3 Business Areas, 3 Business Solutions, 3 Business Benefits

Being in business is never a breeze. But then, not many entrepreneurs embark on their own business venture and expect an easy life. They want to be challenged, to chase their passion, and succeed. So, along with all that, you have to expect a headache from time to time. The good news is, not every avenue in business has to be hard. In fact, once you’ve found your feet in your chosen industry, you can actual work to make your working life a lot easier.

Business has a lot of areas for you to work on, but there are three that can be harnessed to help your business blossom. Between sales, marketing, and customer service, you’ll find that most of your operational issues will be covered. Yes, finance, admin and human resources all matter and make up the glue of your business, but it’s the former three that can really convert work into cash.

Whether you’re looking to grow your ecommerce business or notice a change in your consultancy, by implementing a few new solutions in each area, you should start to see things change. Work will become more efficient, your results will increase and most of all, you should start to see those dollar signs rack up.

Sales

When it comes to sales, not everyone is comfortable with executing every part of the sales funnel. So, it becomes crucial that you get your systems in line to make the process as smooth as possible. From cold-contacting to reaching out to warmer leads and sealing the deal, your sales activity can benefit from these solutions.

Streamlining Your Technique

If you’re not naturally sales driven, you can often find it hard to drive the department yourself. So, it’s going to help you to be continuously improving the sales techniques you use. You’ll often find that it’s a process of trial and error. Not one avenue will work for every single company. Instead, you need to find the best approach for your business. Whether it works to champion your customer or focus on your value proposition, you need to test the waters to know which technique is going to seal the deal.

Knowing Your Status

Sales can be all over the shop if you don’t have a system. Do you find yourself or your staff making a few calls on a Monday one week and then following up with an email on a Thursday the next? If you’re inconsistent and have no idea what you’ve done, and when, the chances are our efforts won’t be very effective. Instead, you need to have a reliable sales tracking system. Actioning your sales process is only half the battle. You have to be able to record your actions and learn from them if you’re ever going to improve.

Concentrate On Your Customers

It’s common in sales to be constantly on the lookout for new customers and new sales opportunities. But, you could be doing yourself and your business a huge disservice by not focusing on the customers you already have. Rather than chasing after prospects time and time again, focus on your loyal customers and see if you can’t resell to them. McGraw-Hill discovered that 68% of lost retail customers shopped elsewhere because of business indifference – that’s a huge percentage to lose because you’re focusing your efforts elsewhere.

Marketing

Even when you’re a marketing whiz, you can often find that your creativity dries up from time to time. Whether you want to be able to wow your audience with a great campaign or really drill down into your customer needs to re-target them, these solutions should give you a little food for thought.

Amp Up Your CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a huge part of the marketing process. Not only is it your way of reaching out to a new audience, but it’s also your way of keeping your current prospects warm. Whether you opt to manage it in-house or get someone like Delta Comtech to deliver Microsoft Dynamics, you need to be able to gain control of how you utilize CRM. By having your customer and prospect details in one place, not only have you got every bit of data in one place, you can start to conduct valuable research too.

Get Your Research Right

Consumer research isn’t anything new, but it is critical to your marketing efforts. Whether you’re planning on getting out into the market and collecting insights, or researching a little closer to home and refining your CRM, you need to be able to have a strategy in place constantly. With research, your marketing efforts will always be targeted. And with targeted marketing, you’re more likely to find that your campaigns are more effective. So start to formulate a market research plan and value those results – they could make or break your next big push.

Push Your Creative Boundaries

Once you’ve found a marketing process that works for you, it’s easy to stick to it. Whether it’s a promotional channel that you prefer or a type of PR, you can often be selling yourself short by not experiencing other avenues. To test the waters, why not go big with your next campaign. Pushing yourself creativity is often one way to stand out and get attention. If you’ve found that you or your business is currently in a marketing slump, trying a new form of media or shaking up your ad strategy could be exactly what you need.

Customer Service

Being able to keep your customers is crucial to business. Regardless of your industry or whether you market B2B or B2C, angry, frustrated or disappointed customers can be a real cause for concern. So, to keep your business in check, it’s time to implement some killer customer service solutions.

Home In On Your Approach

Customer service can be tough. But, if you find that your business is drowning in this area, you just need to find life raft that fits. Sometimes, all you need is a few fresh ideas. Whether shouting about the customer support you receive is the answer, or sending personal thank you notes could do the trick, if you don’t try, you may always be stuck in the same position. But, by starting to streamline the way you care for your customers, you’ll keep them coming back.

Train, Retrain, And Train Again

Sometimes, your customer service stagnation isn’t anything to do with your approach, but a lot more relevant to those executing it. So, it’s for your own benefit to make sure that you stay on top of your staff training – and your own for that matter. Whether you take on someone new, or stand by a new training regime every few months, emphasizing certain winning ways will always help. Pushing empathy techniques and encouraging clear communication, stressing the importance of knowledge and working on listening skills could all help. But above all, make sure your staff are always prepared to go the extra mile and always admit their mistakes.

Use Reliable Software

Sometimes, your approach can be flawless, and your team can be award-worthy, but your systems just aren’t up to scratch. If that’s the case, you need to find the best customer service solution for your business and fast. You need to be able to keep all of your client information, queries and complaints in one place and know when to respond. Without a killer package to help you keep track, you could be digging yourself an even bigger customer-service-sized grave.