Have you ever wondered how some business owners seem to be able to get so much done?
It’s not that they have more time; they know what tools they need and how to use them effectively.
Have you played around with a business tool or two and failed to get great results?
It is easy to sign up for a SaaS subscription, but getting work done and getting the right ROI takes effort and planning.
Fortunately, there are proven business management software hacks that can boost your productivity! Here are a bunch of strategies we’ll cover in this blog:
- Reduce the number of software
- Delegate tasks
- Automate repetitive and mundane tasks
- Measure your success quantitatively
- Measure cost per customer
- Use a calendar tool
- Streamline your work
- Get a holistic view of your customer
- Use a helpdesk software
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
9 Business Management Software Hacks
Business management is about organizing and planning for efficiency, and you already know that. It’s not that different when it comes to using business management software.
The key thing is to make sure you don’t get lost in work or work tools and that you don’t waste your time doing things that can easily be automated or delegated.
Let’s check out the best business management software hacks for productivity and efficiency.
#1. Limit the Number of Software
We begin with one of the most essential business management software hacks.
There are countless business management software available in the market — will you use them all?
The more you look, the more you’ll find new tools to improve your productivity.
You have to stop somewhere.
There’s a new kind of integrated business solution gaining ground these days, and business owners love this shift.
Instead of using one tool for sales, one for calling, one for marketing, and another for project management and team coordination, you can do it all from one software.
Just think about how much money and time this one change can bring for your business, right?
We’re talking about holistic business software like EngageBay — they’re so versatile that they’re often called ‘virtual office spaces.’
Here’s a list of productivity hacks to show you how to decide which software should stay and which ones must go:
- Remove all the software except the one that does it all (you get what we mean, right??)
Read also: 9 Challenges of CRM Implementation & How to Dust Them Off
#2. Delegate, Delegate
Do you know the key difference between freelancers and in-house employees? Freelancers tend to be more experienced, and the cost of their services is more flexible.
Tasks like revamping a website for design and content marketing or writing detailed blogs are best outsourced to experienced freelancers or the right agencies.
These days, you can hire freelancers at competitive rates. Whether they’re high school students, have a technical diploma or a bachelor’s degree, they tend to deliver a higher quality of work, and you can sign them up only when you have a requirement — it’s a win-win!
Another part of delegating work smartly is to assign work to your full-time employees in line with their best abilities. As someone who manages human resources regularly, you may think you can do this by judging people yourself, a business management software can always do a better job at analysis.
The right small business management software like EngageBay can easily show the chief executive officer which employees are the best at specific tasks.
Good employee management and prompt problem solving improve the overall business efficiency. You can let the software do the work of assigning tasks to your managers or employees based on their scores, availability, seniority, and other attributes.
Here are 10 tips to increase sales and profit by Brian Tracy:
Imagine delegating half of your work to agencies and freelancers and delegating the rest to employees without having to figure out which task goes to whom — this is time management done right!
That’s what a management software for small businesses does for you.
This hack can save hours of your time, and as a small business owner, your time should always get more priority than anything else.
EngageBay offers a host of task management, delegation, and prioritization tools so that you can enhance your productivity.
Read also: CRM Experience — How Customer Satisfaction Tools Get Business Success
#3. Automate, Automate
Tired of tedious and repetitious tasks? Automate them all!
You can save dozens of hours and avoid monotonous, repetitive work with an affordable, modern business process management software.
It can be your new productivity buddy that lets you automate most business activities, including email campaigns, sales tasks, deals reporting — and even getting new leads and scoring them for value!
For instance, EngageBay can automate lead scoring, keep track of your leads’ value (score), and automatically send your sales reps reminders to follow up with leads that become qualified.
You can set any conditions for leads to get different scores.
How many such leads can you possibly track yourself? Automate this entire workflow and call leads when they’re ready to hear from you.
This is but one example.
On the other end of the customer lifecycle, it’s hard to keep track of all the prospects’ window shopping from your website and abandoning their carts.
You must not assume that all of them were window shopping. Some need gentle reminders or discount offers to get back to their cart.
Your business needs a software to automate sending emails and SMS to these potential customers, and EngageBay can even help you with templates for your marketing content — thus improving productivity.
EngageBay can also automate social media marketing, sales team processes, and other business operations.
Read also: 8 Sales Email Automation Tools That Don’t Cost a Bomb
#4. Measure Success Quantitatively
The right business metrics help you track the success and failure of every aspect of your organization.
We know how difficult it is to choose from hundreds of metrics. But your focus should remain on actionable & informative KPIs linked to specific goals.
A sales or deals PPC dashboard that can show you the latest performance of your projects in very simple charts and graphics.
These key decision-making metrics can include sales, revenue, profits, customer acquisition, conversion rates, churn rates, and so on.
A robust business management software will give you a visual overview of all the progress your organization is making (or not).
More advanced software, like EngageBay, even lets you add custom metrics for business and sales reports.
Read also: Top 8 Product Manager Certifications: Let’s Do This
#5. Measure the Cost Per Customer
An essential business management tip is measuring your cost per customer.
You should always track the ROI of your ad campaigns, check how much you’re spending through other channels to acquire and retain customers, and how much you’re spending on customer service, product development, and business infrastructure.
PPC ads are a great way to acquire customers at a low cost per lead because you can target your audience precisely with messaging that appeals to them based on their needs or interests.
When it’s time for retargeting campaigns or email marketing campaigns, consider how much the business is making by acquiring new customers through these channels before investing too heavily in any channel of communication.
A positive ROI is when the average customer lifetime value is more than the average cost per customer acquisition.
Getting these figures right by yourself is rather challenging. A business process management software can easily calculate all these for you, and it’ll be much more accurate.
Read also: Types of Customer Services & What Suits Your Small Business Best
#6. Use a Great Calendar Tool for Appointments
One of the biggest issues small business owners face is managing their time and appointments.
A calendar tool will help you keep track of your employees’ availability and meetings. It can also make sure that they are not overworked with too many tasks or meetings on any day.
EngageBay offers an integrated calendar tool where you can share meeting schedules, allocate work hours for each manager and sales rep, and even set custom availability windows for sales reps.
The software will track sales reps and customers’ time zones so that remote working will be a smooth affair. Plus, you don’t have to pay a penny extra for it!
Also, you can send out (automated) confirmation and reminder emails to clients, add buffer times for all the appointments, set daily limits on the number of appointments, and avoid last-minute notices, so you have ample time to prepare for every meeting.
This way, your business productivity improves, and nobody’s exhausted.
Read also: Business Management Software & Why You Need Them (Types, Features)
#7. Streamline All the Work With a Unified Software
Psychological studies show that people are at their best when they reach the mental state called ‘flow.’ To get there, one’s focus must be intense. In your regular workday, this isn’t possible unless all the work is streamlined.
You can streamline all the work with a business management software that’s unified and integrated.
What does this mean?
For example, suppose you have a small agency or organization with a website and a blog. In that case, the best solution is to opt for a single small business management software (like EngageBay).
A software like this integrates with your website, all your blogs, email apps, and social media pages.
It will track and enable automation of assigning or modifying sales tasks, virtual appointments, client support records, website chats, and SMS broadcasts, all without any extra cost.
There are many tools tailored for different aspects of business management, which can make you spend too much time switching between tools.
For example, let’s say you run a gym or you’re a personal trainer. You can use a one-size-fits-all piece of software like ClubOS. It will handle everything from scheduling to email marketing. Most of it can be automated. And it’s all in one suite.
There is a tailored SaaS product for nearly every sector of business that gives you tons of customization and automation tools to play with to make your life easier.
Why do that when just one software can take care of all your business processes?
Streamlining work can enhance productivity and get more done in less time. It also improves employee satisfaction, which in turn improves business success.
Read also: 8 Reasons Why Every Small Business Needs an Easy-to-Use CRM Software
#8. Get a 360-Degree Customer View
Another great business management software hack: Have all the contact information and interaction history in one contact profile, so you have a quick reference for what your customers are like and who else is working with them.
Make sure you have up-to-date and complete contact information about each customer so that all of their social media engagement, personal attributes, value scores, and so on are easily visible in one place.
Having a 360-degree customer view gives you a productivity edge over your competition, especially those not yet using such advanced tools.
EngageBay offers a 360-degree view of all customers — you can send newsletters to your contacts exactly when they are most receptive. The software can tell this based on customer data collected from their previous interactions with your organization.
This way, business success comes faster.
Another example of a 360-degree customer view is knowing how your clients or customers are interacting with other businesses in the same industry.
This will make you more knowledgeable and competitive while also securing relationships that may benefit your business in the future.
For example, you can identify potential customers when they show interest in other brands within your industry, and you don’t have to do any of this monitoring yourself.
Based on the keywords your leads search on social media, your business management software can show you your leads’ shopping or product preferences. This is called ‘social listening’ and is a powerful business management hack.
Then, you can send them an introduction or promotional email that is personalized for their preferences and hence more likely to convince them to buy from you.
Read also: 15 Introduction Email Templates That Work Like A Charm (in 2022)
#9. Use Help Desk for Regular Customer Queries
If you have a business with lots of customer queries, it makes sense to invest in help desk software.
With this tool, your customers get to have their questions answered directly, instead of waiting for an email reply or phone call that may never come.
This is more than just answering questions: They can also raise support tickets and manage their account right from your business’s website or app — which means there’s less room for mistakes!
A help desk tool makes business management efficient and improves customer satisfaction levels.
On the other hand, it also frees up your sales and marketing teams so that they can focus on other important business tasks.
Software like EngageBay can be used as CRM for lead management and marketing automation — but EngageBay is also an excellent help desk tool with live chat support, autoresponder emails, canned responses, and customer support tickets with full-fledged automation.
This way, you don’t have to manage customer complaints in different systems: They will all appear on one dashboard.
You’ll save time by having fewer people involved in resolving the same queries, and many times your customers can resolve their regular queries themselves.
Read also: Business Management Software — Key Features Explained
Conclusion
Think of your business management software as more than just another tool you experiment with — think of it as a business partner that helps get things done faster and better!
A business owner’s success is directly related to managing their time and resources.
If you don’t have the right tools for the job or can’t figure out how to use them effectively, it’s no surprise that your productivity suffers.
We’ve shown you nine of the best business management software hacks.
But the most potent ‘hack’?
Using an all-in-one business software like EngageBay.
EngageBay is a marketing, sales, and customer support software that makes life easier for business owners and entrepreneurs by automating business processes and removing tedious manual tasks from their plate.
You spend less money, waste little or no time, and get lots of work done.
Plus, you have better employee and customer satisfaction!
Have you already tried any of these hacks to make your own business more manageable? Let us know in the comments.
Great insights on business management services! I completely agree with your points. For those in New York, have you considered NetSuite? Their solutions can really streamline operations and drive growth.