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Do You Need a CRM?

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | Do you need a CRM?Customer relationships are crucial to the success of any small business. Recently, customer relationship management (CRM) has gained popularity. The use of the best free CRM software is a tremendous accomplishment. To what extent may implementing a customer relationship management system predict the success of your organization? Here are some problems you might be going through in your business that might indicate that you need a CRM:

The Quantity of Leads is Unmanageable

CRM could be handy if you are trying to handle the inflow of consumers you are having. A sophisticated CRM system will categorize and prioritize leads so that your sales team can respond to them promptly.

You Are Unable to Locate Any Client Information

In the past, spreadsheets, emails, and post-it notes may have been adequate for your organization. Your team’s ability to see consumer interactions and make timely decisions will be hindered as it grows if it continues to use obsolete tools. A corporation should utilize a customer relationship management system to enhance sales and customer retention.

You Are Unaware of the Members of Your Sales Team

Monitor your sales force both at home and on the road. Using a sophisticated CRM, team members can rapidly update information from their mobile devices, allowing you to monitor and respond to real-time changes. A dependable customer relationship management system enables accurate monitoring of company operations and revenue forecasting.


Inept Interactions With Customers

Acquiring new clients is a challenging endeavor. The last thing you desire is subpar service. If your customer service team spends more time reacting to problems than proactively addressing client expectations, you may want a customer relationship management system. Case management and a comprehensive customer view enable you to impress and retain customers.

Reasonable customer relationship management solutions promote knowledge sharing and case assignment among customer support agents. Customers can acquire answers through self-service forums, allowing operators to focus on more complicated problems.

You Are Responsible for Managing the Accounts Over the Long Term

There are numerous types of consumers. No one wants to feel as though they are unimportant to you. By keeping track of significant anniversaries and accomplishments for your most valuable clients, a CRM system may enable you to send timely emails demonstrating your concern for their company. A CRM system can also be used to monitor employees. This allows you to adapt to future encounters and retain a relationship with a client even after contact has moved on.

The Preparation of Reports Wastes Time

Manually entering data into reports deprives salespeople of time they could spend making sales. The centralized nature of CRM platforms’ data storage facilitates analysis and reporting. Periodically, some programs can “clean” client data by adding missing information and deleting duplicates. They can also synchronize your account and contact information with your CRM.

The Path to Your Growth is Obscure

Describe your strategy for acquiring new customers. Is your confidence in the scalability of your company warranted? It may be time to consider a customer relationship management system if your approaches and resources are insufficient. A scalable solution allows your organization to grow without sacrificing efficiency. A scalable CRM software/Sales CRM system can expand and adapt to your business. On the Salesforce AppExchange, there are close to 3,000 corporate applications.

Taking Your Business to the Next Level: What to Do

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Taking Your Business to the Next Level: What to DoIt is very common for businesses to plateau once they are past the growth stage. Business owners might find it difficult to grow their businesses beyond certain levels or to even increase their revenues. The good news is that there are a few things you can do to take your business to the next level, unlocking additional opportunities for sales, revenue, and overall business growth.

Leverage Technology

Technology can be a huge help when you are looking to unlock untapped opportunities. It can help you know where you are wasting money and where to spend it to help with customer acquisition and improve your marketing ROI.

Technology, specifically machine learning and artificial intelligence, can be very useful in helping you discover new opportunities in your market. They can help you analyze the data you are already collecting, helping show areas of underutilization and opportunities you are not already taking advantage of.

Use a Different Social Media Platform

Many businesses pick one or two social media platforms and use those as their primary marketing channels. If you are having a hard time growing on social media, you should consider using new platforms.

Doing so allows you to open up your business to new customers, and you can then start marketing them to turn them into leads. It also gives you more points of engagement with past and potential customers. This is especially important if you are already reaching them in other ways and on other platforms and are having a hard time converting them.

Ask for Outside Help

Sometimes business owners do not seek outside help because they know understanding the businesses at the level they do gives them an insight into how to grow it. This level of involvement can be a disadvantage because such business owners do not see what changes they can make or strategies they can employ to help their businesses grow because they think they know it all.

Sometimes it is good to take a step back and ask for outside help. The help should come from someone with extensive experience in running, managing, and growing businesses and who has done the same with many businesses. A business expert like Rami Cassis helps decision-makers and CEOs with strategies, expertise, and tools that help them take their businesses to the next level.

With such a partner providing their expertise, business owners and other stakeholders can get out of their own way and let the expert guide their business to the next level.


Build a Skilled Team

Sometimes, lack of growth or plateauing is caused by not having the right people in the right positions. A strong team comprised of people in positions that leverage their skills, experience, expertise, and knowledge can help your business expand, set new goals, and achieve them either in the mid or long term.

Remember that you do not always have to hire new people to see growth, an audit can help you discover people who would be incredibly helpful but who are being underutilized in their current positions.

Growing a business or taking it to a new level when it has hit a plateau can be difficult especially when you think there is nowhere else to go. However, there are always additional growth opportunities — you just have to know how to unlock them.

The Business Benefits of Lean Management

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | The Business Benefits of Lean Management

If you are looking for ways to ensure that your business is as efficient and as profitable as possible, then taking a closer look at lean management is probably a sensible idea.

What is lean management? It is a production method that focuses on reducing times during the manufacturing process, whether it is in the production itself or at the logistics end. It is a method that aims to strip everything back to its bare essentials with a view of increasing productivity.

What are the benefits of lean management?

There are a number of benefits you are likely to see if you adopt a leaner approach to running your business, including the following:

Faster lead times

Perhaps, the biggest benefit of adopting a lean management style is that it will enable you to get things done much more quickly than you are now. Anything that is unnecessary will be stripped away, leaving you and your employees to focus on getting the job done.

Any step that is not vital to the manufacturing process will be removed, and stricter inventory processes will be implemented to ensure that you always have just the right amount of inventory for your needs which means less time managing excess stock and more time working on the task at hand.

An improvement in quality

A lean management style is likely to lead to an increase in quality because it enables you to more easily identify any problems in your manufacturing processes, and it will also help you to come up with more innovative solutions to those problems, Not only that, but it enables you to invest in things like automation and better cleanroom design which will lower the number of mistakes and defects that are made well in advance of them hitting the marketplace.

Better levels of customer service

With a lean management style. Every step of the process is documented, which means, when problems do arise, you can more quickly resolve them by checking the log and pinpointing issues. It will be easier for you to make the customer happy when you have all of the information you need to help them, and even more importantly, all of the info you need to eliminate aspects of the product that the customers find unnecessary.


Greater efficiency

Of course, when it comes to efficiency, lean management is hard to beat. Working practices are standardized and the best processes are put in place to make working in your business as simple as can be. Not only is this good for efficiency in and of itself, but it helps to boost staff morale too, and as you will know, happy workers are more productive workers.

Peace of mind

When you implement lean management practices, you have the peace of mind that comes with knowing your business is optimized to the nth degree.

As you can see, lean management can reduce errors, increase productivity and boost your bottom line, so be sure to consider it for your business going forward.

Choosing The Perfect New Building For Your Restaurant

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Are you interested in setting up a restaurant? If so, then there’s a key ingredient that you have to get right to guarantee your success. You must ensure that you choose the perfect building for this new business. Here are some key factors you must take into account making this decision.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Choosing The Perfect New Building For Your Restaurant

Location

First, you should think about the location of your restaurant. Location is key when it comes to getting the right level of foot traffic. If you choose the wrong location, then your restaurant will already be destined to struggle. When looking at the location, consider aspects such as transport links. Your restaurant needs to be accessible to as many people as possible. Don’t fall into the trap of choosing a building that looks great but there’s nothing around. People aren’t going to drive out of the way to take a chance on a new restaurant. It needs to have a local base of customers ready to bite.

Exterior

You need to look at the exterior of the property as well. This is important as without the right aesthetic and curb appeal, you will struggle to build up the right level of foot traffic for your restaurant to be a success.

You can of course buy a building and then spend time improving the exterior. But there will be buildings that already have a beautiful outside and a modern design. This guaranteed to help you attract customers once you are ready to open the doors of your restaurant.


Facilities

Next, you should think about the facilities that are available in the restaurant. For instance, you should consider whether you require a cold storage area. Depending on the food that you are serving, this could be essential. You may also need to buy equipment and convert a space using solutions such as a sliding door cooler. In terms of other facilities, your restaurant will require two restrooms or spaces that can be adapted for this.

This is one of the reasons why the cost of the building is just the beginning. Once you buy or rent a property, you will need to spend time and money adapting it to match the requirements of your new business venture.

Space

Finally, you need to think about the space that a building will provide. No one wants to eat in a cramped restaurant and a small space can also throw off the vibe of an area. It’s important to think about the capacity that you want or expect for your restaurant and ensure that you have the space to match. Don’t forget, a lot of businesses will expand their space by adding outdoor areas. However, this will be seasonal and you’ll also likely need planning permission to add an area like this once your restaurant is up and running.

We hope this helps you understand some of the key points that you should consider when choosing the right building for your exciting, fresh restaurant. In doing so, you can guarantee that you do attract customer interest and easily hit profitability in your first year.

4 Considerations Before You Buy Your First Business Property

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Are you getting ready to open the doors of your company? If so, then you might be looking for the best business property. There are lots of factors that you should keep in mind here. These are some of the key points we recommend you do consider before settling on the right place.

Location

First, you should think about the location of your new business property. This is important for customers, clients, and even employees. Believe it or not, employees can be put off working for a business if it’s not in the right location. You should think about issues such as transport links as well as ease of access. A business property in the middle of nowhere might be available at a lower cost. But this won’t be useful if you can’t get people to come work for your company in the future.

Liability

You may also want to consider issues with liability when you buy your first business property. As the owner or manager of a property, you will be responsible and liable for any issues at the address. Essentially, you will be taking on all the responsibilities of a landlord. This shouldn’t be taken lightly because it can have significant ramifications for you. You may want to consult with a premises liability lawyer to find out exactly where you are legally exposed here and the steps you should take. For instance, you could consider hiring a health and safety officer.

Security

Next, you should think about issues with security. It’s important to be aware that these days it’s common for large and small companies in a variety of different industries to be targeted with hacks and security attacks. This doesn’t just include online attacks either. A criminal may go straight to the home point of your company to attack you and steal data or assets. That’s why you need to ensure that you do have the right security setup in place. For instance, you could choose a building with a remote CCTV system. This will allow you to monitor your property at any time.

Size

Finally, you could consider the size you need for your new business property. Don’t forget that a larger business property is always going to cost you more in the short and long term. This means bigger energy bills and a more expensive upkeep. It might be worth instead opting for a smaller hub for your company. If you do this, then you can use a hybrid working model. This essentially means that team members will alternate between working from home or remotely and working within the office setting depending on needs and requirements. You could even consider using a virtual office to cut the costs down completely.

We hope this helps you understand some of the key considerations that you do need to think about before you buy your first business property. In doing so, you can ensure that you choose the right home for your business now as well as in the years that lie ahead.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | 4 Considerations Before You Buy Your First Business Property