According to Deloitte, using social media helps insurance companies to build a more positive image of the firm amongst the target group. It also gives a real opportunity to lower the cost of processing new clients’ applications.
Gamification, by definition, is when standard elements of gameplay, such as scoring points, winning rewards, and following a rule set, are applied to everyday situations, usually as a marketing strategy to create enjoyment from less interesting tasks. Gamification motivates people to engage with products or companies, or temporarily escape to an alternate reality. The list below outlines 10 suggestions for incorporating gamification into your marketing strategy.
Wondering how you can start a business from home, make great money, and help the planet at the same time? Then remote solar sales are for you!
Let me take you back to the basics; we buy things because we want them. You do it. I do it. Everyone we know does it. We want the latest iPhone, we want to own a Bentley, we want coffee from a local cafe, and we want good antivirus software. We want a lot of things. It’s what humans do.
The insurance industry is highly competitive, so you cannot expect customers to knock on your door without any effort.
There are many reasons why people are attracted to becoming insurance agents. The job often has very flexible hours, the ability to work remotely, autonomy and the chance to connect with a large cross-section of society. It’s a great job for people who love a challenge, thrive off their successes and also love to connect with other people.
It’s no secret that social media is a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. It can be used to build brand awareness and create relationships with customers, and it can also be used to generate leads and drive sales.
The pandemic has become a great motivation for people to reconsider what they are doing with their careers. Many people realized that depending on another company is not a good way to secure their income, and so have begun to start their own small businesses.
It’s undeniable that life for the average person has become busier and more multifaceted than ever before. Technological advancements have enabled our lives to become more complex in a positive way. The average person has way more going on in and outside of work, and this also has an impact on how they perceive information.
Getting leads for your service-based business isn’t a cakewalk. You need to spend hours understanding your target audience, identifying the channels they’ll be active on, creating content and combining different methods of lead generation to even start filling your pipeline.
Over a century ago, a pioneer of advertising, St. Elmo Lewis, created the concept of the sales or customer funnel.
Remote sales teams are always looking for an edge to close more prospects and increase conversion rates. Even with the best technology, there are still common challenges that come with sales, one of them being closing prospects over the phone.
Most people have one form of insurance or the other - health, home, business, or life. Insurance agents seem to have many people interested in their services. However, the competition can get stiff.
Selling insurance is not an easy job. It can be exhausting to be in constant contact with new people to build up your customer base. A more exhausting part of the job is to deal with the number of rejections for every sale you eventually make.
Gone are the days when marketers crammed spammy sales messages into their content mix as they fought to get into their customer’s bank accounts.
Modern sales teams within businesses are responsible for the majority of new revenue that’s generated for a business.
Cold calling is a numbers game. Even if you have done your homework, have a list of somewhat qualified leads and start dialing full of optimism, you will get rejected. And you will get rejected a lot. Most of the time, you will be calling at the wrong time.
The average attention span of a human being keeps dropping every year. According to Kraus Marketing, an average person’s attention span stands at 8 seconds. A lot of things compete for a client’s time. This has made most salespeople resort to aggressiveness to grab attention.
In recent years, video has experienced a surge in popularity across multimedia platforms from socials to streaming. Building on the success of film and television, it’s now the most popular form of online content.
There’s no getting around it – making cold calls can be a daunting task. But if you use the right opening lines, you’ll have a better chance of succeeding. This blog post will share 14 of the best cold call opening lines that work well for sales professionals. These lines will help you start conversations with potential customers and increase your chances of making a sale!
Sales promotion is a tried-and-tested way to increase the number of sales leads, sell more products and services, and generate more revenue.
It can be tough to cold call someone. You’re putting yourself out there, and you don’t know how the other person will react. One of the biggest fears people have when cold calling is that they’ll say something that will alienate their prospects. This fear can keep people from making calls altogether, which is a shame because cold calling can be a great way to get more leads. In this blog post, we’ll give you a guide to creating a cold calling script that won’t scare your prospects away!
2020 and 2021 disrupted the global economy at its core due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many brick-n-mortar businesses were forced to wrap up their operation temporarily or permanently, while others had to regroup and shift their businesses online. This resulted in a rapid rise in competition.
Believe it or not, communities can be found in the marketing industry. That means that there are many communities that are all about improving search engine optimization (SEO) and branding.
Cold calling is probably the hardest part of sales. Obviously not because of all the travel, but it’s psychologically demanding, especially for beginners but veteran salespeople still have the shivers when starting their cold calling routine.
Every business that aspires to success shares one clear goal - to make sales. Methods for achieving this might differ from business to business. Many will focus on more effective marketing, others will seek the perfect domain name. But all businesses agree, making sales is essential.
Cold calling software is one of the highest ROI tools for modern sales teams. Sales teams today often rely on a lot of disjointed tools and processes to reach the right leads and sell them products and services.
LinkedIn, a Microsoft-owned professional social platform, is the largest of its kind in the world, with 800 million users across 200 countries.
Even when companies have a steady stream of new customers, sales promotion is a powerful way to generate new revenue. Marketers can use sales promotions, or promos, to stimulate demand and bring in a whole load of new customers.
Your client base is in another state, your country is dealing with a pandemic, or you simply like to work from home. You wish to start running your insurance company remotely for any reason.
Every business, whether large or small, shares two common goals. These are to reach new customers and to make sales. It goes without saying, but every business that fails to meet these goals will fold. Luckily, in today’s technological world, there are more ways of reaching individual customers than ever before.
Now is a great time of year to expand your sales and marketing knowledge. Especially if you are on a sales team, a sales manager, VP of Sales, or in another sales leadership role.
The pandemic has forced a change in almost every aspect of life and there has been a global shift towards virtual working, with an increase in hours spent on video and online calls.
Customer reviews are vital if you want your business to succeed. Interchangeably, we’re going to refer to them as either reviews or testimonials, but regardless of what term you prefer, reviews will define how successful your business will be in all areas.
Videoconferencing has become an essential tool in the modern workplace. With many parts of the world still being restricted by COVID, videoconferencing allows companies to have employees work from home and still be able to operate their businesses properly. Although videoconferencing has been around for many years, there are several new trends that have begun to dominate the industry.
The key to being successful in sales is being able to understand your prospects and see yourself in their shoes. It doesn’t matter if you want to sell sand in the Sahara or in the Arctic, understanding what makes your prospect tick on a human level is the key to understanding their pain points. That is where Behavioural Science can help you.
Solar panels are increasingly popular across the world, with renewable energy seen as one of the best ways consumers and homeowners can make a positive impact on the environment.
You know you need to get as many sales meetings as possible, so finding ways to attract new leads is a must.
LinkedIn, a Microsoft-owned professional social platform, is the largest of its kind in the world, with 800 million users across 200 countries.
Over the past year, we’ve seen the vast majority of B2B sellers move their interaction to digital platforms, and customers followed. In fact, according to McKinsey, an average of 75% of B2B decision-makers prefer digital communication or self-service over in-person interactions.
If you work in sales or marketing, or even if you’re a budding entrepreneur, you know how important it is to ensure that you stay on top of your game strategy-wise and make sure that new industry tips and tricks are incorporated into your sales arsenal.
CrankWheel’s new update includes a feature called the Projector. Available now, the Projector is an answer to users requesting the ability to project videos with sound during screen sharing sessions. This new feature makes screen-sharing sessions even more interactive while maintaining the seamless user experience CrankWheel promises to users.
Dating can be difficult. You get to know someone new, start to form a relationship with them. Or you go on one or a couple of dates and start texting back and forth with a potential beau. And one day, communications just go silent… No text. No calls. Not even a lousy email. You’ve been ghosted!
After a tumultuous 2020, digital agencies have thrived in 2021. In fact, the number of digital agencies increased by 13.7% between 2020 and 2021. Businesses of all sizes are leveraging digital agencies to accelerate their marketing efforts and acquire customers more cost-effectively. With acquisition channels like SEO, PPC, email marketing and more, companies have limitless opportunities to market to their ideal customers and increase their customer base.
One of the most important metrics for sales teams is the close rate. Once a conversation with a sales lead starts, the aim is to close every deal. Get them to say yes, sign on the dotted line, and buy what you are selling.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are getting used for all sorts of purposes in business today. Some of the business aspects that rely on these technologies are marketing and sales. As a business, there’s a lot that you can leverage from the power of AI and ML.
Digital marketing agencies can generate sales in a number of ways. Outbound campaigns, through referrals and partners, and inbound.
The demand for digital services and experiences has reached an all-time high, forcing firms to change to satisfy changing customer expectations quickly. The modern world is changing in terms of what customers want and what they expect from businesses, and if you want to succeed in such an environment, you’ll need to keep up with the trends and the quickening pace.
Creating and maintaining motivation in sales teams is one of the most important roles a sales manager performs. When a team or members of the team are on a roll, you’ve got to keep that going. When performance drops, you’ve got to motivate them to not give up and keep pushing forward.
Acquiring new clients for any business - especially digital marketing agencies - can feel like an uphill battle. With social media accounts vying for attention, begging you to follow them, bombarding the public with ads and contests, it’s easy to feel like you’ll be drowned out in the clamor.
Sales presentations play a massive role in virtual sales calls. As video calls are more visual, you need to be confident in the presentation being used to engage prospects and sales leads.
Most people when starting a client-based business often struggle with gaining traction. There are plenty of long days and nights where you’ll need to be burning the candle at both ends. In fact, according to an independent agent survey by the NU/PIA, 37% of insurance agents struggle with finding new clients.
Just like any other business, the main concern of your digital agency is to make a profit. But in a competitive market such as digital marketing, you’ll need to have the right prices to attract customers.
A calling campaign is an important tool in many sectors, whether it is to maintain relationships with customers, to conduct a sales prospecting campaign or simply to communicate information about an event or an offer.
Most sales conversations are almost completely virtual, which means using video calling solutions and platforms. Buyers and salespeople prefer this approach.
The art of selling is tough, but the art of virtual selling is tougher. When COVID-19 struck, sellers were forced online to continue their trade. With sophisticated tech and multiple eCommerce sales channels available, the opportunity to sell remotely was a godsend.
With the rise of new sales and marketing strategies, enterprises of all sizes are losing focus on testing different methods to increase their sales. Although newer sales strategies and tools are exciting to try, telesales remains one of the most effective ways to close sales and generate revenue for businesses. This is especially true when for high ticket products and services.
Every business is a brand, or has the potential to become a ‘brand’, and therefore benefit from an intangible but important part of the sales and marketing process, known as ‘brand equity.’
CrankWheel is honored to be recognized as a Top Performer by SourceForge, the world’s largest software reviews and comparison website.
Email marketing is at the forefront of modern marketing and it’s one of the most profitable and easy-to-start forms of marketing for businesses. It has an incredible ROI; for every $1 that is spent on email marketing, the ROI can be as high as $42. Although email marketing has a great ROI on average, you must use the best email marketing strategies to maximize your conversions. In this post, we’ll explore the 7 best email marketing strategies to increase your conversions. Read through the strategies and implement a few of them to see how much your conversion rates can increase.
Reykjavík, Iceland The Icelandic bootstrapped startup CrankWheel has acquired all assets of the Danish startup Accordium. The acquisition (price undisclosed), includes technical infrastructure and intellectual property as well as the Accordium brand and customer base.
When the pandemic hit, in March 2020, companies had to move teams to work from home. In many cases, staff was also put on either mandatory holidays or government-supported schemes where they kept their jobs but were off work for weeks or months.
Getting customers to contact you on their own is every entrepreneur’s dream, but it doesn’t just happen overnight. There are certain steps you need to take to fine-tune your inbound sales process for success.
Reykjavík, Iceland – Digital.com, a leading independent review website for small business online tools, products, and services, has announced CrankWheel among the best telemarketing software of 2021. The top firms were evaluated based on CRM tools, reporting capabilities, and other essential features.
In this guide to telesales, we have gathered some of our resources that will help you become successful in telesales. It includes tips on strategies, how to do telesales effectively, how to generate more leads, qualify them and improve conversion rates. Plus, the guide includes tips on sales scripts, conversations, how to overcome objections and the best tools that enable you to become successful in telesales.
Sales teams often complain about poor leads or not getting adequate marketing support. Marketing teams oppose the claim saying it sends hundreds of promising leads, but sales teams don’t put in the required time and effort.
So many sales conversations are happening over virtual sales platforms right now. CrankWheel is one of those solutions that experienced a surge in use in 2020.
Before you get into the actual business, what is the first step? Lead generation. No matter what, but a large part of the organizational success depends on quality leads. But, the question for many is, ‘How can I generate sales leads?’
Salespeople, regardless of sector or whether they are inbound, outbound, field sales, door-to-door, telesales, or account managers are always good at selling one thing: themselves.
Today, every campaign must compete and deliver across multiple channels - your customers don’t live in a single app or network, and neither can you.
Not every company has a sales process. Even those turning over millions, with teams of outbound and inbound sales agents, could be operating in the same way as a startup. No process, no structure.
In outbound sales, the objective is to get a meeting with a potential sales lead. As far as you’re concerned, these are viable potential clients.
Have you heard of the term “Zoom fatigue”? It’s a pandemic-era phrase, alongside words like furlough and lockdown. One of the many things society has got used to since March 2020.
CloudTelecom Inc, a Tokyo-based telecommunication services company, has chosen screen-sharing from CrankWheel to their new CloudOffice Console service offering. The screen-sharing solution will give CloudOffice users the ability to easily share documents while on a voice call.
Getting into the software sector is a smart move, and potentially very lucrative for salespeople. Software as a Service (SaaS) is booming, and as a sector it continues to grow, with global revenues already over $105 billion, according to Gartner.
For any business, processes are important. They set the tone for how a business is conducted, how efficient they are, and how well they reach consumers. Your business probably has many different processes for many different procedures. One of the most important has to be the sales process. This involves moving consumers from being prospects to buyers and hopefully into loyal customers. Using cloud computing can help make the sales process easier, smarter, and more efficient. It can do this at every point of the sales process, so implementing cloud computing solutions can make a huge difference to your business. Here’s how.
Our customers have become more successful with easy screen sharing and by capturing inbound leads faster. Here is a list of a few of the success stories from our customers that have used CrankWheel for insurance, mortgage advice, tax consulting, digital marketing agencies and SEO services, onboarding and customer success, digital platforms and business directories. CrankWheel has enabled telesales teams to become more effective, customer service representatives to become more successful, field sales teams to be more efficient and helped sales teams to move to a hybrid sales model.
Over the last few decades, buyer behaviours have changed. Buyers — potential clients or customers — are more clued up now than ever. At one point, sellers had all of the information, and it was the role of salespeople to educate buyers, thereby encouraging them to go ahead with a purchase.
Performance reviews are an integral part of the work every manager does. Whether annually, or usually quarterly, it’s a great way for a manager to review everyone’s work and identify areas for improvement.
Every profession has a suite of apps that the majority of people use on a daily basis. Sales is no exception. Everyone relies on apps in sales.
With over 760 million professionals on LinkedIn and 60 million companies, it’s the most valuable social media platform in the world to connect salespeople with potential customers.
Closing a deal is surely the most important aspect of every prospect interaction, right?
Sales is all about establishing a working relationship with a new customer. It’s about establishing trust, getting to know one another, and ultimately starting to work together.
Generally speaking, when the ticket price of a product/service in a B2B transaction is low, it shouldn’t take too many calls or meetings to land a sale.
Once you’ve had a conversation with a sales lead, every salesperson wants a smooth journey to a conversion. Unfortunately, objections often slow the process down, or can derail it completely.
With everything everyone has been through, since March 2020, it’s understandable if your sales teams skills aren’t as sharp as they once were. Sales training can help refresh skills, while supporting these new ways of working.
Some of the best sales agents, whether inbound or outbound, are a bit selfish and focused on one thing: Hitting targets and making money. That really isn’t it a bad thing, you want them hungry to hit those goals. But at the same time, some of them are equally capable of helping everyone else on the team, and this means they could make brilliant sales managers.
Gartner is predicting that 80% of sales will happen in digital channels by 2025. Covid-19 has forced a sudden shift on changes that were already happening, with B2B buyers and sellers increasingly reliant on digital channels before March 2020.
Persistent salespeople keep going and get results. 80% of deals take five or more calls, emails, messages, video calls and instant demos to close, whereas 44% of salespeople give up after the first attempted follow-up call.
Während sich 2019 dem Ende zuneigt und 2020 immer näher rückt, ist es für Vertriebsleiter ganz natürlich, über die Fortschritte in diesem Jahr nachzudenken und sich Gedanken darüber zu machen, wie man die Ziele für das nächste Jahr erreichen kann. Denn denken Sie daran: Sie sind nur so gut wie Ihr letztes Quartal.
Whether you are an insurance advisor, a doctor, an accountant, a hairdresser, a real estate agent, an engineer, a marketer, or in any other line of work, we have a hot tip for you. If you do not already have your own personal online presence, your career would greatly benefit from one.
Lead generation is the process of creating and distributing resources that will attract your ideal customers to your website.
Sales managers and business owners are facing new challenges when connecting with leads and closing deals. Now that most teams are working remotely and sales conversations with prospects have moved to video calling platforms, it’s easy to feel discouraged and overwhelmed.
In sales, mirroring and psychology is a way of engaging prospects on a deeper level. Also known as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), it’s a series of techniques, words and phrases used to encourage prospects to take positive actions.
One of the key factors, when it comes to converting a lead is taking a custom approach. Tailoring demos and pitches to what a potential customer actually needs. And that means putting in the work in the beginning in order to reap the benefits later.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the customer is a key determinant to the success of any business.
Remember life before the pandemic. You could wander into shops, casually, and browse products. It didn’t matter if you weren’t shopping for anything in particular.
“Always Be Closing” is a phrase Alec Baldwin’s character, Blake, a salesperson uses in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Typical of the money hungry early 1990s, the salespeople are told they need to close every deal relentlessly, convincing clients using intimidation, arm twisting and lying.
Sales during this ongoing pandemic has changed. How we sell is different than the approaches many sales teams took before it started, back in March 2020.
In the fourth part of this series, we look at what to do after sending a sales proposal: how you overcome objections, sell more strategically, and crucially, follow-up to get the results you want.
In the third part of this series, we look at sales presentations and the role they play in solution selling.
In the second part of this series, we look at the key to solution selling: assessing what prospects need. Active listening is essential to this, as is asking the right questions.
Solution selling is an approach that’s been working for salespeople since the 1980s. It’s not revolutionary, unless you look at how you currently sell and realise you need to make improvements to get better results.
Now is a good time to start considering whether you need new tech tools for next year. Are you already using a CRM? If not, is this something you’d benefit from?
LinkedIn has revolutionized the way businesses connect with each other. Make the most out of this platform by using its Sales Navigator tool.
When it comes to capturing warm inbound sales leads these days, you are facing challenging circumstances. Everyone is. Marketers are all in the same boat. You are fighting hard to get the attention of your target audience against the distracting effect of the rest of the Internet, and dozens of competitors.
2020 has been a horrendous year, in many ways. A global pandemic has swept the world, causing death, disruption and major economic upset.
With the impact of Covid-19 around the world, businesses everywhere have been forced to adapt quickly. This virus is far too deadly to go about ‘business as usual.’ Instead, the ‘new normal’ we are all living and working in has forced companies to ensure staff are working from home (WFH).
Every year, we have a custom designed CrankWheel t-shirt made for the holidays. This year, we think we have a great one.
We are in a global pandemic, all in this together, living and working in a ‘new normal.’ How do you make plans for the year ahead under these circumstances?
In the UK, in response to surging Coronavirus numbers, the government has implemented a second national lockdown, alongside other European countries struggling with the deadly pandemic.
We reached a pretty big milestone for CrankWheel on November 7th, when we released a public-facing update of our software for the 100th time.
As 2020 rolls into the final quarter, sales teams and leaders are looking forward to the new year. Some of the many challenges companies are faced with are closing as many deals as possible and getting revenue in a healthy position for 2021.
Could anyone have imagined 2020 would be so affected by something the majority of us hadn’t heard of at the end of last year?
Sales conversion rates are crucial right now. Sales teams need to hit targets and close as many deals as possible.
Sales integrity is an undervalued but ultimately essential skill. Buyers need to trust salespeople. Especially now. When everyone is scrambling to hit targets, buyers could be inclined to be more wary and cautious.
Have you ever pitched at a prospect who didn’t buy? Of course, you have. Every salesperson has done pitches, calls and proposals that fall flat. It isn’t fun.
Life and business doesn’t always go to plan. Both throw curve balls at most people on a regular basis. Now we are all living and attempting to work through one of the most disruptive events in recent history, certainly in living memory. Nothing could have prepared the world for Coronavirus (Covid-19), a devastating and deadly global pandemic.
Research shows that the top 10% of customers spend 3x more per order than the regular customer base, and the top 1% spend 5x more per order. However, in my experience, most SaaS businesses still focus on acquiring as many new customers as possible.
LinkedIn now has over 700 million users worldwide. This Microsoft-owned social platform is without a doubt the most effective way for sales teams to connect with buyers and new customers.
Sales during times of uncertainty are completely different than under normal economic conditions.
One of the challenges sales leaders are struggling with is too much data. Before CRMs and other apps and software, sales was about personal relationships. All of that data was in people’s heads, on bits of paper, and sometimes emails.
Being a sales rep, whether you are doing outbound or inbound sales, has never been more challenging. Whatever the economy and some sectors were doing before Covid-19, this has made the operating environment more difficult.
Around the world, many countries are still in some form of lockdown. Coronavirus (Covid-19) has changed the world, and the sales landscape with it.
In sales, especially for field sales teams, face-to-face meetings are crucial for establishing and maintaining strong client relationships.
Now may be a good time for you to double down on outbound sales and email messages. Aim to win as many new prospects into the pipeline as possible. Achieving this means writing and sending emails and messages that get opened.
Presentations, also known as sales or pitch decks, are a key part of product demos. You need to wow customers and sales prospects. Especially now. For the foreseeable future, sales meetings/demos are staying virtual, which makes the visual more important than ever.
Since the turn of the new Millennium, the world has already weathered and come out of the other side of several economic storms. In 2001, it was the end of the dot com bubble and start of one recession, following 9/11.
Coronavirus: How long will it last, and will we ever get back to face-to-face sales meetings? Questions that for sales leaders, and sales teams, are unavoidable at present.
No one imagined the world would be struck with a pandemic in 2020. Coronavirus (Covid-19) has, without a doubt, changed the world as we know it. It’s tragic, devastating and scary. We may never go back to ‘normal’, and for now a new normal is asserting itself.
No one expected Coronavirus (Covid-19) to hit the world in 2020. It’s devastating, tragic for those affected, and we aren’t out of the other side yet. Economically, it’s a global disaster, pushing the world into a recession. Some regions and countries are going to be worse off than others.
On busy days, when an outbound sales team is making calls and sending emails and messages, booking demos and meetings, and closing deals, there is a buzz of energy in the room.
Before Coronavirus swept through the world, remote work was a growing trend. In the tech and startup world, thousands of companies were operating with completely remote teams, or part of the team was remote some of the time.
In today’s digital era, it has never been more relevant to consider hosting a virtual conference. There are a number of ways you can create value for your users. One common way is through events – like conferences, meetups, or user-groups – where customers, clients, industry leaders, and other experts have the opportunity to exchange experiences and knowledge.
Outbound sales teams: What is one of your biggest pain points, once you’ve got leads in the pipeline? Are your leads hard-to-reach, so it needs to be easy for them to consider a solution and say yes? Does it take more than one call to qualify a lead, and then close a deal? Do sales leads drop out of the pipeline?
Customer service calls aren’t always easy. In some cases, a call can be substituted for a self-serve experience. Customers are adept at finding out what they need online, or through logging into online accounts (e.g. FAQs, AI-powered bots, videos and other solutions companies roll-out solve a lot of problems) where answers to questions can be found.
Working from home is one of the most effective ways to combat the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19). At present, global confirmed cases are over 340,000 with 14,600 deaths, according to the WHO. Almost every country and territory has been impacted in some way.
Worldwide, as of 22 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting over 290,000 cases of Coronavirus (COVID-19), with nearly 13,000 deaths across 187 countries and territories.
Sales are either transactional and relationship-based. In most cases, when sales are transactional they are relatively low-budget, a prospect can make a decision quickly, and price plays an important factor.
A lot of folks these days are transitioning from field sales to inside sales. We put together this webinar series to help give you the tools and training that you’ll need.
COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus is spreading fast. We have to acknowledge that this is a scary and rapid developing situation, with scientists around the world working on vaccines and ways of reducing the spread of the disease. One of the most sensible precautions people can take is to self-isolate and practice social distancing.
In light of COVID-19, we want you to know that you can rest assured that CrankWheel as a company is in excellent shape. We will continue to operate, and improve our product and service, throughout the crisis.
Coronavirus is spreading rapidly through the world. As of 16 March 2020, there are over 164,000 confirmed cases, with many more suspected, likely, or undiagnosed, and 6,500 deaths.
Pipeline management is a serious challenge for every sales leader. Anyone who leads a sales team grapples with the same problem. Forecasting is not easy. It’s not an exact science.
Sales are never straightforward. Sales managers and teams across a wide range of sectors and verticals are all doing the same thing, but often in very different ways. In some sectors, sales are quick and transactional. Price playing a big factor. Often, this is when suppliers are selling products and services in a B2B setting that are quickly consumed or used in some way, such as supplies into the construction trade, for example.
In the world of sales, there are easy and hard-to-reach prospects. One isn’t better than the other. Having to work to reach a prospect doesn’t make them any less valuable or viable than one that can be contacted across a dozen channels.
It’s hard to grow when you’re small. Without a marketing budget you can’t attract new customers. Right?
If you want to know more about how CrankWheel got started, this interview just published on StarterStory is a good, long read.
How do you reach sales leads who aren’t online? How do you contact those hard-to-reach customers? Depending on your sector, products or services, this could be a challenge your sales team is struggling with every day.
Every sales manager wants a team of high achievers. Salespeople who pick up the phone, send emails and messages, attend meetings, and consistently close deals and bring in new business. Persistence, enthusiasm, and energy are crucial traits all successful salespeople share.
Sales people have always had an uneasy relationship with scripts. Many think they’re not going to sound genuine and convincing. And to an extent, they’re right to worry about that.
Outbound and inbound sales play separate roles in a business. Inbound is closer to account management, except these are new leads who’ve found you and want to know more.
In many companies, there is a policy “the customer is always right.” “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1”. – Stew Leonard
With 2020 upon us, now is the time when many sales leaders start planning for the year ahead. It’s also the time of year when those who’ve struggled will jump ship, so either you are scrambling to find someone new, or have a search already under way.
Confidence sells, as it improves the trust factor between a buyer and seller. As a salesperson doing an online demo, confidence gives you a sense of authority, knowledge and understanding. It tells the prospect that they’re talking to someone who can help them solve the problem they have.
Sales enablement should make it easier for salespeople to generate leads and close deals. Get sales enablement right, and your team should have less to worry about and can spend more time doing what they’re good at.
Sales skills need constant work. With a new year of prospecting, of winning and closing coming up, with new targets, salespeople need to think about where they can improve and how to get ready for the new year.
Following up sales emails or calls with another email is something everyone in sales does, almost without fail, every week. It’s rarely a fun task, and often follow-ups are frustrating.
LinkedIn, with over 660 million users worldwide, is without a doubt the most effective platform for sales professionals to connect with prospects.
Salespeople are no longer the masters of product knowledge. Buyers now seek to know as much about a potential solution to a problem they’re having as a salesperson trying to sell them it.
As 2019 draws to a close and 2020 fast approaches, now is the time when many sales leaders are thinking about the performance of the team and how to do better next year.
On LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social platform, with over 660 million users, there is a vast opportunity of sales leads.
At the end of the year, it’s natural for sales leaders to reflect on this year’s progress and think about how to achieve next year’s goals. Remember, you are only as good as your previous quarter.
Time is the enemy of every salesperson. When time is on your side, when you’ve got more prospects than you can manage and loads of time until the end of the month or quarter, it can feel pretty awesome to be in sales.
Some sales tactics need to be left behind. With 2020 fast approaching, the last year in the second decade of the twenty first century, we have put together a few that are worth forgetting about.
Sales in person has numerous advantages to sales over the phone, or across a screen. In person, sales people have the advantage of reading body language, listening and observing the many visuals cues we give when speaking to others.
The most effective sales teams use sophisticated sales cadences which are built on real data insights. The steps that you include and the timing of those activities are vital components of a winning cadence. From the number of steps that you include to the time durations between the various sales contacts that form part of your sales approach (everything from emailing to calling to chatting on LinkedIn or other social media platforms, for example), these are all important cadence considerations.
ChromeOS and the use of Chromebooks or Android-based devices can be ideal for sales teams that need a low cost tech solution. Easy-to-use and cost effective is what ChromeOS promises, and we know from experience that it delivers.
Salespeople are only successful when they have conversations with prospects. Every conversation serves as an opportunity to engage. A conversation is a chance to define needs, understand pain points, and come up with solutions. But you need to kick off a conversation for this to happen.
“Are you ready to go ahead?” Whatever way you bring a successful sales negotiation to a close, one of the most frustrating things a prospect can say is, “Yes, but . . .” and then they ask for a discount.
LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for outbound sales prospecting. We have published articles previously about how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to shorten the sales cycle. Sales Navigator is designed with people in business development (and recruitment) roles in mind. Prices start at $64.99 per month (billed annually), or $134.99 per license when buying on behalf of a team (billed monthly).
In most B2B sales environments, summer is a quiet season. Decision makers are on holiday. Or even if they’re in the office, there are enough people on vacation that purchasing decisions are often delayed. Summer slowdown can be frustrating, especially if sales teams are behind on targets.
Sales is technology and data-driven. In many ways, sales hasn’t changed in decades: It’s still all about people. Making connections and building relationships, and solving problems.
Accounts where there are multiple decision makers can be difficult to manage. You might have one decision maker, even a budget holder, who wants to go ahead; while at the same time, others are blocking the decision.
Remember those really simple math problems from elementary (or primary) school? You know the ones. Where there is a picture with like, a certain number of apples in one pile and some more in another. Then, you either add or subtract the apples and see how many apples there are going to be in the end. Sales has a similar equation.
Your messaging - also known as a value proposition - is a key part of the sales process. A strong, clear message is how potential clients understand what you offer and how it benefits them.
Following up is rarely a fun activity. Compared to sales calls, demos, and meetings, following-up with prospects and accounts is something that everyone in sales does, but few enjoy. It’s a necessity and one of the few tasks in sales that often needs repeating.
The sales pitch can make or break the sales conversation. The pitch is a concentrate of your positioning and how creates value for the prospect. And ideally, you should be able to deliver it in one breath of air. Whether you’ve gone to a networking event, picked up the phone, sent an email or LinkedIn message, your communication channel matter as well. Your channel is going to have an impact on the response rate. So will a whole load of other factors, some of which you can’t control.
Assuming your current sales team is doing well, the next smart move is to scale the team. More skilled sales people should, in theory, close more deals and increase revenue, right?
Sales happen where customers are and customer conversations moving to apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger more often. Apps that aren’t easily integrated with CRMs. This article will help you stay organized and harness the power of messaging apps for sales.
Sales is problem solving. For sales teams in a B2B environment, sales isn’t about pitching. Sales people who pick up the phone, get through to a decision maker, and pitch, or who turn up to a meeting and fire off a pitch, don’t do well.
As Summer approaches, for sales leaders and managers this can be a time to recharge, re-think and re-tool knowledge and strategies for the rest of the year to come. If you are taking a holiday, or this is traditionally going to be a quieter time of year for your business, in the weeks and months ahead, now is the perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in useful new knowledge, new ideas and new approaches.
Being in sales is all about knowing how to advertise your products or services in the best light possible in order to make a successful sale. That requires developing a marketing strategy that can maximize your potential of sales. However, sales is all about generating more revenue relative to your expenditures, thus resulting in more profits.
Do you want to close more deals, faster? Do you want to get more qualified leads into the sales pipeline, and qualify them sooner? Assuming the answer to those questions is yes, this article is worth reading.
You probably see it on social media every day; “It’s 2022, why are we still doing [insert something that really shouldn’t be happening anymore]!?”. So when it comes to sales, there are some tried-and-tested methods that are always going to work. Not everything needs to change with the latest Instagram filter.
Generating leads is job one. Qualifying them is job two. Unless you know a lead is a potential client, you could spend weeks or months pursuing what looks like an opportunity, only for it to fall apart. Save yourself time and stress early on, with an efficient qualification process.
Closing is the final, crucial stage of every deal. At some point in every conversation, you need to ask the potential client for an answer. Often, in relationship-driven consultative sales negotiations, days, weeks or months of work have gone into this moment.
Hitting growth targets requires a consistency and predictability that most sales teams fail to manage. In the top 22 percent of companies, business development managers are consistent and predictable when it comes to hitting target.
Sales professionals expect to be paid well. Salaries for experienced salespeople are often larger than other career paths with the same number of years experience.
What do you want your sales team doing every day? Selling! Closing deals! Hitting targets. Sales teams that aren’t closing, aren’t talking to prospects (calls, meetings, demos), aren’t bringing more prospects into the pipeline aren’t doing enough to hit targets.
Time and pressure. Sales teams never seem to have enough time, putting them under pressure to hit targets and keep driving growth forward. Any advantage you can gain on how to shorten your sales cycle, is worth pursuing.
In Europe, the UK and even parts of Asia - including China - economists are predicting that growth is going to slow down. Not a recession, but GDP isn’t going to increase at the same rate as previous years.
Reviews and referrals are powerful drivers of new leads and sales. So why do so many salespeople forget to make them part of the process?
“How is your sales pipeline looking?” This question, or some variant on that theme, is something that most sales managers ask their sales team at least once a week. Sales managers need to know that a sales team is making every effort to keep the pipeline flowing with new deals.
Sales is, without a doubt, the key driving force behind the growth of every company. Growth is not rocket science. Sales teams do not need complex algorithms and AI-powered computers to drive forward growth.
Screen sharing is a big part of the modern sales process. Inside sales teams are increasingly using screen sharing as an invaluable sales tool. Compared to in-person presentations, screen sharing needs a different approach and set of skills to engage your audience.
Account management and strategic account management is one of the most effective ways to increase revenue from clients. It is always going to be easier increasing budgets from those you are already working with than completely new customers.
In every business, there are going to be times when some customers aren’t happy with the service. No matter how hard your team work to deliver great service, there will be times when they fail to meet expectations.
Sales outputs are closely aligned with activity. Hitting your targets is a lot harder when you aren’t taking enough calls and having enough meetings with accounts and potential clients.
Cold calling isn’t an easy game. It takes patience and persistence. Whether you are doing inside or field sales, your job is to make calls and hope a few of them result in meetings, demos or pitches.
In January 2019, we were delighted to announce the launch of CrankWheel Remote Control. Now an integral part of every CrankWheel plan, including our free-for-life plan, anyone can give their viewer control over anything from a browser tab to the full screen.
Unlike field sales agents, inside sales teams are in the office churning through calls, emails and social media outreach techniques to convert prospects into clients.
Hitting target, or quota, is at the forefront of everyone’s mind in sales. You are only as good as your previous quarter, and in high-growth environments, you need to keep hitting target to stay on the team.
Sales always feels like a race. Or climbing a hill. Now that last year is over, you’ve got a new hill to climb, a new race to run. With a new year started, you need to turn future potential into reality.
Have you ever wished that during a screen share, you could let your viewer take over control of the web page or presentation you are showing them, and all without a download? We’re happy to announce that now you can, thanks to the launch of CrankWheel Remote Control, which is included as part of all CrankWheel plans including our free-for-life plan.
At the start of a new year, sales people are either exhausted from closing the previous year, celebratory or looking for a new role. In sales, when someone fails to hit target, there is rarely enough time for a post-game analysis.
When it comes to developing new product features and services, who should have the power? Should your sales leads and pipeline get a vote or should companies stick to product roadmaps?
On the receiving end of a sales call it can be annoying. An unexpected interruption. Someone trying to sell you something you aren’t ready to buy, maybe haven’t even heard about, and that you don’t want. What are the chances they’re going to convert you into a customer? You try and get out of the call any way you can, or just hang up.
Everyone in sales is pushing themselves forward to hit target before the end of the year. Wherever your company is in the financial year, the end of one year and start of a new one crosses an important psychological barrier. Hitting target gives sales professionals a valuable confidence boost.
Do you know your 2019 number yet? Can you guess? For many sales managers, new targets for the year ahead are often larger than the previous year.
Selling to small and medium businesses (SMBs) is about proving that your solution will solve a challenge they are having. Providing you’re talking to a company with a challenge you can solve, they need this solution and have a budget, then you are talking to a potential client.
Qualification is one of the most important part of the sales process. Sales professionals who fail to qualify a lead can spend weeks or months chasing something that isn’t going to happen.
Show don’t tell is a powerful option to have when talking to sales prospect. Sure, you can tell them all about your product, its wonderful features and benefits: or you can show them.
Selling a complex product can make it a challenge for a sales team to hit targets. Top line numbers can stretch into the distance and sales cycles can get longer as salespeople struggle to sell the value of the product to potential clients.
“Referral leads convert 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels”, with B2B referrals closing at rates above 70%, according to the latest research.
Entering a new market can be a longer and more challenging journey than many founders imagine. In our always-on, hyper-connected world, we imagine that engaging with people in other countries gives us an insight into new markets.
Keeping sales prospects engaged is not easy. Cold calling is increasingly inefficient and ineffective. It can take as many as 18 calls to get a potential buyer on the phone.
As soon as a startup closes a funding round the clock starts ticking. As a founding team, you have targets to hit. It is almost impossible to do that without dedicated full-time salespeople.
Cold calling is not an easy game. Getting who you want on the phone is a time-consuming task. Despite increasing reluctance and a mistaken belief that “cold calling is dead”, speaking to a potential sales lead is still more effective than sending an email or making contact using social media.
Customers love getting something for free. Since the early days of software startups, SaaS companies in particular encourage new clients to sign-up with Freemium pricing models.
Generating sales leads from cold calls isn’t easy. And in many ways, inside sales is getting tougher.
Sending a text. It’s quick, convenient and unobtrusive. You don’t need to worry about interrupting someone’s work or meeting when you send a text.
Summer, especially during August when buyers and decision makers go on holiday can be a slow month for sales teams. Decisions get delayed. Momentum is lost. Deals can even evaporate in the heat.
Customers are constantly on the hunt for bargains. Whether it’s scouring the web for coupon codes or cashing in on last minute deals to save some money, retail shoppers love to save.
This brief guide shows how to integrate events from Instant Demos into Google Analytics. A similar approach can be used for other analytics systems.
For sales leaders, there is nothing worse than knowing your team is off-target. In high-growth companies, failing to hit a monthly or quarterly goal can have a huge impact. You could even risk missing an annual target that could make the difference between breaking even or going under.
Sales is evolving. Not only are we operating in a low-growth economy in most developed regions of the world, but how buyers behave is changing. Sales managers and account managers need to evolve and adapt to survive and thrive.
Sales is a numbers game, as any seasoned professional knows. Hitting your number, and making sure your team hits target, is the name of the game. In software companies, maintaining that consistent growth momentum is an even bigger challenge.
Several years ago then I worked as a Sales Manager at Omada I learned the value of using online meetings to qualify my opportunities and I experienced how it helped me to increase my sales productivity with 5x.
What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the words “business networking”? If it’s of awkward small talk, nervous laughter and sweaty palms then you’re certainly not alone.
If you’re a small business trying to make a name for yourself online, inbound marketing is seen as the go-to tactic.
We recently hosted a well-received webinar covering lessons we’ve learned from using product demos in our own sales pipeline, as well as lessons learned from seeing how CrankWheel customers use Instant Demos in different sales models.
When it comes to B2B sales, everything is focused on the ideal customer. Company ethos, mission statements, marketing campaigns and sales materials are all crafted to appeal to the target audience. And rightly so.
Most side projects and companies start with a couple of founders: hard working, committed, believing in a grand vision… Then comes the time to hire your first employees, which can be a daunting process. Who should you hire first? When is the right time? How exactly can you convince great people to join a company they’ve never heard of?
GDPR. Four letters that have struck fear into marketing teams across Europe. What’s been an elephant in the room for so long finally comes into force on May 25, 2018. But what exactly is the General Data Protection Regulation and how is it going to affect you?
79 percent of all marketing leads never convert into sales. For all of the good work marketing does in producing content and engaging website and social visitors, only 21 percent of leads are any good.
When Amazon launched in 1995, it flipped the B2C market on its head. Consumers had a new way to shop, and other companies were forced to react. Over two decades on, many brick-and-mortar stores that failed to adapt to digital technologies are no longer around, while others struggle to compete.
According to Transparency Market Research (TMP), the SaaS market will reach $164.29 billion by 2022. The IDC says that SaaS delivery is growing five times faster than the traditional software market, with cloud software accounting for $1 of every $4.59 spent on software.
Watch a recording of our webinar to get an inside look at our deep integration with Talkdesk.
Customers don’t appear out of thin air. In fact, the process of turning a stranger into your customer includes a great number of actions, where lead generation is a core element. There are some proven lead gen methods like newsletters, PPC advertising, or webinars. That said, you shouldn’t be limited to these tactics.
When Google unveiled its Chromebook in 2011, it was met with skepticism. Would an operating system that is primarily web-based be any good? Relying on internet access to run the majority of applications hardly seemed practical, especially when dependable WiFi was hard to find.
A long time ago in a land far away, I was a Sales Rep for a company that was transitioning from offering traditional break/fix computer services to offering 24×7 monitoring and support (aka managed services) for a flat monthly fee.
How well do you know your customer? Well enough to know what they’re willing to spend money on, what they like and dislike about your products?
In the early stages of growth, pricing is one of the defining features of any software startup. Going to market with a product that isn’t priced to offer value is a fast track to failure.
We partnered with Talkdesk, a leading intelligent contact center cloud platform, to become a featured screen sharing solution in their AppConnect marketplace. From now on you can use both apps together as one seamless sales platform that offers telephony and screen sharing with integrated lead capture.
In an ever-increasingly technologized world, artificial intelligence is already in use in several ways. And whether you like it or not, A.I. will be a part of everyday life, sooner or later. Business will be revolutionized (this is already taking place as we speak) and it’s time for us to prepare.
Sales training is built on a billable hour business model. The sector alone, composed of freelance consultants and multinational firms, is a multi-billion dollar industry.
I saw this on LinkedIn the other day. Is it relevant for sales professionals in startups?
Sales professionals in any sector don’t have it easy. But when you’re up against established legacy competitors or trying to gain traction in a new market or vertical, you’ve usually got a tough journey ahead.
Sales managers in software startups face multiple challenges every day. Maintain growth. Hit target. Manage people. Source leads. Close deals. Look after key accounts and partners. It never ends.
Sales teams need to keep pipelines busy and active. A quiet pipeline, one without enough prospects, or enough likely prospects, should be seen as a red flag to managers and co-founders. Boards and investors often need to be kept informed about the state of the pipeline.
Scaling means committing to growth. Growing means staffing up in sales and marketing departments. You do need a sales team. The clock has started ticking. From the moment investor funds hit your account, you are in a race against time.
Software is created to solve problems. Salespeople work to make sure that as many potential clients see how your software solves their problem. Saves time. Saves money. Makes a process more efficient.
When it comes to scaling a Venture-backed startup, figuring out staffing numbers isn’t an exact science. Founders are keen to increase marketing and sales team numbers since these directly contribute to revenue. Or at least, that is the idea.
Potential clients want to see how your software can do what you claim. Product demos are an effective and popular way to give prospects a tour, wherever they are in the world.
When you work with and around enough software startups, you often hear similar phrases, from staff and founders confident that a free trial is a final stage in the sales funnel.
For a long time there’s been an intense debate between onsite and online sales presentations. Is it better for your team to be in the field, meeting customers face-to-face? Or putting them on the phones, calling and presenting demos online?
No, not the type you’re thinking of! We were hosting UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School students for International MBA Consultancy Week (from the 5th to 8th of June).
Digital marketing, thankfully, is playing a role in ensuring you can reach a much wider audience of potential buyers. Websites and digital sales funnels make it easier to reach a wider group of buyers. With social media, content, email marketing, landing pages, and digital advertising, your product can reach hundreds or thousands of potential buyers every day. Reaching them is only the first step.
David Skok, a serial entrepreneur turned VC, with Matrix Partners, coined the phrase, “touchless conversion sales model” around seven years ago, with an article that neatly summed up the low-touch sales model.
Software companies don’t always adopt the same pricing models, even when they are selling a similar service to competitors in the same market or sector. There is a psychology behind why different pricing models are adopted, which is what we will explore in this article.
Software is big business. Gartner estimates that IT spending will exceed $3.5 trillion in 2017, with $357 billion of that spent on software services, a 7.2% increase in 2016 global software revenues, which were around $333 billion.
Calling a potential lead within 5 minutes of an inquiry (or them handing over an email or phone number through a landing page) increases the chance of successful contact 100 times. This lead is 22 times more likely to enter the sales pipeline, according to the Lead Response Management Study.
CrankWheel just surpassed 10.000 weekly installed users on the Chrome Web Store, and with great scale comes great responsibility. The last few weeks were a lesson in humility in regards to customer success management at scale.
Responding to a customer request within 1 minute increases conversion effectiveness 22x. It’s so intuitive yet at the same time we, the software industry, make customers jump through hoops to get our attention. Here’s one way to make that problem go away.
Come and witness live how fresh and exciting sales can get when you put your heart into developing innovation that works every time!
You all know that at CrankWheel, we are absolutely insane when it comes to collecting sales data and sharing the our experience.
CrankWheel is growing based on user feedback. We seize every opportunity to talk with our buyers. We meet them everywhere! From attendees of events like Slush to other participants of startup competitions like Vodafone Stökkpallur, Deloitte Fast Rising 50 (both of which we won, by the way!). We talk in order to do proper research about screen sharing usability.
In every sales follow-up call hides the dreaded „how does it work?” question. How does one cope in these „I want it now!” times?
Hey there! We are CrankWheel, an international startup from Iceland. We are going to Slush 2016 and we want to meet you there!
This interview was originally published in Icelandic at Vodafone.is under the name “CrankWheel - From Google and a Sales Career to an International Startup in Iceland”.
Deloitte’s jury has finished debating and announced, among others, that CrankWheel was chosen to present on the Fast 50 - Rising Star event on 16th November, on the 20th floor of the Deloitte Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland.
A picture is worth a thousand words. A thousand words when spoken at an average speed require 7 minutes and 42 seconds. You can save your customers that much time by simply adding screen sharing to your telesales campaigns!
Surely your company has great sales professionals with all of the tools it needs to get people interested in the product itself. After all, sales professionals have a wide variety of tools, but according to a recent study (and just plain intuition!) delivering sales presentations is the primary deal closer for most.
It is our great pleasure to announce today the launch of an innovative project one of our customers started several months ago, where CrankWheel plays a key role.
If you’ve ever been involved in sales, you’re sure to have noticed one thing that is critical: sharing. Whether you’re the buyer or the seller, sharing forms the bedrock of your conversation. Prospects share their business challenges and their ideas of how they want to address those challenges. They share how they create value for their customers and how they’re constantly seeking to improve. Flip it around, and the sales team shares their value proposition, and they share proof of how their solution can help solve the prospect’s challenges.
One of Google’s early mottos, part of their “10 things” mantra, was that “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” Our founder drank a lot of Kool-Aid in his ten years at Google, plus it’s just one of the most sensible mantras we’ve heard. That’s why we designed CrankWheel to be a simple tool that does one thing really, really well, namely screen sharing.
Imagine this phone call between Bob, a very well off older gentleman, and Maude, a salesperson at a high-end travel agency:
The last few weeks have been quite hectic here at CrankWheel HQ. Two things kept us busy: Making our product generally available on our website on Friday, November 6th, and preparing for the Slush conference in Helsinki, which happened last week, November 11th and 12th. Our plan was to launch just before Slush, and then publicize our launch at the conference, as well as meet with prospective customers in Finland during our trip.
You may have read about CrankWheel before, on our founder’s blog or the Startup Iceland blog. Today, CrankWheel is coming further out of hiding, launching a new website and this new blog.
