News2023.04.17 4 min. read
Increasing sales as a priority for SMEs: Billennium has found a solution
One of the biggest challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups, especially in the B2B sector, is the effectiveness of sales activities. With increasing financial burdens, this issue has become a priority for them. A solution that will help them improve business profitability has just been presented by Billennium. The company has created Billennium Sales Box – a tool for managing relationships with customers and leads, based on the most important functions of the Salesforce platform and tailored to the budget and needs of SMEs.
Polish companies from the SME sector are increasingly feeling the effects of growing burdens on their business – high energy costs, increases in social security contributions or the minimum wage. According to the “SME Scanner” survey, carried out by Karalla Research, 47% of companies feel their financial situation has deteriorated, as a result of which 15% of entrepreneurs are concerned about the future of their organization. 30% of the respondents, apart from the increase in costs, cite a decrease in demand for products and services as the main reason for this situation.
In the context of the growing burden on the budgets of Polish enterprises, acquiring customers and appropriate management of relations with them becomes crucial to ensuring the security of their business. Therefore, the priority is to support sales departments so that they can work as efficiently and effectively as possible. However, this requires the right tools to optimize processes and provide the necessary information to the sales departments.
Łukasz Przybyłek, Head of Strategic Business
Main challenges for sales departments
Billennium experts point to several main challenges that make activities aimed at selling products and services, especially those directed to B2B, ineffective. One of the sources of problems is the lack of a consistent database of customer information. Data is often scattered across different applications or only in the e-mail inbox or notebook of a salesperson. Even if a company has one database, it often is not updated on a regular basis and some information is lost or duplicated. This later affects a number of other aspects – difficult communication between departments in the company that are involved in various stages of the sales process, ineffective sales and marketing activities, but also incompetent lead management. Another challenge is the low quality or delay in customer service, which also affects customer retention and acquisition, because in the face of a similar offer of products or services on the market, the customer will choose a seller who will provide him with all the necessary information and answer questions quickly and factually.
Only one in four small-sized companies and every other medium-sized company uses CRM!
Businesses can avoid each of these problems by using CRM systems, i.e., software for comprehensive customer relationship management. However, many companies still do not use them. According to PARP data, in 2021 only 25.5% of small enterprises and 54.3% of medium-sized enterprises in Poland used such systems (with a usage growth rate of 1 and 2% respectively over two years!).
CRM systems help to effectively manage sales, marketing or customer service and, as a result, generate higher revenues. Thanks to them, all people in the company involved in commercial processes have a unified view of information about a given contact or customer and can better understand their preferences or see the history of interactions. This allows you to better tailor the offer to each customer and improve their satisfaction. In addition, many tasks can be automated, such as data entry, sending e-mails, scheduling meetings or generating reports. The time saved in this way can be spent on the most important tasks from the point of view of closing the transaction. Another issue is the analytics provided by CRM. Working on the basis of data, we avoid many mistakes, ineffective campaigns and loss of capital.
Przemysław Rudolf, Strategic Business Executive
Billennium Sales Box – Salesforce adapted to the financial capabilities of SMEs
Salesforce has been a clear world leader among CRM systems for 9 years. According to IDC data from November 2022, the company has a 22.9% market share, and 90% of Fortune 500 companies use this platform. The possibilities offered by Salesforce are huge, including almost any expansion and adaptation to the specific needs of the organization, but it is also often beyond the financial reach of smaller entities. That is why, with the needs and possibilities of the SME sector in mind, Billennium has created the Billennium Sales Box.
To create our solution, we used our 12 years of experience in the comprehensive implementation of Salesforce services and tools in many different industries in Poland and abroad. During this time, we have built our know-how, thanks to which we know not only what the platform’s capabilities are, but also what are the most important needs and challenges of small and medium-sized businesses in terms of sales support and lead generation. Of course, we also had to take into account financial and technical issues. As a result, the cost of implementing Billennium Sales Box is even 10 times lower than in the case of a custom solution based on Salesforce and takes up to 5 days.
Piotr Grusiewicz, Head of Salesforce Unit
By choosing Billennium Sales Box, users get a full view of the customer in Salesforce Customer 360. This solves the problem of lack of consistency and communication between departments and customer data. Each participant in the sales, marketing or customer service process has a full range of information about the contractor and all undertaken actions or interactions. The application supports companies in 4 main areas: sales, customer service and data management, marketing activities, as well as work organization and increasing the efficiency of people involved in customer relationship and lead management processes. Clients who choose Billennium Sales Box, apart from access to the key functions of the Salesforce platform, receive much more than the solution itself. The developers of the application provide constant access to the maintenance and implementation team, which helps solve current problems or provide additional customization, and if the organization’s needs increase, also helps in developing the system with further Salesforce services.
The application is available in a browser and mobile version under one license.