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Sales Forecasting Software: Benefits, How It Works, and Potential

If we told you that there was a way to predict future sales that your business is likely to make, how would you react? There’s a good chance you would think that it was some kind of joke, or an elaborate hoax, perhaps. 

Well, the truth is that there are actually ways for business owners to forecast how well – or not so well– their products or services will sell, as well as how much profit they are likely to make in a specific timeframe.

The best-kept secret in the industry? Sales forecasting software. If utilized correctly, this can be a game changer for your business’ sales.

If you are curious to find out more, look no further than our essential guide:

Sales Forecasting Software: What Is It?

To put it simply, sales forecasting can be one of the most crucial aspects of your company’s success. 

It’s a sophisticated process that allows you to uncover invaluable information on how your products or services are performing, as well as how much your company will likely earn from them. And it doesn’t just offer information about how much you will earn by selling a specific product – it can also suggest best practices for when and how to sell that product. 

You might be wondering, if sales forecasting is so important, then why is it estimated that by 2025, up to 90% of B2B companies will still be relying on intuitive methods instead of analytics to predict their sales?

Intuitive methods are less accurate, and conducting the sales forecasting process using a less accurate or even obsolete method can have a massively harmful impact. Faulty sales forecasting can induce a negative domino-like effect that trickles down through your entire corporation.

It is also worth mentioning that sales forecasting is not the same as setting sales targets. With sales targets, you are looking at what your company hopes or wants to achieve in terms of sales at a specific point in time, but without utilizing the same type of analytical forecasting models that the best sales forecasting software can conjure up.

The Benefits of Sales Forecasting

Let’s have a closer look at the benefits that your organization can achieve through sales forecasting.

1.    Optimizing Your Operations

If you run an ecommerce website, being able to predict the sales of specific items can be immensely valuable. It can, for instance, help you optimize your logistics, inventory, and supply chain operations, making sure that you always stock a good amount of your best-selling products.

But there’s more that sales forecasting can help you with. Departments like HR, accounting, and marketing all rely on accurate sales forecasting. Therefore, it’s vital that your company takes a modern, future-ready approach to forecasting.

2.    Helping with Sales Pipeline Management

Managing your sales pipeline is another aspect of your business that is heavily dependent on top-notch sales forecasting. This is because it will enable you to provide your sales reps and sales manager with up-to-date, precise, and trusted information on your products or services, which in turn allows them to close deals faster and more effectively.

3.    Keeping Your Customers Happy

You can and should consider sales forecasting from the perspective of your customers, too. 

For example, you are forecasting for a specific product to sell exceptionally well during a particular time of the year, you will need to tweak your stock accordingly to ensure that there are enough items to satisfy your growing customers’ demand.

As a result, if your customers are able to purchase your business’ product without any complications or delays, then they are much more likely to come back to you next time they need to make the same purchase. They might even buy something else entirely. The ability to create a high level of customer retention is a valuable asset that your business should be taking full advantage of.

How Does Sales Forecasting Software Work?

If you have decided to take a more analytical stance towards sales forecasting, then a sales forecasting software platform can help. By using one of these, you will be able to condense and centralize some of the main sales forecasting tasks, which include:

  • Historical data: Sales forecasting software collects past sales data on specific products to provide an accurate prediction of how much that product is likely to sell in the future.
  • Sales funnel: The way your sales funnel looks at this moment in time can be considered a good predictor of future sales. The majority of sales forecasting software has in-built sales funnel capabilities that let you enter all the relevant data about your sales funnel and provide you with a prediction based on that.
  • Pipeline forecasting: This method helps you create sales predictions based on your current sales pipeline. It achieves this by combining a wide range of elements, including average sales cycle length, individual sales rep performance, deal health, historical data, marketing funnel, and more.

What’s great about working with a sales forecasting software tool is that you can automate, integrate, and centralize all the above tasks – and many more – instead of relying on manual work that is prone to inaccuracies, delays, and human error. Some sales forecasting software platforms can be considered akin to resilient distributed datasets, which means that they can easily deal with and interpret vast amounts of unstructured data.

Unlock the Potential of Sales Forecasting for Your Business

In a world where data remains king, using that data to help you predict how your products will sell and when you should sell them is a no-brainer. This is what sales forecasting allows you to achieve – enabling, in turn, to raise your customer satisfaction, increase your sales, and optimize your overall operations.

Taking an intuitive approach to sales forecasting is not only obsolete, but can cause serious damage to your business, leaving you more exposed to competitors and market fluctuations. On the other hand, a solid, analytics-driven line is what your business needs to thrive in the digital era – and beyond. 

Why Quoting Software Is Essential For Growing Businesses

To stay competitive, companies today have to adjust to today’s consumer expectations and embrace digital business management tools and all the accompanying advantages they provide. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by using effective business management software to provide quotes and proposals digitally via email or text. Some tech-savvy companies provide memorable customer proposals via interactive video proposal reviews.

In the 2020s digital decade, positive evolution in business operations technology has increased the necessity of updating business processes—or risk going the way of the dodo.

dead as a dodo

So, what exactly is “quoting software?” Quoting software works from a regularly updated, detailed transcript of the services that your business provides and clearly outlines your prices for various services and product configurations. The best quotation software systems guarantee that customers are receiving exactly what they are looking for, allowing businesses to build a reputation of trust and transparency with their customers. Over time, this leads to converting more sales leads and referrals, generating more business, and maximizing profits. Automating the proposal process is an essential part of helping a business grow. 

Online Quoting Software: The Ins and Outs

Using online quoting software helps businesses be prepared for the demanding challenges that—if handled properly—allow them to maximize the profit of their services and enable them to grow faster.

Some of these challenges include not only accurately pricing your products and services at the outset of any engagement, but also managing dynamic price changes in the products and services themselves as market conditions change over time.

quoting software

Tweaking these cost changes manually every time your salespeople prepare a quote or customer proposal is tedious and time-consuming at the expense of your business’s overall efficiency. Moreover, a manual process leads to errors, further reducing information accuracy and wasting sales time that should be spent developing new opportunities. 

To reduce the risks of errors and increase operational productivity, the process by which your business provides quotations and proposals to your customers and prospects benefits from optimization. Quotation software centralizes the quotation process and automates it, safeguarding the data from potential human error to a much higher degree than by utilizing disconnected, manual processes.

Businessman showing virtual screen of gear cog icon present operation management involving business process, workflow, problem solving, high performance, monitoring and evaluation, quality control.

Process automation simplifies everything—it saves time for sales staff who no longer have to manually research, copy, paste, then confirm price changes (with a manager?) before finally presenting the quote to the customer.

With employees having more time for other tasks, companies should be able to increase productivity by identifying additional manual business processes to automate—new projects or initiatives that, perhaps, had previously lacked sufficient manpower and focus to get underway.

Maximizing Profits For Small Businesses Using Quoting Software

Quoting software helps small businesses deepen customer relationships by responding quickly to their individual needs and demonstrating attention to detail. One of the main issues that arise for small businesses is when customers ask for minor changes, but the information they requested has already become outdated.

Information automatically generated by quoting software enables businesses to tailor the output of information always to match specific customer preferences. Manually, it is difficult to manage personalized configurations and custom quotes for each order. Quoting software manages and adjusts the price of an order, product, or service by using automated customizing tools.

As a result, quoting software for small businesses helps cultivate repeat and loyal customers and allows for-profit businesses to meet their end goal: maximizing profits

Business people holding financial growth concept illustration

In addition to developing relationships with customers, clients, and vendors, quoting software maximizes the efficiency and effectiveness of overall job performance.

Speed is an important factor to consider, especially for B2C service businesses that provide services to homeowners. Getting quotes to clients faster than competitors increases the likelihood of impressing prospective customers and closing business quickly. Since it can be difficult to manage lots of configurations, especially those centered around complex purchases, quoting software becomes indispensable, giving businesses complete control over the process.

strategic competitive advantage

Quotation software gives your business a strategic competitive advantage. The speed at which you’ll be able to get proposals into the hands of both new leads and existing customers translates into dollars.

Also, given that a price quote is one of the first things your customer sees, it’s important that proposals are presented to the customer in the most professionally appealing way possible. Quoting software comes preloaded with branded templates that improve the readability and design of quotes, making them more intuitive, and easier to say “Yes” to.

Choosing the Right Quotation Software

Quoting software, especially as part of an all-in-one business management ERP solution, is essential for any business that seeks long-term growth by streamlining its workflows, data management, and CRM capabilities. Since there are a multitude of different software solutions on the market, the question becomes which would best fit your business.

Zoho CRM: Is It The Solution Your Business Needs?

It’s hard to know exactly what every customer wants. Some expect personalized service and attention on a near-daily basis, while others are content with being left alone until a crucial conversation is needed. Regardless of the type of customers that your business has, it’s important to have a way—scratch that, many ways—to reach them.

Scattered emails, customers that use various chat applications (not the chat app that your company supports), and phone calls to and from personal lines may have gotten the job done in the early days of your business, but these communication channels no longer cut the mustard as your business grows and expands.

One solution that businesses have enlisted is a part of the Zoho suite of software products: Zoho CRM.

Zoho CRM: What You Need To Know

Zoho CRM offers businesses a customer lifecycle management solution that allows prospects to be tracked through the sales funnel, with some automation to do some of the heavy lifting. Zoho CRM offers competitive customer relationship management capabilities, but does it offer everything that a full-bodied ERP software solution can?

Let’s look at the positives and negatives your business may face when choosing Zoho CRM, and how and why other alternatives may be a better fit for your business and its unique needs.

ERP business management software solutions

Pros Of Zoho CRM

Many businesses are familiar with the Zoho suite of products. Zoho has over 40 apps in total that perform a number of different functions. Zoho Desk, Zoho Recruit, and Zoho Meeting are just a few of the many products that Zoho offers. 

For Zoho CRM in particular, there are a few areas where it stands out among the competition. G2, a leading software review source, lists Zoho CRM’s data import & export tools among its top features. Also, its contact and account management functionality is one of the areas that it functions the best. 

As for the price of Zoho CRM, it’s affordable for businesses of any size. Zoho CRM offers a free trial, and its plans begin at $14/month per user. However, this base plan doesn’t come with all of the features that the enterprise plan offers. The Zoho CRM enterprise plan begins at $40/month per user. Some CRM bundle subscriptions go as high as $69/month per user.

Cons Of Zoho CRM

On its own, Zoho CRM is a powerful customer relationship management tool. From a brand with a worldwide presence, the tools it offers provide value to customers and its easy-to-use design feels comfortable for those who may not fashion themselves as inherently tech-savvy.

One of the most glaring downsides of Zoho CRM is not about Zoho CRM itself, but about the Zoho applications as a whole—while each individual module is powerful, functional, and affordable, getting the most out of Zoho requires using and paying for any number of the Zoho suite of applications. 

In other words, the price and complexity of juggling various software packages can really add up. For small and growing businesses that require multiple users on the system, this cost is often too high to justify. Instead of a single, all-in-one business management software platform that handles everything from accounting, projects, and time management in addition to CRM capabilities, Zoho has essentially split up these features among its 40-odd modules.

zoho crm alternative

While this is ideal for some larger organizations that only need one or two modules to accompany their existing, legacy software solutions, it is less than ideal for smaller organizations that are in need of a complete business management software solution.

Beyond the cost of deploying multiple software products, Zoho CRM falls short when it comes to customer support satisfaction. G2 reviewers have ranked Zoho CRM’s quality of support at 7.5/10, which is below the CRM industry average of 8.6/10. Capterra—another leading software review site—lists a 4 out of 5 rating for customer service.

Zoho CRM: Will It Work For You?

While Zoho CRM offers competitively priced and intuitive CRM tools, it falls short when it comes to offering other vital, non-CRM-centric features that provide immense value to small and growing businesses. For those that are extremely budget conscious and looking to get the most value out of their technology stack, there are some Zoho CRM alternatives that are worth looking into.

Further, many reviewers acknowledge that while Zoho CRM functions well, getting a hold of and receiving valuable help from the Zoho customer support team can often be difficult.

Striven – The All-In-One ERP Software

Projects, operations, tasks, and HR benefit from software solutions. And in today’s world, most companies need a software solution compatible with today’s landscape of working remotely. Having CRM software on its own just isn’t enough anymore, either.

The Zoho family of products contains modules and add-ons to accommodate all of your business needs. However, unlike other all-in-one business management software solutions such as Striven, expect to pay for each additional module and piece of functionality that you’ll need. With Striven, you have all of the tools you need to succeed in one place, together and simplified. No need to worry about paying for add-ons or bloated software that simply doesn’t fit your business needs. The best part? You can try it for free.

Does Your Business Need A Zoho Alternative?

In the current business management software market, Zoho produces a variety of applications—some bundled into an all-in-one suite—that provide a variety of CRM, accounting, and other business management software solutions. 

Though many businesses benefit from the suite of products that Zoho offers, is your business getting the most possible value that it can from Zoho? Disconnected apps and separate systems can be inefficient and expensive. While Zoho One offers all of these apps under one account, they are still a suite of individual applications rather than a single, all-in-one application.

Business needs vary by industry, size, and a host of other factors. Even businesses within the same industry need different solutions, or solutions custom-tailored to their specific needs.

Zoho and its vast suite of applications work well for businesses that are considerably large in size, and some smaller, growing businesses have found Zoho to be suitable for their needs. But when it comes to your business, do you want a solution that merely checks all the boxes or a solution that is custom-tailored to your business needs in order to thrive?

In this article, we’ll cover the advantages and disadvantages of Zoho and what benefits your business might see from exploring Zoho alternatives that are on the market.

What Is Zoho?

According to Zoho’s profile on Capterra, Zoho is a suite of 40+ applications with complementary mobile apps that allow a business to reach customers, grow sales, manage accounting, and increase workflow efficiency.

Zoho One, the package that includes all of the various Zoho applications, is billed as a way for users to be streamlined and connected by utilizing a single login to connect to all of the different applications. 

In terms of pricing, Zoho offers a variety of plans based on the total revenue and number of employees. In addition, pricing can vary drastically depending on which modules are selected. Some estimates of Zoho’s pricing suggest that smaller businesses can expect to start their plan at around $14/user per month while the highest tier package is $57/user per month.

Advantages of a Zoho Alternative

zoho alternative

While Zoho, Zoho One, Zoho CRM, and the rest of the Zoho suite contain useful tools that help businesses manage their products and assess profitability, they’re not always the right fit for every business. 

Zoho Alternatives are Affordable for SMBs

The cumulative nature of micropayments coupled with the à la carte model indicates that paying for individual apps and functionalities can get expensive over time. Sure, it’s possible to only pay for certain apps, bringing the price down considerably. But when it comes to managing all of the mission-critical segments of a business, just a few apps and functionalities may not cut it.

For growing businesses, getting the most value for their money is more important than ever. Some Zoho alternative platforms shy away from the application/module model in order to give growing businesses all of the tools they need to run their entire business, all in a single connected software platform.

Zoho Alternatives Provide Elite Customer Support

When it comes to features to prioritize in a Zoho alternative, even non-technical features are important to consider. For example, finding a Zoho alternative that maintains an elite standard of customer service (at no or low additional cost) is crucial.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) concept with icons. Production, human resources, inventory, CRM, sales, service, distribution, business process.

No matter the quality of the software, errors always occur. And in reality, users will always have questions about the system they are working in.

Zoho offers several support plans for an additional fee, which can get very expensive for growing businesses. In addition, some Zoho modules—notably Zoho CRM—have below-average customer support rankings while other, all-in-one business management systems have stellar customer support scores

Though it may be tempting to opt to go with a large-scale platform, it is often the case that many smaller, all-in-one business management software companies provide better—and 100% U.S.-based—customer support.

Customizations Are A Breeze With A Zoho Alternative

Every business is unique. With large-scale, widely used applications such as Zoho, customizations can be difficult to implement. While not always the case, some Zoho customizations require some level of coding.

For small and growing businesses, having to code (or having to pay for coding services) can skew drastically out of budget. Beyond that, having a single, dedicated, familiar customer champion working with your team can be the difference between successful software adoption and the painful realization that you need to rethink your initial software partner selection.

A Unified Business Management Platform

The post-Pandemic work world has changed and continues to evolve at a fervent pace, and technology has never been more crucial to the success of every business. The importance of having top-shelf, all-in-one business management software has never been greater.

zoho alternative

Running a successful business is challenging enough when your technology stack is running smoothly and efficiently. Speedbumps like erroneous data, complex user interfaces, and technology that simply does not allow for ample, on-time communication only make things tougher.

While the Zoho suite’s individual applications perform very well on their own, it turns out their biggest drawback is that they do exist on their own, not fully integrated with one another. Not only do additional modules require additional investment it also requires more advanced technical support, additional time spent learning how to properly integrate data, and additional time spent ensuring accuracy across multiple systems. 

Having all of your business processes—accounting, inventory, sales, marketing, projects, HR, operations, and more—working seamlessly as a complete, unified software platform will improve your business’s overall performance by increasing efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.

Striven – The All-In-One Business Management Software

Out of the numerous Zoho alternatives on the market today, Striven has been recognized as one of the industry leaders in terms of affordability, quality of customer support, and overall ease of use. Check out what everyday users have to say about Striven.

While some large-scale business management software providers like Acumatica may be a good match for large-scale, Fortune 500-sized companies, Striven understands that not every company needs a system that’s quite as technologically bloated—and one that doesn’t require breaking the bank.

The importance of having all of a business’s core processes housed in a single platform has never been greater. Instead of hoping that various software modules can successfully and efficiently interact with one another, it’s important that businesses are able to view everything that they need from a single dashboard. (Hope has rarely been a successful business strategy.)

For small- and medium-sized businesses to be as successful as their large-scale counterparts, this level of visibility allows businesses to harness the insights they need to corner a larger share of their respective market. Remember, technology is a strategic competitive advantage for any business regardless of size.

Wrapping Up

Software needs to be flexible and anti-fragile. It’s true in terms of business just as it’s true in terms of technology. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to success—every business and business plan needs a solution to fit their specific needs.

Many small and growing businesses have a tendency to lean towards a product like Zoho based on its global reputation. But, it’s important to recognize that just because this product works at such a large scale doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit on a smaller scale.

Striven provides the same high-quality software and customer support as some of the larger ERP names on the market while being more affordable for the average small- and medium-sized business. 

Automation: Linking Manufacturers and Localization

For a long time, manufacturers have operated within the parameters of globalization as a necessary strategy for success in a worldwide marketplace.

What is the definition of globalization? According to the World Economic Forum, globalization can be defined in simple terms as “the process by which people and goods move easily across borders. Principally, it’s an economic concept – the integration of markets, trade, and investments with few barriers to slow the flow of products and services between nations.”

manufacturing management software

In manufacturing, globalization has long been a strategy. Because of this strategy, products produced in large factories in low-cost areas such as Asia have benefited consumers. Low costs for doing business have generated operational cost savings that have been transferred to end users. The volume of available products has also been a benefit to consumers.

Yet globalization may be moving past its prime in terms of effectiveness in the world of manufacturing. Labor pools are dwindling and costs of doing business continue to rise. There is a shift towards localization happening in manufacturing.

This shift provides economic opportunities for companies of all sizes and it’s changing how manufacturers are doing business. When you add automation into this shifting paradigm, it becomes even more effective.

What is localization?

In manufacturing, localization is having a network of smaller manufacturing facilities around the world rather than a few large production centers. Why is localization important in manufacturing? It allows manufacturers to be closer to where their customers are. With a localization strategy, large companies can still think globally but build locally. This is efficiently achieved through automation in the form of micro factories.

What is a microfactory?

Microfactories are smaller factories that utilize automation rather than human labor, saving money while increasing the quality of production and consistency of output.

Normally, smaller factories serving regional markets would seem at odds with the goals of large companies with production centers. Through automation in the form of microfactories, however, large companies can effectively achieve localization strategies. This opens the door to lower costs, more efficient operations, and greater scope of use for manufacturers. It gives large companies the best of both worlds.

Microfactories have another added benefit in the world marketplace. They even the playing field because they make manufacturing more accessible to businesses that can’t afford massive manufacturing overhead but still have products to produce.

Small businesses looking to better utilize automation can now utilize the scale of manufacturing for their products without the overhead costs that exist in a global strategy. With machine automation and localization, and the cost efficiencies that accompany them, manufacturing becomes accessible to just about anyone.

There are many cost benefits to automation as it affects localization. But there are other benefits for manufacturers as well. Proximity to customers means businesses can be more in tune with customer wants and needs. Marketing plans can be geared towards a specific regional audience and campaigns can be responsive to what customers respond to.

manufacturing management software profit

Globalization is losing the impact it once had in a world where consumer demand for authenticity and affinity is steadily increasing. Automation, as a bridge for manufacturers, increases the ability for companies of all sizes to embrace localization and succeed in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Bringing Back the Dead: How to Revive Your Lost Leads

You’ve done it all: you’ve invested money in a software system with CRM capabilities. You’ve set up your system to personalize the customer experience, so customers feel that you’re invested in them. You’ve spent countless days charting that customer experience with all the right touchpoints to lead them up the mountain. Your sales are up, but some leads aren’t converting – you’re losing them to the abyss. Why?

And how do you bridge the gap?

two business people on laptop

As Entrepreneur points out, a dead lead doesn’t necessarily mean game over. “Just because you lost a client, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up—you never know when fortunes might turn,” writes Tina Garg. “[CRM] provides clarity on potential roadblocks in the process. [It] gives you the ability to review all your past deals and uncover common challenges underlying the same.” 

You might be able to resurrect those dead leads. CRM software allows you to master analyzing your lost opportunities, at what point you may have lost them, and consider how to resurrect them for potential future conversions.

What matters in the end is how you approach and re-engage those lost opportunities. You need to evaluate each lead carefully, and deploy a strategy that addresses the needs of each individually. 

It’s called resuscitation marketing. And here’s a simple 3-step process to make it work for you.

Evaluate Your Losses

Your first step in the resuscitation marketing process is to analyze the types of leads you’ve lost and categorize them.

crm software

There are several types of lost leads:

  • The ‘MIA’ lead. A client came to your website and left, or a client dropped the conversation without indication of their decision
  • The delayed lead. You can categorize this client as one who indicated they will purchase, but not until a certain date or time frame
  • The dead lead. This is a client who purchased from a competitor or opted out of buying

It is possible to have multiple combinations of these lost leads, by the way. You may find that your potential client came to your website, filled out a form, and never responded to your email because you took too long to get in touch. They went on to engage with, or buy from, your competitor in the time it took you to respond. 

You may find that other leads indicated they were looking for a specific time window to buy, and when you didn’t follow up again in that time frame, they forgot about you. Even if they start the process over again and your name comes up in their search result, they may not contact you—or worse, they’ll remember that you didn’t follow up at the right time.

“By understanding why your lead failed to convert and constructing an offer to suit their needs,” writes Jia Wertz for Forbes, “your campaigns have a much greater chance of success.” Segmenting these types of lost leads can help you organize your approach to each, and establish pathways for similar future interactions.

Find The Catalyst

The next step is to evaluate how to reignite the spark without burning the bridge.

crm software

Re-engaging lost leads can get a little tricky—it’s always a good idea to ask someone who has years or even decades of knowledge in providing great customer experience. We asked a few experts to weigh in on a successful re-engagement strategy. 

“If you accidentally let a prospect or lead ‘fall off the radar,’ don’t make excuses about how it could have happened,” writes Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert and NY Times bestselling author. “Just be transparent. Obviously, apologize first and then let the prospect know you have a system that someone failed. Then follow up with the assurance that you’re back on track, and offer some value to get their attention. Make it genuine and personal. Follow up with an email to confirm what you talked about, and respond quickly to any request or question they have. Your goal is to restore confidence as you move the relationship from lost to mutually lucrative.”

“Engaging prospects is a never-ending project,” writes Christoph Trappe, CCO of The Authentic Storytelling Project. “In fact, today it takes like 30 touch points to move people along in the funnel. There are a number of strategies to do that. They could include: 

  • Easy sign up for email newsletters
  • Use of tools that allow you to quickly follow up with what previously was unknown traffic
  • Constant sharing of relevant content on all channels

“The last one particularly is a fine line. The line between spamming people and the line of sharing value can sometimes be easy to cross. I am a big fan of automation—once you have them in your email database, send them useful information on a regular cadence. That cadence feels personalized to them. Remember that connecting with prospects is a marathon – not a sprint.”

Rewire the Connection

The third step of resuscitation marketing? Use the advice you glean to resurrect your lost opportunities—now.

Rewire the connection between you and your lost lead and solidify your business relationship

Let’s say you’re the travel company from our third blog on CRM software. Your opportunity was interested in Alaska, and they started a conversation chain with you about seeing the Northern Lights. Your system pushed out the appropriate information, and your potential client seemed interested, but after a few conversations by phone and email they dropped off the grid. Eventually, they reply to one of your emails to let you know they’ve chosen to go elsewhere. That isn’t what you were hoping to hear—but now you have the catalyst to reignite your lost lead’s journey a month or even a year down the line. It’s all about your avenue of approach.

One approach to consider when re-engaging is your market—especially if you’re a service-based business and you offer more than one avenue of service. If you’re the travel agency in the example above and you serve multiple regions, you might: 

  • Follow up with them after the last communication,
  • find out why they didn’t use your company,
  • ask what attracted them to your competitor,
  • see what they thought about their competitor’s services (after their travel dates), and
  • give them reasons to discover something with you.

Your touchpoint email—sent a few weeks after their return date—is the trigger for a conversation on how travel companies can better handle their overall customer experience. You find out that your ‘dead lead’ for Alaska ended up having a poor encounter with their chosen service provider. You follow up often and quickly. You use your lead’s complaints and examples to refine your touchpoints. 

You follow up again with them—where do they want to go next? Iceland’s the next destination on their bucket list, and now that you know even more about your once-lost lead’s preferences—and how best to communicate your information to them—you nail it. They travel, and they rave about their trip.

You’ve regained their trust. They went because you pursued them, listened to their needs, and delivered on a promise of better things to them. And the best part is: you’re going to be top of mind for their next journey.

Conclusion

Sometimes the way to make a sale isn’t to do everything perfectly at the start—it’s to follow through when things get rough. It’s to regain trust and understand the pathways your customer has already explored. It’s about building a bridge with better materials to a different mountain.

So don’t snuff out your fires—let them smolder a little bit. There’s something you can do with each of those challenges, no matter what stage they’re at.

This is our final article in a series on CRM software. See our previous CRM articles to find out more about CRM, its uses and functions, and how it can help your business grow in 2020.