Small and medium businesses (SMB) contribute over 50% to India’s GDP. While government initiatives such as Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (ANBA) and the PM’s ‘Vocal for Local’ campaign are creating stimulus for SMBs, technology has a critical role to play in driving their success. Whether it is streamlining supply chain and logistics, last-mile delivery, or building contactless payment and e-commerce systems, SMBs can grow and thrive when they pivot around technology.
The dramatic shift in customer behaviour, where customers have adopted digital touchpoints to access routine services – banking, education, healthcare, shopping, etc. – will continue beyond the pandemic. So, SMBs will not only have to build digital infrastructure to react with agility to this change, but also focus on the following key areas to spur business in the next normal.
Enhancing connections through technology for amping sales
Traditionally, B2B sales has been dominated by field-sales models, in-person meetings and product demos, given its complex nature that involves:
- Long sales cycle
- Multiple decision-makers
- Huge, long-term investments
Building robust marketing strategies to increase ROI & customer retention
As a small business, you can no longer afford to ignore marketing automation. With automation, businesses can drive a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overheads. While investing in marketing automation, consider a platform that:
- Offers seamless integration between sales and marketing efforts.
- Helps identify the campaigns that are offering the best ROI.
- Fills the sales funnel with high-quality leads.
- Helps nurture leads with information about customer interaction across all touchpoints.
- Creates personalised customer journeys with unique and targeted content.
- Provides data insights for improving marketing programmes.
With Salesforce Pardot integrated with CRM data, you can do all this and make every rupee count.
Streamlining operations to drive innovation
There is no denying that technology is a great leveler, especially when it comes to SMBs. The right tools can help companies to tap opportunities that otherwise require huge CAPEX, large teams, and in-house specialists. You can upgrade internal operations and processes and kick-start continuous innovation by:
- Automating routine processes
- Enabling remote and cross-team collaboration
- Integrating data from multiple sources on a single platform
Other significant internal changes could include:
- Deployment of cloud-based solutions for agility and resilience.
- Adoption of Social CRM to grow your small business using social media.
- Establishing a data-driven culture with simple, intuitive data analysis software.
- Introduction of AI-enabled chatbots for frontline customer service.
Building capacity through upskilling and reskilling employees
Typically, small businesses are judicious when it comes to workforce expansion. So, it makes sense to invest in technology to enable cross-functional skillsets through upskilling. It can also help you bring a more structured approach to your training and talent development programmes.
Here are some unique approaches that will work for you as a small business owner to upskill your employees:
- In-house subject matter experts or top performers across teams can share their knowledge through virtual coaching sessions, videos, or articles.
- Employees can be encouraged to take up online self-learning courses while you sponsor the fee.
But the most structured and effective approach is to build a dynamic learning experience platform using myTrailhead to deliver customised training modules to employees. Through this platform, companies can make learning engaging and track learning progress and performance.
Salesforce Small Business solutions readies companies for a digital-first new normal within minutes. With an easy setup that demands no CAPEX on IT infrastructure, our solutions scale as your business grows. These solutions come with in-built intelligence, so your reps can sell faster and make customers happier.
