Improve Marketing Campaigns, Lead Capture and Sales Revenue to Overcome Hard Times

When banks and other financial institutions are failing globally, what does the outlook hold for SMEs? Well, it is fairly easy to predict that, in general, existing lines of credit will be reigned in, and that new lines of credit will be withheld. So what can SME's do to survive until better days come back? And, on a more positive note, what can they do to increase their market share in their industry segment?

I am a great believer in "systems". However, I am not a big fan of running a business using Excel. However, it constantly amazes me that it is not only SMEs who try to run their business with Excel, you can also find many larger companies who do that as well! For those SME's that sell from stock, and who really cannot give up Excel, and also some of the more enlightened ones that have moved away from Excel, and other Microsoft Office products, to our more modern, function-rich, on demand business solutions from Zoho, I offer some advice:

• Reduce your capital employed in stock.
• Increase your stock turn.
• Increase your profitability.

And how do you do that, I can hear you ask? Only reorder what it necessary to supply historical sales or demand. And how do you do that?

You need to review your suppliers' lead time, safety stock requirements, average usage or demand over the last twelve months, and then factor in your current stock on order and stock on hand. You will then end up with a more accurate reorder quantity than minimum & maximum stock levels that many SMEs still continue to use when ordering for stock. Unless meticulously controlled, Min/Max means holding more stock than you need and can also result in more lost sales compared other ordering systems.

I would then further factor in recent trends by looking at what was sold or demanded in the last three months and the last six months. This is known as weighted average usage or demand.

Should you use average usage or demand? Personally, I would usage. Accurate demand can be very difficult to capture. For example, if someone asks you for 20 widgets, and then does not confirm the order because they only wanted to know the price, I believe it is incorrect to include this as demand.

With me so far? I hope so, because this is a very understandable method of accurately calculating reorder quantities and the formula can be adopted into your Excel spreadsheets and other sales recording systems. And by adopting this formula before you submit your regular order, you will reduce your capital employed, and increase your stock turn.

And by introducing more accurate way of ordering you will reduce the number of orders that you make, which should reduce your freight charges. Less, but larger orders, also should mean obtaining products at more reasonable rates. By reducing your freight charges and obtaining better prices you will increase your profitability.

And what was I intimating when I mentioned that the more enlightened SME's had moved away from Excel? Well, these SME's are moving in their thousands every year to applications, or programs, delivered by Software as a Service, or SaaS. In ordinary terms, this means that you do not have to purchase software, or purchase the licence to use software, and install the programs on your computers. It means that there is one central source for the software, and you access your data via the Internet. It also means that you pay only a small monthly fee per user.

I very much recommend that you look into our Zoho products, a complete range of web based business applications, specifically designed for SMEs. Do you know that for just US$12 per month per user you can take advantage of feature-rich functionality covering sales, marketing and customer relationship management, all fully integrated?

If you want to know more about the sales, marketing and customer relationship management functionality delivered by Zoho CRM, then just drop an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or contact us here.

And the clever people at Zoho have been busy over the last couple of years developing an entire suite of programs designed for SMEs, and for larger companies too!  For example, Zoho People for Human Resources and Zoho Business for office and mail. And much more! Indeed too much to explain in this short article. Find more information about Zoho applications here.

And finally, Ian Wenig, Senior Director at Zoho said "Yes, we are in the midst of a global financial crisis and more bad news is expected, but Zoho is doing remarkably well. Last month alone we sold more CRM seats than ever before".

So meet your challenges head on, and improve your systems now!  We may be wrong, but if many SMEs do not introduce highly cost-effective, integrated systems soon, preferably delivered by SaaS, then they may not be in business this time next year!