For many companies, a typical customer relationship involves selling to customers at the beginning of the sales relationship, and then reengaging when it’s time to renew. This process is efficient, but it doesn’t always maximize the value of each account.

Customer service representatives, on the other hand, have plenty of interactions with customers throughout various stages of the post-sales cycle. To make the most of these valuable relationships, some companies have begun leveraging their customer service reps as secondary sales teams. In fact, studies show that there is a strong link between the amount of money a customer is willing to spend and the quality of the customer service they receive.

Here are five ways you can use your customer service reps to increase company sales while still providing your customers with great support:

1. Provide strategic live chat support.

Most companies provide chat support at key points of the sales process, but often it’s with their sales reps. A better idea would be to position your live chat agents as customer support. People are hesitant to deal with salespeople one-on-one and will feel more comfortable talking to a support agent. Considering that the average customer has over four touches before converting, you don’t need to focus on giving them the hard sell right away. Providing support before trying to close the sale positions your company as helpful instead of overly pushy.

2. Capitalize on quality interactions.

Customers are always happy to post negative customer service interactions, but they need a little nudging to share the good experiences. Whenever a customer is especially happy, or a rep goes above and beyond the usual call of duty, make sure to ask the customer to share the experience with their friends and colleagues. Even better, offer an incentive for sending you any referrals. Referral leads will convert at a higher rate, and will spend up to 25 percent more than typical leads over their lifetime.

3. Train customer service reps to upsell and cross-sell.

Many companies, especially ones that sell SaaS products, have many different plans to address customers who have different requirements. If your business has multiple plans, it’s important to make sure your customer service team is trained to not only understand each plan, but to understand the problems each plan solves. For example, if a rep talks to a customer who has a basic plan, they should listen carefully to the user’s problems and ask plenty of questions. There’s a good chance that they’ll uncover a plethora of opportunities for upselling or cross-selling; at the very least, they’ll obtain lots of useful information that can be passed along to the sales team for future use.

4. Use reps for product development.

Customer feedback is crucial to finding new ways to improve your product or create new ones, and your customer service team is the logical place to start since they receive a constant stream of feedback every single day. Whenever a customer has an idea or a problem that can’t be solved with your existing offering, make sure the rep reports this to your development team. This is where your most valuable feedback will come from–who knows better what your customers want and need than the actual customers?

Additionally, you should make sure all customer service reports are thoroughly labeled and sorted. You can then generate reports to see what your customers’ most common issues are and to help you focus on the areas that need the most improvement.

5. Leverage your customer service content.

When customers have a problem, a first step that many will take is to visit your website; they’ll look for FAQs or relevant blog posts that contain the answers they’re looking for. Having this information readily available on your website will relieve your customer support staff from having to deal with the same questions over and over, and it also makes for a better customer experience.

These web pages are important for your sales team, too. Use them to generate organic leads through relevant keywords and by making sure they’re kept on your own domain. Develop content for general industry-based questions that can bring in prospects who are looking to solve specific problems. Have your marketing/sales and customer service teams work hand-in-hand to make sure your content stays useful, relevant, and updated.

Using your customer service team as a secondary sales staff may require a bit of retraining and strategizing, but the ability to focus on sales throughout your entire relationship with a customer is well worth the effort. Simply follow the advice outlined above, and you’ll have a more sales-oriented customer service team in no time.

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Anyone in marketing knows that the best marketing strategies revolve around efficiency. On bigger scales, investing more money can oftentimes lead to better results, but if you aren’t spending that money effectively, the size of your budget won’t matter—your return on investment (ROI) will still pale in comparison to what it could be.

One of the biggest mental hurdles for startup entrepreneurs to overcome is the challenge of working with a small budget in early-stage marketing campaigns. Most startups struggle with limited initial capital and almost no working revenue, so those in charge of such campaigns believe it’s next to impossible to see meaningful results.

Fortunately, that’s not the case; instead, you need to find ways to market your business more efficiently, using the resources you already have.

Be Choosy With Your Strategies

Your first step is to be choosy with your strategies; just because it sounds good or it “seems” like the type of strategy that should work doesn’t mean you should add it to your repertoire. Because your budget is limited, you’re only going to be able to work on a handful of strategies—the ones you add should be your most likely contenders to succeed.

Do your research and select strategies that have a wide range of impact, like blogging, which as Neil Patel suggests, will serve, not only as the central basis for your web strategy, but can build traffic in a number of other separate channels. You can also select strategies that hold a high ROI for your industry or key demographics.

Start Small

Next, you’ll want to start small. Once you’ve decided on a marketing strategy, it’s tempting to go full-force into it; after all, the sooner you start to build a presence, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits of a larger audience. However, if you invest too much in the wrong direction—like if your chosen strategy doesn’t pan out how you envision it or if you decide to adjust your branding halfway through—you could be eating a major loss. Invest in strategies slowly and gradually at first, relying on AB tests when you can to directly compare your results against each other.

Trim the Fat

After a few weeks to a few months of running your separate (but related) campaigns, take a scrutinizing look at the types of results you’re seeing. Where are you seeing the highest ROI? Where are you underperforming? Your main goal here is to trim the fat, ceasing investments into strategies where you aren’t seeing a positive return, or at least a promising early start.

Again, there’s only so much room in your budget here, so if you have three strategies that return 50 percent, 30 percent, and 25 percent on your investments, it’s better to ditch the latter two and focus everything on your moneymaker—even though the other two are still positive.

DIY When You Can

Though professional marketing and advertising agencies can help you see bigger, better, more consistent results, you may not have the budget for them—at least not right away. And as Hubspot points out, there really is nothing wrong with DIY marketing as long as you take it seriously. Spend some time researching best practices for any and all marketing strategies you intend to use, and don’t assume you know what’s best because it intuitively “feels” that way. Back up all your assumptions with hard data whenever possible, and always challenge yourself to learn more. It’s a major investment of time, but with such a small budget, it’s your best option.

Opt for Freelancers

Instead of doing all the work yourself or relying on your internal staff to handle things, you could opt for freelancers; this is a way of finding outside authorities and experts without resorting to expensive agencies or consultants. The difficulty here is finding a freelancer with expertise in your area of need who’s reliable enough to bring on consistently and affordable enough to work within the confines of your budget. It won’t be easy, but if the hunt is successful, you’ll get practically everything you need without going over budget.

Don’t Skimp on the Important Areas

There’s one more important consideration here: while it’s prudent and sometimes necessary to rein in your marketing spending to accommodate your startup’s budget, you must also realize some areas of marketing can’t be skimped on. For example, if you hastily throw your brand together without investing in real market research or professional design, your company’s entire reputation could be compromised. If your website is clunky and barely functional, it doesn’t matter how many people you can forward to it, it’s going to make a bad impression. Prioritize the fundamentals, and find ways to cut costs in other areas.

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The following headline read in The Dallas Morning News: “Wells Fargo says it’s dropping sales goals.” I couldn’t disagree more. Dropping sales goals is bad for sales, for management, and for customers.

You may have read about the problems the bank had in signing up new customers. Newspaper reports discussed an out of control sales culture. Management wanted sales numbers up at any cost; cross selling was the primary strategy. The Wall Street Journal reported that Wells Fargo opened as many as two million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers’ knowledge.

Too many managers set the wrong goals.

It seems that the sales culture was hijacked by a few misguided managers. Yes, the “sell at all costs strategy” is wrong; eliminating sales goals isn’t the solution. The real problem is that the goals that management set were the wrong goals.

In Wells Fargo’s case, salespeople were rewarded by the number of accounts opened, not the accounts that were used by new customers or even profitable accounts that were set up. That’s how the culture got hijacked in the first place. Salespeople were encouraged to set up new business no matter how good (or bad) it would be for the bank.

Sales managers have to be very careful when they set their sales goals–they may end up getting more of what they reward.

I’ve seen sales programs where the number of sales calls is measured–that’s a wrong sales goal. You could theoretically drive to an account, run in, say hi to the receptionist, ask for a meeting with anyone, not get it, and then leave. You may think you’ve just made a sales call–except you haven’t.

I’ve seen salespeople count this in their sales call quota, and management accept it. I knew an unsuccessful salesperson who would brag about the numbers of sales calls he was making. The problem was he was also the least successful salesperson on his team. He considered a sales call as any time he walked into a business, even if absolutely nothing happened while he was there.

That’s not a sales call.

Set the right goals.

I encourage sales managers to set goals by establishing viable prospects. There should be discussions between managers and sales professionals about what a viable prospect is. Yes, I’ve seen lists of prospects who on close examination would never be considered viable because there wasn’t a a customer budget, there was no customer need, or there was no knowledge of the customer.

Once a list of truly viable prospects has been created, management can set progress goals. These goals should specify what needs to happen as a salesperson moves through the sales process; management would measure the progress, whether the salesperson is moving forward or not, and at what pace.

Why it’s wrong not to have sales goals.

Imagine you went to a professional football game, but this one would be different. Instead of keeping score, the two teams are simply going to play. You are going to watch tackles, passes, and other activities, but there will be no score. How are you going to determine which is the better team? Maybe you will base your decision on which uniform you like better; or perhaps your decision will be based on which player you prefer. These are not meaningful ways to evaluate performance.

So now, how do you think management can evaluate sales performance if sales professionals have no sales goals? What if it’s based on whom they like or something other than sales performance? This would not be fair to the salesperson.

When salespeople know they’re not being measured, their performance suffers. Why should they care and work harder if everyone is going to be evaluated by a nebulous system? Customers suffer when salespeople don’t take care about their companies. Sales goals that are set strategically and with intention produce sales, motivate salespeople, and take care of customers.

Wells Fargo has taken action to rethink its corporate culture. I hope the company also rethinks its no sales goal plan; it would be a mistake to continue it.

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By Carl Faulds

Small and medium-sized businesses face unique challenges compared to their larger counterparts. They usually have fewer resources at their disposal and often face more challenges with cash flow.

However, they have one big advantage: they can take fundamental decisions and change direction much more easily. One change every small business should consider is debt refinancing. But why is this so important?

What Does Debt Refinancing Really Mean?

In simple terms, this means taking out one loan to pay off another. The most important factor, of course, is that the newer loan must be better than the older one: more affordable, more flexible, or capable of being repaid over a longer term to reduce your monthly expenses.

Of course, the first thing you’ll be looking for is a lower interest rate. Even a fraction of a percentage could make a huge difference if you have substantial debts and a long repayment period. If you’ve taken out particularly expensive forms of borrowing–unsecured overdrafts or business credit cards, for example–the difference in the interest rate could be huge.

Your cash flow could also benefit significantly from a longer repayment term, which will have the added bonus of giving you more cash in hand to spend on growing your business. However, be careful: by extending the term of the loan, you’ll hugely increase the total amount of interest you pay, so it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons.

And of course, we mustn’t forget that if your new loan is larger than the loan it repays, you will have a substantial cash windfall. Investing this money wisely to power your company, while keeping a little back to ensure a smooth cash flow, could be the best business decision you’ve ever made.

What Are the Reasons to Refinance?

First and foremost, you may simply be able to obtain a better deal. In this scenario, your business and its financing needs may not have changed significantly and you could find yourself borrowing a similar or slightly higher amount– but more cheaply.

Alternatively, you might wish to replace one short-term loan with another. However, a word of warning is necessary: it’s very easy to get into a cycle of debt by doing this, even if you save a little on interest by changing providers. In other words, if you’re going to replace a loan with a similar loan, make sure it’s worth the effort and look carefully at other solutions.

In contrast, it could be that your business has changed radically since taking out its last loan. Key milestones include remaining in business for two years (fifty percent of companies fail within five years, so longer-established firms are much more attractive to lenders), generating a six-figure turnover, or reaching a personal credit score of 700 or more. In these circumstances, lenders who previously rejected you could be very interested in taking on your business–meaning you can negotiate far more advantageous terms and save yourself a great deal of cash.

Finally, you might decide to consolidate a number of loans into one more affordable monthly repayment. This will give you access to more capital, simplify your accounting procedures, and hopefully reduce your interest rate, so it’s well worth doing.

Don’t Be Caught by Early Payment Penalties

Before you refinance, you need to bear in mind that many loans carry a penalty for early repayment. This is a way for lenders to make up some of their lost interest if you end the arrangement early, and such penalties can be substantial. Look carefully at all the loans you have and factor in the cost of terminating them before you commit to refinancing. However, if you weigh all the issues carefully, refinancing could be one of the best things you ever do.

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