Tag: software

One tool to serve them all

When working in retail, finance, and manufacturing (sales) industry, you often come across one unavoidable piece of software.

A Customer Relationship Management software or what is abbreviated to CRM.

Now what really is really astonishing is when people ask how a CRM can actually help their business. Often one gets asked what CRM stands for or even means!
Now granted, it is a technical and industry-specific jargon depicting an online tool. More specifically, it is software used on hardware like PCs, tablets, scanners, point-of-sale devices, and modern cash registers).
What it does, however, is something many businesses both small and large take for granted – and mostly to their detriment.

The purpose

We use CRM solutions a lot more than we think. Take our Smartphones for instance: they are basically miniature customer (data or content) managing tools and though personalized, they serve the same function.
Now to put this into perspective very quickly and simply: our phones store and manage all our contacts. Our friends, family, businesses, and clients are kept in records primarily to help us access and communicate with them quickly.
Mobile phones, have also evolved to now enable you to not only manage your contacts to just make calls or send SMS. You can now share all sorts of content with via the various social media platforms.
Each of these platforms naturally has its own purpose and account. Android phones, for instance, come with (need to be activated by) a Google account.
You can then subsequently use it to access many applications (via an app store) and not just your email.
CRMs manage a company’s accounts in a similar way. They enable you to quickly get a hold of people to either sell directly to, create or follow-up on a sales lead, or nurture the lead until it becomes a sale.
This is carried out by software that sits on the front-end of a database stored on a local server or on the cloud. The software is normally user-friendly for it to be adopted and used frequently by end users.
This enhances your productivity and therefore increases revenue for your business.

Practical uses of CRM

They are used more by salespeople and staff of companies that offer a service via their customer support services or front-end teams.
So, when you call your local phone company because you are behind on a payment or would like to hand in a product for repairs, it is a CRM system that is used to log, track and manage the case till is solved.
The transcript, along with the call logs and resolutions are kept for a later date or time for if you make a follow-up call, request a new service. These records are stored in a database or what is called an instance.
Depending on what your company does, it will have several (national or regional) instances to help access data even faster.
A CRM can help you manage a healthy relationship with your clients to ensure that you are not calling them several times a day to put them off.
It will stop you from forgetting to follow-up on scheduled calls or emails or worse yet, sending them the wrong product or information about your offerings.

Salient features

A good CRM package also comes equipped with a means for you to create and store brochures, create effective and targeted marketing campaigns, generate quotes and invoices (PDFs). It will also come with a solid built-in knowledgebase.
This is a stored pool of resources containing processes and scenarios to help you quickly resolve a problem, prescribe a product or log a case.
And nowadays, like a mobile phone, a good CRM software can seamlessly help you integrate with social media platforms to follow, service or attract customers from those digital marketplaces.

Several CRM tools out there that offer different functionalities and depending on the size of your business, you can get a basic one that just manages your contacts and interactions.
Then you have ones that handle full-scale operations (back-office processes like warehousing, inventory, accounting, finance, payroll, and HR).
Those fall under another high-level category of CRMs known as Enterprise Resource Planning tools or ERPs. A topic for another blog perhaps as they are a totally different animal altogether.
CRMs are however, an component of ERPs and bigger companies would need both to handle large scale operations.
So you see how useful a CRM is in helping to run your company. They are now being even more automated with the help of Business Intelligence and AI.
That makes it even easier for you to use them to grow your business to levels where ERPs you would eventually need an ERP.

Many CRM suppliers offer free trials and even free online software, so take a shop around to see which one fits your needs.

The current industry leaders in CRM solutions are Dynamics (Microsoft), Salesforce, Oracle, SAP CRM and Zoho.

30 November 2017
Connect with the world faster

It is quite hard to understand why anyone would bother to ask (sometimes silly) questions these days when answers lie within the tips of our fingers – literally.

Back in the day, we used to have the ordained task of trekking to school or public libraries, or in some cases, rely on the local nerd to help answer questions and grasp difficult concepts.

Most of you don’t realize it, but we carry information boxes via our smartphones and tablets daily. It is easy, however, to get bombarded by misinformation and what is now dubbed ‘fake news’.

This is why it’s important for you to be able to identify credible sources when conducting research or looking for quick answers.

Information overload

One source of information that we subconsciously consume daily is social media. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, news, and information can reach us within milliseconds.

We can now tune into local news broadcasts only to get things that are specific to our areas of interest.

A quick and ill-prepared online search for a diagnosis, however, can lead to you discovering that you only have three days to live.

Worse yet, you might even “uncover” an imminent evil ploy to destroy the world and have us living underground or under the ocean.

Not all such theories, however, are far-fetched. Soon we will be seeing flying cars and man-manned drones such as the EHANG 184.

And whether rumour of fact, these quick news snippets get us thinking and prompts further research into more credible sources.

Uses of social media

Your football clubs, politicians and musicians are all actively using them to break new signings, announce new albums or push new policy or campaign objectives.

In addition, most, if not all companies, banks governmental institutions and even religious organizations now have a presence on social media. They use it to aggressively promote their brands or agenda.

So, you see, ignoring the news and social media completely these days is the equivalent of retreating to a cabin in the woods or cave. You would be shutting yourself completely from family and the rest of the world.

A social media detox is probably not a bad thing to do. We often get overly bombarded by information. However, skipping a week can leave you feeling as though you just emerged from the stone ages!

Here is a quick guide to the mainstream information sources that you can use as starting points for your research.

Google:

The biggest search engine and while it generates more results (quicker than other search engines ) – it also naturally, carries a lot of misinformation.

Google specifically has great features such as the voice-activated ‘OK Google‘ feature. It is quite responsive and good if you can’t be bothered to type but need voice-activated quick responses.

You can quickly get the latest football scores, the next flight to Tokyo, or the latest stock price of Oil or Bitcoin.

Wikipedia:

Always a quick reference guide (commonly used here). Bear in mind that their entries are put together by ordinary people.

So while fairly accurate, you should cross-reference information there especially when it comes to dates and events.

The website, however, gets reviewed/verified regularly and is therefore still quite a practical ‘go-to’ source for you to get quick facts. Be wary of the usage of short ‘Wikis’ though.

Investopedia:

For credible and simple to understand finance-related terms concepts on the go along with related news and great blog. They even have a great simulated stock trading game that you can enjoy.

Twitter:

Brandishing the iconic blue bird logo, Twitter is quick, instant, and addictive to some (no names mentioned).

Twitter is the best platform enabling you to announce and share information quickly via your mobile devices. News often breaks on it often before mainstream can media can announce/publish it.

It’s even quite common for news anchors to quote the tweet handle of a politician or celebrity when delivering news these days.

Facebook:

Launched as the first real (public) social media platform. It was designed to connect university/college peers. It has since grown to be the one source of finding your old flames, colleagues, family.

Authorities and companies are known to have used it to find out criminals or veto job candidates.

The platform was even allegedly used as a source for political campaigns and meddling with outcomes of a certain major presidential election.

It has, since its inception in 2004, been a place where many applications such as gaming application developer Zynga have made millions by capitalizing on our addiction to mobile games.

Facebook also has its other uses. It serves as a large marketplace to sell things, sends instant messages (with video-calling), and provides us with security alerts in times of terror attacks and natural disasters.

LinkedIn:

This app is important but often overlooked source of company information, recruitment, and career-building website. Though it looks similar to Facebook, it is more career-oriented and a great source for recruiters to head-hunt find you online.

LinkedIn gives you an extra professional ‘leg-up’ and even enables you to quickly convert your profile into a well-structured PDFed CV.

So useful, that it was acquired by Microsoft late last year. It is a powerful resource for their CRM solutions to be able to track individuals, companies, and decision-makers.

Instagram:

This has become a lot more than a place to post pictures of your dog´s gourmet dinner. This picture-based app has a fully-fledged marketing engine backed up by hashtags like Twitter. Like Whatsapp, it also now belongs to Facebook.

It has become a necessary tool for both, individuals and businesses and of course, celebrities like Kim Kardashian.

Instagram took over, in terms of popularity, the likes of similar older picture sharing platforms such as Photobucket or Flickr.

WhatsApp:

Owned by Facebook (if you didn’t know). This phone and the desktop-based app got their edge by taking over the SMS function from mobile operators.

We don’t send SMSes anymore. And if you still do, it’s usually because your phone is too old – or you are up to something shady! 🙂

Blackberry (R.I.P) started this idea with the BBM Messenger. But like others that tried and failed using exclusivity, not everyone wanted a Blackberry just to use that feature.

Enter WhatsApp with the ability to use your mobile phone number rather than the device itself to set it up. And just like that, it snatched up the whole market!

Running off Wi-Fi or your mobile data, you can instantaneously share videos, links, and pictures.

You can use it to host – or rather – facilitate group events like the planning of a surprise party, a birthday party. It can help you also get serious things done. You can collaborate on assignments, prepare a presentation, or (for start-ups on a low budget) launch a marketing campaign.

The funniest thing is how we now have people walking with more authority – with the title of “WhatsApp group admin”.

Snapchat:

This animated short video-making application is more for the youth but you can also use it for enterntainment. Snapchat is used mostly by celebrities like DJ Khaled – who is often viewed as its ‘ambassador’. He even owns shares in the company.

It also has also recently surged in popularity (number of users) and earned a place with some of the business powerhouses on the NYSE.

20 November 2017
Sales misconception – debunqed!

The ‘great’ art of selling is about earning and keeping your client’s trust. In business or commerce, there is nothing greater than the feeling of completing that successful sale.

By successful, we refer the whole process: from convincing the customer that your product or service will meet his/her long or short-term needs. This is after listening carefully to their requirements through thorough discovery. The client is then able to the payment without hassles and take timely delivery of the goods.
Finally, the customer acknowledging and thanking you for it with the hopes of coming back should be the most rewarding part of the sale. That coupled with your commission of course!
A successful sale is a step-by-step process and must have all the above elements.
Anything short of that is paramount to a quick-fix or even a scam. It is only lazy salespeople (taking shortcuts) that give the trade a bad reputation.
Granted, not all of your sales interactions will turn out to be complete success. Some elements of the above process could be stymied by aspects out of your control. For instance, the client’s lack of funds, suppliers’ delivery delays or a faulty product can mess up a good sales cycle.

A true story

Some of the most successful sales are even conducted by faceless agents. Once, while based in Johannesburg, we sold a product (that was mass produced in China) and had it delivered from New York to Cape Town via air-freight.
This was based on a demand (order) that was placed on a then operational website. The actual sales were brokered via correspondence by email and phone.
Luckily, the product (and delivery) quality was good enough not to warrant a face-to-face visit, though in those days having Skype for Business would have been a great resource to at least give ‘a face’ to the sales rep.
They were, however, willing to deal with the agent several times without having met them personally based on the quality of the (medical) product. This was in addition to the vote of confidence and guarantees provided throughout the intensive sales interactions.
This little anecdote proves that it doesn’t matter what you sell, if the product is of good quality, and meets all (compliance) requirements including the recent GDPR law – the sale actually becomes the easy part.
You will, however, still require a little bit (and the right kind) of presentation skills to position the product/service adequately enough to execute the sale.

There is no real art to selling – we all do it all the time without realizing it. From the time we apply to a kindergarten or high school, to university and finally to all the jobs in our working career.

Reinforce the brand

As salespeople, we must present ourselves (our unique skills and character) and persuade a ‘buyer’ to take us on. This is also something no automated sales agent or Chatbot can do and is an area that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not beat us on.
And just like a brand, everything we do is intended to enhance our value and the more we beef-up our brand (with educational, mentorship and technical qualifications). The better our brand, the more demand for your offering.
But back to selling. We sell people ideas: something as simple as convincing your mate to meet at the pub after work or your girls to join you for a weekend spa takes skilful persuasion. And even more so if they had other plans or options.
That is essentially what sales is about – persuading a buyer to choose your product or service over that of others using tools such as the consumer black box.
Such persuasion obviously can be genuine or fraudulent. Those salespeople trained by their leader Jordan Belfort as illustrated in the 2013 Wolf of Wall Street movie are a testimony. The revealed how persuasion can be used effectively when capitalizing on with an inherent human trade – greed.
Being truthful, however, (even if it means letting go of a sale) will determine whether you get repeat customers. This is something most successful salespeople make use of to boost their conversion rates and pipelines.

Mentorship

Debunqed.com likes to follow unconventional salespeople who use unorthodox but effective methods. These are not necessarily the textbook style of selling but will help to inspire you to address the potential client’s needs honestly.
Such ‘on the ground’ learning is done with the help of a mentor. Shadowing one or two mentors that are passionate about what they do can rub off a few skills that can supplement traditional sales theory.
Sales is a skill best learned on the ground and you will hardly find an institution offering it as an elective course.
Such revenue-multiplying potential that repeat-customers can provide for your sales portfolio or pipeline beats getting a quick-fix by conning people no matter how big the ‘score’ is.
What you should be doing as a salesman is gaining your customers’ trust whilst solving their problem.
A trusting customer will always look you up for more purchases.

If you operate in an industry where you have multiple products or one that needs to be renewed – you earn revenue for life!

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14 November 2017
The not-so mysterious world of cryptocurrency

Warren Buffett once referred to financial derivatives as “weapons of mass destruction” . He warned that they are detrimental to the global economy and financial markets.

Cryptos have a way of creating something supposedly of intrinsic value out of nothing. This is as dangerous as propaganda that leads to conflict or promotes struggle.

They are backed up by a cloud of non-regulatory policies by states who themselves, still traditional monetary policy measures.

And this is despite their full understanding of the instruments of financial wizardry.

In economics, the term creative destruction, however, has a paradoxically positive meaning. It is perfectly suited to the new form of “crypto”- currency (Bitcoin) that is not as mystic as it seems.

A brief history

Money is a concept that probably also met up with resilience when it was first supposedly introduced by the Chinese. They started carrying folding money during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907).

The instability generated by uncontrolled usage and denomination, however, soon led to rapid inflation. This prompted the Chinese to drop it, only for it to be taken up again later when it got stabilized by the adoption and use by the West.

They developed paper money as an offshoot of the invention of block printing. Block printing is like stamping.

Ironically that very same term ‘block’ is the foundation behind the Bitcoin – which is generated using blockchains (digital public ledger).

We won’t get into the mechanics of Bitcoins. We will, however, attempt to increase awareness on why and how this new payment method could cause positive ripples in the financial global system.

What is Bitcoin?

As per Wikipedia, and as simple as it can get in terms of a description: Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and a digital payment system.

It was supposedly invented by an unknown programmer, or a group of programmers, under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.

Though the anonymity creates an element of distrust about the agenda of its creators, it is surprisingly more transparent than derivatives.

Cryptocurrency uses a system of cryptography (encryption) to control the creation of digital ‘coins’ and to verify millions of transactions.

These transactions include are a basic movement of funds between two digital wallets and get submitted to a public ledger and await confirmation through encryption.

This video is a great and simple way for you to understand the above because it is best understood when explained as a larger picture. Check out this useful and basic video on Bitcoins.

That is quite a feat worth acknowledging because 11 years of existence is nothing compared to gold’s multiple century reigns.

Now 2009 was not long ago considering the Bitcoin is now ‘worth’ well over $20 000 each (updated to 2021 levels).

For centuries, gold has been our standard of trade or backing of all types of currency until it was ‘uncoupled’ by Nixon in 1971.

The future of trade and commerce is in the digital sphere – are you in the know?

Potential currency?

For something to become the standard measure or mode of trade it, however, needs to be stable. So, while the technology behind Bitcoin (the Blockchain) is relatively sound, its actual price needs to find its firm nesting.

Established currencies trade on markets via exchange rates with relatively minuscule increments of change in price and value. In comparison, Bitcoin can jump in value by $1000 within (minutes or seconds) – prompting skepticism about its stability.

Google Engineer Ray Kurzweil, who is revered as a “prophet” for his mysterious predictions, such inconsistency undermines the cryptocurrency’s value as a currency.

The aim is nevertheless to relieve our dependency on money or more so, the iron grip and often abusive control that some banking institutions have over consumers.

You could even argue that the recent surge in its price is being fuelled by agents of the traditional banking industry. They naturally feel threatened by the fact that they may not fully understand it and its inherent potential. So they (cash-flush) could inflate it for an inevitable ‘burst’.

But the currency though very volatile in its movement has remained buoyant. It has now held for well above $10 000 for sustained periods since its inception. Gold is now approx. $1,900.

Bitcoins provide more guarantee than financial derivatives especially because of their open-source approach to its existence and use.

Complexity

The tricky part is simply getting to grips with the vastly abundant information about it and how you could even generate it.

It is still a great backup ‘of a backup’. We rely on technology and more specifically the Internet for transactions and the associated traffic for our daily lives.

A simultaneous crash of a few major servers, however, could send it all tumbling back into the digital abyss. But as with money and other forms of currencies, only time will tell.

Bitcoin will just have to further prove its resilience and stability in the long run.

Getting attention

It is certainly not a ‘fly by night’ thing because it has sparked the interests of both public and private institutions globally. China even made a bold move to block the Bitcoin market from trading within its borders at some stage.

China is notorious for blocking things that stem from the ‘West’ only to later introduce it under their own control to protect their financial sector.

So, we can be rest assured that the creator is not Chinese! Sweden has allegedly passed legislature to make it an accepted form of currency.

Currently, banks and governments are frantically creating their own sets of blockchains to ensure they are not caught off-guard.

Read more about the implications of Cryptocurrency on the financial sector.

Bitcoin also gets its collective strength (intrinsic value) from its limited quantity in circulation (19 million out of a finite 21 million).

Spillover effects

Bitcoin has also paved the way for others such as Ethereum, (mostly used for smart contracts and by developers) which is also seeing good growth.
Then there is Litecoin, which was formed as part of a controversial yet civil split from the originators of Bitcoin to use ‘variant technologies’.

All these platforms (companies) now use the blockchain to create all types of cryptocurrencies to capitalize on the spoils of this digital revolution.

There are also several institutions that are offering late-comers a chance to benefit from the spoils of using and investing in digital currency.

Naturally, all these schemes with their investment packages would require a ‘buy-in’ and marketing to attract more takers.

Such Crypto ‘companies’ are likened to a pyramid scheme and subject to many investigations by fiscal and criminal authorities.
But that is how Bitcoin, its promoters, and the market were initially treated.

Interested? Check out the following useful links to their official websites to help you get started.

You can learn more about them, about mining them, or simply buy some Bitcoin here.

RISK WARNING: YOUR CAPITAL MIGHT BE AT RISK WHEN INVESTING IN CRYPTOCURRENCIES.

7 November 2017

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