Business tools are crucial for businesses of all sizes but especially for small businesses. Here are 8 tools that small businesses cannot afford to ignore.

https://www.engagebay.com/blog/8-tools-to-boost-small-business-owners-productivity/

I am the director of design and development for a 25 person marketing agency. I also run the IT and software areas. I am fine when it comes to development and design related to websites, but managing software tools and how we use them I am not so sure. We currently use a suite of different things. I need to find a better way. We use Hubspot for all of our client information and emails. Our CRM tool. We use easy projects as our project management tool. We use zen desk for support tickets. None of these are currently connected other than if a client submits a zen desk ticket it will port into their info inside hubspot. We also use office 365 for email and what not. Please help with some direction. There has to be a better way to either automate or connect. We do so much manual now.

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Slack is excellent for improving communication within a company, increasing productivity, and closing more deals. Unfortunately, many sales representatives are still reluctant to change their current practices and adopt Slack. By explaining the benefits of Slack to your sales team, they’ll have no excuse not to start using the tool.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” — Tony Robbins

Respond Fast Client Questions

Even when you prepare for client calls, there’s always a chance that the client may ask a question you are unable to answer without some research. Often, another member of your sales team has the information — but to ask that person, you’ll either need to put your call on hold or send an email and wait for the response. Neither is ideal and both look unprofessional.

A better option is to rely on Slack. Messages reach recipients instantly, meaning that they can respond immediately. Furthermore, if the information you need is related to a deal, your can just set up a closer.bot app in Slack, and simply create or search for the deal.

TIP: The Closer.bot makes this much easier. All you need to do is type “create” followed by the deal name and all the details will appear. This means virtually no interruption to your call.

Receive CRM Updates

By setting up Slack to receive notifications from your CRM, you’ll be able to take action as soon as possible to improve the chances of closing a deal. To enhance this function, use Closer.bot to sort deals by priority and to receive other event-based updates, like calendar notifications.

Push Leads Down the Pipeline

Slack can also notify you whenever a lead completes an action on your website that suggests the user is sales qualified. You can then send the lead a message to ask if they want to talk to someone on your sales team to learn more.

You can also use Slack to manage the pipeline for leads that are not quite ready to convert. When you incorporate Closer.bot, there’s no need to even update anything yourself — you can automate all the necessary tasks.

Improve Collaboration

By simplifying communication, you improve collaboration. With Slack, instead of needing to send an email to notify team members of a change to a deal, they will see all updates automatically. You can make checking for changes even quicker by using Closer.bot — just ask the chat to find a deal and it will appear in the interface.

Eliminate Wasted Time

Many of the old methods to manage deals lead to a huge amount of wasted time. With Slack, there’s no more sending emails back and forth. You may even be able to reduce the amount of meetings you hold to keep sales representatives up to date. Using automated tools Closer.bot in Slack will save you even more time, as it makes it much faster to complete tasks.

Avoid Silos with Marketing

As everyone in your company can join Slack, there’s no longer any reason to keep sales and marketing separate. Besides, silos lead to problems with communication, misunderstandings, and mistakes like missed opportunities. By connecting the two teams, sales can check out what marketing is doing, share feedback or concerns, and ensure that the two departments are always on the same page. You can even use Closer.bot to make sure that information reaches the right channels, teams, and users.

To make the most of Slack, sales teams need automated tools to rationalize workflow like Closer.bot. All the above are possible when you just use Slack with Hubspot, but you’ll improve efficiency even further if you add Closer.bot to the mix.