This is a pragmatic approach to linking CRM with Social Web: http://www.cdcsoftware.com/en/PivotalCRM/Products/Social-CRM.aspx
Sales Partners of CRM Software suppliers are by definition more interested in selling you software than in helping you develop a CRM solution. Most of them only work with one or two products, so to them, your problem always look the same.
This characteristic is unfortunately actively encouraged by buyers who look for functions and technical requirements but are not aware of the real business aims involved. There are probably no functions which can be requested which existing CRM solutions do not offer, so using lists of functions will not produce valid results. The quality and the usability of those functions in your environment is another question.
CRM suppliers and resellers can be exptected to have good expertise with regard to their products and good sales people who can show you their solution the way you like to see it. However, even though it is often thought that customer care and sales are the same everywhere, this is definitely not the case. Sales and support processes are always unique. Selecting CRM Software which has the largest number of ticks against your requirements list will not get you the best solution. You will hear talk of best practices from your CRM Rep, but there are no best practices which fit all companies.
If you are looking for more than simple contact management, CRM Software will always need to be modified, so you need to look for suppliers who can understand your business and convince you that the software they are offering can be modified to your requirements.
The sales person who points out these traps will bring you a better solution than the person who tells you the software will do it all for you.
The advice is as old as the hills, but is as true as ever: Don’t let software drive your business, define your requirements and then look for software which fulfills your business needs.
More follows.
Let’s start with a list of things sales people do not like doing:
- Writing monthly/quarterly reports
- Looking for marketing collateral, product descriptions
- Entering data
- Processing documents
This is evidently not an exclusive list but one which relates to CRM systems. When new CRM Systems are put in place, too little attention is paid to the real requirements of sales people. They are regarded as a source of information and are often left with little more than an automated address book with contact history and opportunity management. Even the opportunity management is more often oriented towards management information requiremens and not to the need of sales people.
The remedy is not tricky. When a new sales support system is to be introduced, ensure that exisiting information is imported for each sales person, provide interfaces to back end systems with sales and product data and ensure that reports and forms exist to relieve the sales force of routine tasks.
Is CRM moving back to SFA?
Jun 28
Looking back to the beginnings of software for sales and marketing, we have seen “Computer Aided Selling”, “Sales Force Automation”, “1to1Marketing” and now “Customer Relationship Management”. Although suppliers and experts speak about the need to communicate with customers and offer 360 degree customer views, the majority of the RFPs I see tend to center arount the improvement of sales efficiency.
This can probably be explained by the increasing cost of sales and decreasing sales margins but does ignore the advantages which could be gained by looking at sales processes from the cutomers point of view. Aiming at decreasing costs usually involves simplifying current processes and not on reviewing the processes in total. It also has the side effect that products promising simple and quick implementation tend to be preferred.
Increasing efficiency and reducing costs are certainly valid aims when introducint a new CRM system, but the real advantages of a new system should include processes which would not be possible without the use of software. Sales, Marketing and Service functions can be integrated to improve the total service level to the customer not only be reducing administrative loads, but also by offering new services.
Once again iPhone-Hype is everywhere and CRM-suppliers are quick to offer interfaces. The approach differs from product to product – some provide online access to the database, others download date to the phone. The most common use is to check or find customer names or contacts when on the road, but most apps go further with a variety of functions. E-Mail and Call are of course to be expected on a phone, but some products provide access and edit functions for activities, opportunities or orders.
While the access to address and contact data is certainly useful, it is worth thinking if further functions are worth what they cost. This will vary from application to application and certainly from industry to industry, but in many cases the small display and limited data entry speed on the iPhone (Blackberry is faster for most users) limit the practical usage. it is probably better to turn to a notebook witha larger screen and a real keyboard – it may not be trendy, but it does encourage more careful use.
International companies will tend to centralize IT-applications where possible and it appears that CRM-solutions are now being targeted. This may seem reasonable but there are many arguments against centralization in this area. One recent example I found in a large pharmaceutical concern. A regional manager was looking for a CRM-solution for his agents in the Middle East, the agents being anything from a one-man company to a specialized sales organization with up to 15 employees. The manager was told by his IT, that the only CRM-solution allowed in the company was SAP. I need not comment on that. The manager was determined to find a solution and in fact did – the solution he found was not declared as a CRM-system.
The point is, that CRM-solutions are only effective when the local sales processes can be supported and a one-man company just does not have the same processes as the German operation with many thousands of employees and a gigantic sales force.
Adapting an enterprise application to suit local conditions has two major disadvantages:
- the cost of customizing is extremely high, and
- the massive customizing produces an application nothing like the original.
It is in fact often more effective and much less costly, to install suitable products in each country and to generate interfaces as required.
It is also absolutely essential to analyze and react to local requirements, even within Europe methods and processes change from country to country. Further, requirements vary according to the size of the sales operation. One memorable near-fail of a project occurred for example when a company in the automotive industry assumed that all vehicles could be identified for their lifetime by the registration number – the system designers were based in the UK.
In most cases, in Germany at least, customers are categorized as A, B or C customers based on the volume of business. At first, this appears logical but at a closer look more factors should be regarded:
- business volume in relation to the customers total budget
- the customers growth plan
- marketing prestige
Just looking at achieved business volume is a very one sided view of a customer. More important is the size of the customers budget, assuming that there is no reason why you should not expand your share. Some customers will clearly grow rapidly and these need to be handled with particular care since this is a chance to establish contacts and loyalties which will keep competitors out when the company grows and more people are involved in purchase and development decisions. Some companies have a lighthouse function in their industry which makes them a generator for new business if they can be referenced.
Basically, there is nothing wrong with an ABC analysis, but the process for the classification needs to be well and clearly defined and classifications should be reviewed at least annually.
The main argument against the ABC classification, is that C customers tend to be ignored. This would lead to problems, since the rule that 20% of customers create 80% of revenue will always apply. Cutting away the C customers will only reduce revenue – it will not change the 20:80 relation!
The importance of information gathered during a customer call cannot be exaggerated. This means that calls to customers should be carefully planned and the results recorded in way which allows later analysis of the information gained.
Good sales persons will know how often they should visit their customers and have a good knowledge of customers attitudes and requirements. However even the best sales person will sometimes forget a call and information not stored online is not available for analysis. A well designed CRM system will provide means for suggesting calls to be made on the basis of the date of the last visit and the potential of the customer. Going into more detail, a CRM-System can support sales people by offering a customer-specific check-list of important points and will make the job of entering call data simple.
This is basically a very simple process and is often, exactly for this reason, overlooked during application design. Some of the most succesful companies guide the frequency and content of customer visits very closely – CRM in practice!
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.
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