“Buyer beware” is beginning to have a new meaning. A new CRM-Add-In was offered to me today. The tool, when integrated into a CRM-Application, measures the extent to which the person is networked in Facebook, XING, Twitter etc. and gives a score according to the size of the network. The idea is of course, that people with a large network need to be more carefully handled than others.

From the point of view of the customer, this would mean that it is necessary to invest time in maintaining a network in order to get good service. That does not sound too good.

Maybe the saying “we are what we eat” should be changed to “we are what we buy”. Something to think about the next time you buy something on the internet.

It is a question of visibility. Highly visible people and companies will find Web 2.0 to be an important platform for image building and marketing. For this group attention to CRM will also mean attention to what is going on with Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn and other social sites.

However the vast majority of companies are not in this highly visible group but would like to get there. For these actors in the great commercial game, virtual contacts do not replace real live contacts until they have reached the tipping point. The tipping point is the point at which the company or product becomes “in”. The only way to reach this point is by having enough people recommending your company, product or services and if possible in having socially visible people doing this.

You will not get people to recommend you just be writing blogs like this one or by twittering as much as you can. You will need to create an emotional relationship and not just a link in XING or LinkedIn. Take a look at an organisation such as BNI – this could be your first step in the right direction.

The World Cup is here again, cars and houses are once more flagged and the streets are empty during games. The key word here is loyalty. Why are people loyal to the team they support? At a time when companies are looking for ways to promote loyalty, people are turning to sports and social media. There is a lesson to be learned from this. People can only be loyal where emotions are involved, and emotions are built around people. There is a strong need to identify with a group of people with similar attitudes and opinions.

Companies which attempt to reach customers by offering the lowest prices or the newest technology may have success so long as they are the cheapest or the best, but they will not keep their customers when conditions changed. This may be one recipe for success, but companies able to generate an identity to which people can relate will do better. Evidently, creating and maintaining the identity is a case for the entire staff of a company, but a good CRM concept should provide the organizational basis by supplying the right information at the right time.

Loyalty is more important than the promotion of special offers and technical gimmicks.

After all the hype on the use of social media, the time has come to think about what has happened (or not happened). One thing is certain – using and keeping track of social media is a time consuming activity. Following LinkedIn, Twitter, XING or Facebook, can fill your day and often produce no useful results. So time consuming that there is a definite danger, that real life contacts and opportunities may be overseen.

While social media to produce sales relevant information, the task of separating the relevant from the mass of irrelevant data requires considerable effort and this should not be the task of sales persons. Further, the mass of information must be processed before any of the the data is entered into your CRM system. Further, it is important to decide how the information is to be used before starting down this road. is it your aim to create new contacts for your sales organization or to keep track of the activities of current customers?

Talking to a group of sales people recently, the general view was, that personal contacts are becoming more rather than less important than before. Certainly in B2B business, prospective customers are becoming increasingly resistant to E-Mail and Call Center contacts.

Even the best viral marketing ideas will not create the desired effect if they are not seeded successfully. For those with a limited budget, try the following:

• Digg, Reddit, Delicious & Co: People using these sites are numerous and are often “communicators” and active in several networks.
• Twitter: Twitter is a must, but is not enough on its own unless you manage to get mentioned by a well read participant. Not all twitterers with a large number of followers have real visibility.
• Blogs: Influential bloggers can spread your message, but will only do this if your campaign is relevant to the blog topic.
• Social Networks (LinkedIn etc.): if you have connections with social media power users, leverage them to help seed campaigns.

These are just a few of the possibilities. Ensure that any responses are captured by your CRM system and followed up!

The importance of a modern, functional internet presence cannot be exaggerated. Which functions are essential for the furthering of customer relations? Try these:

• Personalized information on products and services for customers and prospects
• Customer forum for product features  – present and future
• Technical support and advice
• eCommerce (where applicable)

Most company internet sites talk at readers rather than with readers and allow little or no dialog opportunities apart from a simple contact form or telephone number. This puts the barrier much too high for customers who may have something valuable to say but do not want to reach for the phone or wait for an answer. A customer forum in some form presents an ideal opportunity for gathering ideas, comments and positive criticisms. When a forum with groups, themes etc. is not suitable there are alternatives, for example a competition of some kind. An excellent example is the Smart Design Contest. This success of this well designed interaction shows that customers and prospects will happily contribute constructive ideas and comments. Apart from gathering new ideas for product development, marketing specialists have an excellent basis for trend analysis.

Every forum needs administration and editing – not all comments are friendly or suited for publication – but the costs and effort involved are balanced by the advantages of closer customer relations and also by the value of information gained.

Integration with a CRM application should filter information gathered and channel this information to the relevant employees or user groups. In the case of support oriented applications the business processes for handling incidents (ITIL) are generally well defined and implemented. In the case of sales, this is very often not the case although  CRM software with workflow and customizing tools is available.

What prospects and customers look for:

• Information on potential suppliers and their products
• Relevant comments and reports from other users
• Supplier independent discussion platforms

What B2B prospects and customers do not want is a sales pitch, for that they can go to the suppliers web site. Many groups in XING have mutated to sales platforms, which is not what social networking is about.

What B2B suppliers want:

• Background information on persons involved with purchase decisions
• Visibility resulting from discussions and comments
• Market background information
• Real-life contacts resulting from social network activities

These requirements are not incompatible, but there is a numbers problem. While individuals looking for information can research on a specific topic when interested, suppliers need permanently to monitor these activities. Also the number of people gathering information will always be considerably higher than the number of employees available for monitoring social sites. The effort involved in monitoring is immense.

Evidently, there is a need for automating these processes, which is where CRM software comes in. As may be expected. Salesforce as a cloud oriented supplier has announced several functions, most of which are still in development. Other companies, Pivotal for example, have announced plans for integration with twitter, linkedIn and facebook. The solutions offered are oriented towards gathering information, which is fine but is only a time saving function for sales and marketing personnel who would otherwise research the information directly.

After saying that automation is required, there are some major challenges to master. Firstly, the amount of information available is considerable and only a small part of the information available will be relevant. Secondly the behavior of people active in the social web world is changing rapidly and there is no reason to suppose that this will change during the next years. Finally, marketing gurus will say that there must be a dialogue between suppliers and the outside world. All this makes automation more a dream than a realistic aim

Common to B2B and B2C is the aim of steering people to the company web site, assuming of course that the web site offers support,  forums, customer information platforms and order processing. At this level, processes can and should be automated.  The message I am getting to is this. CRM B2B applications may be loosely linked to social sites, the really import interaction is that between the CRM solution and a modern, functional internet presence. 

Social networks as a platform for B2C sales and communication are well established, the drift from print to online marketing demonstrates this clearly. A recent study by Outsell shows that online marketing now accounts for over 30% of the total marketing budget. In facebook and youtube, companies selling to consumers (Coca Cola, BMW or apple for example) are well represented while suppliers of ingredients or parts are hard to find.

B2B customer relations differ from B2C in a number of ways.

• Relations are built to individuals, but these individuals act as members of an organization, not as consumers.
• Decisions to purchase involve a number of individuals, each with their own aims and motivation.
• Requirements may be influenced by personal egos and emotions, but will largely depend on business demands.

This makes the use of social platforms for B2B CRM more of a challenge but is certainly a challenge which cannot be ignored. In the business as in the consumer world, people use the internet as a primary source of information and communication. For CRM applications, new installations tend to build social functionality into the company CRM application.  However, existing public platforms do have a place for some activities at least on the basis that individuals involved in a B2B purchase may base their opinion on consumer information. The following table may help.

This week’s theme is the use of Web 2.0 features for CRM  for B2B sales and marketing. The following topics will be covered.

1. The relevance of twitter, facebook, youtube and other platforms for communication between individuals
2. The relevance of networking platforms such as linkedin and xing
3. The advantages of a forums and discussion groups
4. Guerilla Marketing

Watch this space!

At last most CIOs have recognized that CRM is not just names, addresses and opportunities but a set of business processes involving customer interaction. At first glance, it should be possible to integrate social networks in existing processes, but a second look shows the need for a re-think. While business processes are designed to proceed step by step to an aim, the users of social networks are used to short exchanges which may or may not lead anywhere. Reading Tweets or entries in XING or LinkedIn for example, users comment on almost anything and may or may not come back to look at replies. Certainly the users do not wish to receive any form of advertsing as a result of an entry but are looking for communication. Any ideas?