What could that extra time mean for you in practical terms? Here are some suggestions:

1. You could implement a new, proactive marketing campaign targeting certain prospects in your database (the analytics in Results Freak will help you here).
2. You could upsell to your existing customers (again Results Freak will help you identify the most likely candidates and their needs)
3. You could use your time to focus “on” the business instead of “in” the business, developing new strategies or special projects for example.
4. You could bring in new staff or train up existing ones to take on some of your roles – confident that the CRM system makes it easy for staff to follow processes, and for you to maintain an overview of what’s happening.
5. Finally, of course, you could simply relax, safe in the knowledge that you’re managing your customer relationships well (in fact, your systems are probably in the best shape ever).

Now that sounds like a great idea!!

Using a CRM system like Results Freak makes the marketing team’s life much easier. Not only do the powerful analytics increase marketing effectiveness, the wealth of hard data makes marketing business cases that much more persuasive.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Results Freak enables to you track your campaign success against KPIs. What’s more it also allows you to drill down into the data to generate insights for future campaigns. For example, a special offer resulted in lots of enquiries and a few sales – but how many of those people became regular customers? People enjoyed the event, but what happened with those customers over the next 12 months?

Whether you are marketing through events, online, or face to face, Results Freak has the smarts to enable you to identify, track and analyse the return you’re getting on your investment.

Well, it’s part of it. But what really excites people is how CRM enables them to do their jobs. It’s not a resource, it’s a tool – like email, or a mobile phone.

A CRM system like Results Freak is the system on which you run your sales and marketing.

Whether you are the sales person, sales manager, account manager, marketing director or managing director, a CRM system will give you greater insight into what’s happening with the customers in your business day to day.

It will automate run-of-the mill tasks and make sure all those small but important jobs get done.

And the data that accumulates over time is invaluable when it comes to reviewing performance and planning for the future. Simply brilliant for your business.

1. Your ability to develop and implement a really good business plan is being held back because you don’t have the data you need to do the job well.
2. You and your team are getting confused about who said what to which customer and who is responsible for doing what and when. You might even be having turf wars among the sales team and customer poaching.
3. Your customer data is unwieldy and increasingly inaccurate because you’re working off multiple databases.
4. Your sales and marketing spend is significant (in terms of time and money), but it feels really ad hoc. You know you need to be more targeted and ensure you’re getting a return on investment, but where do you start?

You are working really hard, but you know that opportunities are slipping by or being overlooked simply because you don’t have time to work on them.

If any of these scenarios sound familiar, be assured that the right CRM system will help you resolve these issues in your business.

You will wonder how you survived so long without one.

Despite this being an unchallenged truth in the world of marketing, can you put your hand on your heart and say you’re doing all you can to ensure repeat business?

You’re not alone. Time pressure. Resource pressure. The sheer impossibility of keeping on top of every single opportunity means that, inevitably, none of us are doing everything we’d like to do.

But there’s no doubt you can do better. A CRM system like Results Freak makes keeping in regular contact with customers simple and efficient.

Did you know that Results Freak can track sales and marketing success, forecast sales and track business, coordinate customer communications, and generate quotes, letters and direct mail?

We all know what we should be doing. Now there’s really no excuse for not putting theory into practice.

Well today we officially announce the launch of Twitter for Results Freak.  The Twitter module was developed in conjunction with Microsoft and is now live and available to all Results Freak clients.  We’re also working on some significant enhancements which will be very powerful for anyone who is serious about using Twitter for business.

So what does the existing Twitter module enable you to do?  For starters …

• Manage your Twitter contacts superbly – even if you have multiple accounts
• Schedule outbound Tweets days in advance
• Track all communications from, to and mentioning your username
• Pass Twitter contacts on to your sales person or sales team, effortlessly
• Track your twitter contacts, right through from “first contact” until they come back for repeat purchases
• Run marketing campaigns and measure the results closely
• Understand key metrics, including your ROI, from Twitter campaigns
• … and much more

We’re looking forward to your feedback …

Software-as-a-service means those burdens are a thing of the past. Today the big issue is simply a matter of deciding which service to buy in.

• No more spending money on hardware to run your software in house. Simply log on via the internet using your existing computer.
• No more needing to be in the office to use the system. You can log on and access your data from anywhere. All you need is internet access.
• No more technical hassle. IT experts are running your software and making sure you get all the upgrades. You also get a help service.
• No more dubious data security. Your data is backed up regularly and stored by a reputable company (one that provides much better systems and safer storage than your business will ever have)

In other words, with software-as-a-service products like Results Freak you get to enjoy all the advantages of sophisticated business software – but with none of the headaches.

No wonder it’s taking off.

It’s not good for morale. And it’s not a good look with the customers.

How do you stop it happening? Strong systems and transparency are a big help. In many cases this means introducing a CRM system.

A CRM system gives the sales manager enormous clarity over what is happening in the sales process. It also makes the process of managing sales people more efficient.

For example you can allocate territories and set up sales teams within the software. Leads and tasks can be automatically distributed. You can create price lists and discounts to keep offers consistent. And the workflow processes enable you to define and implement consistent sales processes across the team.

Changing bad habits in your sales team needn’t be a big confrontation. It may be as simple as switching to a new system.

In the meantime, if you’re the inquisitive type, you might want some further information. The good news is, there’s plenty available.

Firstly, on our main website you’ll find lots of detail about our product. This includes what it does, how it helps, pricing and terms. There is also specific information there which will be relevant to you if your focus is mainly sales, marketing, customer service or management. You choose.

On this blog, you’ll find a host of useful information, videos, posts and links. It’s really easy to search.

But to make things easier for you, here are some links to very useful videos on our YouTube channel. They are short (usually under three minutes) and very informative. Why not take a look at a couple and answer any burning questions you have?

Hear what our clients say about how quickly the benefits of CRM kick in, including:

• Saving time and money while improving sales
• Growing your business much faster
• Measuring your marketing ROI so that you can vastly improve it
• Finding business information, fast

Click the YouTube link on the right to http://www.youtube.com/user/ResultsFreakCRM

• See what Results Freak looks like
• Find out how data is organised
• Understand how to get data into CRM
• Eliminate frustrations caused by duplicate or bad data.
• Organise your contacts very logically indeed
• See how you can use CRM to keep track of key business data
• Take a peek at Results Freak’s intelligent search function – you’ll be able to find almost anything
• Find out how to improve your sales process
• Elminiate worries about who might have access to your data
• Look at how you can improve customer service and therefore satisfaction levels
• Take a peek at our very clever mapping function – you’ll never look back!

We know from experience that you’re likely to find what you need somewhere on this list – but we’ll be talking to you soon anyway.

All the best from the Freak team!

In any business, conversations are happening all the time – sometimes simultaneously – with prospects, clients, contacts and suppliers. So as businesses grow and expand, it can become increasingly difficult to know who has spoken to whom, what has been said, and the timeline of conversations. This is where Results Freak can help in more ways than one.

Results Freak allows emails, calls and meeting notes to be tracked as they happen, and to remain on record, forever.  Anyone can access details of all the interactions your business has had with a contact.  If you were able to track conversations in this way, what impact could it have on your business?

With Results Freak you can be sure that you’re not interrupting an important conversation between a colleague and prospect. With the Outlook plugin, you can track emails and calls which will automatically be shared with the right colleagues.

To see exactly how this works, watch the video above.