Applying Technology to Jumpstart your Sales – a video tutorial from SCORE
CRM
There are many ways to manage your customer data. Called “Customer Relationship Management” suites, these tools allow you to track important data, create email and mailing campaigns, and have multiple people service the same account. When looking for a CRM, be sure to view demos and check what they can do for small business. Once you’ve chosen a tool, be sure to take full advantage of the training!
Appointment setting and reminders
When you are setting up a meeting with a prospect or client, send it as an appointment. This tool allows you to confirm all the details include time, place, date, and subject, and know it gets into their calendar correctly. Also if they change it or modify the calendar entry, you will be aware of that electronically and can follow up to see what has happened.
Professional documents: presentation tools
Many sales professionals use PowerPoint or KeyNote to convey their messages. While these tools are terrific as a back up to the speaker, they should never be used in place of a person. Here are some tips on effective presentations:
- Start with what’s important to the customer. It is easy to start with your company’s history, etc. but that isn’t what they want to know.
- Limit the amount of content per page and be sure you aren’t reading the slide. It is vital that your presence is necessary!
- Check the presentation with the projector you are going to use. If you can’t, have a version with a light background and a dark background. That way it won’t be hard to see.
- It isn’t necessary to brand every single page. Use that real estate for content.
- At the beginning of the presentation, tell the audience what you are going to share, share it, and at the end, summarize what you shared.
Professional documents: PDFs
The Portable Document Format was designed to keep a document the way it was intended on any device. With a small piece of software, PDFs can be read on computers, tablets, smart phones and other devices. To create a PDF, just do a web search for a free PDF creator.