10 KPI’s Your Business Should Be Measuring

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.

Get Better Metrics For Your Business

SalesChain Platinum includes a Business Intelligence platform. With built in BI, you get synchronized data which means a streamlined workflow between departments. Stop tracking down Information – let us put it in one place and increase your productivity.

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.

 

 


Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

5 CRM Strategies to Improve Your Business

Great Software Needs Great Strategy

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:

1) Understanding Customer Behavior

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. 

2) Data Cleansing and De-Duplication

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.

3) Schedule Routine Stakeholder Analysis Reports

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. 

4) Strike While The Iron Is Hot With A Mobile CRM Application

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.  

5) Use CRM Data to Improve Marketing

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.

Meaningful Data Is Actionable Data

So how does a company link customer data bases to business action?  To avoid failure to take advantage of CRM tools, an active, company-wide strategy should be developed, implemented, and routinely evaluated.  Time should be devoted to all-staff training on CRM software to ensure that all the features are being utilized.  This should not be just a peripheral tool for any employee.  From management and marketing, to sales and service, data-driven decisions are far more productive, efficient and lucrative!


Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

Why Choose SalesChain?

One Solution for Imaging and IT

SalesChain boasts a comprehensive integration to ConnectWise Manage, which expands upon and strengthens the existing integration to e-Automate and eliminates the need for duplicate data entry.  Within the SalesChain platform, dealers can easily synchronize customer records across e-Automate, ConnectWise, and the SalesChain CRM when they close a deal.  That record is automatically checked for validity and de-duplicated.

Automation = Growth

Intelligent automation solutions can help transform a company’s operational processes, such as automating the infrastructure, integrating service management with other systems, and ensuring security compliance to create zero-touch service management capabilities. 79% of IT leaders said automating business and/or IT processes has increased in importance over the past six to 12 months.

Superior Mobility

As the digital office continues to rely on remote work and constant accessibility, cloud-based solutions are no longer a nicety, but a necessity. Whether you’re in the car checking your customer notes before a meeting, at the airport entering order information from your laptop, or working from your home office, SalesChain’s cloud-based platform has your back. Our system empowers mobile users across the US and Canada to maximize their productivity beyond the bounds of the office.

Support You Can Count On

In software, support is everything. Having downtime or being confused about your system causes frustration and delays. We aim to provide a quality system that is backed up by even better support. This has led SalesChain to have one of the highest recommendation rates in our field. Our user testimonials speak for themselves. Call our office during business hours at and you’re guaranteed to reach a SalesChain expert in the US who can answer your questions or point you in the right direction.

Case Study: Delivery Workflow Automation

In this video testimonial, Crystal Manning talks about how SalesChain’s delivery workflow management tools cut KDI’s DSO in half.

More Features For Less Money

SalesChain is capable of doing the work of 5 or more competitive software products, each of which requires additional management to populate information across different systems and is just as expensive as our solution alone. With Integrated commissions, delivery workflow automation, lease portfolio management, and business intelligence charting tools built in, businesses that switch to SalesChain see a consistent increase in productivity while reducing cost. Below, we’ve listed 4 systems SalesChain’s Platinum suite is capable of replacing.

Integrated Commissions Utility

In the world of sales, money is the ultimate motivator.  Knowing how much they are going to earn for each proposal is catalytic to your sales team’s success.  Avoid confusion, conflicts and time spent guessing. Our commission system allows you to easily manage commissions for every person and role played in winning sales, including:

 

Delivery Workflow Automation

SalesChain allows you to define customized workflows that best represent the working steps (or Nodes) needed to complete each type of product or service that your business offers. Fulfilling an order for 2 copiers involves different steps than say providing IT services for a law firm. Each step of the process may be defined with characteristics that include:

  • Sequence of work
  • Dependencies
  • Assignment of responsibility
  • Notifications of assignment and completion
  • Trigger dependent steps

 

Built-In Business Intelligence

Complete and accurate data presented in an easy-to-understand format becomes actionable data. Data that you can rely upon to detect problems and make sound decisions for your business. Charts in SalesChain’s Business Intelligence platform can be interacted with to help you make decisions faster. Click on metrics to drill down into other charts. Use our audit tool to view a detailed report of all of the information in the chart. Also, users are able to build custom dashboards with exactly the charts they want rather than being locked into standard information readouts.

Lease Portfolio Management Utility

Give all users the information they need to service their accounts in an organized and timely manner. SalesChain is capable of pulling all of your leases from every leasing partner and importing them into our database, matching them to the e-Automate customers and machines so as to provide the most comprehensive view of the account in our Lease Desk.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

What is CRM and How Does It Help Your Business?

What is CRM?

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.

Why Is CRM Important For Your Business?

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.


What Does A CRM System Do?

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.


What Benefit Does a Cloud-Based Solution Offer?

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.

 


Learn More.

Coffee With Tim.

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


Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

Why is SAAS a better Value?

Specialization Is Key

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.

 


 

The Benefits of SAAS

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.

 


 

SalesChain as a Service

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!

 


 

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

Commissions is the GLUE

How Does Commissions Hold The Whole SalesChain System Together?

Because Commissions are integrated into the SalesChain software instead of being a separate system. That means it’s easy to view trends and know which products are selling and create incentive programs to reward reps for selling specific products.

It also means that the data you’re viewing is more trustworthy, since it’s never been translated between platforms.  Proposals and orders will be created and priced within the SalesChain system.  Allowing commissions to be processed and reconciled to confirm this data accuracy.  The direct result is that all of the data will be in the system allowing us to create accurate and timely reports.

In short, you can use Commissions to Guide your strategy, Leverage and Understand your data, and Extract meaningful results.


 

Commissions is the GLUE

In this episode of Coffee With Tim: How can commissions act as a motivator for better company-wide acceptance of a single automation system?


 

Use trends to GUIDE your strategy

“Salespeople make more money when they understand how the business makes money.” – Tim Szczygiel, Creator of SalesChain.
With SalesChain Integrated Commissions, Reps and managers alike can view sales data in easy-to-understand dashboards and use trends to shape a more successful sales strategy.
The integrated accounting approach gives increased visibility to the sales force in the form of an accessible electronic dashboard.

 

LEVERAGE and UNDERSTAND the data

SalesChain Business Intelligence and Forecasting tools are accessible by all users, including the sales force.
This accessibility allows them to see where the company is making money so that they can capitalize on best selling products and suggest new, compatible ones to clients.
SalesChain workflows are specific to their clients, so the tools you employ and degree of access to them are customizable at not only the client but the dealer level.

 

EXTRACT from the data to increase revenue

The SalesChain commission program helps to focus employees by making it easy to see important trends in sales data.
EXTRACT patterns from the data and understand your market to know what products to focus your attention on and use integrated commissions to incentivize selling those products.
SalesChain’s Forecasting tools use this information to predict future sales successes, and provide an estimate of profits.

 

How Can Integrated Commissions Help Your Business?

Check out our features page to learn more about the SalesChain’s commissions system, it’s features and function, and it’s potential benefits.

What Can SalesChain Do For You?

Interested in learning what the SalesChain system has to offer? One of our SalesChain experts would be glad to walk you through the system and show you exactly what our software can do for you.

Remote Work Is Here To Stay

Remote work is here to stay.

According to a Gartner study, over 80% of companies will continue to offer remote work options after the pandemic, yet nearly one-third of HR professionals are worried about reduced productivity within this workforce.
Finding solutions to help remote staff work as efficiently as possible is critical. SalesChain’s cloud-based model has been bringing the office to your fingertips since 2002.
Our software is packed with features that enable remote productivity including:
Step up your off site productivity today. Schedule a demo below or call our office. We look forward to growing with you!

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

What’s New In SalesChain Platinum?

New Year, New Features.

Looking back at a challenging year, our silver lining has been developing game-changing new features for our software. We urge you to take advantage of the full power of SalesChain in the new year! Explore some of our most exciting new features below. Contact us to book a one-on-one demo of any of these offerings.

1) Microsoft Outlook 365 Integration

Two-way integration with Microsoft outlook means when you schedule, edit, and cancel appointments in outlook which will automatically appear on your SalesChain calendar.
Appointments are automatically associated with Account records in SalesChain. When an appointment is created in Outlook we automatically comb our database for a matching email to associate that appointment with an account.

2) NEW: Business Intelligence Charting Tool With Customizable Dashboards

SalesChain combines quality data and understandable metrics for a better business intelligence solution
SalesChain already has accurate data. When a sales rep performs an action, we add it directly to your charting tools.
Displaying information in an easy to understand way is critical. Organizing these charts into custom dashboards lets you see exactly the information you want.

3) Create Attractive Proposals With The Proposal Wizard

Create attractive, custom proposals with the flexibility to tailor your message for the most detailed sales rep using the SalesChain Proposal Wizard. No more need for Power Point or spreadsheets… in just a few simple clicks you can have a comprehensive proposal ready to print, email, and E-Sign for acceptance.

4) Upgraded Hubspot Integration

Our two-way integration to HubSpot was updated in early 2020, and allows for the sales and marketing departments to work seamlessly together to effectively market, nurture and identify opportunities for sales. SalesChain pulls lead information in from HubSpot and allows marketing staff to target qualified leads for salespeople. In turn, any account information added by salespeople is transferred back into HubSpot.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

Are you making the most of your SalesChain Platinum Subscription?

Are you making the most of your SalesChain Platinum Subscription?

Salespeople and business owners are always looking for ways to save time and money. Today, many of the tools we employ to make our lives easier are software-based. Technology can be great… if you use the right tools and maximize their benefits.

You have chosen the right technology to allow you to implement efficient workflows and automate redundant tasks, thereby saving you time and money – We’re here to help you use them to their full potential.

Here are 6 ways you can make the most of your SalesChain Platinum subscription:


1) Create Attractive Proposals With The Proposal Wizard

From intricate, intelligent legal paperwork accepted by all of the major leasing vendors, to auto-populating manifests, to customized, beautiful proposals, SalesChain’s document generation capabilities are truly best-in-class. You may already be using the system to generate order manifests, pick up/move forms, and lease order fulfillment paperwork, but are you generating proposals from the system?

If you are, you may be able to improve your experience by using the proposal wizard. This utility, developed and implemented in late 2019, allows salespeople and managers further customization of the documents being sent to prospective clients. With the ability to generate multiple proposals on the same order, choose which pages are included, and determine inclusion or redaction of certain financial figures, such as buyout value, this utility allows more control than ever.

Click here to view a video about the proposal wizard.

Have you imported a custom-designed document into the system to make the best impression on your customer? Whether you’re using the proposal wizard or not, SalesChain allows you the ability to import your company’s own proposal document to the system so you can stay on brand, maintain the best-looking design, and impress your customers with beautiful documents that send a powerful, organized message.

If you do not have a custom proposal document for your business, we have recently partnered with MJS Live, a video marketing and graphic design firm, who would be happy to work with you to design a new document. You can find them here.


2) Automate your CPC Service Pricing

The Service Pricing Module allows dealers to publish CPC rates and provide sales reps intelligent and flexible tools for pricing blended service pricing in minutes.
Integrated bid desk pricing workflows simplify and track secure pricing. Service pricing achievement is clearly measured within our dashboarding tools.
The Service Pricing Module allows reps to easily tailor service rates on a deal-to-deal basis. It can be configured by our system administrators to lock reps into a series of specified “Tiers” of pricing, and can even allow reps to “Buy Down” service rates, donating a portion of their commission to lower the price of the deal in tight pricing situations, or when you’re pricing against a competitor. This easy to use module is a staple of our pricing too.

3) Configure Automatic Order fulfillment Workflow Automation

Define customized workflows that best represent the needs of your fulfillment process. Fulfilling an order for 2 copiers involves different steps than say providing IT services for a law firm. Each step of the process may be defined with characteristics.

By default, the SalesChain Platinum system is configured with a standard set of notifications and generated tasks to keep your office flowing quickly and efficiently. If you do things differently than the “standard” dealer, you may mistakenly ignore these automatic notifications, or dismiss them altogether as spam. To take full advantage of the system, you are encouraged to set up a configuration of notifications and tasks generated based upon the unique workflow of your organization.

Call our office today to ask about setting up  a custom workflow, or click here to view a sample workflow model.


4) Integrate Your Commissions

“Commissions are the glue.” Tim talks about what this means to us in a video here. One of the best ways to motivate everyone to use the software, keep up to date with their actions, and build a complete data set is to process sales commissions WITHIN SalesChain.

The reality is, salespeople are in this industry to make money. What sometimes gets lost is the fact that salespeople can make more money when they understand how the business makes money. The integrated accounting approach allows for greater understanding through transparency. When someone clicks a button in SalesChain (to process an order for example) and the commissions system is calculated within the same suite, that information is the most up to date and remains untainted by human or machine error. Because of the wealth of information which automatically syncs to update within the system, users of the software can immediately know who is selling what, when and where with the greatest success.

Try integrating commissions with the SalesChain system and we guarantee that more of your staff will use the system more consistently.


5) Bi-Directional Integration to e-Automate

Bi-directional data injection into e-Automate avoids redundant data entry and synchronizes data across disparate systems. This level of integration ensures consistency through your sales orders with active synchronization. Whenever a sales order is created in e-Automate, a deal is automatically priced in SalesChain with all the appropriate figures populated for you. When a deal is priced in SalesChain there is no more need to type the order into e-Automate once a salesman has made the order in SalesChain.
Seamlessly create sales orders and work harmoniously to achieve superior productivity.

6) Schedule a User Training Session

Ease of use and employee training also play a huge role in the successful implementation of technology. Even if your people have used the system daily for years, it never hurts to freshen up on the fundamentals or to learn about properly using some of our newest features!

Contact our office to schedule virtual training, or a demo of our newest features! Or visit our YouTube Channel to brush up on some of the basics! Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any feature showcases or update videos!


When you use the system to it’s fullest potential, you not only increase your company’s efficiency, but also generate more data. With this abundance of data you can generate and understand more complete and accurate reports. When data is complete and accurate, it becomes actionable. It allows you to make Data Driven Decisions and take your company forward confidently in a direction supported by fact.

Learn more about how our Business Intelligence Dashboards are helping our customers make Data Driven Decisions –> Here

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.

What is Business Automation?

What is Business Automation?

Defining SalesChain as a product can be difficult.  This is mainly because there is such a large variety of services that we provide to the end user. To understand ourselves, as well as the product we provide, we had to take a step back and ask some general questions. What umbrella encompasses Integrated Workflow Systems, Sales CRM, Commissions, the Delivery Desk, Business Intelligence Dashboards and other fulfillment measurement systems within our suite?

The answer: Business Automation. How did we come to this conclusion? What exactly is encompassed within “Business Automation?” Let’s take a microscope to this topic and define exactly what “Business Automation” is.


Defining Business Automation

We can learn a lot about Business Process Automation (BPA) by considering its title. The process involves automating the more routine, time-consuming and tedious processes within your business.

BPA goes beyond traditional data management and records to advanced software systems and programs that integrate all your applications. Automation can permit your company to maintain control over various issues, such as customer relationships, analytics, planning, sales, standardization, and development. Automation can target not only complicated information technology tasks, such as managing your system users and troubleshooting network issues, but also programs like email marketing services.

By offloading statistical, organizational, and data-oriented tasks to intelligent software and computer systems, we take the load off your staff and enable more work to be done in less time. Therefore, BPA enables businesses to minimize costs, increase efficiency and streamline processes.


The Effect of Business Process Automation

These days, business automation is everything: it provides alleviation from rigorous, precise, and tedious, manual tasks, ensures your business is running efficiently and accurately, and leaves your staff with better morale. To remain competitive in the modern business world, this relief is simply essential.

Daily business processes involve a lot of moving parts. From email chains, document revisions, and meeting schedules to delivery itineraries, manifests and configuration lists, it’s safe to say hundreds of tiny decisions make a company function on a daily basis.

Business automation tools like SalesChain provide the tools necessary to achieve the hairpin precision each of these tasks required. In short, it mitigates many possibilities for minor errors associated with the human condition which can leave customers and employees, both,  feeling lost in the chaos of undirected communication, revisions, delays, and compounding frustration.


What is Business Rules Management?

For a Business automation system to run properly, it needs a set of defined rules. The system needs to know which tasks it is to perform, and when; It needs to know the specific ways your company combines data in order to provide the most valuable metrics; And, most importantly, it needs a defined workflow customized to the infrastructure of your business’ processes and hierarchy.

A Business Rules Engine is an application with a defined, custom workflow that runs within a business automation system and makes decisions automatically based on preset rules. These decisions usually involve transitioning to a specific path, task or action in a workflow definition, for instance assigning a task to someone or saving a document to a particular folder in a document management system.

SalesChain works individually with our customer base to define and each dealer’s workflow, adding custom variables to Business Intelligence reports or product categories where necessary in order to make our software work for the customer, rather than making the customer work within ridged confines of a single iteration of our system. Our robust system represents a variable Business Rules Management system.

 


Consistent Processes = Informed Decisions

When your company’s workforce uses consistent processes in integrated systems they begin to build a complete and accurate data set. With this data set, viewed in an understandable format, like SalesChain’s Sales Analytics Dashboard and BI dashboarding tools, that data becomes actionable; This information allows you to make informed decisions more confidently.

To Review:

  • Automation can permit your company to maintain control over various issues, such as customer relationships, analytics, planning, sales, standardization, and development. While taking the load off your staff and enabling more work to be done in less time.
  • Business automation tools like SalesChain provide the tools necessary to achieve the hairpin precision required in daily business tasks
  • Once you define a workflow, a BPA tool can save your business money, time, and hassle.

Ready to Streamline Your Business?

Use the link below to schedule a discovery call for a demonstration of the SalesChain system. One of our representatives would be happy to assist you, answer your questions and see if SalesChain is the right partner to help you grow your business.