If you’re a business owner still trying to manage customers with spreadsheets and diary entries, then you’ll love this chat I have with Salesforce’s Jeremy Smith about how customer relationship management (CRM) software (like Salesforce) ensures you create amazing customer experiences. Plus I’ll show you how to create an effective voicemail greeting and we revisit a past episode where we covered the clever use of social media.

“People are loyal to an experience, not a brand. So if the experience you’re offering your customers isn’t great, then it’s not doing your brand any favours. CRM software can ensure this doesn’t happen!”

-Jeremy Smith
Salesforce

There’s loads more tips and insights just like this that will help you build that beautiful business of yours into the empire it deserves to be. Hit the PLAY button or subscribe free to hear the full interview. You’ll also find the full interview transcription below.

If you have questions about customer relationship management software then you’ll get the answers in this interview:

• What is CRM?
• Why does a small business need CRM software?
• How does CRM help me create amazing customer experiences?
• What are the key features and benefits of a CRM tool like Salesforce?
• How can I build my email database using CRM software?
• How can I personalise my marketing?
• Can CRM software help me manage my social media activity?
• How can I handle customer complaints using a CRM tool?
• And plenty more ...

Jeremy Smith is the Regional VP of the Marketing Cloud at Salesforce. Whether it be in retail to blur the lines between digital and physical or moving from treating an audience as passive recipients to including them in the business’s story, he’s passionate about seeing small business embrace the power of customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Here’s what caught my attention from my chat with Salesforce’s Jeremy Smith:

1. Loved this quote of Jeremy’s - “These days people are loyal to an experience not a brand.” Use all the tools available to you to create a world-class customer experience and you’ll have more enquiry, you’ll close more sales, and customers will talk about you to others … you’ll be shareable.
   
   
2. Personalised marketing … It’s here, and it’s ridiculously accessible. Your mass email blasts should start with the person’s name, your sales staff should be easily able to react to client milestones, you should be able to see where each individual customer is in their buying journey with you.
   
   
3. Time to throw away the spreadsheets and diary entries, and step up to a CRM like Salesforce. If that still freaks you out, then by all means start with an email marketing tool like MailChimp, and customer support software like ZenDesk, but don’t leave it too long.

 

But the marketing gold doesn’t stop there, in this episode you’ll also discover:

• I’ll show you how to make your voicemail greeting a lot more effective.
• And we go back into the vault, revisiting a chat I had with a couple of gen Yers who’d decided that used coffee beans would make a great body scrub ... and that sex was the best way to sell it!

 

Other resources mentioned:

• Download the Salesforce free eBook - 6 Small Business Sales & Marketing Challenges - How to turn them into opportunities
• Salesforce’s overview of CRM software

 

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May your marketing be the best marketing.

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