CRM Archives - BaseCloud CRM

What Are The Benefits Of Using CRM Software?

Quentin Grundlingh — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:48:50 +0000

CRM offers many benefits and advantages by collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data.

Some benefits and advantages of CRM systems:

Enhanced contact management

Every call, question, negotiation, and touchpoint from prospects and clients are recorded and accessible to the entire team with a centralised contact management system.

This boosts sales, marketing, and customer service teams in terms of tracking, pipe progression and client history.

Cross-team collaboration

Build on the expertise of individuals — a CRM system enables people from different parts of a business to work together.

A sales team can collaborate with a product team to produce bespoke quotes. At the same time, a marketing campaign that generates a lead can equip a salesperson to have a more informed, tailored conversation with the prospect.

Increased productivity

Cut out administrative tasks like follow-up emails and \”catch-up\” meetings with management.

With a CRM, follow-up emails can be auto-generated and tested for effectiveness, management can easily access the most recent details of a customer meeting, and customer service administrators can learn a customer\’s background without leaving the call.

Empowered sales management

Empower sales managers with data to analyse customer relationships, track sales-related activity, assess deal viability, mobilise extra help when needed, and provide teams with real-time updates.

Manage sales pipeline and all the individual milestones along the way, from lead generation through to closing.

Integrated sales forecasting

A single source of truth makes it much easier for sales managers to make accurate forecasts, thanks to their visibility of sales in the pipeline.

Sales teams can learn from the past and forecast the future through historical data. At the same time, predictive analytics uses big data insights to anticipate future customer behaviour.

Reliable reporting

Get an at-a-glance view of its sales pipeline so it\’s simple to spot potential issues and nip them in the bud.

As well as making data digestible, reports improve team productivity by saving time that would once have been spent pulling data manually or laboriously creating pivot tables in spreadsheets.

Improved sales metrics

Nurture the right prospects quickly and efficiently by zeroing in on the leads that matter. CRM data and reporting systems provide insights into conversion effectiveness at various points in the sales funnel.

Once a business better understands its customers, upselling and cross-selling opportunities arise– opening up additional business opportunities from existing customers.

Increased customer satisfaction and retention

An easily accessible view of a customer’s interactions to date makes it easier to anticipate issues and deal with complaints.

This creates a more positive experience for customers who no longer have to endure the frustrations of being bounced around between departments and channels and having to re-explain their problems each time.

Better marketing ROI

Effective tracking helps businesses to understand what marketing activities and campaigns are practical for their client base.

Campaign tracking provides actionable insights into what type of marketing works for which customer, making it easier for marketers to maximise their budgets and deliver greater ROI.

Enhanced products and services

A sound CRM system will gather information from various sources across a business and beyond.

This gives unprecedented insight into how customers feel and what they are saying about an organisation — so businesses can improve what they offer, spot problems early, and identify gaps.

Why choose BaseCloud CRM?

BaseCloud CRM is the most advanced CRM system in South Africa. It provides all the essential functions of a world-class CRM system, with custom-made features from individual customers and a hands-on approach.

Functions Includes:

Integration capabilities:

Email integration – Tracking and automatically logging emails.
Calendar integration – Tracking and automatically logging meetings in the CRM.
Integration with other software packages – Integrate your CRM with your accounting and other software.

2. Automatic lead tracking:

Automatically track calls
Automatically track emails
Automatically track forms

3. Automatic ROI calculation: Calculate the ROI for each of your marketing channels.

4. Insights about your current business inefficiencies: Easy-to-understand insights on the areas where your business can improve.

5. Dashboards & Reporting: Customisable dashboards and easy reporting.

6. Opportunity & Pipeline Management: Get insight into and track your entire sales process, from your team to your clients.

7. Task management: Create, manage and share tasks with your team.

8. Sales process customisation: Every business is different; you need a CRM system that understands be customised to fit your sales process.

9. Ease of use: Clean & uncomplicated design.

10. Value for money: Pricing suited to the South African market.

The post What Are The Benefits Of Using CRM Software? appeared first on BaseCloud CRM.

What is CRM Software? Customer Relationship Management Software Definition and Insight

Quentin Grundlingh — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 08:11:24 +0000

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management software, helps business owners track all communications and nurture relationships with clients and potential clients.

CRM software replaces the many spreadsheets, databases and apps that some businesses patch together to track client data. What is the result of an effective CRM system? Better organisation, efficiency, better time management, and impressed clients.

What does CRM software do?

CRM software records customer contact information such as email, telephone, website, social media profile, and more.

It can also automatically pull in other information, such as recent news about the company\’s activity, and store details, such as a client\’s personal preferences on communications. The CRM system organises this information to give you a complete record of individuals and companies, so you can better understand your relationship over time. CRM software improves customer relationship management by creating a 360° view of the customer, capturing their interactions with the business, and surfacing the information needed to have better customer conversations.

Why is having a CRM system important?

CRM enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.

Forging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM\’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customisable dashboard that can tell you a customer\’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more. If your business is going to last, you need a future strategy. For forward-thinking companies, CRM is the framework for that strategy.

How do different business functions benefit from having a CRM system?

While the importance of CRM has traditionally been as a sales and marketing tool, some of the most significant gains can come in other areas, such as customer service, HR, supply chain and partner management.

Here\’s how different business functions benefit from using CRM:

Sales teams can use CRM software to understand their sales pipeline better

Sales managers can access reliable information about the progress of individual team members in achieving their sales targets, for example, and see how well individual sales teams, products and campaigns are performing.

Sales reps benefit from reduced admin, a deeper understanding of their clients, and the opportunity to spend more time selling and less time inputting data.

Marketing teams can use CRM to make forecasting simpler and more accurate

They can get clear visibility over every opportunity or lead and map out the whole customer journey from enquiry to sale, giving them a better understanding of the sales pipeline or prospective work coming in.

It\’s also possible to include information from customers\’ public social media activity – their likes and dislikes and their sentiments about specific brands and businesses.

Customer service teams can effectively track conversations across channels

A customer might raise an issue in one channel – say, Twitter or Facebook – but then switch to email, phone or live chat to resolve it privately.

Without a common platform for customer interactions, communications can be missed or lost in the flood of information – leading to an unsatisfactory response to a valued customer.

Supply-chain, procurement, and partner management teams can manage relationships better

They can track meetings with suppliers and partners, record requests, add helpful notes, schedule follow-ups and stay on top of expected next steps.

Reporting enables businesses to compare the efficiency of suppliers and so manage their entire supply chain more effectively.

The HR team can use CRM to accelerate recruitment and track employee performance

CRM can help the HR function by speeding up the onboarding process, automating the process of managing candidates, analysing resourcing needs and identifying skills gaps, and supporting the pursuit of staff retention targets.

Consider how convenient it would be to consolidate all the data streams from sales teams, customer service staff, marketers and social media—and translate them into actionable business information. A CRM platform lets you manage these data streams across channels without losing track and gives sales, service, marketing, and beyond an integrated view.

What are the different types of CRM systems?

Operational CRM systems

A sales plan lays out the business\’s objectives, strategies, and goals by selling goods or services.

It must include the required details on the target audience, current customers, revenue goals, market conditions, financial targets, the structuring of the team, pricing, and tactics used.

Analytical CRM systems allow companies to use data like:

customers\’ interaction history
preferences
contact information

To better understand their behaviour and modify business processes to drive desired outcomes.

Some examples of analytical CRM processes include data warehousing and data mining, where companies review data in aggregate to discover patterns and gain insight.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM systems can help your marketing, sales, and customer service teams cross-reference customer interaction data.

This helps provide a complete picture of each customer\’s wants and needs and how they prefer to interact with your organisation. Some examples of collaborative CRM processes include interaction management, which tracks customer communication across multiple channels, and channel management, which uses that data to help companies decide how to engage with their customers. Consider this CRM if your employees live remotely or your customers\’ interactions with your company are primarily digital.

What is the CRM cycle?

Reach:

The marketing team drives brand awareness through effective audience segmentation and delivery of compelling campaigns and content. Customer Acquisition: Getting prospects to take a \”next step\”, such as downloading a document on your website, signing up for a webinar, or filling out a form. Conversion: Conversion occurs whenever a lead becomes a customer by completing a purchase, whether through the sales team or via self-service, like an online ordering portal. Retention: Once you have customers, you must ensure they stick around. Provide top-notch customer service and support to ensure that customers return to you repeatedly. Loyalty: This means more than repeat purchases. Your most loyal customers will expand their stake in your company. For example, they may upgrade to a higher service tier or buy a product that complements their original purchase. If you have a CRM system in place, you can help drive these upsells with customised recommendations.

Why should I invest in a CRM system for my business?

If you can articulate a clear definition of what a CRM success story would be for your business, you\’re already on the right track. Some other signs it\’s time to consider a CRM for your business:

Your sales team needs help knowing which leads to prioritise.
You need real customer data.
You need visibility into your sales team activity.
You spend more time putting together reports than you do analysing them.
You don\’t know what\’s next for your business.

Depending on the size of your organisation, you should also ensure you have buy-in from executives, a dedicated project lead, and (of course) a budget.

Can I grow my business using CRM software?

Studies show that CRMs can improve your company\’s conversion rates by up to three hundred per cent. So you can grow your business with a CRM – provided you select the system best aligned to your business needs.

How do I choose CRM software?

Your CRM system should speak to your business\’s needs. The relevance to your business is the main priority.

Next, your CRM software provider should have a hands-on approach to assist you with challenges with the software and training to help you get the most out of the system you\’re paying for. Read more about choosing the right CRM software for your company here. Are you interested in benefitting from a CRM system for your business as soon as possible? Contact us today to learn more about BaseCloud CRM, the most advanced CRM software in South Africa.

The post What is CRM Software? Customer Relationship Management Software Definition and Insight appeared first on BaseCloud CRM.

Choosing CRM Software

Quentin Grundlingh — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 07:15:08 +0000

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a game changer for most businesses out there.

For many business owners, it is not a question of whether to implement a CRM system but rather a decision of which CRM software to go with.

In essence, CRM software allows a business to maintain relationships with their clients seamlessly whilst tracking their leads, insights, and much more.

A CRM system replaces a spectrum of software, platforms and databases that businesses typically use to track a variety of things across many different departments.

Why Implement CRM Software?

With the nature of CRM software coming down to customer tracking, management and communication, CRM offers a variety of benefits for a business.

The most important thing to consider when choosing a CRM system is which software will benefit your business the most.

By understanding what CRM software entails and how it affects your business, you can improve every aspect of your business, both internally and externally.

Where do I start?

The first step seems basic, but it is often assumed and overlooked. To ensure the best fit for your business, you must first identify the needs and requirements of the business itself.

Think of the minor details to the more obvious, bigger ones and work from there to ensure the best fit for your business. CRM software is not a one-size-fits-all that your business has to fit into but a jack-of-all-trades solution to be customised to meet your specific requirements.

What To Look For In CRM Software

For internal purposes, CRM software improves streamlined communication between departments.

This adds to the overall productivity and efficiency of the business as a whole. In terms of the external appeal of CRM software, it enables you to stay on top of all communication with clients and keep track of insights that help your business grow.

Why is using a Cloud-Based CRM system better?

The transition of CRM systems from on-premises to cloud-based software has brought with it a range of benefits.

Businesses no longer need to install software on multiple devices in order to connect their various departments. Shifting data and software into a protected environment online means automation takes over to make things easy.

A cloud-based CRM system results in easy collaboration through remote platforms. This leads to better communication between employees and with clients too.

Cloud-based CRM software also allows the business to potentially scale faster as updates, processes, and analytics are automated online.

BaseCloud CRM

At BaseCloud, we specialise in all things CRM as experts within the field of CRM software. BaseCloud CRM is a cloud-based software and comes with a range of unique features to help businesses grow.

We ensure that you win at business; our systems make that happen.

Choose a CRM System That Meets Your Needs

Through the implementation of a CRM system, you gain unprecedented insight across the board. Take control of your sales and stay on top of all departments, as you have access to everything at your fingertips.

With more understanding of your business marketing tools, campaigns and results, you end up having better insight into what is working best for your business.

Benefits Of CRM Software

A solid CRM system will allow you to build, nurture and maintain strong relationships with your clients whilst also having a detailed overview of your business at the touch of a button.

By optimising your sales and having clear metric gauges, you can maximise on what tactics work best. This allows your business to sell more services and products respectively in the most effective way.

Stay on top of leads and convert them to paying clients in a streamlined way that leaves no room for loose ends. CRM software helps make this easy and allows you to find, track, and keep new clients.

Be sure to ask for a demo to see exactly how a given CRM system works to ensure it is the right software for your business particularly.

CRM Software Non-Negotiables

Deciding whether a given CRM system is the best fit for the type of business comes down to understanding exactly what is offered and what the software is able to do.

This will vary from case to case, business to business, as the needs and requirements will be so different accordingly.

In general, noteworthy features to keep an eye out for would be:

Lead management
Department synchronising
Email marketing automation
Contact & communication features
Sales pipeline visualisation
Marketing capabilities
Social media integration
Dashboards & reporting in graphs, tables etc.
Sales facilitation & automation
Integrations with other platforms/software

The Choice of CRM Is Yours

Choosing to implement a CRM system within your business can make a huge difference in the long run. By thoroughly weighing up your options, you will be able to find a system that works best for you.

If you are interested in BaseCloud CRM, get in touch today and let us show you how we can help your business grow.

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BaseCloud CRM – The Most Advanced South African CRM System

Quentin Grundlingh — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 13:02:15 +0000

It might be a bold and slightly subjective statement, but we have more than enough reason to believe BaseCloud CRM is the most advanced Customer Relationship Management tool in South Africa.

Click here to get a free trial with BaseCloud’s CRM tool

How are we this confident about our software? To answer that question, you first need to ask yourself this:

Why do people use Customer Relationship Management software in the first place?

A CRM system is a software system that helps business owners nurture their relationships with their clients effectively. It should also simplify your life, get things done faster, and automate mundane tasks.

In an increasingly competitive world, how you manage and use your business’s information will be the difference between success and failure. Therefore, using a quality CRM system is core to that concept.

What are the benefits of the BaseCloud CRM system?

Improve and automate your contact management

Every call, email, meeting, and touchpoint with your contacts can be tracked automatically. There’s no need to do this manually anymore – modern CRMs (like BaseCloud CRM) are connected to your inboxes and calendars.

Your customer satisfaction and retention improves

The easiest customers to convert are your current customers. Acquiring new customers is expensive, and when you know your customer (through constant communication), you are less likely to lose them and to upsell them to other services.

Increase your sales metrics and productivity

Using a reputable CRM system improves sales productivity by efficiently enhancing and hitting targets if you measure and track your performance. A CRM system far outweighs something like Excel to increase sales productivity.

You receive personalised customer interactions

Your CRM should come with lead tracking capabilities, so you know where your clients have originated from, albeit from billboards, your website, flyers or any other marketing channel.

Using this information allows you to reach out with relevant information individually tailored to your customer or prospect.

See your business’s productivity increase

With a CRM, you can easily automate and track regular administrative tasks like follow up emails and ‘catch up’ meetings. You’ll also be able to build reports on customers falling through the cracks.

Are there high revenue customers that account managers are not giving proper attention to? Is there low revenue, high effort clients?

You have a business to run, and your CRM system should be there to smooth things over. Suddenly tasks that used to take your staff hours to complete is now automated or only takes a few minutes.

The top 10 features to look for in a CRM system:

1. Integration capabilities:

Email integration – Tracking and automatically logging emails.
Calendar integration – Tracking and automatically logging meetings in the CRM.
Integration with other software packages – Integrate your CRM with your accounting and other software.

2. Automatic lead tracking, automatically tracking:

Calls
Emails
Forms

3. Automatic ROI calculation: Calculate the ROI for each of your marketing channels.

4. Insights about your current business inefficiencies: Easy-to-understand insights on the areas where your business can improve.

5. Dashboards & Reporting: Customisable dashboards and easy reporting.

6. Opportunity & Pipeline Management: Get insight into and track your entire sales process, from your team to your clients.

7. Task management: Create, manage and share tasks with your team.

8. Sales process customisation: Every business is different; you need a CRM system that understands be customised to fit your sales process.

9. Ease of use: Clean & uncomplicated design.

10. Value for money: Pricing suited to the South African market.

This brings us back to our original statement: BaseCloud CRM is the most advanced CRM system in South Africa. Because it provides all the benefits mentioned above and has all the essential features of a CRM.

And then some.

What makes BaseCloud CRM so unique?

BaseCloud CRM is so much more than just a CRM system.

Our top features include:

Emails, calls, and forms are tracked automatically.
Our system recognises and automatically assigns any communication from a specific client.
You can create workflow notes to never forget about following up/checking in with your clients.
You can create your own automated origin channels, including tracking numbers, emails, forms, Facebook forms, LinkedIn forms and more.
Users can listen to sales call recordings in the same place as where the leads are managed.
Business coaches and marketing agencies can use our CRM system to view THEIR clients’ performance and reporting in one go.
There’s also a marketing platform included for users to view the marketing performance of Facebook, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Email Campaigns, etc.

Finally, one of our favourite features is Call Connect, which allows your team to connect with leads within 30 seconds. Yes, a response time of under a minute is proven to get potential customers’ attention and convert that lead into a sale.

How does it work?

A customer submits a form on your website.
Your sales rep receives a call from our system, and the contents of that form are played back to the representative.
The sales rep chooses to connect with the customer by pressing “1” on their dial pad.
The system calls your customer immediately.

It’s straightforward to set up; there’s no need for you to be a tech-whiz.

The system is intuitive and straightforward to use, but we also help you set it up and provide training for you and your staff to make the transition process as easy as possible.

How do you measure your CRMs’ success?

Let’s say you decide to invest in, for example, the BaseCloud CRM product. How do you know your CRM system is working for you and your investment is paying off?

We’ve made you a little checklist to help you out:

Can you better identify issues with current marketing campaigns?
Do you find it easier to identify sales and business process inefficiencies?
Can you measure the performance of your sales team?
Are you effectively managing your team?
Can you calculate your ROI at any given time?

Firstly, you know you’re on the right track if you can first understand your marketing performance and measure precisely where all your leads are coming from.

You should now also be able to automate mundane business processes to save you time.

Finally, you manage your customers and prospects well enough that you are confident you and your team are not dropping the ball.

Get a free trial today and see if we can help your business grow.

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4 Key Features Every Lead Management System Should Have

Quentin Grundlingh — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 10:01:46 +0000

Managing leads has become more important than ever. Not only can one not afford to simply drop leads anymore, the speed with which leads are followed up with and turned into paying customers is vital to the health of any business.

Many small businesses think they can manage with excel spreadsheets, task lists or even handwritten notes. These methods can work in some specific situations but are extremely prone to error, forgetfulness and ultimately, a loss of revenue. For this reason, we at BaseCloud believe that every Lead Management System should contain at the very least the below 4 core features.

Automatic live capturing of leads.

The days of manually writing things down is both very time consuming and open to errors. A good lead management system will automatically populate info into a lead sheet when leads come from emails, forms, calls and other channels (think Facebook Lead gen Ads, Chatbots on websites, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms).

Automatic system reminders

Some leads cannot be converted immediately. Many require follow-up at later stages. A quality Lead Management system will allow users to set reminders that will automatically remind users to follow up with overdue leads.

Advanced filtering and search options

Imagine if you have 1000 leads coming in every day. How will you find the leads relevant to just you as a member of the sales team? Perhaps you remember a customer’s name and wish to find their lead again? The ability to filter and search for leads quickly and easily is fundamental to a lead management system.

Reporting capabilities

Management is not interested in individual lead details. They want to see an overview. Even better graphs and figures. Lead management systems that can auto generate overviews and graphs have a big advantage when looking for trends and ways to improve your business or sales process.

If your current method of lead management does not include these 4 pillars it may be time to think about better managing your leads. We highly recommend the BaseCloud Lead Management System with Advanced Tracking if you are looking to better manage your leads and increase your revenue.

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