Sales status

The sales process can be managed and monitored using a CRM system. The sales process drives the sales pipeline. All sales opportunities can be be categorised by sale value, timing and probability.

• Sale value. The estimated value of the sale based on current knowledge.
• Sale timing. The date the sale will be closed.
• Sale probability. The probability of winning the sale.

Sales pipeline management

Milestones and probability

By establishing a set of milestones and assigning a percentage probability of sale against each it is possible to factor and hence track the value of all sales over time. Thus your complete sales pipeline can be tracked and appropriate sales activity applied to close sales.

An example …

A sale opportunity is identified with an estimated value of £10,000 with delivery in 6 months time. As the opportunity has not been qualified you may give it a probability of 5%. The future value then of this sale is therefore £500.

However, 3 months on:

• You have made a proposal and the value of opportunity now £12,000.
• You are not in exclusive discussion with the customer.
• You think you may be the preferred supplier.

The sale probability is now 60% so the future value has risen to £7,200.

Finally, after 6 months hard work you win the deal, the contract value is £14,000 and you start next week!

Assignment of sales milestones and probability

With a range of businesses out there it’s not possible to give firm guidance on milestone vs. probability.

However, the best policy is to apply your business knowledge to identify a small set of milestones that are clear and unambiguous that relate to progress through the sales pipeline. Follow this with % probabilities at each milestone of closing the sale based on past business experience in winning orders.

How can we help?

We can work with you, using our proven ‘Business First’ approach, to identify and implement a sales pipeline tracking system for your business. To discuss further please contact us.

Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system will enable you to develop a deeper relationship with your sales leads and customers through targeted communications, tracking actions and modifying your engagement approach based on results.

What CRM options are there?

There are a number of CRM solutions available to businesses at various price points either delivered as an internet based service or run locally. The optimal solution will be dependant on the complexity your customer base, mix of products and/or services and who will require access to your data.

Regardless of solution, flexibility and day-to-day ease of use are key to making your data work for you.

CRM basics?

There are three principle elements to building and using a CRM system:

• Capturing contact data. Designing a contact record to capture the right level and granularity of information to enable targeted correspondence with your customer base.
• Filtering data. Being able to ‘slice and dice’ your information to target individuals accurately with relevant communications. This is where a CRM system releases the potential of the information you have recorded.
• Recording results. Being able to track the results of your communications such that future communications can be based on this ongoing dialogue.

The CRM contact record – some basics

Every business has different information needs however, the basics of any CRM system is to be able to characterise individuals or companies with a series of attributes.

Mandatory data

Some attributes should be mandatory, for example the persons last name or their address post code. Wherever possible dropdown selections, tick boxes and the like should be used as this forces consistency in data entry which makes subsequent filtering much easier.

Consistency of data

Consistency of data is the biggest problem in any CRM system as inconsistent data makes data filtering very difficult (that well known expression of ‘rubbish in – rubbish out’).

For example, Hampshire and Hants are the same county but only the first 2 letters are the same. Filtering to get everyone in ‘Hampshire’ would miss out everyone in ‘Hants’ and visa versa.

Who owns your CRM data?

A strange question possibly, but very important. As your business grows many people will have access to your business data; both reading and entering information. Without somebody having overall data ‘ownership’ your CRM data quality will inevitably decrease which has a direct bearing on its value to your business. The data ‘owner’ has the responsibility of ensuring data quality through audits and staff training.

Finally, as your customer database is your business it makes business sense to guard who has access and the type of access they have to avoid both data loss to competitors and data breaches.

How can we help?

We can work with you, using our proven ‘Business First’ approach, to identify and implement a CRM system for your business. To discuss further please contact us.

To find out more about building customer relationships read our blog on Customer Relationship Management. For more information on email direct marketing see our blog on Email Direct Marketing.

The problem – how to manage your business contacts list?

As businesses we all collect contact details and other information about our customers and sales leads. The question is how to organise and use this information to benefit your business?

Understanding your business relationships

If you understand the business needs of your contacts you will be in a good position to create sales opportunities and build deeper business relationships.

Broadly, your business relationships fall into two categories:

1. Sales leads. Those people who have shown an interest in your business but have yet to purchase from you.
2. Customers. People who have purchased from you. You will be in a good position to develop this relationship further resulting in future sales opportunities.

Managing your business relationships

Communicate with your sales leads and customers in what ever format is most appropriate; email, text, letter, fax, telephone or even face-to-face! The key things are:

• Relevance. Make what you say relevant to their needs.
• Records results. These results will inform you how to continue an ongoing dialogue to grow the relationship.

How can we help?

We can work with you, using our proven ‘Business First’ approach, to identify how best to manage your business relationships. To discuss further please contact us.

For more information on email marketing see our blog on Email Direct Marketing.

A QR or Quick Response code is a code that is readable by camera ‘phones and bar code readers.

Where would you use it?

The pattern contains encoded information provided by you; your website URL, text or some other data. Typically this is added to your website or business card to enable visitors to capture your contact details quickly and efficiently.

This is my vCard QR code. It contains:

• My name.
• Company name.
• Telephone number.
• Email address.
• Postal address.
• Website address.
• Additional information.

The QR code can be used in all sorts of innovative marketing situations from flyers to marketing ‘give aways’ to estate agent for sale or let boards to provide visitors with a website URL or additional information.

What else can be encoded?

In addition to the vCard used above you can create a QR code containing various other pieces of information (this one is a brief description of our business using the Text option). These are:

• Text (as shown to the right).
• Website URL.
• Telephone number.
• SMS message.
• Email address.
• Email message.
• Contact details (vCard as shown above).
• Event (vCalendar).
• Google maps location.
• Wifi login (Android only).
• Paypal ‘Buy Now’ link.
• Social media.
• iTunes link.
• YouTube video.

With this range of options the possibilities are only limited by your imagination!

How do I generate a QR code?

Google QR code of course! There are many websites offering the capability to create QR codes.

Generate or buy a list of email addresses, create an email, blast everybody on a daily basis and wait for results.

The recipients mark your emails as spam and delete them; you derive no business benefit, it harms your reputation and likely you get reported as a spammer. Game over!

Let’s consider the fundamentals …

Build an email distribution list

First your list must only contain people who have opted in to receive emails from you else you and your business will get classed as a spammer.

Some ideas to use in building an email distribution list:

• Via your website where people can opt in to receive regular communications.
• ‘Give to get‘ where visitors provide their email address in return for receiving some specific information.
• Asking existing clients and contacts to subscribe to your distribution list.

Before you build your email list consider how you will want to ‘slice and dice’ or segment subscribers to your list(s) to enable you to target specific groups.

This email list will form a key element of your customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Target your emails and measure response rates

Key to email marketing is:

• Ensure everybody on your list has opted in – absolutely fundamental.
• Get a validated email address – absolutely fundamental.
• Allow people to unsubscribe – absolutely fundamental.
• Target decision makers and make it personal.
• Content should be well crafted and relevant to the recipient.
• Visually interesting and consistent in branding and structure between successive emails.
• Include a ‘call to action’, ideally time limited to generate urgency.
• Don’t make it too long. Include hyperlinks to relevant web pages for further information.

Measure your email response rate

Email campaigns should not be considered a ‘fire and forget’ activity. It is important to measure the campaign response rate in order to feedback into future campaigns.

Response rate measurement can be further enhanced by undertaking comparison testing between different email formats within the same campaign. This indicates relative effectiveness between the various formats and is a very powerful way of improving your ongoing email marketing.

Email marketing and email list manager service

If you bulk send emails use an email marketing service. These services are set up for high volumes and will be registered with internet service providers (ISPs) as non-spammers.

These services also provide automatic recipient unsubscribe facilities as well as email development and response measurement tools like opening and clicks – vital for feedback on how your emails are being acted upon.

Email list security

Your email list is a key part of your business. It takes time (and therefore has a value) to build so don’t loose it or give it away.

Benefits and disadvantages of email marketing

Driving visitor traffic to your website to ‘find out more’ broadens your opportunity to cross sell other goods and services and additionally, aids site search placement ranking.

The disadvantage of email marketing is that it is uni-directional. You are totally reliant on the receiver doing something with the email which is why it is so important to make it interesting, relevant and include a ‘call to action’.

How can we help?

We can work with you to:

• Set up a suitable email marketing service.
• Identify how to segment your customer base for maximum benefit in email campaigns.
• Develop email templates for use in your direct marketing email campaigns.

Additionally, if we build your website we can include an opt-in email marketing sign-up for your web visitors linking to an email marketing service should you require this.

Contact us to discuss setting up your email direct marketing solution.

Actually, both. So, what is the relationship between marketing and sales and how do they work together to generate new business? Start with an overview …

Marketing

You might have the best product or service available but without marketing you have no business.

Marketing raises your profile so letting customers know you exist and what you can do for them.

Key to marketing is knowing where purchasing decision makers look and how to make contact with them.

A website supports your business marketing. Visit these links to find out why a website supports your business marketing or to find out why you should have a website.

Our ‘Business First’ approach to website development is geared towards understanding your business and marketing needs.

Marketing generates sales opportunities which transfer to your sales pipeline.

Sales

Sales opportunities, either from your marketing efforts or prospecting existing customers are added to your sales pipeline and some ultimately convert into orders.

The timeline for closing sales in the pipeline varies depending on the type of business your run. Inevitably along the way some sales opportunities will be lost through being qualified out either by the customer or you, lost to competitors or the opportunity just goes away.

The key thing to remember is that if you are not talking to your prospects then they could be talking to your competitors.

Performance Measurement

The third element of any the marketing and sales process is measuring your marketing and sales effectiveness. Through this measurement process you will be able to improve your sales conversions into orders.

Sony is to stop selling floppy disks from March 2011. The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM.

Earlier this year Sony stopped selling the disks in most international markets due to dwindling demand and competition from other storage formats.

The slow death of the ‘floppy’ or ‘diskette’ began in 1998 when Apple decided to not include a floppy drive in its G3 iMac computer. Since then various other firms have stopped support for floppy disks, including computer giant Dell in 2003. Computing store PC World stopped selling them in 2007.

However, Sony has continued to sell the disks, and continues to ship them in the millions. But, the firm – which claims to have produced the first 3.5in (9cm) disks in 1981, has decided to halt sales completely faced with competition from online storage and portable USB drives.

RIP Floppy!

What’s Wrong with IE6?

It was designed when few international web standards existed and the capabilities required to deliver on-screen web content were fairly limited and easy to achieve with a dominant browser solution.

In addition, IE6 is more susceptible to security problems which were not envisaged when the browser was first designed.

Since 1995 web standards have been developed and new browsers have come to market. These browsers have converged to follow international web standards which benefits both consumers of web information and web developers who struggle to deliver rich content on a browser that is not up to the task.

Finally, later browsers provide better internet security features than IE6.

Why should I Upgrade?

Recent security breaches, well reported in the press, had the French and German governments recommending to their citizens not to use IE6.

Additionally, there is a growing movement of businesses and web application developers who are dropping IE6 support. This is because IE6 can no longer deliver the browsing experience expected by visitors because of shortcomings in available functionality and compatibility with other modern browsers.

Which Browser Should I Choose?

There are choices but all of them will give a better and more reliable browsing experience than IE6.

The dominant browser (although becoming less so) from Microsoft is IE8. The next most popular browser is Firefox, followed by Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

All are available as free downloads with automatic updates as new releases are published.

The question is, how to determine what these should be to make it easy for a visitor to find your blog post?

Why categorise and tag blog posts?

Simply to enable visitors to quickly get to the blog post which interests them and answers their question.

In addition to adding categories and tags, posts can also be date/time coded. Using these three approaches (category, tag and date/time) allows postings to be ‘sliced and diced’ so that your visitor can get to the relevant blog post quickly.

How to identify categories and tags?

This is known as designing the blog taxonomy – identifying unique categories and tags that will be used for all blog posts.

There are two things to consider:

• The greater the number of categories and tags the finer grained it will be possible to set each blog post.
• Too many categories and tags can result in blog post subject overlaps which can easily results in too many low quality visitor search matches.

Getting started …

So, the best approach is to start off with a small number of categories. These could be the main goods or services you provide or main subjects that you will blog about. It is worth recording these.

Next, create some initial blogs and categorise them. When this is done identify an initial set of tags and tag these blogs.

Finally, review how the blog categories and tags are distributed and make any changes.

Thereafter, as you create new blogs try to use these blog categories and tags unless there is a good reason not to.

NTL (now Virgin Media) installed the first broadband connection in the UK in 2000. Since then the number of connections in the UK has grown to 18.3 million.

In the last 10 years broadband has changed the way we live and work be it shopping, holidays, home working and everything in between.

The next challenge for broadband providers to increase network speeds. Today only people who live in high density conurbations enjoy high-speed internet access. The rest are stuck in the internet slow lane, particularly those who live in rural areas or a distance from their local telephone exchange.

Over 2.75 million homes cannot get broadband of a minimum of 2Mbit/s. Next-generation broadband holds out the promise of even more revolutionary ways of doing things so the imperative is for network providers to deliver high speed internet access to everybody who needs it.

As people increasingly expect ‘always on’ availability to information businesses need to consider how they will respond to the challenge of meeting information consumers demands and doing business 24/7/365.