As technology becomes increasingly ingrained in our everyday lives, it’s important for businesses of all sizes to make sure they are staying up to date with the latest trends. Technology can offer any business a massive amount of information, increase efficiency, simplify tasks, you name it. One of the most important areas that it can change, especially for small businesses, is the bottom line.
By harnessing new technology, you can help increase sales and ensure that your business is healthy and growing. Although there are many varieties of technology that can have a beneficial impact, here are some of the best options to help small businesses increase their sales.
Intelligent Automation
Although maybe overestimating the speed of technology, a majority of the science-fiction movies from the ’80s did get one thing right: automation is coming, and it’s going to be big. Intelligent automation is a conglomeration of several different types of automation and artificial intelligence, but the end result is a well-rounded and efficient way to complete various end-to-end business tasks. There are several areas specifically in which intelligent automation can be a great boon to your small business.
Marketing can benefit greatly from even the slightest touch of automation, removing the countless hours of emailing and responding to cold outreach emails. Specifically, in marketing, intelligent automation allows you to reach a much larger audience while still maintaining the personal touch that defines your small business. You can automatically reach out to someone who was often visiting a specific page of your business and help convert them into a customer.
Automation can help provide a high-quality marketing approach to your business, while also increasing your sales numbers.
General business operations also provide a great opportunity for automation, allowing businesses to streamline workflows and minimize costs while simultaneously increasing efficiency. By removing menial repetitive tasks, you can shift your focus and effort into more hands-on activities that your business requires your undivided attention to. In a similar vein, your sales team directly can also benefit from intelligent automation. Reducing manual data entry and helping you schedule phone calls and follow up meetings to ensure you are staying on top of all aspects of your sales funnel and help you convert on all your prospects.
Customer Relationship Management Systems
Although customer relationship management (CRM) platforms have been around for a little while, many small businesses are still unaware of the utility and assistance they can provide. CRM systems can be a driving force behind increasing a company’s sales, while still remaining simple and effective.
CRM tools can help you and your small business build more sustainable relationships with your customers. Using a tool that can help you store all of your customers’ important information in one single location allows you to easily personalize all of your interactions, and provide them with the personal touch that every customer looks for.
Increased organization is something that every small business strives for; through utilizing a CRM solution, you can keep all of your appointments, charts, tasks, and more all in one place. You can split your various contacts into different lists to better identify their needs as customers and allow for easy group communication. You can also manage your team’s tasks and assignments in one unified board to ensure the smooth completion of projects.
Cybersecurity
As technology continues to expand into every nook and cranny of the business world, evolving threats expand as well. This is increasingly true in today’s world, given the current global health situation. Cybersecurity can both, directly and indirectly, affect a small business’s ability to make sales, by protecting current assets to ensure the safety of customer data and trust. The consequences of a cyber attack can be detrimental to a small business. Almost 50% of all small businesses are affected by cyberattacks; these attacks cost businesses $200,000 a year on average.
Protecting your business’s current assets is one of the most important things for a rapidly growing company. One of the most crucial, yet intangible, aspects of sales is a customer’s trust in a company. If a customer can’t trust a company, it’s extremely unlikely that they will purchase their products. Earn the trust of your customers through quality services, unique products, and the security of their information. Customers who like a product and trust the company will be more likely to return and continue the sales relationship.
Make sure you have up-to-date cybersecurity systems in place, such as an SD-WAN option, in order to protect your customers, maintain their trust, and continue to grow your sales. Some other options to bolster your cybersecurity defenses include making sure that you have up-to-date security programs installed on all company devices and ensuring that all your passwords are strong and only revealed to specific people. In addition, creating and emphasizing the importance of a cybersecurity program can greatly help employees better understand certain potential risks, help avoid data breaches, and retain customer loyalty.
Chatbots
Chatbots are a rapidly growing industry that provides a unique level of customer service and interaction. Chatbots can immediately interact with any customer who lands on a page of your site, regardless of the current time of day or location. One HubSpot report finds that “of the 71% of people willing to use messaging apps to get customer assistance, many do it because they want their problem solved, fast.” In an era of slowly shrinking attention spans, engaging the customer quickly and efficiently is an important step to turning interested parties into confirmed sales.
Chatbots have a lot of unique features that can be quite useful, one of the main draws being providing a more in-depth level of customer communication without having to direct a large number of resources towards it. Another helpful feature is chatbots’ ability to track the viewing and purchasing history of a website visitor and suggest to them a product or service they might want next. This is a great way to not only help customers along the various stages of the sales funnel, but it also can lead to additional sales that might not have previously been taken advantage of.
Fostering sales growth is one of the most important aspects of any business, especially one looking to grow. Taking advantage of some of the technological innovations can help you stay one step ahead of your competitors, and make sure that you are always in the black. Intelligent automation is a great way to remove repetitive tasks from the equation and allows you to focus on more hands-on matters. Customer relationship management software helps you maintain a strong relationship with all your customers and ensure that you are converting on all your potential sales.
Having the proper cybersecurity protections in place can protect your financial stability, and ensure that you retain a customer’s trust, and in turn, their sales. Chatbots allow you to level up your customer communication and helps convert on otherwise lost additional sales. Many of these can be used in tandem to ensure that you are increasing your sales and helping your small business thrive.
