In an increasingly connected world, a customer’s experience matters now more than ever and maintaining your reputation is vital. As your customer base grows and staying connected with customers becomes more challenging, are you certain you’re making the most of your opportunities? What can you do to anticipate your customers’ needs so they don’t have an experience that sends them off to check out the services of one of your competitors?
Since your business already runs Microsoft Office 365, you are familiar with the value that Office 365 brings to your organization. What you may not know is that when you add Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you extend that tool to get a complete solution that keeps your business in tune and engaged with your customers.
By adding Dynamics CRM Online, you:
Make it easy for everyone in your organization to get the information they need to deliver great customer experiences.
Boost productivity by empowering your sales and service employees to do their best work from virtually anywhere.
Get visibility into your organization to make informed decisions and grow your business.
You’ll find that the simplicity and affordability of the combination of Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online makes a critical business solution attainable and adaptable for any sized business. Best of all, you can move at your own pace and use only the elements that you need. Its enterprise-class cloud infrastructure, maintained by Microsoft, keeps your business secure and reliable with minimal technology support.
Get Started Now
Businesses who are up and running on Office 365 + Dynamics CRM Online never look back—enjoying gains in productivity and sales, and the competitive advantage from customer service excellence.
Contact us today 800-257-0691 to learn more about how you can use Office 365 + Dynamics CRM Online to shift your focus back on the things that matter most to your business.
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Three Digital Marketing Tactics That Work for Real Estate
There is no doubt that digital marketing is what everyone in business is talking about these days. It’s no different in the real estate industry. According to Borrell Associates Inc.’s 2015 Outlook for Real Esate Advertising, real estate agents and brokers are now spending over $13 billion on all forms of advertising, a whopping 75% of that amount is going towards online and digital advertising.
However, the percentage of ad spend devoted to digital marketing is predicted to slow down and possibly even drop in 2015. It’s possible that, according to Borrell’s report, that an optimal ratio has been reached. It also suggests that real estate advertisers may be moving their resources elsewhere.
Certainly, digital marketing is a great way to generate interest and leads. However, much like in other industries, real estate advertisers are throwing lots of budget at obtaining leads, whether it’s through social media, pay per click ads, display advertising, AdWords, YouTube, Facebook ads, and on and on. The focus seems to be on generating massive amounts of leads with little thought given to whether they are qualified and even less thought given to the most important point of all – how many of those leads will ultimately convert to clients.
With this in mind, here are three proven digital marketing tactics that work for real estate agents and brokers, much like they do for businesses of all kinds.
1. Effectively Manage Your Relationships
Digital marketing has grown in popularity because of its ability to help you reach a massive audience in a fast, cost-effective way. Websites, blogs, social media, and videos are designed to help reach more people, and people will find you. But what is an astounding issue in real estate is what happens next. Consider these contrasting, and extremely worrisome, statistics:
The REAL Trends 2013 Online Performance Study found that 45% of consumers expect a response from a website within 15 minutes and 56% expect a response from their real estate agent within 30 minutes of contact.
Contrast that with the statistic that 45% of inquiries on real estate websites never receive a response.
What is happening here? Immediate response to your customers is critical. Utilizing a powerful communication and productivity tool such as Office 365 with Outlook will put you ahead of the competition according to these statistics. Real estate is still a people business and people expect to be contacted as soon as possible. Office 365’s mobile experience is unparalleled, and gives agents the tools they need while on the road. See how one top producer manages his emails from the road utilizing Office 365. >>>
2. Use a CRM System to Manage Your Leads
Staying in touch with the right people at the right time is more than just replying to their inquiries. Generating leads is definitely something that you need to do. Maintaining a healthy, active pipeline of leads is the lifeblood of any business. However, it’s critical that you use a contact/customer relationship management (CRM) platform, such as Microsoft Dynamics, to help you store, track, and qualify your lead database for effective communication and management of your prospects. This will help you sift through your leads to find the qualified prospects and work towards converting them to clients. Email marketing campaigns to your qualified leads is still the most effective digital marketing you can do. It’s even more powerful when the emails are targeted with relevant content. For example, you may have clients who are only interested in investment properties or multi-family units. Having this information stored in your CRM system will help you build target email marketing campaigns that deliver above average response. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online integrates seamlessly with Office 365 and Outlook to give you a powerful digital marketing platform that will help you convert leads to prospects and prospects to clients. Take a tour of Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions and find one that’s right for your business. >>>
3. Stay in touch frequently and utilize dynamic content
Now that you are ready to start your email marketing campaigns and manage them through a CRM platform, the next crucial step is to make sure you’re sending relevant and engaging content to your prospect database. Don’t send the same tired emails asking people if they’re ready to buy or sell. Get them excited about your listings. Motivate them to seek out the home of their dreams. Emails need more than text, they need powerful visuals. One powerful tool that lets you create impactful, media rich content is Microsoft Sway. With Sway, you can create and share attention-grabbing digital stories with text, images, and video to showcase your services and properties to prospective clients looking to buy or sell. These digital presentations can be made quickly and deployed on demand to target specific customers or to your entire database. Forget about paper flyers, and stop sending the same boring emails – stand apart from all your competitors by sending fresh, exciting content via your Sways! See a sample listing Sway below >>>
Digital marketing doesn’t have to be an expensive crapshoot. By sticking to the tried and true tactics and being smart about the tools that you use, you’ll be on your way to converting more of your leads into valuable customers. To learn more about the Microsoft solutions presented in this article, contact Managed Solution to see how easy, quick and cost-effective it is to get started.
Contact Us & See How Today’s Technology is Shaping the Real Estate Industry of Tomorrow 800-293-6593
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Wednesdays With Will: Voice Of The Customer
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
Welcome back! In our last installment we discussed how you can better visualize your business with the use of dashboards to represent data. This week’s topic is going to touch on the same topic but from the other end…gathering the data. There are many ways to gather data but it’s important that the information collected is leading to what you’d like to know. One of the most tried and true ways to accomplish this is through surveys. Today we are going to discuss why the voice of the customer is a key component for meaningful business analytics and decision making.
The primary reason most businesses use surveys is to develop a go to market strategy for acquiring new business or to learn more about their existing clients. When crafting your go to market strategy it’s important to understand the market you will be servicing. You will need a clear grasp of your value proposition including how to position your product or service and the price it can be sold. This is all part of the research stage and surveys can be leveraged for acquiring this information. It can be very costly for an organization to launch a new product or expand their business without doing the proper research and having a proper understanding of their potential market.
When used for an existing customer, the goal may be to get a heartbeat on the business relationship between the client and your organization. This is important for understanding what your business does great and where there may be opportunity for improvement. It can be crucial for identifying gaps in current service. It also leads to an increase in customer satisfaction and retention. This is the first step in transforming your client from a customer to an advocate of your business.
Surveys can be used to increase sales with both new clients and existing customers. Since a survey gives your customers a voice, you are given a defined understanding of their need and possibly others in the same industry. This information can then be used in a targeted market campaign to let others with the same challenge know that your organization has a solution. We live in the age of the internet where most people will do their own research prior to engaging with a salesperson. Demonstrating an understanding of a challenge and a possible solution helps build trust in the early stages of the business relationship.
The focus of my previous articles has been about how leveraging a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool can assist with simplifying Sales, Marketing, and Services processes. The latest edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, 2016 and the Online version, has included a survey maker as a new preview feature. At the time, it can be tested and used in a non-production environment. The full release should be available in the next couple of months. If your organization is already using Dynamics CRM and contemplating the use of surveys to improve the customer experience? Now is a good opportunity to try it out and see how easy it is to create a custom survey with your company’s branding. To improve user accessibility, it’s been optimized so a survey can be taken on a phone, tablet, or computer. Your Services team will gain more customer insight because they will be able to view customer feedback history as they resolve a service case. As mentioned earlier, the survey information can be translated into dashboards for better visualization. Surveys are just another way of augmenting the capabilities of your Sales, Marketing, and Services teams.
Take this quick survey to let us know if you currently use surveys
As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
To distinguish Grant Thornton International Ltd (GTIL) from its larger competitors, its member firms must maintain closer relationships with—and deliver personalized attention to—their clients. The independent member firms of GTIL are deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM to facilitate collaboration around sales, marketing, and customer service. The solution has driven an increase in the number and size of sales wins, while helping the firms offer better value to clients and maintain consistency in a complex environment.
In an industry that has long been dominated by the Big Four, the Grant Thornton organization is under constant pressure to differentiate itself from its larger, better-known competitors. To do this, Grant Thornton member firms, which operate in more than 130 countries, offer their clients something the competition cannot: personalized service and closer relationships.
“We are not, nor do we want to be, the biggest accounting organization,” explains Rick Stow, head of Client Relationship Management. “We compete with four much larger firms, so we differentiate by having closer relationships to earn credibility and increase value. We choose to be much more connected to our clients. We need to have a good presence in our local markets if we're going to compete.”
Grant Thornton LLP, which operates in more than 56 offices in the United States, maintained various customer management solutions (including SalesLogix); they lacked visibility into contacts, accounts, and influencers across all employees and practice areas. This sometimes led to duplication of effort and missed opportunities. Further, because account teams were not aware of all interactions with a specific customer, it was difficult to gauge the strength or extent of the relationship. With no way to identify opportunities for cross-selling services, the member firms’ ability to grow the business was limited.
With a single standardized solution, Grant Thornton LLP aims to ensure that the firm—rather than individual employees—maintains the relationship with each contact.
Going mobile
Grant Thornton member firms in the United States, Canada, and Germany currently use Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and on-premises for sales force automation, marketing management, and comprehensive account planning functionality built using the xRM extensibility capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, two add-on solutions augment Grant Thornton LLP’s account and customer data with third-party research, including data from InsideView and LinkedIn. Future plans include adding social listening capabilities that will capture additional information from public sources.
The upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 will also allow Grant Thornton LLP to fully exploit the mobile capabilities of the Microsoft Dynamics solution. Today, a handful of people access the system on Windows 8 Surface devices, but because most employees spend a majority of their time outside the office, making functionality available on virtually any device or platform will be key to successful, widespread adoption.
“More and more people are asking for a true ‘app’ experience,” explains Stow. “One of the most appealing aspects of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is the ability to deliver the same experience across multiple platforms. Whether you’re opening a form from within Outlook, from a browser, or on a mobile device, you have access to the information and full functionality.”
Fostering collaboration
Finding ways to foster collaboration among accounting and advisory professionals is key to Grant Thornton LLP’s continued success. “Relationships are everything,” says Stow. “So people are very protective of their relationships. But to understand the full scope of a client relationship, we need to overcome that individual mindset and find ways to collaborate effectively.”
In addition to establishing Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a standardized solution for CRM, Grant Thornton LLP has found that other technologies have been key to helping employees share information and work better together across member firms. A large-scale SharePoint deployment includes more than 50,000 unique sites where employees share documents and collaborate on accounts and initiatives. Communications and enterprise social media tools, including Lync and Yammer, provide voice, instant messaging and conferencing capabilities — and connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to facilitate communication around client and account activities.
As a result, the employees in Grant Thornton LLP can depend on one another and deliver more comprehensive service to clients. “It’s not just about using the technology,” says Stow. “Our workforce today is more connected — and more productive. People see the interactions and work more efficiently, and that ultimately allows us to serve our clients better.”
Enhancing sales processes
Microsoft Dynamics provides Grant Thornton LLP with a process-driven CRM solution that accommodates different sales processes and regional requirements. For existing accounts, the connection capabilities of the solution allow each member firm to build virtual account teams that include all employees and partners involved in a particular relationship, who can collaborate on a plan to nurture and proactively drive the relationship forward.
Using the collected data in the CRM solution, account managers see strengths, weaknesses, and threats related to a particular relationship or opportunity. They identify competitors that might be serving the client — in addition to potential partners in other advisory roles who might influence sales — and collaboratively develop a plan to pursue the opportunity.
Since deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Grant Thornton LLP has experienced a 450 percent jump in the number of opportunities it is tracking, a 36 percent increase in average win value, and a 700 percent rise in the number of contacts in the system. In addition, by tracking employee behaviors in the system, Grant Thornton LLP correlates factors such as sales activities and frequency of client contacts to win rate and revenue generation so as to further refine the sales process through insights.
Delivering better client service
Stow is quick to point out that the benefits of the CRM solution extend beyond sales. “Our goal for the solution is not to push additional services on our clients, but to better serve our clients,” he says. “The enhanced planning and collaboration tools enable us to respond to clients more effectively and in a more timely fashion.”
In particular, he points to the ability to conduct proactive planning using custom account plans developed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The tool helps Grant Thornton LLP identify priority accounts and includes a complete history of account activity and plans for nurture or contact efforts. Connections to partners and other service providers enable Grant Thornton LLP to identify partners who might enhance the value proposition through collaboration.
Using data to drive value
The value proposition of Grant Thornton LLP is also enhanced by the analytical capabilities of the CRM solution. Using CRM in conjunction with business intelligence tools such as Power BI, Grant Thornton LLP can identify trends or issues affecting a particular class or segment of clients and then reach out proactively to other clients in that segment to address these issues.
The development of new services is also driven by analytics, which provide insights into client demand based on service line, service type, revenue, and other factors — which makes their very smart people even smarter from a sales, marketing, and business development standpoint.
“The solution enables us to be much more focused,” says Stow. “We can use data to make data-driven decisions and communicate to our teams using actual data. Everyone here is very smart, but the additional insights — based on a single shared version of the truth — make us all smarter.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
World Animal Protection is an international animal welfare organization that has been in operation for over 30 years. To help end animal cruelty, it provides aid, education, and government outreach support. Effective, reliable, cost-conscious back-office solutions ensure their resources are used efficiently and they can focus on maximizing their charitable work around the globe.
To make the most of its resources, World Animal Protection streamlined its management of global finances, operations, and sponsorships. Planning, managing, reporting, and delivering support in an efficient and consistent way across their global operations enables them to concentrate their efforts on maximizing their impact on animal protection. World Animal Protection uses a combination of efficient processes and reliable tools to ensure efficient and compassionate resource delivery.
1. Be accountable to supporters
Transparency regarding financial sourcing and decision-making is key to a healthy ongoing relationship with supporters and funders. The right technology and business solutions can help make that happen.
2. For better aid, improve visibility
Seek to provide better visibility into donors, budgets, and projects. This practice helps World Animal Protection ensure that funds are being properly managed, as they continue to flow in, and that those funds are largely used to help animals across the globe instead of being consumed by unrestrained administrative costs.
3. Choose tools and processes that support your mission
World Animal Protection has consolidated geographically disparate finance and operations processes, and no longer relies on a disconnected collection of spreadsheets to manage its work. Now they have a complete, trusted, and connected network of processes and workflows, supported by a framework of reliable and cost-efficient software solutions - including Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Office 365.
4. Understand the concerns and history of key players
Serving stakeholders across the globe with consistency requires a mindful approach and a firm grasp of the history of your organization’s relationship with them. Find the right tools to keep track of historical information and put them to use. World Animal Protection uses Microsoft solutions to better understand and engage with supporters, stakeholders, and sponsors, without compromising security or personal data.
5. Get out of the office and into the field
Don’t spend all your time in the office, miles away from the people and projects you are working to support. Take the time up front to establish tools and processes that keep things running when you are in the field, doing the really important work.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
RREAL strives to alleviate fuel poverty by installing solar panels on low-income family homes. To ensure they serve more people cost effectively, RREAL chose to manufacture the solar panels they install. They needed robust client management and accounting tools to manage the growing intricacies of the business. By adopting Microsoft Dynamics GP on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, RREAL has a single streamlined process, helping reduce installation time by more than 50%.
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
I know this greeting is about five days late but…Happy New Year! That’s the challenge of “Wednesdays With Will”, I have to stick to my day (Wednesday) for the blog title to make sense. Regardless, I’m sure most of you participated in the common ritual of making resolutions for self-improvement now that a New Year is upon us. Instead of asking about your personal resolutions, why don’t we discuss your business resolutions for the year? This question isn’t intended to give you anxiety but to get you thinking about how you can take what you did well in 2015 and make it great in 2016. Let’s narrow the focus to 3 areas that are common among most businesses no matter the size or industry…Sales, Marketing, and Customer Services/Support.
If your business is like 99.99% of businesses today, you are looking for ways to improve at least one if not all of these aspects of your organization. As we discussed in previous posts, one of the best ways a business can address all three facets or each individual component would be to leverage a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Is your sales team currently using one to track your interactions with customers, prospects, and opportunities? Is your marketing team using one to manage marketing campaigns (including budgets), gauge effectiveness of individual campaigns, and track social sentiment to better position your organization through messaging? And finally does your customer service or support team have the tools to effectively service your customers so that they become your advocates? These are all tasks that can be easily managed by a CRM.
It’s a New Year so that means you have a fresh start and new opportunity to set your business up for success. Seize the opportunity and have the conversation now. What you do in January will dictate your success for the rest of the year.
As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Wardhere. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
The new light-weight CRM App for Outlook
What is it?
With no installation, no configuration, and no additional log-in steps, you can now quickly track your important customer emails directly within Outlook, whether on your PC or Mac running the desktop version of Outlook, or on the go through Outlook Web Access on your laptop or phone (Windows, Android, or iOS). You can even see relevant information from Dynamics CRM Online about the person who sent you the email, or pop open the full form directly from within our new CRM App for Outlook.
What’s the difference between the new CRM App for Outlook and the existing CRM for Outlook Add-in?
The new CRM App for Outlook is a light-weight app directed to accomplish a few specific tasks like tracking and converting emails as well as reviewing a few details about the specific contacts and leads from the email. Alternatively, the CRM for Outlook add-in is a full client for Dynamics CRM that allows you to have complete access to all of Dynamics CRM’s functionality, including dashboards and full grids, and even allows you to work offline.
How do I get the new CRM App for Outlook?
Note: The CRM App for Outlook is rolling out over the next few weeks to CRM Online organizations independently following the CRM 2016 release. If you don’t see the below options, your organization hasn’t yet received the feature. This app requires Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Online and Exchange Online.
Dynamics CRM Online users can easily add the app to their Outlook directly from within Dynamics CRM Online. Simply click on the gear icon and choose Apps for Dynamics CRM. Then choose Add app to Outlook under the CRM App for Outlook heading. The app will show up in the user’s Outlook interface when reading or composing emails anywhere they use Outlook.
Dynamics CRM Online administrators also have the ability to push the app to user’s Outlook interfaces through the newly added CRM App for Outlook settings page. To do this, simply navigate to Settings > CRM App for Outlook and click on the Add App for All Eligible Users button. Optionally, you can select individual users from the grid to add the app on an individual level. Use the auto-add feature to ensure all newly added eligible users automatically get the app added to their Outlook.
Keep in mind that for both cases, in order for users to be eligible to get the app, they will need to have their Exchange mailbox configured with Server-Side Synchronization for incoming emails as well as have the Use CRM App for Outlook user role privilege.
I’ve been using the preview version of the app, do I need to do anything?
Yes. With the release of Dynamics CRM 2016, the preview program for the CRM App for Outlook will end. Thank you for all of your valuable feedback. Once your CRM Online organization is upgraded to Dynamics CRM 2016, the older app that was available during the preview period will no longer connect to your Dynamics CRM service, and will be removed from the Office Store. You will need to manually remove the app and then follow the instructions listed above to get the new, fully-supported app.
To remove an app from Outlook, simply open Outlook Desktop and choose Manage Add-ins from the File menu, or from Outlook Web Access, choose the settings gear icon, then Manage add-ins. From there, choose Dynamics CRM and then choose the uninstall button to remove the app.
