Results

The weak economy has left everyone talking about how to use technology to cut costs, but what about using it to increase sales and tap new opportunities? From CRM software to video conferencing tools, it may be time to call your technology to the front lines.

Reduce Response Time with Unified Communications

Unified Communications (UC) allows employees to work faster and smarter, speeding your company’s response time to client needs, new business requests and issue resolution. Because it unites different devices and media – like PDAs, networks, voice mail and email – it reduces communication lag time and increases the availability of business intelligence across the organization. How can this translate to more revenue? If you have two days to complete a new business proposal, and it takes one day to share information about the project across the team, you’ve lost a day that could have been spent refining and enhancing your response to the new prospect. Conversely, UC gives team members instant access to answers and expert opinions, no matter where they are located.

Reach More Clients

Video conferencing is an inexpensive way to expand your company’s geographic reach while cutting travel costs. Because most companies are facing economic strain, putting this tool in your arsenal is a good way to impress prospects – it demonstrates that your company is proactively looking for ways to keep project costs down without sacrificing quality, while your competitors are still adding fees for face-to-face meetings to their budgets. One other bottom-line benefit of video conferencing is that it provides a way to evaluate leads without investing additional time and money in site visits. Businesses that have dismissed this technology because of limitations of past tools need to take a new look. Today’s low-cost, high-definition tools make video conferencing more like being in the same room than ever. For less than $500, you can tap into quality that Fortune 500 companies used to pay thousands of dollars to achieve.

Harvest Client Data to Make More Strategic Sales

Spending an extra hour or two analyzing data housed in your CRM application can open the door to new money making strategies. For instance, identify which of your products and services have the shortest sales cycle and which deliver the most profitable clients. Then target sales activities toward these groups. You can also mine data to determine who your best clients are and design promotions that cater to their priorities. The next step is to use this ‘best client’ profile to target new companies that match these characteristics. It’s also a good idea to review neglected opportunities. CRM products like Microsoft Dynamics make it easy to weed ignored leads from the database and isolate those poised for immediate sales.

Improve Client Service

Your business may be able to use technology to enhance clients’ experiences with your company. Have you automated online account access? Enabled automated performance reporting or online bill paying? Streamlining tasks that clients need to manage as part of their relationship with you is a great way to provide better and faster client service. It also offers rationale for why prospects should choose your company over competitors, and even why they should be willing to pay more for your services.

With the IT tools above, your company can ignore the headlines in favor of working smarter and watching your business grow.