Category: About Saleswah CRM

Saleswah CRM customization

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The evolving face of Saleswah CRM customization

We allow our customers (Who is Saleswah for? ) to login and use the software for free for a fortnight. So, it is not often understood that what you see is just one “flavour”. Something that showcases some of the best features of the software but hides perhaps just as many.

Does that mean that you get a “hobbled” product? No. All it means is, if there is something you need and don’t see it upfront on the product on the web- the one you registered and logged in to- ask. Pick up the phone or drop us a mail.

You will be surprised. Saleswah CRM customization can create a product that is surprisingly close to your needs.

Saleswah CRM customization 1
As a user you define what features you need and what you don’t

We have customized Dashboards, added large work-flows, hidden large parts of the software away. And done it in less time and with less effort than we ourselves thought it would take.

All this while keeping the core product intact. Yes, sometimes it does result into “stress-testing” the software but we are happy to report Saleswah has so far stood up to the stress well.

The other work we have done on Saleswah has been in creating totally custom mobile app UI- to handle totally different work.

CRM customization on mobile app UI

Mobile app sales dashboard
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Some of the customization work ends up being not so custom- after all. They become mainstream. For instance the work we did in creating a calendar at a client request has now ended up in the main product.

The next step to CRM customization

When we think CRM configuration or CRM customization, we think adding features. We thought different. We decided to give you the option to start small.

CRM customization

Across both our sales and service CRM platforms, we have now made it possible for the customer account admin to select the menus that she wants and hide the others. Of course she can add them back whenever she wants.

Take an example. Let’s say you are going to use the sales CRM and you want to ease into implementation by doing some basic stuff first. So, you DISABLE advanced features like quotes, proposals and marketing campaigns but retain features like account, contacts, deals, tasks etc.

Why are we doing this? Because, we found in our experience, the customer teams that started small, had a much smoother implementation curve. The new CRM customization flow is live for all registered users, new or existing. If you have yet to see Saleswah CRM in action, the time to do it is now. Register for a trial account to test drive Saleswah CRM, today.

How we classify your opportunities in sales funnel stages

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The sales funnel stages

Over the last three years we have evolved a lot in our thinking about the sales funnel stages and how we should report them.

Find and surface the leads that you should focus on

We started off with a very radical approach. We got Saleswah to proactively alert the user that there was a sales lead. We used some nifty calculations to see which contacts and accounts were “active” and what more, which ones were active in a “deal-bearing” way. We had our views on which customer facing activities were more important i.e. more likely to result in a sale. So, we surfaced leads in your funnel before you recognized these as such. Pretty cool, huh? Or, so we thought. This was a blog we wrote which explained our thoughts.

About two years back we pulled the plug on this feature. Simple, we never managed to get customers to understand this. This was perhaps before its time in the market or simply poor marketing and/ or hand-holding on our part.

Next up, grade the deals in the funnel

Now, we took a fresh look at the sales funnel stages. Our earlier thought was to get to capture the marketing activities and sales activities that led to a sale and if the action was “hot” in an account, we reported a sales lead- the very earliest stage opportunity in the sales funnel stages.

As we evolved, and abandoned the previous strategy, we started concentrating on the opportunities that the salesperson had recognized as such and created a “Deal” record. We felt there is a huge scope in helping the salesperson figure out where to concentrate his efforts. Let me explain.

A sales funnel has deals which are at different stages of maturity. Some may close the next week, some may close the next month and some may never close. Also, there are various stages of probability that you will win the deal.

Traditionally, the sales review consisted of the manager and the sales executive looking at a spreadsheet with a list of these deals and arguing about the probability of a win and the timeframe of the eventuality. The Sales Executive is the optimist whereas, the manager is more pragmatic if not downright pessimistic! Having played both roles in the past, I knew there is a scope to contribute positively in this debate.

A sales deal requires information – as the salesperson engages with the customer contacts, he gathers more information. The critical information is about the budget, timeframe and decision making. Also, knowing how critical the need is helps her to understand if the deal will be prioritised above other issues demanding management attention at the customer place.

So, the information maturity is crucial in understanding how far down the funnel has the deal come. So we started tagging deals with the calculated sales funnel stages. We called them Prospecting, Opportunity, Investigation, Presentation and Close. For more details, read our previous post on the 5 sales deal stages.

We just changed the names of the sales funnel stages

While this time we achieved a lot better customer understanding and adoption, we felt we needed to make it simpler for folks to understand what the stages meant. So, we renamed them. Now they are called Sales Lead, Prospect, Warm deal, Hot Deal and Close. The algorithm that classifies them as such remain the same with some tweaking to better reflect how Saleswah itself has evolved.

Hope this made sense. Please get back to us to schedule a one on one session if you want to understand more about Saleswah.

How we classify your opportunities in sales funnel stages 5

Building Saleswah brick by brick

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What do you need to build a product?

We are on our way- we started years back, we are still building. And we keep adding features, tweaking or revamping UI and we keep adding customers.

It sounds great but it is not so simple, obviously.

We have worked hard for years, made changes to workflows, UI, cut features, added features, changes pricing, run promotions. We have shown the product to thousands. And a few thousands have used and continue to use the product.

And we keep getting better. There are many answers to the web on “how to build a great product”. I personally like many of them. But, the one quality you need – other than the obvious and usual ones like getting to a product market fit, hustle, investing in scale, selecting the right feedback…

And, that quality is patience. Coupled with belief.

Not just yours; but your customers’ too!

You must have faith in your sense of direction. And your customers, especially some of the early adopters must share it too.

You must be patient. There will be problems that will take days to solve. Implementation issues will clog delivery of that new feature that the customers have been shouting for. Perfectly working integrations will suddenly stop working.

No documentation, no roadmap, no stories of “been there and done that”. You need to have patience and you need customers, who have bought into the vision and are willing to wait.

Remember it is a journey. Enjoy the ride.

 

 

 

 

Who is Saleswah for?

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Customers we serve (and benefit)

Years after we started our journey – our focus continues to be those companies who are selling products and services to other businesses.

CRM tends to be a bit of an omnibus term. Here’s how we explain to customers when we talk. In our view, CRM is a software that helps manage- schedule, track and facilitate all customer facing processes. The way I see it, the difference between ERP and CRM is that ERP manages the processes “inside your gates”. CRM manages “outside the gates” processes.

So, within this broad ambit, there are sales and service processes- both.

Let’s discuss them one by one and position Saleswah appropriately.

Sales CRM

If you are scouting for a Sales CRM, first ask two important questions to yourself:

  • Who is my customer?
  • What is my selling process?

Am I selling to individuals or am I selling to companies? Normally most companies do either one or the other. Your product or service will typically determine your choice of customers.

There are exceptions. For instance, you may be a soft-drinks company and have 2 target segments. Individuals who you target through your retail play and corporates like clubs, airlines, hotels who you sign up with for exclusive deals. While the latter is a B2B sales process, the former is B2C. Saleswah does not cater to B2C process at all.

A B2B sales process will need salesmen with feet on street. There will be territories, hierarchies, target setting and periodic reviews of achievements against targets.

A B2B sales process needs profiling of customers- organizations and people who work for them- for they decide on the purchase. The history of interactions, captured over time guides future interactions.

Why Saleswah Sales CRM?

Saleswah Sales CRM helps sell products and services to other businesses. So, all other entities in Saleswah (Contacts, Deals, Tasks, Appointments, Quotations- and even sales targets and achievements) are linked to the Accounts (companies that you sell to). “Account owners”- sales people who are the first line contact for the customer (Account in question) have primary ownership of targets, get rewarded for achievements (deals won) in the accounts, get assigned tasks related to the accounts and so on.

Does the above describe your sales process?

Ask for a demo or Register for a free trial.

Service CRM

If you are looking for a Service CRM, the defining questions are:

  • What is my product or service that I need to provide after sales service for?
  • What is my post-sales service process?
  • Do I provide in customer site or does he bring the product in for service?

There are many products that require no post sales service. Most home furniture, consumables etc require no service. Some products may simply be too inexpensive to require customer service.

But, many products- home appliances and industrial products  (and even services- think the cable TV or broadband service) require services to keep going. Many software products which are customer premise installable, require service as well.

Service can be during the warranty period and after.

Service can even include installation support. And, typically warranty coverage kicks in after installation is complete.

There are products that the customer brings in to be serviced to the service station. Think cars or laser printers or laptops.

But there are many products that are only serviced on-site. Home appliances, large machines – Diesel Gensets, Chillers, CNC machines. Some machines are serviced onsite for minor complaints and brought in to the service centre for major work.

Software support is normally always onsite- this is irrespective whether it is an installable software like Tally or cloud based software. Of course, you may end up providing the support on phone, email or internet.

Why Saleswah Service CRM

Saleswah Service CRM helps manage after sales service processes that require:

  • Onsite services.
  • Tracking warranty and/ or Maintenance contract based service.
  • Require field visits tracking.
  • Asset management- based on serial numbers.
  • Managing out of support cases.

Saleswah can help manage large installed base of equipment- running into tens or even hundreds of thousands. It can easily scale to hundreds of users, many roles and hierarchies and and a complex process of onsite service deliverable.

If you are looking for a easy to use service CRM which can scale to the most complex of requirements,

Ask for a demo or Register for a free trial.

Four steps to selling in B2B

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1. Acquire, profile, manage and engage your contacts

You are connected- to your customers in all platforms. So should your CRM be. In the first of the 4 steps to selling, set up your Saleswah CRM in no time by one click import of your contact lists. Stay synced across Google Apps, Saleswah and Outlook. No pain contact management.

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2. Log interactions and track activities at account and contact level

Businesses buy, but we interact with Contacts. Saleswah lets you track both- and, relate them as well.

Contact interactions are logged and their business impact shows up in the Account level dashboard. We even show you which of the activities that you are performing are related to a sales opportunity, and those that are not. Wicked!

 

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3. Recognise the opportunity, nurture it and progress to win

From the time you sniff a whiff of an opportunity to the time it comes to pick up the order, Saleswah lets you track the sale, the stages of the opportunity- how ‘qualified’ is your judgement and your forecast?
Know the BANT score or the Deal Stage: anything that helps you with better forecasting of your opportunities.

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Sales Deal Management in the Saleswah CRM

4. Reports and Dashboards to get constant feedback

 

Sales target vs achievement
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The story of Saleswah CRM

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Saleswah CRM is a new product, but it rides on 2 years of experience with its predecessor the Salesgenie CRM++.

We launched Salesgenie CRM++ more than 2 years back. It was a web-based comprehensive CRM software that allowed sales, marketing to share data and collaborate. Salesgenie CRM++ focused on the sales process tracking and monitoring. We launched it in the Nasscom Product Conclave, 2010- among the top ten products Nasscom chose to introduce in the Product Conclave that year.
We acquired customers and learn a lot from their usage experience. Among the most important things our customers told us were:
– they wanted to monitor activities as much as processes
– they wanted to have a CRM which sold to individual owned businesses much as enterprises
– they wanted a more comprehensive reporting capability
– they wanted to be able to assign tasks and see if they are being closed.

We listened, and the result is Saleswah!
We could have called it Salesgenie CRM++; the “new, improved”. There are two reasons we did not.

1. We have gone way beyond what Salesgenie CRM++ set out to do or indeed was able to do. Salesgenie CRM++ was meant to be a pure-play B2B Sales and Marketing automation product. It was more a profile and event logging and  process tracking tool. Saleswah does much more- it adds significant task and activity management features, adds process triggers and significantly enhances the reporting capabilities and adds a some really useful dashboards. We also have blurred the distinction between B2B and B2C- you are now as much able to use this products for selling to other businesses as to individuals.

So, it is not just an improved product- it is in many ways, a different product.

2. On Salesgenie CRM++, we did not have a dot.com domain! On Saleswah.com, we do.

This matters to us. It did not matter to you, our customers of Salesgenie; but, it mattered to us. Also, we discovered those who owned the dot com domain in Salesgenie, had a database service. Different service; but, we felt we did not want the confusion.

Two things that are new:

Saleswah CRM adds two features that Salesgenie CRM++ did not have.

1. An evergrowing set of reports and dashboards; to make sense of all the information you are capturing to gain insight into your business.

2. Task Management: Saleswah has a comprehensive task management functionality- define tasks like “Call”, “Meet personally”, “Demo”, “Collect cheque” and assign them to your executives, set deadlines and monitor closures. Simple to use, easy to track on the Tasks Dashboard. You will love it.

What about the existing Salesgenie ORM++ users? Well, if anything, they will see all the improvements when the migrate to Saleswah, and we will help them through the process.

Some things that do not change: Saleswah continues to be web-based and if anything, even easier to use and definitely easier on the pocket. You see, we now have 3 levels of user licensing – so, you can choose just the level of your individual users – don’t pay for features that your users do not use! Our licenses can now start at as low as US$4 (Rs 220/- for customer based out of India) per user per month!