Your Business Development Toolkit for 2019

Everyday, new offers come out proffering solutions to every business problem. While some live up to their name, there are many that offer more lip than service. To get the best of this new year, take your business development to the next level with this business development toolkit.

Collaborations

Thanks to the advancement in cloud computing and mobile devices, your business has no excuse sticking to old-fashioned methods of collaboration. Today’s solutions grant you the flexibility you deserve whether you are a small business or a large enterprise. There are business development tools that make it easy to write down ideas when they pop in your head. These notes are then synced across all devices and available to people you grant permissions to. At the same time, you can share files with colleagues in a business development meeting miles away without a single phone call.

Cloud computing allow you to collaborate in real-time. It also puts your business in a position to pluck opportunities as and when they occur. Investing in collaboration tools will boost your business development drive and improve performance of existing tools.

To derive the full benefits of these tools, it is important to understand the security implications of working with the cloud. Multi-cloud or hybrid cloud storage strategies can help you mitigate the dangers of accidentally losing data over an unsafe network. That said, you should have a disaster recovery plan on standby to make sure the steps to recovery are carefully charted for business continuity. Collaboration is good; take advantage of tech tools to boost productivity.

Client Relationship Management – AKA CRM

Clients are at the heart of your business. Whatever solutions you offer is meant to meet the need of a client, be it a consumer or another business. To stay on top of your game, you need CRM software that offers more than email notifications. The best systems allow you to game the sales funnel and convert more leads over a shorter period of time.

Take the Gesatech Client Relationship Manager, for example, which lets you manage leads at every level of the sales funnel. It starts with an integrated landing page that collects data from users and automatically populates same into the CRM. The lead receives an automatic message reminding them of where and why they entered their details. Further on, the CRM allows you the convenience of qualifying the clients based on whether or not there is the opportunity of making a deal. Again, an email tailored for clients at each level of the sales funnel can be sent automatically. This automated sales funnel cuts down time involved with nurturing leads. At the same time, it reduces the chances of leads falling along the way as is the case with manual client management.

Emails

Emails are arguably the cheapest and fastest mode of communication. They are also the most popular mode of communication among business development managers. Whether it is sharing information with partners or with consumers, your email needs to complement your other business development tools. You need to be able to do more than send an email to a potential client.

For starters, your email should reflect your business ethos. Do not rely on a free public email service provider to create a professional outlook. Rather, invest in a business email service that runs with your own domain name. abc@yourcompany.com is much more professional than abc@yahoo.com. The former is easily recognizable by your business partners and portrays a certain level of trust that the latter doesn’t. Many fraudsters use free email services such as Yahoo mail and Gmail. Doing same makes it difficult for your business to be distinguished from the pack.

Emails also need to be secure. Before you go ahead to select a service provider, ensure they have authentication protocols that will protect your business from phishing and email spoofing. Consider deploying additional email protection mechanisms to protect your business from spam and email-bourne viruses and malware. Proofpoint Essentials, for example, is a cloud-based email security service that protects you 24/7 without compromising on performance.

Business Data

Data is the new currency of this digital era. With so many social platforms, businesses are now more competent at collecting customer information. However, very few are quite skilled at harnessing the tonnes of data for their daily use. While big businesses can afford to employ Ivy League graduates to manage their business analytics, solutions still exist for businesses with smaller budgets.

With the right web services, you could get in-depth website analytics to start with. Not only will your digital marketing assets be configured to record the right kind of data, analysis of said data becomes rather straightforward.

Business data could also be effectively managed with the right digital marketing collateral. Through fact sheets and solution briefs, your clients will be able to appreciate complex data about your services and make informed decisions.