Create a Uniform Workflow Standard:

Create a Uniform Workflow Standard:

CRM And Company Wide Sales Policies

by  Eliteseo4u

Business that wish to create a uniform workflow can find a CRM solution to their problems.

Keeping all employees on the same page and enforcing a workflow standard can be a nightmare for a growing company.  As the number of employee’s increases, managers and business owners are not able to spend as much time overseeing the work of their employees as they could when the company was smaller and some little things begin to fall through the cracks.  Over time the little issues can become bigger issues until the company reaches a critical point.  Without oversight employee standards begin to drop and the company can find itself in serious trouble.  A CRM system can provide workflow solutions that enforce a uniform work standard.

Why is a uniform standard important?

Uniform standards ensure that employees are all using the same process when dealing with customers.  The process makes sure that employees follow company approved steps and that all sales team members file the same reports for each sales call or meeting.  This reduces the number of variations in reports, and allows management to focus on the data.  One of the standards protocols that many companies use is the approval of all contract proposals over a preset dollar amount before the proposal is sent to the customer.  Without a system in place to make sure that employees are following the company’s guidelines, employees can get lazy and not seek contract approvals.  This can lead to problems when a customer is quoted a price that is lower than the company can afford, and if the customer approves a contract only to have that contract revoked by the company at a later date, the customer may choose to find another vendor.

How does CRM enforce the uniform standard?

CRM enforces the uniform standard through a guided pipeline approach to sales.  The guided pipeline has checkpoints that employees must meet before moving on.  At every step of the sales process team members are required to update the status of the job.  In the situation requiring approval for contracts, when the salesperson changes the status to “In Negotiations”, the CRM system can refuse to allow any more movement in the pipeline until a manager has updated the contract status as “Approved” in the CRM system.  This keeps management informed about the status of customer interactions at critical points in the sales process.

Doesn’t CRM limit creativity?

By forcing the sales team to adopt a uniform sales process it may seem that creativity is being stifled, but the reality is that workers are being more productive.  A uniform standard creates a set of easy to follow guidelines that are the same for every sale, so that employees know how to progress through the sales pipeline in the most efficient way possible.  With the guided process, employees waste much less time trying to remember what they have already done for the customer in the sales pipeline and what the next step might be; all of those decisions have already been scripted.

CRM solutions can help generate better sales leads and increase revenue, but there are other benefits as well.  Using a CRM platform to create a guided workflow standard for a company’s employees allows the employees to be more productive and more efficient.

My name is Elington Brown and I work with a CRM solution on a daily basis.  I feel qualified to write this article, because I control the CRM system for our company and that is all I do and have done for 5 years now. I hope this helps everyone who reads it.  Thanks for readi

Printed Presentation Folders to Enhance your Proposal

Printed Presentation Folders to Enhance your Proposal

by Roger BrainTree

Printed presentation folders allow a company or business to add sleek looking designs and personal touch to a proposal. At first glance a presentation folder may seem over the top and nonessential, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Custom printed folders can benefit your business by adding to your professionalism as well as increasing your customer base’s opinion of your business or service offered.

Functionality

On the most basic level printed presentation folders can benefit your business by adding an extra level of organization. Having just one kind of standard folder to use for all presentations will help improve organization by eliminating last minute scrambles to find a folder or showing up to a presentation without a folder. Also, just having one sort of standardized folder will allow you and your company to focus on a specific structure for the uniform organization of all presentations. The added structure provided by custom printed folders will allow you to focus more on coming up with good content for a presentation rather than worrying about how to organize it.

Promoting a Successful Appearance

In addition to aiding with structure and organization, printed presentation folders will benefit your business by promoting a successful appearance. Having a successful appearance can be the difference between a client choosing you or one of your competitors. It is a well known fact that appearance and presentation are some of the biggest influences for customers when they are considering purchasing a product or a service. Printed presentation folders will help to establish that you and your business are organized and professional. This added touch of professionalism will help to put the customer’s mind at ease making them more receptive to your presentation and information offered. As the custom printed folder will be one of the first things seen by anybody in a presentation, it is important that it looks professional and makes a good impression. Though it may seem like such a small detail a presentation with your company’s logo is sure to wow whoever sees it.

Additional Advertising

Beyond just promoting a successful image a printed presentation folder can function to provide additional advertisement for you and your business. A presentation folder with your company’s name and logo will make at the very minimum a subconscious impression in your customer’s mind. The more you can visibly present your company’s name and logo the better. More visual presentation of your logo and name will increase the chances of gaining clientele or sales. Furthermore, if you leave the presentation folder with a potential customer it leaves a visual reminder of whom and what your company is.

The Bottom Line

Obviously having a printed presentation folder alone is not going to sell your product or service. However, coupled with a solid business model, presentation folders will help provide that extra amount of professionalism that will place you a notch above your com

Revamping your email systems- part 1

Upgrade your email system- here is how…

Email can be controlled. If you want it to be. As a business owner, before you hire someone to deal with your email, you need a system they can follow. There are a lot of systems, I just want to share the simple one I use to clear my inbox every day that I work. I don’t clear it daily because I take days off. Even if I am behind in work or behind in my goals. That’s a post for another day.

There are 5 things that need to happen with email

Delete- just delete the stuff you dont care about and are not going to read. Remove yourself from an email list that you find you are not really reading what they send over a month. It saves you the visual garbage and its saves THEM money, not paying to email you when you no longer wish to get them or read them.

Delegate-  There are things that other people need to handle for you. Assistant, virtual assistant, whoever you delegate to, just send the email over to them. If you have prepared them well, they can handle it. Don’t micro manage, just ask them to handle it and unless they make a huge mistake, understand they will not handle it the way YOU would. They are not you, however, their solution can work and leave you free to do the things you can not delegate

Respond- answer the question, buy the thing, add it to your calendar, read the email and get the update…whatever the response is, do it and then archive the email

Defer- this is for things you do not have time to deal with. You must also have time on your calendar each week to go through what is Deferred or risk dropping the ball on business activities and thereby losing money.

Do- Some email mean taking an action, do it right then and there.

if an email has been handled, then delete or archive it.

You email box will be empty after practicing this for about a month. Teach it and delegate this to an assistant and stop sweating about your email. Be efficient, get rid of spam and live a normal live. Nothing is great about having a huge number of emails sitting around.

It used to be a sign of how busy you are, now, it’s a sign of how inefficient you are. If I want to work with you and hear you an a huge overflowing full email box— ALL THE TIME– Then I am going to think again. If you can’t handle your email, you might not be a good match to work with me. There is a point when you need to upgrade your systems.

If you practice this s

« Previous Page — Next Page »