What if there’s an effective way not just to gain customers, but turn them into permanent customers for your brand?

The answer lies in delivering exceptional customer service.

When you take good care of your customers, they’re more likely to recommend your business to others.

This will not only help you to get more profit but also help to create a good relationship with them.

As a result, good customer service strengthens your brand reputation and gives you an advantage over your competitors.

Let’s dive in.

Why do startups need good customer service?

Startup is different from traditional business. It is like an extreme version of a regular business. You expect to invest and lose a massive amount of money before you reach a profit.

This could be years and years of building before any money comes back. However, the potential reward is massive and when you succeed, it can be really really big.

Here’s a graph that shows the journey from investment to return.

If you look at the beginning, you can see a significant drop. This part is called the “valley of death,” where most of the startups fail.

Not exactly uplifting, right?

Yes, you’re right. It is a daunting reality.

About 96% of businesses fall within 10 years in this valley of death. This usually happens because they focus too much on boosting sales and making quick profits. In doing so, they end up investing large amounts of money into these efforts.

But that’s not how it works. Let’s give you an example: Elon Mask spends a specific amount of time on his X (formerly known as Twitter) daily to connect with people and post a wide range of topics, from technology to social issues.

Can you imagine! Someone like Elon Musk interacts directly with everyday people, sharing practical advice on a range of issues.

Sometimes it’s called the “land grab” technique. You provide extraordinary customer service and build the trust of your customers. After that, you own the market.

Elon’s active presence on X not only drives engagement but also inspires and attracts users to remain on the platform, making his influence a key factor in its continued popularity.

Your startup can transform from a small player to a game changer by exceeding customer expectations.

Now, let’s go ahead and discuss 7 key benefits that startups can gain from good customer service and the ways to improve it.

1. Increase customer loyalty

“Customer loyalty means that our users continue to use our services and trust us to provide them with the high-quality product that they have come to expect.”

– Jacob Lokshin, Abelian

In the early stages, every customer interaction matters for a startup. It’s the key factor in building customer loyalty and trust for your business.

Let’s make it easy. How many of you have experienced an exceptional customer experience that you snap a photo with the brand and post it on social media?

It seems silly but many of us really do that. It’s the power of their extraordinary service that turned people from a casual shopper to a brand-loyal ambassador.

It might sound simple. If so, why do millions of businesses go out of the market every year?

Is it because their competitor was that much better at marketing and sales techniques?

Maybe or maybe not. But the real answer lies in delivering top-notch customer service each and every day to gain customers’ loyalty.

At the end of the day, this will be the difference maker between your business’s success and failure.

Here are some benefits your business can gain from customer loyalty.

• Help to create brand attachment: Continuously having good interactions with customers can lead to a strong connection and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
• Increase repeat business: When customers are happy with your service, they’re more likely to return and buy again.
• Give competitive advantage: A good customer relationship can differentiate a company from its competitors, even if prices are higher. 
• Grow trust and convenience: Customers will gain trust in you which makes things more convenient with them.
• Create a positive brand image: Customers will always feel happy with every encounter with your brand.

2. Improve brand reputation

As a startup, the first thing you need to focus on is building a positive brand reputation. But a good reputation doesn’t come in a single day.

Companies with years of experience and quality products failed to build a good reputation in the market. And in most cases, the reason remains the same.

They may have invested millions of money to create quality products but customer service remains unnoticed.

As a result, they have failed to create a connection with their customers.

Imagine you went to a restaurant with your dear ones to enjoy good food and quality time.

But in a matter of moments, you encounter some bad behavior from a staff. It can ruin your mood and spoil plans.

Most of us have encountered this situation at least once in our lives and we always avoid going back to the place afterwards.

If your customers do not have a clear understanding or favorable perception of your brand, they may be unwilling to purchase your services.

Therefore, investing in customer service that accurately represents your startup goals and values is both a wise investment and a smart branding strategy.

3. Lead to higher profit

Most new ventures are constantly chasing new customers. Because their existing ones don’t stay loyal, forcing them to continually find ways to keep their business afloat.

Is it a sustainable strategy to run a business? It actually isn’t.

It’s time you focus on customer lifetime value. Because it’s important to reduce acquisition costs and increase High-Value Purchases.

“Treating your customers like family is the key to recurring customers.”

– Tim Han, Success insider, Author

Now, we are not telling you to turn a blind eye to their red flag and keep on supporting them.

But definitely recommend you go a bit above and beyond to give them special treatment.

In fact, research by PWC shows that “86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.”

So, enhancing your customer support is an absolute must for profitable sales and churn reduction.

Here are some additional financial benefits of good customer service for startups.

• Reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC): It means engaging customers by delivering ongoing value can lower the cost of acquiring new customers.
• High-value purchase intention: Customers are more likely to spend more if they are highly satisfied with a company’s service.
• Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): It represents the total value a customer brings to a business throughout their relationship with the brand.

4. Grow employee satisfaction

“Happy employees are the engines of innovation and customer satisfaction. Their happiness translate directly into competitive advantage.”

– James Lawrence, Happy Companies, CEO

Your employees are the engine that drives your business. It is thus important that they feel well in their workplace.

However, a demotivating business climate not only causes high turnover and employee burnout but also makes it difficult to work efficiently and develop creative solutions. And this directly impacts your profits.

A happy customer base and their positive feedback can help your business to change this climate. They feel motivated and more likely to drive innovation.

As a result, you can get better service and a competitive advantage for your business.

5. Provide a competitive advantage

Why is it important to let your customers know why they should do business with you? Because it highlights your competitive advantage.

This helps reassure customers that they have made the right decision to do business with you.

For example, imagine you’re at a grocery store buying meat. The butcher holds up a steak and says:

– “Look at this! Beautiful piece of meat or what?”

– “Do you know we trim just 1/8 inch of fat around the meat?”

– “You won’t find it anywhere else.”

– “Thanks for shopping with us.”

In the market, products can be similar, but the competitive difference needs to be emphasized. The slightest extra effort helps you stand out from your competitors.

By delivering top-notch service, you’re not only showing that you care about your customers, but you’re also building a strong reputation for your brand.

This consistent focus on positive experiences keeps customers coming back and sets your business apart from the competition.

6. Gain word-of-mouth referrals and reviews

If you need a new product or service, you usually ask your family and friends for advice. Whether it’s about a car, a house, or a doctor, you usually trust their recommendations.

Referrals are one of the most powerful determinants of the future success of your business. It can significantly increase your brand’s reputation.

By providing excellent customer service, you enhance the chance that your brand will be recommended within their friend circle.

However, remember that referrals can also work negatively. Dissatisfied customers may share negative reviews, which can damage your reputation and discourage future customers.

7. Help businesses make better decisions

As a business owner, you have spent countless hours trying to perfect your product or service. But you are likely too close to see your product objectively.

That’s where customer’s opinions can give valuable insights into what you are doing right and what you need to do.

By listening to their concerns, you can easily tailor your offer to your customers’ needs. It benefits your business not only in the short but long-term customer relationships.

Additionally, it can also lead to collaborations and partnerships. The connections may result in new business opportunities, such as joint ventures, that help your business grow and expand.

What startups can do to improve customer service?

As an entrepreneur, nothing compares to the excitement of starting a new business. However, if you want your startup to progress, setting up your customer service program is crucial.

Though creating a great customer experience may not be the most interesting task, doing it from the start can greatly enhance your brand’s reputation.

Here are some key points for startups to keep in mind to improve customer service.

1. Customer-centric culture

Customers always expect your service to be world-class and ready to help at any moment. If your support team makes even a small mistake, they might switch their business elsewhere.

With so many options available to them now, you must go above and beyond every time to satisfy them.

For this reason, you need to build a culture that prioritizes customer satisfaction.

Ensure that all team members understand the importance of providing excellent service and are trained to handle customer interactions with empathy and professionalism.

2. Effective omnichannel solutions

Customers expect consistent information and quality of service across their preferred channels. Over the past few years, this expectation has grown significantly.

Nowadays, Customer service must be available on every platform customers use, whether it’s social media, email, or chat.

A survey report shows that “76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments.” 

Compact support systems with omnichannel setup link channels together, allowing agents to share information seamlessly.

This way, customers don’t need to leave their current activity to get help from your business.

Instead, they can reach out on any channel of their choice and receive an immediate, reliable response.

3. AI-powered support system

A solid customer service strategy includes attention to customers’ pre, mid, and post-sale. Your customer support should cater to your customers at every stage of their buying journey.

A great way to make sure your customers’ queries are always answered in no time is by using an AI-powered agent response.

By using a cutting-edge AI-powered helpdesk, you can handle high ticket volumes and ensure every customer gets a personalized experience by maintaining a good FRT score.

4. Develop a customer journey map

Understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even if you think you have a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase will always be unpredictable, especially at the startup level.

Although you can’t predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is crucial for tracking the key milestones that every customer reaches.

It helps you see the customer’s experience from their perspective and identify opportunities to improve interactions.

Wrapping up

For startups, meeting and exceeding customer expectations every time is important to stay ahead of the competitors. Promise customer service in the initial stages can greatly influence how customers view your brand.

By offering a personalized experience, understanding their needs, and building trust, you can boost loyalty and drive repeat business.

Moreover, these strong customer relationships can lead to future opportunities like referrals, additional offerings, and new collaborations.

Ultimately, startups that prioritize customer relationships are more likely to build a loyal customer base that ensures their long-term success.

The post Customer Service for Startups: 7 Key Points to Stand Out appeared first on Fluent Support.

This stat highlights WordPress’s incredible popularity and trust among website owners worldwide. If you’re considering launching an online store, harnessing the power of WordPress for e-commerce could be your key to success.

Let’s explore how you can leverage this versatile platform to build your business and establish a solid online presence.

Benefits of using WordPress for e-commerce

WordPress offers user-friendly tools and plugins, perfect for beginners and seasoned developers. The flexibility and customization options make it a popular choice for e-commerce.

User-friendly tools and plugins

WordPress is renowned for its extensive plugins and tools that simplify the process of building and managing an online store. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, making it easy to build an e-commerce site. 

Here are some plugins that stand out:

WooCommerce: This e-commerce plugin is highly popular on WordPress, and for good reason. It transforms your website into a complete online store, offering product management, payment processing, and order tracking features.

Easy Digital Downloads: This plugin is perfect for selling digital products. It has an easy-to-use interface for handling downloads and payments.

Yoast SEO: Good visibility on search engines is essential for attracting customers to your store. Yoast SEO is a useful tool that makes your site more visible in search results.

Customization and flexibility

Whether you’re a small business owner or a large enterprise, WordPress offers many options to create a unique and efficient online store tailored to your needs.

Themes and templates: WordPress provides many themes and templates, both free and premium, designed specifically for e-commerce. These customizable themes allow you to modify various elements such as layouts, colors, fonts, and more to match your brand’s identity.

Plugins: They’re the backbone of WordPress’s flexibility, extending the functionality of your e-commerce store beyond the basics. There are thousands of plugins available, from marketing tools, advanced analytics to customer helpdesks and payment gateways.

Open-source platform: WordPress is an open-source platform. That means its source code is freely available and customizable to match your needs.

Setting up your online store with WordPress

Creating your WordPress online store involves several steps, from choosing a domain to configuring payment methods. Each step is vital to ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers.

Step 1: Pick a domain and hosting provider

Your domain name and hosting provider significantly affect your store’s performance. They also play a significant role in establishing your brand identity and ensuring a smooth user experience. 

Domain name: It should be unique, memorable, and easy to spell. Avoid complex words/phrases that may confuse potential customers. Besides, choose the right domain extension (TLD). The most common is .com, but other options like .store, .shop, or country-specific TLDs (like .co.uk) can also be effective. If your preferred .com domain is unavailable, consider other relevant extensions. You can use services like GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Google Domains for easy domain registration and management.

Hosting provider: It should offer high uptime guarantees (99.9 percent or higher) and fast server speeds to ensure your site loads quickly and remains accessible. Plus, ensure your hosting provider is optimized for WordPress. Managed WordPress hosting plans are worth trying, as they include automatic updates, performance optimizations, and dedicated support for WordPress-related issues.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate: An SSL certificate encrypts data transferred between your site and customers, protecting sensitive information. This feature secures your site and builds trust with your customers.

Step 2: Install WordPress and essential plugins

Once your domain and hosting are set, you can install WordPress and essential plugins. This step ensures your website has the necessary features and functionalities needed to operate smoothly.

WordPress installation: Most hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installation, making the process quick and easy. If your hosting provider doesn’t offer one-click installation, you can manually install WordPress. Download the WordPress package from WordPress.org, upload it to your hosting account with an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client, and access your domain in a web browser to run the installation script.

WooCommerce plugin: WooCommerce transforms your site into a fully functional online shop. From your WordPress dashboard, head to Plugins > Add New, search for “WooCommerce,” and click “Install Now.” Once installed, click “Activate.” 

Additional plugins: You might also want to include helpful plugins like Yoast SEO to improve how your site appears in search engines and Jetpack to make sure your site runs smoothly and stays safe.

Step 3: Design your store

This step goes beyond aesthetics. It’s about making sure visitors have a smooth experience that encourages them to explore, interact, and ultimately buy.

Theme selection: When selecting a theme, consider responsive design (mobile-friendly), customization options (allow you to adjust colors, fonts, layouts, and other visual elements), and e-commerce compatibility (specifically designed for e-commerce).

Customization: Once you’ve chosen a theme, customize it to match your brand’s colors, fonts, and style.

Product listings: You should use high-quality images that showcase your products from different angles. Moreover, write informative and persuasive product descriptions highlighting features, benefits, and unique selling points. And don’t forget to ask customers to leave reviews and show them prominently. This step helps gain trust and show you’re reliable.

Accessibility and usability: Optimize images and use caching plugins to ensure fast loading times. Place prominent CTAs throughout your store, guiding users toward purchasing or signing up for newsletters. Additionally, focus on security by using SSL certificates and reliable payment gateways to keep customer information safe and earn their trust.

Establishing a legal business entity: Forming an LLC in Georgia

Running a successful online business goes beyond just having a functional website. You must also consider the legal aspect. Registering your business as an LLC in Georgia is a strategic move that can safeguard your personal assets and ensure legal compliance. This business structure is a great choice for entrepreneurs, offering many advantages.

Benefits of starting an LLC in Georgia

Starting an LLC in Georgia has some special benefits, including:

Easy registration for out-of-state LLCs: Georgia makes it simple for LLCs from other states to register and do business here, helping businesses expand easily.

No annual reports for single-member LLCs: If you are the only member of your LLC, you don’t have to file annual reports, which means less paperwork and lower administrative costs.

No tax on retirement income: Georgia doesn’t tax retirement income, which is great for LLC owners who are planning for retirement.

Business incentives and grants: Georgia offers financial support through incentives, grants, and tax credits, especially for tech, manufacturing, and film production businesses.

Low taxes: Georgia has a low corporate tax rate and offers tax breaks for creating jobs, doing research, and other business activities, making it a good place to start and grow an LLC.

Great location: Georgia’s location with major transportation hubs like the Port of Savannah & Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport makes it easy to access national and international markets.

Strong infrastructure: Georgia has a well-developed infrastructure with good transportation networks, technology resources, and business support services, providing a solid foundation for running a business.

These benefits make Georgia a great place to start an LLC, offering strong support for business growth and expansion.

Steps to form an LLC in Georgia

Forming an LLC in Georgia is a straightforward process. It offers significant benefits, including liability protection and operational flexibility. 

Suppose you’re curious. Here’s how to start an LLC in Georgia:

Step 1: Choose a name: Select a unique and distinguishable name for your LLC that complies with Georgia’s naming requirements. The name must include “Limited Liability Company,” “LLC,” or an abbreviation like “L.L.C.” or “Ltd. Liability Co.”

Step 2: File your Articles of Organization with the Georgia Secretary of State: This step involves preparing and submitting the Articles of Organization. These documents formally create your LLC and include important information like your LLC’s name, address, details of your registered agent, and the purpose of your business.

Step 3: Create an Operating Agreement: While not required by Georgia law, drafting an Operating Agreement is highly recommended. This document outlines your LLC’s ownership and management structure, as well as operational procedures and rules. It helps clarify responsibilities among members and reinforces the LLC’s separate legal status.

Legal and financial considerations

When launching an e-commerce store with WordPress, ensuring legal compliance and managing finances properly are critical for long-term success and protection. 

Obtaining an EIN: An Employer Identification Number (EIN) is essential for your business, even if you don’t have employees. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) issues this number, which acts as a unique identifier for tax purposes. It’s necessary for filing taxes, opening a business bank account, and conducting other financial transactions.

Opening a business bank account: Consider keeping your personal finances separate from your business finances for clear legal and financial understanding. Select a bank that provides services tailored to businesses, including online banking, merchant services, and possibly loans in the future, to meet all your needs.

State compliance requirements: Each state has specific business compliance requirements, including annual reporting and tax obligations. In Georgia, for instance, LLCs must submit an Annual Registration with the Secretary of State to maintain their legal status. Depending on your business activities, you may have additional licensing or regulatory requirements to fulfill. So, you should stay informed about these requirements and deadlines.

Combining your e-commerce store with business operations

Integrating your e-commerce store with your overall business operations is crucial for efficiency, growth, and customer satisfaction. Here’s how you can seamlessly merge your online store with your business processes:

Inventory management

Efficient inventory management is necessary to avoid stockouts and overstock situations, ensuring smooth order fulfillment.

Inventory plugins: Utilize plugins like WooCommerce’s inventory management or specialized plugins such as TradeGecko or Katana to track stock levels, manage product variants, and automate reorder points.

Automation: Set up automated notifications for low stock levels or integrate with your suppliers’ systems for real-time updates.

Reporting: Generate reports to analyze sales trends, identify fast-moving products, and optimize your inventory strategy.

Payment processing

Streamlining payment processes enhances customer experience and ensures secure transactions.

Payment gateways: Integrate trusted payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, or Square to accept payments seamlessly. Ensure compatibility with major credit cards and alternative payment methods.

Multi-currency support: Cater to global customers by supporting multiple currencies and displaying prices in local currencies. Use geo-location tools to automatically detect a customer’s location and adjust currency options accordingly.

Fraud prevention: Implement robust fraud detection tools and practices, such as address verification systems (AVS) and CVV checks, to protect against fraudulent transactions.

Customer service

Providing exceptional customer service builds loyalty and encourages repeat business.

Support channels: Offer support channels such as live chat, email support tickets, and a dedicated customer service phone line. Use chatbots to handle common inquiries and escalate complex issues to human agents.

Customer relationship management (CRM): Utilize CRM software like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho CRM to manage customer interactions, track customer preferences, and personalize marketing campaigns.

Feedback and reviews: Encourage customers to share thoughts through automated emails or rewards. Stay alert to reviews and respond quickly to show customers their opinions matter.

Conclusion

Mastering e-commerce with WordPress involves leveraging its powerful tools, customizing your store, and ensuring legal compliance. By following this guide, you can create a successful online store and establish a solid business foundation.

The post Mastering eCommerce With WordPress: Launching Your Store as a Legal Business appeared first on Fluent Support.

So let’s get this straightened out for good.

What makes revenue and sales different 

On the surface, revenue and sales might seem the same— I mean, they both involve money flowing into a business, right? Well, not quite.

In fact, that’s the most common confusion people have when it comes to sales and revenue. 

Sales, in its simplest form, represent the number of products or services a company sells. It’s the millennia-old act of exchanging goods for money. For instance, if your online store sells 100 widgets, your sales for that period amount to 100 units.

On the other hand, revenue casts a much broader net. It consists not just of direct sales but also of other income streams a company might have. Revenue includes not only the money generated from selling products (i.e. the sales revenue) but also income from subscriptions, licensing fees, and even interest on investments and loans, etc.

Revenue reflects the total income a business earns. It offers a more comprehensive view of the financial landscape.

Sales vs. Revenue Compared

Let’s break it down with a hypothetical scenario. Imagine you run a software company. Your primary product is a cutting-edge app, bringing in a substantial portion of your revenue. 

However, you also license your technology to other businesses for a fee and earn interest from investments. While your sales focus on selling the app itself, your revenue encompasses the sales, licensing fees, and interest income—a more holistic measure of your company’s financial status.

Take Tesla’s first-quarter report for 2021 as a prime example of how gross revenue extends beyond the mere sales of its EV’s. While Tesla reported a noteworthy net income of $438 million for the quarter, the spotlight was on its impressive $10.4 billion in revenue.Crucially, Tesla’s gross revenue outpaced its total sales, and here’s why. 

Beyond the core business of selling electric cars, Tesla diversified its income streams. In this particular quarter, the company earned $518 million by selling emissions credits to other automakers, showcasing how non-sales factors significantly contribute to overall revenue. 

Similarly, examining Exxon Mobil Corporation’s financial data for the quarter ending June 30, 2019, provides valuable insights into the distinction between revenue and sales. 

In June 2019, sales and operating revenues amounted to approximately $67.5 billion, reflecting a decrease from the $71.5 billion reported in June 2018. However, total revenue for the same quarter in 2019 was $69 billion, compared to $73.5 billion in 2018. 

This discrepancy highlights the inclusion of additional revenue sources beyond direct sales in the total revenue figure. Notably, for Exxon Mobil, revenues from other sources, such as equity affiliates, contributed significantly, totaling over $1.5 billion in 2019 and $2 billion in 2018. 

Wrapping up: The Bottom Line

In conclusion, while sales are a vital component of revenue, the two are nowhere near the same. Understanding the difference between revenue and sales is pivotal for businesses as is sales and service aiming to evaluate their financial performance accurately.

So, the next time you’re assessing a company’s health, look beyond the sales figures. Delve into the broader picture painted by its total revenue, and you’ll gain a more nuanced understanding of its financial soundness.

The post Revenue vs. Sales: What’s the Difference? appeared first on Fluent Support.

More than 50 out of 100 businesses say that they will choose a brand if its sales support is better than others. A good portion of the sales team is assigned to the sales support team, which can boost 25% of the company’s return on the total investment.

In simple words, sales support is mandatory for any business. But we will get into the details one step at a time. So buckle up.

So, from the definition, we can already assume that a sales support team is a big deal for a company. But we might confuse the sales support team with the customer support team.

Are they the same?

Sales support vs customer support

The short answer is no. They have totally different functionality. Here are seven differences between these two teams:

1. Goals

Sales support: Help the sales reps team close deals smoothly.
Customer Support: Help resolve customers issues after purchase.

2. Focus

Sales support: Works at the front of the sales funnel and provides product-related information and guidance to the customers so they can make an easy decision.
Customer Support: They work at the end of the sales funnel to solve customer issues and help them use the product or service smoothly.

3. Skills

Sales support: They need strong sales skills and the ability to build relationships and close deals through lead generation.
Customer support: This team member needs to develop product service skills and the ability to listen to the customer and empathize with care.

4. Communication

Sales support: They generally communicate with customers over the phone or via email.
Customer Support: Besides phone and email, this team also communicates via live chat and even through video calls for faster support.

5. Tools

Sales support: The sales support team usually uses customer relationship management (CRM) to ensure smooth sales-related communication.
Customer Support: They use a help desk system. Either it could be a SaaS system or WordPress-integrated plugins such as Fluent Support.

6. Metrics

Sales support: The only numbers they care about are qualified leads, closed deals, and generated revenue.
Customer Support: On the other hand, they care about the number of closed tickets (resolved customer issues) and customer satisfaction numbers.

7. Culture

Sales support: Their culture is mostly result-oriented.
Customer Support: Their culture is customer-oriented.

Benefits of better sales support

There are countless benefits to having a support team for sales. We are going to count here the seven benefits of this team. So, let’s see, what does sales support do?

1. Improved efficiency

A good sales support team can ensure a graceful sales process. It will free up the sales rep team to generate more possible leads for the company.

2. Improved customer satisfaction

When a customer has a positive experience during a purchase due to the help of sales support, they become happy customers. And a happy customer means multiple business cycles.

3. Enhanced brand reputation

When the purchase experience is positive, customers build a positive brand perception. Hance increases brand awareness and customer loyalty.

4. Increased sales

A well-equipped sales support team can help the sales team close more deals. A well-balanced harmony between two teams can increase revenue.

5. Reduced costs

A support team for sales can take up some work from the sales rep team. This can help the sales rep team focus on making a better sales funnel. That means reduced costs and more revenue.

6. Improved employee morale

Providing a good purchase experience can boost the energy of the sales support team. On the other hand, it opens up more time to do research and build a better sales funnel for the sales rep. Both ways, all the teams become more productive.

7. Enhanced data insights

The sales team has a lot of opportunity to collect data because of direct customer interaction. They analyze this big data to figure out more business scope and improvements.

Best practice of sales support

We get the benefits of a good sales support team. But this is not an easy task. There are a lot of factors you have to consider to build a better team.

1. Proactivity

Sales support mainly provides support to the sales rep team. So, the support team should be proactive about their task. They have to reach the sales reps before they ask for help.

Let’s say the sales support team can develop FAQs based on the direct customer interaction experience. This can help sales reps generate more leads.

2. Responsiveness

The sales support team should be responsive to the sales reps. That means they need to always be ready to provide any assistance or guidance to close the deals smoothly.

3. Helpfulness

The sales support team should walk extra miles to help the sales reps. This includes providing information, providing additional survey data, following up with the customers, and even triggering the sales funnel.

4. Positive attitude

The sales support team should always be positive and encouraging about helping the sales reps. Because a positive collaboration can ensure successful sales.

5. Knowledge

The support team from sales communicates with the customers. So, this team needs to have complete knowledge about the product and the service that the company offers. Only then customers will get the proper answers.

6. Organization

The sales support team needs to organize a lot of information. It starts with generated leads, opportunities, deals, product updates, and processes. So, they also need to know about the sales support tools.

7. Communication

Finally, support teams communication should be clear and concise. So that customers as well as sales reps can understand them easily.

Sales support tool

Here are some tools for the sales support team that can ease up the work.

1. Customer relationship management (CRM): It helps to have everything in one place, from leads, opportunities, and closed deals.

2. Sales automation software: This system automates repetitive work, such as sending emails, setting up appointments, or generating reports.

3. Lead generation tools: This tool helps find qualified leads from different channels and advertising.

4. Sales enablement tools: This tool contains all the information about products, services, and offers in one place to conduct a successful sale.

5. Sales intelligence tools: This type of tool helps you collect and organize information about customers, such as company size, industry, pain points, needs, and so on.

6. Video conferencing tools: This system helps the team communicate with customers. Video calls have more success than voice calls or emails.

7. Email marketing tools: This will help you send emails to your target customers in an automated sequence. Tools like FluentCRM can help you with these tasks.

8. Social media marketing tools: This type of tool helps you connect with potential customers via social media channels. Even tools like WPSocialNinja can help you showcase customer feedback to your potential clients.

KPI metrics for sales support

Let’s say you have established a team for sales support. But is that team doing a good job? There are a few KPI metrics you can look into to learn about that.

1. Number of opportunities created

This number indicates how many sales opportunities are created via the sales support team. The higher the number, the better.

2. Number of qualified leads

This number tells you about qualified leads from the sales support team. That means more potential future customers.

3. Lead conversion rate

This is the number of leads that have been converted into potential opportunities.

4. Number of deals closed

This is the number of deals that the sales support team helped to close.

5. Customer satisfaction

This is an NPS survey response from the customer about the sales support. A higher number of customer satisfaction ratings means good performance.

6. Sales revenue

Finally, this number indicates the earnings of the company because of the sales support team.

Job descriptions of sales support

If you can feel the excitement of this job, then here is what employers are looking for:

• Prompt response to customer questions about products, services, and offers
• Efficiently streamline the order process and invoicing
• Answer the technical queries of customers
• Ensure qualified leads and track the process with follow-ups.
• Directly work with the sales reps to develop and implement sales strategies
• Be up-to-date on relevant industry trends and competitor activities.
• Finally, stay up-to-date about new releases of the product, features, services, and offers.

Final thoughts

To ensure a successful sale and a good experience for the customer, multiple teams work through the process. But the direct responders are the sales team.

If you want to close deals smoothly, there are a lot of factors a client has to go through. To ease up the process, a dedicated team is a must. And that’s the sales support team.

Lastly, we can say that an essential part of building a sustainable business is having happy customers. And to make sure that, ask yourself, What is sales support?

The post What Is Sales Support? Why You Need To Improve This appeared first on Fluent Support.

A big part of a startup’s success (or failure) depends on its ability to attract new customers and make sales. After all, startups are businesses and the bottom line is the primary concern.

That being said, attracting new customers or as marketing teams like to call it, customer acquisition is the biggest challenge fresh startups face. We’re here to change that, at least for the splendid people reading this blog.

In this article, we’ll look at the definition of customer acquisition, customer acquisition strategies for startups, and how to measure your customer acquisition strategies. 

Definition of customer acquisition

Customer acquisition is the process of identifying and attracting potential customers and converting them into paying customers of a business. The whole acquisition process involves multiple steps and each step requires its own strategies to ensure leads convert into buying customers at the end of the process.

Customer Acquisition Strategy for Startups

For startups, the acquisition process is fairly similar to more traditional businesses. However, the strategies can vary depending on the particular requirements of the startup. In short, there’s no one-size-fits-all plan for customer acquisitions. So let’s get started with bringing more customers for your startup.

Targeting

The first step to acquiring new customers is identifying the right people. As the saying goes, 

If you’re selling to everyone, you’re not selling to anyone.

So it’s crucial to find the ideal people who have use for your solutions and are willing to commit hard-earned dollars to purchase them. Targeting customers involves the following process,

Determine Market size

The market size is the maximum number of people that are looking for the solution you provide. Understanding the market size allows you to project the highest potential number of customers that you can acquire. 

No single company owns 100% market share nowadays, so it’s safe to assume your startup won’t either. But understanding the market size puts you in a position to evaluate your share of the market and whether that portion is enough to sustain your startup.

More importantly, market sizing allows you to estimate the investment (resources, personnel, infrastructure) to support the projected market size. This ultimately has a huge impact on your customer acquisition strategy.

Market sizing is usually done in 2 broad methods. 

1. Top-down 

2. Bottom up

Create Buyers Persona

Once you’ve identified the market size it’s time to define the buyer persona of your target customers. Creating a buyer persona is a broad process on its own, and kind of beyond the scope of this article. However, you can consider creating a buyer persona similar to developing customer profiles.

Fundamentally, a buyer’s persona is a set of characteristics that accurately identify your target customers. Most businesses usually require multiple personas to effectively segment their potential customers. This allows you to customize and personalize your acquisition and retention strategies for each segment for the most efficiency.

Identify effective channels

Once you’ve identified the target personas, it’s time to determine the most effective channels for reaching them. People of different age groups, locations, and personality traits are not congregating in one giant marketplace. Each of them is connected to their own sphere, and they rarely intersect.

For a startup, you’ll need to find exactly where your target audience is jiving and what their vibe is. The best way to connect with people is to go where they are and find out what they care about. 

Effective channels usually include Social media, Emails, Forums, and websites. Each of these fulfills a different purpose in the way of connecting with your target customers. You need to identify which of these channels will be ideal for each buyer persona, and plan your campaign and strategies around that information.

Strategies for acquiring customers

Once you’ve prepared a buyer persona that fits your customers, now it’s time to drive them through the funnel. An acquisition funnel is a progression where prospective buyers begin interacting with your business and become loyal customers by the end of the progression.

The acquisition funnel (sometimes also known as buyer journey) can be divided into 3 broad stages. Potential customers pass these stages sequentially ultimately leading to a purchase. Each step of the acquisition funnel refers to the psychological stage of a prospect. Because of these distinct mindsets, you need to employ different marketing tactics to effectively drive prospects through the process. 

Let’s check out the steps and the marketing tactics best suited for them,

Awareness stage

The awareness stage revolves around people who are only beginning to explore your niche, and most likely aren’t aware of your startup. The prospects in this stage usually look for information to build “awareness”. So that’s exactly what you need to offer at this stage. 

SEO

Search engine results are the first place people look for things. For startups, this is probably the most important factor for success. The unconventional truth is, 

SEO helps your content reach the target audience through SERPs. But ranking is only half the story. You also need to provide content that people are looking for. In other words, the content you put up for search traffic needs to fulfill a purpose for the readers. 

This involves keyword research, understanding the buyer persona, and developing valuable content. Once you ensure these, you get to a position where you can effectively leverage the traffic that you gain through the SERPs.

Video tutorials

People on average spend 17 hours/week watching online videos. A large portion of this time goes on video tutorials. So educating prospective customers with video tutorials is much more effective. You need to develop videos that are easy to digest and act as a gateway for prospects to become aware of your brand.

Success with video also depends on factors like SEO and content targeting. Your videos need to be focused on topics that resonate with the awareness stage. This means educational and how-to videos on topics that act as a gateway into your startup niche.

Social

Social media acts as a digital billboard for your brand. Your social media strategy needs to accommodate the stages of the acquisition funnel. Ideally, you’d want content that resonates with prospects and positions your brand where they can find it. 

Social presence is an essential part of brand recognition nowadays. So creating a data-driven social media strategy can outperform other traditional forms of acquisition. This “ideal strategy” needs to encompass a variety of practices such as,

Focusing on value; Your social content needs to be relevant to your audience.

Engaging with the audience; Social is less about content and more about people so connect with your audience. 

Building a community; To build on top of an engaged audience, you can foster communities to create a forum of like-minded customers

Using targeted advertising and promotions; Social ads and boosting can increase your reach if done properly.

Lastly, partnering with influencers; Influencers in your niche already have the attention of your audience. No harm in borrowing their “influence” to boost your presence along with it.

Referrals

Referral is basically rewarding the process of inviting new customers to your business. That is an existing customer referring your service to your friends and family, usually to cash in on an incentive. 

The incentives are a crucial part of any referral program. As in what will the customer gain by recommending your product or service to people? Usually, SaaS companies offer free subscriptions and discounts in exchange for referrals. 

However, it can be a double-edged sword if your plans aren’t well thought out. I remember a food delivery app struggling with referrals because their system wasn’t idiot-proofed. They ended up paying customers after delivering items because the referral system was abused beyond repair. To avoid such a conundrum keep these things in mind,

• Offer an incentive that is an incentive, not a post-it “thank you” note.
• Verify the referrals for authenticity.
• Cap the amount of redeemable incentives.

Free tools

Free tools are a great way to both generate leads and identify their awareness stage. You can be pretty sure that an absolute beginner will not be using specific tools unless you develop some understanding and experience with your niche.

So when you get a lead from a free tool, you can be fairly sure the user is at the consideration stage rather than the awareness stage. That being said, it’s actually effective to upgrade awareness stage prospects to the consideration stage by providing a simplified tool for a niche-specific problem.

Consideration stage

Leads in the consideration phase are aware of both their problem and the possible solutions that are available. The challenge here is to shorten the consideration phase and enable them to make a decision. For this goal, you can adopt the following channels,

Content

Content for the consideration phase is quite different from the content designed to build awareness. Your goal here is to provide all the necessary information a prospect needs to make a fast decision. This includes,

Listicles; Compilations of products in your niche that showcase the pros and cons of both your products and your competitors. Check out our listicles on WordPress knowledge base and help desk solutions for a better understanding.

Webinars; Webinars help draw in prospects who are trying to understand the industry standards and in turn the solutions widely accepted by the community.

Case studies; Case studies help showcase the practical utility and benefits of your service or product in a real-world scenario. 

Usually, an acquisition strategy deploys a combination of these content to nurture leads toward the decision-making phase.

Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are the ultimate method of nurturing leads. It provides a channel completely in your control and your audience accepts this content willingly. So you can target your email content specifically for each lead, according to their buyer stage. Not only that, it allows you to retarget existing customers as well for upsell and cross-sell campaigns. 

The best part of using newsletters is they allow you to control your communications in your own private channel. Exposure isn’t dependent on complex search and social algorithms. Making it easier to track and monitor your strategies as well as improving targeting.

Reviews

Your customer reviews are another great way to nudge prospects to make a decision. People have an innate trust in other people’s opinions. Especially, in the B2B space where 92% of customers make a faster purchasing decision after reading a trustworthy review.

Good reviews from reliable sources have a big impact on people considering a service or product. When someone is checking out what your company offers, they’ll look at what others have said to figure out if your product is right for them. 

They’ll consider whether your product fits their needs if your sign-up process and customer support are on point, and if spending the money is worth it. So, reviews really matter from start to finish in the buyer’s journey.

Decision stage

Once you’ve been guided to the “purchase” page it’s all a matter of making the action as lucrative and easy as possible. Even though you’ve provided all the necessary information to help in the decision-making, you need to bridge the gap of making the decision and taking action based on it.

This is where the following techniques help in marketing methods.

Consultations

Consultations help seal the deal by helping customers understand the product fit. Ideally, you’ll need to showcase the learning curve, supporting resources, and onboarding cost of your product or service. It’s a great way to demonstrate the utility of your product/service.    

Discounts

Discounts are the final incentive to lock in the customer. Maybe they like your product or have been considering it for a while. A small onboarding discount can go a long way to reinforce all the techniques you’ve utilized in your acquisition funnel. 

People love to feel special. A custom discount price just for one customer can provide just the right push to make the decision and stop considering other options. 

Customer Acquisition Metrics For Startups

So we’ve covered the basics of acquiring new customers for startups. Now you need to understand how to measure your efforts.

Customer acquisition costs

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the expense spent on attracting new customers to your business. It covers advertising, marketing, and sales costs, excluding production expenses. To calculate CAC, divide the total sales and marketing costs by the number of new customers gained.

The formula: CAC = (Sales cost + Marketing cost) / No. of new customers

Key components of CAC include ad spending, employee salaries (for marketing and sales teams), creative and technical expenses, publishing costs (varies by platform), and production costs (e.g., content creation tools, and equipment).

The higher return on ad spend (ROAS) for driving new customers, the lower the CAC. Similarly, effective sales and marketing teams can reduce the cost per customer acquired. 

CAC:LTV

LTV or Life time value represents the total revenue a customer generates during their entire engagement with your business. This includes repeat purchases, upsells, cross-sells, and any other revenue streams resulting from the customer’s ongoing relationship with your products or services.

The CAC: LTV ratio is the relationship between the cost of acquiring a customer and the potential return on that investment over the customer’s lifetime. It’s calculated by dividing the CAC by the LTV.

A ratio below 1 indicates that the LTV of a customer exceeds the cost of acquiring them. This is generally a positive scenario, suggesting that your acquisition efforts are effective and profitable.

A ratio around 1 suggests a balance between acquisition cost and customer value. It’s important to closely monitor this ratio to ensure it doesn’t tip unfavorably over time.

Conversely, if the ratio is significantly higher than 1, it may signal that your customer acquisition costs are outpacing the potential value those customers bring. This could indicate an issue with your acquisition strategy, retention efforts, or pricing.

Activation Rate

Activation rates are a great way to measure acquisition success rates for SaaS companies. In most cases, companies determine activation rates by measuring engagement with a certain feature, completing a certain action, or achieving a specific outcome. Compared to CAC and LTV, this makes activation rates a more flexible metric. 

Nonetheless, it is an accurate marker of how effectively a startup’s product or service is being adopted and utilized by its user base. The activation point and rates can vary across industries and the goals of your company.

Trial Conversion rate

Trial Conversion Rate is a pivotal metric for startups trying to assess the effectiveness of their customer acquisition strategies. It signifies the percentage of trial users who convert into paying customers after experiencing the startup’s product or service. 

This rate provides valuable insights into the startup’s ability to engage, captivate, and demonstrate value to potential customers.

Formula: Trial Conversion Rate = (Number of Trial Users Who Convert / Total Number of Trial Users) * 100

A higher trial conversion rate suggests successful user engagement, a compelling value proposition, and an effective trial experience. Conversely, a lower rate could indicate room for improvement in onboarding, product communication, or trial duration.

Wrapping up

Acquiring customers is the lifeblood of a startup’s success. But it’s not enough on its own. Bringing in new customers is only half the story. Retaining the customers you bring in is just as important as sustaining the growth you’re working relentlessly for.

At the end, it all comes down to delivering the value you promise and making people aware of what you offer as frequently as possible. The rest will work out well, at least that’s what we wish for your startup.

Until next time, happy serving.

The post Customer Acquisition Strategy for Startups appeared first on Fluent Support.

So when it’s time to make decisions about your business’s sales targets and strategies it’s crucial to have a sales budget on hand. In this article, we’re going to check out why sales budgets are important, how sales budgeting works, building a sales budget, and the best practices for a proper sales budget.

What is a sales budget?

A sales budget is like a plan for how much a company thinks it’ll sell in a fixed amount of time. The budget shows how many of each product or service the company expects to sell and how much money it will make in return. 

If a company has a lot of different products, it might group them together into bigger categories to make it easier to plan. A sales budget forms the basis of further budgets such as materials and labor budgets. It also feeds into the managerial and executive expense estimates.

In reality, estimates from marketing, sales, customer service, and management all come into play in building an actionable and accurate sales budget.

But the sales budget is much more important than just that. Here’s why,

Why is a sales budget important?

There are quite a few reasons to develop a sales budget, including,

Setting goals

The first thing a sales budget tells you is your goal for the given period of time. It could be a month, a quarter, or a whole year. The idea is to create a budget that reflects your goals for that time period. The more factors your budget takes into account the more achievable the goals will become.

Identifying opportunities and issues

A sales budget helps provide a framework for strategy development. So when your sales (or marketing) strategy doesn’t perform as expected, it’s easier to find the problems and address them in real time. Similarly, it’s easier to identify opportunities for strategies that perform well.

Financial planning

The point of any budget is to simplify financial planning. A sales budget does that for almost every business. As the sales budget feeds into other estimations it’s a crucial part of financial planning for your business. After all, your goals are sales, and anything you spend should feed into the sales growth. A sales budget helps you make these estimates and plan accordingly. These estimates include profitability analysis, calculating customer support costs, and lifetime value of customers as well.

Benchmark

A sales budget is built on your estimate of sales. So it provides a trackable reference for your sales performance. If your sales team is reaching the goals perfectly your estimates are correct and your strategies are working to make them a reality. Similarly, if the team is failing to meet the quotas then you may have overestimated and need to reevaluate your strategies. 

All in all a sales budget gives you the benchmark for tracking your real-time sales performance.

Sales budget: What you’ll need?

A sales budget requires information and data from multiple departments the most important of them being,

Sales forecast

The sales forecast tells you the number of units you can expect to sell in a given time. Usually, the marketing team generates these estimates, and can also be called marketing forecasts too. The forecast tells you exactly how much you can expect to sell based on trends. It also sets the reference point for creating strategies that will increase the projections.

Price per unit

Along with knowing how much you’ll sell, you’ll need to know how much you’ll make from it. This data usually comes from the unit price for products or services you’ll sell. Some companies choose to use unit prices for individual products while others create product clusters and manage the sales budget according to that. 

Total revenue

The total revenue is the total amount that you’ll generate from achieving the sales goal. This data comes from multiplying the unit cost with the total estimated sales. In usual cases, the total revenue is the primary goal that needs to be tracked throughout the sales period.

Sales period

The sales period is the timespan the sales budget is for. If you’re estimating monthly sales then the budget is a monthly sales budget. Similarly, if you calculate quarterly or annual sales the budget turns into quarterly and annual sales budgets respectively.

Beginning balance

Carryover from the previous cycle or year. This number comes directly from the accounts team and signifies the amount to be paid from the last cycle but is paid in the current cycle. This provides a continuity of the whole sales budget across cycles.

Creating a sales budget

Now that we’ve got everything we need to create the sales budget let’s get to the task and see what you need to do.

Determine time span

The first thing you’ll need to define is the period of time the sales budget is going to work with. Time frames will change all the assumptions you’ll make, so it’s crucial to keep the period significant but not too broad. Companies usually create quarterly and annual budgets so that’s the time span they use. You can go for a monthly budget as well.

Inventory

Next up you’ll need to know exactly how much of your product is available for sale. This should also include the pricing and manufacturing cost of your inventory. For businesses dealing in physical goods, this is fairly simple. For service companies and digital products, the inventory needs to provide the highest number of clients you can manage with the existing system without expanding anything.

Analyze historical data

A sales budget is a well-informed estimate. A key part of making this estimate is having data from the previous sales cycles. This data lets you build projections for future sales quotas and budgeting requirements.

Factor trends and current events

The next part of your estimate depends on the current events and trends. A good example is the semiconductor shortage that occurred right after the pandemic. During the pandemic sales of cars and other smart devices went up. Based on those sales companies projected a large number of sales in the post-pandemic year. However, the semiconductor producers were unable to meet the inflated demands. 

Come the following year the sales went down because the pandemic buying spree stopped. Now device and car manufacturers were stuck with too many products and no means of finishing the product without semiconductors and no customers to sell them to either. Reading ahead of trends is a crucial part of creating an accurate sales budget.

Creating the sales budget: Example

Now we can go ahead and create a sales budget for a hypothetical company. The budgets will be quarterly and annual budgets for the company.

A sales budget for the 2nd quarter from March to May

A sales budget for the year

Sales budget: Best practices

So we’ve covered how you can build a sales budget from scratch. Keep the following best practices in mind to make sure your sales budget is as accurate as possible:

• Clearly state your goals, such as raising sales, income, or client base. Use SMART goals to keep them effective.
• List the important actions that will enable you to accomplish these goals.
• Estimate the costs precisely so that you can meet your planned sales budget.
• Regularly coordinate and communicate with the administration, production, sales, and marketing departments.
• Monitor Timing decisions so you can maintain accuracy regardless of unforeseen constraints

What are the limitations of sales budgets?

While sales budgets provide a ton of utility there are some limitations to creating sales budgets too. The first challenge is time and effort. The sales budgeting process is time-consuming and requires significant effort to be actionable.

The second limitation is the fact that it’s based on predictions and estimates, making accuracy a huge challenge.

On top of that, reaching a consensus about the budget is a challenge in and of itself. Different people may have different opinions on the budget, which can make it difficult to get everyone on board with it.

Lastly, for new companies, it can be particularly hard to prepare a sales budget because they don’t have past sales levels and trends to use as a guide.

Wrapping up

That’s all you really need to know to get started with your sales budget for 2023. The years just started and you can still plan up for the 3 upcoming quarters. Using this model you can create a sales budget for any business regardless of scale.

You need to ensure the estimates and goals are based on reality and not on blind assumptions. Keep crushing those goals and see your estimated budget turn into reality.

Until next time, happy serving!

The post What is a Sales Budget with Template! appeared first on Fluent Support.

While people tend to confuse market segmentation with customer segmentation, we believe it’s better to consider them as two sides of a coin. One brings in prospects, and the other converts them into customers and manages them as such.

In this article, we’ll cover what customer segmentation is and how you can implement and analyze customer segmentation for your business.

What is customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation is the process of sorting and compartmentalizing customers into distinct cohorts based on one or more identifying characteristics.

That being said, segmentation is something that we all use in our day-to-day lives without actually calling it that. Let’s start with your workplace as an example. Given you work in a medium to large-sized enterprise, there’s a chance you have different feelings towards each of your colleagues.

Some might be old friends you found on the job; some are close acquaintances, while others are just coworkers and nothing more. Can you see the segmenting?

Okay, now let’s say you’ve got a private party next week. Who do you invite?

If it’s a friends-only party, you invite friends among coworkers. If not, then you invite your acquaintances. But do you invite every coworker? My guess is you don’t.

That’s segmentation right there! In a broad practical sense.

In business, customer segmentation is much more objective and data-driven than your invitations list. And there’s good reason for companies to do it that way.

Why do companies use segmentation?

Customer segmentation creates a significant impact on every (almost) aspect of your business. Here we look at the aspects that are the most obvious,

Marketing strategy

As a business, you’re supposed to segment customers based on what you already know. So knowing your customers is the first step to segmentation. The best part is that the information you use to segment customers is also how you find your ideal buyer persona. Knowing your target persona is the stepping stone to building an effective marketing strategy for that persona.

Promotion strategy

Similar to marketing, having customer segments allows you to craft tailored promotional campaigns. Targeting promotional channels and material according to customer segments provides better conversion rates. Ideally, you should tailor-fit your promotional strategy for every type of customer.

Budget efficiency

Marketing, promotion, and sales are expensive. Not even the biggest companies can claim to have a bottomless budget for marketing. So when you do invest in marketing, it needs to be effective and return more than it costs. Customer segmentation is one of the primary methods to spend marketing and sales budgets efficiently. This efficiency is a by-product of effective resources and marketing strategies that are customized for each segment. So no customer segment is left out of the budget.

Product development

Product development is one of the clearest places where customer segmentation makes a big impact. Take the soap example I really like to use. Everybody needs soaps, right? So why are there such wide varieties of soaps when everyone uses them for roughly the same purpose?

Well, soap isn’t just a necessity (as a cleaning agent ought to be). It’s a commodity that has differing applications to customers. Age and gender are good criteria for segmenting soap users. Older individuals prefer milder and less perfumed versions. At the same time, younger folks require a stronger soap with appealing fragrances. If you market the same soap for everyone, will it catch on?

The answer is, No! The same thing applies to making product improvements as well.

How your product will function and benefit the customer depends entirely on what the customer needs from that product. Your segments are supposed to tell you what those needs are for specific groups so you can develop or improve your product accordingly.

Customers demand relevance

The last benefit of customer segmentation is finding and delivering relevance for the customer’s needs. No matter which channel you use or how good your copy is, if it doesn’t reach the right segment, it won’t convert as you’d expect. The only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to cater your approach to the segment. Your product won’t sell if you aren’t making it relevant. Segmenting helps you find that relevance accurately.

Popular customer segment examples

Nowadays, almost every business is employing customer segmentation. While industries and products are unique and require tailored segments, there are segments that are absolutely universal. These segments can be used no matter what you’re selling.

1.  Baby Boomers

Baby boomers are the current retiring generation in the US. They number around 77 million and own almost half of all real estate. This large group of individuals has immense purchasing power and has time on their hands as well. Businesses that require customers to have decent purchasing power have to target this demographic.

2.  College Students

College students are the second largest cohort after Baby boomers. While baby boomers have lived their lives and are at the tail end, college students are just getting started. But similar to boomers, they also have significantly more purchasing power and time to onboard with new products and experiences. Even more so, thanks to college essay examples that let them spend money instead of time. This is one of the biggest reasons for new businesses to target this cohort even more aggressively.

3.  Suburban Housing Market

The fastest-growing cohort, however, is the suburban household owners. This is the demographic that has comparable purchasing power but very little time to onboard into new things. So when marketing to this segment, convenience is a bigger factor than cost. 

The fast-food industry has already started to tap into this segment by expanding out of city centers to suburban corners and malls. Placing themselves in a convenient position for this segment is getting more revenue than targeting uptown locations.

7 major customer segmentation models

Apart from the common segments, you can create segments based on any criteria. Which factors you choose determines the model of your segmentation process. The most common models that work for businesses are as follows,

Demographic Segmentation

Demographic segmentation utilizes the following criteria to segment customers.

• Age
• Gender 
• Income 
• Education
• Marital status, etc.

Geographic Segmentation

Geographic segmentation utilizes location information such as,

• Country 
• State
• City
• Town, etc.

Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation utilizes personal information such as,

• Personality
• Attitude
• Values
• Interests

Technographic Segmentation

Technographic segmentation utilizes customers’ preferred devices and proficiency

• Mobile 
• Desktop 
• Learning curve 
• Familiarity

Behavioral Segmentation

Behavioral segmentation uses habits and characteristics to build the segment,

• Purchase tendencies 
• Frequent actions 
• Feature or product use case
• Identifying habits

Needs-based Segmentation

Needs-based segments divide cohorts based on specific needs and their probable fulfillment.

• Use case
• Preference
• Customization
• Must have and unwanted features

Value-based Segmentation

Value-based segments look at financial incentives and outcomes for customers, such as,

• Lifetime value
• Churn probability
• Acquisition cost
• Conversion potential
• Service costs

What makes a good segment?

So you’ve figured out how to implement customer segmentation. But how do you know your segments are the perfect fit for your business? Well, a good segment needs to have the following characteristics to be effective and worth implementing. 

Substantial

Your segment needs to house a substantial number of customers from your prospective market. Creating a segment based on a criterion that gives you a handful of customers to target isn’t an effective segment, to begin with.

Identifiable

Your segment also needs to be easily identifiable. Especially for tech-related businesses, if the segment depends on vague criteria, it becomes difficult to effectively identify customers that fall into that segment. Reducing the effectiveness of the segment. 

Measurable

After building a segment it’s crucial to measure the success (or failure rate) of the customers in that segment. If you can’t measure and track the conversion rate and other metrics of a segment, it will not bring the expected value.

Accessible

Your segment needs to be accessible to your employees and your business. If customers in a segment aren’t easily accessible, your strategies for them will not deliver the expected outcomes.

Responsive

Lastly, your segment needs to be responsive to your efforts. If your promotional and sales strategies do not invoke a response, or if you can’t reach that response at any given point, the effectiveness of the segment declines.

How to implement customer segmentation for your business?

1. Customer segmentation goals and variables

Before you can start segmenting customers, you need to know 2 things

Firstly, what’s the goal of the segment? The goal is the outcome of the segmenting.  Knowing the goal of a segment will tell you if it’s worth creating that segment in the first place. Companies already using the buyer’s persona have the upper hand in this. Mostly because their leads are already segmented based on their stage on the acquisition funnel.

But beyond that, when it comes to existing customers, you need new and even more specific segments. Once you have the goal of the segment, you can select the most effective variables to specify the segment. 

You can determine goals and variables by answering the following questions,

• Is profitability important, or is a product fit more important?
• Are there repeat purchases to consider?
• Where do they drop off in the acquisition process?

Having these answers can help you better identify the variables that will increase the effectiveness of the segment.

2. Convert goals into customer-centric segmentation projects.

Now that you have the goals, you need to convert those goals into segmentation projects. Treating each segment as an independent project will help you correlate the data better when compiling all segments together.

The process of creating customer-centric segments provides benefits such as,

• Easier to set limitations and stay within them
• Focus on the correct deliverables for the segment
• Delegate project tasks efficiently

3. Set up and prioritize each customer segmentation project

Now that your project plans are in order, it’s time to set up the project for the segments. You need to start by setting an objective for the project. Don’t confuse this with the segmentation goal. This objective is the outcome you want to achieve by using segmentation.

Once you’ve set up the project objective, you can Involve the stakeholders. Every person who will interact (actively or passively) with the segment is a stakeholder and needs to have access to the segment.

Next, you need to define the project scope for the stakeholders, so they can report back on the metrics that everyone has agreed to track.

Finally, when the project is set up, you need to determine and communicate the outcomes and deliverables for the segment and the stakeholders.

4. Collect and organize customer data.

Customer data is one of the best sources for setting up segmentation projects. You can gather this data in a number of ways, such as

• Surveys and Feedback
• Social listening
• Contests and Giveaways

These methods, although self-reported, are still reliable when segmenting customers. But gathering this data is only half the job. You also need to have a system to properly store and manage this data. This is where a good CRM or Ticketing system comes in handy.

5. Segment your customers into groups of your choice.

Do the segmenting following the criteria and quality metrics for good segments. When creating these segments, remember,

• The segments need to be easy to find and navigate.
• Segments need to have a significant size. Otherwise, they won’t be effective.
• Segments need to be stable so as not to change their targets too frequently.
• Find out segment overlaps and account for that when using the segments
• Identify customers with the highest and lowest revenue potential (i.e, acquisition cost, LTV)

Wrapping up

Customer segmentation is a broad process that potentially contributes to every aspect of your business. While marketers use market segmentation for better outreach, Sales reps depend on customer segmentation for better conversions. Similarly, service people use segments to determine customers’ lifetime value and upsell prospects.

Regardless of the purpose, the concept of segmenting remains the same. You want to address a subgroup of your customers (or prospects). Sorting them based on shared similarities and planning your strategy according to that is the best way to optimize your marketing and sales budget to yield the best returns possible.

The post Customer Segmentation Models: How to Create and Use them appeared first on Fluent Support.

Here are a couple of examples I found roaming the internet.

So let’s clear up this confusion once and for all!

What is Customer service?

Customer service, broadly speaking, means interacting with customers without the goal of making a sale. It can involve any number of interactions, from product support to pre-sales questions and everything in between. 

Customer service mostly deals with customers’ questions to elevate their experience with the brand, regardless of making a sale. It’s one of the distinct steps of the CRM process.

To enhance your client support strategy—download our comprehensive FREE eBook and build a high-performing customer service team.

The form can be filled in the actual website url.

What is Sales?

Sales, on the other hand, deals specifically with closing deals and getting the revenue flowing. Compared to customer service, sales are much more goal-oriented, mostly because it’s very easy to measure.

SDR metrics, such as qualified leads generated, conversion rates, and average deal size, provide tangible evidence of the sales team’s effectiveness.

The sales team’s job is to prime the customer to make the purchasing decision with the least room for second thoughts. 

Difference between sales and customer service

Now, from the definitions, it’s pretty clear that service and sales perform very distinct roles. To compare them, however, we can use some clear factors and see how different they really are.

Customer service and Sales in the future

Sales has always been the primary concern for businesses. That’s pretty obvious, considering it’s responsible for most of the revenue. But in modern times, service has also become a key factor for doing business. Customer perception is shifting rapidly, making product quality and benefits a secondary factor, as opposed to likable service.

Customer service is now the primary way to stand out from competitors. So the role of customer service is also fueling sales and customer retention for the long haul.

To manage global sales and customer support more efficiently, companies are turning to solutions like virtual phone numbers, live chat tools, AI-powered helpdesk systems, and so on.

However, sales will always be the primary concern. But the role of sales managers and executives must diversify to include more customer service skills.

Wrapping up

Customer service and sales can be considered two sides of the same coin. One brings in the customers, while the other helps customers get the most out of doing business with you. To actually succeed, businesses have to invest in both.

While the sales training process for sales executives is required, it’s still not as complex and demanding as training service agents. So counter-intuitively, you need to invest more on service training than in sales.

While you do this, keep in mind sales performance is easy to monitor, and customer service metrics are much more difficult. Mostly because the results come in the long haul and in much more subtle metrics than a pay cheque added to your account.

The post Difference between Sales and Customer Service appeared first on Fluent Support.

If you’re still not on the BFCM bandwagon, you’re letting the biggest bonanza slip away from right in front of you. Fear not, cause we’ve put together the ultimate BFCM guide for practically any business. So get your Notion pages ready cause this will be one long journey through everything about BFCM. 

Starting with…

What does BFCM mean?

BFCM is the cool acronym for Black Friday Cyber Monday. It’s arguably the biggest discount festival on the planet, first beginning in the US and slowly spreading across the globe. The idea began back in 1952 with businesses trying to kick off the Christmas deal season with a bang. 

BFCM is the weekend right after Thanksgiving. For the most part, it remained that way. Retail shops gave extensive discounts for people hitting the stores after a holiday that brought families together.

Over the years, that same tradition has become an annual migration for customers hunting for the best deals. Fast forward to 2007, Kmart did what no one thought before.

They dropped their discounts on Thanksgiving instead of the following day. More brands and stores began adopting this, and soon there was the “Black Thursday.” 

After generating serious backlash (and a drop in sales), brands decided to go back to the day after Thanksgiving. Thus, the term Black Friday became relevant again. As deals and offers got more extravagant, the sales rolled out throughout the weekend up to Monday, morphing into the term “Black Friday Cyber Monday.” 

During this weekend, businesses have 3 things in mind, 

The goals for BFCM

Brands launch a variety of offers and deals during the BFCM weekend to achieve 3 goals. These are the motivators for the ridiculous discounts we love and crave!

More sales

Companies love one thing the most and that is sales. BFCM provides the ideal chance to break sales records. Brands go out of their way to make sure customers buy from them and buy a lot. This applies not only during the BFCM weekend. It’s more about priming customers to save money throughout the holiday season up to Christmas and New Year’s eve.

Easier Acquisition

A lot of sales means more customers that try out your products and engage with brands. This is the ideal scenario to acquire new customers for the year ahead. Acquisition costs are a big challenge for businesses because acquiring a new customer can cost up to 5 times more. BFCM provides the perfect opportunity to onboard new customers without necessarily involving more investment.

Clean house

Although this is a secondary goal, cleaning the house is still a pretty big consideration. Brands (especially retailers) accumulate many product lines in stores through the summer and fall collections.

Most of these products don’t make the cut after the year ends. This is why brands try to clear out these products during the BFCM campaign to free up as much warehouse space as they can.

The perfect BFCM Checklist

So now you know what BFCM is and what your goals should be as a business. But we’re not done yet! 

Not until you have everything you need to launch the perfect BFCM campaign for your brand. In this section, we’ll provide the basic checklist you can follow to create a BFCM campaign that generates thousands of dollars in sales. 

We’ll cover the following sides of the BFCM campaign and how you can ace every one for your business.

• Content planning
• Campaign details
• Technical Preparations
• Bonus tips

Content Planning

The first thing you need to get more customers through the door (or your landing page) is to put up the content. BFCM isn’t something a couple of brands are doing. Absolutely every retailer on the continent is going to throw massive discounts. So relying on lower pricing is not going to cut it. You need content that attracts people and gets the message across. What you’ll need for awesome content –

Banners and Images: Your website (or your shop) needs lots of banners and images designed just for BFCM. The theme can be anything you like, but it needs to highlight the discounts and deals you are offering.

Ads and Copies:  It’s the same with adverts and marketing copies. Everyone’s offering discounts, you need to focus on what makes your offer special. A well-targeted ad and engaging copy are all you need to make the most of this discount fest.

Blogs, Listings, and Collaborations: Banners and adverts are all good, but they can’t be the only content you create to maximize exposure. Blog posts, Black Friday deal listings, and collaborations are great ways to gain exposure too. Blogs help educate customers, deal listings help customers find the best deals, and collaborations help your customers find more relevant products with your collaborators and vice-versa.

Email campaigns: Many retailers cut the middleman entirely and slide into inboxes with personalized offers for all their subscribers and customers. Emails are the best way to provide value to customers with very little investment. Remember, emails have the highest ROI for all the channels used for marketing campaigns. BFCM is no different.

Abandon cart emails: Since you are doing emails, a good way to maximize sales is to add an abandoned cart email to your campaigns. It’s been shown that abandoning cart emails boost sales by 3%. It may not seem like much, but 3% of 10K is 300 sales, just for perspective.

During the BFCM season, these can make a huge difference because many potential customers will visit your online store and not buy. Abandon cart emails will help bring a portion of those customers back for the purchase.

Campaign Planning

Now that your content is ready, it’s time to set your BFCM campaign strategy. Planning out your campaign is the main factor in BFCM success. When planning your campaign, these are the details to pay attention to,

Your offer: As we’ve already said, EVERYONE is offering a discount. You have to make the offer an irresistible one for your customers. Crafting the perfect offer depends on a lot of things, including the product itself, its original pricing, demand, and availability. You have to consider each of these to craft the perfect offer that makes the product worth purchasing instantly.

Organize the deals: After designing offers (discounts, coupons, pricing tiers), you need to organize them into a neat landing page that customers will love to engage with. This helps customers navigate the offers and find the best ones for themselves. But it’s not just for the customers. Having these offers organized neatly helps your sales, support, and marketing team too. BFCM is hectic and having this information ready to be served saves a lot of hassle.

Buildup the deals: Hype is the trick of the trade for marketing. The more hype you build for your offers, the better response you’ll get. People hate waiting. But nothing satisfies them more than the anticipation fulfilled. It’s on you to build that anticipation and “WOW!” them at the end.

Use scarcity where it’s right: Another trick is to push a time or availability issue for the customers. The fear of missing out is (FOMO) very real, and it’s your best friend. Don’t make your deals something that comes every year with no specialty. If you’re offering discounts, make it look as exclusive as possible. People love exclusive stuff and will go out of their way to buy it (even if they don’t need it).

Target the right people: Every aspect of your BFCM offer should correspond to all your customers, not just the new ones. As the Pareto principle goes, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customer base. So forgetting about your existing customers is not something you can afford. The best practice is to cater your email, adverts, and deal copies to every type of customer.

Technical Preparations

So your content is ready, and your campaign plan is set. Time to look at the technical soundness of your store. 

Test site and get feedback: Putting up new content and landing pages isn’t all that your site needs. You need to check to see if all the content fits in and if nothing breaks on the user end. After putting up all the changes, make sure your site can handle the increased traffic you’re expecting. Nothing is worse than a broken check-out page, especially during the biggest sales campaign you’ll have in any given year.

Tracking pixel and heat map: To track your customer’s journey up to the sales page, you can utilize new technologies like pixel tracking and heat maps. These tell you which part of your page is attracting the most attention and which parts are underperforming. This information is crucial to monitor your conversions and success rates for your campaigns.

Live chat: More sales means more customers asking questions. To avoid stressing out your service team, a good solution is to offer live chat support so customers can talk to your brand in real time without necessarily having to sign up.

Mobile-friendliness: As much as 6% of retail purchases in the US happen on mobile devices. Every part of your campaign, from emails to websites, must be compatible with mobile devices. If all is okay, but your check-out page breaks on mobile devices, you’ll lose a lot of potential sales.

Prepare for web traffic: Your server, hosting, and website need to be able to handle the traffic your campaigns bring. This also extends to your email providers, who will handle all the correspondence. Failure in email sending and traffic handling can result in more losses than you can imagine.

Bonus tips (Logistics)

We’ve covered the general checklist for creating the best BFCM campaign ever. But there’s still more you can do to ensure the highest ROI from your campaigns. We’re going to look at some logistical preparations that you need for that. Some may require you to go for logistics digital transformation to get the process rolling efficiently beforehand.

Contingency Plans: A lot of things can go wrong during the BFCM campaign. Historically, there have been incidents that made brands shut down stores and cancel orders because of a lack of contingency planning. Whether it be store or website security, back up everything and keep redundancy wherever possible.

The store’s capacity: Your store needs to be able to keep the products safe and accessible for the sales rush. If it’s small, you need fast restocking, and that’s possible only if you have your own warehouse or if it’s close by. You need to calculate product availability and inventory before the sales start because once it does, you can’t roll back or hit Ctrl+Z. (okay! No need to yell! Cmnd+Z for you, Macheads). 

Simple return policies: Before your deals hit the internet, make sure to review your discount and return policy. Leave any confusion, and it will blow up in your face pretty badly. You might get away with a lengthy and complex return policy year-round. But during the biggest sales fest with millions of eyes looking for good businesses, you simply can’t afford it. A bad return policy will ruin all the good things you offer, so review it and amend it accordingly.

Standby for support and service: Forget about the operating times for your customer service and support team. Even if you don’t offer 24/7 support, you must, around the BFCM weekend. As many as 90% of customers (especially millennials) prefer brands that have ready customer service. BFCM is the perfect time to showcase how awesome your support/service team is. More importantly, it grows users’ confidence in your brand that your team is ready to serve them no matter what.

Brief support/service team: Since you are revising the service/support team, it’s also good to reeducate agents on customer handling. BFCM is a time of serious rush. Customers can come in with all sorts of questions, requests, and demands. Your agents need to keep their cool through it all. A refresher course might help them cope better and provide the best performance possible.

The challenges of BFCM

Well, that’s all you need (roughly) to create the best BFCM campaign for your brand. We know it’s a lot of work. But the gains are simply too good to pass up on this. To make things a little more simple, we’ll cover the biggest challenges businesses face during BFCM so you can be ready.

More pre-sales questions

People are on the lookout for the best deals, but that doesn’t mean they stop judging brands and asking questions. As soon as your BFCM campaign goes live, you’ll be flooded with pre-sales questions about every product and the best offers. The rush can easily swamp your customer service team, so it’s better to stay prepared.

Increased need for onboarding

More customers mean you need to onboard more of them to your system. This can add stress to your CRM and support management system. Not to mention it requires personalized messages to create cross-sell and upsell opportunities for BFCM customers. If your onboarding process isn’t smooth, the BFCM rush will put it to the test, and it will break. 

Massive competition

Absolutely every brand is going to make equally ridiculous offers in order to attract the highest possible amount of customers. The competition can become aggressive very fast. Your company needs to be prepared for this and create offers that can knock the wind out of the competition. 

Time constraints

Time is probably your worst enemy during BFCM. Limiting the biggest discount sale to a weekend causes immense stress on a lot of the systems and people involved. Everyone is working on a deadline, and no one can do anything about it. The only thing you can do is prepare beforehand and utilize time as effectively as possible.

Getting ahead of the challenges

We’ve figured out 2 easy solutions to manage these challenges. These are the best solutions you can implement to manage the BFCM sales rush because,

1. They’re cheap

2. Easily scalable

3. Require minimum dependencies

The solutions we recommend are,

A dedicated support team

Having a dedicated support team mitigates the stress of onboarding new customers and answering the pre-sales questions. They can also help you effectively manage time constraints by clearing queries as fast as possible.

If your teams can convince customers quickly, your sales will also pick up speed. Moreover, service and support are crucial factors for customers. Showing how dedicated your support team is, even under the BFCM stress, is a good way to set yourself apart and beat the competition.  

Effective Tools

Your teams are only as good as the tools you provide them. Customer support desks are one of the crucial tools you’ll need to get ahead of the BFCM challenge. Ideally, you’ll want a tool that gives you,

Automation: Saves time and reduces redundant actions.

Saved Responses: Saves time and reduces response delay.

Detailed reports and metrics: Helps you track support performance throughout the BFCM weekend.

Activity logs: Monitors agent activity and reduces confusion and conflicts.

Unlimited customers and agents: This lets you expand your support team as you need without limiting the number of customers you can have.

Wrapping up

That’s a wrap on our BFCM checklist for 2024. We know it’s been a long read, so we won’t repeat all that in the summary. Instead, we ask for your opinions and take on the BFCM season. Let us know anything we’ve missed to make this checklist more complete. 

BFCM is a big opportunity to break into your business and rev up your sales funnel. Follow these and prepare accordingly to get the best results possible. 

Until next time, happy serving!

The post A Marketers Guide to BFCM in 2024 appeared first on Fluent Support.

What are Gross sales?

Gross sales is the total amount of sales made within a specific time. This only includes the money generated by adding up all your sales figures into a single amount. It’s normally calculated for monthly, quarterly and annual figures. Ideally, it’s the sum of all transaction bar any deductions.

Calculating Gross sales

The formula for is as follows,

Gross sales = Sum of all sales + Sales discounts + Sales allowances + Returns 

Why it’s important?

Measuring Gross sales is important because,

• It’s impossible to calculate net sales and revenue without Gross sales
• Gross sales help track the ratio between Total sales against Sales discounts and Total returns
• Measure the total amount of revenue made by the sales team.

What is Net sales?

Net sales is the amount left after deducting all discounts, allowances, and returns. It’s also known as net revenue after the deductions are made. Plainly put, it’s the revenue left after all the sales costs are accounted for.

Calculating Net sales

Net sales are calculated by the following the net sales formula,

Net sales = Gross sales (total revenue) – Sales Allowances – Sales Discounts – Sales returns

Difference between Gross and Net sales

Wrapping Up

Sales analysts get significant insight from the difference between gross and net sales. This gives clear insights into the performance of sales and customer service strategies and turnover rates. Knowing these things helps marketing and sales teams to tweak and optimize their strategies to improve these metrics.

These sales values are fairly simple to calculate. All you have to do is plug the values into the formula and that’s it.

Until next time, happy serving!

The post What is Gross and Net sales? [Calcualtions and the differences] appeared first on Fluent Support.