Once upon a time, generalization formed the basis of production. From stationery items and mugs to accessories and apparel — mass manufacturing swiftly met consumer demands and kept the expenses to the bare minimum for companies and customers alike.

However, we soon met with the flipside of mass production. Everyone wore or had the same thing. The novelty was lost. Soon, personalization made a headway. According to a 2018 report, it seeped into communications and storytelling along with the print industry.

Many businesses in the print industry mainly deployed web-to-print technologies and added customization options to extend their product lines and drive sales.

Product personalization helped them interact with their customers intimately, increasing engagement and, subsequently, bottom lines. As a result, it was seen as a significant trend with both major retailers and luxury brands. Following are examples of products that are hugely customized:

• Apparel: Clothing and footwear demand personalization as no two bodies are alike.
• Jewelry: Customers who want a unique piece of jewelry can customize it as per their liking and preference.

The market since then has undoubtedly evolved from mass production to be more focused on individual (or corporate) preferences and customization.

Why customers are loving personalization

In simple words, they love things made just for them. Online shoppers hunt for products with a blank space where they add initials, a motto, or a personal image.

But this also holds true for corporations that want to customize mugs, shirts, and stationery items with their brand logo, employee’s name, or other significant copy.

According to a Deloitte study, one out of every five customers is willing to pay 20% more for a customized product. That is because personalization increases customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty towards the service provider. But there is more:

1. It adds to individuality.

Print customization allows the end-users to express themselves. Just how they seek brands that encourage self-expression, personalization itself enables them to celebrate their individuality.

When Caribbean rum brand Malibu launched a white bottle, “Malibu by U,” they wanted rum lovers to purchase the bottle and draw on or sketch it using any color besides the original brand colors. It was a fun exercise to engage customers and drive sales.

People tend to notice something different. For instance, if you sell customizable, print-ready luggage online through an online design tool software, your customers can choose the size and color and add imprints or logos or their name.

Obviously, this will push other potential customers to notice the luggage and even ask your customers where they got it from. Personalized products are a conversation starter. They are perfect for word-of-mouth marketing.

2. It fulfills customers’ unique needs.

Customer expectations are on the rise. They do not want to purchase what is on the offer. Instead, they want to feel like the product was made specifically for them. Needless to say, personalized printing can boost the product’s uniqueness.

Imagine a company gets personalized cookies made for all its departments: marketing, sales, operations, HR, and so on. Of course, they are just cookies, but their value immediately goes up if they have a personalized copy written on them in fondant.

Such small efforts make a huge difference in the long run. Australia-based The Silver Store, for example, deals in fingerprint-engraved and hand-written silver jewelry pieces. Some customers want to engrave a logo, others want a family monogram.

Everyone has a different priority, but all requirements are catered to by the online jewelry shop. That is what personalization is all about!

3. It involves customers in the purchase process.

When consumers have too many choices (which they do), it adds to the stress and falters the decision-making process. Too many options can lead to choice paralysis and buyer’s remorse — both of which often result in abandoned carts and an increase in order returns because the buyers thought they should have considered the alternatives.

Web2print solutions offer a blank canvas for end-users to design their favorite print products from scratch. They can access a library of images, font types, and designs and create a highly unique and personal product. This keeps them engaged and prevents choice fatigue.

4. It boosts their satisfaction levels

Having end-users get involved in the customization experience is a pretty nifty way to stand apart from the competition as a brand. After all, who knows the best about their needs? Customers themselves, of course.

If businesses enable such a personalized buyer journey initially, customers would be happy to purchase from them. However, personalization does not confine user needs within a specific frame. It does not bind them.

When businesses understand the different types of customers, it becomes clear that one-size-does-not-fit-all. By catering to their needs individually, businesses are better able to boost customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Customized products for business: the present and future

You will agree that to beat the competition, you must offer more value to your customers. And this happens by creating happy and memorable experiences for them. What is more amazing than enabling them to design a product for themselves?

Before deploying an online design tool solution, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

• Is there even a demand for customization of the products you offer? You must evaluate the nature of your products.
• Is your customer demographic okay designing products themselves? Not all your customers need to be comfortable doing this by themselves. They might want to outsource it. Whatever the answer, ensure you have a simple online design editor that everyone can use.
• Are you burning a hole in your pocket by deploying a web2print solution? You should not have to if you have partnered with the right vendor. It is necessary to ensure your business feasibility and deploy a custom UI to control where end users can customize.

In a nutshell

If you are thinking of stepping into the customization pool, do not think much. Thrive on exclusivity by providing your customers with an online product design tool that lets them cater to their needs specifically. The more customers are involved in the buying process, the more likely they will return. What do you think?

Product Customization Positions Your Brand To Win And Customers Are Loving It was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The marketing team wears multiple hats until an actual conversion happens. One important hat is that of a magician bringing leads to the sales team out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Of course, there are many ways a marketing team can gather leads — including email marketing, adding compelling CTAs, running paid ads, landing pages, abandoned cart emails, etc.

So, when is the right time to turn the lead to the sales team? If it’s too soon, the sales team ends up wasting more time, and too late, you have more drop-out rates. Fortunately, now, thanks to Marketing CRM software, marketing and sales teams can work together smoothly to attract visitors, nurture leads, and close deals.

What is marketing CRM?

A marketing CRM assists teams by merging marketing functions with data from sales and other parts of your business. The best retail CRM will help organizations with information and tools to run effective marketing campaigns to obtain more leads and close more deals.

In general, marketing CRM takes the form of cloud-based applications to help teams access your complete information on multiple devices with a quick log-in or a fast browser extension download.

The best principle behind a good marketing CRM is to build a better business through overlapping communication and centralization of tasks and data.

Nine best marketing CRM software — Quick Overview

Here are our 9 top marketing CRM software for your businesses. Just click the links below to skip ahead to the retail CRM you’re interested in learning about:

• HubSpot
• Constant Contact
• Freshworks CRM
• Act!
• Drip
• Agile CRM
• Zoho CRM
• Zendesk Connect
• Insightly

How to Select the Best Retail CRM Software?

The options are plenty in the market when it comes to selecting CRM software for retail. Check out these aspects to know what to look for in the best CRM software for especially small businesses:

• Reporting: A good marketing CRM will help companies track activities consistently and generate reports to show data to make informed decisions.
• Ease of Use: The perfect retail CRM for your business will be one of the accessible tools for your team and you to use without getting lost with too many options and navigation.
• Integration: The best marketing CRM software will easily integrate with other tools and services, allowing businesses to automate multiple processes.
• Customization: A well-built CRM for retail will let you customize workflows and processes, understanding that every business is different and their needs are also different.

Now that we are aware of what to look out for in the best marketing CRM software, let’s jump right into it!

1. HubSpot

HubSpot, hands down, is the best marketing CRM for especially startups and small businesses. It’s 100% free and filled with features that any team would expect from a high-quality retail CRM.

HubSpot allows you to manage and organize your contacts, view deals that they opt for and which deals were lost, letting companies get a complete view of the Sales Funnel. It also helps you connect your Gmail or Outlook accounts to track and capture emails.

What makes HubSpot the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Simple and very easy to use tool
• Clean visual dashboard for reporting
• Store unlimited users and 1 million contacts (NO expiration date)
• Integrates with 300+ apps, including WordPress
• Easy to get mobile apps for Android and iPhone
• Create custom filters to sort and manage contacts
• Automate and schedule emails, specific tasks, easily create tickets
• Use marketing tools such as ad management and pop-up forms.

Pricing:

• HubSpot’s features are available for free.
• For advanced features such as phone calls, meetings, and email tracking notifications, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan — starts from $50 per month.

2. Constant Contact

Constant Contact, a well-known email marketing platform, is also an excellent retail CRM software. This tool works best for small businesses, especially those who want to set up email campaigns and manage contacts.

Constant Contact’s dashboard is simple, clean, and easy to use. They make it easy to track customers’ activities from your dashboard and display reports. With the help of an easy drag and drop tool, you can send emails and store contact details with ease.

What makes Constant Contact the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Schedule emails based on convenience
• Create a sales funnel and track it automatically
• Use marketing automation to gain and nurture prospects
• Create beautiful emails using a simple drag and drop builder
• Use 100+ attractive email templates to engage with customers
• Easy integration with popular eCommerce platforms
• Run Facebook and Instagram ads to grow your list

Pricing:

• The pricing depends on the size of your email list.
• The basic plan starts from $20 per month.
• Plus plan starts from $45 per month.
• You also get a 60-day free trial.

3. Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM is easily one of the best marketing CRM software for any retail business. It offers features designed with small businesses in mind. Freshworks CRM’s dashboard can help you capture leads and manage contacts. You can also create a sales funnel, make phone calls, and send emails without leaving the CRM software.

But the standout feature of Freshworks CRM is its reporting capabilities. It lets you create simple to advanced reports, show sales and revenue data with graphical charts. You can use your dashboard to display up to 6 reports.

Another critical aspect of Freshworks CRM is its powerful 360-degree customer view. With this feature’s help, you can identify customer touch points, access their social profiles, and see their activities from a single screen.

What makes Freshworks CRM the best marketing CRM for your business?

• A.I. powered lead scoring offers assistance to prioritize leads
• Automatically updates contact profiles and information
• Create specific segments for various leads
• Easy to schedule appointments, take notes, manage, and share files
• Offers insights about deals through the dashboard
• Allows a 360-degree sales funnel view
• Track deals easily with Android and iOS app
• Enables calls and generates automatic call logs
• Easy to assign local or toll-free numbers to your team

Pricing:

• Freshworks CRM offers four different pricing plans.
• The basic plan starts from $12 per user per month (billed annually).
• You also get to try a 21-day free trial and then select a plan.

4. Act!

Act is one of the marketing CRM software with real-time business metrics built to turn leads into sales. This tool integrates sales activities and marketing efforts seamlessly to deliver suitable sales agents with the right leads. You can also track important KPIs across all business processes.

What makes Act, the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Offers email marketing and a collection of high-production-value email templates
• Integrates well with Outlook, Slack, QuickBooks Online, and other business apps
• Personalize conversations and build trust
• It helps you identify trends from any deals you’ve lost.
• It lets you automate communications and activities you define
• Generates dynamic reports, visual snapshots of real-time metrics
• Organize customer details, emails, attachments, campaign results, and even industry-specific data to make it easily searchable.

Pricing:

• The starter plan is $25 per user/per month (billed annually)
• The professional plan is $50 per user/per month (billed annually)
• The premier plan is $90 per user/per month (billed annually)
• The ultimate plan is $200 per user/per month (billed annually)
• Offers a 14-day free trial for all plans

5. Drip

Drip is one of the leading retail CRM in the market. This tool offers features to increase your online store’s sales by helping you manage contacts, generate leads, and convert them into paying customers.

Drip comes with an attractive interface, which is very easy to use. This tool tries to bridge the gap between what your customers want and what your online store delivers. Any business can leverage Drip’s marketing CRM, not just eCommerce website users.

What makes Drip the best marketing CRM for your business?

• It helps you automate workflows
• Allows usage of tags, custom fields, and events to track customer activities
• Integrates easily with popular platforms like WooCommerce and OptinMonster
• User-friendly email builder
• Powerful segmentation of customer data
• Content customization for intelligent personalization
• Custom conversion tracking
• Purchase intent marketing
• Automatic revenue attribution

Pricing:

• It offers three pricing plans plus a 14-day free trial.
• The basic plan starts from $49 per month.

6. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is another popular CRM software for retail stores. Their best features include being user-friendly with a simple dashboard. Agile CRM lets you automate your activities related to sales, marketing, and customer service.

You can also manage contacts, track deals, automate calls and voicemails. This retail CRM is loaded with features and remains affordable for small businesses too.

What makes Agile the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Create beautiful landing pages
• Track emails with real-time data
• Build campaigns with segments
• Marketing automation made easier
• Use email templates to create attractive emails
• Add forms to grow your list
• Add pop-ups and push notifications via web rules

Pricing:

• The free plan works well for up to 10 users.
• Paid plans start from $8.99 per user per month.

7. Zoho CRM

Zoho continues to be one of the best CRM for SMBs. This tool is simple as they use a powerful cloud software suite and offer various SaaS applications for businesses of all sizes.

Zoho CRM is used to convert leads, engage with customers, and boost your revenue. It’s easy to manage and automate various tasks, including email, social media, live chat, and more, using Zoho CRM’s single platform.

What makes Zoho CRM the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Easy to capture and manage leads
• It helps you stay ahead with deal management
• Allows you to connect with customers across multiple channels
• It lets you automate workflows
• Create a personalized customer journey
• Omnichannel support available
• Receive analytics reports

Pricing:

• Zoho CRM’s prices start at $12 per month (billed annually)
• It also offers a free trial to get started.

8. Zendesk Connect

Zendesk Connect is a powerful CRM that offers targeted marketing with personalized notifications. They do base on the tracking of user preferences and behavior over time. This tool also helps you segment customers, trigger campaigns in-app, and boost engagement.

What makes Zendesk Connect the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Ticketing system
• Messaging & live chat
• Help center
• Voice
• Community forums
• Reporting & analytics
• Answer Bot
• Customer service software

Pricing:

They offer a sliding scale pricing according to the number of monthly messaged users.

• 2,000 monthly messaged users is $153 per company/per month (billed annually)
• 50,000 monthly messaged users is $918 per company/per month (billed annually)
• 500,000 monthly messaged users is $3,094 per company/per month (billed annually)

9. Insightly

Insightly is one of the full-fledged marketing CRM with a complete G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 integration. It offers total contact management that helps you streamline engagement with your customer base. Also, it allows both salespeople and marketing team members to gain complete visibility on leads, customers, and suppliers.

What makes Insightly Connect the best marketing CRM for your business?

• Flexible calendaring and event management
• Automatic address book curation
• Insightly notes, Evernote, and comments for staying organized
• Fast search options
• Create custom fields and filters.
• File sharing to keep related records together and accessible.
• Web to contact forms.

Pricing:

• Plus plan starts at $29 per user/per month (billed annually)
• The professional plan starts at $49 per user/per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise plan starts at $99 per user/per month (billed annually)
• A 14-day free trial is available for both Plus and Professional plans.

Get started with the best Marketing CRM for your business.

So, how do you plan to select the best marketing CRM for your business? The answer is simple. Pick one from the list above that squares best with your business needs.

Here’s some final universal advice for businesses looking for a marketing CRM — consider these three factors:

• Pricing (learn how the price jumps between different plans as you scale up)
• Ease of use (avoid more significant learning curve to save time/money spent on training)
• What integrations does it offer? (i.e., if it works with tools you already use).

So, pick the best one and get started right away!

Author Bio:

Keerthana Selvakumar is a Content Writer at TargetBay, an Ecommerce Marketing Cloud used by thousands of online stores across the globe. When she is not working, Keerthana spends most of her time reading, cooking, catching her favorite Netflix shows, and fantasizing about becoming a good storyteller. An admitted Anime fanatic, she feeds her addiction to Japanese Manga and Anime by binge-watching episodes on Sunday afternoons until her eyes pop out.

9 Best Marketing CRMs for Retail You Must Try in 2021 was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Businesses often struggle to keep track of all their leads. As they acquire new leads, marketers need an efficient way to sort, label, and qualify those leads in a singular program.

To make things more complicated, each lead is at a different stage of the buying process. Some might be just learning about the product. Others might be reviewing the different features that the product offers and sharing them with their team.

Marketers need to engage qualified leads with the right content at the right time in order to effectively convert them. This requires using customer relationship management (CRM) software to aid in the storing, labeling, and management of those leads.

What is a CRM Software?

A CRM software is a program that manages the customer relationship from the moment they fill out a form on your site all the way until after they purchase. The software functions as a dashboard that enables you to acquire, manage and segment leads so you can initiate targeted campaigns or review where they are in their purchasing journey.

The CRM can function as a centralized location for the business to understand what is in the pipeline for future deals. It can offer assistance in the storage and management of current prospects as well as reporting for deals that are open, closed, or in motion. Sales, marketing, and business intelligence departments will all have reasons to use your CRM software.

Often, companies will build their entire tech stack around their CRM software, using other software that specifically integrates with it. Freshworks CRM offers dozens of integrations with popular software solutions used by entrepreneurs around the world.

But how exactly will CRM software increase sales? Let’s take a look at three ways you can deploy your CRM software to ensure it is increasing your bottom line.

Leveraging CRM Software For Sales

For many businesses, purchasing a new software must justify an increase in sales. Well, you’ll likely be able to recoup your investment with your CRM software, since it is such an important component of your sales channels.

Your CRM software will help with inbound and outbound marketing campaigns and ensure your sales and marketing team have closely collaborated on goals and initiatives. Specifically, your CRM software will help increase your organization’s sales through the lead capture, event tracking, and sales automation functionality.

Lead Capture

Do you still have a bunch of web forms on your website that simply collect prospect's information and store them in your CMS, only to be retrieved when someone does a manual export? Now is the time when you can streamline this and use your CRM to add a web form that will send the prospect information right into the CRM.

An effective B2B content strategy only works if you include forms embedded natively into the content to ensure that you are capturing your prospect’s information while they browse. It is a missed opportunity if you forget to include a form. You wouldn’t have any way to capture the information of an engaged prospect who is reading a relevant piece of content related to their business use case.

With forms that are linked to your CRM, you can go beyond the simple action of acquiring emails to grow your email list and instead, let your CRM do the work by automatically setting up a profile for your prospect in your CRM when they sign up. By doing so, you’ll capture the important information needed to begin nurturing prospects down the purchasing path.

Event Tracking

Has your marketing team been running 10,000 miles per minute and throwing the kitchen sink at all your campaigns in hopes of attracting more leads? With event tracking in your CRM, you’ll be able to distinguish what is paying off.

By adding scripts to certain campaigns and pages on your website, you’ll be able to track which pieces of content or ad campaigns were viewed by the prospect in your CRM. If the prospect converts, you’ll have more visibility on the ROI for specific marketing initiatives and understand more holistically where it makes sense to invest your time and resources.

For example, if you’re using a bunch of link building tools to ensure that a specific blog post ranks higher on search engines, you’ll be able to track the people that have viewed that blog post and eventually purchased it. In Freshworks CRM, you’ll be able to see which actions your prospect took along their customer journey:

By adding event tracking to key marketing initiatives, you’ll be able to evolve your marketing strategy to ensure it consistently reaches your target audience.

Sales Automation

Now that you have your customer profile set up in your CRM, it’s time to nurture them with strategic sales messages. Your CRM can send your prospect information directly, or you can integrate your CRM with your email service provider.

Sales email cadences are essential for nudging prospects closer to conversion. You’ll be able to see if your prospect opened or clicked on the email in your CRM which can help you evolve your messaging to ensure you’re resonating with your prospect.

In the Freshworks CRM you can build these sales sequences with basic steps:

Your CRM will keep track of your prospects’ journey. With the right sales sequences, you can ensure that your prospects are continuously engaged and learning about your product’s features as well as everything you have to offer.

Conclusion

Without a CRM, you’re not reaching your full sales potential. Businesses need a centralized hub for all their interactions with their prospects. Their CRM can act like this and function as so much more. A CRM will acquire, track and nurture your prospects with the right cadences set up.

In addition, you’ll be able to easily find and segment prospects to ensure you’re reaching them with the right marketing campaigns and messaging.

By using a CRM, you’ll be able to drive sales and increase revenue while consistently engaging your prospects and leading them to purchase.

About the Author

Brad Smith is the CEO at Wordable.io and the Founder of Codeless (a content production agency). His content has been highlighted by The New York Times, Business Insider, The Next Web, and thousands more.

The Role of CRM Software in Increasing Sales was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the past 20 years, the world has evolved at an unthinkable pace right before our eyes. It’s at the point where if a person who went into a coma in the 90s wakes up today, they’d be thoroughly shell-shocked.

We’ve redefined so many aspects of life in less than a generation. It’s amazing progress. Not only on the technological front, but the way in which we live has changed significantly. Take jobs for instance, 20 years ago there was no such thing as a social media manager or a social influencer. The thought of such professions would puzzle most, but today it’s the norm.

With the advent of technological dominance, it means that there are more opportunities for alternative professions in both tech and non-tech related fields. More and more people have opted out of the traditional 9-to-5 in favor of more flexible hours that allow them the freedom to pursue what they value in life.

All this has become possible while still maintaining a healthy financial inflow to fund comfortable lifestyles. If previously only a selected few with a fancy degree could afford such freedoms, now the opportunity is available to virtually anyone willing to invest some resources into their self-development.

Looking to make a shift yourself? Then you’re in luck. We’ve compiled this great list of 10 in-demand jobs that require no college degree. Watch out, one of them might just become your next career or a least a great new side-hustle!

1. Freelance Photographer

Minimum requirements: Decent camera, good sense of artistry

Photography is not for everyone, but it is a skill that can be learned. Many freelance photographers today started out as a self-taught and went on to be hugely successful. The trick to being a good photographer is choosing your niche. There are so many styles to experiment with and choose from: wedding, product, portrait, events, nature, food and countless more.

The entry barrier can be steep as a freelance photographer has to invest in good equipment to build up a strong portfolio. You’ll also need to take charge of all the related jobs from marketing to accounting.

The upside is once you’re established enough, you can afford to delegate certain tasks and focus on the passion projects that most appeal to you. This Freelancer’s Guide to Photography does a great job of outlining how to get started and ensure your success.

2. Personal Trainer

Minimum requirements: Certification may be needed

Gyms are so ubiquitous nowadays that every other person you meet very likely subscribes to one. For those of you who enjoy working out and engaging in an active lifestyle, this job might be for you.

Personal trainers provide assistance in assessment, instruction, and supervision for those who are exercising. Since this job deals with health and well-being, in many countries a certification is required. It also requires good people skills, excellent organisation and most importantly patience.

The job can be exceedingly rewarding and allows you to work on your own term while still doing something you love. Check in with gyms in your area to find out what specific qualifications they require their fitness instructors to have.

3. Data Entry

Minimum requirements: A working computer with a decent internet connection

This is a job that would be a great fit for students or stay at home moms. A data entry job is very mechanical. It typically involves entering information to a prepared database, but can also encompass tasks like cleaning CRM data. This line of work calls for strong clerical skills such as proficient typing, good time management and keen attention to detail.

There’s what seems to be a surplus of data entry jobs available on freelancer job sites such as Upwork or Fiverr. Yet the downside is that the competition is quite fierce. This might drop you to the vicious cycle of job first or experience first. Once you establish yourself though it can become quite a comfortable side job.

4. English Teacher

Minimum requirements: Fluency in English

If you speak great English and have the patience, you might be interested in exploring an English teaching career. Online English teaching is blowing up due to an increased demand from many Asian countries, especially China. Otherwise, there are plenty of offline teaching roles that are looking for expat teachers.

Many positions require a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certification. And some might require a certain passport (most commonly US, UK, Australia or New Zealand) and a first degree. However, there are plenty of positions that are less demanding.

To be a teacher you need to have patience and strong organisation skills to develop learning plans that suit your students as well as imaginative thinking to make learning engaging!

5. Virtual Assistant

Minimum requirements: A working computer with an internet connection, preferably a home office

A virtual assistant is a job that in many ways resembles a secretary or a personal assistant job, except it’s remote. While virtual smart assistants like Siri and Alexa battle it out for chatbot supremacy, fear not. There’s still a growing need for virtual assistants with an actual human touch.

This is another job that requires a lot of clerical skills covering tasks such as: schedule management, making travel arrangements, filing and document organisation, correspondence, and many other administrative functions.

Being a good virtual assistant also requires phenomenal communication skills both written and verbal. You have to be a proactive person who is eager to help your employer through the hectic daily operation.

The really great thing about the virtual assistant field is that it is so diverse. Instead of working at one static full-time job, you have the ability to create multiple income streams by doing a variety of different jobs for different bosses.

6. Translator/ Transcriber

Minimum requirements: Bilingual

This job is for anyone who is able to fluently convert information from one language into another. Various certifications are available for those who are interested in becoming a professional translator, but usually a strong knowledge of two languages is enough to get you started.

The translators typically work from home and receive and submit their work electronically. Schedules will vary depending on assignments, but most tend to work full time during regular office hours translating documents, publications, websites and what have you.

Usually a translator will offer a transcribing service where they translate audio from a video or voice recording into written text. This job can be expanded to include subtitling, which is getting very popular with the advent of on-demand streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix.

So if you have advanced language knowledge, attentive listening skills, patience and strong critical thinking, this might be a great avenue to explore!

7. Content Writer

Minimum requirements: Good language and writing skills

The content industry offers a very lucrative opportunity today. Many companies maintain a blog as a form of marketing or to simply have a communication platform to share with their clients.

Although a college degree is not a must, it’s a good idea to come up with a solid resume and state your writing experience there. This will increase your chances to get the content writing job you want. Luckily, there are plenty of quality academic writing services and tools to help you with this. Your interest in a particular field can help you to develop your niche and find a right position.

Remember, strong written content is king, but the secret to an excellent blog or social media post lies in the visuals.

8. Graphic Designer

Minimum requirements: Design skill, tech-savvy, and sense of artistry. Also, good equipment

Although a lot of graphic designers have an advanced degree, a great deal turn to online tutorials, short courses, books, training videos boot camps to ease themselves into the profession. What you need to start is a committed approach to consistent learning through both offline and online means.

There are plenty of courses which can equip you with the right skill, given that you are passionate about graphic design. Once you secure the necessary skills, you need to build your own portfolio which serves as your showcase to market your service.

Graphic designing is quite a popular profession among digital nomads due to the remote nature.

9. Proofreading

Minimum requirements: Good language skill, an eye for detail

Once the content is ready, a written material has to undergo a proofreading process before it is allowed to see the light of the day. Proofreaders mainly identify errors in a written piece, but the job is not as easy as it sounds.

It requires not only meticulousness and love for reading, but also good knowledge of grammar and punctuation. This job can be interesting for those who are well versed in their respective language and have an eye for detail.

The motivation to work on your own to meet deadlines and the ability to focus fully are especially important in order to perform well in this role.

10. Welder, Electrician, Plumber

Minimum requirements: A vocational education

Technical tradesmen such as welders, electricians, and plumbers are sometimes foolishly looked down upon. These jobs are always high in-demand and have a potential of being very high earning. So if you pay a great deal of attention to detail, have a steady hand and enjoy troubleshooting problems, think seriously about one of these careers.

They typically require completion of training programs offered at vocational schools and engage in on-the-job apprenticeships. But once you get started it can lead to a very interesting career.

For example welders who specialise in high-altitude welding or under-water welding are highly paid due to the scarcity and the complexity of the job. It is worth mentioning that although we live in the digital age, the demand for such technical skills show no signs of diminishing.

So where do I start?

Get your notebook out!

Always start by assessing your current situation. Is there any particular work that you enjoy? Do you mind investing a bit upfront? How do you feel about going back to school? Once you’ve mulled it over and made a decision, it’s much easier to get started.

Next, gather up all that you’ll need. Do you need to take that online course? Do you need to go to a local authority to get the certification? Maybe you need to do some research and buy new equipment?

Once you have armed yourself with the necessary skills and requirements, you can start looking for jobs. Plenty of freelance websites are available out there and you only have to be on the outlook for the opportunity. Forums and Facebook groups can sometimes be hotbeds for various job offers.

When you are all good to go, don’t forget the importance of presenting yourself in a more professional manner. Set up an impressive email signature and never miss an opportunity to showcase your personal brand. You can make a personal website for your portfolio or simply revamp your resume and optimize your Linkedin profile.

And when it comes to receiving payments, a professional invoice should double as a marketing tool. Always include your business logo. Who knows, if you follow my recommendation and end up becoming your own graphic designer boss, maybe you’ll have created your own!

Author Bio:

Uwe Dreissigacker is the founder of online invoicing software InvoiceBerry & also offers free invoice templates to businesses. Small businesses and sole traders can create, send and manage their invoices, quotes and credit notes with the tool. In his free time, Uwe travels the world and enjoys experiencing different cultures.

Be Your Own Boss: 10 In-Demand Jobs that Require No Degree was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

‘One-size-fits-all’ is a phrase that might have made sense in the past, but when it comes to modern marketing this approach no longer cuts it; customers want and have become accustomed to, greater choice.

People have always had varied needs, that’s no secret, and businesses today have the power and knowledge to tailor their marketing strategies in a way that caters to a range of requirements. How I hear you ask? Simple — through clever market segmentation.

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is a process wherein the market, or a portion of the market, is separated and grouped into different ‘segments’ based on their shared or common characteristics.

The aim of this is to enable brands to understand customers and prospects better so that they can accurately strategize and specifically target people with more relevant (and therefore more valuable) communications and offerings.

There are 4 main types of segmentation:

• Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation takes into account basic information such as age, gender, income, occupation, etc. It’s one of the most basic forms of market segmentation, and demographic data is the easiest to collect and analyse.

• Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation groups people based on factors relating to their geographic information, i.e. location, urbanicity, climate, culture, and language. Geographic segmentation is based on facts and is useful for brands both big and small; global or local.

• Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation roots itself in psychology; understanding peoples’ values, opinions, interests, and attitudes, for example. Psychographic data is harder for businesses to collect and analyse than the previous two mentioned. Still, it has the power to offer a lot more value to businesses in return and, therefore, customers and prospects.

• Behavioural segmentation

Behavioural segmentation groups audiences based on how they act. This data is generally collected by analysing how customers and prospects behave on a website, in an app or in-store. The insights gained through behavioural data are highly actionable — allowing businesses to monitor the actions made by customers in a way that is transparent, and to act according to specific touchpoints and pain points.

Each of the four types of market segmentation has its own functions and benefits. Some businesses favour just one, and others use multiple segmentation types in tandem to advance their insights. Overall, the type or types of segmentation that you choose to implement in your marketing strategy are dependent on your overall business goals and objectives, and the decisions that will be made based on the data that you gain.

So, now that we’ve got a better understanding of what market segmentation is, here are five key reasons why you need to implement it in your marketing strategy

5 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy Needs Market Segmentation

1. Market segmentation enhances business focus

Key advantage: streamlined decision-making.

Market segmentation provides businesses with a sense of direction. Sure, there are many brands whose targeting strategy is ‘undifferentiated’, i.e. mass marketing is their preferred method, but attempting to serve too many markets or offer too many products can dilute a business, weakening the brand itself, and the trust that customers and prospects would otherwise have.

Say, for example, you own a shoe store and sell every type of shoe available; trainers, heels, sandals, boots, slippers, wedges, etc., but you realise that you’re always running out of stock in the ‘boots’ category. By conducting market research, your geographic segmentation data tells you that most of your audience resides in a cold climate with a higher-than-average rainfall. Your psychographic segmentation data tells you that the majority of your audience values time spent with family, exercise, and outdoor activities like hiking in the mountains. By analysing the data that’s available to you, it’s clear that you’ve been wasting your money stocking a wide variety of sandals and heels; you make the well-informed decision to widen the range of boots that you offer to include more durable, warm, and waterproof shoes.

And voila! By utilising your market segmentation data, you have been able to shift your focus onto the things that matter most to your target audience.

You want your brand to be memorable; market segmentation gives you a deeper and clearer understanding of your audience’s needs, wants, and motivations, and therefore means you can focus on how to best serve them.

2. Market segmentation optimises user experience

Key advantage: improved brand affinity.

Understanding your customers is integral to the continued success of your business. There are loads of different brands out there, so consumers have a huge variety of choice for almost any product or service they desire. That means if you’re ignoring the needs of your audience, they will notice this and find a brand who can offer them a greater service, more specific products and a valuable experience.

Whether you’re focusing on an app, a website, or products in a brick-and-mortar store, great user experience (UX) relies on these primary factors:

• Usefulness: does it have a function and is that function necessary?
• Usability: are the navigation and app functions clear?
• Findability: can your audience locate your product online and/or offline? Can they communicate with you when they need to?
• Credibility: does your audience trust your brand and your offerings?
• Desirability: is the experience offered engaging and wanted?
• Adaptability: will people easily and willingly be able to use your product?
• Visual: is it aesthetically pleasing?
• Value: is the customer satisfied with your product or service? Are you as a business receiving an expected (or increase in) profit or brand affinity in return?

Let’s say you’ve created a new app that sells the latest tech products. There are other apps out there that are similar to yours, but it receives lots of downloads because the visual design is on-point, you’ve marketed it really well, and you’ve taken the time to optimise it for app stores so it pops up instantly. But there’s an issue; people seem to be downloading your app, spending a short amount of time on it, and then uninstalling at a rapid rate. You take a look at your behavioural data and realise that users are clicking on an item, hitting ‘back’, and then exiting (which is subsequently followed by the dreaded uninstall). What could be the issue? You create an A/B test and see if adding breadcrumbs will help. Guess what? It does! Breadcrumbs within apps and on websites allow users to know where they are and helps them to easily navigate whilst taking up very little space.

So, not only were you offering poor user experience because your customers are becoming frustrated and confused, but you were also damaging your brand reputation.

In fact, research shows that a massive 57% of internet users say that they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile, and 50% of customers will stop visiting the site even if they like the business. By actively including market segmentation research in your marketing strategy, you can clearly identify the touchpoints and pain points of your customers and prospects.

One of the main reasons that brands fail is because they don’t understand their customers well enough. Market segmentation is the gateway to discovering the actionable insights that you need for optimised UX.

3. Market segmentation improves product development

Key advantage: strengthens your competitive position.

Your customers are real people. And, just like real people, they don’t want their opinions to be ignored. So in order to ensure the continued stability and growth of a company, it’s important that businesses listen to their audience and act in accordance with customer requirements.

As environmental, social, and technological changes and advancements occur, global trends follow. Of course, people change of their own accord, but global trends that are caused by external factors, such as a steep increase in the global use of plastic, play a huge part in the motivations of consumers. Market segmentation allows businesses to better understand their audience; taking note of these shifts and burgeoning requirements, ultimately, makes for improved product development and gains a competitive advantage.

Take the example of Adidas; a couple of years ago they teamed up with the environmental group Parley, after noticing that their customers and prospects were becoming more concerned with the growing amount of plastic waste littering oceans. Because of this, they decided to create a sneaker that was made using recycled ocean plastic.

Source: Brandwatch

By analysing the behaviours, values and opinions of their audiences, Adidas was able to improve their product development and create something good for the environment, good for their customers and, therefore, good for the company.

4. Market segmentation helps break into new markets

Key advantage: economies of scale

It’s not uncommon for businesses to break into new markets. Whilst there are risks involved, expansion into new areas, amongst other things, offers companies the ability to generate new sales and profits, influence market price, and snatch a competitive advantage.

Market segmentation can help you to identify gaps in the market or recognize markets that are being underserved. For example, you might have a multitude of physical stores but by analyzing your audience’s behavioral data, you realize that a lot of your customers like to shop online and actively use social media. Therefore, it makes sense for you to digitally transform, right? By going digital and marketing your products or services online, or creating an online store for your customers and prospects to visit, you can utilize new avenues that will increase your value.

A key factor when it comes to breaking into a new market is knowing that market and the people who reside within it. You can conduct research on your potential customers’ demographic, geographic, psychographic, or behavioral information to discover how you can effectively provide a solution to a problem.

Before you rush into any new market, physical, digital, or both, make sure you identify your goals, identify market gaps, identify your desired audience, and conduct thorough market research.

5. Market segmentation reduces costs

Key advantage: an increase in ROI (return on investment)

As much as you don’t want to hear it, not everyone will want or need what you have to offer. That’s just the way it is. But there are a lot of people who will want your product or service, and market segmentation allows you to identify and target those segments that can bring you the most value. Reduced costs and an increase in ROI are some of the primary reasons that companies actively apply market segmentation in their marketing strategies.

Wes Rangel of DotcomWeavers says that “market segmentation creates a cycle where you study data, improve marketing tactics by segment, earn more sales, get better information, improve tactics again, and so on”.

As we’ve mentioned briefly, mass marketing entails trying to capture the widest possible market of consumers and can be hugely costly for businesses. Market segmentation results in, well, the opposite of that. The ability to target a more limited audience and track their actions and motivations means that you can allocate resources and trim unnecessary spending, therefore saving money and reducing waste. This gives the business freedom to reach out directly to customers and prospects in a specific segment, guiding them towards particular, clear-cut products and services with the knowledge that they will more than likely make a purchase.

Including segmentation in your marketing strategy significantly influences the decision-making process, enabling brands to heighten their personalisation efforts, more accurately and effectively target customers, and therefore see an increase in sales.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a new business with a small customer base or a huge, successful corporation with innumerable customers, utilising audience data and market segmentation analysis in your marketing strategy allows you to gain valuable insights and make decisive moves.

In today’s data-driven world, harnessing your customers’ information for improved products, services, experiences, and communications is relatively simple and is highly beneficial for both parties involved. With such a wide range of options available, it’s important for businesses to really get to know their audiences if they want their brand to be successful and lasting.

So don’t try to squeeze your audience into a one-size-fits-all box — after all, we’re in the 21st century; analyse, segment, strategise, and create unique and personalised experiences for your customers.

Author Bio:

Stevie is a Content Specialist at Hurree. She uses a variety of mediums to develop creative content in order to inform and optimize Hurree’s strategy. Hurree is a marketing automation platform that helps you to create better relationships with your audience by enabling your multi-channel tools to work together through clever segmentation.

5 Reasons Your Marketing Strategy Needs Market Segmentation was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Most people tend to think that a helpdesk is a mere ticketing software. However, they couldn’t be further from the truth. A helpdesk software is far more contemporary and advanced when compared to a ticketing system.

A ticketing system has been traditionally responsible for simple customer support through email. A Helpdesk, on the other hand, does everything a ticketing system does and helps retain customers, generate leads, and analyze the effectiveness of your support apparatus.

In this blog, however, we are concerned with how a good helpdesk can help you retain customers. Read on to find out how!

Understanding Customer Retention

Before we go any further, understanding customer retention is important. Customer retention is an important metric for a business. Having a good product is no guarantee that a customer will stay. The only way to ensure that a customer stays with you or a new client becomes a customer is to retain them once they contact your brand’s support. Providing customer support through email has been a traditional way to invite your customer at your platform or to greet them with onboarding emails for using your services.

Customer retention can boost your business revenue. This growth is exponential, meaning that a 5% improvement in your support can increase your revenue by upto 25%.

Good Customer retention has various advantages. The greatest advantage of good customer retention provides you is that retained customers can act as indirect brand promoters. A customer that is satisfied with your product and support system will recommend you to other people. Overall, such a customer attitude works wonders for your brand value. To summarize, customer retention is directly proportional to your brand’s value in the market.

Let us take the example of Amazon affiliate marketing. When Amazon began selling books, it got an extensive promotion from people that needed an easier way to buy books. People who had grievances with their deliveries were quickly sorted out making them more satisfied and more likely to buy again. Fast forward, two decades Amazon is the leader in the eCommerce space.

A good support system can guarantee that you can retain your customers. Helpdesk is one such support system.

The Role of a Helpdesk in Customer Retention

A Helpdesk is a key to a good customer retention strategy. It provides one of the simplest ways to retain a good customer base for your business and brand. Here’s how a helpdesk can help you with the same:

• Brings all your support channels under one interface:

Companies have multiple channels to interact with their customers. From social media to help centers, every place provides a way for a customer to contact you.

A helpdesk can help you homogenize your support and can be used to bring all these channels in the form of tickets to your support channels. These tickets can be divided on the basis of their type an assigned to specialized support individuals.

• Agent Reporting and Analytics:
  A perfect customer support strategy can be ruined if your support agents aren’t good enough. This is where a Helpdesk can help. Helpdesk automatically records everything in a ticket and automatically uses the information to generate analytics and reports for your agents.
• The metrics provided in agent reports are accurate and can be directly used to judge agent performance. This information can be used to help your agents get better at answering tickets.
• Task Automation:

A good helpdesk can help you automate various tasks. Tasks like ticket allotting and prioritization can be automated by presetting certain parameters and keywords. What this does that it assigns the tasks to the most relevant agents improving the quality of your support team. Improvement in support quality is the precursor to more customer satisfaction which leads to better customer retention.

• CSAT Tracking:

CSAT stands for customer satisfaction. CSAT is the most direct metric you have, to judge if your customer retention strategies are working. CSAT can be obtained by asking every customer how their experience with your customer support went. The better your CSAT score, the more likely a customer is to stay with your brand.

CSAT scores can also be isolated for agents and can be used as a metric for judging agent performance. Good helpdesk software has built-in functionality for CSAT tracking.

Choosing a Good Helpdesk Software

There are a lot of Helpdesk software out there. However, there two factors that make up a good Helpdesk software. These factors are:

• Affordability
• Ease-of-Use

Affordability

An affordable Helpdesk is a good helpdesk. Helpdesk software are very important for a business. However, a good helpdesk should also be maintain a proper cash-to-value ratio.

Ease-of-Use

The major reason why ticketing systems have gone out of fashion is their poor interface. Thanks to the rapid evolution of design standards, modern helpdesk have better interface. However, a good-looking interface is not necessary a good one. A software must always be intuitive to use. The only way to know if a Helpdesk is the right fit for your agents, is to try them out before buying. Many helpdesks provide trial versions for their software. Experiment until you find the right one.

Conclusion

Before we end, let us summarize how you retain customers with a helpdesk. A helpdesk provides you the ability to report and analyze every single ticket that goes through your system. You can use the information gathered from each ticket to generate a lot of analytics to assist your retention strategy. One of the key analytics that can be obtained is the CSAT score. The CSAT score is key to understand your success at retention.

Apart from that, a helpdesk ensures that your support quality goes up. It does this by providing reports for your agents and helps supervisors understand their agents better. It also automates ticket allocation and divides tasks in such a way that agents get tickets that play to their strengths. Lastly, a proper Helpdesk brings together all your support channels in one place to ensure that your support is homogenous no matter what platform a customer or client approaches you from.

Author

Abhinav Girdhar is the founder and CEO of Appy Pie. Abs has a cumulative experience of over 10 years in the world of technological development and entrepreneurship.

His in-depth knowledge of mobile app development technology and his sharp observations offer valuable contributions to the blog. His areas of expertise are SEO, trends in the mobile app world, and the latest innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

He has a passion for fitness and likes to get his daily dose of endorphins from a run and a strenuous session in the gym.

How to Retain Customers with Helpdesk Software was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the most important aspects of your sales process is finding buyers for your products or services. As simple as this task seems, it is very tough for certain businesses to increase sales. If this is your goal, then you must find the best strategies to do this.

Let’s start by asking you a question, do you have an amazing product or service? Are you having issues with finding buyers or patronage? If your answers to both questions are yes, then you just picked the right article.

We have put together a list of ideas for increasing sales in this post. At the end of this post, you should achieve your goal of increasing sales.

How to Increase Sales to Existing Customers

When you are planning to increase sales, you need to get your priorities right. Your existing customers should top that list. This is because they have already shown you trust by purchasing your products or patronizing your services.

It is simple, if you treat them well, they’ll return, and soon, they’ll become your advocates. Here are a few stats from a survey conducted by Customer Thermometer to show you why you need to focus on your existing customers:

• About 65% of your total sales are likely to come from your existing customers.
• You have a better chance of selling to existing customers (60–70%) than new prospects (5–20%).
• There is a better chance for existing customers to try your new products or services out.
• About 80% of the profits your business will make in the nearest future will be from 20% of current customers.
• Returning or existing customers will spend about 31% more than what first-timers will spend.

These statistics must be giving you some interesting ideas already. They go a long way to tell why you need to focus more on your existing customers. Let’s show you some of our ideas and strategies in the next section.

Top 6 Tips to Increase Sales

We have already established the fact that existing customers are important to your sales campaigns. You need them if you want to increase sales considerably. Here’s how you can maximize your sales to existing customers.

Always consider customer behavior

Understanding customer behavior is a very important aspect of drawing up a marketing campaign. It is important to understand how customers relate to your products or services. Do they rely on a single feature more than others? Are they having issues with one of your product features?

Considering their behavior gives a clear picture of whether you need to provide upgrades in certain areas or not. One other approach is to provide personalized services or training to customers. Using this method helps to enrich or extend your relationship with your existing customers.

The secret is to avoid being forceful or too compelling. Rather, it is offering education on what services or product features that you have. They probably never knew about those features or services in the first place.

Seek feedback

Feedback is very important when you are trying to increase sales. It is important to ask your customers what they think your products or services lack so that you can focus on value-added upgrades.

Here’s a simple example to buttress this point. Let’s say there is a restaurant that only offers eat-in services. Some of your existing customers might not always be interested in always sitting down to eat your food, and it may even be a considerable amount. You may be losing out on significant earnings by failing to understand this. You will only know about this if you seek feedback from them.

This allows the restaurant to reach out to customers that cannot make it down to the physical location. Making this addition increases sales considerably and it shows why you need to seek feedback.

Adopting the same method for your business will also ensure that you add new product features or services. This will help build stronger relationships between you and your customers as well.

Run regular promotions

One of the best ways of increasing sales is by rewarding your existing customers. Who doesn’t love an incentive? Promotions that reward old customers will improve their loyalty and tend to increase sales numbers significantly.

The frequency of the promotions doesn’t matter. They can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. What matters is that it doesn’t stress your business. Make sure that you always plan for promotions so that they don’t wear you out.

With an established rhythm for your promotional campaigns leveraging on email marketing or popular platforms, your customers will begin to anticipate. Such anticipation is what helps you increase sales. Why?

Apart from the fact that customers target these periods to patronize you, they act as advocates and sales agents. They’ll begin to spread the word about your promotions long before it is time. This way, new customers begin to flock to your business so that they’ll be eligible just in time for the promotions.

The referrals you get to become the foundation for a whole new customer base. See why you need to run promotions?

Stand out from the competition

No matter what you sell, you will always have competition. Even if none exists at the moment, it is just a matter of time. What do you do to keep your existing customers on your side?

You need to stand out. This means that you have to study what the competition is doing and find a way to do it better. It also implies that you must come up with ways that put you miles ahead of the competition.

Come up with a clear message or slogan that is distinct from that of your competition. Work out your promotional campaigns to be more satisfactory for your existing customers. Understand the pain of your customers and find the best ways of solving their problems.

Use visual mechanisms to tell your story

It is no secret that it is easier to spur action with visual aids. One of the easiest ways to increase sales is to use visual aids or infographics. This method makes messages actionable and subtly convinces existing customers to make more purchases.

Visual mechanisms include whiteboards, videos, images, infographics, etc. The idea is to show customers how you plan to solve their problems with a product or service. Visual mechanisms create a contrast that encourages a level of urgency in the customer to close up the sale.

Over-deliver all the time

The way to keep customers coming back is to over-deliver every single time. Doing this does not only keep them returning for more products or services. It also ensures that they have great stories to tell about your business. Provide them with tremendous value.

Don’t get us wrong, you don’t have to do this to the extreme that you lose money. All you need to do is step over the line just a little. This gives your customer an unexpectedly pleasant experience and an amazing product or service.

Here’s something that you should understand about delivering to your customers — never consider product or service delivery in the short-term. Always focus on the long-term effects on your customers and your business. You also need to be consistent if you are adopting this method because soon, they’ll always expect that little “extra.” Focus on the customer and prioritize them.

If you want to implement this value-based mindset, look into Agile project management practices. Such methods are focused on delivering value to the customers and visualizing the whole process for the team. With Agile project management tools it becomes easy to see what the team is doing and what extra steps they could take.

Conclusion

With each of these tips, you should be able to increase sales to existing customers significantly. Don’t forget that this fraction of your audience needs your attention the most and should be a priority. What other ideas do you have? Share them with us below.

Author: Maria De La Pena

Maria is a content writer for the unlimited graphic design service Delesign with a keen interest in eCommerce and internet marketing. She is a communications graduate and understands what it takes to write persuasive copy and blog posts. Outside of work, you can find her mini-blogging about her life on social media.

Ideas for Increasing Sales to Existing Customers was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Businesses and brands are always looking for more ways to smartly present their products or services in front of the target audience in order to increase their sales. Finding and encouraging people to purchase your product or service is an integral part of the entire sales procedure. If you are producing high-quality products but unable to sell, none of it matters because sales are everything to a business’s growth.

If you are also looking for more ways and strategies to reach your sales goals, then you have come to the right platform as you can find proven strategies to increase sales for your business in this article.

Recognize the customer’s problems or needs

potential customer must realize that your product is the best fit to get their issues and problems resolved. In order to create products that are really useful for your audience, you need to recognize the customers’ problems and pain points. In this way, you will be able to make products according to the specific needs and requirements of consumers to make them feel your product could resolve their issues better.

Data-Driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing is all about the use of personal information or customers to create and publish advertisement messages in the best possible way to reach them with what exactly they need. There are so many tools available to leverage customer information in this digital marketing landscape. Today’s digital industry is full of mar-tech and ad-tech solutions that could be used for personalized marketing to reach prospects effectively. For instance, if LinkedIn is an important part of your social media marketing for lead generation, LinkedIn Sales Navigator could be a great tool for you to find and connect with the right audience to sell them your products or services. Data-driven marketing helps you target high-quality prospects and leads by showing them ads that are relevant to their needs and interests. It also helps you create a corporate message that entices prospects greatly to convert them into permanent customers. This type of marketing also keeps your marketing costs to a minimum by helping you prevent buying ads on wrong marketing channels.

Utilize the power of the web

No doubt the traditional sales method can help you get sales but you should also be taking advantage of the modern-day marketing channels and solutions to make your marketing campaign more effective and successful too. The Internet helps you reach a broader and highly target audience and allows you to reach and communicate with your potential and existing customers in multiple ways. Smart use of the web helps you present your products or service in front of the customers in many ways. A business website, specific landing pages for your products, social media profiles, chatbots, and social media platforms are the best places to market your products and to find the right customers. Whether you are running a small business from home or own a business outlet in your local market, you must have a strong online presence in order to reach millions of people who might be interested in your products or services. Moreover, businesses can also use the internet and different digital communication channels to provide their customers with excellent and quick services. When customers are satisfied with your services, they are more likely to buy more of your products.

Use your SEO Keyword Smartly

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective and useful marketing strategies to increase sales in 2020. That’s why you should update your SEO keyword usage in order to appear in more searches. Along with using your target keywords in website content, focus more on synonyms and LSI keywords to rank your business higher in search engine results. Creative use of long-tail keywords is another best way to appear in more local searches. Long-tail keywords also come with less competition than short-tail keywords to provide you with better SEO performance.

Build a Strong Social Media Presence

Smart business owners and marketers never underestimate the power of social media when it comes to promoting a business or product online. A best and successful business marketing campaign always include social media. As everyone is on social media these days, building a strong social media presence for your business can help you reach your target audience in their social feeds. Not only this but social media also helps you connect and communicate with your existing and potential customers effectively. Social media is also a superb way to collect customer feedback, suggestions, and complaints to improve business operations and processes for better customer experience.

Use Chatbots on Your Website and Social Media Profiles

Chatbot makes your business available 24/7 even if you are not there to deal with your customers. Chatbots are developed to provide your customers with what they want immediately, and it could be a great way to boost your sales incredibly. By using chatbots on both website and social media profiles, you can keep your audience engaged effectively to encourage them for more sales.

Proven Strategies to Increase Sales for your Business was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Role of Sales enablement manager in an organization

So your company is growing steadily, and you’re thinking of bringing on a sales enablement manager to help you sustain your growth, and avoid a plateau.

In this blog post, we discuss what a sales enablement manager does, and exactly why this position is so important. By the time you reach the end of the article, you’ll have a good understanding of how this person will work together with the rest of your team, and what you should look out for when hiring for this role.

Ready? Let’s jump right in!

What is sales enablement?

Before we unpack what a sales enablement manager is, let’s take a second to discuss the concept of sales enablement.

In a nutshell, sales enablement is the process of providing a sales team with the information, content, and tools that help them to sell more effectively.

Here are a few key metrics that are tied to sales enablement:

• Revenue per sales rep, ie the amount of revenue that each sales rep brings in
• Win / Loss rate, ie the percentage of sales opportunities that are won (vs lost)
• Competitive Win / Loss rate, ie the Win / Loss rate of deals where you’re competing with another company to close a prospect
• Sales rep onboarding time, ie the time it takes for a new sales rep to start reaching out to prospects and closing deals
• Lead to customer conversion rate, ie the percentage of leads that eventually become a paying customer
• Sales cycle length, ie the time it takes to close a sale from a lead

All in all, sales enablement is about empowering your sales team to become better at what they do, so that they can achieve better results for the company.

What is a sales enablement manager?

Simply put, a sales enablement manager is someone who supports the company’s sales and marketing teams, and ensures that the sales team has all they need to sell more effectively.

Wondering what’s the difference between a sales enablement manager and a sales manager? A sales enablement manager is more of a “niche” role, with the candidate being focused on the different aspects of sales enablement, including:

• Providing training to sales reps
• Optimizing onboarding procedures
• Producing content or overseeing the production of content
• Aligning the sales team with the marketing team

What does a sales enablement manager do?

What does a sales enablement manager do, and how do they manage a team to produce better results? This can be broken down into three overarching elements, which are:

• Improving team effectiveness
• Improving team efficiency
• Planning and strategizing

Improving team effectiveness

First and foremost, sales enablement managers help sales reps become better at their jobs by providing training, refining onboarding processes, and creating sales content and collaterals.

Depending on how big or small the company is, and how many resources it has, the sales enablement manager may be directly involved in providing training and creating content, or they may outsource and oversee these activities.

For example, if a company doesn’t have an in-house copywriter and has no budget to engage an agency to create sales collaterals for them, the task of creating content will fall on the sales enablement manager’s shoulders.

But if the company is working with an agency, then the manager will simply sync up with the agency and provide directions on how to improve and optimize the sales content.

Improving team efficiency

Next, sales enablement managers also help to improve team efficiency, and empower sales reps to make the best use of their time.

To do this, they may introduce new tools and platforms to the team, re-engineer workflows and processes, and more.

According to statistics, the average sales rep only spends 35% of their time selling. With this in mind, the goal of the sales enablement manager is to reduce time spent on menial, easily-automated tasks, so that reps can channel their time and energy into building relationships and selling.

Planning and strategizing

Finally, sales enablement managers are also involved in planning and strategizing. Here are some key decisions that these managers have a say in:

• How to allocate resources and budgets
• How to deploy reps across different territories
• Planning of sales promotions and marketing campaigns

What kind of background should a sales enablement manager have?

As you’ll now understand, a sales enablement manager isn’t just involved in sales. This position actually lies at the intersection of sales and marketing — so an ideal candidate would have experience in both these areas.

For instance, Kurt Jones, director of sales enablement at PeopleFluent, has worked in both sales and marketing.

Prior to taking the role of sales enablement director, Jones worked as a recruiter. Seeing as PeopleFluent owns a recruitment software, Jones’ stint as a recruiter allowed him to get a better understanding of both the seller and buyer’s points of view.

That said, this doesn’t mean that companies should write off a candidate who only has experience in sales or marketing.

Assuming you hire someone who’s a marketing expert, but isn’t as well-acquainted with sales, there are many things you can do to get them more familiar with how the sales team works. For example, get them to go on ride-alongs with sales reps, so they get to experience the sales process first-hand.

Background aside, it’s also crucial to look for the right skills when hiring a sales enablement manager. Generally speaking, candidates who are good at communicating and have good writing skills will perform better at these roles.

To unpack this: seeing as the sales enablement manager is the one to bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams, being a good communicator is essential. Having good writing skills will also come in handy as this person creates sales collateral (or oversees the creation of sales collateral) for the company.

Why is a sales enablement manager important?

At the heart of it all, a sales enablement manager helps the sales team to do their jobs better, and this translates into higher conversion rates, and an optimized sales funnel.

This can make a massive impact to how much revenue a company generates — without having to drastically increase the budget spent on marketing or advertising.

Here’s an example: say the marketing team generates 200 qualified leads per month, and your sales team closes 20%, or 40 of these leads. Assuming a Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of $5,000, this translates into $200,000 of revenue (or potential revenue) that you’re generating each month.

Now, if you bring a sales enablement manager on board and they manage to increase the closing rate by just 5%, they’ll bring your company an additional $50,000 in revenue, every single month.

The bottom line? Small improvements to your sales processes and funnel can bring about a huge increase in revenue. That’s why it’s important to hire a dedicated sales enablement manager!

Upon joining a company, the sales enablement manager should…

Once you hire your sales enablement manager, you’ll want them to hit the ground running, and start putting together a roadmap of what they can do to help the team.

But before implementing any changes, your manager should conduct an audit to assess how well-prepared and sales-ready the team is. Here are some areas they’ll want to investigate:

• Does the company have a solid marketing plan, with concrete KPIs, action plans and timelines in place?
• Are the sales and marketing teams aligned on how to define a lead?
• Are the sales reps familiar with the latest product information?
• Are there any content gaps? Is there any obsolete content that should be updated or replaced?
• Is there structured training in place? Do reps share their best practices and strategies on a regular basis?
• Is the training effective? How engaged are reps during the training?
• Do reps have a specific system when following up with leads?
• Is the sales team making use of new tools and technologies (eg live chat, chatbots) to optimize their workflow?
• If yes, are they maximizing the potential of these technologies (eg by using canned responses in live chat?)

What Is a Sales Enablement Manager (and Why Is This Position So Important) was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are you achieving your professional goals? Do you feel like your business is starting to suffer due to procrastination and you’re not sure why? Don’t worry — we have all been there. Fortunately, there are some easy and even fun ways you can begin to increase your productivity. In this article, I am going to share 13 ways I’ve hacked my work life to maintain productivity over the years.

Part I: Become Righteously Self Aware

Self-awareness is the first step towards becoming more productive. It’s all about getting to know yourself inside and out in an effort to fine-tune all of the areas that affect your productivity. What you want to really find out through self-awareness are the answers to the following questions.

1. Find out what makes you tick.

The things that motivate us to do great work varies from person to person based on our individual personality types and characteristics. Some people get energy and inspiration when surrounded by other people (extroverts), while others do best when they are alone to focus on their thoughts (introverts).

Some are morning people, while others are night owls. Some perform best in environments with minimal conflict, while others can produce even in chaos. Knowing your unique personality traits and talents will motivate you to be more productive and help you create a more productive work environment.

A fun way to get to know yourself and what motivates you is to dive into your personality. If you have already taken the time to learn about your ancestry through MyHeritage DNA, Ancestry DNA, 23andMe, or similar services, you can learn about how your DNA affects your personality too.

Xcode ($20) offers insights into 30 additional traits using your raw DNA data from MyHeritage DNA, Ancestry DNA, or 23andMe. These include your big five personality traits, entrepreneurship potential, leadership potential, intelligence, morning or night preference, and sleep habits. They also include tips on how to optimize your performance based on your genetic code.

You can also take assessment tests used to identify the personality traits, talents, and qualities that affect how you thrive professionally. The following are some of the most well-known assessments used by Fortune 500 companies to develop stronger teams and leaders.

● The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator will give you insights into how you receive energy, gather information, make decisions, and approach the world. You will get a report about your personality type and can find a list of things that each type finds helpful and stressful on the website. 89% of the Fortune 100 companies have used the MBTI assessment.

● The CliftonStrengths by Gallup ($19.99 — $49.99) will reveal the top talent themes that can affect your productivity. For example, if you have a talent for competition, your best environment for productivity would be different from someone with a talent for harmony. 90% of Fortune 500 companies have used Gallup assessments.

2. Assess the times that you are most productive.

When you hit your stride in your workday — the time you feel you are performing at your peak — think about the circumstances.

● What time of day is it?

● What did you eat recently?

● Did you get a workout in?

● Did you just come back from a break?

● Are you in a particular setting?

● Are you wearing something comfortable?

● Are you listening to music?

● Is there a distinct scent in the air?

● Do you have something enjoyable planned for later?

Try answering these questions after several highly productive work periods to see if you can find some common themes.

3. Assess the times you are least productive.

Now, let’s think about the opposite. What are the things that break you out of the productivity zone and make it hard to get back into it again?

● What time of day is it?

● What did you eat recently?

● Were you interrupted? If so, by what or whom?

● What is the environment like where you are working?

● Do you have access to more things than you need to complete your work?

Similarly to the section above, try answering these questions after several highly unproductive periods to see if you can find some common themes.

4. Analyze your current work habits.

The most important question to ask yourself in the self-awareness phase of becoming more productive is what are you actually working on each day? If you’re like the average full-time employee, you may work eight or more hours a day. But that eight hours could be broken down into three hours answering emails, an hour and a half in meetings, plus additional time spent on breaks and distractions.

This would leave you only a few hours at most per day to work on the things that mean the most to your business.

The easiest way to find out for sure is to track your time. If you have an iPhone with the latest iOS, you can start there by looking at your screen time. It will let you know how many hours per day you spend looking at your phone and give you a breakdown of how you spend that time.

Mac users can try the Timing app, which will automatically log your activities and categorize them, including websites you visit. You can use the free trial for 14 days and purchase the full version for $39 — $99, based on the features you like.

RescueTime is another productivity tracking app that can track your activities between desktop and mobile devices and sync the data. You can use the lite plan for free to learn more about your online and app activity or upgrade to a paid plan starting at $6 per month to track offline activities and access additional features.

These apps are great for finding out how productive you are now and watching how your productivity improves as you become more self-aware and apply the productivity hacks to your routine.

Part II: Prepare, Prioritize, and Plan

Now that you’ve gotten to know yourself and your habits a little better, it’s time to create a realistic, goal-oriented plan that will make you more productive so you can bring each brilliant new business ideas you have to fruition.

5. Prepare a productive work environment based on your unique personality traits and talents.

Let’s say that you just discovered through the MBTI assessment that you are an extrovert that needs people as a source of energy, but you currently work from home. Or maybe it’s just the opposite — you are an introvert that needs less interaction, but you currently work in an open office floorplan. Either way, your productivity is likely suffering due to too little or too much social interaction.

Take some time to think about the personality traits and talents you learned about yourself in the self-awareness section. Then think about the things that make you the most and least productive. Now, look at how you can prepare your work environment for productivity.

If your workspace isn’t suited to your personality, talents, and the things that make you the most productive, make changes such as moving closer to or further away from others. For those that can’t change their workspace, consider blocking out times to work in a more productive environment, such as working from home in the mornings.

Also, consider the following productivity boosters backed by science.

● Increase natural lighting in your workspace. This study proved that people working with more natural lighting experienced fewer headaches, eyestrain, and drowsiness.

● Improve your ergonomics. Research has found physical office comfort plays an important role in productivity. Viewsonic found that companies utilizing ergonomic desktop setups reduced back, neck, shoulder, and eye discomfort. The Mayo Clinic offers a simple guide on how to setup your desk for maximum comfort.

● Declutter and destress. It’s hard to tell what comes first — stress, clutter, or procrastination — but it all inevitably ends with a reduction in productivity. If your workspace is messy, take some time out to organize. A cleaner workspace will lead to clearer headspace.

● Add some color. According to psychology, colors like green stimulate creative thinking and blue makes people comfortable, making both great colors for productivity. Avoid red and yellow, as they have been found to hinder analytical thinking and increase frustration, respectively. If you can’t paint your workspace, add green and blue using art, plants, office supplies, and other decorative items.

6. Prepare a productive digital environment.

The process of decluttering doesn’t end once your desk is organized. Now it’s time to prepare your digital workspace for productivity.

One of the top hacks you will read in most articles about productivity is to turn off notifications while you are working on crucial tasks. Most popular OS systems for desktop and mobile devices — Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android — have a do not disturb feature that allows you to turn off notifications during specific times so you can focus on specific tasks.

If you want to experience a distraction-free lifestyle beyond work hours, reduce push notifications on your desktop, browsers, mobile devices, apps, and social networks.

● For Mac: System Preferences > Notifications

● For Windows: Start > Settings > System > Notifications & actions

● For Chrome: Settings > Privacy and security > Site Settings > Notifications

● For Safari: Preferences > Websites > Notifications

● For Firefox: Preferences > Privacy & Security > Notification Settings

● For iPhone: Settings > Notifications

● For Android: Settings > Apps & notifications > Notifications

● For Gmail: Settings > Desktop Notifications

● For Facebook: Settings > Notifications

● For LinkedIn: Settings > Communications

● For Twitter: Settings > Notifications

● For Instagram: Settings > Notifications (in app only)

Effectively, what you are looking to do is turn off anything that isn’t crucial. If you haven’t updated your notification settings in a while (or ever), you may have notifications for things you no longer care about or need. Research has proven that even if you don’t take any action, seeing or hearing a notification can break your concentration and hurt your performance.

Hence, ask yourself if each notification you have set up is worth the distraction from your work or a moment in your life outside of work. The answer is probably no for a new like on Facebook or a new post from a blog you followed on your browser.

In addition to turning off notifications, consider decluttering your desktop and mobile screen using folders to organize your files and icons. As you are re-organizing, make shortcuts to the most productive apps and tools the easiest to access, and make shortcuts to the most distracting apps and tools the hardest to access.

For those that work with browser-based tools, you can boost your productivity potential by setting your browser to open a specific set of pages on startup.

When scheduling 90 minute blocks of peak performance times, be sure to also schedule coordinating breaks for healthy snacks, simple workouts you can do in your office, and mindful meditations. You can even do a fun activity like play solitaire as a way to take the edge off. Just these things alone will give you a healthier body and mind, and these have been proven to boost productivity.

● In Chrome, you can customize startup pages under Settings > On startup.

● In Safari, you can save startup pages as bookmarks under a specific bookmark folder. Then choose that folder under Preferences > General > New windows open with.

● In Firefox, open the pages you want to start with each day. Then go to Preferences > Home > Homepage and new windows > Custom URLs > Use current pages.

It’s also important to seamline things like accepting payments, subscription billing and affiliate management — minimizing customer support overhead, like having to manually update customer payment details and cancelling subscriptions.

7. Prioritize and categorize what you need to do.

Before you can create a plan of attack, you need to prioritize. No matter how large or small your to-do list is, everything can be organized, ranked, and categorized.

Start with your larger items, such as projects or business ideas. Consider ranking or rating them based on the following criteria.

● Which project do you feel the most passionate about right now?

● How much revenue will the project/idea generate?

● Do you have all of the resources needed to complete the project/idea?

● How quickly can the project/idea be completed?

● How quickly will the project/idea generate a positive return on investment?

If you work for someone else, you may not have as much say on which projects should be completed first. As an employee of a company, projects have to ranked based on urgency and importance for the company and clients of the company.

For entrepreneurs, however, these questions can help you decide which project is best for your business and your workflow. While you may feel the most passionate about a particular project, the one that could generate the most revenue for your business quickly could also spark some much needed motivation for your productivity.

Once you know what project(s) you are focusing on, you can start analyzing your task list. When it comes down to prioritizing day to day tasks, the categories are as follows.

● Tasks only I can handle vs tasks I can delegate to others.

● Repetitive tasks that can be combined (batched).

● Tasks that can be completed quickly vs tasks that will take longer.

If you think about it, there are likely some tasks on your list that, while you are capable of doing, you shouldn’t be doing because they aren’t the best use of your talents. For those that have the ability to delegate them to colleagues, freelancers, virtual assistants, or professional services — do it.

Next are the repetitive tasks that can be batched into one time slot each day. For those who have full control of their scheduling, this can include emails, meetings, phone calls, reviewing reports, and similar tasks. A study from MIT found that batching tasks — like email — led to higher productivity and lower stress.

Now evaluate the tasks that can be completed quickly or easily and the tasks that take some time to complete or are most difficult. This will come in handy when you are creating your ultimate productivity plan.

8. Plan a productive schedule using your prioritized and categorized task list.

Once you have prioritized your projects and categorized your tasks, you are ready to create a plan for productivity. A lot will depend on how much control you have of your own schedule, but take into account the following.

● Do you like to tackle your biggest toughest challenges in the first half of your day when you are sharpest or do you prefer to get the easier or batch tasks out of the way while you are still waking up?

● If you have to take phone calls or be in meetings, are you at your sharpest in the first or last half of your day?

● Would you have a more productive day if you finish more things in the first half of the day, energizing you for a more challenging task after your lunch break?

● Would you have a more productive day if you finished the challenge in the morning, knowing that you would be able to coast on autopilot after your lunch break?

● Are you more likely to focus in the first half of your day or the last half of the day based on interruptions you can’t control, such as scheduled meetings, phone calls, and interactions with colleagues?

● Are the people around you more productive or quiet in the first half or last half of the day?

Once you have answered these questions, it should be easier to create a specific plan for each day that fits your personal productivity schedule.

Part III: Find Your Rhythm

Productivity is all about finding a rhythm. Everyone’s rhythm will vary, based on their genetics, diet, exercise, and a variety of other factors. Here’s how to get your productivity in line with yours.

9. Work with your Circadian and ultradian rhythms.

According to research published by the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company, your productivity is affected by both your biological Circadian and ultradian rhythms. While the former controls your sleep/wake cycles, the latter controls your ability to focus.

Based on these rhythms, we should be the most productive from when we wake up in the mornings until mid-afternoon, which is why most 9 to 5 workers need that caffeine boost between 2pm and 3pm. We should also be able to focus best in bursts of 90 to 120 minutes max, with breaks in between.

With this in mind…

10. Incorporate healthy habits into your productivity routine.

People typically neglect to include healthy habits anywhere in their professional productivity schedule. Don’t just assume that you will give yourself a break at the appropriate times each day, or you will just go with the flow.

When scheduling 90 minute blocks of peak performance times, be sure to also schedule coordinating breaks for healthy snacks, simple workouts you can do in your office, and mindful meditations. Just these three things alone will give you a healthier body and mind, and these have been proven to boost productivity.

11. Listen to rhythms that boost productivity.

Adding the right rhythms to your environment can help increase your productivity, especially in workplaces where you cannot control noises around you. Services like Brain.fm and Focus@Will have scientifically optimized music that helps listeners concentrate on work or studies. With the right noise-canceling headphones, these services will help you tune out any distractions in the environment around you. This is just one workplace trend to adapt for your business.

Part IV: Track Your Productivity

Now that you know yourself and have a productivity plan, take some time to put it into action and continue to use the productivity apps and tools mentioned in the first section. After a couple of weeks go by…

12. Review your productivity using productivity apps and tools periodically.

You should see some positive results in terms of a boost in productivity hours from when you first began using the productivity app or tool you chose in the beginning of your self-awareness journey. Depending on the app and pricing plan you chose, it should give you a historical record that allows you to compare how your productivity has improved since you applied your project prioritization, task categorization, productivity plan, and other productivity hacks from this article.

Assuming that everything is looking good, continue periodically checking in on your productivity tool to ensure that your productivity is staying on track. If you see any declines in productivity, the solution is simple.

Part V: Adapt & Refine

Productivity should never be a set it and forget it type of system. As with anything, you will have to adapt your productivity schedule around new projects and tasks that arise and refine it accordingly. Or you may have to refine it when you simply start feeling less productive than usual on a consistent basis.

13. Test new productivity hacks one at a time.

To continue boosting your productivity levels, test out new productivity hacks one at a time to see if they positively affect your productivity. As you continue to seek new ways to boost your productivity, try out new techniques from this article and others — one at a time — to see if they help increase your output as needed.

That way, you will know for sure that a specific technique did the trick, as opposed to wondering which one of the five changes you recently applied made the difference. Once you have found out what hack makes the most difference in your productivity, be sure to let us know by leaving a comment or sharing your favorite hack along with this post with your followers on social media.

Author:

Mark Thompson is the co-founder of PayKickstart.com — a SaaS that is reinventing the modern-day shopping cart and affiliate management, helping thousands of businesses and Entrepreneurs sell more, maximize customer lifetime value and automate subscription commerce.

A Serial Entrepreneur Shares 13 Productivity Hacks was originally published in Freshsales - The Official Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.