. This will also help you increase your SEO and your audience reach, which can generate new inbound leads.

#13 Employ urgency

Last but not least, inducing the sense of urgency is a great way of generating new inbound leads or nudging an undecided consumer to make a purchase. One way of employing urgency is by creating a deadline and using time-sensitive language in an email or a newsletter. Use language such as ‘Limited time only’ or ‘ends tomorrow’ to urge traffic to your site to make a purchase. Include a countdown clock in your newsletter and across your social media, to remind your followers of the urgency. You may wish to send a last minute email for a more dramatic effect. 

Create demand and need with scarcity. Urge your followers with ‘only 3 left’  and ‘while stocks last’ products and offers. The rapidly dwindling supplies can convert the unsure followers into inbound leads. However, ensure that you are honest about the quantities of stock, your followers will find out if you’re lying and they won’t be happy. Invest time and effort into your headline and keep your body of text concise and brief. You want your followers to feel the pressure of the scarcity of your product – you do not want them to get lost in your newsletter.

Finally, use a clear Call-To-Action button. All your efforts will be wasted if you do not tell your followers what you want them to do with the information provided. Make your CTA a highly visible link or a button with action-orientated wording. You can also use Fomo, a tool which showcases recent consumer actions to increase conversion on your site and helps you generate more leads.

Increase-Your-Sales-Leads-Productivity-Without-Breaking-Down_DONE

Takeaways

According to Hubspot, 65% of marketers admit that generating traffic and leads is their top marketing challenge. One way to think about the inbound lead generation is to imagine it like a spiderweb — every campaign is a silk thread; the more threads you have, the bigger is your web, the higher are your chances of catching something. It takes time and skill to spin a wide enough web but it will last you a long time, too. Without leads, your business will perish.  

A diverse inbound lead generation strategy will most certainly lead to a boost in sales. But the main takeaways to consider include:

  • Map inbound lead generation to your sales funnel to be able to effectively target prospects in every stage of the buying journey.
  • Use data to drive your decisions: research keywords and trending content to start from a strong place.
  • Get serious about copy — focus on communicating the benefits of your product rather than features, keep it actionable and tap into human emotions.
  • Take advantage of free high-quality natural stock images — there can never be too many images.
  • Use tools available to you to streamline the process of building a mailing list and driving traffic.
  • Make sure your lead generation forms are asking for essential information only and are simple and convenient to fill in.
  • Spend time A/B testing changes to your website, email or content campaigns to launch with confidence and improve your conversions.
  • Create skyscraper educational content to educate and engage your visitors.
  • Establish your brand guidelines early on, so that you can align all of your marketing efforts.
  • Use analytics to better understand your customer’s journey through the site.
  • Ensure you’re producing the right mix of content, including visuals to optimize your site’s SEO and SMO.  
  • Boost your credibility through social proof.
  • Induce a sense of urgency to prompt your buyers to make a snap buying decision.

Lead generation starts with understanding your customers, so always ask yourself “what’s in it for my customer?”

Every team is important, but your sales reps are under a lot of pressure to convert your leads into customers. Without your sales reps, your business is in real trouble. So it’s important to make sure they’re operating at the peak of their potential by monitoring their performance.

There are many articles out there that focus on monitoring the performance of your sales reps, but we believe that employees are entitled to trust and privacy from their employer.

How do you balance their need for privacy while collecting the necessary data to analyze performance?

Introduction to workplace privacy

You’ve hired your staff because you believe they’re the best people for the job. Don’t insult them by monitoring every single interaction they have with your clients or customers.

In some instances, such as for legal reasons, strict monitoring of all employee communications is advised. But for the purposes of improving sales performance, you should focus on the sales data rather than private correspondence.

Effective monitoring yields result for both employees and employers. It’s motivating for staff because it highlights the areas where your reps are doing well, and also shows them objectively where they can improve.

Firsthand experience

As the CEO of your company, it’s essential for you to know what your staff is up to, without infringing on their privacy.

With the best of intentions, staying in the ivory tower can’t provide you with reliable insight into your team’s performance. Data should be combined with personal observation to generate well-rounded results. Spending a day with your team gives you a direct experience of their frontline work, and also makes them feel valued.

Sales Reps Performance vs Privacy Tracking

For example, you may have one team member who isn’t performing as well as the others. If you only look at the data, you might see them as the underdog. Direct observation shows you they’re picking up the slack for the rest of the team by providing day-to-day customer service.

This kind of insight can suggest that you may need to hire a receptionist or an admin assistant to deal with your clients’ general inquiries. You’re using data and observation to support your sales reps.

Using a sales CRM for your team

Monitoring your employees with analytics is not about singling out individual team members but viewing their performance in light of the whole team. Rather than spying on your staff, you can use a CRM tool to work for your team by providing a 3D picture of their sales.

A sales CRM is a valuable tool for collecting the necessary data about your team’s activities. All sales activities are recorded in the CRM for anyone to refer back to.

More than just a CRM, Teamgate is a complete sales stack for your team. It offers the capability for you to generate objective data to improve your future sales strategy. It also helps you forecast your future sales income, over the next month and for all-time. It’s easier to turn leads into customers with a handy sales funnel.

Monitoring sales insights

No one wants to trawl through boring reports, especially high-pressure sales reps who have their eye on making their next commission.

With a CRM like Teamgate to manage your sales activities, your reps are relieved of the need to keep manual records. All of your data is centralized in one place and can be easily imported or exported.

Sales Reps Performance vs Privacy Teamgate Analytics

Teamgate CRM offers intelligent, actionable insights into your sales activity that can tell you where you could improve your operations. For example, Pipeline Trajectory tells your reps when they should reach out to leads with a specific action, meaning no more guesswork.

The goal is to accurately monitor your sales insights without targeting individual employees. You’ll uncover problems with your sales strategy if it turns out lots of reps are having difficulties in the same area.

Using your data to reward sales reps

It’s not about punishing your employees when things go wrong, but rewarding their efforts when they do well.

Highlight the achievements of your reps with a monthly ‘Sales Star’ award. This positively reinforces your employees’ behaviour and motivates them to continue.

You can even set up sales goals in Teamgate so that your team is automatically motivated every day. They can even compare their results with their colleagues in friendly competition.

Making the most of the sales calls

Phone calls are a channel that is especially prone to losing valuable data. If no one records interaction with your potential customer, you may lose them at a critical point in their journey.

Teamgate SmartDialer is the dialling system you’ve been waiting for to take a headache out of calls.

Teamgate SmartDialer features:

  • Integrates with our sales CRM so you can access your customer data and easily manage relationships.
  • Enables you to make calls directly from Teamgate in the browser for maximum efficiency and user experience.
  • Records conversations so reps can review their calls at a later date. This ensures that nothing valuable is lost in the unpredictable environment of a busy modern workplace.
  • Connects your sales reps with their prospects so incoming phone calls are routed to the right person, every time. Your prospects will be impressed with their personalized experience and pleased that they weren’t accidentally passed between team members like a hockey puck.

Takeaways

Sales reps use their personalities and powers of persuasion to demonstrate to prospective customers exactly why your products would benefit them. They work on the frontline in a stressful environment and face constant rejection. Don’t make their jobs harder for them by monitoring your staff like Big Brother.

Sales Reps Performance vs Privacy Goal Setting

Always assume your sales people are doing the best they can with the resources you’ve given them. If there’s room for improvement, and there always is, smart CEOs know they can usually change their processes to empower their staff.

As a CEO, you can work together with your reps to make their lives easier. Provide them with actionable insights on their performance based on real data. Teamgate offers the perfect blend of sales metrics and automates mundane tasks, without compromising the privacy and independence of your sales team.

If you run a small to medium-sized business, you’ve probably heard of lead scoring. We are sharing a set of lead scoring best practices which will help to improve sales conversion rates of your company. Lead scoring is not something you can set up overnight, but you can get started today with careful thought and evaluation of your customers. It may also be a good idea to invest in a lead scoring software to automate the process. We’ll discuss this in more detail, but let’s start from the beginning. 

How Does Lead Scoring Work

Lead scoring is a methodology used to help sales teams closing more leads. It’s a process that involves both marketing and sales, as each team must decide which leads should be qualified as the ideal ones. Lead scoring is used in conjunction with the inbound marketing tactics, such as building a social media following, blogging or offering free guides, to decide which of your leads are ready to convert.

Instead of pursuing every lead you have, you may rank your leads according to their value for your business and decide which ones to follow up with first. This allows you to prioritize and invest more of your energy into leads that matter most.

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Why Would I need Lead Scoring?

It’s all about making your sales process more efficient. If your sales team doesn’t have enough leads yet, then lead scoring is not necessary. Instead, your marketing team needs to put more focus on the lead generation.

However, if there are more than enough leads, rather than following up on each one, simply assign values to your leads. This will help to decide which ones are ready to convert. Set the criteria, then use analytics and lead sign-up forms to collect the relevant data. As a result, you will be able to pursue only those leads that are most likely to convert.

Which Companies Need Lead Scoring?

lead scoring best practices for companies

Every organization is different and some may not require lead scoring at all. The best practice to follow is to identify whether your company is struggling with leads conversion or not. Companies that want to boost their sales conversions, and have more leads than they can pursue, most probably, need lead scoring. 

Setting Up Your Lead Capturing Forms

In order to score your leads, you have to know who they are. So, to start tracking your leads you would need a lead capturing form. This is a form on your website which offers a way for customers to sign up to hear more about you and your products. This data is then captured and funneled into your lead scoring or CRM (customer relationship management) software, where you can begin tracking interactions of your potential customers.

Optimizing Your Lead Capturing Form

Put forms on your landing pages where your prospects can see it. This could be combined as a gateway to some content that your target customers will be interested in engaging with, such as an ebook or a PDF that they can download. In exchange for this content, customers should provide their name, email address and a few details about themselves.

Note: If you ask your leads to fill in too many fields, you may fail to capture them as people may not want to sign up. If you ask for too few details, the quality of your lead data can suffer as well. Make sure you ask for relevant details about your customers by linking the fields you include with your lead score criteria, which we’ll go into next.

Deciding Upon Your Lead Score Criteria

lead scoring best practices criteria

You can find out what sort of characteristics your customers normally possess by analyzing your current customer base. They won’t be identical to the future prospects but they are your best source of inspiration. You can also work with your sales and marketing teams to create descriptions of your ideal customers. It could be that they are a CEO of a mid-sized tech company, or a Marketing Manager of a small health food supplier. You can have more than one type of ideal customer.

There are a number of factors you need to take into account when deciding upon your criteria, but the best practice is to follow a points-based system. You need a) demographic information and b) behavioral intelligence for your leads. First, you will be focusing on the characteristics of your ideal customers who are worth to be pursued as leads. Second, you’ll be looking at how these customers are behaving to see who is ready to be contacted by your sales team.

a) Demographic Information

After you have decided upon the characteristics of your ideal customers, you can start to set up your lead score by assigning multiple values to criteria, such as job title, industry, company size, country, marketing source, links with competitors, and more. Demographic information about a lead can identify personal information, such as job title, company information (e.g. number of employees), relationship to your organization (e.g. past customer), and others.

When considering which demographic information to choose to evaluate your leads, you may want to include some basic criteria which must be met for them to qualify or disqualify as a lead. For example, you may instantly disqualify someone if they are a student.

b) Behavioral Intelligence

After you have decided upon the essential criteria for determining your lead score, include some key behaviors for your leads to engage in, these will also contribute to their score. This is where it is really important to have the appropriate software to track the behavior of your leads. For example, if you send them an email, you need to track whether they’ve received it, opened and clicked on it. Or, if you post some content on social media, you want to know whether they saw it, how long they spent on the page, if they shared it on social media, and so on. You can also decide on behaviors that deserve a negative score, such as if they unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Identifying Leads to Pursue

You need to set up a points-based scoring system when evaluating your lead criteria for each potential customer, typically a scale between 1 and 100. With this in mind, score your leads based on how closely they match your ideal customer profile, based on the demographic information and behavioral intelligence.

lead scoring best practices leads to pursue

For instance, if one of your leads is a CEO of a mid-sized tech company, but they haven’t demonstrated any engagement behaviors, then your lead might score around 50 points. A similar company that fits the demographic criteria and has somewhat engaged with your company can be awarded 75 points, which is a trigger to your sales team to contact them.

There is a number of systems you can use to score how close your leads are to converting, ranging from the letters A, B, C and D, to Hot, Warm or Cold, or in numbers from 1 to 4. Then you may assign each label a range on your scale. Pick a system that feels most natural to your company and easiest to work with.

Other Purposes of Lead Scoring

In your process of scoring leads, some potential customers may not quite qualify, but you can identify and target the leads which need nurturing. If you have the right software, particular lead scores can trigger automation. For example, once a lead passes a certain score, an email is triggered to invite your lead for a demo of your product.

You can also use lead scoring to get to know your potential customers better. Paying so much attention to your target market is always great because you may uncover surprising insights. Test different marketing messaging with your leads to see which ones work best, and optimize your marketing strategy. 

Choosing Your Lead Management Software

Having the right software is key to success with lead scoring. If you lack the capabilities to properly analyze your leads, you won’t get very far. The type of lead scoring software that you need will depend on your company. Compare different options based on price, functionality and size with reviews from trusted sites such as Capterra or Software Advice. 

lead scoring best practices choosing the right software

Teamgate offers lead scoring as a part of our cloud-based intelligent Sales CRM for small and mid-size teams. With its user-friendly interface, Teamgate is a great sales stack for today’s business that helps you convert more leads. 

The software is changing all the time and becoming more sophisticated, with some solutions beginning to use AI and bots to engage leads. For example, software can determine if your lead is highly engaged or a student doing research. A virtual sales assistant using AI technology to email the leads can interpret their responses and alert your sales team. 

Smarten Up Your Teamwork

Know who your leads are, track when they’re ready to buy, and make your sales team contact them. Lead scoring streamlines this process so you’re only focusing on high-quality leads who are most ready to convert. The key is capturing your data with the right software, optimizing your website with properly prepared content and forms, and integrating your software solutions so your leads don’t fall through the cracks. It is a team effort, but totally worth it for the boost you’ll see in your sales conversions.

If hot leads aren’t converting, then you might need to take a look at the products and services you’re offering. Check whether they’re suitable for your target market and if your pricing is appropriate. Don’t get discouraged, but remember that analyzing your leads and scoring them is the beginning of streamlining your sales process. 

Before every rally competition drivers have a possibility to prepare for it – to write a route book. 

Magical rally process highly depends on how professional are driver’s actions and how well co-driver interprets a road book. In short – driver operates vehicle using co-driver‘s instructions from a road book to reach the goal – team knows, what to expect around the corner. 

Can you win your Dakar on sales? With sales forecast – for sure. 

Forecast? Is it about the weather?

Yes, sometimes it even can be about the weather impact on your business. We are sure, you would like to know what happens to your sales results during a sunny holiday period or a snowy Christmas rush, right? 

Will you be ready for ups and downs? 

“Advanced maths” – you think. 

No, just scientifically tested probabilities and processes. 

Sales Forecasting In Your Sales Race

Sales forecast is more about business planning, definitely not about accounting. Information which you get from sales reports and forecast has to be reasonable, but it doesn’t need to be too much detailed. Forecasting is much easier than you think and much more useful than you imagine. 

Sales forecast will empower you: 

  • To plan your future growths and declines; 
  • To use sale insights for company‘s process management: cash flow, resources/workforce allocation; 
  • To predict revenue; 
  • To prepare for raising capital.

Forecasting of sales is the process of estimating future sales. Precise sales forecasts enable you to make wise business decisions and allow to improve short-term and long-term performance. 

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You can base your forecast on historical sales data, market research information, regional trends, additional personal estimates and even weather forecast! This report allows you to see what your prospective sales are and how they look in comparison to actual sales. 

It still sounds like advanced maths, right? Trying to run a business without a forecast is the same as trying to finish your Dakar without a road book. 

No doubt, that would be much harder. 

Related: How to Stop Being the Second Best in Sales?

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Best practice tools to create right rally road book for your sales – insightful results with right forecast

If you’re still hesitant about forecasting your sales and think that it is not worth investing time to gather information from different reports, we have an excellent solution for you – Teamgate sales forecasting tool. It will empower you to take right insights and actions to reach the goal- finish your sales period successfully.

Teamgate sales forecast reports are based on two types of information: historical sales data and potential planned transactions – sales goals.  It makes sales process simple and understandable. Using sales forecast report in Teamgate CRM you’ll be able to access sales future prospective in a very user-friendly way. 

If you systematically bring together all the sales plans and results using CRM, you will need just a few mouse clicks to prepare your sales forecast for required period, person or product. 

With Teamgate sales forecast you will have visualized „all in one“ diagram: 

  • previous period historical sales results; 
  • planned sales from your pipeline – opportunities; 
  • sales results for current moment; 
  • goal of sales.

Teamgate Sales Pipeline Forecast

Based on historical sales information forecasts show where you will be in end of period, what is very important for sales market insights to ensure your thoughtful actions in critical situations during the period. 

Related: 7 CRM Best Practices for 2017 and 5 Most Important Sales Metrics You Need To Focus On Today

For more information about Sales Forecast solution by Teamgate CRM please check our YouTube channel. 

Don’t be afraid of sharp turn in your sales rally, be prepared for it. 

You can be like professional rally driver with a perfect route book for navigation, because Teamgate Sales forecast report will empower you to be ready to face up the next month or year decade without big surprises. 

We’re ready to tell you more about Teamgate CRM. If you would like to hear more how this solution can empower you to get a 360 degree view of the whole sales process, please contact us or join  our Facebook page. 

How do you plan to maximize your productivity? No matter what your business is, you sure would be looking to make the most of the resources at your hand. And one of the best ways to do it is by having reports and summaries with you.

But how can reports and summaries help?

Each day matters in business. How you plan your day and how you execute it eventually determines how successful you are in the longer run.

And this is where reports and summaries help, as you can see all that you need to do every day, in one place.

For one, you would need to keep a periodic record of the progress of your business goals. Reports are a great way to do that. Know how daily progress has been. Note the recent developments. Keep track of employee progress. Keep a check on whether you are in alignment with your overall goals at all times.

Summaries, on the other hand, help you know the to-do tasks for the day. You can keep yourself updated at all times, and have better time management.

Related: Could The Traditional Sales Model Really Be Hurting Small Businesses?

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How Can You Use Summaries and Reports To Get the Best Results?

Here is how you can use summaries to do more with your time.

  1. Know the Sales That You Are Going to Make

Sales and Marketing teams can use summaries and reports to keep a tab of the sales that they are making with time. Each day, a new goal can be set. Enquire at whether Facebook and other social media sites are profitable for you. See if you are converting potential customers into real ones. And review your cash and profits margins daily.

Reports and summaries can help you know:

  • Whether the sales margins are increasing
  • Whether your marketing campaigns are yielding the results you need
  • Check the daily tasks you need to do when it comes accomplishing your marketing goals
  1. Check the Audience

The right strategy will also help you know if you are building on customer loyalty and improving brand image over time. You would be able to better understand your audience. This includes the ability to understand how customers are generally behaving. For instance, if you own a restaurant, you can use summaries and reports to understand the following.

  • What are the typical ages of customers who normally visit your restaurant?
  • Do your customers have a specific liking for something or share any common interest?
  • What is the most popular food item?

You can then create summaries every day to check you are getting the reports you need. For instance, you might want to know if your customers love chocolate more – and if they do, you might want to introduce newer chocolate dishes.

  1. Be Clear to the Requirements

Be clear as to what you need from your summaries and reports. It all depends on the role that you are handling within the organization. A CEO’s summary and a report will be different from that of one who is in the marketing and sales team. For instance, as a CEO, you might want to have summaries that consist of things like the following.

  • How is the marketing and sales team progressing?
  • What meetings do you need to be part of that day and what are your expectations regarding it?
  • What are the common employee problems that you need to solve?
  • Measures that will help you deal with customer touch points.
  1. Beat the Work Overload

Summaries and reports can help you beat the work overload easily. You would not have to worry about missing deadlines, and you would be able to understand the business pain points easily. You would also be able to be focused and keep you organized.

When writing summaries, keep pointers to keep a to-do list that you can use easily. When writing your reports at the end of the day, you can also have some pointers so that you can compare them with reports of the next day.

Reports and Summaries

  1. Allocate the Priorities

Sometimes, you will not be able to do all that you write in the summaries. So, it is a good idea to prioritize and write according to the things that are more urgent. You can also write ‘A’ for the task that is more important and ‘F’ for the one that is less important.

You can carry out all the necessary tasks, and you would not get stressed by the large number of jobs that you have to deal with.

Why Is Time Management So Important In Business?

Time management helps businesses power ahead of the competition. You will be able to do more, and get the best results by creating the right summaries and reports.

If you have a lot of many tasks to do the next day, which you can understand from your reports, change the task when you begin to get bored. Take it into account when you are creating the summary the next day.

To manage time effectively, set an achievable goal. Do not set an unreasonable goal that would lower your confidence. Irrespective of the type of work, plan each day’s summary according to your priorities. Creating a schedule will also minimize last-minute deadlines.

The next step would be to prioritize your tasks with summaries. Unimportant tasks such as chatting on social networking sites consume a lot of your day. Research shows that setting the color scheme to black and white would make the sites look boring and make you uninterested in using them.

Evaluating is also an important aspect of time management. Use summaries to maintain an account of how you spend time. Knowing the time estimates for each work will help you plan in a better way.

Before you evaluate the day’s reports, take a short break at regular intervals to the task, as it will help regain concentration and ensure you do not make any mistakes.

For any business, the ability to manage time with unmatched efficiency can help produce quality work in good time. And summaries and reports can just make the process a lot more efficient.

Teamgate Introduces ‘Morning Muffin’

In October (2016) Teamgate will introduce its newest Summary-building feature – ‘Morning Muffin’. With Morning Muffin you can choose to receive a morning email with the most important updates from the last day:

  • Lead update
  • Pipeline update
  • Today’s agenda, including your meetings, calls and tasks.

Morning Muffin - Lead Updates

Users will be able to turn on ‘Morning Muffin’ in their Teamgate Account settings bar. All daily updates or just a few of them can be selected. The start of the day supposed to be productive!

If you do not have Teamgate account yet, you can sign up for free here.

Once you understand this single thing, you will be able to reach any goal you could ever set for yourself.

Understand That Success And Goal Setting Is Boring (Here Is Why)

That is true. That is what makes most sales people lag behind. Before jumping to any goal setting exercise, you have to understand that goal setting is a dreary thing. It is like you are making life hard for yourself, instead of having fun and doing whatever you want.

It is a life of self-denial. It is repetitions of the same principles and fundamental until you get to an “auto-pilot state”. That “auto-pilot state” is where doing almost anything seems natural to you. The truth is ONLY few salespeople reach that state.

How to Make Goal Achieving an Automatic Thing for Your Mind

Once you get that setting goals and success is boring subject, then the next logic thing is doing whatever you can to make it second nature in your life. Fortunately, there are some principles that you need to follow every single day to make the goal setting habit and a second nature in your life.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Learn to Motivate Yourself

If you are in sales and all you do is wait for your sales manager to give you a pep talk, then you will never get ahead. Successful people are those who motivate themselves every single day.

Now, you are probably asking, “How do I motivate myself?” It is simple. All you need to do is read more books in the subject of sales. At least, read one book a month about the topic of sales and marketing.

Doing this simple thing will give you more confidence and make you be able to think about sales. You will come up with more ideas that can help you improve your sales results improve each single month.

2. Know the 5 Systems in Sales and Improve In Each Area

Maybe you have sales goals, but the main reason why you are failing is that you do not know the 5 systems that go into a successful sales system. If you find yourself failing in sales and marketing, it is because you have not mastered the following key areas:

For you to be successful in selling, all you need is to learn the five key areas and improve on them.

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Now, take a sheet of paper and give yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how you are good at this critical area. Once you have identified that, go to the bookstore and buy a book that can help you improve in that vital area. Read it, take good notes, and practice it. The best time to read is early in the morning before you leave for work. That will give you more motivation.

Related: How To Increase Sales In 2017 Using The Power Of Inbound Sales and Lost (And Won) Deals: 3 Things to Take Into Account

3. Write Your Daily Goals Every Single Morning

You have heard it countless number of times, “You can’t hit a goal that you can’t see.”

You need to put your goals in writing. You must feel it and see it. And writing it down happens to be the best way of getting your goals to stick into your subconscious mind. The other benefit of writing is that it helps you achieve clarity on what you want to focus the most. When doing this process, you will face one setback. The first two days will be easier for you to write down your daily goals. However, the third day you will feel bored. It happens to every person, but you have to keep going.

photo-1455390582262-044cdead277a

Related: Steps for Writing a Winning Sales Proposal in a SaaS

4. Make Goal Setting a ‘Habit’ In Your Life

For you to make goal setting a routine in your life, you need 40 days. You need 40 days to make plans and to follow them non-stop. If you keep a goal of getting 50 prospects in a day, you have to force yourself to do whatever the circumstances call to get those prospects. If it is doing 10 presentations a week, it should be that. If you can do that within the next 40 days, couple of things will happen.

  • You will get the confidence and motivation to boost your sales
  • You will be in the ‘auto-pilot’ state where you will have mastered all the sales systems.

Finally, the 40-day challenge can help you bring a new habit or learn new techniques in sales. And if you can maintain it for the long-term, your sales goals will improve. Setting goals and achieving them is difficult and easy. It will be easy if you follow the above four principles. It will be hard if you make it hard for yourself. Goals are important because they act as a forcing system that can get you ahead in life. From today, see goal setting as a bridge to your dreams in life.

Related: Some Businesses Could Fail to Make the Leap to CRM – Here’s Why

This is How the 360° Customer View is Easily Attainable

Last time we were creating an email marketing campaign, we had the same forms we always begin with, same autoresponders, and a similar outreach plan. The information collecting tactics, however, were just a little more intensive, and the monumental results were well worth the extra steps. By using free online data sources, paired with Teamgate’s simplistic platform, customers became much more than just email addresses and purchase histories. In turn, our outreach strategy underwent a metamorphosis from traditional advertising techniques to a targeted and high-converting conversation with our market.

The 360 degree customer view provided us with insights and trends, specific to our campaign, that we couldn’t have predicted otherwise. All of this was possible by following just a few extra steps when creating our customer profiles.

Is There any Difference Between Leads, Prospects, and Customers?

The very first thing to do with your customer profiles is to break them into three groups – leads, prospects, and customers. Customers are those in your target market who have solidified their position by purchasing something from you at some point. Prospects are those interested in making a purchase. Leads are potential customers (A lead may have signed up for your mailing list, but has yet to complete  or a transaction.). In order to compare traits later, it is important to know where on the spectrum an individual stands.

As prospects make purchases, you can move them into the customer category. As leads take interest, you can move them into the prospects category. A good Sales Stack platform will be set up for just this. With customer relationship management technology, there is no need to create tedious spreadsheets or clutter your life tons of separate files for each group; you can store information for each group in one place for easy comparison.

Where Did This Guy Come From?

Chances are that you’ve got hundreds, even thousands of customers. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could remember how each person is connected to your organization and what other customers and companies they’re connected to? You can. If you’re using a modern Sales Stack platform, you can easily categorize customers into detailed segments and organize by company. This means that if you’re selling to Company X, and Jane, John, and Suzan all work for company X, you can find them just by clicking on their company in your dashboard. In this way you can send targeted and personalized messages to subgroups that know more than just where you’re at in one sale.

This kind of list segmentation comes in especially handy when you’re delivering personal sales calls and sending out individual emails. You can mention to Suzan that Jane made her order last week, and let her know that, not only are you paying attention, but also instill a “team” mindset into the process. We all want to buy from those that treat us like real people. The more you know about a lead or prospect, the more successful you will be in closing any sale. 

Do you have a CRM that keeps you organised?

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Does List Segmentation Only Benefit Sales?

If you’re wondering if you can use a Sales Stack platform for your advertising and marketing efforts as well as sales, the answer is yes. You can give everyone in your company access to as much of your information as you want. A marketing professional may have a different kind of insight to add to customer notes that will aide the sales process and vise-versa. Through modern Sales Stack, you can see your customer from all angles. This describes the information that you have access to, and the perspective of the staff member looking at it.

Think of modern Sales Stack as more than just a gym floor; it’s a basketball… a basketball game. Even if you had every bit of your customers’ information before, you were still coming at the idea of customer relationship management as if the Earth were flat, so to speak. Now, you’re able to look at it as the three dimensional object it is, and see the way that it orbits in space. Feel free to get excited.

planet-teamgate (1) (1)

How Can You Start Taking Advantage of This Data Mine?

You knew there had been a breakthrough in business and data mining, and you were sure there was a way to start harvesting from your customers. What you didn’t know was how to do it without gambling a fortune on research that may or may not have anything to do with your target audience. Now is the perfect time to start exploring the vast universe inside your customer list. Sign up for a free trial with teamgate, upload your subscriber and customer lists, and start taking advantage of the advanced insights with everyone on your team, today.