What’s it all about? 

Customer Relationship Management – CRM – means many things to many people. To some it’s a technology, pure and simple. To others it’s the holy grail of customer loyalty – and retention – regardless of how it’s implemented. 

CRM can be very complex or it can be extremely simple. It can be one organization’s contact management system and another organization’s automated marketing tool. Sales force automation (SFA) is the preferred use for some while automated web-based customer self-service is the application most important to others. Having a single, 360° view of a customer is getting more important to many CRM users because it informs them of what makes their customers tick and provides an opportunity for them to provide expectation-exceeding customer service. The results? Increased sales, profits and customer loyalty. 

We don’t need no stinkin’ technology 

Whether or not you may have thought of it this way in the past, CRM has been around far longer than the technology that supports the process today. Sales and customer service organizations have been collecting information about their prospects and customers since the dawn of time. Consider all the little bits of information residing on index cards, Rolodexes, contact forms, stand-alone databases, ledgers, account books, logs kept by salespeople and in the monster memories of some folks. And those repositories are all of the relatively modern age. 

Even going back to less connected times, people were keeping records in some very unique ways that would easily qualify as forms of CRM. And they were passing the information on from person to person, generation to generation, often by verbally telling stories. Legends grew out of stories relating what this person or that organization did to “land the big one” – and to continuously make that ever elusive, prized major account happy and coming back for more. 

The bottom line is that CRM is a philosophy or concept that should permeate your organization. It is all about learning all there is to know about your prospects and customers, recording that information in an easily retrievable format, combining that information with contact, purchasing and account histories and providing access to that information to everyone in the organization who has contact with your customers. It is about making it easy for customers to do repeat business with you. It is about communicating faster, better, easier and more frequently with your customers. It is about using that information to foster customer loyalty, thereby increasing your sales and profitability. 

Building an effective CRM solution for your business should include seeing everything about your business from the customer’s point of view. You’ll absolutely want any CRM system you might choose to benefit your organization. But if it’s done right, the system will also be easy to use and unobtrusive for your customers. And it will, by its focus on the customer, increase your sales, your profits and your customer loyalty. 

There are some who will disagree with that last paragraph. They’ll tell you that a CRM solution is all for the benefit of the sales organization; that it should run invisible to the customer; and that they want results now without regard for nurturing the relationship they’re proposing to manage. 

The way it used to be 

That’s more and more the way it used to be. Today, enlightened organizations, and indeed some CRM vendors, realize that customers can also benefit from a good CRM solution and in so doing attribute value to the relationship they have with those businesses with which they’re engaged. They’re addressing this new point of view in the way they design, deploy and customize CRM solutions. 

CRM today 

Modern CRM allows businesses to take that 360° view of their customers, allowing them to customize solutions, communicate more effectively, and, in general, provide a better customer experience. By using the information gathered at each point of contact with each customer to continuously learn about their needs, wants, preferences, buying habits and service requirements, sales organizations can and should customize the experience for each of their customers. 

Aggregating that information with the information gathered from other customers of the same or similar type helps the sales organization to understand bigger picture issues that confront those customers and develop solutions that will help their customers manage and grow their businesses more efficiently and more profitably. 

Armed with this kind of information, sales organizations can show their customers how they can streamline operations, foster higher employee retention, increase sales, reduce costs or help them achieve any of their other highest-level strategic priorities. Having the depth and breadth of information available through the use of a CRM solution allows sales organizations to: 

·         market to the specific needs of any given customer;

·         provide solutions rather than just sell products or services;

·         become a trusted advisor, a partner, in meeting their customers’ highest priority needs; and

·         deliver world class, expectation-exceeding customer service. 

Tools of the trade 

There are a slew of CRM solutions available in the marketplace today. They range tremendously in functionality, emphasis or specialty, ease of implementation and maintenance and cost. Some are very basic – little more than pumped up versions of contact or personal information managers. Others are very complex databases that can be customized in great detail and automated. Some specialize in sales force automation while others emphasize enhancing customer service. Still others have robust marketing functionality. Although most CRM solutions employ proprietary programming and schemas, open source code solutions are gaining traction, allowing for more flexible customization and integration with other applications. 

It’s important to know how you want to use a CRM solution and to map out a plan for vendor selection and solution implementation before your search begins. Even with careful planning, CRM solutions, in all their complexity, can be challenging to implement. Take the time to make certain there is a good fit between your needs, the vendor and the solution. Get help navigating through the twists and turns of vendor and application selection and implementation. You’ll be glad you did your homework. 

The bottom line 

If you’re not paying detailed attention to your customers’ needs, wants, habits and requirements, and communicating the same throughout your organization, you’re missing the boat. Adopting the CRM philosophy or concept will help you learn what makes your customers tick. Using a CRM tool that meets your business needs will facilitate and enable the collection, retrieval and sharing of customer information across your entire organization. Applying what you learn to serve your customers better will result in increasing your sales, your profits and your customer loyalty. 

© 2005 Patrick A. Hassett. All rights reserved. 

Pat Hassett draws on more than 30 years experience in sales, sales management and sales support roles across several industries. He stands ready to help you increase your sales, your profitability and your customer loyalty through the use of customer-centric sales methods, high level customer service and customer relationship management tools. To learn more about how SalesNow! can help you, go to www.salesnowonline.com or write to infalesNowOnline.com.