Tag: productivity

At Teamgate we’ve learned that customer success management is one of the most important functions of our whole sales process. Now, we’d like to share our experience, and success with you.

How focusing on customer success really helped us to build

In case you didn’t know, at Teamgate we design and sell CRM sales software solutions which help salespeople sell faster, and smarter. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Since our humble beginnings, we’ve come to learn some really important lessons, about ourselves, and about our product:

Finding the right customer is great
Selling to that customer is amazing
But, retaining that customer, while building brand loyalty, is beyond words, and that’s where customer success management really shines

The first thing we realised is that the sale is not the end of the journey. Of course, every sales team know that by now, but to learn that lesson for the first time, comes as quite a revelation.

That revelation required a whole change of mindset at Teamgate.

It required a change of focus, from simply selling the product in order to make a profit, to the bigger picture, and the long-term view of the entire customer experience process.

We care about the customer’s experience, and we’ve discovered that most of our customers really appreciate that care. In order to gain that appreciation, we had to begin somewhere.

Teamgate focus on customer experience led us to question our whole process:

Were we sourcing the most valuable leads – not just in monetary value, but in forming the right product/customer relationship?
Were we really listening to the customer’s needs and concerns?
Were we supplying the most relevant tools which they could really benefit from?
Were we relaying their concerns to our product development team?
Were we there for the customer throughout the whole onboarding process?
Did we offer the training and support they needed, and were we there to follow up on any further concerns?
Did we offer them the value they could afford, and not the value that we wanted to sell?
Was our product as scalable as our customers need
If they were using a competitor’s product, why were they doing that? What could we do to change the situation?

With the onset of this customer-centric focus, a new, and rejuvenated Teamgate experience was born.

How did Teamgate’s customer success management focus change?

Now, our customer success managers are equipped with the very same array of tools, which you can use to manage your customers’ experience.

We designed them that way because we listened to what our customers wanted. Because of the attention we paid to our customers’ comments, we can be sure that our Teamgate solutions work.

Teamgate includes a bundle of simple-to-use features which have become firm favourites with customer success managers, right around the globe.

These features proactively help us, and you, to keep your customers engaged, far beyond the sales process itself.

We know that if they work for us, we’re sure that they’ll work for you.

The Teamgate features designed to manage your customer success

Having listened closely to our customers’ needs, Teamgate introduced a host of time-saving features allowing our customer success managers to ensure that customers remain satisfied, engaged, and which continuously offered value, long after the initial deal is done.

Vitally, they help you to reduce your churn rates, increase the opportunity for upselling, and promote continuous customer loyalty, advocacy and customer happiness.

In fact, we care so much about customer happiness, that by means of a focused and consistent approach to measuring customer satisfaction after resolved ticketing issues, Teamgate customer success team raised the satisfaction rate from 95.1% (2015) to 97.2% (2017). For SaaS companies especially, Baremetrics and similar subscription analytics platforms can help you gain deeper visibility into churn drivers and revenue recovery opportunities alongside your customer success efforts.

So how did we do that?

Teamgate customer success hacks you need to know:

#1 – Deals block – Directly within your Teamgate companies, deals, or people cards those charged with customer success management can quickly and easily analyse all won, lost, and postponed deals.

This information can then be brought to the table in an effort to enhance the relationship between you and your customer. It will also offer an overall picture of the customer’s history, and most importantly, the value of your mutual relationship.

#2 – Zendesk and Freshdesk CRM integration – Zendesk and Freshdesk come as two of the leading customer support ticketing solutions. They offer you instant access to any past or present, resolved, or outstanding customer issues.

Armed with information on all ticketing issues – reporting bugs, log-in problems etc. – our Teamgate customer success managers can address any issues directly with the customer, assuring them of problems solved, updates, software patches, and recording their concerns.

#3 – Intercom integration – The Intercom and Teamgate integration allows customer success managers full access to all conversation history in one place.

This takes the guesswork out of previous conversations and gives customer success managers a running start when dealing with customer experience issues.

#4 – Custom fields – Custom fields are a means of adding additional, and unique information to your leads, people, deals, companies, and products. This is invaluable when filtering your searches in order to resolve a particular problem or concern.

At Teamgate our customer success managers use the actual value of sales at a particular time, dates which contracts were signed, and the duration of contracts, as some really useful custom fields.

#5 – Contact time-frame filter – Within your CRM sections; leads, companies, people, or deals, Teamgate offers you the oddly named ‘Not Contacted Within’ filter.

This feature lets you select contacts with no ‘live’ activities – to-do’s, calls, or meetings – over a chosen period of time. This is really relevant for customer success managers when making decisions on which course of action to take next. This is almost like a Teamgate secret weapon, making sure that even the most silent of customers never get forgotten or overlooked.

The real value of engaged customer success management

Teamgate’s customer success leader, Gintare Pasaulyte, fully realises the importance of keeping customers engaged. Her experienced outlook on the subject of continuous CRM customer success, is as follows:

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better, by knowing our customers, their personalities, buying habits, and even hobbies in order to increase their satisfaction and loyalty.“

Every positive attempt a business makes towards engaging with their customers, is essential for growing revenue, creating prolonged customer loyalty, instilling product advocacy, and maintaining the continued potential for growth.

Customer success management is not just for today, it’s for life

Customer success management is an overall approach to managing the value of your customer, through a variety of positive means, over the complete customer lifetime.

At Teamgate we recommend that you try to think past the sale, the real value comes from winning a customer for life, and, having the right tools to do that is hugely important.

Perhaps you’d like to see for yourself just how Teamgate CRM and customer success software can help you grow your business, long after the sale has been won.

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Onboarding a new sales CRM can be a daunting task, but with the Teamgate experience it doesn’t have to be

How do you choose your CRM software?

There are a variety of single reasons why companies decide they may require the use of sales CRM software, but there are also a combination of reasons for that decision, and more importantly, how that decision is made.

A sales CRM will allow company CEOs and CFOs to take a ‘future view’ of their revenue prospects. A well-chosen CRM will allow an insight into future trends, potential revenue sources, and possible pain-points gathered from the CRM’s analysis functionality.

Sales managers and sales teams will consider their CRM implementation process from a slightly different perspective. Their need is to manage the day-to-day functionality of the sales process, to capture leads automatically and to save time, convert leads to deals, close deals, and to track all stages throughout the complete sales pipeline. Also, the information gathered during the various stages of the pipeline is vital for future business generation and the successful visual analysis of performance.

Marketers will tend to choose a CRM which allows for harmonious interaction and cooperation with the sales department, in other words, ‘smarketing’. Tools like Sendspark, an AI-powered video personalization platform, can amplify outreach efforts by enabling sales teams to send personalized video messages that integrate seamlessly with CRM data for more engaging customer interactions.

A customer service manager will want to choose a CRM which closes deals effectively, is fully adaptable to ever-changing sales circumstances and time limits, and one which leads to an improved connection between company and client, and also allows for upselling to valuable clients.

However, it is also vital to talk with all those who will be involved in the final implementation, the end-users. These are the ones with the real information and who are qualified to offer their input in a highly significant manner.

Where do I start my onboarding process?

You wouldn’t buy a car without taking a test-drive, or a house without a thorough examination, the very same reasoning applies to your CRM onboarding process.

Before you choose the correct software for you, your company and your sales process, you’ll want to be sure that the product is suited exactly to your particular needs. But how do you do that?

Firstly, before you begin your onboarding process you are going to want to do some serious research on any problems in your sales pipeline which you are attempting to correct – or trying to avert completely in the first place. This will entail identifying pain-points associated with lost leads and deals, bottlenecks in the sales pipeline, or the inability to source the correct leads in the most time-saving manner. Once you’ve done that it’s time to browse the CRM options available.

The length of time it will take to integrate your new online CRM software should be a major factor in these considerations. The more time it takes to integrate and onboard your CRM the longer it will take to make your new resource pay its way.

Another major consideration is the time-frame needed to train your sales team. The level of complexity of your chosen CRM can have a major bearing on your salespeople’s willingness to accept or reject a successful onboarding process. Your salespeople are the ones who have to be most comfortable with the new CRM, so they should be the ones at the core of your considerations. The last thing they need is an additional burden to deal with while attempting to do what they do best – namely, sell.

It’s recommended that you and your salespeople take the time to avail of as many online tutorials and free trials as possible during the selection process. The Teamgate Sales CRM offers comprehensive free trials, with the full attention of their highly-qualified customer support agents on-hand to lead you through the process. It is only through trials and hands-on experience of the CRM’s functionality can you fully appreciate how it can enhance your whole sales process.

Who is the onboarding process final decision maker?

At the end of the day someone has to make the decision about which Sales CRM is right for any organisation. Whoever makes that decision has to be absolutely sure that they’ve made the right choice to benefit the whole organisation and its future. The person responsible for the decision will invariably be responsible for the sales process; the company CEO, sales director, BDM (business development manager), marketing manager – however, whatever decision made could be in tandem with the head of the IT department, sales manager, or chief operations manager, and sales team.

Migrate, purchase, or evolve?

The decision you have to make may be simple, or, you may have to choose between migrating to a completely new CRM, taking the step of purchasing your very first CRM, or the process of moving from an Excel spreadsheets-based system.

If your decision is one of migration it should be obvious that problems already exist within your present CRM. Following on naturally from that realisation you will need to look at a new CRM which will address your concerns and provide the appropriate solutions. Teamgate CRM has consistently led the way in providing these solutions for companies who have become dissatisfied with their old methods. By constantly liaising with clients Teamgate have been able to adapt and evolve and to design and provide appropriate solutions to problems, sometimes before you even realise a problem might exist within your sales pipeline.

However, no matter how smart your new CRM may appear the question remains; how difficult will your end-users find the whole onboarding programme? With Teamgate it couldn’t be easier. The product is intuitive, smart, simple to use, has a feel of familiarity and a customer care/support team there to help you through any teething-problems.

If your choice has been to migrate from Excel you’ll be happy to know that Teamgate simply imports all of your important, and hard-earned data, allowing you to continue your sales process almost seamlessly. You may also find an easy means of importing your data to Teamgate from an existing CRM. For teams managing complex data migrations across multiple systems, Integrate.io provides low-code ETL and ELT pipelines that can streamline the process of moving data between databases, CRMs, and other platforms without requiring heavy engineering resources.

No matter how simple any new system is to get used to, you will most likely have teething-problems. That’s why the Teamgate customer success management team are there you guide you through any queries or concerns you may have. Teamgate’s customer success management team are there to help you in a way which suits you best; via email, live chat, phone, or video call. Now that’s service.

The Teamgate attitude to onboarding

Teamgate has always had its focus set resolutely on the onboarding process, and its simplicity.

Looking at the front-end of a new CRM resolution can be off-putting, that’s why Teamgate have tried to simplify the process and offer you help through every easy step of the process. A thorough knowledge of the product and its functions are essential for success. Your sales depend on it. That’s why the subject has become such a fundamental concern for Teamgate.

Here’s how we address the issue:

When starting out with Teamgate you are allocated a dedicated individual and unique customer success manager for your account, to ensure that you are led through the onboarding process simply and personably.
Teamgate will also provide you with free online training sessions, plus a host of online resources to ensure a fast and reliable transition for your success.
For advanced users certain extra customisations can be applied to enhance performance even further.
Newcomers will be guided through the process every step of the way.

The basic steps of onboarding with Teamgate

The first steps of onboarding with Teamgate is getting to know the terminology that you will use on a daily basis to make selling simpler and more effective. Don’t worry, it’s nothing to be scared of; in fact, we’ve simplified the process so much you won’t even realise that you’re learning. This is where you’ll learn the difference between leads, deals, people and companies. Sounds easy eh? You’re right.

In addition, you’ll also learn the best-practices and insider tips and tricks to get the best value from your CRM on a daily basis.

Next up you’ll learn how to import data from your existing files or database. The process has been simplified within Teamgate allowing you to recapture all your valuable information in a more organised space and also allowing you to use the data to start selling immediately.

You will learn how to integrate Teamgate – using WordPress forms – with your website to gather valuable new leads and generate potential new business.

From the outset you will already know the stages of your sales pipeline. Through the settings and customisations functions you can fine-tune all stages of the pipeline, creating and saving all the necessary information relevant to suit your particular needs. Through the roles management function you may allocate owners and collaborators of leads, and or deals, ensuring information is always available to the right hands when needed.

With every marketing campaign, contact, lead, or deal won or lost, a vast amount of valuable information is gathered. Teamgate provides sales managers with intelligent reports and analysis which decipher this information into extremely useful reports, charts and insights, allowing for better sales forecasting and projections, and analysis of past cycles and performance results. This in turn allows attention to be turned to areas of blockage in the pipeline and stages requiring tweaking or improvement.

By means of a multitude of multi-functional integrations – Mailchimp, Zendesk, Twilio, Quickbooks, and a host of others – your Teamgate CRM evolves to become more than just a sales tool, it becomes the workhorse of your whole sales process; allowing multiple, time-saving functions to simplify the complete sales process.

And, as always with Teamgate, our dedicated customer success managers are there to help you with any queries you may have about how to get the very best from your Teamgate CRM experience; from novice salesperson to CEO. Why not take a look today?

And we have the awards to prove it!

The most user-friendly CRM in the market – Capterra Ranking
#4 Best CRM in the market for Q4, 2017 – GetApp
Most affordable and user-friendly CRM – Capterra

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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.

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.

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 use tools like Sendspark, an AI-powered video personalization platform, to send personalized recognition videos to your top performers, making their achievements feel even more special and celebrated across the team.

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.

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.

Whether you realise it or not, your days are carefully designed by no-one else but you. It is you who chooses to skip a morning jog to steal an extra half an hour in bed, or wastes the quiet morning hours checking social media notifications instead of cracking on with the day’s toughest tasks.

If you want to see a change in your routine, to feel a shift in your energy, mood and productivity levels, then you have to take responsibility for your actions and choices. The only way to be more effective is to choose to be more effective.

We have interviewed 6 outstanding entrepreneurs to give you a taste of how people, who are exceptionally productive and achieve more than their peers or competitors, think and act. Feel free to copy and apply the habits that fit into your lifestyle.

Marijus Andrijauskas: “Avoid the Domino effect”

Marijus Andrijauskas is the founder and CEO of Teamgate, a complete inbound sales CRM for startups and SME’s. He credits his high productivity levels to a selection of monitoring and management tools that keep him on his toes every day.

His mornings start with some Tibetan exercises, a cold shower, coffee and world news. Marijus claims this morning routine is a must for him to ease into the day and come to work prepared to move mountains.

“My planning philosophy is quite straightforward. I always try to finish the tasks I planned, whatever it takes. Because it’s like a Domino effect; if one falls, a full row can be down.”

When asked to share his productivity methods, Marijus is very honest: “Multitasking is inevitable these days. I plan to categorize my daily tasks. If it needs a sharp brain, then I do it in the morning. If it’s a creative task that takes time, then I do it in the afternoon with chats/phones off.”

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Maris Dagis: “Keep a short daily to-do list”

Maris Dagis, the co-founder, and CEO of an eCommerce platform Sellfy.com says that the number one habit that allows him to stay highly effective is keeping a daily to-do list. “I keep it short, with just a couple of important tasks I need to do each day. That allows me to focus and be effective every day.”

Maris starts his day with a glass of water, a good breakfast and a short workout to get going. Although he insists it’s “nothing fancy”, ultimately, it’s the routine that puts a spring in his step. “Workwise, I keep a small (2-4 tasks) daily to-do list that I review each morning.”

He has a few tips when the conversation turns to staying effective at work. “At Sellfy, we keep a very broad picture on what to achieve each year and a more detailed roadmap for the next 3 months. Specific tasks are usually planned in 2-4 week short periods and assigned to each team member. For me, personally, it’s zooming in and out constantly to align priorities and see whether we are moving in the right direction or something needs to be changed.”

Maris believes that keeping his email inbox clean, allocating blocks of time without interruptions to get stuff done and keeping the notifications of his devices to a bare minimum are the simple methods that increase his productivity.

**Tomas Laurinavicius: “Practice the ‘either HELL YEAH or no’ rule”**

Tomas Laurinavicius is a lifestyle entrepreneur. As someone who’s known for writing about habits of highly effective people, he has a few foolproof tips to share:

Using the 2-Minute Rule. Overcome procrastination and laziness by making it so easy to start taking action that you can’t say no. If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.

Achieving Inbox Zero. It is a rigorous approach to email management aimed at keeping the inbox empty, or almost empty, at all times.

Achieving To Do List Zero. Just like Inbox Zero, you try to get to zero by delegating, removing and completing tasks in your to-do list.

Setting Reminders. People forget quickly even if it’s extremely important. I set reminders for myself when to stand up and take a walking break when to go to bed, when to follow up on an email, when to call a bank, when to cancel the free trial software and so on.

Saying No. No “yes.” Either “HELL YEAH!” or “no.”

But when it comes to choosing his number one habit that boosts productivity and helps to hit all targets, he is adamant that meditation is the right solution.

Matiss Ansviesulis: “Focus on one thing and one thing only”

Matiss Ansviesulis is the co-founder and CEO of Creamfinance, a company that makes money available by providing one-click loans to consumers globally. It’s backed up by Smart Data scoring method and is currently operating in 7 countries.

Matiss kicks off his day at around 7 am with a salmon or avocado sandwich and a 20-minute jog. One thing he tries to avoid by all costs is checking his email. “I prefer to spend my morning investing in myself both physically and mentally rather than checking emails. That’s, of course, if I’m not traveling which happens around 50% of the time.”

Being productive at work is of major importance to Matiss. His productivity methods range from learning to delegate to focusing on one task at a time. “I’m a fan of GTD (Getting-Things-Done), which is why I try to deal with the issue as it comes. If I can’t solve the issue at that moment, I schedule the time when it can be done and continue. If not – I delegate. I also have a PA who helps me a lot. Also, I try to delegate all the practical, mundane tasks to other people”, Matiss explains.

“My planning philosophy is to focus on the outcome list, not on a to-do list. Every evening I make a short outcome list, which outlines the things I want to achieve by the end of the day. When I come to the office I start with the list and focus on my deliverables. I check my email only after the things are done.”

The one productivity-boosting tip he swears by is to focus on a single task at a time. “I keep things focused. Pick one thing as a priority and one thing only, block out distractions, deal with the issue and move on.”

Einaras Gravrock: “Break big tasks into actionable micro steps”

A serial tech entrepreneur, founder, and CEO at CUJO.com, Einaras Gravrock simply can’t afford to give in to lazy habits. He leads a company that protects homes and businesses against network security threats, such as malware, phishing, and ransomware, and his habit to break big tasks into actionable micro steps is what protects him against failure.

“I start my morning by opening the Calm app and doing one of their exercises to get my thoughts and priorities in order. After that, I tackle any urgent tasks that may have come up since the night before. We have teams in multiple countries so for most of my colleagues my morning is their end of the day. That makes the first part of my day quite intense. I leave the creative work for the afternoon.”

As most of the busy entrepreneurs, Einaras is obsessed with seeing results: “I approach each day with ‘what is the biggest thing I can accomplish today’. If I can focus on what’s truly most important for the business, that one thing which will make the biggest difference, then it’s a successful day.”

But he doesn’t rely solely on his mental strength to maintain the productivity levels. The founder of CUJO lists a few productivity tools that make his life easier: “Evernote for notes and personal priorities, Slack for team communication, Yesware for external communication tracking, Pipedrive for CRM, Trello and JIRA for team projects and priorities.”

Ryan Robinson: “Understand the benefits of opportunity management”

Ryan Robinson, a freelance content marketer for high growth startups and tech companies like LinkedIn, Zendesk, Quickbooks, CreativeLive and more, is nothing short of a busy bee. Besides his intense freelance projects, he also teaches more than 200,000 monthly readers how to start a profitable side hustle on his blog ryrob.com.

His days start early. “My ideal morning, call it about three days each week, starts by waking to my FitBit wrist vibration alarm around 5:00 am. After getting up, I’ll shower, have a light breakfast and bike a few miles to my office in downtown San Francisco by around 6:00 am. I get my clearest thinking done in the morning, so I protect that time very carefully. I make sure not to check my email or social notifications until around 9:00 am after I’ve been able to get a solid block of writing, planning or other mission-critical tasks.”

Ryan uses several productivity methods that help him keep the distractions to a minimum. “My favorite productivity hack that saves me a ton of time each day is scheduling 2 x one-hour blocks of time during my day where I’m allowed to look at my inbox & reply to emails. This helps me stay on track with working on the projects that drive the highest return for me, rather than allowing myself to get sucked into and spend the entire day working out of the never-ending inbox.”

The number one habit that keeps him productive and effective is questioning his use of time every day. “I ask myself many times throughout my day, “is this the best possible utilization of my time right now?” I call this opportunity management and write extensively about it on my blog. It’s the habitual thought process that allows me to properly evaluate inbound opportunities. It keeps myself from biting off new projects that aren’t a good fit at the moment. This way I stay focused on my most important goals.”

Bringing It All Together

Boosting and maintaining productivity is an obsession of big and small businesses. It’s what keeps entrepreneur experimenting with their routines, trying to habitualise skills and sharpen their brain. The biggest secret of the million-dollar industry is that there is no one ground-breaking way to getting stuff done. To summarise, I think it is very clear that all of these entrepreneurs are seeking to be organised, on top of their business and their personal lives. Out of all the tips mentioned above, here at Teamgate, we find that the best way to be on the top of your to-do list is to keep setting up tasks and achievable goals each day for every team member.

Are you a person who thinks that fishing is boring? Or maybe you’re a fisherman who knows how exciting fishing can be? Either way, if you are someone who wants to know why lead capturing compares to fishing, just keep on reading.

Standing on a shore and waiting for a fish to bite can make you feel stupid, unless you have a strategy. If you come at the right time and prepared, if you know what kind of fish you want to catch, and if you have the necessary equipment, you are more likely to go home with a good catch. The same applies if you want to capture more sales leads.

In this article, we discuss how Smarketing can help you to come at the right time and prepared. Also, how important it is to know your target audience and how it can help to capture leads. Finally, we write about the necessary “equipment”, i.e. landing pages, web forms, mobile, and CRM, and share some useful tips and tricks.

Play Smart from the Very Beginning

You may have heard of Smarketing and think that it’s just another fancy buzzword. But we want to prove otherwise and show how exactly it can boost your sales. To begin with, Smarketing integrates sales and marketing processes to ensure a common approach. This can be done by frequent and direct communication between the two departments from the very start of your sales process.

Rule #1 – every marketing activity should be tied to a sales objective. As this article talks about lead capturing, let’s say your sales team has an objective to generate more leads. Here’s where Smarketing comes in. It is necessary to make sure that your sales team identifies what they look for in a lead and communicates this to the marketing team. This way marketers can create targeted campaigns and generate more qualified leads.

It’s worth noting that a CRM may come in handy in this process. With Teamgate, your marketing team is able to manage and track newsletter campaigns, thanks to the integration with MailChimp. Having additional information about leads can ensure that sales conversations become more helpful and consultative. Moreover, you can use Insights to analyze which of the sources are generating the most leads and what impact marketing campaigns have on deals. All in all, a common tool can facilitate the communication, which has to be frequent and direct.

Know Your Prospects and Create Trust

To be one step closer to capturing more leads, you need to take care of your landing pages. Having a standalone page for each marketing campaign is important, but this page shouldn’t just be an in-your-face web form. There’s a lot to think about when designing an attractive landing page, so here are some tips & tricks to consider:

Think about your audience. Your landing pages, as well as your marketing campaigns, should be targeted to either prospects, leads, or existing customers. You may want to think what kind of content is relevant to each of these groups. For B2B sales teams, personalization is key—tools like Sendspark enable you to create highly personalized outreach through AI-powered video, delivering targeted messaging that resonates with specific prospects by name and company context.
Give something back. Make it clear that in exchange to taking an action, e.g. filling out a form, you are going to repay. It can be digital content, a discount coupon, a longer trial, or something else, but whatever it is, it should be relevant to your target audience.
Content is the key. First, your landing page should have an informative headline, ideally, one that matches the CTA message. Second, the intro paragraph must be short but persuasive; listing benefits as bullet points might be a good idea because it’s easy to read. Lastly, you can add visual content to complement the overall design as well as repeat the visuals of your marketing campaign.
Add trust elements. Use elements which show involvement of other people, it can be a number of shares on social media, feedback from your customers, media mentions, etc.
Create a sense of urgency. People tend to stay on a page and take actions if there is a deadline or limitations set.
Look for inspiration and test. Spend some time to gather the best practices and try them yourself. And don’t forget that testing may lead you to the best result. For example, A/B testing can help to identify in what landing pages leads are more likely to convert.

Get the Most by Asking for Just a Bit of Effort

Without doubt, web forms is a great way to capture leads. However, to gather enough data to be able to qualify leads, you need to create well-thought-out forms. Here are some useful insights which may help to get most out of the web forms.

First, just like with landing pages, there is a lot to think about when creating a web form. It should draw the attention and be engaging, e.g. animated or visualized. Maybe it doesn’t even have to look like a form? Think of using attractive design elements, like images, sliders, etc.

Second, remember that shorter forms are more likely to convert, however longer forms may provide you with more information and capture better quality leads. Think about your ultimate goal and add only the relevant fields which are enough to convert and qualify leads.

Lastly, make sure to provide a Privacy Policy statement because people are concerned about the safety of their data. Like with landing pages, provide elements of trust and don’t forget to emphasize the value proposition.

Integrate to Automate Leads Capturing

In addition, to be able to conveniently reuse your data, integrate web forms with a CRM. You can make special forms with the popular WordPress platform and add simple template web forms to all of the landing pages directly from Teamgate. Alternatively, look for a unique tool in the advanced technology platform Zapier. For more sophisticated data integration needs, Integrate.io provides low-code ETL and reverse ETL capabilities that connect your lead capture forms to databases, data warehouses, and CRMs without heavy engineering. Finally, if you are looking for something more specific, a powerful API allows to integrate more systems which you need to capture sales leads.

Image Source: ImpactBND

Be Where Your Prospects Are

It’s no secret that the use of mobile devices has increased over the past few years and is still growing. If you want to capture more leads, you should definitely think of strategies which would ensure you won’t miss the mobile users. Here are some things to consider if you want to be more mobile-friendly:

Establish your presence in mobile apps and consider having one yourself. Yahoo’s Flurry Analytics data shows that 90% of consumers’ time is spent in apps. And if you want to capture leads, you have to be where they are. Platforms like Adalo make it easy to build custom mobile apps without coding, allowing you to create lead-capturing experiences directly on iOS, Android, and web.
Make your landing pages and web forms mobile-friendly. A lot of user start their search using mobile devices, make sure that once they stumble upon your content, they can convert immediately.
Present clear CTA messages – this will help to prevent accident clicks and ensure better quality of your leads.

Finally, think about your sales team and allow them to capture leads wherever they are by using a CRM. Most of the CRMs, including Teamgate, have mobile apps which make it possible to enter new data at any time.

Less Manual Work, More Focus on the Right Things

We have already discussed the importance of good quality landing pages and web forms, which help to capture more leads. If you take care of these, you’re half-way into automating your processes. Now you may just need a good CRM.

Automating your workflows allows to generate leads in a more convenient way. A CRM can help you save time – you won’t have to add new leads manually; instead, you will be able to import them from spreadsheets, various contact lists, or even your social media accounts. For example, Teamgate-LinkedIn Shuttle, a simple integration tool, allows to import a new lead from your LinkedIn profile in just a click. By the way, there are a number of proven ways to utilize LinkedIn to generate new and nurture your current sales leads.

Image: Lead Scoring in Teamgate CRM

Talking about nurturing leads, automated workflows can facilitate it too. A CRM allows to track communication history, plan activities and tasks, push notification, automate lead scoring, and more. Put everything together and you can be sure that you won’t miss an opportunity to contact leads when they are most interested.

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It Doesn’t End When You Catch a Fish

To sum up, if you want to be the one coming home with a good catch, you need to have a strategy and follow it. Marketing campaigns that are aligned with your sales team can be compared to a good bait. The more often you go fishing, the better you understand where to find the fish and how to catch it. Likewise, you need to understand who your leads are and how to capture them; lead scoring is a great for getting to know your leads. Make sure your landing pages and web forms are the “tasty bait” that ensures better conversion rates. Also, don’t forget that the waters are wide and you need to be where your fish are. Establish your presence on mobile; even though it may still be “a small river”, it’s getting filled with more and more prospects.

Finally, remember that you’re not the only fisherman standing on a shore. Maybe you need to get a better fishing rod, or even a boat? Always look for the right tools and improve your sales processes. Start with a CRM which can help you save time by automating lead generation process. The time saved is going to be a valuable asset when nurturing your leads.

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?

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

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. Video can also be a powerful tool in this phase—platforms like Sendspark let you create AI-powered personalized video outreach that tracks engagement signals like video opens and watch time, giving you richer behavioral data to inform your lead scores.

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.

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.

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.

Setting up a “call center”, even if it’s just a small in-office operation, is a pain in the you know what. Even the best traditional phone systems are clunky and hard to use. Tangled cords, managing multiple busy lines, dropped calls, a traditional dialing system produces more headaches than results. We don’t roll that way, sorry. That’s too 1990’s for us.

For inbound marketing and support teams, which often have a lot on their plate already, making and receiving phone calls can be a real drag. Calls -lots and lots of calls- are a must for these teams, but each team member is going to have a lot of other things that need to get done. Fortunately, the right dialing system can cut down on time wasted, as well as hassle, by making it easy to make and manage phone calls. And when combined with modern sales engagement tools like Sendspark, which uses AI-powered video personalization to help teams reach prospects more effectively, you can transform your outreach efforts into genuinely personalized interactions that drive results.

With the right automatic dialer, you get to enjoy the convenience of calling right from your web browser. With an auto dialer, there’s no need for an outside service provider, you can make your calls right through the web. And let’s not kid ourselves, most people these days are more familiar with web and smartphone apps than old school push button phones and all their blinky little lights.

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As a result, with a smart automatic dialer system you’ll spend more time being productive, and less time pulling your hair out, cursing at your clunky traditional phone system, smashing push buttons.

Of course, making a simple phone call through the web isn’t so difficult these days. What’s more of a challenge is finding a great platform that offers the value added services needed to really increase your company’s inbound and outbound performance.

Finding the right autodialer isn’t quite as hard as finding a needle in a haystack, but it’s close. An automatic dialer itself isn’t enough, but when combined with a smart CRM system, you’ll be able to easily manage relationships.

With SmartDialer, you can use a smart management system that enables not only phone calls, but also makes it easy to record, manage, and track your efforts. With our automatic dialer, managing your calls isn’t “rocket science” precisely because we focused on making it easy. You don’t have to waste precious seconds hunting down names and numbers, and then dialing them. Everything can be managed with a few simple clicks.

In fact, SmartDialer is integrated directly into TeamGate’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform. This means you can plug your phone efforts directly into your overall relationship management efforts. This creates a more holistic and complete relationship management process. We hate using buzz words, but in this case it’s warranted: our autodialer will create synergy within your customer relationship management process.

Yup. We said it. Synergy. And our automatic dialer system will actually deliver it unlike all those PowerPoints cranked out by consulting firms. This results in increased productivity. Both sales and support teams are short on time. There are always more clients to call, or more issues to resolve. By increasing productivity, and cutting down on wasted time, your employees will be able to focus on more important tasks.

Using Recordings to Improve Team Performance

Recording phone calls is especially important for sales teams, as well as support and other business teams. Luckily, the SmartDialer autodialer makes that easy. You can record phone calls quickly, securely and with minimal effort. This creates a permanent record of your calls.

Worried about big brother? You’ll be in charge of your recordings. Hypothetically, you could set up some type of Orwellian state in the office, but we recommend using our autodialer for staff training and producing results.

You can use these recorded conversations to improve team performance. Did a sales team land a big sale with some clever tactics? Hand out some high-fives, review those tactics, digest them, and then share with the team. Is a particular issue with your software or product popping up frequently? Lots of hair getting pulled out on the support team? When a support team member finds that great solution for their customer, again you can use the recording to digest. Analyze and share.

When it comes to sales and support, knowledge is power. Simply put, not everyone on your team will know how to handle every single conversation or issue. Of course, some team members are going to excel. Learn from them.

Besides recording conversations, you can also record scripts. Are you a sales closing Casanova that can sweep customers right off their feet? Rock it lover boy (girl?)! And with our automatic dialer, you can record a script to execute those savvy lines automatically. This will save time, and ensure consistency.

Conclusion: In Browser Dialing Produces Efficiency

Seemingly “simple” features like SmartDialer autodialer can provide a huge number of benefits. Efficiency and productivity often isn’t achieved through sweeping changes, but instead smart innovations that save seconds here, and provide opportunities there. That’s the SmartDialer auto dialing system.

No, an automatic dialer won’t provide you with any epiphany on its own. But SmartDialer will free up time and produce better results. What are you going to do with that extra time and profits? That’s up to you. Call more clients, meditate in a Zen garden, solve more support tickets, take a trip to Monte Carlo, whatever.

Calls are important both for sales and support teams, as well as others. Yet phones themselves are growing obsolete. By using an integrated, browser based automatic dialer that’s connected to your CRM, you can cut down on time spent making calls, and thus can gather more data and focus on what really counts: your customers.

If Mark Twain was a salesman, he would definitely advocate the new Teamgate & Slack integration. He once said that “to get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with” and we couldn’t agree more. In the fast-paced society, one often doesn’t have time to stop, appreciate winnings, and share the good news while they’re still relevant. Luckily, we live in the 21st century and technology is at our fingertips – let’s use it to spread the good news!

By now, you most probably know that with Teamgate you can improve communication with customers, boost your sales and implement set goals. But how about letting people know about the success? Traditionally, you could organize a status meeting and gather a group of people in a room. But we all know how busy work schedules can be. You’re lucky if everyone’s at your meeting few weeks after a deal was closed successfully. However, the good news is the most exciting while still fresh.

Fortunately, we know a way to keep your managers and teams up-to-date with your Teamgate activity, even if they don’t have an account! All you need is to use Slack, a multi-device team collaboration platform. Connect an integrated CRM solution to share instant, automatic notifications when deals are won. A few simple steps and your communication is improved significantly!

How does it work?

To be able to set up this integration, you will need the most powerful, yet free, app integration platform – Zapier. With this platform, you can connect various products into one solution to use them on a daily basis. So, you need to connect Teamgate with Slack over Zapier using easy selection steps inside the platform.

Create a new channel on Slack, e.g. #DealsWeWin, and make sure to invite the entire sales team, as well as other interested parties, to join the channel. Now, when everybody, including the Teamgate Winbot, is there, real-time notifications about winning deals will be pushed and the good news shared on the channel. You can setup the notification message yourself – include details about a customer, deal size and value, sales reps, etc. It is even possible to add more sophisticated messages and use them to congratulate your sales team member for doing a great job. Because they deserve this, right?

Added value hides in simple things

For those wondering why this integration is better than tracking winning deals inside Teamgate, for example, using pipelines, insights, dashboard, here’s our argument: with this small feature you can be informed of the same minute wherever you are, with no extra action required. As Slack is a multi-device platform, one can be notified instantly, even on the go, because we cannot live without our smartphones and smartwatches!

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Use Zapier wisely to build different information structures and you will improve your team communication by spreading the good news and appreciating great work. You’ll not only be the first one to do that, you’ll also save precious time spent in status update meetings where, most of the time, information shared is often outdated. For sales teams looking to amplify their outreach, pairing this approach with Sendspark, an AI-powered video personalization platform, can further enhance how you celebrate wins and engage prospects with personalized video messages.

In a nutshell, if you decide to use the Slack integration, you will be able to:

Instantly share information about winning deals with a group of people.
Build the structure of information the way you want.
Improve team communication and reach those on the go.
Appreciate the excellent work.

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 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.

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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. For teams managing complex data sources and integrations, Integrate.io can help streamline your data pipelines so that clean, reliable sales and transaction data feeds into your forecasting models automatically.

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.

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.

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.

Selling does not have to be a number’s game. Companies and salespeople can improve future sales by studying the lost sales. When you imagine the number of hours and energy you have put forward, the only thing that you can be proud of is a call from a prospect telling you that he has changed his mind.

We all have been there. But the truth is, as a salesperson, you have the capability of closing almost every sales deal just like the top 1% of salespeople do. If you have been losing more sales than win, this article is about to show you a couple of things that you can start doing today to close more business.

1. Take Serious Study on the Sales System

Selling is a system. If you follow the sale system or circle, you will know the weak areas that you are performing poorly. If you have happen to have lost the sale in the past, all you need to do is study that particular sale from the presentation stage to the closing stage. From there, you will know the weak areas that are making you lose the sale.

If you have had past success, you can also take a close look on how you sealed that deal. If you start studying both the winning and losing sales, you will get a market gap that you are not fulfilling. It can be like you changed your presentation with the new deal that you lost. Or, it can be that you became so confident that you scared away the prospect. Taking both studies is the beginning of closing more business in the future. Tools like Sendspark, an AI-powered video personalization platform for B2B sales, can help you refine your outreach by letting you record a single personalized video message and automatically generate thousands of individually tailored versions for each prospect.

2. Get Through Feedback from Your Previous Client Whom You Have Won the Sale

You have heard it a lot that you need to get feedback from past clients whom you have lost the sales. It is right. But, chances are only a few of those clients will be bluntly honest with you. Others will give you vague generalities like, ‘the product or services is not good enough’. You will not get a real answer that can help you close more business in the future. The only people that can help you are your previous customers, who have bought your services.

You can start conversation by telling them like:

“You are one of our most valuable customers. Now, my company wants to improve your life even better with this product or services. Why did you buy our product or services? What excited you about it? Is there anything that you would want our company to introduce or include in the service or product that can make your life easier and more comfortable?”

You can always get more creative and ask more questions. Now, depending on the answers that you will get, take a study of the kind of words your customer is using to describe your product or services. You will notice that they are using simple words, not corporate words that many salespeople use when doing their presentation. If you get the right words they use, this can help you change your presentation a little bit and use the exact words when doing a presentation to a new customer.

The exact words that the customers use are usually the hot buttons. Now, if your customers tell you that your company needs to improve in certain areas of your product or services, you need to be thankful because these customers will be buying from you for life. It means you can sell them more your product or services and they will be willing to buy. And you can always tell them how your product or services perfectly fit what they are saying.

As a sales company or a salesperson, it is so easy to get to know the concern for your existing customer so that you can see a way of selling to new customer.

3. Know Your Competitors

Chances are there is something unique that they are doing to close more sales deals. Your job is to study that. You begin by knowing their product or service better. Then your job is to come up with a major difference, which can be a great selling point. That difference is what you need to sell to the customer to close the deal. For you to get this, let me give you a short example about a pizza shop.

“Do you like pizza? Our competitor will tell you that they can create fresh mozzarella, but they don’t tell you that they buy it pre-shredded in a big plastic bag. At John’s Pizza, we hand-shred our mozzarella every morning. Our competitor will tell you how convenient their home delivery service is, but they won’t tell you that their average delivery time is over an hour. John’s Pizza delivers in 28 mins or, your pizza is free.”

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If you can get this difference from your competitor, you can win more business deal. You can win more sales deal than your competitor. All you need are these 3 tips that can help you change your marketing approach. It does not have to be that. You need the determination and commitment to make every sales deal count. If you can think through these ideas, you can improve your sales. Because now you have found what your focus is to spot the weak areas and see how you can serve that market better and efficiently.

The sales company and salespeople struggling today lost most deals in the past and moved to the next without doing a flashback of what happened. That is the key difference between top 1% of the salespeople that make it and the bottom 80% that are struggling.

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:

Prospecting
Cold calling
Follow-up
Presentation
Closing The Sale

For you to be successful in selling, all you need is to learn the five key areas and improve on them. Tools like Sendspark can help you excel in prospecting and follow-up by enabling you to create personalized video outreach at scale, turning your one-to-one communication into a repeatable system.

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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.

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.

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.

Now that the Rio Olympics have ended – let’s see what we can learn from the world-class athletes who competed there.

These athletes are working to go to the pinnacle of physical achievement; this means whatever lessons you learn can be applied to achieve entrepreneurial or sales success.

1. Prepare to the Best of Your Ability

This lesson is the most important and fundamental lesson you can learn from an Olympian. Do whatever you can to prepare.

Gather information by reading the bestsellers or joining networking events. Work tirelessly on your projects. Work out the kinks by going through the process again and again. Familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the company or way of work.

“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity” – Seneca

Olympians prepare for every scenario and outcome, and so should you. Work down to the last detail and you will have maximized your chances of luck working in your favor.

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2. Adjust to the Circumstances

It is not uncommon to find, despite your preparations, things aren’t going your way. It is necessary to be able to improvise and keep going when your plans fail you.

You can see it is a common occurrence with rhythmic gymnasts to keep going and finish the routine when they lose or drop their apparatus. They know that their slip up will cost them valuable points and time, but it is even more important to salvage what time is remaining and complete the routine.

So it is that you too must keep going if and when a mistake happens. But it can be helped by some of the preparations you’ve made. Being knowledgeable and familiar with your work makes it easy to improvise and get back on track. Do not be discouraged!

3. Find a Mentor

Every athlete looking to compete on the world stage has a coach. Their coach trains them, provides them with knowledge accumulated through the years, has necessary connections, and much more. Why would you forgot a mentor as well?

This lesson is important for the young generation as well as the experienced. An instructor allows you to observe techniques and skills in a live environment. You will get first-hand experience and knowledge from the source. You’ll also be able to save a lot of time from trial and error through mentor teachings. With another person present, you’ll have the ability to bounce ideas off of them and compare notes to track progress. Remember to learn from them! For those pursuing technical careers or interested in developing new skills, platforms like Treehouse can provide structured learning with live instructor support to complement your mentorship journey.

The second option, if a mentor is unavailable, is to join a group of peers who share the same interests and goals as you do. You’ll be in constant competition, keep up to date with current trends and ideas, and have help available to you if you fall short.

A side effect of having peers with the same goals is that it keeps you on track and avoids procrastination or other distractions. You’ll be improving because the group will be improving. It is a similar dynamic to Olympic teams; teammates push each other to do better constantly because there are limited spots available in an event.

4. Work In Cycles

Our bodies naturally perform in cycles. The most common cycle is the circadian rhythm. Our body’s natural clock functions in a daily cycle; this means the body functions in 24-hour periods. We work, eat, sleep, and do whatever else we need to do in these 24 hours. This idea is true for people on earth as it is for astronauts in space.

Olympians know that rest is vital to their performance because it is necessary after a day of training. So, this too applies to the salesperson. After working a long day, trying to close or learn a new technique, you must set aside time to recover. Take a break and don’t think about work. Do anything but work. Remember, work and then rest. On and off.

5. Always Set Goals

Athletes prepare for the Olympics months and years in advance. With this long period, it is easy to lose sight of your goals because what you want isn’t in the immediate future. Now, what do athletes do to stay on track each day?

They set goals for themselves. Long term goals that are years away can be made easier by breaking them down into monthly goals. Then, those goals are made more precise into daily tasks. Now, you have small checkpoints to know you’re keeping on track. Tools like Baremetrics can help track your business metrics and progress toward financial goals, providing the visibility you need to stay accountable to your daily and monthly targets.

Do not underestimate the power of this technique. Spend some time to do a small task and it will be easier to do more. Then, do it every day and you’ll have reached your goals sooner than later.

6. Assume the Sale

If you have watched the Olympics, you will notice some athletes definitively stating they will take home the Gold. You will almost always see this type of declaration in Boxing. You may ask yourself, how can they say this and not worry about backing it up?

What is important to note here is the mentality these athletes have. They already assume they’re going to win, and so they shall as the saying goes. It even helps them because if they have made such a bold statement, then there is no choice but to make it come true.

Take sales for an example. It is the case that assuming you will get the sale naturally leads to the sale. Your mind focuses on the goal, and your body acts accordingly. It is a powerful tool and useful reference point for you to have when you are working.

In conclusion

If you follow these six lessons, you will see an increase in your productivity and results. Do all you can to prepare; then lady luck will be on your side. If, in the slimmest of chances, fate goes against you, adapt to the circumstances! Learn from an expert, or from the like-minded. Keep in mind that, work and rest are two sides of the same coin. Use goals as a tool to keep on track for long-term ventures. And when all of that is complete, have the mindset of someone who has already won.

Customer Relationship Management software, in theory, is a godsend for companies everywhere. It offers many different capabilities in all areas of operation. It offers the capability to handle automated phone calls for customer service, generate marketing campaigns based on the stored information of customers, and streamline data entry processes so employees can spend less time inputting information into spreadsheets. Companies should be leaping at the opportunity to use this technology and cut back on other operating expenses, then, right?

CRM Software – Pitfalls and Confusion

As it stands, CRM software is subject to the same pitfalls and confusions that any disorganized department within the company would be, and these pitfalls cost money. Data gets inputted incorrectly or not at all, leading to inaccurate information; records of phone calls aren’t recorded properly, so customers may receive duplicate calls regarding a product or issue; inaccurate data on a person’s whereabouts leads to completely irrelevant marketing campaigns being generated for them. The issues are numerous. So why invest a bunch of money in this new software and then have to double back and input the data that CRM software misses? It’s understandable that many companies out there don’t want to use it just yet.

While there is hope on the horizon, it’s difficult to say how close or far away we are from a point where the software can be effectively utilized across the board from a technological standpoint. There are issues that need ironed out, for sure. But companies have a lot to figure out in the interim, as well – there are some key issues that they face to implementing said software.

First, using CRM company-wide can prevent a lot of issues where the topic of keeping complete records is concerned. If every department utilizes the same technology, it greatly reduces the number of gaps in the records that are likely to be left. Many companies already utilize a common operating system that is slightly specialized for each department, for example; those companies that purchase the license for the software would be able to utilize CRM in the same way, specializing the platform slightly for each department so that the tools better suit their needs.

Is CRM Software A Substitute For Good Communication?

Communication is also key. CRM software at its peak is definitely capable, but it’s not a substitute for good communication within a company by any means. If departments just rely on CRM doing what it does and don’t bother to communicate otherwise, it will just lead to more confusion and inefficiency, which hurts the bottom line. Especially where sales and marketing departments are concerned, good communication is absolutely crucial, and the best way this can take place with CRM in use is to allow employees the ability to update information as necessary. With customer service complaints, for example, this function could be extremely important – for an issue that requires follow-up, the original person who spoke with the customer may not be available. And how frustrating would it be if the next person to help the customer had no prior knowledge of the situation, and CRM hadn’t effectively recorded the information? The customer and the customer service rep are both unhappy and more time has to be spent gathering information again. Giving employees the ability to update the information lessens the chance of this happening greatly. Again, CRM can be a very efficient tool, but employees need to be able to act as a safeguard against inefficiency when necessary.

Data Flow in CRM

Data flow is also extremely vital – systems used by a company have to be able to communicate. Without the ability to translate the information received across different programs the company uses, CRM is significantly less useful. For companies managing complex data integration across multiple systems, solutions like Integrate.io can facilitate seamless ETL and data pipeline connections between CRM platforms and other business applications. The technology has to be able to suit everyone in the company, from a sales representative to a top executive. After all, what good is it if the data a customer service rep needs is in the CRM database, but is unavailable to the program used to handle customer service issues? We end up with a situation like the one previously mentioned: frustrated customer, frustrated employee. Data flow and the ability to cross-communicate will make all the difference in the world for companies looking to use CRM to streamline their operations processes.

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CRM software is a big investment for a company to make, especially in terms of time and budget. To make it work effectively requires a top-down overhaul: programs already in use need to be made compatible with CRM. Employees may need training to properly use the software. Policies regarding operations may need to change to reflect the way the new software is being used. Despite all of this, it can be worthwhile and can eventually save companies money in the long run by allowing them to cut down on expenses like payroll and preventing the need to outsource to more call centers. But these companies will have a lot to figure out about how the new software will require them to adapt. Without proper communication between employees and programs alike, and without making sure the system is used company-wide, CRM implementation can easily fail. That’s why you must take a closer look at charts of top CRM tools and make sure that CRM you plan to implement is capable to overcome all these pitfalls and confusions mentioned.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly come a long way from where it began. From robots programmed to play chess in the 1950s to AI designed to allow cars to run on autopilot, the technology has improved by leaps and bounds. Pattern recognition capabilities for AI have become so much more intricate and complex, especially with the advent of technologies like cognitive computing and natural language recognition. Now more than ever, artificial intelligence is able to receive extremely intricate inputs and make sense of the data collected. Where the technology sits today is a far cry from the artificial intelligence we knew just a decade ago; every day, more advancements are made. It is little wonder, then, that artificial intelligence is being looked at as a way to improve Customer Relationship Management software.

In theory, CRM software is wonderful. It collects input from all sorts of sources – phone calls, email correspondences, and the like – and neatly and accurately places all of that information into databases where it’s easily accessible for marketing and customer service purposes. It’s a dream come true for many companies – the ability of automated systems to accurately collect and utilize information has the potential to help cut back on large, difficult-to-control expenses like payroll.

Outsourcing to a computer should be more economically beneficial than outsourcing to a call center, after all. The efficiency of CRM allows sales reps to focus more on achieving sales goals and less on data input. It allows companies to generate marketing campaigns based on a customer’s geographic location, and it even knows when to send automated customer service and marketing calls. Customers never deal with blunders like duplicate sales calls, and companies get a much better return on their investment by making sure their marketing campaigns are as true to the target audience as possible. Great, right?

Data Leakage and Data Missing

Again, this technology is great in theory. The hope is that CRM is capable of doing all of this and more, but the reality is that some CRM tools just aren’t up to snuff. While it sounds crazy for a business to not jump on the CRM software bandwagon, many companies are still leery of the technology – and with good reason: it could be a huge investment for a system full of inconsistencies. At this time, many companies don’t want to even try to utilize the technology because some part of the CRM software on the market is plagued with potentially horrible problems like data leakage, inaccurate information, and sometimes even missing data altogether. The prevailing attitude among businesses these days seems to be that outsourcing to call centers is still more efficient and better for the bottom line than using the call centers’ automated counterparts – after all, a human can reason and logically deduce where to place that information as it is collected, leading to greater accuracy. Lots of businesses are using CRM, but many, many more are not. CRM technology needs to be improved – and AI has the answer for all of its troubles.

Having More Effective CRM for More Benefits

It’s a daunting task, but it can be done. The type of AI used today is what’s known as Artificial Narrow Intelligence, or ANI. This technology is everywhere – from your cell phone to your car’s fuel injection system. This kind of AI is designed to recognize a specific set of parameters and trigger a reaction to them. The chess-playing robots of the 1950s were incredible at chess, but don’t ask them to organize any files on your computer- they simply can’t do it.

ANI can be fine-tuned to recognize speech patterns and figure an according response; and this kind of technology is exactly what CRM needs in order to improve hyper-compartmentalized ANI components that excel at recognizing data and accurately inputting said data into the correct spot to be utilized later. Again, it’s more complicated than it sounds, but here’s where startup companies could swoop in to save the day. Companies like Integrate.io are pioneering low-code data integration and transformation solutions that help teams connect data across databases, APIs, and CRMs, powering the kind of accurate, reliable data flows that CRM systems desperately need.

Lots of startup companies may be focused on fine-tuning this technology to be successfully implemented in CRM software in the future, ultimately making it even more effective. Doing this has great advantages for all parties involved – by increasing CRM efficiency, the technology becomes more attractive to potential business customers – after all, higher accuracy means a better return on investment, and ultimately an even better bottom line. And startups can benefit by selling the improved software.

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Whether a company opts for cloud-based CRM – Software as a Service – or a CRM database hosted on their own server, the improvement in the quality and accuracy of the tech will be evident in sales, marketing techniques, and customer service. From chat bots pulling relevant information from correspondences and storing the data accordingly to more accurately tracking the geographical location of customers, the benefits are numerous.

Conclusion

Let it be said that this technology has a long way to go. The task is daunting and there are many pitfalls. However, with startup companies beginning to hone AI technology and implement it effectively in the future, the dream of even more effective CRM software may be closer to a reality than many of us realize.

In today’s competitive markets, any company delivering services or products needs to constantly market in a bid to try and reach more people. As your sales team works tirelessly looking for new leads daily, it may get harder and frustrating over time. This is where CRM comes in. Every company who sells something, whether items or services, needs CRM. A CRM tool is a necessity because:

1. It lets you register your contacts and leads

2. It is possible to track customer interactions and build networks

3. It helps you manage and store your customer data

When it comes to capturing new sales leads particularly, this can be one of the hardest tasks for any sales team. Previously, it involved a lot of hands on work on the company website, events and use of advertisements. However, with social media platforms like LinkedIn, reaching a greater number of potential clients has been made so much easier. The only issue now becomes management of the sites and integration with the company systems. This is where Social CRM comes in, and tools like Sendspark can enhance your outreach by enabling personalized, AI-powered video engagement with prospects directly through your LinkedIn and email platforms.

Deeper into Social CRM

This CRM feature, simply involves using technology and particularly social media to interact with customers and build networks. This is as a result one of the major business growth tools for any serious company. Taking the importance of social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and many others in marketing today, it is necessary that CRM systems integrate social media sites. Especially with younger generations as a target, companies use social media to bring attention to their services, products, or brands, in order to build up customer relationships and increase the overall demand.

By having platforms like LinkedIn on the database, companies can communicate with customers to get and also track feedback like opinions, complaints and experiences. With such information, a company can get more insight into how they are perceived and know how to improve. CRM software platforms can also combine these social media trends and the internal survey data to make a comprehensive report. Thus, you as a company can make better decisions and improve their brand, products or service.

Social CRM and LinkedIn

LinkedIn is great for looking for new opportunities and sales leads. Moreover, on LinkedIn, through use of customer communities, clients can directly post reviews and interact with you and fellow customers in real time.

By use of referrals and follows, a company can therefore capture new leads and easily reach new markets. Through such interactions, finding new potential customers and building relationships should be a much easier task! Therefore, it is easier for sales teams to go through the whole sales pipeline where they can easily find leads, work effortlessly to turn them into opportunities, and finally complete with a sale.

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This is not forgetting Mobile CRM which refers to CRM apps for tablets and smartphones. This makes work more mobile for marketing professionals and sales representatives using GPS and the LinkedIn mobile app. That way, they can easily offer quality services while on the go. Best of all, now there are some software tools which allow you to easily import data to your CRM tool directly from your LinkedIn profile, such as name, company name, title, email address and telephone number, if provided.

To conclude, companies nowadays should consider using these CRM tools that can offer some social integrations, creating value for every company to capture new leads faster and with less effort.