With more than 5 billion users worldwide, social media platforms offer an excellent means for companies to connect with their target audiences. Because they are useful for lead generation and relationship building, social media channels are an indispensable part of any sales strategy for starting and growing a business.

But here’s the thing—selling on social media isn’t just about posting engaging and relevant content now and then. Instead, you need a concrete social selling strategy to connect with the right B2B buyers, build trust, and convert them into paying customers.

In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at the benefits and best practices of social selling.

What is social selling?

Social selling is the technique of using social media platforms to find new prospects, engage with them, and close sales. Successful social selling involves generating and qualifying leads and earning their trust before pitching your product or service. The idea is to build relationships with prospects instead of asking them to purchase right away.

Also, unlike social media marketing, social selling efforts don’t stop at publishing meaningful and traction-worthy content on different platforms. 

Of course, social media campaigns play a crucial role in building brand awareness and attracting the right prospects. However, social sales reps and social sellers take things a step forward and engage in one-on-one conversations with these prospects, aiming to build long-term relationships.

What are the benefits of social selling?

First things first—with social selling, you can meet potential buyers where they already are. Whether you want to connect with C-suite executives or entry-level employees, you’ll find them on one social network or another. All you have to do is identify your target audience’s preferred social media channels and become active there. 

On the plus side, connecting with prospects on social media is more scalable than going to in-person networking events. It’s more cost-effective, and you get your hands on high-quality leads.

Then there’s the added benefit of aligning your marketing and sales tactics to your audience’s needs. Social sales teams can use social listening tools to stay on top of conversations involving your brand, products, competitors, and the overall industry. 

That, in turn, helps you gain in-depth insights into each prospect’s needs and pain points. You can use these insights to personalise your messaging and build a deeper connection with them, helping your salespeople close more deals faster.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that with social selling, you can directly reach out to top-level decision-makers. Engaging with them is far more effective in driving sales than connecting with gatekeepers through traditional sales channels.

Other benefits of selling on social media include:

• Increased brand visibility
• Improved brand reputation and credibility
• Enhanced brand trust and loyalty
• Shortened sales cycles

Choosing the right networks for social selling

It’s necessary to choose the right social media platform, whether it’s to advertise your business or connect with people interested in your offerings. A platform that doesn’t have your audience won’t help your cause. 

When it comes to effective social selling, LinkedIn is often the preferred channel for obvious reasons. The platform is a favourite among C-suite executives and is particularly useful for driving B2B sales. Unlike other social networks, many LinkedIn members use the platform to inform business-related decisions. 

Also, LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index can be a helpful metric for evaluating the performance of your strategies. Similarly, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a valuable tool for finding more prospects.

Then there’s X. Formerly called Twitter, X is designed to encourage public discussions. The platform’s search functionalities make it easy to find and jump into relevant conversations. That, in turn, can help establish your reputation as a thought leader and gain the trust of potential customers.

Other social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are generally best for content consumption and entertainment. However, you can still use these platforms to increase brand awareness and reach more prospects.

Keep in mind that there isn’t a well-defined formula to select the right social selling channels. Instead, you must have a deep understanding of your potential customers’ preferred social networks and select the right channel(s) accordingly.

Best practices to get started with social selling

Social selling takes more effort than just posting insightful content on social media. It demands a concrete strategy to identify and connect with the right prospects and move these conversations outside social media to close sales.

If you’re getting started with social selling, the following tips will come in handy to optimise your sales process:

• Build your personal brand: Create impressive profiles on selected social media platforms. Include attention-grabbing details about your expertise and experience. Get endorsements from coworkers and clients, and share top-quality content on your profiles. If you have a team of social sales professionals, make sure they set up attention-worthy social media profiles, too.
• Leverage social listening: Many social media marketing tools also offer social listening features. You can use these to set up alerts for brand, product, and competitor mentions. They can also be used to identify trending hashtags and keywords. That, in turn, will help you chime into relevant discussions and connect with your target audience.
• Harness the power of comments: Check your posts regularly and respond to audience comments with more meaningful insights. It’s also a good idea to comment on your prospects’ posts and strike up a conversation with them. Avoid hard-selling your products/services, though.
• Furnish social proof: Besides posting informative content, consider sharing customer testimonials and success stories. Better still, you could publish a case study or record a podcast about a customer’s experience with your company. It can be an excellent way to build credibility and help prospects understand how your offerings fit their needs.
• Know when to move out of social media: Social networks are ideal for finding and connecting with target customers. But if you want to close a deal, there may be a time when you must take that conversation to another channel like email or phone. Timing is crucial here. If you’ve been communicating with a prospect for a while and they seem interested in your business, ask them whether they’d like to connect on a call for more details. Or better still, suggest an in-person meeting or a product demo to move them closer to a purchase decision.

It’s time to up your social selling game

With social media platforms attracting a vast user base, a social-selling strategy is becoming a must-have for modern businesses. However, selling on social media requires a more nuanced approach than sending a sales pitch in DMs. 

Build brand authority and thought leadership by publishing valuable content that resonates with your audience’s needs. Once you have a prospect’s attention, engage in meaningful conversations and help them see the value in your offerings.

A CRM solution like Act! can help you stay on top of the leads generated through social selling. Start your free trial to see the platform in action.

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Embracing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions is quickly becoming the norm for organizations that want to enhance operational efficiency. While enterprises have been at the forefront of AI adoption, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are catching up fast.

According to a recent survey, 75 percent of small businesses already use AI solutions. Also, over 90 percent of SMB owners agree that AI tools drive cost and time savings and maximise profitability.

Besides automating routine tasks, AI systems can help small businesses improve customer experience and decision-making processes. Plus, they help forecast cash flow, sales, and market demand. They can even identify fraudulent transactions, human errors, and unusual activities. Significant cost savings is yet another advantage of AI implementation.

And the results show. A survey revealed that businesses that used AI saw a 12-point rise in their likelihood of profit growth over non-adopters.

Nevertheless, 90 percent of small business owners reported facing obstacles in integrating AI into their operations. It’s more complex than simply using ChatGPT and Midjourney to create marketing materials in seconds.

In this article, we’ll outline the key AI adoption challenges for small businesses and effective ways to overcome them.

Adopting AI technologies: Challenges for SMBs

From accounting and inventory management to marketing and customer support, AI tools help improve various business functions through the power of machine learning. But despite realising the benefits of AI adoption, small businesses often lack the resources and technical expertise to implement AI projects. They don’t have adequate budgets to build proprietary AI systems or recruit AI experts to oversee adoption and use.

Case in point—47 percent of SMB owners cited not knowing how to use AI tools as a significant deterrent to adoption. Other challenges they pointed out included non-compatibility with existing systems (31 percent) and security and privacy concerns (26 percent).

Then, there’s the issue of inaccurate results and bias. AI algorithms are limited by the data sets used to train AI models. They are prone to “hallucinations” and can generate incorrect or misleading information.

For instance, the last thing you want is for an AI-powered chatbot on your company website to provide false product details to customers. Worse still, it might make derogatory remarks and turn customers away.

Plus, these systems can reinforce patterns of bias and discrimination present in the data used to train them. For instance, in 2018, Amazon developed an experimental AI recruiting tool trained on résumés submitted to the company over the last 10 years. The software showed clear bias against women and even recommended unqualified candidates.

It’s also worth noting that many small businesses don’t have the necessary infrastructure and processes in place for data collection and management for AI initiatives. This can lead to duplication, inconsistency, and other quality issues. That, in turn, can prevent SMEs from harnessing the full benefits of AI solutions.

They also lack continuous learning programs in-house that can be used for upskilling existing employees. This can cause SMBs to lose their competitiveness against larger corporations.

Best practices for AI adoption in SMBs

Embracing AI for small businesses isn’t as straightforward as using a few AI-powered tools. You need to adopt a strategic approach to ensure a seamless transition to these systems. 

If you’re looking to adopt AI solutions for a small business, keep the following best practices in mind:

1. Audit your existing processes

Adoption of AI applications for your small businesses doesn’t mean you have to automate every function. Instead, the key to successfully implementing AI for a small business is understanding which processes stand to benefit from it. 

Evaluate your current systems and processes to determine whether there’s potential to improve their efficiency with AI technologies. 

Keep an eye out for business functions and processes where employees spend most of their time performing routine tasks. Also, identify areas that could benefit from AI-driven analytics and decision-making. Lastly, weigh the efficiency gains against the cost, effort, and time required to implement new AI systems.

2. Identify the right tools

Most SMBs lack the funds and resources to develop proprietary AI solutions. The good news is that you’ll find a broad spectrum of ready-to-use AI tools for any task. Be it to improve customer support or reduce instances of customer account fraud, you can choose from various cloud-based AI providers. You can also get into partnerships with other companies if you intend to develop one.

Other AI tools that can come in handy for small businesses include:

• Trello for project management
• Vic.ai for accounting
• ChatGPT and Jasper for content writing
• Manatal for recruitment
• Power BI for data analytics

The final selection of AI tools will depend on the processes you want to streamline. Dig deeper into their customer data privacy and data protection policies to determine whether you can trust them with sensitive business information. Also, make sure they support integration with your existing tech stack.

3. Implement data management practices

Use a secure centralised repository, such as a data warehouse, to collect data from various sources. This will serve as a single source of truth and keep your data up to date. Outline clear processes for data formatting so that it can be easily added to the platform. It’s also a good idea to implement governance policies to maintain data quality. 

Check whether the selected platform is compatible with your existing tech stack and the AI tools you intend to use. The idea is to ensure a seamless flow of information among various systems so you can extract meaningful insights from it.

4. Prioritise employee training

Even the best AI technologies will fail to improve operational efficiency if your employees don’t know how to use them. Educate your staff about any new AI tools you’re planning to introduce. Establish a formal training program to walk them through the platform’s features and help them understand how it’ll make their jobs easier. Educate them about the use of AI, data management frameworks, data-driven decision-making, and more. 

5. Don’t lose the human touch

Keep in mind that AI systems aren’t an alternative to human insight and intelligence. While these tools can help cut operational costs and speed up processes, employees must oversee their operations.

It could be as simple as fact-checking an AI-written blog before publishing it on your company’s website. Similarly, you can audit the output of AI analytics tools to determine the accuracy of the insights they provide.

Retaining the human touch is crucial to minimizing issues arising from biases and hallucinations inherent to AI solutions. It also plays an important role in keeping customer satisfaction levels high.

Act! makes AI work for your small business

Adopting AI solutions for your company is an excellent way to streamline business operations and skyrocket efficiency. It gives you a competitive edge and lets you delight customers with a frictionless experience. 

The key to the successful implementation of AI for SMBs is selecting the right tools and ensuring seamless integration with existing systems. It’s just as crucial to establish data governance and management policies. 

Lastly, train your employees to use AI tools to support their jobs instead of relying on these solutions to take over their tasks. 

Act! offers an AI-powered marketing assistant to help you create content for emails, landing pages, and other marketing collateral. You can even use it for proofreading and translation.

Additionally, with Act!’s marketing automation features, you can create response-driven email campaigns for lead nurturing. It even helps you create workflows for scoring leads and sending alerts for timely follow-ups based on a prospect’s actions. Get access to your free trial now to see how it works. 

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“Interpersonal skills” is an umbrella term for how you build rapport, or communicate and interact with others. These are the skills that enable you to work with and lead team members. They also help you build strong relationships and keep your team performing at its best.

When it comes to business interpersonal skills, the following are a must:

      Communication skills

Effective communication skills are a hallmark of outstanding leaders. Whether you’re a business owner or manager, you must have the ability to convey information clearly and concisely. Also, you must choose your words carefully to avoid demeaning or offending anyone.

Keep in mind that communication skills in business management aren’t limited to speaking with confidence. Your body language matters just as much. It includes your non-verbal communication like facial expressions and posture, as well as whether you make eye contact and what you do with your hands while speaking.

     Active listening

Effective interpersonal communication skills in business aren’t just about how you transmit information. You must also listen to the other person with patience to understand the information they’re sharing with you. 

To develop active listening skills, pay attention to their facial expressions, hand gestures, nods, and tone of voice. The idea is to understand what they’re trying to convey and how they feel instead of planning your next response. 

     Conflict resolution

Conflict can arise with team members, customers, or vendors. As a leader, you must approach difficult conversations around a conflict with an open mind.

Focus on understanding the other person’s perspective and arriving at a middle ground instead of trying to win the argument. When you handle conflicts with ease, it sets an example for team members and gives them the freedom to challenge each other without losing their temper. These problem-solving skills can stop conflicts from blowing out of proportion. 

    Empathy

Empathy is about putting yourself in another person’s shoes even when you disagree with them. It helps you look beyond your beliefs and perspectives and understand why people behave the way they do. 

Whether you’re giving negative feedback to a team member or addressing a customer’s complaint, empathising smooths out the interaction. It can be instrumental in winning their trust and building lasting interpersonal relationships.

   Self-awareness

You can’t motivate the people around you without understanding what drives you. That’s where self-awareness steps into the picture.

Self-awareness involves identifying your flaws and weaknesses and understanding why you experience certain emotions. It’s the key to regulating your feelings and improving emotional intelligence. This helps you navigate conflicts and difficult conversations without losing your cool.

How to develop and improve your interpersonal skills at work

Strong interpersonal and communication skills are the hidden force behind a positive work environment and a thriving business. If you want to build or enhance your interpersonal skills in business, here are a few effective tips.

1. Identify must-have skills

Start by evaluating your strengths and weaknesses to identify the interpersonal skills you already have and the ones you must develop. Ask those around you to pinpoint things you could improve in your interactions. 

For instance, you might be great at understanding other people’s perspectives and approaching conflicts with an open mind. However, conveying your feelings and ideas might seem challenging. If that’s the case, it’s time to work on your communication style. 

Once you’ve identified the essential skills, set measurable and time-bound goals to keep you on the right track.

2. Learn by observing

One of the most effective ways to improve your soft skills is to observe successful interactions. Keep an eye around your workplace to notice how other team leaders and managers communicate with their team members and customers. You could also look at some successful business leaders for inspiration.

For instance, you might observe that a manager uses non-verbal cues like body language to make others feel comfortable during a conversation. Or you may find that they use specific techniques to regulate their own emotions when dealing with conflict. Start adopting these traits. 

3. Improve with practice

The more real-life practice you get, the better your people skills will be. The easiest way is to find a mentor who can engage in different conversations with you and offer constructive feedback.

Alternatively, you can join a formal training program on building interpersonal skills. Use your professional network to find recommendations for such programs or look for them on the internet.

If possible, record your interactions with others and replay them to identify areas of improvement. For instance, you might observe that you tend to interrupt the other person or overuse filler words in conversations. Spotting these gaps will help you improve your communication and interpersonal skills.

4. Ask for feedback

Regardless of the type of interpersonal skills you want to develop, you must seek feedback. When you interact with team members, ask whether they observed any issues with your body language, tone, or word choice. You can also ask if they felt attacked or demoralised. 

Besides team members, seek feedback from other people you interact with every day. These include supervisors, coworkers, and business partners.

Successful teams are built on effective communication

Strong communication and interpersonal skills can be instrumental in fostering a culture of teamwork and productivity. As you improve your people skills, you set an example for your team members. That, in turn, will motivate them to put their best foot forward.

Act! CRM simplifies workplace communication and collaboration. Start a free trial today to see how it can reshape your internal and external communications.

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Do you know the biggest trait of successful entrepreneurs and business owners?

They ruthlessly guard their time and focus on their goals while multitasking and getting things done.

But, running a business means you can’t completely escape daily administrative and repetitive tasks. Add to that the constant barrage of phone calls, social media updates, and smartphone notifications, and achieving peak productivity can feel like a distant dream.

But it isn’t impossible.

In this article, we’ll share practical and achievable time management techniques for a busy entrepreneur to help you focus on the highest priority tasks without losing control of day-to-day operations.

The importance of time management skills for SMB owners

As a small and medium-sized business (SMB) owner, you wear many hats. You’re likely the CEO, the marketing director, the customer service representative—the list goes on. 

It’s no surprise that the average startup owner works a staggering 50–70 hours a week.

Working long hours is often a part of early-stage entrepreneurship, but it’s important to recognise that you have limited physical and mental energy. And, daily firefighting might feel like work, but it only drains your energy and distracts you from your most critical strategic tasks.

It isn’t sustainable, results in burnout, and ruins your work-life balance.

That’s why you must prioritise your demands so you can spend time your time working “on” your business, providing strategic direction, creating better customer experiences, and finding impactful ways to delegate, automate, or eliminate the rest of the tasks to ensure your business runs smoothly.

Practical time management tips for busy entrepreneurs

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Before leveraging any time management strategies, you must carefully audit your daily routines and find out where you’re spending your time.

You can do that using time-tracking apps or simply listing everything you do in a spreadsheet at the end of the day. A week’s worth of data should be enough to show your trends and help you identify improvement areas.

Once you have these insights, use the following techniques to optimise your productivity.

1. Use the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritise tasks

The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the most popular tools for prioritising tasks and managing time effectively.

Here’s how it works.

Take all your tasks and organise them into four quadrants.

Urgent and Important

These are the most critical business tasks that need your immediate attention—a critical customer issue, a limited-time sales campaign, or a project deadline. Prioritise them over everything else. 

Important but Not Urgent

These are important tasks that usually contribute to the long-term health of your business—annual planning meetings, learning new skills, and investing in better software. It’s best to schedule them for an appropriate time instead of delaying them indefinitely.

Urgent but Not Important

These are operational and low-skill administrative tasks that are critical to your day-to-day operations but can be easily delegated.

Not Urgent and Not Important

These are time-killers like social media scrolling, useless meetings, or hierarchical formalities that you should eliminate from your life.

Next time you create a to-do list at the start of your workday, run it through this matrix to ensure you prioritise the most important tasks and delegate, schedule, or eliminate the rest.

2. Beat distractions using the Pomodoro Technique

We can’t completely disconnect from social media, emails, or workplace interactions. But we can organise these distractions to ensure they don’t impact our productivity.

This is where the Pomodoro Technique is so effective.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time-management strategy that breaks work down into focused intervals separated by short breaks.

It consists of the following:

• Intervals: Each work period is called a Pomodoro and typically lasts 25 minutes.
• Breaks: Short breaks (usually 5 minutes) follow each pomodoro.
• Sets: After four Pomodoros, there’s a longer break of 20–30 minutes.

Use the breaks to relax, scroll social media, or do anything that usually distracts you from work. But remain fully focused during the work period.

There are no hard and fast rules here. You can change the duration of the intervals and breaks to fit what works best for you.

3. Free up time using automation

Automating business processes and workflows is one of the best ways to free up your time and be more productive. This is where a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Act! can be a powerful type of time management software for your business.

You can use a CRM to automate your email marketing, lead generation, and customer management workflows. Instead of manually entering customer information into different spreadsheets and spending hours every day searching for the right data, use Act! to organise everything in a customer information dashboard.

It provides you with insightful information and ensures you spend more time making business decisions based on customer insights instead of managing spreadsheets.

4. Minimise meetings with asynchronous communication

Meetings cause more than $37 billion in productivity losses every year.

What’s worse? 55 percent of professionals feel the majority of meetings could have taken place over email.

The simple solution? Use asynchronous communication tools like email, screen recordings, voice messages, and project management tools to collaborate more effectively and save time. Only schedule meetings when there’s no better option.

5. Create a knowledge source for your team

You’re a business owner, so naturally, you know the most about your business and how you want your employees to run it for you.

Why not transform this information into a knowledge source with video recordings, articles, guides, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) your employees can use every time they need guidance? This could save you thousands of hours over time and reduce your team’s dependence on you.

6. Learn to say no (often)

Saying no to anything that doesn’t align with your goals or vision is a superpower every business owner needs.

Steve Jobs was famous for doing that at Apple. But it also works for small businesses because your team, investors, or business partners can sometimes try to pull you into tasks that aren’t worth your time. 

Learn to say no more often than yes, and you’ll be much more productive than your competitors.

Create daily habits and routines to get more done

Ultimately, your productivity as an entrepreneur comes down to creating productive daily routines that drive your day.

Having a routine means less uncertainty, distractions, and surprises. As a result, you’re able to focus on long-term goals and spend more time working “on” your business.

Of course, you’ll still need to dive into the operational stuff from time to time.

But that’s where prioritising, delegating, and most importantly, automating your tasks will help you with effective time management. 

To get started with automating tasks and freeing up your time, give Act! a free 14-day trial.

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What’s the secret to building a successful small business? Of course, there’s no universally acceptable answer to that question. But, ask any SMB owner, and they’ll tell you how their team members are their most valuable assets.

Case in point: Employees who are energised and excited about their work are 31 percent more likely to go above and beyond. Figures like these emphasise the importance of building effective teams and managing them the right way.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what it means to build and manage a great team so you can establish a strong foundation for your organisation.

What does a successful team look like?

Simply put, a successful team is one where individual team members deliver high-quality work on time. And they do it without feeling burdened or burnt out.

Regardless of the industry or scale of an organisation, an effective team will exhibit the following characteristics:

• Shared values: The entire team is aligned toward predefined values, objectives, and expectations. All members work in harmony for the team’s success.
• Open communication: Team members are always on the same page, irrespective of whether they’re working on-site or in a hybrid setting.
• High sense of ownership: Every team member is willing to go above and beyond what’s expected to achieve common goals. 
• Willingness to face challenges: Team members treat every challenge as a new learning opportunity and use problem-solving tactics to overcome it.
• Delegation of tasks: The leader identifies team members with the right skill sets and assigns suitable tasks to them.
• Trust and respect: Each person in the team feels confident about sharing their ideas and opinions without the fear of being criticised, ridiculed, or manipulated. 

How to build effective teams: A few valuable tips

Building effective teams and managing them properly improves employee engagement. That, in turn, motivates team members to do their best work and even helps increase retention.

But here’s the thing—smaller businesses may lack the resources available to larger organisations. For instance, you might not have funds to take employees out on fun team-building activities or offer monetary incentives every quarter.

So how do you build and manage a team effectively with limited resources? Follow these steps to get started.

1. Set clear goals and expectations

Establishing goals at the outset provides team members with a sense of purpose. It also helps them prioritise the right tasks to accomplish their milestones. Plus, they’re in a better position to align their work with overarching business goals. It’s particularly crucial when you’re working with a remote team.

Consider using a goal-setting framework like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound) to define clear goals.

While you’re at it, define your expectations by setting ground rules, such as:

• How quickly should team members respond to emails and messages?
• Is it okay for them to hold off replying to emails after work hours?
• Are there any expressions or phrases they must avoid in conversations?
• What factors will you consider when evaluating their performance?

2. Prioritise diversity

Team members from different backgrounds and lifestyles with varied skill sets bring new ideas and perspectives to the table. This fosters innovation, boosts teamwork, speeds up problem-solving, and pinpoints workplace biases that kill productivity. It can also help identify and tap into new growth opportunities.

It’s only natural that 56 percent of employed adults in the US believe that focusing on diversity is a good thing.

So, if you’re looking to build an effective cohesive team, make it a point to onboard a diverse array of team members. 

3. Don’t micromanage

Your team members don’t need you to stand over their shoulders and monitor their work. That kind of team management is distracting and gets in the way of their best work. Also, it sends the message that you don’t trust them and goes against your idea of team building.

Instead, break down team goals into smaller tasks and assign each task to a team member with relevant skills. Alternatively, it’s a good idea to identify team members with complementary skill sets and assign suitable tasks to them.

Conduct group team meetings or one-on-one sessions at regular intervals to track progress. Ask about the challenges they’re facing on the job and what will help them accomplish their goals more efficiently. This is also a good time to share feedback on their performance and offer advice on how they can improve.

4. Facilitate healthy communication and collaboration

It’s one thing to ask team members to keep each other in the loop. But how can you ensure they actually do that? The key is to create open channels of communication and collaboration with the right tools, regardless of whether your team meets in the office every day or works remotely.

For instance, you can provide them with cloud storage solutions to simplify file-sharing.

Similarly, customer relationship management (CRM) systems can come in handy for customer-facing teams. For example, sales team members can use a CRM to monitor a lead’s status and even assign follow-up reminders to their coworkers.

Besides providing the right tools, encourage team members to listen to each other and engage in healthy debates. The idea is to offer constructive feedback to coworkers instead of dismissing their ideas outright. 

5. Provide opportunities for development

Your team will typically include a handful of top performers and underperformers. However, the majority of your team members will fall into the bracket of middle performers. These are the people who need the right push to do their jobs better.

As a leader, it’s up to you to identify middle or average performers and provide them with suitable learning opportunities to elevate them to the high-performers category. It’ll make them feel seen and motivate them to give their best. Equipped with an advanced skill set, they’ll be in a better position to deliver on your expectations.

6. Build your leadership skills

Whether you’re a business owner or in a leadership role, you set the bar for other members. So, you must imbibe the qualities you want to inculcate in others.

Start by developing strong leadership skills, including active listening, clear communication, and empathy. Also, seek feedback from your team to understand what you can do better. When you demonstrate vulnerability, you earn the respect of your team, which, in turn, inspires them to do their best work.

Improve your team’s communication with Act!

A strong team thrives on open communication, respect, and trust. The key is to ensure all members have a unified view of the team’s objectives and values. It’s also crucial to provide them with open channels for connecting and sharing their ideas.

With Act!, customer-facing teams can access information about potential, existing, and new clients. Team leaders can monitor the performance of different sales reps and provide them with suitable feedback. Sign up for a free trial to see how Act! can help you build an effective team.

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Today’s CEOs believe there’s a 24 percent likelihood that their companies will be exposed to macroeconomic volatility in the next 12 months. Business leaders also believe that there’s a 24 percent chance inflation will be a key threat to their companies during the same period.

An economic downturn has been a looming threat for businesses over the last few years. From the pandemic and supply chain issues to geopolitical conflicts, several factors have contributed to a feeling of uncertain times and a shaky economic climate.

While times of economic uncertainty affect every company, small business entrepreneurs are often hit hard. In this article, we’ll dig deeper into the impact of economic uncertainties on small businesses and discuss strategies to deal with them. Let’s get started.

The impact of economic uncertainty on SMBs

When the global economy declines, inflation and interest rates spike, which, in turn, curb purchasing power. In other words, most businesses will see a drop in sales and revenue during such periods, resulting in cash flow challenges.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that funding from investors dries up during such periods. For instance, worldwide VC funding plunged to $344 billion in 2023, reaching the lowest level since 2019. This makes it even tougher for small businesses to stay afloat.

Economic uncertainty also brings other setbacks, such as supply chain disruptions and regulatory changes. Given that most small businesses are already cash-strapped, it becomes even more challenging to cater to changing customer needs and drive sales.

Navigating economic uncertainty and overcoming sales challenges

Fluctuations in the global economy during tough times aren’t a death sentence for your company. There are ways to build your customer base and generate revenue despite an economic slowdown. 

Here are a few strategies to help you get started.

1. Monitor market trends

First things first—if you want your business to sail unscathed through economic downturns, you must embrace a proactive approach. That involves staying on top of changing market trends and consumer demands and preferences. 

Keeping up with trends will give you deeper insight into how purchase habits shift with economic fluctuations. That, in turn, will help you make the right decisions regarding product development and pricing and adapt your sales tactics.

Conduct online surveys, social media polls, and customer interviews to dig deeper into their changing expectations and needs. 

A CRM platform can also help you track changes in the behaviour of existing customers and prospects. You can use detailed customer profiles available on Act! to monitor their purchase history and recent customer service interactions. It’ll help you identify trends in their preferences and sentiments.

Additionally, use tools like Google Trends to understand where consumer preferences in your industry are headed. Competitor analysis and social listening tools can also come in handy.

2. Diversify revenue streams

The next step is to tap into alternative revenue streams by diversifying your product/service offerings. It becomes easier if you already have a finger on the pulse of your customer base.

For instance, let’s say you run a company that sells nutritional supplements online. As inflation rates spike, you might observe consumer interest in your products plummeting. However, interacting with your customer base might reveal that they’re keen to learn more about affordable and healthy eating. 

You can consider partnering with expert nutritionists to offer consultations on your website. Also, you could launch a range of paid online workshops for people who want more in-depth insights. Upselling your products at these events can generate even more revenue.

The key is to stay agile and be open to modifying your business model as consumer mindsets change.

3. Strengthen existing customer relationships

If you run a small business, you already know that retention is more cost-effective than acquiring a new customer. When you’re navigating economic uncertainty, it only makes sense to double down on existing customer relationships.

It could be as simple as staying connected with existing customers via email and social media. Highlight the challenges your business is facing and the steps your team is taking to overcome them. You could even ask them to share their ideas on navigating these challenges. It’s an excellent way to show how you value them and build stronger relationships. 

A CRM solution like Act!, with its integrated marketing automation features, can come in handy for streamlining communication with customers. You can even personalise your messaging based on their demographics and purchase preferences. When the timing is right, don’t hesitate to recommend relevant add-on products/services or request referrals and testimonials.

4. Don’t skimp on marketing

Even on their best days, small businesses have to make do with limited marketing budgets. When sales are slow and revenue is tight, you might feel the urge to cut back on marketing costs.

But, chances are, your competitors are also facing a similar cash crunch and will pull the plug on their marketing campaigns. Continuing your marketing efforts during this time will give you the competitive edge and visibility you need. And when the economy takes a turn for the better, your business will be at the top of potential customers’ minds and increase your chances of real success.

5. Cut costs with tech

Despite being proactive and prepared, an economic downturn will bring cash flow challenges for your business, forcing you to bring costs down. That’s where modern tech innovations come into the picture.

From marketing automation software and project management tools to chatbots, you can use a variety of tech-powered solutions to improve the efficiency of your marketing and sales teams. It’ll help you accomplish more tasks in less time and with fewer resources and enable your team to focus on more critical aspects, such as improving the customer experience and identifying new opportunities to drive revenue.

Adapt to changing customer needs with Act!

In a recent survey, 67 percent of SMB owners cited finances as their most pressing worry in the new year. The key to navigating economic uncertainty as a small business owner is to stay abreast of changing market dynamics and customer preferences. 

With Act!, you get a centralised database and dashboard to store, manage, and analyze customer data along with a marketing automation suite. That makes it a powerful tool for identifying and harnessing emerging trends in buying habits during economic fluctuations.

Start your 14-day free trial to see Act! in action and understand how it can support your business.

The post The SMB Owner’s Guide to Navigating Sales During Economic Uncertainty appeared first on Act!.

When you started your business, you only had a handful of customers. It made sense to store and manage their details in an Excel spreadsheet.

But as your company grew, so did your customer base. Today, you or your sales reps have to scroll through hundreds (if not thousands) of rows in a spreadsheet to find the necessary client details.

If your SMB has been grappling with these challenges, you’re not alone. A recent Act! CRM Survey Report revealed that 39 percent of SMB owners use spreadsheets to manage customer information.

But, with digital transformation becoming the norm for businesses across all industries, notes and spreadsheets are no longer the right fit for managing customer relationships and meeting your business needs. Here’s why you need to replace them with a scalable CRM solution—and what to consider when you stop using Excel as a CRM.

Reasons to stop using notes and Excel to manage customer data 

First things first—Excel spreadsheets are great at storing datasets from various sources like Quickbooks and LinkedIn, running quick calculations, and creating charts and graphs. Similarly, note-taking apps can help you quickly jot down key takeaways from a client interaction. 

But when it comes to effective customer relationship management (CRM), these capabilities aren’t enough. Here are a few common drawbacks of using Excel as a CRM system:

Version control issues

Picture this: You share the spreadsheet with customer data with your sales team. Each team member downloads the file on their computer and updates relevant details after talking to a client. It won’t be long before you have to deal with duplicate or inaccurate data, leading to inconsistent communications. 

Lack of accessibility

Spreadsheets aren’t particularly mobile-friendly. That makes it difficult for sales reps to access and update customer data while they’re on the move, and it can affect the outcomes of in-person client meetings.

Security concerns

Beyond protecting your customer data spreadsheet with a password, Microsoft Excel doesn’t offer robust security features. You can’t do much to prevent unauthorised access to sensitive data. Worse still, if an employee downloads the file on their computer and leaves your company, they can continue using your customer data.

Limited analytics capabilities

Notes and spreadsheets can pack a ton of useful data on customer behaviour, purchase history, service requests, and more. However, they lack sophisticated analytics features to turn the available data into actionable insights.

Scalability challenges

As your customer base grows, managing customer data in spreadsheets will become nothing short of a nightmare. Imagine scrolling through endless rows to find out when a potential customer was contacted last. Or sending a follow-up SMS to the wrong phone number because a sales rep forgot to update the details. That kind of inefficiency can result in leads slipping out of the funnel. 

Why CRM software is better than spreadsheets

Did you know that over a quarter of SMBs that started using CRM software saw a significant boost in revenue and company growth? But improved revenue isn’t the only reason why you should use CRM software instead of Excel. There are many reasons why you should use a CRM instead of Excel.

Improved customer data management

A CRM platform like Act! CRM offers a centralised dashboard to collect, store, and manage customer information. It creates a single source of truth, and employees across different departments can leverage file sharing and refer to it before interacting with clients. If they edit any information, the changes get reflected in real-time. This provides everyone with a unified and updated view of each client, elevating the user experience. It also speeds up decision-making and simplifies business processes. 

Act! even provides advanced search filters to help employees find the necessary information quickly. This facilitates seamless customer interactions and ultimately improves the purchase experience.

Additionally, CRM solutions with cloud services make it possible for multiple team members to access and work with client data simultaneously, regardless of their location. This makes them particularly suitable for hybrid or remote teams as compared to on-premises ones.

Deeper insight into customer lifecycle

With a CRM solution, your knowledge of customers isn’t limited to a few fields like name, phone number, and the date of last purchase. Instead, a platform like Act! lets you map out a prospect’s entire journey and helps you understand where they are in the sales funnel. 

With these insights, you can tailor your marketing and sales efforts for each lead instead of following a cookie-cutter approach. You can also monitor how different leads move through the sales funnel and identify friction points that drive prospects away.

Enhanced efficiency with automated workflows

Modern CRM systems come with a broad spectrum of automation capabilities. For instance, Act! lets you set up automated reminders and alerts. You can even assign specific tasks to sales reps and let the software notify them automatically. These features come in handy for ensuring timely follow-ups and maximising conversions.

Additionally, Act! lets you configure automated workflows that are triggered based on specific client actions. For instance, you can set up a welcome email that sends automatically when a new lead enters your funnel. Similarly, when a customer completes their first purchase, you can send an email survey.

Such automated workflows eliminate the need for manual follow-ups and help streamline operations. Customer support and sales teams can instead focus on more crucial tasks, such as driving retention and conversion rates.

Advanced analytics and reporting

A cutting-edge CRM solution doesn’t just store customer information. It helps you analyze the available data and track crucial metrics, such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV), and customer satisfaction score (CSAT).

With these metrics at their fingertips, marketing and sales teams can make more informed decisions. Plus, you can turn these insights into meaningful reports that come in handy for generating revenue projections.

On-the-go access

Many CRM platforms, including Act!, offer mobile apps that make it easy for employees to access customer data and insights wherever they are. 

Act!’s Mobile App (Android and iOS) provides sales reps with driving and destination insights. They can also update a customer’s information in the app, ensuring other team members are on the same page. It’s also possible to customise notifications to improve sales rep productivity and build high-performance teams. 

Additional benefits

CRM platforms offer several other benefits, often including integrated marketing automation and personalisation along with a library of email templates as well as numerous integrations with third-party tools. Act! even uses robust security measures, such as encryption and multi-factor authentication, for customer data protection.

Switching from spreadsheets to CRM: Key considerations

While CRM software offers several benefits, it’s crucial to find the right fit for your small business. Not all CRM platforms are created equal, and the wrong solution can add more bottlenecks than it resolves.

Here are a few tips to identify the right CRM platform for process optimisation and unhampered growth for your business.

Outline your needs and budget

CRM platforms offer a wide array of features, from automated workflows and shortcuts to data to pipeline management and reporting. However, your business may not need every feature that’s offered. Assess your unique requirements and create a list of must-haves. Then, define a realistic budget based on your needs and look for CRMs with pricing in that range.

Check for compatibility

Regardless of the CRM platform you select, make sure it’s compatible with your existing tech stack. Look for integration with commonly used tools, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Shopify, calendar apps, and more. Also, check if it can work on your operating system like Windows or macOS.

Consider the learning curve

Finding a feature-packed CRM solution is only half the work. You also have to ensure your employees use it to the fullest. That makes it crucial to evaluate their current technical skills and determine whether they can use new CRM software. You might also have to implement a training program to ensure a seamless switch from spreadsheets to CRM.

Up your CRM game with Act!

Storing customer data in spreadsheets will only get your small business so far. If you want to build lasting customer relationships and skyrocket company growth, using a powerful solution like Act! is non-negotiable. With advanced features like automated workflows and reporting, you can nurture leads more effectively and grow your sales.

Start your 14-day free trial to experience Act! and understand how it can drive your marketing and sales efforts.

The post Moving Beyond Excel or Notes: Essential Tips for Streamlining SMB Operations appeared first on Act!.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as an SMB business owner? It could be finding skilled and passionate professionals for your company or ensuring regular cash flow with limited funds.

But the single greatest challenge that can stifle your SMB or startup is getting clients. Unlike established global corporations, you may not be able to afford fancy, high-budget marketing strategies and campaigns to reach target markets and potential customers or create brand awareness. 

It isn’t surprising that only 50 percent of small and midsize businesses in the US make it past the five-year mark. How do you ensure your company doesn’t join the other 50 percent of SMBs that fail? The key is to get creative about finding new clients with limited marketing resources. Here are a few techniques to help you attract and close clients like a pro.

  Create thought leadership content

Did you know that 64 percent of B2B buyers trust thought leadership content more than other marketing materials when it comes to evaluating a brand? Additionally, 65 percent of worldwide B2B decision-makers believe it positively impacts their opinion of a company.

That makes thought leadership content an excellent tool for establishing your authority, credibility, and reputation in your industry. It helps you build trust among potential and current customers, which, in turn, facilitates lead generation and helps you find clients for your business.

You can choose from a wide array of content formats, including webinars, podcasts, interviews, industry reports, original research, and e-books for your thought leadership content. 

Select evergreen topics that will resonate well with your ideal customers and address their pain points. Also, collaborate with influencers and key opinion leaders in your industry to maximise credibility and reach.

  Revamp your business website

What’s the first thing you do when you want to buy a new product? If you’re like most consumers, you’ll likely run a quick Google search and check out the top-ranking websites. 

That makes it crucial to design an impressive, user-friendly, and mobile-responsive website. Even if you don’t sell products or services online, use your website to showcase important information about your company. That includes your story and vision, profiles of core team members, and testimonials from happy clients. Make sure you populate your website with compelling content your target audience will find valuable.

While you’re at it, use search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to ensure your website ranks high in relevant search engine results. From keyword research and guest posting to technical SEO, there are several tactics you can employ to boost search rankings—one of the best ways to get business clients.

  Build your brand

As an SMB, you need to think beyond establishing a mere social media presence for your company or new business. With more than 33 million small and midsize businesses in the US, you’ll face stiff competition on any platform.

How do you break through the clutter and hit the right ears? Humanise your business by building a relatable brand. This can be an excellent way to establish thought leadership.

Consider publishing guest blogs, case studies, and op-eds in authoritative publications. It’s also a good idea to start a podcast series where you can showcase your expertise. For instance, if you run a financial advisory firm, you could host a podcast focused on alternative investment strategies and send invitations and updates to your email list.

  Establish local presence

Irrespective of the type of business you run, it’s crucial to spread the word locally to thrive.

Consider attending workshops, seminars, conferences, and other networking events hosted by your local chamber of commerce. Bonus points if you can bag a seat as a speaker at these events. Also, keep an eye out for meetup events in your area that are relevant to your niche.

It’s even a good idea to participate in fundraisers and donation drives or contribute to a local nonprofit to position your business as one that cares about the community’s well-being. Additionally, optimise your website for local keywords and “near me” search queries. Create and maintain your Google My Business profile, and list your business in other local online directories.

  Deliver a smooth purchase experience

Implementing an SEO strategy, publishing insightful and authoritative content, and speaking at industry events can be excellent vehicles for lead generation. But how you handle these leads after they enter your sales pipeline dictates conversion rates and revenue.

In other words, you need to have a solid lead nurturing strategy in place to close a sale. Start by outlining a sales process that addresses a potential client’s needs at every stage of their purchase journey.

It’s a good idea to use a CRM like Act! to collect and store client details in a centralised location. With Act!, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales reps alike can access detailed buyer personas and use that information to address queries quickly.

Additionally, you can set up workflows to track your sales cycles and automate follow-ups with leads at the right time. You can even personalise your communication based on how a lead engages with your emails, social media platforms, and SMS campaigns. Such laser-focused messaging can move the prospects further down the funnel and prime them to purchase from you.

It’s also crucial to provide potential clients with insightful and enriching content that can help them make an informed decision. Avoid overly pushy tactics, as they can drive leads away. Instead, deliver a hassle-free customer experience by handholding them at every step of the buyer’s journey.

  Harness the FOMO fever

Whether you’re targeting regular consumers or B2B decision-makers, keep in mind that your potential clients are susceptible to the fear of missing out. You can use that to your advantage by announcing limited-period discounts and promotional offers.

For instance, if you run a fitness coaching service, you can offer a free one-on-one consultation with one of your experts. Similarly, if you sell online courses, you can introduce a two-for-one offer, where two people can attend two courses for the price of one.

Such time-sensitive offers create a sense of urgency and speed up conversions. Make sure you use email marketing to send timely alerts, coupons, and regular updates to your customer base so that they’re aware of any upcoming promotions.

 Ask for referrals and reviews

Word-of-mouth recommendations can do wonders for your small business’s growth. All you have to do is ask happy clients for referrals. 

If you’re already using a CRM platform, you can create a workflow that automatically sends an email to a new customer asking for their feedback. If their experience is positive, send another email a few days later asking them to recommend your product or service in their networks.

You must offer incentives, such as reward points, freebies gifts, or discounts on future purchases, in exchange for referrals to motivate your customers to recommend your brand. This is also a good time to request new clients to review your business on various online platforms, such as your Facebook page, Google Business Profile, and other online directories.

  Collaborate with businesses

Partnerships with local businesses that cater to your target demographic but aren’t direct competitors can help boost your reach. This is an excellent way to find new clients without spending a lot on marketing, and it’s particularly effective when you want to enter a new market.

Let’s say you run a financial advisory business. You can collaborate with a real estate investment firm to offer free consultations to their clients. Or you can partner with an insurance agency and offer expert advice to their customer base.

  Skyrocket lead generation & conversions

If you run a small business, it’s natural to wonder how to find clients and turn them into brand advocates. From publishing thought leadership content to asking for referrals from your current customers, there are numerous ways to find new clients and nurture and convert leads.

Act! offers a robust CRM solution with integrated marketing automation features. Sign up for a free trial to see how Act! can help you with lead generation and increasing your conversions.

The post 8 smart tactics to find and close new clients for your SMB appeared first on Act!.

Every business, big or small, needs a steady influx of new customers. Building trust, as well as building relationships, is crucial to establishing brand awareness and authority to keep your business top of mind and generate more revenue.

However, most small and midsize businesses can’t afford expensive advertising campaigns to attract potential clients. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to identify your ideal clients and grow your client base without exhausting your marketing budget?

That’s precisely what referral networks help you achieve.

A strong referral network helps fill your sales pipeline with high-quality leads in your target market who are interested in purchasing from you. It can also help you close sales faster and build a loyal customer base.

In this post, we’ll discuss effective ways to build a referral network for your business. But let’s first take a closer look at how referrals impact business growth.

What are the benefits of a strong referral network?

Today’s buyers are spoiled for choice when they have to make a purchase decision. A devoted referral network can help you stand out in such a buyer-driven market.

Case in point—89 percent of buyers trust personal recommendations and testimonials from people they know. That makes word-of-mouth recommendations the most trusted advertising channel, even above social media ads and TV commercials.

Additionally, a 2021 survey found that 55 percent of consumers discovered a new product through word-of-mouth the previous year. And 40 percent actually purchased a product after discovering it.

These numbers make one thing clear—buyers are more likely to trust a brand and purchase from it when it’s recommended by someone they know. That’s what makes referral networks a marketing goldmine.

Besides building credibility and trust, word-of-mouth referrals offer a high return on investment (ROI). That’s because you don’t have to spend on expensive marketing channels, such as paid advertising and influencer collaborations. You only have to incentivise your current customers to bring in referrals.

Moreover, a well-defined referral marketing strategy can turn into a self-sustaining vehicle for customer acquisition. As long as you nurture your most valuable advocates, they’ll continue to drive more potential clients to your business.

Different types of referral networks

The goal of a referral network is to bring in new clients by encouraging your current clients, employees, vendors, and other partners to spread the word. You can choose from the following types of referral networks:

• Customer referral networks: Your current clients sign up to recommend your brand and products or services to their contacts.
• Employee referral networks: You encourage your employees to share your brand with their friends, family, and other contacts.
• Referral partner networks: Existing customers, industry professionals, or other businesses sign an official contract agreeing to refer new customers to you.
• Cross-referral networks: You build a formal partnership with a complementary business that targets similar market segments, agreeing to refer clients to each other. It’s also known as a reciprocal referral network.

It’s crucial to assess your target audience and niche and choose the most suitable type of referral network. You can also use a combination of different referral networks to maximise the benefits.

How to build a robust referral network

High-quality referrals come with several benefits, including lower customer acquisition costs and improved brand loyalty. But you can’t wait for your customers, employees, and other businesses to send referrals your way. Instead, you need a concrete strategy to build your network.

If you’re wondering how to gain referrals and grow your business, follow the steps below.

Improve customer experience

Here’s the thing—if a customer encounters several difficulties when purchasing from you, they won’t recommend your products or services to others. On the other hand, excellent customer service has prompted 82 percent of consumers to recommend a business.

So, if you want to build a successful referral network network, a frictionless customer experience is non-negotiable. A customer relationship management (CRM) solution can help you facilitate seamless interactions with existing and potential customers to elevate their experience.

For instance,  Act! CRM lets sales reps and customer support executives access detailed client profiles in a few clicks. You can also configure lead nurturing workflows to follow up with potential clients automatically. 

Additionally, you can personalise the workflow based on a prospect’s previous interactions, purchase history, and email activity. All these features come in handy for removing points of friction from the buyer’s journey.

Offer compelling incentives

Typically, you’ll have to offer some kind of incentive in exchange for successful referrals. You can motivate customers with incentives like discounts, cashback, reward points, and free gifts. On the other hand, professional development opportunities and company gift cards work better for employee referral networks.

You can make things even more irresistible by offering personalised experiential rewards, such as tickets to their favorite band’s concert or an all-inclusive staycation at their preferred resort. Reserve these for instances when the revenue generated from referrals would be substantial.

Spread the word

If you want to make referral networks a formal part of your customer acquisition strategy, you must let people know about your referral program. For instance, a few days after you close a sale, you can send a thank you email to the customer informing them about the referral program. A platform like Act! can help automate this process. 

Similarly, if you’re looking to build a cross-referral network, it’s a good idea to attend industry-specific networking events. Connect with non-competing businesses and professionals that target the same (or similar) market segments to harness partnership opportunities.

You can also promote referral programs on other platforms, including your company website and social media profiles.

Make referring easy

Recommending your brand to others should be straightforward. Otherwise, even the most tempting incentives will fail to generate referrals.

The simplest technique is to provide customers and partners with a unique referral link or code. All they have to do is share it with their contacts via message, email, or social media. Besides making it easy to recommend your brand, this technique helps track successful referrals.

Nurture loyal advocates

Some clients, employees, or partner businesses will drive more referrals than others. It’s a good idea to identify these high-value brand advocates and provide them with better incentives. It might be just the push they need to recommend your business to even more people.

An easy way of spotting loyal advocates is to track referral sources. A CRM platform like Act! that integrates with third-party tools comes in handy here. It captures client information from various acquisition channels, helping you identify high-value referral partners.

Measure and improve

Recommending your products and services to interested buyers is but one part of referral marketing. You also have to ensure that these leads turn into loyal customers who drive even more referrals.

That emphasises the importance of using a CRM to track your sales pipeline and identify successful referrals. This will help you understand whether your referral strategy is headed in the right direction and uncover ways to improve it.

Skyrocket referrals with feature-packed CRM software

A strong referral network has the potential to generate qualified leads and build brand loyalty and trust. It’s a fantastic way to chart your business growth with minimal marketing efforts and budget. 

You can leverage your existing clients, employees, and third-party referral partners to build your network. Make sure you promote your referral programs and offer the right incentives to maximise word-of-mouth recommendations.

To ensure you execute your referral program well, get a CRM that can help you better serve your customers and send personalised communications. Act! CRM ticks all these boxes and even offers integrated automation and customer activity tracking capabilities. Sign up for a free trial to see it in action.

The post A Guide to Building a Referral Network for Your SMB appeared first on Act!.

As a business owner, you already operate on tight margins and limited resources. So, it’s vital to optimise your existing resources and maximise profits by cutting losses and inefficiencies.

This is where calculating, tracking, and improving your billable utilisation comes in.

If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s simply a measure of how much time your employees are spending on work that directly generates revenue. Improving billable utilisation can increase your company’s overall efficiency and help you generate more revenue without investing additional resources.

In this article, we’ll explain billable utilisation in detail and show you ways to improve it for your business.

What is billable utilisation, and why is it important?

Billable utilisation is the percentage of time your employees and team members spend on work that generates revenue. You can calculate it across your team and for individual employees.

In other words, an employee’s billable utilisation score shows how much of their total working time is spent on work that produces business results that earn revenue.

A high billable utilisation percentage shows you’re using your resources efficiently and investing your time in the most critical projects. A low billable utilisation score, on the other hand, means you must optimise your processes and reassess your resource plans with capacity planning.

For example, say a marketing agency hires an expensive copywriter to work on a new project. They’d want to maximise the billable utilisation of the copywriter by ensuring they work on billable, client projects only.

But if the copywriter spends a large chunk of their time in meetings, dealing with bottlenecks or technical tasks like configuring a landing page tool or installing WordPress, their billable hours will decrease because the agency cannot charge the client for those hours.

So, the agency must ensure that out of the copywriter’s total available working hours, little to no available time is spent on work outside the copywriting process.

The benefits of measuring billable utilisation

Knowing your team’s billable utilisation has several benefits. By tracking this metric, you can:

• Compare your efficiency and functionality against industry benchmarks and make adjustments
• Ensures the right resources are allocated for the right jobs
• Increase profitability without investing additional resources
• Get a clear picture of your resource capacity to take on future projects
• Inform your project planning and resource allocation for billable projects

What’s a good billable utilisation rate?

One hundred percent billable utilisation isn’t possible or desirable. Even your most efficient employees need time for training, skill development, and administrative tasks that are not directly billable. The ideal score also varies with the nature of work, as some roles are more suited to direct billing than others.

Generally, a professional service-based company should aim for a billable rate above 80 percent. However, every industry has different benchmarks, so it’s essential to see the score in the context of your particular industry.

If your scores are below the industry benchmark, you’re underutilising your available resources and must optimise your billable utilisation. On the other hand, if you’re significantly ahead of the average industry numbers, you’re overutilising your resources, which might result in burnout and reduce employee productivity and efficiency in the long run.  

Billable utilisation vs. resource utilisation

Although these two terms are commonly confused, they convey different aspects of your business. Resource utilisation represents all the tasks and activities of your team, including non-billable hours. Billable utilisation is a more specific metric representing the percentage of time your team spends on billable tasks and activities.

How to calculate billable utilisation

Calculating billable utilisation is pretty straightforward. You take the total number of billable hours and divide it by the total available hours, excluding things like holidays and non-billable activities. 

This percentage is then multiplied by 100 to get your billable utilisation rate.

Billable utilisation = (billable hours / total available hours) x 100

For example, if your business has 1,200 billable hours a year and your total available hours (minus holidays) are 2,000, your billable utilisation would be (1,200 / 2,000) x 100 = 60 percent.

You can use the same formula to calculate the utilisation of individual employees.

How to track billable hours

The most reliable way to track billable hours is by using a centralised and fully automated time-tracking system that logs your team’s activities, manages comprehensive timesheets, and gives you a clear picture of their daily activities.

The challenge, of course, is to ensure that everyone on the team records their time honestly and regularly. 

Here are a few tips to make that happen:

• Explain the benefits of time tracking to your team and how it helps your business become more efficient.
• Clarify how logging everything helps highlight your team’s performance.
• Make time tracking effortless and hassle-free.
• Share reminders.
• Run daily or weekly audits on different levels to ensure your team logs working hours and daily tasks.

5 ways to increase billable utilisation rate for your business

Continually optimising your billable utilisation is among the best ways to increase profitability and accelerate business growth.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Invest in project management and CRM tools

You need an integrated project management system that not only tracks time but also gives you a 360-degree view of your projects and their allocated resources.

By connecting it with a CRM system like Act! you can gain additional visibility across your sales and marketing pipelines, enabling you to plan your workload and resource availability more efficiently.

Combining your CRM with your resource management system shows you:

• Your team’s total available hours
• Current billable time and utility
• Sales and marketing leads that are ready to onboard for the next month or quarter
• Individual team members with high or low utility scores.

Such transparency and real-time insights simplify your decision-making and help you increase efficiency.

2. Shift or minimise non-billable tasks

Carefully evaluate your team’s workload to ensure they’re not unnecessarily involved in any non-billable tasks. Optimise their billable utility by shifting unproductive tasks to cheaper resources and minimising distractions that hurt productivity.

3. Train and upskill your employees

Sometimes, the easiest way to increase billable efficiency is by investing in your team’s training and development. With timely skill set upgrades, they can perform the same tasks with greater efficiency, resulting in higher profitability. 

4. Upgrade your technology

Evaluate your business equipment and technology to ensure they’re in optimal condition and do not cause operational delays. If you see the need, invest in more advanced technology to help your team perform the same tasks in less time.

5. Leverage automation

Every business must evaluate the tasks and operations they can automate. This can free up your resources, increase efficiency, and help you drive better results with fewer resources. 

For example, Act! can automate your sales, support, and marketing workflows through tools like automated landing pages, email campaigns, and lead scoring.

Optimising billable hours is low-hanging fruit for SMBs 

SMBs don’t always have the liquidity to invest in business growth. Optimising billable hours is an excellent way to increase profitability without major expenses. By using an integrated resource management system coupled with a CRM like Act! you can get all the information you need to calculate, track, and increase your billable work, resulting in greater efficiency and growth.

Sign up for your free Act! trial and see it in action.

The post How to optimise billable utilisation in your SMB appeared first on Act!.