Recession Roadmap: Driving Sales in Tough Times

It doesn’t take an economist to see that we’re in a tough spot. The shops are empty. People – and businesses – are under huge pressure.

Will things get better? While they say that time heals all, the fact is that market downturns mean deep economic recalibration – there will be winners and losers at the end of this. It’s scary, but it’s true.

The better news? It’s possible to emerge even stronger on the other side.

So strap in, hold on and commit.

 1 – Work smarter

It may seem counterintuitive, but when times are tough, resist the urge to do more. Instead, get back to basics – focus on your business’s core. Do fewer things, but do them right! Boom times allow for the growth of fluff, while recessions reveal the real revenue drivers. Exploit this opportunity to identify them.

Tough times reveal the products and services that are your business’s bedrock – direct your energy there.

 2 – Get the right mix

New customers? Be crystal clear on your targets for new acquisitions – come one, come all isn’t a strategy to deploy when the market is making life difficult.

 3 – Improve your sales process

By driving efficiencies in this part of your business, you’ll free yourself up to add value elsewhere.

 4 – Improve your sales productivity

Automation can give people the time they need to focus on sales. When back-office processes are taken care of, there’s no need to sit in the office crunching through admin. You can work from anywhere, knowing those aspects of business are taken care of.

 5 – Improve and automate your reporting

Smart software that integrates machine learning techniques can help streamline the process and power intelligent decisions.

Need a report? You should be able to grab one instantly.

 6 – Work on your product offerings

The second? Stop customers from straying. You can do this, for example, by introducing a sub-brand, which customers can cancel their use of later.

 7 – Improve your marketing

Secondly, get social. Go where your customers are and get your customer mix right. Closeness with the right customers has never been more important than right now.

 8 – Focus on your cash flow

With your admin and reporting under control, this becomes far easier. You have both the time and the necessary tools to make revenue generation a top priority.

It’s simple, really

What we can change is how we react.

Don’t miss more articles by The CRM Team

How to Enable an Extended Sales Team

Sounds like strange advice in the current market, doesn’t it? It shouldn’t. When times get tough, many make the mistake of losing confidence. They focus inwardly, looking to consolidate what they have, rather than outwardly: on what could be. This is unnecessary self-sabotage!

Rather: vision, guts and a little ingenuity can make all the difference, separating the winners from the losers.

A major opportunity every business should be exploiting is this: Creating extended sales teams. By viewing everyone in your business – yes, everyone – as a salesperson, you immediately increase your sales potential.

Trust beats smooth talk

Selling is no longer about the gift of the gab – it’s about building trust. And that means that everyone in your business can – and should – sell.

In fact, those people who already work for you are actually in the best position to do so. For example, who better to up-sell a deal than a service technician who is always on the front-line delivering to customers?

It’s true – not everyone understands the world of sales. So, sales managers may need to step in to provide guidance at first – showing those new to the process how to identify opportunities. Putting incentive structures in place is key too, as it will change the behaviour people have in seeking out new sales avenues.

Sell with service

The first step? Focus on your service people. Service teams interact with clients every day, throughout every stage of the post-sales cycle. That interaction equates to trust – trust that’s been built up over time. Here are a few ideas on how to leverage their abilities:

Create referrals – Referral leads convert at a higher rate than typical leads. Not only that, but referred customers tend to spend more. If you’re not exploring this avenue with your service people, you may be losing out.

Ask for customer feedback – Develop a culture of gathering (and sharing!) feedback. Use that information to learn and grow. Ask your marketing team to develop a set of key questions, then get your service people involved deployment. Use the feedback gathered to help improve both your product development and sales processes. Your service people are on the ground – they can access insights others simply can’t. Change what needs to be changed on the basis of what you discover and, if need be, rethink your approach. Also, share the changes you made with customers who gave you the feedback in the first place. They will feel appreciated and are more likely to give you more feedback in the future.

Cross-sell, up-sell and even down-sell – Have a client with a basic plan or product? Get your service teams to ask well thought through, quality questions; they understand customer needs and pain points better than anyone else. This means they’re best positioned to make recommendations about how customers can access better services. Don’t discount down-selling either: if a client is wavering, a basic plan can be a way of retaining their business, with the potential for growth in future.

Capitalise on online chat – The market has changed. Digitisation, fluidity and instant communication are the order of the day. Customers have come to expect fast responses and real-time interactions. The right person providing the right information online can both improve customer experience and shorten the sales cycle.

Make it about marketing

There was a time when marketing teams simply handed over leads to sales. Those days are gone. Now, marketing is operating ever further into the entire sales cycle, taking customers ever deeper into the journey.

This means that your marketing teams are increasingly important to the sales process. It also means that they need to be more knowledgeable about sales (and how your business runs) than ever. Here are a few tips:

1. Integrate and educate. Enable your marketing teams to close deals – and then, help them to close more. Part of this means taking a tactical and strategic approach to your marketing activities.
2. Identify and attract prospects that are easier to sell to. An easier sale frees up the time and resources you need to drive other areas of your business forward.
3. Generate the right leads – Use your marketing team to help generate the leads you need to support the sales team. Having the right leads that are more likely to convert is better than generating tons of the wrong leads.
4. Increase your close rates. Market more intelligently to attract the right people with the right message. Then, make sure that every touch point you have with them is consistent and equipped to drive maximum value.

Closing with customers

Here’s the key: customers are not only the people you sell to. They’re also the people who can help you sell.

Customers can be a great source of new sales leads. Leverage your customers’ networks to explore new opportunities and open new doors. If you’ve worked well with a customer and developed rapport, you’re well positioned to ask for references into other business units or departments in their company.

Existing customers can also be extremely effective last-inning closers too. If there’s a deal in the pipeline or a lead who’s on the verge of buying – but who is not yet quite convinced – ask an existing customer to help close the deal. ‘My experience with the company was great’ is often just that little bit more effective as a sales tool than ‘Your experience with our company will be great’.

So, here’s the deal: don’t be afraid to go big

Sales is no longer about smooth talking – it’s about building trust and long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with customers. With a little guidance and the right incentive structures in place, you can empower anyone in your business to build and grow the kind of connections every successful business needs.

Don’t miss more articles by The CRM Team

Why our customers chose Dynamics 365 over Salesforce.com

In our post, Microsoft Overtakes Salesforce.com, we shared an important market shift: Global analyst Forrester placed Microsoft ahead of Salesforce.com for the first time.

This is hugely significant. To understand this trend, we asked our customers why they chose Dynamics 365 over Salesforce.

Here were their top 6 reasons:

1. Integration with Outlook, LinkedIn and other Microsoft technologies.

“We searched for well over a year and went through multiple platforms… Dynamics’ superior flexibility, scalability, ability to integrate seamlessly with Office 365 and Azure were all factored in the final choice.”

Most companies already use Microsoft’s products: Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook etc. So, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is the leader in integrating those technologies with Dynamics 365.

Our customers love the fact they can work in Dynamics 365 without leaving Outlook. With Office 365 and Dynamics 365 built on the same common data model and hosted together on Azure, your data couldn’t be more integrated. And with Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s powerful Sales Navigator syncs directly with Dynamics 365.

While Salesforce also offers integration with Outlook, Exchange, LinkedIn etc. our customers said that the integration was more difficult and limiting in terms of functionality.

2. Value

“In just seven months we saw an 87% increase in sales”

Our customers are being asked if they are seeing value in their technology investments – if it’s having an impact on their bottom line.

This is something Microsoft is very strong in. Feature-by-feature, analysts consistently find little to choose between Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. But when it comes to the price of those features, there is no comparison. Microsoft is consistently lower in cost. And lower cost means a quicker time to proving value.

For instance, if you compare the core enterprise offerings, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Plan costs $115/user/month. In contrast, Salesforce’s Lightning Enterprise Edition costs an extra $35 per user per month at $150/user/month. However, with the Customer Engagement Plan, you get Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, Powers Apps and Microsoft Flow – all included. In contrast, Salesforce only includes the sales elements.

Microsoft’s offering not only costs less, but it’s a complete, robust, multifunctional CRM. It’s much easier to get business value with a platform where you get more for less.

3. Simpler Development & Greater Flexibility

“What started as a conversation about lead management consulting help quickly grew, in an exciting way, into a vision of building a new system with functionality we just hadn’t even considered.”

Your business isn’t static, so neither should your technology. The ability to customize and develop your platform should be a key consideration when choosing between Dynamics and Salesforce.

Unlike Salesforce, Dynamics 365 is only built on widely used programming languages (.Net, C# etc.) . This means it is easier to adjust your platform – because you have a broader pool of developers to draw on: either in house, or through Microsoft’s extensive partner network. And it also reduces the next issue…

4. Avoiding Getting Locked In.

5. Avoiding Hidden Costs

• Add-on Pricing – Salesforce sells all add-on functionality at an additional cost. In contrast, many of these features are bundled in Dynamics. eg. Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics Platform is extra, but Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite is part of the core Dynamics offering. Other modules such as Field Service, Customer Service are included in the Microsoft core offering. With Salesforce, they’re extra.
• High Storage Costs – Additional storage for Salesforce can be as high as $250 per GB per month. In contrast, Dynamics 365 is just $5 per GB per month. As your platform matures, this will become more and more of an issue.

6. What’s coming in the future

“I quickly saw access to really interesting new Microsoft tools in the stack like propensity management, digital Web chat support, machine learning and analytics to build better models of customer behavior and needs. That sealed the deal for me, ultimately.”

Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning. There’s a huge technological wave coming. Companies will either surf on top of this wave or be crushed underneath. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft – all the big hitters are investing heavily in this. Salesforce realized this recently and went on a spree of purchases of AI start-ups. But in terms of spend, they can’t compete.

For instance, Microsoft’s annual R&D budget is $12Bn (at least $4Bn of this is AI). In contrast, Salesforce’s turnover is just $10Bn. Microsoft is pumping the benefits of this research into Dynamics 365 at a tremendous rate and have made it a key focus in future development.

In Conclusion

Dynamics 365 is at the forefront of helping businesses like yours become more efficient and improve your bottom line. It will cost you less than Salesforce and you’ll get more for your investment.

Why not join our customers and discover what Dynamics 365 could do for your business?

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Five Golden Rules Every Great Field Service Organisation Follows

The mantra’s stuck around for a reason, but the route to the promised land has changed.

Now, surprise and delight means not only delivering great customer experiences, but leveraging the power of tech in doing so – a fact that holds true for field service organisations in particular.

The reality is that in today’s hyper-competitive, tech-saturated marketplace, customers have come expect more than ever before from Field Service Organisations (FSOs):

• Personalisation.
• Rapid order turnaround.
• Agility.

At the same time, strategies that place too much value on new customer acquisitions through a short-term tech focus tend to be unsustainable.

So, how can FSOs navigate this new business landscape and use tech to power long-term sustainable goals? Here are five rules to bear in mind:

1. Avoid profit tunnel vision

The next client … the next big sale … focusing too hard on these can come at the cost of your current customer base.

Remember: your existing customer base is your most profitable base. Also: it’s expensive to acquire new customers. Your current customers’ experience with your organisation should therefore be a high priority. So, improve the customer journey, making sure it’s studded with positive interactions and value-adds – repeat business and referrals await.

Consider this: a customer calls in, needing to have a piece of equipment repaired. The repairs are done, and the customer walks away happy. However, since the customer isn’t a specialist, what he’ll remember most about the process is the customer service he received. Sometimes it’s just as much about how you make a customer feel as the actual service you provide.

2. Tackle tech phobia

However, the reality is: your competitors get it. They know the value of tech. And chances are, they’re investing in it a big way.

The result? When enough businesses begin to transform, everything in the marketplace changes. The benchmarks customers expect service providers to meet go way up. The ways in which clients expect to interact with businesses (including yours) are completely remade.

Consider:

• The rewards of real-time. Mobile technology means that field techs can connect to real-time feeds from the office and customers. This not only means they’re more visible, but that they’re able to respond far more quickly to changes or order updates. Are your field techs making use of mobile?
• The way the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing machine maintenance. The old paradigm: a device breaks or needs an overhaul. Only then does a customer phone in with a request for service. The new model: IoT devices send and receive data all the time. Now, you can receive an automatic notification of the need for a service or repair, without either you or your customer needing to lift a finger. Now imagine this: your local car service centre phones you, because your car has sent an alert that it’s time for a service. The agent asks if he or she can book you in for a Tuesday morning, your preferred time, based on past data. You agree – it’s not only convenient, but you’re left with the sense that your service centre really cares.

3. Don’t dodge data

The right data analysis can reveal everything from up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, to ways in which to maximise your most profitable customer relationships, refine service delivery based on past feedback and identify your most profitable customer groups and product types. Gone is guesswork. In its place – data-guided decision making.

More importantly – data is the core of personalisation. And personalisation has come to define the most critical interactions in business today. Customers expect you to understand their needs and provide tailored, individualised service. To do that – and do it well, without draining your resources – you need the right tools to dig into your data.

For example, by knowing what products or services a customer ordered from you in the past allows you to streamline how you interact. It also allows you to suggest relevant options, upgrades and associated services.

4. Increase efficiency

Schedule optimisation is one internal process that can drastically improve profit. For example: by using Microsoft Dynamics 365, technicians can dramatically increase the number of appointments they’re able to fit in each day, improving both productivity and profitability.

As your business grows, increasing efficiency becomes paramount. Failing to put the systems in place to allow you to grow – without adding to headcount – can mean the difference between linear and exponential profit growth.

5. Don’t forget your most effective sales channel – your field technicians

Field techs are the face of a business. So, make sure you empower them to consult with and add value to each client interaction.

This can mean anything from adding a touch of personalisation to every meeting, going the extra mile when it comes to fulfilling an order, or using tech to streamline order processing, parts ordering and payment. Doing so can be a powerful differentiator in the market.

Nucleus Research: Dynamics 365 + Sales Navigator significantly increases your sales productivity.

Get an hour back each day. That was the conclusion of global tech analyst, Nucleus Research when they looked at LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 for Sales. Putting it another way, using this combination gives you a 12-15% increase in your productivity. Think how many more deals you could close because of this.

This is a big claim. But it’s not unreasonable. We’ve been using LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Dynamics 365 for months, and have been experiencing the benefits.

Now, when a lead comes to us we get all the data from LinkedIn alongside it. From this one lead, we can easily identify all the stakeholders associated with the deal – without leaving Dynamics 365. We can see their photos, job title, past work history, connections, etc. It’s incredible.

But don’t just take our word for it, you can read the report here. Or better still, see it in action in this short video:

Nucleus Research concludes:

“Clearly Microsoft has an advantage with the sheer volume and granularity of business relationship data within LinkedIn.”

What’s stopping you from having that advantage too?

Talk to us today.

Gartner: Microsoft a Visionary in Field Service

“U.S.-based Microsoft is a Visionary on the basis of the breadth of capabilities it offers on a single platform”

Gartner went on to state:

“[Microsoft’s] Dynamics 365 for Field Service covers end-to-end service, including capabilities not found in many competing solutions, such as predictive equipment maintenance management and contract, depot repair and inventory management.”


“Microsoft has… an aggressive product development roadmap… a result of significant growth in license sales and active users.”

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