Improving your business development process with an internal business app

If you work in business development, sales, outreach – or any facet of business that deals with the exchange of goods or services for economic gain – you know the struggles of dealing with client expectations, leads going cold, client acquisition, and all the other challenges that come with the territory of selling – either emotional or job-wise.

We’re living in the age of user experience – clients expect your engagements to be even more personalized and targeted to their needs than the native ads they see on social media. In fact, 79% of your communication efforts will go ignored by clients if the messages don’t meet your clients’ standards of desired personalization.

We’re also living in the age of speed – not only do your communications need to be personalized, you need the ability to react to changing demands and needs, new challenges, and new opportunities – and sometimes, even quick reactions aren’t enough – predicting your clients’ needs is the only true way to stay on top of your game and reduce client churn, dead ends, and increase your numbers.

The most effective way to accomplish this is by integrating your business development process with an internal business app.

For more examples of how you can improve your company’s efficiency, culture, and processes, check out these blogs:

• Improving your employee training process with an internal business app
• Improving inventory and supply chain management with an internal business app
• Improving your business operations and culture with an internal business app

In this blog, we’re going to go over the different features and capabilities an internal business app can add to your business development practices.

Lead management

Introducing yourself is easy – it’s keeping track of who’s who after the fact that’s the difficult part. It’s already hard enough when meeting prospective clients in face-to-face networking events, let alone when dealing faceless customer profiles aggregated through your website’s analytics.

Keeping track of leads, both at scale and speed, is crucial to your company’s success in today’s market. With the mobile revolution and the burgeoning IoT, large corporations aren’t the only businesses with global reach – the interconnectedness of markets and systems means your client can be halfway around the world, or right down the street – your methods for selling to them will largely remain the same, but their expectations will vary.

Measuring data is key to predicting your clients’ needs. By utilizing an internal business app that can keep track of customer relationship analytics like how often you speak with your most billed client, pending orders, or previous support inquires made, you can more accurately predict their requests or questions.

With an internal business app, you can automate both your relationship analytics, and your mid funnel marketing processes; such as marketing and re-marketing campaigns that utilize email or text to keep your prospective clients engaged with your business.

Even for businesses with smaller budgets, who lack the ability to implement complex backend systems necessary for such automation, a small backend system that auto-imports client data to your business developers is achievable – when a client fills out their info on your website, the backend system can then add it to their customer profile in your database. Small increases in efficiency can provide a huge boost to your employee’s productivity.

When your sales team adds contact information to a customer profile from a lead they just created, the data all ends up in the same place. Not only does this make it impossible to lose or create duplicate pieces of client data, it means that if a sales representative is no longer with your company, the lead’s info stays within your database – not on your employee’s personal phone.

Client communications

A small business in Virginia is expected to communicate with a client in London in the same manner as a large corporation with a London-based office would.

Customer service means a lot more than being polite and knowing your client’s first name – it means being able to answer their questions before they ask them – using the same phrases and language someone from their corner of the world would. Before you can achieve this capability, however, you first need to develop and maintain a personal connection with your clients.

The easiest way to create a personal relationship with a client is to know their personal needs – this means past interactions, as well as possibilities for potential business they have expressed to you.

Every business knows customer satisfaction is the number one key to success, and failure to meet customers’ expectations will spell the doom of any company. Knowledge is power – and in this case, knowledgable employees means happy clients.

Customer service and a personalized experience are important – in 2016, out of customers that switched services, 64% reported their reason was because of lack of a good experience with the company that was serving them – not due to the cost of services provided.

With the help of an internal business app, you can make sure every interaction with every client is measured, strategic, personal, and under control – meaning there’s no surprises for either you or your client, and everyone is sure to be happy.

Referral mangagement

Everyone knows the power of a good referral. Other than reengaging with an existing customer, it’s the most cost effective method for driving sales.

It’s truly a small world – but without a data management system made possible by an internal business app, networking and business development can look like a vast, disconnected landscape.

Through the backend client data management system made possible by an internal business app, you can connect the dots to figure out who knows who. Maybe one of your best clients knows that lead your business developer just added into your system? As soon as the data points connect (which, with the implementation of real-time updating, can be near-instantaneous), your entire business development team will know.

Your employee out in the field can start a conversation with the new potential client about your company’s work with the existing client, or, you can get a head start on communicating the request for a referral from your best client.

Having the power to connect referrals with new leads both at speed and in the field is a great tool to increase your lead generation: customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate.

With an internal business app, you can, of course, add these referrals to your lead’s contact information that is stored on their personal profile – so all the data you would ever need to know about a client is stored in the same place, and is accessible from anywhere.

Account Management

When was the meeting with David? No, the other David. You know – the one with the on-demand dog walking app?

An internal business app mitigates these wasted minutes. If an account representative schedules a call with David-the-dog-walker, your account manager will know as well, because all the information David and his business can be found in the same place – his client profile in your internal business app.

Assigning tasks, scheduling meetings, making sure follow-up emails are sent, and phone calls are placed is simple when it’s automated. You can even set up automatic notifications to make sure no task is left by the wayside, as a double layer of redundancy to ensure your clients’ satisfaction.

Strengthen your customer relationships

There’s no better system than an internal business app for keeping the ever-changing world of business development in check. By managing and analyzing client data, you can increase lead generation, and solidify existing customer relationships through your internal business app.

We hope you’ve found this blog informative! If you’re interested in learning about the cost of implementing the capabilities we discussed, check out our How much does it cost to implement backend CRM software? blog.