We are in the midst of a customer revolution where sales, service and marketing processes are transforming, making it easier for small and mid-market businesses to compete for customer attention. With this comes great challenges, and a transformation necessary for companies to connect with their customers.
Take this challenge head on by:
- Adjusting your thinking. Embrace the mantra, “the customer is in charge,” and bring stakeholders on board to pave the way to make sweeping changes to your organization, that put the customer’s desires, wants and needs front and center.
- Getting connected. Make sure your company’s products and services are connected to the social world. A customer platform in the cloud can do this for you, a platform in which sales, service, marketing and applications, even products are tied together to directly connect your customers through social and mobile applications to your people, your systems—and your business.
- Listening to your customers. Your brand is created by a collection of conversations. Understand where people learn and engage in discussions about your brand. Look at social media, communities, and news sites to hear what they say, see what they want, and determine how to reflect that in your marketing campaigns. This will help you recognize who is interested in your space and identify influencers who can echo your message.
- Creating campaigns where your customers spend time. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter give an opportunity to target your message to the right people and be very efficient with your campaign dollars. Segment your ad campaigns based on interest, needs, demographics, and geography to make it more personal and meaningful.
- Engaging with customers. Create content on your website, social media, and in marketing materials that your audience wants to read. You need to join the conversation by publishing content that is relevant and engaging and you need to be able to promote that content from multiple channels across your business.
- Being an App Master. Keep on top of your customers changing needs by quickly building and deploying apps that engage and impress customers with the right functionality and content in the right place at the right time. Quickly build creative solutions to offer customers.
- Being responsive in real time, everywhere. It’s not good enough just to be a phone call away Today’s customers are eager to ask questions and to be the center of attention. And they participate in multiple channels. The sooner you can solve an issue, the happier your customer. When a customer can access you in real time via social, email, phone or video, they never have to wait to have their question answered.
- Unlocking the back office. Collaborating directly in the context of a business task is powerful stuff. There’s a wealth of critical information in your back office systems, whether it’s order status, inventory counts, billing, or vendor data. By marrying that information with your front office sales, service, and marketing activities, your team is better equipped to deliver on its promises.
- Giving sales reps the tools to get the job done. Customer companies use the cloud to put everything their sales teams need to win at their fingertips. They consolidate information from multiple systems to give reps a complete view of their customers and prospects. Reps easily track accounts, contacts, and opportunities for improved visibility and real-time analytics, and share information and collaborate on deals over their company Intranet.
- Handing your customers a megaphone to sing your praises. Help customers help themselves. Existing customers are a great resource of information for potential customers as they’ve “been there, done that.” By cultivating advocates and giving them a voice on social media, you’re not only increasing the effectiveness of your service, you are giving prospects confidence in your company and community. You are creating brand evangelists.
To get started, join us at Salesforce Essentials, where sales leaders, customer service managers and IT professionals will discuss these challenges and how Salesforce can help any company market, sell, service and transform to get ahead of their customers and grow for success. You'll get inspired by hearing how Salesforce is helping their customers. Even more, Salesforce partners, Apptus, Dell Boomi and FinancialForce.com will all be exhibiting their partner applications.
Join us at Salesforce Essentials and transform your business for growth:
December 10 Chicago Register now
December 10 Ottawa Register now
December 11 Raleigh Register now
December 12 Washington, DC Register now
January 16 Vancouver Register now
Register today and discover how to take your business to the next level. Read the free ebook below to learn more about becoming a customer company.
