Building A Strong Downline Relationship In Your Direct Sales Business

Congratulations! You've got a strong direct sales downline or are beginning to build one! This is one of the best parts of being a direct sales consultant, - the fact that you can share your passion for your business with others, help them to earn a little extra money and get paid for helping grow your company as well.

Now that you are a leader of a team, you'll need to build a strong relationship with downline members to not only help them stay strong in their business, ...

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Congratulations! You've got a strong direct sales downline or are beginning to build one! This is one of the best parts of being a direct sales consultant, - the fact that you can share your passion for your business with others, help them to earn a little extra money and get paid for helping grow your company as well.

Now that you are a leader of a team, you'll need to build a strong relationship with downline members to not only help them stay strong in their business, but to help your business grow stronger as well. A strong downline relationship will be one that's mutually helpful and everyone benefits.

But you may be wondering how to insure that downline members feel cared for while still maintaining some type of balance with the rest of your life. Here are 5 easy tips for maintaining a great upline/downline relationship.

1. Start off with a bang. When a new recruit first signs up, it's vitally important that you communicate often with her. One thing that I have found very helpful here is to develop a series of emails to send to new downline that talks them through those first days "on the job".

It will help them feel like they are connected to the company and to you. Each day while your new recruit is waiting for her kit she should hear from you. This is very easy to do with an autoresponder system, but can also be done by just copying and pasting into an email message every morning.

2. 15 minutes a day. Set aside fifteen minutes of each workday for downline phone calls. Use those minutes to call one to five members of your group for a quick "just checking in" call. Leave a message if you get voicemail. The idea is to let them know that you're thinking of them and giving them a chance to hear your voice. This is a great time to ask how they're doing with their non-business life as well and get beyond your direct sales company to show you care about them.

3. A downline website. Creating a simple website for my group has been the best thing, by far that I did to keep communication open and strong with my group. We have weekly topic discussions, contests, upload important files and just have fun with the whole group. Through this many relationships between members of my group have blossomed just because the website allowed them to "break the ice".

4. Meetings and/or conference calls. This is another great way to foster unity and strong relationships within your group. Many of you probably have downline that are out your area, so have a quarterly conference call with everyone just to touch base. There are many free teleconference services via the internet that make it very easy to do. And if you can, have a face-to-face meeting once in a while as well. Some group leaders have meetings monthly or quarterly. Others do a once a year get together with everyone.

5. Ecards. I love ecards for celebrating birthdays, achievements etc. First of all it's FREE, which is great, but it's so convenient and just plain fun. Use one of those Internet calendar functions to keep track of birthdays. Once a month go through the upcoming month and set up the ecard deliveries for the birthdays and company anniversary dates for the next month or more. You can set these up to deliver up to a year in advance! It's a wonderful thing. There are hundreds of sites for free ecards on the Internet.

The key? Communicate in any and every way that you can. You will find that your direct sales team members will stay with your company much longer when you've fostered a strong relationship by keeping in touch! Have fun and happy team building!

Building a Strong Business Relationship

When it comes to business and sales, building a strong relationship is critical. The stronger your relationship is with your customer, the more likely they will be to refer you business.

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Sales, marketing, loan officer, mortgage, leads, telemarketing, skills, training, communication, selling

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When it comes to business and sales, building a strong relationship is critical. The stronger your relationship is with your customer, the more likely they will be to refer you business.

Every day, make an attempt to build on the relationships you have with your customer. Don’t just say hi as they walk in and goodbye as they leave.

The last thing you want to do is make your customer feel like a statistic.

Let them know that their business with you is appreciated. Talk to them, strike up a non-business conversation with them. It could involve just about anything, such as the weather, sports, a movie, pets, etc.

Non-business conversation puts your customer at ease and gets them talking. The more they talk to you, the more they will open up to you, opening the door for more sales opportunities.

Or, you can keep it simple. For starters, get to know you customers by name, than address them by name. Say things such as, “how’s it going today?” Or “how was your weekend?” Or “is there anything I can help you with today?” Make your presence known and felt.

Your customer wants to be appreciated, so take a few minutes of your time to show them that you care about them as a customer.

Another way to strengthen your relationship with your customer is to keep a Rolodex handy with a list of all of your customers birthday’s, anniversaries, and special events. Keep your eyes and ears open for when customers talk about up coming events in their lives. Such as children’s birthdays and graduations.

When the appropriate date approaches, send your customer a card, wether it is a holiday card, a birthday card, a graduation card, or a congratulatory card. Just send it.

Your customers will appreciate the fact that you remembered them on their special day. This will only strengthen the relationship you already have with them.

There are many reasons to build a strong relationship with your customer, but two of the reasons remain to be key.

One main reason is that customers value and appreciate good customer service. They want the piece of mind of knowing that if something ever happened with their product or service, that they would have you to turn to as their go to person.

This is extremely important because your customer will have this in mind when your competition moves in to take them away.

And believe me, your competition will try to take them away. As long as you provide excellent customer service, your customer will stick with you.

There is no substitute for excellent customer service.

Customer service is the most important thing to a customer, even more important than fees’.

The second reason building relationships are so important is because of the referral process.

A customer that is treated with respect and provided excellent customer service will most assuredly refer their family and friends to you. Why wouldn’t they?

Your most important asset is your customer, so build and strengthen the foundations you have with them. Buy building strong relationships, you will be building your sales. Good luck.

This article may be reproduced by anyone at any time, as long as the authors name and reference links are kept in tact and active.

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Customer Relationship Management For A Higher Level Of Customer Service

For businesses large and small, their profitability and success depends upon customer retention, customer relationship enhancements and customer acquisition. This is often known as Customer Relationship Management or CRM. CRM is the managing of all business and interactions with customers. The main purpose of Customer Relationship Management is to allow businesses to better manage their customers through the introduction of reliable systems, processes and procedures for inter...

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customer relationship management,crm,crm software,crm solution,small business crm,online crm

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For businesses large and small, their profitability and success depends upon customer retention, customer relationship enhancements and customer acquisition. This is often known as Customer Relationship Management or CRM. CRM is the managing of all business and interactions with customers. The main purpose of Customer Relationship Management is to allow businesses to better manage their customers through the introduction of reliable systems, processes and procedures for interacting with those customers. A good CRM program helps the business acquire customers and service the customers. Good CRM also helps retain good customers, and identify which customers can be given a higher level of service.

CRM is a complex mix of business processes, enterprise strategies and information technologies, which are used to study customers' needs and behaviors to help businesses develop more substantial relationships with them in order to get greater results.

In the late 90's, customer relationship management mainly consisted of just an index file, an answering machine and a telephone. Today, an advanced CRM system has evolved into an Excel spreadsheet and more. CRM systems normally consist of email and/or snail mail, marketing campaigns, contact manager programs, sales tracking program, and multi-media contact center or voice mail system.

A successful CRM strategy doesn't just mean simply installing and integrating a software package; it also involves a wider approach including modifying business processes based on the needs of customer, training of employees, adopting relevant IT systems and software, and IT services that allows firms to track their CRM strategies.

Good CRM software can help run an entire business by allowing companies to maintain all customer records in one centralized location that is accessible to the whole organization. Front line offices have systems that are set up to collect data from the customers for processing at the data warehouse where data is stored, orders are filled and tracked, and sales data analyzed.

One of the most common causes for customer relationship management system failure is poor data quality, which can be easily avoided. CRM systems are as useful as the information it provides. The old saying "garbage in, garbage out" can be applied to CRM data quality. To ensure good CRM data quality, be sure to input the data accurately; check data entries twice to minimize the possibility of duplication; if there is an error in the provided information or if the information is not complete, then re-establish contact with the customer to recheck the data. Customers generally do not get annoyed at this; instead it makes them more appreciative of the extra customer service.

Get High Return with Free CRM: Customer Relationship Software

Costly CRM or Customer Relationship Management software has not delivered results. Organizations have paid high user fees with out getting the return on investment. This article shows why financial return is nebulous and delivers cost favorable alternatives to high priced CRM applications. The article introduces the open source community which offers Free CRM and Free Sales Software with no licensing fees, and that is available today.

Keywords:

ms crm, act, entellium, customer management, call centers, help desk, crm, customer relationship management, free crm, salesforce, sales force automation, marketing, sales, leads, mortgage leads, leads, lead tracking, lead generation, sales software, manufacturing, distribution, lead solutions, ACT, contact management, crm software, free crm, sugarcrm, free crm solutions, free crm software,

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CRM, or Customer Relationship Management Software, return on investment has not materialized. Interviews with companies that failed to deploy CRM effectively gleaned this:

1. CRM was rushed in as the “Next Best Thing.”

2. Excessive license fees and implementation costs.

3. Endless implementation time lines.

4. Technology complex deployment.

5. Organizational upheaval.

6. Poor adoption rates.

7. No real collaboration or communication with channels.

8. Elusive payback.

9. No after installation reconsideration of goals.

10. Unnecessary customization, including replication of legacy systems.

11. CRM simply mirrors existing, inefficient business practices.

12. Organizations unable to conform to best practices.

13. Failure of management to ask “How do we want to run sales? “

14. Inexperienced trainers.

15. Too much focus on current IT rather than business problem.

16. Lack of executive sponsorship.

17. Systems are complex and hard to learn.

18. Companies are over optimistic when evaluating capabilities.

19. Training is in-effective.

Your personal favorite may not be on the list. But one thing these reasons tend to have in common is that they emphasize the “R” – return side of the equation. It’s astonishing that no one states the obvious: A major reason CRM ROI has been so bad is due to the “I” being high to begin with and higher as the system is implemented, administered and maintained. This number is just way too big! Similarly, there is little attention that typical implementation takes months and that the cost of implementation services is often five or more times the cost of the software. Any one of these factors would be enough to cause misgivings about investing in an expensive CRM tool.

Why Pay High CRM Fees

The suffering Companies are paying 65 USD to well over 100USD per user per month, and receive no value. High fees put high pressure on the organization to force progress which may take time. Professional open source businesses are deploying alternatives to high priced CRM. This low or no cost software model lets the organization breathe; to gain value, to improve the deployment methods, training and support, creating user value and user adoption.

Open source Community software is a strong alternative to high priced software. CRM offerings, with high functionality and none of the pricing pressure, can be had for Free of very low cost. Remarkably, there is a free lunch; the open versions offer in many cases better functionality, more flexibility and higher usability.

Smart companies, part of a vibrant open source community, offer value added services to ensure CRM success; extensive user training programs and strong user support structures. This training, for fee, is onsite, web based, video and hard copy documentation, this support structure is live chat, forums, phone, and wikis. Communities are built to share best practices and even private forums are built for single companies. In doing this, CRM companies are breaking the shackles of high software cost and quickly delivering best of breed, CRM functionality which can be had for FREE. No software expense. The open source community changes the math in the ROI equation. The return is high because the investment is low.

Customer Relationship Management

Changing consumer attitudes are driving Customer Relationship Management. Fuelled by Internet induced expectations and an even increasing mood of self reliance among customers, companies have to compete in an environment where communication, buying processes, data management, delivery and service are all-important in the battle for longterm, profitable relationships.

Customers now require:

- Control over the buying process (information, comparison,
selection, easy to f...

Keywords:

csutomer, relationship, management, crm, marketing

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Changing consumer attitudes are driving Customer Relationship Management. Fuelled by Internet induced expectations and an even increasing mood of self reliance among customers, companies have to compete in an environment where communication, buying processes, data management, delivery and service are all-important in the battle for longterm, profitable relationships.

Customers now require:

- Control over the buying process (information, comparison,
selection, easy to find, use and respond to)

- The best possible price (including delivery, and without
compromise to brand or product quality)

- The quickest, slickest delivery system (preferably free)

- All payment options (secure)

- Communications designed to suit the particular need
(computerised; complex; caring)

The above apply whatever the form of trading:

- Direct
- Traditional
- Retail
- E-commerce
- Wholesale
- Combination

These attitudes combined with the development of new technology and the growing convergence of a number of 'new - new' and 'emerging - new' communications and distribution technologies such as:

- 'Fixed link' telephony and telemarketing
- Internet and VOIP
- Mobile telephony, SMS etc.
- Digital TV, Cable, Satellite

is leading to an increasing focus on Customer Relationship Management by all types of organisations, as they realise that technological change allows them to re-organise the way that they manage customer relationships and make them more profitable.

Organisations are searching for something far more holistic, consistent and yet dynamic.

To achieve that and a sustainable competitive advantage in Customer Relationship Management means working with the management team, staff and suppliers of the company, where reasonable and cost effective using technology (e.g. intranet, extranet) to help to deliver the actions necessary to maximise performance.

One must:

- Define profitable market sectors and customers
- Understand customers needs and expectations
- Identify profitable product and service propositions
- Create effective, efficient, adaptable, cost effective
infrastructures

Customer Relationship Management is: the customer focussed management of the whole relationship with each customer, in order to measure, create and increase income and reduce costs for each customer and customer segment and thus to generate greater positive lifetime value across the portfolio.

Customer Relationship Management requires the organisation to know the answers to questions such as:

- Which of my customers are profitable or unprofitable?

- Do I know their lifetime value?

- Which of my products and services are they buying and not
buying?

- Have I measured customers' purchase behaviour patterns, their
loyalty/retention/repeat purchase and multiple product
purchases?

- What channel preferences do customers have?

- Who are my most profitable customers and what is their
ranking/grouping by risk, by product service grouping, by
profit, and by revenue?

- What strategies can I use to improve a customer's
profitability profile?

It also requires the organisation to deliver customer value. Customers must feel that
the organisation:

- ‘Understands what I want’
- ‘Communicates with me’
- ‘Provides me with added value’
- ‘Gives me reasons not to switch’
- ‘Treats me as an individual’

To achieve these answers Customer Relationship Management requires focus on both sides of the equation:

- Customer Communications Management
- Process Quality Management

and on three key delivery mechanisms, those of:

- Proposition
- Processes
- People

To be fully effective at Customer Relationship Management an organisation has to position the business unit or enterprise (proposition, processes and people) so that the customer is as the centre of their business. True Customer Relationship Management means that the business has streamlined customer management through the integration of all customer 'touch points', such as marketing, customer service and payment in such a way that true customer satisfaction and loyalty appear to occur effortlessly.

Customer Relationship Management is not a 'fad' it is a business philosophy that helps to increase revenue, reduce costs and to build and retain a loyal customer base.

Customer Management Relationship

The catch phrase of the 1990s, Customer relationship management, was an instant darling of large and medium business houses, which in theory promised to develop and manage a happy and cordial relationship with customers. Now a decade and more into customer relationship management, organizations are slowly realizing that the unwieldy process is no longer easy to handle easily, as they initially thought, and forging a relationship forever is not gaining ground.

The reasons f...

Keywords:

crm software,crm solution,online crm,microsoft crm,crm customer management relationship,crm applicat

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The catch phrase of the 1990s, Customer relationship management, was an instant darling of large and medium business houses, which in theory promised to develop and manage a happy and cordial relationship with customers. Now a decade and more into customer relationship management, organizations are slowly realizing that the unwieldy process is no longer easy to handle easily, as they initially thought, and forging a relationship forever is not gaining ground.

The reasons for the slow progress of this magnificent management tool are not very difficult to understand, although it has taken years to dawn on the organizations. However, fundamentally, the theory of CRM, customer relationship management, is still the wonderful formula for insuring your customer base. Let us see the two biggest stumbling blocks on the road to successful customer management relationship.

Two of the Biggest Stumbling Blocks to CRM

1.The success of customer relationship management depends on whether each interaction of customers with the organization was satisfying enough.

2.The cumbersome process is cost ineffective and unfriendly to maintain and track product and user data accurately

However, software managed databases are coming close to inject efficiency with advanced features to track have changed the face of CRM vastly. Nevertheless, the recent advent of internet technology has proven to take CRM to an altogether different plane wherein customer can instantaneously interact with automated answer banks and/or a customer support executive.

So, What Is the Basic Structure of Automated CRM?

To make things simple, let’s take the three core structural elements of an automated CRM. These three can be enumerated as: 1) Operational structure, to automate the fundamental business processes like marketing, sales, and service;

2) Implementing analytical technology to support customer behavior analysis and finally,
3) Cooperative approach to ensuring customer contact through media such as web, phone, SMS etc.

Software based CRM brings in certain cutting edge advantages.

1. Round the clock and 365 days information delivery on products/services, usage, problem solving over the web.
2. Automated scheduling of sales and service calls
3. Automatic guidance to typical problems
4. Interactive web tools allow customer define quality and/or problems
5. Easy tracking of repeat customers facilitate quicker identification

Still There Is Shadow beneath the Lamp

As business world is moving towards ironing out lacunae, there still remains lot of things to attend to. Not all the customers who emailed to customer departments are satisfied. The general complaint is the quality of service remained the same despite interactive websites. Whosoever is answering the emails still has the traditional supportive back office works to do. Another point that could be sighted here is the bane of automated email reply.

The bottom line, however is, come what may, CRM is here to stay.