Active CRM

In our second installment of CRM Forum, Heather Bennett of Heather Bennett Resources exposes to ActiveCRM her tips for helping sales organizations boost productivity and pump up revenue by harnessing the hidden power of their CRM systems. Listen in as she reveals the number one technique for getting even the most unorganized sales rep to embrace your CRM tool.

As of today the stock market is down more than 3,000 points off its high for the year, the credit markets have collapsed, and the news is all a rage about the impending “Global Recession.”

During Difficult economic times is when you should tighten up your internal systems; remove any “slop” or lazy practices that you kinda, sorta know about but just haven’t got around to finishing up.  It is the time to get your CRM in order.

Real business intelligence can and will make the difference between profitability and loss, and getting your CRM in order will help.  The following three quick tips will help you get started

Compliance—Review how your sales team is using their CRM.  Who is not using it correctly?  Who is adding irrelevant crap?  What vital information is systemically missing?  Reinvigorate enforcement of CRM as a valuable business tool.  Most likely a veteran or star sales member is the worst culprit.  They need to be handled firmly in a way that will help them see the value of CRM, not just to you the sales manager and to the company, but to them.

Trends—Are there any unaddressed customer service trends? Something you could tweak in the way you do business and make a tremendous change to how customers perceive you?  One example I have is from a recent experience.  I subscribe to a marketing newsletter from a company that prides itself on outstanding customer service.  My August newsletter never arrived, and I to call to ask them what happened to it.  They apologized and said they would send it out right away.  Thirty days go by and after 2 more phone calls and 30 minutes on hold another customer service representative tells me, sorry, I can’t tell for sure if it went out.  I finally received my August newsletter in October.  By this time I was extremely irritated with the company and rethinking my subscription.  But when I opened the envelope I was pleasantly surprised.  There was an apology letter included with my newsletter.  It was a very small token and cost the company nothing.  It completely changed my perception of them and how I felt about the transaction.  It was very powerful.  What could you do to improve customer service? It is in your CRM.

Analysis—What does the data tell you?  Your CRM is trying to tell you something.  You just have to understand what it is saying.  Do you know who your top 30 customers are?  When was the last time you tried to up-sell them? How about the next 30? Is there any one segment or vertical of your customer list that you haven’t touched in awhile?  Is a segment of your list hyper-sensitive and ripe for an additional touch? If you are having a bad month, it may be easier to increase sales from customers you already have rather than with new customers.

During the Great Depression many businesses fell by the wayside while others thrived.  In many cases, the difference may very well have been how well those businesses understood their customers and were able to adjust their marketing, customer service, and sales strategies.  If we are in the beginning of a global recession, be one of the ones who thrive.

In our first installment of CRM Forum, ActiveCRM sits down with Cahal Grennan, Regional Sales Manager at M5 Networks, Inc, to discuss the most common challenges facing sales managers and how revamping your CRM solution can help motivate your team and improve performance. Listen along as we get a candid look inside a sales organization proactively using the techniques shared on this blog.

*Right click on the image above, and click “Save Target As…” to save this audio file to your desktop. After the download has completed, double click on the .mp3 file to listen to this interview on your computer’s audio player.

Created for companies looking to sell more in our competitive information-overloaded environment, Active CRM delivers news and information you can immediately put to use in your sales organization. Active CRM addresses the challenges facing sales professionals today, and every issue is loaded with practical solutions and relevant resources like case studies and white papers. But don’t just take our word for it…

What Active CRM Readers Say

“Active CRM is a great resource for sales professionals. As sales improvement specialist working with dozens of clients, I find your content interesting, helpful and relevant. Keep up the good work!”

-Heather Bennett

President & Owner, Heather Bennett Resources

www.heatherbennettresources.com

“Active CRM does a great job communicating sales management issues. I lead a large B2B sales team spread across a diverse geographic area, and your newsletter tips are invaluable in keeping my team proactive. Thanks so much for the great content!”

-Brian Klansky

VP of Sales, M5 Networks, Inc.

www.m5net.com

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As a highly-motivated salesperson, you’re constantly looking for ways to optimize the information you gather about your customers. You’re diligent to record any piece of data that might later help you build a better relationship with the client.

But have you taken the time to really get to know the business intelligence capabilities of your CRM application? Most good CRM packages contain features that collect, filter and classify business intelligence in ways you might not have considered.  They allow you to categorize and examine all the details you’ve spent so much time gathering about your clients. A simple detail such as how many clients are located in the same office building, for example, can translate into better appointment planning.

While we’re discussing business intelligence, let’s take a look at your prospect database. Does it include such information as who their strongest competitors are or whether foot traffic makes up most of their business? Perhaps you’re beginning to understand how seemingly trivial information can give you the inside track when suggesting product or service solutions to prospective customers.

A note about business intelligence gathering: not every client or prospect appreciates being asked probing questions about his business. Creating a survey script to collect information about customers is never going to be as effective as talking, and listening to, your customers and prospects on a regular basis. Allow questions to come up organically during your conversations. No one enjoys being grilled by a salesperson about his buying habits.

Don’t be afraid to use the Internet to gather information, as well. New technologies such as data mining are being constantly improved. You’re no longer limited to client websites or business directories to gain new information about who they are and how they like to do business.

Once you’ve collected more in-depth information, start using it to shape how you relate to your clients. Spin those reports in several different ways to examine the preferences of diverse groups of customers. And don’t be afraid to pull reports by variables you aren’t using now.

Here’s a quick laundry list of ways that business intelligence might be analyzed to your benefit:

ü      How many of your customers have multi-state retail locations? (Are you marketing to all of them?)

ü      Which clients regularly use the Internet to place orders/receive product information? (Would automated order status messages build greater client loyalty in this group?)

ü      Which customers in a given sales territory tend to place ‘rush’ orders? (Can you assist them by setting up automated product replenishment?)

ü      Do product returns tend to follow industries or geographic areas? (Are there more appropriate products that can be suggested?)

ü      Has the number of employees at client locations grown or diminished in the past six months? (Should you anticipate an increase or decrease in orders soon?)

ü      How many calls did you make on the customer prior to their first order? (Do they need time to consider their options, or can you present new products easily to this customer?)

Every one of these pieces of information can be used to shape your approach to your customers. Obviously, this list isn’t exhaustive. Let your creativity run wild as you’re analyzing your customer data. Allow quality business intelligence, collected and stored within your CRM system, to become the cornerstone of your daily sales strategy.

Whether you’re selling products or services, there are two vital branches in every sales-driven organization—a sales force that builds good relationships with clients, and a management team that can think strategically. Without both of those branches, your business has as much chance of surviving as a tree that’s been split down the middle by lightning.

A good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application can provide the information both branches need to flourish, but only if that information is up-to-date. A sales manager who makes decisions based on out-of-date business intelligence is about as effective as the salesman who doesn’t realize a contact was laid off in the last downsizing. Each of them depends upon real-time information to perform well in his position.

Most CRM software packages have the ability to store client information and produce management reports. What they can’t do is force your sales people to input and update that information as they interact with clients. The goal when establishing an Active CRM culture is to create great relationships with every client, not just the clients who have a motivated account representative.

What’s needed, then, is a method of integrating as many of the client contact, sales and order processing functions as possible into a single, automated application. The first attempts at Customer Relationship Management applications automated many of the sales functions, but there remains a need to update client data constantly without alienating your entire sales force. That best of all possible business tools is known as an Active CRM System.

Many of the major CRM software vendors have responded to that need with improved features. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the ways an Active CRM system might function:

·         Integrate incoming and outgoing phone calls into your CRM system, with input screens which appear automatically when a call is received

·         Tie into your email system and automatically record client messages received in your database

·         Easily import existing contact data from Microsoft Outlook and other contact management applications

·         Provide web-based access to client databases and order screens for sales people on the road

·         Link sales activity, marketing campaigns, billing and order fulfillment into single screen access

·         Allow uploads (and access) from handheld devices to avoid double data entry

·         Provide customer self-service ordering interfaces, with corresponding alerts to account reps

·         Automate sales forecasting and reporting to keep sales personnel in the field instead of the office

Many of these features are now available in standard CRM systems. If you’re not ready to abandon your current CRM solution, consider having customized interfaces built by the vendor or a software developer. The point of all this increased ability is to give your customers what they want, quickly and consistently. A truckload of client data is useless unless it translates into improved customer experience. With the goal of successfully relating to all clients and prospects, explore the possibilities of an Active CRM system for your business.  Your sales force, and your customers, will thank you for it.

Here’s a fact that we, as sales professionals and managers, can no longer avoid: the company that doesn’t develop an internal culture of Active Customer Relationship Management may not survive in the tight markets to come. Unless you’ve established deep roots with your customer base, their hard-earned dollars may go elsewhere.

Companies without a Active CRM mindset may also not be sufficiently in touch with their customers to recognize when it’s time to make a change. That’s a critical mistake, because ‘market agility’ is no longer just a buzz word, it’s the characteristic that will separate the wheat from the chaff when times get tough.

What should a company do if Active CRM isn’t the prevailing mindset?  It’s really quite simple—developing an Active CRM culture means analyzing and perfecting the way every customer contact is managed. That isn’t the same thing as customer service training (although that’s a good place to start). Having a company-wide Active CRM attitude means valuing your customers, and potential customers, enough to learn who they are and what they need, whether or not ‘salesperson’ appears after your name in the company directory.

Let’s start at your front door. If a person calls in from an advertisement, how is that first contact handled? Does the first employee they encounter recognize the value customers have to your business? Active Customer Relationship Management means managing the way your company builds relationships with customers. Every employee a client encounters at your business should place the same value on them, be they janitor or CEO.

From the sales department to the executive suite, acknowledging the need to build trust with customers should be automatic. This Active CRM attitude affects the way marketing is done, the speed at which phone calls are returned, and the attention paid to filling orders accurately.

Active CRM cannot simply be defined as the software you purchased to keep track of clients. That software is a powerful tool, but without integration with existing communications tools and a corresponding desire to create strong relationships with your clients, it won’t help keep your doors open. Basing decisions about your company’s future on what you know about your customers is essential, but so is communicating your company’s philosophy about customers to every person on your payroll.

We recognize that there are employees in nearly every company who wish this CRM ‘fad’ would go away, so they can go back to business as usual. My response to that attitude is “WAKE UP!” Customers with less money to spend pay close attention to the way they’re treated and spend their money accordingly. With competition for new customers at fever pitch in many markets, we can’t afford to under-value a single person or company who looks our direction.

Whether you’re a sales associate or you manage the entire sales office, you have the opportunity to help create an Active CRM philosophy at your business. Refuse to let customers become ’just another number’ for your company. Talk to employees of other departments about the value each of your customers has. With the proper attention paid to who your customers are and what they want.

In most industry and service sectors today, it’s no longer enough to base key business decisions on ‘our customers as a whole.’ Your company’s continued viability may depend upon your ability to identify, and make decisions upon, the preferences of specific client groups.

In addition, heightened global competition in many sectors means that clients may not have the loyalty to your firm they once had. Cementing that fidelity to your products or services takes deliberate effort on your company’s part to establish relationships with clients, rather than simply seeing them as ‘buying units.’ Taking the time to learn who they are and what they want is much more effective than marketing for the masses.

If your profits aren’t where you expected them to be this year, you must gain control of the way in which business intelligence is being gathered and analyzed.  That’s where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications can help. CRM systems were developed to allow businesses to input, analyze and exploit key business intelligence metrics.

When individual client preferences and buying habits are recorded, they can be spun in infinite combinations to help you determine, for example, which zip codes are likely to purchase new tires in June. Or perhaps you’d like to know how many women business owners in the Midwest are attending your coaching seminars, in order to market other products to them. Whatever it is you’d like to learn about your customers’ purchasing habits, the first step is to initiate a CRM system that’s workable in your environment.

CRM packages range from single-computer standalone software packages to large web-based applications that can be accessed and updated on the fly by your sales force. Many of today’s CRM systems can be integrated with your production and order fulfillment applications, as well as your company’s phone and email systems.

If you haven’t yet invested in a CRM solution, assign the task of researching CRM applications to someone in your organization and have them compare such factors as mobile access and report customization. The time spent at the front end of your CRM implementation project will make all the difference in whether you end up with data that’s relevant to your individual business.

Perhaps your company already has a CRM application in place, but the business intelligence being collected isn’t very useful. Two key factors in whether a CRM package is effective are ease of data collection and potential for customization. Let’s face it—a packaged CRM solution that isn’t producing the business intelligence metrics you require isn’t worth the price of the box.

 In the same way, software that requires constant manual updating isn’t likely to boost sales productivity. Have your sales team identify areas where data input is time consuming, and contact the software vendor about ways to streamline your application.

Once a workable CRM system is part of your company’s standard operation, you’ll be amazed at the agility with which you can respond to your market. By equipping your sales force with an easy-to-use method of staying in contact with prospects and clients, you’ll also be enhancing the relationships on which your company is built. The smart executive in today’s world is the one who is constantly looking for ways to understand her customer base , and nothing takes the place of CRM.

As a sales associate with a large territory, what’s the most difficult thing you experience on the road? It’s certainly no picnic living out of motels and being away from your friends and family. But in terms of your ability to do your job, not having access to current customer data must be at the top of the list.

The foundation of true Customer Relationship Management is information about what’s going on with your customer base. It’s important to make that information accessible to every member of a sales force, whether they’re sitting at their desk or in a client’s office two states away. Fortunately for those of you in sales, more and more organizations are looking for ways to ensure their road warriors are never far away from the information they need.

Here’s an example of how having current, first-hand information can make all the difference in dealing with customers:

Suppose your biggest client cancelled a large order after you are already on the road to her location.  You might, of course, be informed of the cancellation when you check in with your office. But without detailed information about the client’s complaints, you could be walking into a minefield when you visit her. Having information relayed and translated from your CRM system by a third party is never as effective as reviewing the original customer comments recorded when the cancellation was received.

In another light, having up-to-date information can elevate your customer’s opinion of you and your organization. The sales associate who can check the status of the client’s latest order on her Blackberry while sitting across the desk from the customer has much more credibility than the sales rep making frantic phone calls in the hallway.

Recognizing the importance of remote CRM capability, software vendors began developing ways to provide access to at least a limited set of customer data from wireless devices. The usual obstacles to developing a wireless application slowed that effort–issues such as data security, cost of wireless service and hardware compatibility. But today, several of the major CRM providers offer mobile applications for their software.

Such CRM giants as SAP, Oracle, and SalesForce.com were in the forefront in developing remote CRM access. Companies willing to make the investment to add these modules to their CRM solution have a definite edge on their competition. Even a single-member sales force can benefit from this additional capability. A small business owner who’s in front of his clients, as well as running his business, needs every possible tool available to keep him up-to-date on client activity.

If your company isn’t taking advantage of remote CRM capability, why not make the case today? You have plenty of experience spelling out the benefits of a purchase to your customers. Turn all that talent to persuading your sales manager that it’s time to step up to mobile CRM.