5 Reasons Clients Do Not Buy

“I have the money to buy and the time to discuss with you because I want to get this solution now from your company.” said no client ever. But you would love to hear it, right?

This phrase compresses the result of overcoming the 5 most common reasons that clients invoke when faced with a business proposition:

1. Money. The client usually states he does not posses the money for the service or product you are proposing. Actually, just a small amount of businesses do not have money for investing in development. The other ones have the money to buy but do not understand the benefits of your product or service yet. If it brings value to their business be sure they will invest in it.

2. Time. This reason is even more unbelievable and can be counteracted also by demonstrating the value brought by the solution. A business owner or manager will always make the time to increase the productivity and bring more money to the business. So that makes this reason obsolete.

3. Need. There are two types of reactions you get when proposing to a potential client: he knows he needs your solution or he doesn't. If he knows, it's simple to move on with the discussion, but if he doesn't, a demonstration and proof about his need is required. He has to understand clearly why he needs the service or the product. Follow the 3 steps rule or use a trigger event, which is an event that can make a person realise that (s)he needs something.

4. Urgency. The client overcame the money and time problem and he knows he needs the service or product, but why now? In this situations you need to create the sense of urgency depending on the service, product or business relationship. The client needs to know that if he does not get the service or product now he will lose money, he will not make as much or he will miss out on a great opportunity.

5. Trust. Went through with money, time, need and urgency? The client knows he has to buy the product or service and he has to take quick action, but he still does not buy yours. This is the time when the credibility question is raised. The client needs to know he can trust YOUR product or service, not a competitor's. Conquer their respect and earn their trust.

Knowing the 5 reasons clients do not buy can make you and your sales team feel prepared for any business interaction. Being always prepared will make you trustworthy and will ensure growth for your business.

What other reasons have you or your sales reps heard while proposing to a business owner?

Zimplu CRM at CeBit 2015

Industry 4.0 was the title of the 2015 edition of CeBit fair. Economy and The Internet of Things were the main themes of the event and discussion rolled around digitalization. Nexus Electronics felt at home between the tech solutions presented the past week. Zimplu CRM, The Uncomplicated CRM Solution got to stand straight in front of visitors among great competitors and represent proudly our company and Romania.

The official site of the trade explained in the after show report that “The beneficiaries of this year's enhanced business focus included some 3,300 exhibitors from 70 nations.” You can also see other numbers of CeBit 2015 in the infographic on the right.

Top managers and CEOs used this opportunity to do business more then ever, and so did Nexus Electronics. A lot of visitors stopped to see our delicious cake print and engaged us in interesting conversations about all of our solutions. We spoke with visitors from all over the world about our CRM software and explained the benefits of an uncomplicated solution for their business.

CeBit 2015 was also the perfect occasion to launch the mobile version of Zimplu CRM which makes the software even more accessible and easy to use. Now, our clients can handle sales teams, contacts, client support and meetings from anywhere at any chosen time. The only requirements are a smartphone and internet connection.

The participants expected innovation, networking and enlightenment and CeBit 2015 delivered. The experience was as great as we expected and we felt like being a part of an empowering international conversation about technology, digitalization and economy.

How to Measure Client Retention Strategies

When it comes to growing a business, many entrepreneurs focus on getting new clients and forget about client retention strategies. Not attending your existing clients' needs can cause your business to downgrade revenue significantly. It is possible to keep it going constant for a while, but not for long.

New clients coming and going will taint your reputation and cannot take your business to a satisfying, peak level. We discussed some strategies concerning this issue in a former article about clients' loyalty.
But how do you know if your strategy is fruitful?

Photo source. 
 
The basic formula for measuring client retention is pretty easy: ((E-N)/S)) x 100 where:

E(nd) = number of customers at end of period

N(ew) = number of new customers acquired during period

S(tart) = number of customers at start of period

The notations can make the formula seem quite complicated, but it is not. Let's take an example:

You can start measuring from the existing, let's say, 400 clients and choose a time frame as you please (week/month/year/other period you choose). During that time frame you lose 40 clients, but you gain 80 new ones. At the end of the period you have 440 customers.

Putting that into the mathematical formula, you get:

440 - 80 = 360; 360/400 = 0.9; 0.9 x 100 = 90. Your retention rate for the chosen period was 90%.

Is 90% a good rate or not? It depends on your type of business, your goals on a certain market or industry.

There are some managers that get their business growth from new clients, like businesses based on subscriptions or memberships, but on the long run the market will be extinguished and the same businesses will have to attract the same old clients and make them pay again for the membership.

Most business owners understand the importance of retaining clients for a long-term partnership. They also love to talk about winning new ones, but dislike talking about loosing any of them. The reality of business world must measure both sides of clients' management. Tracking the client retention rate lets the business owner put both those metrics in perspective and provides an easy way to measure your results over time.

So, to what extent do your clients stick with your services?

How to Train Your Sales Dragons

On the business battlefield, the salespeople are your knights, the force that brings you the victory of signing a client. But first, you have to train them well about how and when to attack.

The manner of selling by following those three steps is applicable to almost 90 percent of the situations. Your salespeople can be taught to follow these steps, how to adapt to different situations and how to be prepared for a meeting with a prospective client.

For a successful sales meeting train them well to:

1. Find out what the client's needs are.

First impression is a weapon that few know how to handle. To be successful, your salespeople need to know how to act, talk and command respect from the person in front of them so the sale will take the path of a trustworthy discussion.

Teach them to hold the product's or sale's details for later and learn about the client's need. They should ask about the internal processes, the methods of organizing the company's activity or any other information that can become a stepping stone for introducing your product.
The representative of the client won't expect for a salesperson to care about the backstage of his business. He will be surprised and intrigued.

He will respond and explain his well-thought processes with the pride of a business owner and your representative will understand what his business needs.

2. Find arguments on how your product meets the needs of the client.

At this point we can agree that the salesperson understands what the client's needs are. Now (s)he has to pick up the client's weapon and show him how to use it better, faster and more productive.
The sales rep should choose several important points in the story, then rewind to the beginning and tell the same story, but this time with the product involved.

This will provide the client a simple approach on the improvements your product or service could bring to his business. The next step is to prove him that your story is as simple as you told it, it's real and it's viable.

3. Exemplify and demonstrate.

The sales representative showed the client what he can do with the weapon, but now (s)he has to let him try it. Explain exactly how the product or service works, show it to the client, create a demonstration based on some internal operations of that business. Let the client enjoy the benefits for a minute before going back to business.

This is the time where the salesperson can prove (s)he did his homework, as well. There are two keywords for this conversation: adapt and become memorable. The sales rep has to emphasize the benefits of the product or service that this client needs most. This is what Victor Antonio calls “provide insight” or “information beyond the obvious” in his video “Sales Tips - Insight, Questions and Use of Language“. The information comes from the previous conversation, which means adapting, and also from a strong background research, which provides the knowledge to be memorable.

This is also the moment to steal his attention and present the whole special business package you sent for him. Be careful! Teach them not to lose themselves in details or bombastic promotional approaches. They do not have to show everything your product or service can do. Too much information can clog the business owner's mind and make the product or service seem complex, but too complicated.

Training your sales dragons to follow these three main steps will benefit their personal approach and your business. You will learn about your clients, you will make them feel listened to, you will intrigue and then surprise them, you will make them feel good about choosing you as a partner and, of course, you will sell.

EQ or How to recruit salespeople

As a business owner, you probably do realize that more and more people pass the technical and psychological test in your recruitment process, but hiring them does not seem to bring more value to your business. There is still the 20% of your sales team that provide the 80% of revenues. The 80-20 is a valid rule, but you should wonder why this is happening and what makes the 20% special. Believing it or not, it’s emotional.

We, at Nexus, started by interviewing salespeople and following our instincts or just trusting them for the job. Turned out that many of the trusted persons left the job shortly after being hired. Then we decided to recruit by testing their logical skills and the results were similar. By trial and error, we found the best way to expand our team: we now test for logical thinking and a high EQ.

EQ or Emotional Quotient got into the spotlights as studies showed that this quotient is most inclined to influence success and business growth than personality or IQ.
The EQ reveals that a person has a set of competencies that prove he or she has the ability to recognize self behavior, moods and catalysts, and to respond best according to the situation.
According to Mike Poskey from Zerorisk HR, Inc., there is a set of five emotional intelligence skills that studies proved to be more important in the workplace than skills achieved by education or personality traits combined. 

In his article, “The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the workplace: Why it matters more than personality”, he divides the EQ competencies in social competencies which determine how people handle relationships and personal competencies which determine how people handle their own behavior. Social competencies include intuition and empathy, political and social skills and personal competencies include the three Selves: Self awareness, Self regulation and Self expectations & motivation.

The EQ test results portrait the person that will come later to the interview and makes it easier to test the accuracy of his or her answers or if the person fits the needs of your company. And he or she has to fit. One unfit, influencer type employee can harm the productivity of a whole sales department and can decrease the company's incomes. On the contrary, suitable sales people can increase revenues even if they are fewer. So keep this in mind: more employees don't necessarily mean bigger profit. We actually experienced situations about 2 times more salespeople and 40% less sales.

Furthermore, experience taught us that any recruiting tests also need to be verified by personal interaction through an interview after you have in mind the characteristics of the perfect candidate. But you have to know exactly what you need! Start from this and only afterwards focus on finding emotional intelligence tests online, training your HR team to apply and interpret the tests or even externalizing the process.

Also, the beauty of this set of five competencies is that they can be trained and improved. After you get the right sales people, you have to invest continuously in their soft skills by training and coaching them to overcome their limits and develop their emotional intelligence.

If you care for other success stories, have two more great examples:

A Texas-based Fortune 500 Company had utilized personality assessments for candidate selection for a long time with little results in reducing turnover and boosting revenues. After switching to an emotional intelligence-based assessment and EQ training and development program, they increased retention by 67 percent in the first year, which meant $32 million extra from reducing turnover costs and increasing sales revenues.

Also, a large metropolitan hospital reduced their critical care nursing turnover from 65 percent to 15 percent within 18 months of implementing an emotional intelligence screening assessment.

Furthermore, one study conducted by a Dallas corporation measured the productivity of employees with high and low EQ scores. Turns out the ones with high scores were 20 times more productive than the ones with low EQ scores.

So maybe it’s time to change the way you recruit your sales people and hire only persons that can increase that 20% percentage, nurture them, help them grow and be patient at least 3 months to see results. Be sure your business will thrive and your employees will be optimistic, empowered and productive.
Photo source.

What is CRM and Why You Do Need One

Whether you are starting a new business or trying to grow a small, existing one, the first thing you should do is organize everything about it. Have your customer database in order, know exactly what your sales team is doing and what partners you have beside you. All of these are not simple tasks when you begin gaining more and more customers.

And no, an Excel sheet is not the optimal solution for organizing. After that exact phrase comes the CRM. I believe you already know what a Customer Relationship Management solution is. And if you do not, all the information you need about it is this: a CRM is a software solution that can organize your entire activity occupying less space than an agenda and containing more information you can ever inclose in the Office Package.

Over time, CRM software got more and more complex and gained a lot of features that can help you do almost everything in an automated way. But statistics show that managers and salespeople use only 30 % of the features of a CRM. Taking that into consideration, my advice to you is not to suffocate your sales team with unnecessary features and stick to a basic, customizable CRM solution.

Try Zimplu for free and get a complex, but uncomplicated CRM solution.

Now that we cleared that out, let’s see what you can do with a CRM solution to improve your business.

Improve your customer relationship. The first thing your CRM can help you with is organize your sales team and your help desk team to serve better the needs of your clients. Know when to call whom and find their contact in seconds. Know what was your last conversation with that client even if you hadn’t talked to him directly.

Increase revenues. Believe it or not, a CRM solution will put a plus into your sales. Organizing your database, you will get to know your customers better and, afterwards, target your products strategically to the customers that need them most. Your efforts will be more effective and the profits will come easier.

Market your product better. Knowing who bought what, when and how long took him to purchase can help the marketing team to launch their campaigns to the exact segment of population you target. Without a CRM that is an almost impossible task, but with the help of one, the public are segmented properly and more effectively for your business’s growth.

Ease your in-house communication. With a CRM you have all the data about your customers, sales team and partners in one place organized to be found in seconds. Every sales person’s conversation can be written down and everyone will know about what to talk about when calling that customer. Of course, a manager can get reports about sales and sales team every time he wants for a better leading operation.

Save time. The most important asset none of the people in business market have is time. Automation of your internal and external processes save you and your team a lot of time to spend on other important aspects like soft skills, aspects that can never be automatized and that will improve your business’s image and bring the human touch.

So think about it. Is your business big enough to need a CRM solution or is that the reason it is not?

Teaching Kids Entepreneurship Risk With a Doll

How many of you had any idea about starting your own business till at least high school? And how many of you followed that dream? Not many, for sure.
The fact that children thought so rarely about being entrepreneurs was also the drive of American Girl company to create a doll that can teach children the basic notions of starting their own business and transform their dreams into reality.

The story of Grace Thomas starts with a passion for baking with and for friends. After a trip to Paris she is inspired to transform her passion into a successful business. Her path follows the usual financial and bureaucratic procedures for registering the new “La Patisserie” simplified for the little ones.
The idea came naturally as a result of the high interest in stories about girls doing business. Cited by the Wall Street Journal, Julia Prohaska, senior director of global brand marketing for American Girl, also declared that “Marrying the idea of girls’ high interest in baking and cooking with entrepreneurship was just a natural fit.”

Besides the beauty of learning through games, the American Girls doll approached a real problem of the new generations: the low tolerance for risk. “We are creating generations of people who are terrified to make a mistake,” says Ted Ganchiff for Wall Street Journal, founder of the Science & Entrepreneurship Exchange, a Chicago-based nonprofit that runs classes about engineering and entrepreneurship for children between 9 and 15.

The so-called “Millennials” dramatically decreased the percentage of young people starting a business. “Only 3.6% of businesses today are started by people younger than 30. In 1989, it was 10.6%.” shows the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances cited by WSJ.
In addition, the gap between women and men entrepreneurs is still wide with around 200 000 business a month in the last five years started by women, compared to 325 000 started by men, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit in Kansas City.

Putting aside the great educational intentions, Grace Thomas is a $120 doll, the 2015 American Girl character, following the company’s tradition of releasing a special doll that can draw children's attention from traditional toys every year since 2005. Compared with the Barbie entrepreneur, priced $12.99, Grace Thomas is no bargain for a tight budget real entrepreneur, as the accessories, the business bakery and the make-believe ingredients, sell for $500.

Photo source.

5 Things to Do for Your Clients’ Everlasting Loyalty

Establishing a circle of loyalty between you and your client can take a lot of effort, but focusing on the right factors can make this journey easier and faster. Here you have the main ingredients of a healthy, long-lasting B2B relationship.

1. Display of generous attitude

Being generous with your clients not only proves that you are interested in their business’s growth and their interests, but also touches their heart. That is the key ingredient when any business person decides to stick with a partner even when times are tough. Think about the relationship analogy: the proof of positive feelings must be constant and thoughtful for your bond to last longer and be fruitful.

This attentive attitude can depend on your domain and it involves nothing much than a little bit of proactive thinking or fast reaction. For example, make sure your service or product is easy to use and easy to get a hold on. Your clients have to think about you first and that is simple to achieve if you do something different, like a special discount or a personalized approach.

Another thing you can do is add an extra to your services. Extra helping your clients is a clear evidence that you want a business connection on the long-run and that your partnership is important to you.

2. Take time to learn about their needs

Clients, along with their customers, value quality service more than fast service. Put your knowledge before your working rate. This can insure your business loyal clients that understand the high risk of error during a fast pace of work. A Customer Experience Impact Report from 2011 states that “rude, incompetent and rushed” service was the number 1 cause of dumping a brand or a service. In addition, more than 50% of the customers engaged in a purchase of a product or a service went for the brand with a strong customer service reputation.
That can be easily translated in B2B cases because at the end of the other line is also a person that makes the calls. So, taking that into consideration, you will gain more loyal clients if you take the time to know what they want and how they want it done rather that delivering fast, but faulty.

3. Customize your services

After you get the time to get to know your clients and their needs, you should find a way to comply with them. Don’t worry about your business. You won’t lose money by trying to impress your clients. You will get even more. A Bain & Company survey conducted in 2013 showed that customers are willing to pay 20% more than standard equivalents for customized products and many companies are successfully charging a lot more for personalization.
In addition, your personalized services are going to stand out on the market and increase your positive reputation as a flexible and intuitive business partner.

 Photo source.

 4. Get your brand story out there

When it comes to B2C relationship, a story well told is one of the most persuasive forms of writing or speaking available for a brand. Managing to carry away the customers, even for a little while, is a power that every company can work on and an efficient way to increase loyalty.

In B2B field, your brand story is, actually, your reputation and if it consists in a positive image in the eyes of your business partners and also your employees, you should thrive on it as much as you can. Make sure that your clients know you are trustworthy and tell them beautifully about your business values and mottos. If they believe your story and you prove it’s a true one, they will stick with you for a long time.

5. Be there first

It’s a fact that people get used to services and are reluctant about change when the competition brings no strong differential aspects. If your market is competitive enough but the differences between services or products are not crucial, a key action is to get a new client first. Change in business takes time and resources and if your service meets the needs of your client, be sure that he will stick with you for as long as you keep yourself up to the challenge. An important angle of getting new business is letting your potential client try your service for free for a small period of time, but just enough to get him used with your platform or way of making business.

In the end, there are a lot of variables to take into consideration when trying to raise your clients’ loyalty. The main idea is to focus your efforts on a factor that represents the base of sustainable and healthy growth for your company: the long-term bond between your business and your clients.

The 80/20 Rule For Sales Department Maximum Productivity

A sales pipeline is a must know for any sales rep and many sales departments use this formula daily and successfully to sign more customers. Each customer goes through an initial contact, followed by a qualification step that decides the opportunity of a further meeting. If the meeting happens, the business proposal and closing the deal come after. The last step is actually the beginning of a new process: the after sales services.

What is the secret ingredient that will make it work?
Even if sales departments respect the process described above, some of them still meet efficiency problems. This usually happens because all stages of the sales pipeline are handled by the same persons, who could be handling even the administrative tasks like billing or debt recovering.

The 80/20 rule for productivity
Sales managers should embrace this simple, unwritten rule, proved to raise human resources’ productivity: Each individual should dedicate at least 80% of his working time to the same type of tasks. In the sales department scenario, productivity will decrease if every member of the department is engaged in every sales stage, or worse, in administrative tasks.

Therefore, we strongly recommend to divide the people in the sales department in three main categories: Business Developers, Sales Representatives and Account Managers. Business developers will be responsible with finding new business and qualifying new opportunities. sales representatives will attend meetings, will do the business proposals and close the deals. account managers will handle the new customers during the contractual period.

Since skilled sales representatives are so hard to find, and their work is so expensive and valuable, the main benefit of applying the 80/20 rule is saving their precious time for actually selling. Thus, the number of sales will increase in a short period of time. Let small tasks and administrative work be handled by people whose jobs don't require the skill of a sales representative or account manager.

Finally, following the sales pipeline and assigning the right person for the right job will help the sales department become more and more efficient. This will help us achieve the maximum productivity within the sales department by increasing sales and by lowering costs.

Sales People Hate The Daily Activity Report

Most of the sales departments rely on the activity report sales agents send every day, week or month. It is a control measure, a way to know if the salesmen are doing their job and if they are doing it right. However, salesmen hate this. Who would like to fill a spreadsheet every day with all the phone calls he made, meetings and discussions? It is unproductive, the salesman would argue, while the sales managers accept that this is time consuming, but the only way to control their department.

We, at Zimplu CRM, know how much sales people hate to fill "unnecessary" documents, that's why we made a little upgrade to our Sales Activity Report and included all the details a user wrote into a note or a task. This way managers know not only that their employees are active but each detail of every discussion their employees had with prospects/clients.

This is not only about control, but delivering the proper feedback to the sales representatives and finding out insights about why opportunities are won or lost. It is the perfect way for a sales manager to deliver his expertise to his co-workers by giving the right feedback at the right time.

Here is a screenshot with our upgraded activity report in Zimplu CRM:

This upgrade was made at the request of our customers who want to have a better control of their sales department.

Evaluate The Marketing Channels You Use

There are so many possibilities to gain new leads for your sales department, just think about the multitude of marketing channels at your disposal: email marketing, telemarketing, direct mailing, social media, online advertising and so many others. You probably already use some, but which marketing channel generates more conversions, brings back most revenues and is better fitted for your company? If you could answer this question, directing the marketing budget towards the right channels will be a piece of cake.

Let's see how Zimplu CRM can help you in this particular matter. To illustrate, we created a dummy database:

First, we’ll add a custom field for Opportunities, with a few options available and only one possible choice. These options should include all the marketing channels used to promote your company’s products / services towards prospects. As you can see, we selected direct mailing, fairs, internet marketing, referrals and telemarketing.

When a sales representative creates an opportunity, this field should be completed based on the answer the prospect offers when he is asked about his source of information regarding your company.

Now that the custom field was created, it should be completed every time, no exceptions admitted. Furthermore, we must create a Filter to see all the won opportunities for each marketing channel, just like it is shown below.

We named this filter "Internet Marketing Revenues" and we chose to see only the won opportunities in the last 30 days, for the internet marketing channel.

Now we can see all the opportunities matching the conditions above.

We can now export this list to excel, where we can make further calculations like total revenues, profit and ROI for the internet marketing channel.

Apply the filter for every marketing channel you use and you’ll be able to decide, based on real data, which one is more effective in your case.

New Update in Zimplu CRM

Are You Ready for the Bomb?

Zimplu is ready to launch the bomb. A new big update is coming up with a major design change that will make your work even easier. We revolutionized the way task management is done with less buttons to click for a basic activity. In short terms, we made the sales representatives who use Zimplu to work more efficiently, to waste less time for each contact and, in the end, to make more calls or send more emails every day.

We know that the most used section in Zimplu CRM is the dashboard and this is where the change begins. The dashboard is the place where you find all the tasks you need to solve today and the sales you made this month and it gives you a great perspective of results and work that needs to be done.

So what’s new about the dashboard?

Imagine that you can check a task as done and create a new one with only 1 click, this is a new button we implemented to ease the work and to shorten the process of completing a task.

Also, whenever you will create a “Call” task, the phone number will show too, for “Email” the email address will show too, and for “Meeting” the physical address of the contact will show.

You have everything you need on your dashboard in order to get started today and each day will now be shorter thanks to the new changes made in the dashboard section.

Other changes

Do you still believe that employees should only be able to access your data from the office? That’s ok, even if Zimplu is a web-based CRM, your employees can access your company’s data only from your office by simply assigning a unique IP address from which they can log in. You will find this new option in the “My Account” section, make sure you got the right IP.

The new update is scheduled for Wednesday, 28th of May, 2014.

Here is a snapshot with the new update:

Start Small, Don't Lose Data, Grow Big

You just started your business and your biggest concern right now is to find customers to sell your products or services to. There are probably thousands of prospects to call, emails to send and lots of things to keep track of. As a startup business it's easy to handle all the information, but can you keep it all whole and safe for when you grow big?

Now it’s the perfect time to prepare for later challenges. Until you become a significant company on the market, you’ll gather stories about every prospect you get in contact with, and you'll learn what their needs and opinions are. You must secure all this information, or you'll lose it in a couple of years. And then, what if you'll want to continue the conversation with prospects you already met?

There is no better time to implement a CRM than the startup stage

Often, startups decline to use a CRM system thinking that such technology is more than what they need for their business size. A few clients are easy to handle, but problems appear when the portfolio develops quickly. There are several on-demand CRM solutions available with affordable subscription plans for any startup company. So there's no reason not to take advantage of the benefits offered by CRM these days.

It’s difficult to manage all information, like contact details and discussions, if they are kept in a notebook or a spreadsheet. The business might not be suffering now, but as time passes, unorganized data and activities will affect you one way or another.

How implementing a CRM can help your startup in the long run?

To achieve performance, employees must be well organized and focused on their daily must-do activities. Furthermore, you should be aware of your company’s progress, which you can measure only by analysing data. A CRM system is exactly the solution that can help your company make the right adjustments in order to improve business.

“Always be Marketing” is a quote you want to stick to for as long as you do business. Having a CRM software can also help you communicate better with your prospects. Some of them won’t buy from you right now, but maybe they will some other time. It’s your job to stay in touch and build a strong image of your products or services.

5 Steps To Follow After Recruiting a New Salesman

You had tons of meetings regarding expanding your business and the board  finally decided you need more sales representatives in order to cover the market. Hiring a new salesman is good, but most of the companies don't see the results they were expecting. Are you confident the new employee will adapt to your business?

Hiring a new salesman is great, but most of the companies don't see the results they were expecting to see, and most of the time they blame the employee for not being able to adapt to their business. But how often are the employers right?

Before you decide to start hiring and schedule interviews, you should establish a clear process for the new salesmen in order to get him to the same level with your other colleagues. Treating this process with maximum importance is what will capitalize your recruiting investments and efforts, not to mention the time you invested.

Here are 5 Steps To Follow After Recruiting a New Salesman:

1. Get him to know your products and services inside out

Most of the businesses provide common products and services, and sometimes managers make the mistake to believe that what they offer is easy to understand. Do not avoid any details, like I said, get him to know your business inside out.

2. Teach him how you sell

I know, he is a salesman, he is supposed to know how to sell, but every company and every sales manager has a different perspective, a different organizational culture. Just like at Zimplu, we advise our salesmen to talk in a very polite way, to use certain words in a discussion or to avoid certain subjects in a meeting. There is more in salesmen than just being the ones who bring contracts, they are also the ones your clients meet first and make your company look good or bad in the eyes of your customers.

3. Get him to know your audience

This is the step where most of the companies fail. The new salesman knows your product very well and he understands the organizational culture, but how much does he know about your targeted customers? Most of the new colleagues will come from different types of businesses, and if they were used to talk to transport companies managers, it won't mean he will be as good as talking to bank managers or consultancy companies. There is a different approach for each type of customer, so make sure your salesman "wears the right suit".

4. Make sure he knows how to use your CRM

Before you read this, I hope you do use a CRM System. Every salesman should have an experience in using CRM applications and the CRM will be the first help he will get for doing his job right. By having a database of customer discussions and contact details, you salesman will get all the support he needs to get in touch with prospects and start working.

5. Control and Measure

So, your salesman fits your organizational culture, knows your CRM and knows your business inside out. It's time to go to meetings and start making calls. This is where your sales and management skills step in and help your new colleague correct his mistakes in order to represent your company the way you want to, so make sure you go to the first meetings together in order observe him.

Mission accomplished! 

3 Future Technologies from CeBIT 2014

Each day brings us closer to the reality imagined by Hanna-Barbera for the animated characters from the Jetsons family who can do anything by just pressing a button. When surrounded objects are endowed with artificial intelligence and can solve problems without requiring our constant attention, we only have to focus on essential tasks and become more efficient. CeBIT 2014 (March 10 to 14, Hannover, Germany), the most important trade fair in the field of IT, has brought to the public this year's innovations who seem to emerge from the world of science fiction:

1. Nexus Locator

A free Android application and easy to use, Nexus Locator was developed by Nexus Electronics Company, who can track your mobile phone on the map in real-time and sends the information to the managers in real time. The app is particularly useful for companies that must constantly monitor their employees working outside the office to increase or improve their efficiency.  In addition, the application solves some problems regarding communication between the headquarter and the teams on the ground, for all daily tasks can be supervised, directed or modified from the office and received instantly by the traveling employees.

2. Fibaro System

A smart house that can learn your habits and make you enjoy your every day is no longer a dream. With such a system implemented, windows know when to open themselves, the heating system works according to the outside temperature, the coffee is ready until you're out from the shower and lights turn on whenever you enter a room. You have more time to spend and the costs lower when everything is programmed.

3. Aimox Smart Band

If you want to get accurate information about every aspect of your life, you can choose a body monitoring system to wear it everywhere you go. The bracelets have a modern design, lightweight and they record how many hours you slept, what you ate, mood, heart rate, exercises you do, and the calories you consume in a day. Also, the bracelet will be sure to wake you up at the right time of the sleep cycle, to notify you if you haven't exercised in a while, to show you patterns and correlations between your daily activities.

Do Your Sales Reps Skip Meetings?

Nexus Locator

Have you ever faced the situation when one of your salesmen keep telling you they go to meetings but you don't really see the results, sometimes you can't even know if they have actually been to the meeting or somewhere else. Sometimes you may just be paranoid, but what if you're not?

Sales management is definitely not about controlling your sales reps 100%, or making them feel uncomfortable, you want them to be relaxed whenever they meet clients, but you can't ignore the fact that some of them might not do their job at all.

At CeBIT 2014 we launched a new product, a mobile application designed for logistics that can also be used by sales managers to have an idea about how active their sales reps are. We launched Nexus Locator, an Android Application for monitoring employees phones so you can always see your sales reps in real-time on the map and generate various reports about their activity, routes and speeding.

One of the most important features Nexus Locator offers for sales management is designing hot spots (Point of Interests) on the map. In this situation, for sales management, you can create a hot spot for each one of your clients office location and generate reports regarding visits in the hot spots you created. This way you will always know if and when your sales reps visit clients and if they actually try to do their job.

Aside from Zimplu CRM, Nexus Electronics Company offers GPS Tracking solutions since 2007, and we do have a lot of customers who use traditional GPS trackers to monitor their sales people vehicles, just so they know if they are doing their job. Nexus Locator App is the new solution for GPS Tracking, making it even better and easier to manage your human resources.

This is not only about control, but it is always useful to know who is available for a job when something comes up. Sometimes you just want to know which one of your clients generate more costs for your company, or you need to have an idea about how many meetings were needed for each customer in order to close the deal.

Nexus Locator can be found on Google Play Store.

How Much Do You Value Data?

There are a lot of managers who don't recognize the data and information that flows through their company as an asset. Entrepreneurs or other managers who think about their assets in terms of human resources, equipment, machines, vehicles, but they never considered data and information as an asset for their company. Of course we are not talking about big enterprises here, most of them are small or medium businesses who never thought of data to be an important factor for their business, companies who never gathered data and they are not afraid to lose it.

Imagine this: a small sales department with 5 to 10 salesmen in a company where every salesman goes to meetings, pitches contacts and makes calls. All the discussions, phone numbers, company names go into employees personal organizers, notebooks. Salesmen come and go, and when they go, they take all the data with them, and when they come, they have to start from the bottom. This is the typical cycle for a lot of companies out there who don't use business software solutions, ERP systems or CRM Applications. What is worse is that they still believe they can work it out the way it is right now, managers who often think that software solutions are too big of a hassle.

Nexus Electronics company, for example, started to use a CRM system for sales since day 1 and just like in any other company or sales department, people come and go, but when sales people go, the information stays in the company's database. We are talking about tens of thousands of contacts who were probably not ready to purchase at first, but every time a  sales person started a new discussion with a lead, they knew everything about the company, who is the decision maker, what discussions other co-workers had with them, what kind of people they are talking to and how to approach them.

For these kind of companies, data is extremely valuable because it actually brings value to the company. Companies who value data will always be one step ahead of the competitors, they can identify needs easier and sales people can come up with a better strategy. We can always stay comfortable, but sometimes we have no idea the performance we can achieve if we step outside of our comfort zone, in this case implementing a CRM solution for the Sales Department.

See You in Hannover at CeBIT 2014

CeBIT 2013 was a real success for Nexus Electronics, we managed to make new partners from all over the world, find new customers for our GPS Tracking Devices and tell more people about other technologies that we offer. We didn't put too much effort into Zimplu CRM last year, but this year is going to be different, Zimplu CRM will be one of the main products we will present at CeBIT.

What is CeBIT?

CeBIT is one of the biggest technology fairs in the world, it takes place every year in Hannover, Germany, and it has an exhibition area of roughly 450,000 square meters. In a literal translation, CeBIT comes from Center for Office Automation, Information Technology and Telecommunication, with a record of 850,000 visitors. 

What Will Nexus Electronics Present at CeBIT 2014?

First of all, we will be there to give you more information about Zimplu CRM, about benefits for using it, its features, and what we brought new in our application.

We've been working hard to make improvements to Zimplu CRM, our customers now have more features they can use for even more activities in the organization than sales and customer support. The design of Zimplu is also something we've been changing, and we are not even done yet. Zimplu CRM is now closer to become a full professional tool for business, indispensable for our customers.

Zimplu Team is looking forward to meet you this year at CeBIT.

Just like last year, we will continue to present Nexus Telematics devices for Fleet Management, and even Nexus Locator, an Android App for monitoring mobile phones.

We will also introduce you to one of our newest application, Perpeton, a server monitoring web application that helps companies provide better services online and announces them when their servers have problems in order to avoid server crashes.

2014 Surprise: Advanced Filtering is Now Available in Zimplu CRM

We had this in mind for a long time, and now it is finally ready! We implemented the advanced filtering option in Zimplu CRM which will help you sort your companies, opportunities, contacts, and support tickets using custom conditions.

Imagine having the option to filter your companies by the number of employees, location, revenue, or domain at the same time with the possibility to export your data in a spreadsheet where you can create custom charts for your filtered database or send emails to the selected companies.

Filtering can be done at the most advanced level for any of your existing fields, including custom fields. Filters can be created by any user, each filter you create is specific to your user account, and the filters you create for one account will not be available for the rest of your users.

How to Create Filters in Zimplu CRM?

Start by clicking the filter button on the top right corner to create a filter.

After you click on create filter, a new window will pop up where you can add as many conditions as you wish for the existing columns (don't forget about the Filter Name).

When you are done, click the save button, and then you may select your filter from the Filter List on the top right corner. Selecting a filter will apply all its conditions to your list.

Columns Visibility - Video Tutorial

Following the latest blog post regarding columns visibility, we now created a Video Tutorial to help you understand better what columns visibility is and how it can help you.
Watch the video below for a better understanding of the Columns Visibility Feature: