Marketers are tasked with discovering and establishing the leads that will help get the product in the right hands; sales, puts that product in the hands of the consumer. As such, both jobs directly affect each other. If marketers can’t find where to place the product, sales cannot sell it. Likewise, if sales can’t sell anything, then marketers don’t know which products to pitch where.  

But when times are tough and sales begin to plunge, it’s usually the sales team that is pulled in and read the riot act.

Boss – “Why are we not converting sales”

Sales – “Marketing is giving us sucky leads.”

Marketing – “Sales couldn’t close a door, let alone a new client.”

So herein lies one of the greatest organizational debates of all time: sales continually feeling that marketing provides them with sucky leads while marketing feels sales is just doing a sucky job at converting. Of course, this is nothing new.

While the dynamic between the two has always been complex, it has become even more so with the advent of SaaS. (Software-as-a-Service) SaaS as a business model in conjunction with sales automation has streamlined almost every digital aspect of the business from invoicing to traffic monitoring. Sales automation condenses the menial everyday tasks of a sales rep through artificial intelligence assistance. Now essential business practices like content marketing have never been easier.  With the added simplicity and efficiency of sales automation and the unrestrictive nature of selling digital products and services, anyone can become a Quasi-Marketer Sales God by using these digital tools.

Reporting

One of the greatest features of SaaS marketing tools is its ability to produce vast snapshots of your business’ performances across multiple channels. You can combine all your performance metrics and data into a single, shareable and easy-to-read dashboard. The software can be used to monitor the traffic metrics of your website and determine how many people have viewed the page and how long they’ve stayed on it.  

When it comes to Sales, Revenue and Organizational reporting. Tubular present all this information in the click of a button. Information that previously took hours at the beginning and end of the week can now be seen, visualised and actioned in a matter of minutes.

If this type of reporting resonates with you then book in a call here and I will personally get your sales and revenue reports all set up for you.

Dashboard software allows you to get a seamless overview of different marketing and operational activities of various divisions. Products such as Yurbi are good for companies looking for white-labels dashboards and reports.

Attracting Attention

With the implementation of SaaS services, content marketing has become streamlined and multifaceted. Apps like Buffer allow you to actually schedule your social media content distribution immediately. You no longer have to work on and publish posts one after another. Now marketers and salespeople alike can coordinate all social media outreach at one time with just a click of the mouse. Content creation and dispersion have never been easier.  

Lead Optimization

Leads are the lifeblood of the sales department and should be treated as such. With the rise of email automated marketing leads no longer waste away in digital records. Historical information on leads is also more comprehensive than ever before. A.I and products like Clearbit and FullContact help sales as they scour the internet for all fragments of data concerning users purchasing profiles and history. There are also algorithms for prioritizing leads to determine which still need conversion and which are ready to buy.  

Improved Communication and Collaboration

A lot of SaaS services are geared towards making communication across channels and departments within your business much easier. The digital feature that has benefited the most from this is video conferencing. Software such as GoToMeeting and Zoom allows you to host conference calls with up to 100 people in HD. Some other benefits include:

• Advanced scheduling features
• Screen sharing capability with the added ability to control transference (Another caller can use your keyboard and mouse)  
• One-click recording
• Drawing tools for increased interactivity

SaaS has also done wonders for real-time collaborative work within businesses. Applications such as Canva allow all members to view, edit and comment on pictures, posters, social media posts, infographics, eBook designs, video thumbnails and everything in between. Salespeople can now collaborate on projects instantaneously rather than having to wait until the marketers have completed their research and developed their own leads.  

Note-Taking and Distribution

Sales A.I is perfect for keeping track of all aspects of a business. It can create summary points from a sales rep’s calls with customers, take notes during meetings (in-person or online) and it can instantly distribute call scripts to entire departments.  

Improved User Experience

The key to keeping customers is to keep them happy. Every aspect of their experience with the product should be productive and rewarding in some way. Sales automation A.I allow for efficient flow to the entire customer/user journey with the implementation of chatbots. Chatbots offer intuitive and instantaneous support to customers through their ability to accumulate and analyze customer information in order to offer tailored guidance. Ironically enough, this digital assistance also adds a personal touch to the user’s interaction with the product, which does wonders in retaining them as longtime customers.  

So who benefits the most from implementing sales automation and digital marketing into your business? The marketers or the salespeople?

The answer is everyone. Correctly implementing any type of new software can help you create comprehensive reports on sales and marketing activity. Now both salespeople and marketers can coordinate content creation and distribution and instantly respond to user queries. Anyone, whether they are in marketing or sales, can now access the business’ leads and reports and use that data to schedule email blasts, phone calls, and even their content marketing.  

All in all, sales automation is a double-edged sword for marketers and salespeople. It makes understanding marketing spend and tracking sales performance incredibly easy but can further blur the lines.

But, who’s fault is it for Q2 closing down?

The post The Rise of the Quasi-Marketer/Sales God appeared first on Tubular.

We are asked many times at Tubular, “What made you build a sales funnel CRM software in an industry that seems busy.” The answer is frustration. Frustration that CRM and sales software appears to be a control mechanism inserted into organizations without any particular division seeming to understand, or really care for, the organization objectives from adopting a CRM. From the thousands of conversations we’ve had with our clients since developing Tubular, we have learnt that many people shared our frustration. The most common question being…

Why are the existing CRM softwares so complex and difficult to use, and why does CRM implementation detract from the job many companies have to sell?

Those who follow the latest trends in sales will know that the traits which contribute to a successful sale tend to be resoundingly personal traits that can be attributed to the learned or natural skills of the sales person. Included are these traits:

• Confidence

• Tone

• Trustworthiness

• Authenticity

All of these personal characteristics are not features within a CRM. Yet stumble upon a CRM landing page and you are given the false impression that implementing a CRM will convert sales just by merely opening up an account.

Wrong!

A Sales CRM systems provide a platform to engage, prospect, nurture, and gather intelligence which a salesperson can combine with positive personal traits to build great rapport and convert leads, prospects and clients into sales.

So let’s take five points that sales CRM’s are incredibly useful for:

• Capturing leads
• Engaging
• Prospecting
• Nurturing
• Gathering intelligence

These are all activities which you would prefer to be doing faster. It’s a no brainer, but if you were to ask a company if they would rather spend one minute accurately prospecting leads as opposed to 20 minutes prospecting a lead, you would choose the faster option, as long as accuracy is not lost in speed. Speed and accuracy can be a deadly combination.

With that being said and as a huge inspiration for building Tubular.io, we continually asked ourselves,

Why is the CRM industry a throwback to 90’s-looking database industry, with little navigation providing an enjoyable User Interface (UI) or User Experience (UE)?

We set ourselves the following benchmarks.

1. Can we build a CRM where any analytical statistic relevant to a sales pipeline can be obtained in under 14 seconds, and in no more than six clicks?
2. Can we build a CRM with a minimalist interface that provides enough detail to engage, prospect, nurture and gather intelligence on a lead without looking like a Beethoven manuscript?

The answer is yes – but not overnight, and not without pouring hours and hours into updates and feature releases to ensure we never get away from our ethos. Updating your CRM should never be more than a few clicks away. After creating our benchmarks, we put ourselves to the test.

To test our benchmarks, we set up a list of tasks the people find a nuisance to perform in their CRM, the ones commonly forgone and that form organizational information silos. Can we create and complete these tasks in a matter of seconds? Can we make CRM software relevant and fun?

The following set of tests measured average number of clicks and average time it takes to complete each of the following tasks.

The Results

1. Creating a lead  

There are a number of triggers you can set up through Zapier to automate lead creation.

Adding one manually:

• Average No.of Click : 4
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:14

2. Add a task

In Tubular, tasks can be added to Leads, contacts or deals.

• Average No.of Click : 3
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:12

3. Add interaction/note

Within Tubular Deals and Leads portal – you can email, store notes and add tasks.

• Average No.of Click  : 3
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:07

4. Set reminder to follow up

Reminders can be added to deals, contacts or leads.

• Average No.of Click  : 4
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:14

5. Change lead status to “qualified”

In Tubular, leads are qualified and in your sales pipeline when they have a deal added to them.

• Average No.of Click  : 6
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:18

6. Attach a document

In Tubular, PDF’s and or Google Docs can be added in the deal flow.

• Average No.of Click  : 4
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:14

7. Generate a report

In Tubular, multifunction reports can be drawn up in the click of a button. The options available are endless to assist you in obtaining the financial and performance breakdown of your activity within your sales funnel.

• Average No.of Click : 3
• Average Time (mm:ss) 00:12

A unique interface!

In building Tubular, we realized that we had to keep a minimalist interface that provides enough detail to engage, prospect, nurture and gather intelligence on a lead without looking busy, or becoming too cumbersome for multiple divisions within a company.

How do you structure deal stages, deal tags, deal values, forecasts, forecasted weighted average, payment terms, emails, to-do’s calls and documents associated with a deal in one place – with no information overload?

The answer is yes, with the correct use of modals, drop-downs and infinite scrolling, you are able to remain concise yet provide detailed deal information to stay informed and on top of your sales pipeline.

Tubular is a UK based Sales Pipeline CRM that puts User Interface and User Experience at the heart of every feature. It has numerous awards for its UI/UX design, including being ranked in Capterra’s top 10 most user friendly CRM software.

The post Why UI/UX matters when choosing your CRM appeared first on Tubular.

Coming soon!

From next week onwards you’ll start to see our new smart notifications appear by your profile picture in the top navigation bar of the Tubular Webapp. Look out for the orange badge which will display the number of new notifications you have. Click on the badge and a list of your latest notifications will appear in a dropdown. 

We’ve included notifications for the following activities:

Deal Stage Update
Notification of stage updates within a particular deal and who in your team updated the deal.

Completed Tasks
Notifications whenever a team member completes a task with the associated deal.

New Comments
Notifications of who has added comments to a specific deal.

New Notes
Notification of who has added a note to a deal.

Likes
Comments that have been “liked” by other team members.

As well as notifications in the Webapp we have also setup push notifications on all of the above for both Android and iOS native Apps.

Never miss a beat when it comes to managing your sales pipeline.  

Create A Free Tubular Account

The post All New Smart Notifications appeared first on Tubular.

There are a few features within Tubular. Some from your first login may not be wholly obvious, but they have been designed specifically for enhancing how teams make their Sales Pipeline much more efficient.

Here are our favorite (hidden) features:

Using your Organizations and Contacts as a company’s Global Address Book.

Did you know that Tubular can be used as your company’s global address book? That’s right. By importing and inputting the relevant contact details, you allow your team members to see their details as well.

What does this mean? Total transparency, and no more text messages, emails, or calls asking for people’s numbers. (Time Waster!)

Using Contact details to Call and Email

From within the Tubular web-app, Android application or iStore application, by clicking on the phone or e-mail sign, you can dial or email your contact from within your synced caller or email preference.

Sharing files with your team across Tubular

From within the new deal screen, the paper clip below the timeline allows you to upload and share files,  providing your entire team with access to view that particular document. This is best utilized to share documents such as quotes, purchase orders, legal documents, contracts and written reports with your team.

This streamlines your sales tracking and improves efficiency in collaboration, so no more emailing or sharing multiple documents back and forth between  multiple people within your organization. These documents are time stamped and you can clearly see who within your team uploaded each particular file.

Archiving and Unarchiving Deals

If a client has not demonstrated  interest for some time, you can archive  any individual pipeline. To  do so, click the “view deals” button, then click “archive.”

You can always move your archive deals back into your deals by clicking the archived deals filter button in your deals page. Click the archived deals button, view deal,  and click un-archive. The archived deal will now be shown in your current deal overview page.

Assigning tasks to colleagues

You can unearth the full power of Tubular  when your team contributors  assist in task completion.

By clicking the tasks button, you can get an overview of your team’s complete and incomplete tasks. This makes managing sales pipelines and teams easier within your organization.

You can view a breakdown of your team’s task overview with the deal button in the navigation panel or within the view deal button. You can see each task assigned to each team member for any particular pipeline deal.

We hope you find these features useful, and you continue to use Tubular as the platform to collaborate, track and convert your sales pipeline.

Have you sign up for your Free Tubular Account ?  Click Here 

The post Unearth The Full Power of Tubular appeared first on Tubular.

Here are seven ways Tubular can simplify your sales pipeline and get your team converting leads quicker.

A single tool for you and your team
It’s important your whole team is up to date. Tubular allows you to view all leads in one place, keep track of where you are within a deal and stay on top of associated tasks. This means the whole team stays updated, informed and in contact at all times.

Enhanced control and efficiency
Control all your incoming leads and suggest new ones. Move the status of a deal with a single click ( or tap ). No more waiting for systems to boot up, sync or share data. Its all real time and shared instantly across your entire team.

Instant communication
At a single glance your whole team is up to date and can comment and decide how best to progress sales leads and share documents.

Customisable deal labels
You need a tool that will fit in with your existing processes. All our labels and stages can customised, whether you’re at the early stage of a lead, delivering a pitch or closing the deal, you pick the label that’s just right so that everyone knows where each project is.

Easy filters
Filter deals by groups, team members, quarters, or labels – auto updated reports allow you to focus on leads and deals in a particular quarter or linked to a specific client. You are also able to set the start/end date for your financial year. A Dynamic Deal value offers a grand total of all deals added up when the filter is applied.

Integrates with your to-do list
Your Sales Pipeline is linked to your team’s tasks,  you can also assign tasks to specific team members, keeping everyone in the loop and on the ball. Spend less time sending emails and notifications to the people in your team.

Online wherever you go
You can access your Tubular from your mobile, tablet and laptop using any supported browser. Nows there not excuse not to be on top of your game. 

The post The top seven ways you can simplify your sales pipeline. appeared first on Tubular.