Surveying the landscape of small businesses across the U.S., and amid concerns over the need to grow sales while reducing expenses, small business owners say the number one frustration they face daily when it comes to sales and marketing is the inability to consistently follow up with prospects. In a survey of entrepreneurs across the U.S. conducted by small business marketing automation software provider Infusionsoft, 65 percent of small business owners cite an inability to consistently and efficiently follow up with leads as the top concern.
The survey indicates a growing frustration among small business owners and marketers with closing an immediate sale, saying that they forget the nurturing process and instead let leads simmer. Small businesses increasingly seek a way to automatically capture and court leads until they are ready to buy, thus allowing the business owner to work on strategically growing the business.
The following is a list of the top 10 marketing-related frustrations as cited by small business owners in the 2008 U.S. Small Business Marketing Frustration Survey (ranked in order of importance):
--Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently
--Can't properly track and manage prospects and customers
--Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts
--Poor email deliverability
--Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation
--Can't track sales activity
--Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems
--Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff
--Too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns
--One-dimensional marketing
Automation of marketing and processes enables the small business to convert more leads into customers, grow the business without the need to grow staff, and increase sales from existing customers.
More information on Customer Relationship Management can be found at www.CRMindustry.com
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