Imagine one of your most valued clients
will soon be arriving for a meeting. You
look up this client’s information in your customer relationship management
(CRM) database, which tracks every purchase he’s made, marketing proposal he’s
been pitched, and interaction that has
occurred between him and your sales rep.
Not only are you more prepared for the
meeting, but you have collective insight
into the client’s preferences before he
even walks in the door.
“CRM is your sales process on steroids,”
says Chris Spears of Arke Systems. “It
allows you to know what your customers
are buying, when they’re buying it, and
why. It is a tool that helps you focus on
existing clients and execute the steps to
bring in new clients.”
Smart Business asked Spears about
CRM systems, what they are, and why you
need one.
What is CRM?
CRM allows you to monitor clients and
prospects to see how they are interacting
with your company. It enables your customer-facing employees to see what communications have taken place, any previous purchases and the service requests
they have filed. CRM in one form or another has been around for as long as people
have had any kind of sales process.
Is CRM more prominent now that it can be
tracked by software?
Definitely. If you don’t have a CRM system in place yet, you should implement
one. It will help you improve sales and
cover some basic areas that will enable you
to focus on your customers. If your sales
staff currently manages its own contact
and client lists, what happens when a
member of your sales team leaves? How do
you know if your team has been actively
communicating with all contacts and not
leaving anyone out? How do you ensure
that updates are made to all the lists a contact may be on? A CRM system can help
your sales team to be more thorough,
knowledgeable and efficient.
It also helps you prioritize your sales
investment. Each salesperson has a
resource cost, and a CRM system can help
each person realize if he or she is spending
his or her time on unresponsive prospects
or accounts and allow the salesperson to
focus on the prospects and clients that are
more promising. You can give salespeople
some insight into how they’re doing and
where they’re getting their best results as
well as develop a report on a group of
salespeople at the organizational level for
forecasting and activity. Where, as an
organization, do you see the most deals?
Where do you see the biggest waste of
time? Who are your bottom 10 percent of
clients that are eating up the most service
and sales time and aren’t profitable?
What are the different features and types of
CRM?
CRM is something different for every
company. There are CRM systems that
focus on account and contact management, CRM systems that handle sales force
automation and customer service, etc.
Most systems cover all of those areas, and
each company will utilize them differently.
A company can implement CRM in a
number of ways. Business users can decide
that they want something on premise
installed in their office. There are also hosted solutions available like Salesforce.com.
With Microsoft’s CRM solution you can
choose to be hosted or on premise with the
exact same feature set.
CRM is not just a sales tool. Any good
CRM system that you review is going to
have multiple capabilities and features.
CRM can help your marketing team, customer service group and executives.
Imagine running a marketing campaign,
watching new prospects come into your
system and closing business. Then those
new clients are automatically tied back to
those marketing campaign efforts, which
allows you to understand the exact ROI of
the campaign. This information will be
invaluable as you plan future campaigns
and allow you to make better decisions.
The customer service capabilities of a
CRM system track service tickets, response
times and scheduling of resources. Sales
people often say that it is easier to sell to
existing clients than find new ones. Keeping
clients happy is your key to providing them
the next product or service that they need.
What about at the executive level?
A CRM system used across the board is
going to show valuable metrics for the
executive team. How quickly is my customer service department closing tickets?
How many new tickets are being opened
on a weekly basis? You can look into the
marketing department and see how much
money is being spent versus how much
revenue is generated. Another important
feature is sales forecasting. You can
observe the sales pipeline, when you
should be expecting to close that business,
what it means for company growth and
whether you’re hitting the numbers you
expect.
What kind of company do you want to be
when this economic ‘crisis’ is over?
Companies that are investing in their
future are going to thrive and companies
that continue to stick with the status quo
are going to fall behind even further.
CHRIS SPEARS is a principal at Arke Systems. Reach him at (404) 812-3123 x120 or [email protected].
