As the leading provider of sales and business automation solutions to the office technology industry, we have taken the time to learn and develop best practices for the implementation of our software. Because of our experience, going live with the SalesChain system has never been easier. We’ve outlined the typical steps of the go-live process below!

While boxed software is a perfectly viable solution for some business settings, companies often find themselves wishing for more power and flexibility from their technology. Tailor-made software solves a number of problems by allowing users to have a closer relationship with developers and support staff. Here are 5 reasons why industry-specific software is a more compelling option for dealers who want to maximize the value of their software.

As your company grows, you’ll need to add users, functionality, and better reporting. With an expandable, industry specific software, like SalesChain, this will mean flipping the on switch to added features or putting in a request to our development staff. However, with off the shelf systems, this may mean a costly upgrade or, worse yet, changing systems entirely.

Often users of big-box software find themselves buying additional software products to add functionality where gaps exist. On the contrary, there have been several instances where SalesChain users have found the need for an additional feature, and our development staff has responded in kind by creating the feature for them.

A great example can be drawn concerning our Deal Pricing utility. SalesChain has been providing Proposal and Order Pricing to dealers for years, but in an executive review meeting with one of our customers, we found that their entire staff was zeroing out the value of their accessory pricing and adding that cost back into the mainframe of the machine. Rather than force them to subscribe to the way that our system works, we added the ability to make this change in our pricing calculator with a single button. When we added this button, we learned that many of our other customers were doing this too!

This example serves not only to illustrate the idea that users of custom software systems can see changes they request implemented, but that developers of industry-specific software can also glean significant benefit due to the closer relationship they maintain with their user base. This closeness creates a community environment, which helps users and developers alike reap the benefits of the group-think.

By using software designed to meet the needs of your specific industry and, more intimately, the needs of your business, the process of logging information in that system can make a lot more sense. Much in the same way that there is always a right tool for the job, there is often a software that serves any given situation specifically. When your software developer is familiar with your industry on an intimate level, they can provide a workflow process which makes sense within the bounds of your industry.

One solution that SalesChain has implemented to make sure that our user base is provided with a workflow that makes sense to them is to work with leadership at our client companies directly to clearly define the workflow that they already use. Most of the time, once we glean an understanding of this workflow, we can replicate it accurately within our system. find Many industry-specific software providers designate a senior developer to working with clients to outline these workflows and make sure that the system works for them the way they intend it to.

When your software represents this workflow for prospecting, pricing, documentation and delivery, the system starts to work for you rather than your team being enslaved to the system. When this comfort level is achieved, your team will be more confident and perform tasks faster and more efficiently.

Many pre-packaged software products are built to communicate well with “outside” software to fill the gaps in their own functionality. Quite often, however, they’re built specifically to communicate with sister products in an effort to get customers to buy other products made by the same company. Providers put a thin veil over this practice by calling each component the “best in class,” while ignoring the underlying problem that these are still disconnected software products. This principal also applies to integrations to outside software products. While big-box providers may integrate with partners with very recognizable names, those integrations might not have all that much to do with the day-to-day functions of your organization.

This oversight undermines the goal of SalesChain and other niche providers. With a system that’s built with your industry in mind, integrations to common marketing and ERP tools are already built in, and companies that are focused on development and automation can be sure that this process happens without the need for human intervention.

What’s more, the companies that we choose to integrate with are hand-picked because of their relevance to the industry. Big-box software providers will likely focus on integrating to partners with the largest names or recognition,  rather than those that are most common to a niche user base. For example, SalesChain’s integration to ECI e-Automate, which allows salespeople to create sales orders in e-Auto with the push of a button rather than requiring that a staff member be allocated to writing this information. Industry-specific integrations allow industry-specific software providers to give users a superior experience for their day-to-day functions.

Similar to the selection process for integrations, most small business software is created to appease the masses. Major providers don’t allocate the development resources in order to create custom versions of their software to suit every industries needs. Their solution provides the most basic of functionality that will appeal to a very wide customer base without adding any truly valuable utilities.

Not only does this create problems on an fundamental level with your business, but when your employees fail to see the value in the system they’re using, they will never use it to it’s full potential.

When your organization partners with an industry-specific software solution, you’re presented with a set of tools that is specific to the functions of your business. When there is a clear workflow, and clear utilities to perform that work, your organization can take advantage of that system much more effectively.

With a focused software system comes a focused support staff. Support personnel who are trained and operate in the same industry that a software serves are much more apt to provide competent help and advice. When a service staff member works exclusively in one industry, they solve problems pertaining to that industry alone, and can built a valuable knowledge base much more quickly. Representatives of an industry-specific solution are going to have a great understanding of the day to day functions of your business and know what specific features will benefit your business best.

Software that is marketed as a small business solution for all industries will meet basic needs but may struggle to offer support on an issue that is relevant only to your company. When they’re trained on the software alone, rather than the industry it serves, they are bound to present a much more generic, and less insightful, degree of assistance.

SalesChain, for example, prides itself on fantastic service. Our help desk staff is trained on our system from its most basic functions to its most advanced utilities and is able to help staff of any tier at our client companies with the issues they are facing. Indeed, a staff that is US-Based, English speaking and trained on the intricacies of the copier industry can serve our user base much more effectively.

Data Provides Insight

To be successful, all companies must prioritize a way to track progress in all aspects of their business, including overall sales, response to marketing, human resources, productivity, financials, product management, etc. Analysis of these components can provide deep insights into the health of a business and the direction it is going, provided they are used efficiently and correctly. Keeping this in mind, multiple metrics should be measured and analyzed on a regular basis.

These metrics should consist of trackable, quantifiable data that is often referred to as KPIs, or key performance indicators. KPIs can guide management decision making, product development, employee workflow and customer service. KPIs are most effective in guiding growth if they are used to establish a baseline, then tracked consistently, tied to the company goals and objectives, and made easily available to employees. SalesChain offers a business intelligence dashboard tool that does just that. It is customizable, allowing sales representatives and managers to view metrics specific to their business and most important to them in real time. Here are ten key sales metrics to consider and how SalesChain can help your company utilize them.

KPI #1 – Value of Leases Expiring

There’s an old saying in business: it’s easier to sell to an existing customer than to bring on a new one. In industries with a high propensity towards leasing, like office equipment, keeping existing customers translates to lease renewals and lease upgrades. When a lease is coming to expire, it reflects revenue that is coming to an end. However, this data point also represents the value of upcoming sales opportunities. As leases come to expire, it becomes time for reps to ask whether deals can be renewed or upgraded?

If your company’s value of leases expiring is consistently falling below actual revenue, it may be an indication that your customers are downsizing or it may indicate that these opportunities for upgrade or renewal need to be pursued more directly.

A good strategy is to implement a workflow which notifies reps 6 months in advance of when these leases are coming to a close, and again at 90 days from expiry. These notifications should be put in place for your company’s leases, and competitive leases alike. SalesChain’s workflow engine is capable of sending these notifications at custom intervals to sales reps and notifying management of critical steps taken in the lease renewal process.

KPI #2 – New Vs Returning Revenue

Measuring the amount of your business which comes from new customers is put into context when it’s compared to the amount of business from repeat customers. Traditionally bringing new customers into your business not only comes at the cost of the rep’s time, but also at an expense to the company.

To be sure that the cost of bringing on a new customer is factored into this comparison, net profit from new and returning customers should be compared rather than gross profit.

In most cases, businesses which do a great deal of leased business will find that their repeat business greatly outweighs their new business. This metric isn’t meant to be a comparison of the two directly as much as an insight into your organization’s growth.

Not surprisingly, if your new revenue is growing in proportion to your repeat revenue, your organization is seeing growth and can take steps to continue expanding. However, if your new business is shrinking in relation to your returning revenue, it may be time to consider new avenues to generate new business. Consider trying a email marketing campaign or a phone blitzing campaign targeting decision makers at your prospecting companies. You can use SalesChain’s prospecting tools to search your contact database for contacts delineated as decision makers, and generate your call list from there!

KPI #3 – Customer Churn Rate

Knowing which customers have stopped doing business with you is often considered more important than knowing which new customers you have onboarded in any given period of time. When it comes to measuring customer retention, the most straightforward metric you can turn to is a simple measurement of turnover. Whether they opted out of service, elected not to renew a lease or decided to purchase equipment from a competitor, a churned customer is one who your business failed to retain.

Generally speaking, if your churn rate is higher than 5-7% it’s time to evaluate the happiness of your customers and determine why there might be a problem. An unreasonably high churn rate typically indicates that your product or your service is failing to meet your customers needs or expectations.

Churn rate is inversely proportional to Retention rate. While churn rate is the number of customers you’ve lost over a given period of time, retention rate refers to the ratio of customers who return to do business with your company. The two are often confused.

KPI #4 – Actual Revenue Vs Forecasted Revenue Vs Quota

One of SalesChain’s oldest and most popular charts serves to compare exactly these three statistics. Nicknamed “the trifecta report” by our development staff, our user base has utilized it go get a clear understanding of the actual profitability of their business compared to sales expectations set forth by management (quota) and the forecasted revenue opportunities predicted by Sales Reps.

If your actual revenue is consistently falling above rep’s quota, then it may be time to up quotas and consider expanding business. On the contrary, if revenue is below the quota, it may be time to have conversations with teams that are underperforming or consider a different sales approach.

Forecasted revenue is entirely in the hands of the sales reps and is calculated by adding up the value of all leads, proposals, and orders in a given time period. Leads and proposals are prospecting opportunities, or deals which have not yet been signed by a potential customer, while orders are near-confirmed deals, or deals which have been signed and are in the fulfilment process.

If forecasted revenue is consistently above actual revenue, this might mean that reps are overselling or overestimating the value of deals, which can both scare potential customers away and feed management embellished numbers. If forecasted revenue is below actual, a bit of cautious optimism may be advisable.

KPI #5 – % Of Leads Followed Up With

While close rate is an important metric to track (see KPI #10), it’s important to see how far each of these deals progress before turning into either a sale or a lost opportunity.

To gain an understanding of how many leads are followed up with, users of SalesChain may either turn to the sales rep activity reporting tools to see which type and how many actions were taken on any given account.

Managers may also take it a step further and look to lead information to see if one or many proposals were ever created. Since leads, proposals, and orders share a hierarchical structure, it’s easy to glean insight on how one led to the next.

KPI #6 – Competitor Pricing

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

While Managers and business owners shouldn’t track competitors at every move, keeping a keen eye on their pricing can help create a strong competitive strategy. If your prices don’t differ much, you can consider a price matching strategy to guarantee your customers the lowest price in the area, and helping increase your appeal to customers at the point of sale.

Make sure you’re training your reps to handle pricing objections appropriately, so that you maintain your own profitability while maximizing the customers value on paper. If you’re pricing a tough deal, consider extending lease terms to lock the customer in for longer while also lowering their monthly cost.

Keeping clear and consistent competitive equipment records helps make this insight accurate and complete. Reps can enter competitive equipment records into prospect accounts within the SalesChain system including lease payment information, machine make and model info, and the competitive sales rep’s information if all that information is available. Our competitive equipment desk allows reps and managers to see this information in one place, and our workflow module is capable of notifying reps when these competitive leases are coming to expire.

KPI #7 – Number of Sales Rep Activities

­­Employee managers have the challenge of assessing the effectiveness of an increasingly mobile workforce. Sales representatives perform multiple tasks using mobile technology while they are out of the office. It is important to track productivity with a quantifiable tally of many different types of activities that can lead up to a sale.

If reps have a high number of activities and high number of sales, this is the ideal situation for all parties involved. If reps have a low number of activities, and a low number of sales, they may not be meeting their call numbers.

Reps who have a low number of activities, but a high number of sales may not be logging all their activities in the SalesChain system, an equally offensive habit as it hurts the company’s ability to glean insight into good sales habits which could help the rest of the team.

However, reps who have a high number of activities, but a low number of sales may need some guidance on strategy or approach. Consider additional instruction or coaching with reps who may be struggling to make sales, as this may be indicative of smaller closing numbers. There may be an exception here for reps selling specialized equipment which has a low propensity towards closing.

KPI #8 – Sales by Region

For larger companies with multiple offices, a Sales by Region metric measurement can be mined for important clues and trends. Organizations which assign reps to specific territories can use this data to glean insight into rep performance as well. Factoring in where a rep is placed is critical in this assessment. A great rep in a rural territory may be doing very well given the number of opportunities in that region, where a new rep may be better placed in an urban area where there are plenty of prospecting opportunities. Competition in these regions should be a consideration as well.

Perhaps certain categories of equipment sell better in certain regions or sales representatives in certain regions are more successful selling to certain types of businesses. Areas where production print or wide format are more prevalent may be good targets for blitzing campaigns or other marketing strategies. Areas with a high propensity towards needing frequent service can also make good targets for consistent revenue for the organization.

KPI #9 – Sales Cycle Length

“Time is money” is an enduring business maxim! Tracking how much time expires between identification of a lead and the final sale is the first step in tweaking the process to make it more efficient and therefore, more profitable! Some reps may take three weeks to sell while others take six, understanding the differences in rep’s processes could help sales managers lead their team better.

Analyze and cross reference the effect that sales Cycle length has on a given rep’s win rates. Are the most successful deals happening when the deal moves quickly to close? Do you find more success when reps take their time to nurture a deal and get a clearer understanding of the client’s precise needs?

Sales cycle time can also have an effect on customer satisfaction. If you have a rep who is moving deals quickly to close, but those customers aren’t happy with the solution provided in the long term, it could hurt your chanses of renewing that lease and service contract. If you find that your customers are dissatisfied their product, and churn after only one lease term, a longer sales cycle may yield better long term results for your enterprise. Conversely, if your opportunities are slipping through your fingers and deals are getting lost after a certain period of time, it may be advisable to shorten your sales cycle time and focus on closing deals before the customer sleeps on your business.

SalesChain’s workflow and analytics tools help give clear insight on how long each step of the sales and delivery process takes, the reveal inefficiencies and help optimize your sales cycle time. Viewing drop off points and finding problem areas in sales and delivery helps owners and managers improve the quality of their customer experience.

KPI #10– Close Rate

Your conversion rate or win rate measures how the percentage of leads that ultimately become customers. If you get approximately 500 leads per month, and on average 50 buy your product, your conversion rate is 10%. This metric can help you calculate how many leads you need to make your revenue targets. Historical conversion rates also show whether your reps are becoming more effective.

Conclusion

In conclusion, quantifiable metrics are employed consistently by successful businesses to track and analyze trends. Although metrics selection depends on the business type and their goals, it is important for all stakeholders to utilize KPIs to inform decision-making in all areas of business process. SalesChain provides a superior business intelligence tool to facilitate choosing KPIs and mining the information derived from them to create valuable and data-driven best practices. We gather the data on these KPI’s so you can set goals for your sales team and help see greater profit.

Cloud-based, digital CRM (customer relationship management) software is fast becoming the norm in the business world.  Companies are searching for strategies to optimize the usage of these investments.  Without a company-wide buy-in to implement CRM management tools, valuable functionality that could profit the business is left under-utilized or even completely unused.  According to this Monday.com article, “CRM tools help businesses organize their collections of data into a simpler user interface so they can then recognize and communicate with customers in a scalable manner.” 

With this valuable opportunity available, how do companies facilitate best practices by all employees, including sales, management, marketing, and customer service?  Employees should understand why CRM implementation is so important and how they can accomplish that.  Here are five strategies to consider:

The primary goal of a CRM product is to provide insight into the customer and potential customer base.  The more data that can be collated into one interactive tool, the clearer the picture that is gained.  CRM tools are not just address books!  Consistent and conscientious data entry allows users to analyze customer interaction with your company.  Understanding customer behavior is key to answering how, when, and where your customers are interacting with your brand.  SalesChain software provides customized analytics in the form of Business Intelligence tools and dashboards.  Sales, marketing, and service employees can all dig deeper into the data to glean valuable insights that drive next steps. 

A CRM tool is only as good as the quality of the data base.  Management of large data files is simplified by having them all contained within a cloud-based tool.  But maintaining that tool ensures accurate and useful data, therefore, Data Cleansing and De-Duplication is vital.  A system should be in place to eliminate errors, duplication, and old records.  Marketing campaigns generated based on CRM data need to be targeted, relevant and up to date.  SalesChain software unifies entries that may have been duplicated in other, disparate systems. SalesChain offers a De-Duplication service when we onboard new clients, taking data they had in spreadsheets or in other CRM systems and making sure it’s clean before we import it into our own system. We cross-reference this data with InfoUSA’s database and the US Postal service to make sure the addresses and business names are current and valid, saving headaches later in the order and billing process.

By their nature, CRM tools are designed to handle volumes of data way too cumbersome and time-consuming to be entered manually.  Regular data cleansing maintains the integrity of the information, but now what?  How can this powerful potential be used?  Analytical CRM dashboards create highly sophisticated and functional reporting tools.  Companies should implement a strategy for routine stakeholder analysis reports.  All employees can benefit from access to reports such as customer interactions, customer purchase history, upselling opportunities, customer lead interactions, key performance indicators (KPIs), and response to marketing.  Time should be allocated to allow teams to study, brainstorm, and implement insights from these reports. 

A cloud-based CRM tool creates accessible mobility from anywhere there is an internet connection.  The company sales force becomes much more efficient and data entry can happen in the moment, greatly reducing data entry errors and missed opportunities.  Therefore, it is an essential part of a good CRM strategy for there to be a mobile CRM application in place.  It eliminates dependence on an office-based server and saves money spent on installing and maintaining software on multiple company machines.  

Finally, a good CRM tool plays an ongoing role in effective marketing.  Marketing employees can use CRM to intuit customer behavior patterns, such as how they respond to marketing campaigns.  These powerful tools have the capacity to personalize marketing materials, based on analytics that include customer communication preference and buying habits.  One can identify top customers and create an understanding of the sales process.  Marketing directors can use this information to better manage resource allocation and employee workflow.

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, helps manage all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and prospects. The goal of a CRM system is to increase your business’ sales by helping reps better engage with their prospects. Although SalesChain is much more than a CRM System, Customer Relationship Management is the core of our sales functionality.

In the modern business world, CRM represents the digital equivalent of the 20th century rolodex, with infinitely more capacity and expanded features. SalesChain’s CRM system is capable of scaling to meet the needs of any organization, large dealers with multiple locations can view hundreds of thousands of account records across multiple territories just as easily as a down-the-street reps can enter information on their local prospects. A CRM that works for you can help your business by:

• Connecting Your Business Silos.
• Identifying Leads and Suggesting Action.
• Offering Better Customer Support
• Increasing Your Bottom Line.

To grow your business (much less keep it alive), your team needs a strategy that’s centered around your customers, and enabled by the right technology. You have goals. Your sales team has targets, your business has objectives, and you want to find profitability. For businesses to thrive, the sales force needs an organized way to keep track of data sets that go well beyond basic customer contact information, but the sheer volume of trackable customer data is too large for sales professionals to handle manually. Also, getting up-to-date, reliable information from disparate systems is nearly impossible.

A CRM software works to centralize the many streams of data coming in from all sides of your business including sales, customer service, and marketing, and present it in easy-to-understand formats like reports and dashboards. CRM systems are designed to include every interaction with both prospective and current customers across all communication channels, such as phone calls, emails, and in-person sales calls. Used correctly, this data set can create and drive complex workflows for an entire sales team and give management the ability to track employee progress in real-time.

Though CRM systems have traditionally been used as sales and marketing tools, SalesChain’s system goes above and beyond to incorporate service and support roles into the system. In fact, we find that SalesChain frequently doubles the number of CRM users for dealers that we onboard, looping twice as many individuals into your organization’s unified activities. The ability for service managers and technicians to log activities with customers and assets delivers a more holistic and satisfying experience to your customer and gives sales, service, and marketing a single view of the customer to inform their ongoing activities.

A CRM system helps you win more business by communicating more effectively with your customers. A CRM platform serves as a hub for sales teams to enter and alter contact information, enter competitor equipment records, and log activities like call records and meetings. Our CRM system also serve to keep the sales force on track and in sync with each other by helping to avoid duplicate data, managing reps’ schedules through integration with Microsoft Outlook 365, and allowing managers to view activities and achievement for each rep they oversee.

CRM systems also provide a way to integrate the sales and marketing departments. Data-driven sales strategies can inform appropriate marketing campaigns. Customer response to marketing can, in turn, provide further actionable data for the sales workflow. Creating a full digital view of every customer can help with lead tracking, customer follow-up, tracking customer behavior, and providing client support. A data-driven business culture facilitated by a CRM and marketing automation system can provide both better customer service and increased revenue.

More and more standard computer functions are moving into the cloud. Previously, CRM solutions were often based around an on-premises server which only allowed users to access the system’s data from within the office environment. With the move into the cloud, the world of CRM is changing. Rather than having to install software on tens, hundreds, or thousands of desktop computers and mobile devices, and maintain their own hardware, organizations are discovering the benefits of moving data, software, and services into a secure online environment.

A cloud-based CRM gives a sales force accessible mobility while out in the field. With an internet connection, users can access their company’s entire SalesChain database from their phone, tablet or laptop no matter where they are. Referencing the cloud database rather than their own notes or contact cards, customer data is more likely to be complete, updated and accurate and less prone to manual data entry errors. Updates, reminders and tasks travel with the user, and can be added and acted upon from anywhere you can access the system. A sales user can look up customer details in their car before a meeting, reference our catalog of machines in the middle of the conversation, and create follow up tasks as they’re walking out of the building. No longer do they need to return to the office just to log their activities in the system.

Using a cloud-based system also means significantly reduced costs in implementation and maintenance since there is no hardware to maintain, nor are there any software updates to install. All of our system updates are done remotely through the cloud. Like many cloud-based CRM solutions, SalesChain is priced by the amount of critical users who need logins as a subscription service rather than as a large upfront charge, meaning the cost is much more manageable upfront and scales with the organization, helping smaller businesses grow rather than crushing them with overhead.

Coffee With Tim.

Listen to helpful tips about the benefits of SalesChain from owner Tim Szczygiel in our candid YouTube Interview series.

There are an enormous number of software applications available for virtually any corporate niche that exists today.  Specialized software has revolutionized the business world, but there is now the danger of overspecialization in this marketplace.  Employees must juggle multiple different applications because each has single use functionality.  This creates inherent productivity slowdowns, as employees are forced to toggle between open applications and increases errors due to manual data entry.  In fact, it has been found that “single purpose applications are actually impeding rather than enhancing productivity” (cmscritic.com)

This oversaturation of the market with single use software has been addressed recently with the advent of SaaS, or software as a service.  These products eliminate the inherent problems associated with single use software, namely, high subscription costs, duplication of effort across apps, interruption of workflow, increased staff training, unauthorized downloads by employees on the corporate servers posing a security risk (so-called “Shadow IT”), and software incompatibility issues.  SaaS products have the flexibility to be used by any size business, and many smaller niche providers can now offer a SaaS option.  This is the direction of evolution for business software.

SaaS software products have inherent benefits for business.  Fast deployment of the application with a relatively low subscription cost is accompanied by service level agreements that provide guidance, training, and trouble shooting.  Individual client customization options can be prototyped and implemented quickly, often soliciting the collaboration of the clients themselves.  SaaS applications lend themselves to the increasingly mobile and remote workforce as well.  Web-based use allows subscribers to access the product anywhere there is internet connectivity.

The bottom line for any enterprise is that time equals money.  Implementation of SaaS products specific to their clients has many advantages.  Costs are decreased because there is simply a pay-as-you-go subscription agreement, with the flexibility to be scaled up or down as needs change.  There is a quicker training curve for employees, and less wasted work time because they are all using one single application.  Software compatibility issues are also eliminated.

Sales Chain’s complete business automation solution represents the best that SaaS has to offer.  A single product replaces up to five disparate (and possibly incompatible) systems with one, easy-to-use and efficient solution.  Sales CRM, a deal pricing calculator, document generation, an E-sign utility, a commissions module, and extensive business intelligence tools are all integrated into our software!