How to make more sales using the Internet! (Part 2)

Nowadays your products and services are nоt your sole most important assets. In the new digital world, you need to consider 
the overall customer experience which involves automating the customer buying process. 

The buying cycle of a product often takes a really long time and some unnecessary steps. That can turn off even the most loyal of customers. There are certain things you could automate or change to drive more engagement and certainly more sales.

Build a customer self-service portal

In my experience, no matter if you offer products or services, putting in place a self-service portal can become a turning point in your business. It's a great way for an organization to allow its customers highly personalized and interactive services. 

A self-service portal is a private website that enables each of your clients to have their own secure space where they can complete transactions, have access to information, have access to account-specific information such as invoices, orders, billing data, etc. With a range of self-service options, you'll boost customer satisfaction as well as build long-term clients. 

Deploying a web self-service portal benefits your clients in a variety of ways. Thereafter, satisfied customers benefit your organization.

• Customers can place new orders, view previous orders, check order status, and update profile information.
• Customers have highly personalized sell offers based on their previous activity, purchase history, preferences, etc.
• Offering customers a faster way of getting their answers and a tool for submitting support tickets.

The most prominent benefits of a self-service portal for you and your company are:

• Reduce operating costs - considerably reduces the amount of time for an employee to process tickets and support questions.
• Boost sales - provides clients with tailored products or offers and make it very easy for a client to automate repeat orders
• Collect data - one of the greatest benefits of self-service portals is the ability to directly collect and further analyze clients' information.

The right customer portal lets you meet customer needs by allowing you to interact with them, collect valuable insight regarding users' activities, purchases, and take action on providing timely customer support. It's a great tool to drive customers to spend more money on your company - buy a more expensive model of the same type of product, add features/warranties to purchase a product or upgrade ordered services.

CRM Analytics

There are many ways to gather data. Many companies sit on loads of good customer data and they do not even realize it. The tricky part is to analyze all that data and further use it for data-driven decision-making. 

Using a central platform for collecting and processing all data, as well as a tool for identifying opportunities to increase efficiency, connecting with clients, and generate new leads, a CRM (customer relationship management) solution can make all these processes effortless for you.

By integrating a CRM solution, a company can predict and analyze customer behavior, identify trends, improve customer service and identify the preferences of target markets. With data collected and analyzed from multiple sources, CRM analytics presents it so that better and quicker business decisions can be made. 

Using big data and CRM analytics to turn collected data about customers into useful information can benefit your business in various ways. If you're ready to really get to know your prospects and clients, it’s time to try Composity CRM. Create a free account and get started today!

Customer segmentation

With the right CRM software, you can divide customers into meaningful and measurable groups that share similar characteristics. You can separate them by customer activity (sales, promotions, customer support, website visits, etc.), demographic data (country, language, job position, etc.), or psychographic data (interests, opinions, etc.). Segmenting your customers enables you to develop a deeper understanding of them and discover their needs. You can tailor campaigns, offers, whole products, and services to specific groups and communicating more effective messages.

A company can use customer segmentation to:

• Target marketing campaigns
• Target email campaigns
• Customize a product/service to suit the exact needs of target customers
• Optimize product pricing

Sales Forecasting

Sales Forecasting can become one of your best-hidden advantages. Forecasting provides you with 
predictions about metrics like how many customers will actually purchase again and insights into what revenue can be achieved.

Sales Forecasting is not an exact science, but it can be helpful in several areas:

• Monitor your sales team-level performance, if they are above or below the forecast.
• Set more accurate sales goals and targets.
• Estimate revenue you can generate in the given time period.
• What-if scenarios - how likely is a customer that bought one product to buy another one

Using Sales Forеcast is a very useful method to have an overview of your business - where is your company now and where is it going in the future. 

Many business owners believe integrating CRM software with their existing systems or a new one is a major challenge. Not all systems indeed work with each other but with the advance of cloud technologies and the new era of software, it isn't an issue anymore.

Additional resources

There are thousands of articles out there about sales - techniques strategies, best practices, and so on. Some are all-time treasures, others are just another promo content. Some of our favorites are:

How to Gather 100,000 Emails in One Week (Includes Successful Templates, Code, Everything You Need)

Timeless Marketing Advice from the Father of Advertising’s Favorite Book

3 Proven Ways a CRM System Can Increase Your Sales

12 TED Talks Every Salesperson Should Watch … More than Once

SaaS Marketing Plan: 5 Ways to Get your App to Sell Itself

The Ultimate Lifecycle Email Marketing Guide