Qualified vs unqualified leads

/in , , , /by

From prospecting clients, managing relationships to closing sales, they are a million things on salespeople’s minds. For them to do what they do best, they need to know the right direction. They need to know the best relationships to nourish at the right time to convert the right people.

Digital and outbound marketing teams help the sales segment leads into either qualified or unqualified leads.

Qualified versus Unqualified Leads

Unqualified leads are not necessarily bad leads. It just means that they are not yet at the point of their buyer’s journey when they are ready to purchase. Sometimes, it just means that they currently don’t know about your product’s benefits and how you’re different from your competitors. Other times, it means that you are offering a solution that they don’t need yet or that they currently can’t afford.

With enough time, effort, and coordination, unqualified leads can be converted into paying customers. But even after they are acquired, they are less likely to repeat their purchase or remain loyal to your brand. On the other hand, qualified leads are like low hanging fruit. They are often in the process of being nurtured by your campaigns or have already completed it.

Qualified leads are those who can afford your offerings and can make the final decision to purchase. They are likely to have already researched on you or your competitor’s products with an intent to buy.   They have a problem in mind with your product or service as a possible solution; They are more likely to repeat their purchase and be loyal customers.

How to have more qualified leads

Each company will have a different way to segment and define their version of qualified leads. A combination of historical data, industry knowledge, and internal marketing studies can help companies identify their ideal customers. The more defined your company’s ideal customer is, the easier it will be for sales and marketing teams to find them.

Getting qualified leads require seamless work between sales, marketing teams and even customer services teams. For every stage of the sales cycle, there needs to be enough information to help them make a decision. Even qualified leads need education on why they need your offer and why they should purchase from you and not your competitors. It’s also important to keep track of why customers buy from your competitors, or just don’t buy from you again.

Handle your leads more effectively with the use of crm enablement platforms like Hey DAN. With their data entry, management, note-taking, and profile management, you can make sure that you’ll never lose sight of a qualified lead even after they convert.

By utilizing Hey DAN’s Voice to CRM technology, your sales teams can work on the things that matter. Instead of wasting their valuable energy on time-consuming administrative work, they can focus on what they do best. They can make sure that each nurtured lead into not just purchase but lifelong loyalty.

Lead Generation Channels

/in , , , /by

Lead generation is the necessary first step that all companies must do to be able to find the right customers in a sea of strangers. The rise of the internet and social media has changed the businesses sell to customers. Instead of shouting from mountaintops hoping the person will hear, brands now can speak with their ideal customers with a few clicks.

There are two ways the main channels to generate any kind of leads: online and offline. But between those two channels are endless ways to find the right customer who’ll have a need and can afford your offers. Here are a few common ways that companies can generate leads:

The Two Types of Lead Generation Channels

Online

  • Digital Advertising
  • Free Trials
  • Exclusive Sales
  • Webinars
  • Free Items with Sign up
  • Cold Emailing

Offline

  • Networking Events
  • Sponsorship
  • Show Rooms & Exhibits
  • Activation Booths
  • Cold Calling
  • Discount Card

Both lead generation channels will have their pros and cons. Online lead generation campaigns are generally cheaper and more targeted, but they are also more prone to fraudulent data. An offline campaign is more likely to generate correct information through form validation techniques. However, it is harder to pin down their actual conversion rates and at higher risk of fraudulent data.

The Role of Lead Generation in the Sales Pipeline

What the two channels have in common is that both can only be as effective as the overall strategy and execution excellence. It’s not enough to do them in passing. Campaigns must work with the right mindset, timeline, and expertise.

All great sales teams know that while generating leads is the first step, other steps need to happen before they become customers. A Lead must be assessed through both sales and marketing departments before they are qualified and prioritized. The lead generation process requires help from both marketing and sales teams. Customers need to feel listened to with the right content at every stage. Even after they make a purchase, companies still need to listen to their feedback make an effort to keep them as lifelong customers.

CRM and Lead Generation

No matter where the leads come from, companies will still have to manage each relationship. There’s no better way to do this than to utilize Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. A well-designed and maintained CRM system is one of the best tools that any company in any lead generation campaign.

Thankfully, there are sales enablement platforms like Hey DAN that can be your partners in not just generating leads but also nurturing them even after purchase. Hey DAN can help you with the initial data entry and management to maintaining your sales pipeline. With their expertise having served thousands of clients before, Hey DAN can help you spot opportunities that you may have missed. Companies can benefit from their years of experience dealing with clients from different industries to maximize their sales performance through optimum lead generation. Don’t just dream of quality leads; think of lifelong customers that are advocates for your brand.

Issues with CRM Form Validation

/in , , /by

We all know that not having a CRM system is difficult, but having a bad one is a nightmare. There are many consequences to having CRM systems with bad data from internal misalignment to angry, frustrated customers.

From lost time to wasted resources, companies are better off preventing bad data than just trying to clean them up. One way to avoid this is by creating proper forms that validate content before it’s added to the system.

Why Form Validation is Important

Forms are tricky. Besides having the right fields, they also have to have a great customer experience. There’s nothing more stressful than customers or sales representatives filling out several boxes, and then receiving a validation error afterward.

A great form that is optimized is a key element for converting customers and keeping your sales teams efficient and effective. Whether it’s for your external or internal customers, making sure the experience is seamless is necessary. But what are the issues companies face with validating their forms?

The Three Common CRM Form Validation Issues

Lack of Progress

When forms are filled and rejected, many people tend to feel like they have wasted their time. Many single page forms that look daunting will make people dread to fill them. When people take time to share information, companies should treat every second as valuable. Not being able to give people a sense of progress will make them resent their experience.

No Separation of Erroneous & Correct Fields

Rejected forms are bad enough on their own, but CRM forms that do not make it clear what you did wrong is worse. A lack of visual cues on invalid fields can mean users spend more time than necessary trying to figure out what they did incorrectly, instead of correcting their input. Customers waste their time sorting through multiple fields with little assistance.

Form Abandonment

Nothing bothers users more than getting several errors in a row. When a customer’s form is not accepted more than a couple of times, many people will call it a day and abandon it altogether. Sales representatives who are already spending 2/3 of their time doing admin work will be prone to delaying data entry, causing issues with your sales pipeline.

How to Avoid Form Validation Issues

Form validations issues require a joint effort between UX designers, web developers, and sales teams. It starts with choosing the right fields, validating them both in-line and after submission, and making sure the customer is always happy throughout the process.

Avoid scaring away customers and stressing out sales teams by reducing errors in the data entry process with Hey DAN. With expertise from seasoned CRM professionals, Hey DAN can help your company optimize your CRM forms efficiently.

Hey DAN can also take your company a step further with their specialized voice to CRM technology, which combines machine learning and real people to make sure your data is up to date, relevant, and valid. Hey DAN makes sure that your customer relationships always start with a good note.

How To Keep Your CRM Data Clean

/in , , , , , /by

Your company’s CRM is a treasure trove of information. A combination of prospective customers and existing relationships, the effectivity of CRM systems will mean the difference between thriving and surviving. Great CRM keeps both the management and their sales teams aligned. It should be a centralized system that makes sure companies will never miss out on opportunities. It’s a powerful tool unless your data is all wrong.

In a webinar by DiscoverOrg’s CEO Henry Shuck, he revealed through a study that bad data cost companies approximately 550 hours and as much as $32,000 per sales representative. If you’re not taking the time to maintain your CRM system’s data, it doesn’t matter how much resources you’ve spent. Good campaigns with bad data don’t convert customers. They waste money.

How common is flawed data?

According to Salesforce, 70% of CRM data becomes unusable and obsolete every year. Customers change with time; they move houses, change jobs, and get married. The list goes on.

To realize the maximum value of your CRM investment, you need reliable, accurate, and up-to-date information. To have this, you have to do two things: make sure that the data entry process is flawless and do routine cleaning of your existing data.

Why Data Entry & Hygiene Is a Problem

A common problem that sales teams experience is that they don’t have enough time to do all the administrative aspects of their job. The study says that of over 2900 sales representatives worldwide says that admin activities use up 66% of sales representatives’ time on average. These activities are more often than not unrelated to their essential core function – selling.

Sales representatives are also people; they have limited capacity that a company must manage effectively. Salesforce’s State of Sales report says that sales representatives only have 7% downtime while on the job. With minimal breaks between engagements, sales reps regularly have their plates full. Sales teams are prone to not only having flawed data but also high chances of burned-out staff and high attrition rates. High turnover rates with delayed data entry can lead to wasting company acquisition resources and loss of institutional memory.

Finding A Better Solution

Instead of using your sales team’s valuable time to do the CRM data maintenance, you can outsource this to integrated systems like Hey DAN. Data automation through sales enablement specialists can not only assure you that your data is timely and accurate, but they can also improve the context of your relationship.

In just a single recording, Hey DAN is a customized voice to CRM solution for all your data capturing and hygiene needs. From the first time you speak to a client to the automated follow-ups, you’ll have a range of expert assistance for your CRM maintenance needs. From data clean up, mining, and management, you’ll not only save your team’s energy; you’ll also be gearing yourself for sales success. If you’re not confident in your company’s data, CRM enablement partners like Hey DAN can help you get there. Book a demo with us today.

9 Fields of an effective CRM template

/in , , , /by

 

At the heart of every CRM system is a CRM template. Make sure that your teams don’t miss asking the right people the best questions. Check out these fields and see if your CRM template is as effective as it could be!

Work Information

Whether your product or service is for other businesses or freelancers, it’s paramount to know their position, job title, and company name. This allows you to identify stakeholders and key decision-makers that will likely need your product or service.

Name

A customer’s name is the fundamental element of a lifelong relationship. According to Campaign Monitor, personalization increases email inbox open rates by as much as 26%. In a crowded marketplace where everyone is trying to sell you something, sometimes being called by your name makes a huge difference.

Contact details

After learning about your potential lead, the next step is knowing how to engage with them. With the rise of social messaging platforms, you can find a way to interact with people even without knowing their traditional contact details. To achieve institutional memory you have to make sure the data stays not just with your sales team but with your company.

Estimated Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

When a company begins to grow its CRM system, there needs to be a way for your team to know the estimated value that you expect to get from your customer and their company.

Prioritization

Once you have the Customer Lifetime Value, you can determine where to spend your team’s resources and prioritize nurturing high-value relationships.

First and Most Recent Contact

After engaging with your customer, it’s necessary to keep track of when you last interacted with them. Being able to identify how long each stage of the CRM system will reveal how to improve it.

Status

Whether it’s in the demo, pricing discussion, or pilot stage, it’s good to know exactly where you are with each of your customers. When you are aware of the objective for your recent contact was, you’ll know where to bring the conversation next. Status tracking helps for when the relationship has to pass on from one employee or department to another.

Next Steps

After you’ve made the first touch, it’s important to note when the right time to follow up is. Many executives have their hands and their schedules full; they would appreciate timely follow up. On the other hand, not timing it can make you appear unprofessional. Make sure to give just enough time to engage people without being too pushy!

Additional Notes

It’s important to remember the little things. Whenever a customer shares their opinions or preferences, it’s a token of their attention and time. They may have change requests or reservations about your product or service that you’ll need to address before your next engagement.

While the CRM processes are different per company, customizing the right fields is only one part of the equation. Authenticity, usability, and timeliness of the data are equally important. Avoid making mistakes during the data entry process by partnering with integrated systems such as Hey DAN’s Voice to CRM solution. Get the right data to the right people at the right time.