Small Firms Have Hard Time With Followup, Says Survey

Small business owners said the number one frustration they face daily when it comes to sales and marketing is the inability to consistently follow up with prospects, according to a survey from software supplier Infusionsoft.

Specifically,  65% of respondents cited an inability to consistently and efficiently follow up with leads as the top concern, according to the survey.  

In addition,  survey respondents cited the following as their other top marketing-related frustrations:

* They can’t properly track and manage prospects and customers.

* They need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts

* They find poor e-mail deliverability.

*  They find there’s too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process--no automation.

* They can’t track sales activity

* They lack centralization—there are  too many different programs and systems

* They find it too costly to maintain servers and information technology staff

*  They find it too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns.

Infusionsoft polled 1,000 organizations with 2-100 employees via e-mail and phone across from Jan 1 and April 30.