What is implementing a CRM software program worth to your company?
The question really boils down to a few simple issues.
Ask yourself these questions to determine what value a CRM software system will bring to your business.
1) What sales opportunities are you missing that you could close if you had more efficient management?
2) What do you NOT know about your current customers that you should, how many of them will switch to the competition, and what revenue will be lost as a result?
3) Are inefficiencies in your customer service creating extra costs or causing you to loose revenue?
4) Which of your current accounts cost more than they are worth and how much are they costing you?
5) How much could CRM software save you by making your lead generation efforts more effective?
Now add up all of the real costs, as well as the lost opportunity costs and it is likely that you will find that you are losing and spending a lot more than you expected. In most cases, the total you come up with will be more than the cost of CRM software implementation.
Now, here are some more questions you can use to determine the log opportunity cost of not implementing CRM software:
1) How many accounts did your company lose in the last year and what were the annual revenues of those accounts?
2) What would you estimate the number of sales opportunities lost in the last year to be and what were they worth?
3) How much time was spent adjusting orders because of inaccurate or incomplete information and what did this cost?
CRM software helps track employee actions and gives managers the ability to see the results of sales, marketing and customer service efforts. With the data collected, CRM software gives your company new capabilities. You can launch targeted sales and marketing campaigns to uncover new revenue opportunities and service customers better.
Technorati Tags: CRM Review, CRM Software
As with all business decisions, return on investment should be a main consideration in deciding whether to implement a CRM solution for your organization. The CRM Review blog is here to assist you in making this important decision.
Most CRM programs include contact management and some form of campaign tracking. When reviewing different CRM alternatives you will want to consider the following features when deciding which CRM system to use:
CRM Review Items
Web-based or Local System – A web based system allows anytime, anywhere access wherever there is internet access and tends to reduce IT costs because someone else is managing the hardware and monitoring the software maintenance and upgrades. Local software solutions may be less expensive up front, but will require time and resources to maintain.
Interface Ease of Use – Some interfaces are built to be user friendly; others that are not may require a longer learning curve.
Configurable by Industry – Does the CRM solution you are considering have templates or add-ons or modules that can be customized for your particular industry?
Technical support – What level of technical support will you need to effectively run your system? What support is offered by each provider being reviewed?
Advanced User Permissions – Does the CRM program being reviewed have the built in security that is necessary for your operation?
Automated Backups for Data – Maintaining backups is critical to any information system. Having a built in system is helpful in making sure this critical function get done.
Marketing Automation – Many CRM systems you will review will have the ability to coordinate multi-step marketing sequences that include email auto-responders, email broadcasts, direct mail, newsletters, fax, voice broadcast and tasks such as phone calls and personal visits.
Sales Force Automation – Do you need a system that will help you manage your sales team, such as customizable steps in your sales pipeline, the ability to set up sales teams, automatically distribute sales leads and build automated triggers into your sales process to make sure your leads are being followed up on time.
Email Deliverability – As more companies use email to communicate with prospects and customers, email deliverability becomes a critical factor in successful campaigns. Deliverability assurance programs ensure that your emails bypass the spam filters and get through to the customer or prospect.
Contact Management and Tracking – As you continue your CRM review you will find that many CRM programs allow you to track all emails, faxes, appointments, tasks and phone correspondence to contacts in one place
Additional CRM Review Features
Affiliate Tracking – If you use affiliates or joint venture partners you will want to look for a CRM solution that allows partners to view their referrals and commissions online, set up their own tracking links and download marketing resources.
E-commerce – Some CRM services offer an integrated shopping cart. Some even allow for up-sells, cross-sells, special discounts, payment plans and custom html to maximize your online sales.
Process Credit Cards – If you are doing e-commerce the ability to automatically process credit card transactions through your existing merchant account or via Paypal is extremely useful.
List Management – As you complete the CRM review process you will want to find a system that allows you to segment your customers and prospects into meaningful lists that can be used for promotions and follow-up.
Billing & Accounting – Having a CRM system with integrated sales and accounting reports, custom reports, and the ability to automate recurring billing programs and notifications of failed credit transactions can be very useful in reducing the overall cost of sales and customer service. Another option to built-in billing and accounting is the ability to integrate with 3rd party accounting programs.
Calendaring & Tasks – Some useful features include the ability to access information away from the office via computer, PDA or cell phone.
Help Desk – Some CRM programs offer the ability to handle support requests, create ticket stages (to track and manage customer support issues) and set triggers to automatically initiate required actions throughout the ticket process. These can be helpful for saving on manpower in your customer support center.
Some CRM solutions offer all of these features; others offer some of these features. Take some time to analyze your needs to figure out the features you must have as you begin the CRM review process.
CRM Reviews
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Subjective considerations for Customer Relationship Management implementation
In a previous post we reviewed factors for determining the real dollar value of implementing a Customer Relationship Management system. Here we will discuss some of the more subjective factors in evaluating the benefits of a CRM system.
Simply put, if you don’t give your customers and clients what they want your business won’t make a profit and if your business doesn’t make a profit, you’ve got a real problem! The whole basis of implementing a customer relationship management system is to allow you to know what the customer wants and enable you to give it to them in a more efficient manner.
Many of the benefits of a Customer Relationship Management system are quantifiable while others are more subjective. Here are some questions you should ask yourself to help you determine how Customer Relationship Management will benefit your company:
Does your company really put the wants and needs of the customer first?
Do your customer service department, sales department and management staff all have access to the same customer information?
Does your sales staff have information about individual customer accounts that no one else in the company has access to?
Is your Marketing department abile to segment customer accounts so they can do highly targeted marketing?
Is your company organized in such a way that all departments support marketing and sales efforts to win and keep customer accounts?
Is customer turnover a rare occurance?
Are you tracking opinions of your customer service?
Is employee compensation tied to customer satisfaction and sales results?
Does your management team have a long term expectation for customer relationship management results?
If your answer to any of these questions was “No” then these are the areas in which customer relationship management will prove to be the most beneficial.
CRM Reviews
Technorati Tags: CRM Software, Customer Relationship Management, Web Based CRM Software
Customer Relationship Management software, otherwise know as CRM software can help a business not only manage marketing processes better but also can save money by cutting advertising costs and keeping sales staff hours to a minimum. There are several options when it comes to CRM programs. Some are web based while others reside on a local computer or server. There are programs for a single person and solutions for world-wide corporations.
We will be discussing the advantages of using web based CRM software in this article. There are many advantages to web based CRM software as apposed to stand alone software that resides on your system.
Advantages of Web Based CRM Software
Web based CRM software systems allow your staff to access customer information anytime and anywhere they have internet access. This means that if your sales rep is sitting in the customer’s office and needs access to the customer’s information he can simply login to the system and get what he needs.
Because web based CRM software is managed by the provider the provider takes care of updates, security, redundant disks, backups and many other I.T. tasks. This reduces your need for I.T. staff, equipment, office space and training.
Most web based systems provide technical support services, again reducing the need for staff, office space and training.
Data backups are handled by the provider which relieves you of the obligation and ensures that it will actually get done.
Email deliverability can be a real problem for marketers. Your web based CRM provider should have a deliverability assurance program to ensure that your emails get pass the spam filters. This can be a full time job if you do it yourself.
A web based system also allows you to have an Affiliate program that allows affiliate partners to view their referrals and commissions and manage their affiliate account online.
Calendaring and other sales tasks can be accessed at home or on the road with any web-enabled desktop, laptop, PDA or cell phone.
Often web based CRM software will have help desk features that handle support requests and track and manage customer support issues.
CRM Reviews
Conventional CRM programs help companies manage sales opportunities of products or jobs that typically end with the deal being either closed or lost. They may or may not continue to focus on additional sales to individual customers. The rules of the game are a little bit different for companies that provide professional services.
For service-based companies, such as financial, legal and consulting businesses, converting a potential customer into a client is only the beginning of what is hoped to be a long term relationship. Therefore it is important to implement a CRM software program that is designed with the specific needs of services-based companies in mind. There need to be a focus on tracking client service rather than closing deals.
The following are features that should be taken into consideration in your CRM decision:
Client Support & Service: This feature enables the recording and tracking of all client contacts by e-mail, the web and phone. Additional features may include automatic escalation rules and tools to improve trouble-ticket handling.
Services Item Catalog Creation: This feature allows for the creation of a portfolio of services. It may include client-specific price levels, discounting rules and preferred-client pricing.
Job/Project Tracking: Tracking allows you to manage and track multiple types of projects or jobs with linked activities that clients, sales, service and support personnel can all view.
Services Sales Management: That can manage the full sales cycle including tracking leads, generating proposals and contracts, forecasting bookings and support resources.
Advanced Calendaring and Activity Time Tracking: Normally this feature allows for sharing calendars, developing schedules and monitoring assets. It will also let managers track the employee actions on an individual or per-project basis with time-tracked activities (tasks, calls and meeting events).
Self-Service Center: A secure center where clients can track: project status, order history, current quotes, shared documents; knowledge bases, FAQs or submit a trouble ticket.
Document Management: Provides a location to store, organize and transfer documents in different formats. These documents can be published to intranets, corporate web sites or client self-service centers.
Technorati Tags: client support, crm, customer tracking, service business
Most businesses seem to have two failures in common. First, they are neglecting one of the most important aspects of their marketing program – to follow-up with their leads and customers – because it’s boring, time consuming and a general pain in the neck.
The second common failure is in handling lead management. Company owners often have no idea what is happening to leads they distribute to their sales force. They don’t know if anyone is calling them, or if the sales person is just “skimming the cream” or “cherry picking”—which by the way, you can’t blame them: they have a limited amount of time and get paid commissions to close sales, so they spend time with the hot leads, not the ones that are tough to get a hold of or the ones where the timing isn’t exactly right. The problem here is that no one knows what is happening to the rest of the leads that come in the door.
This is where a Customer Relationship Management Program can help. Not only in can it help your sales force use their time more effectively but it can also help managers do a better job.
A good CRM Program will have the following benefits:
1. Marketing Automation & Communication. Automatically execute multi-step, multi-media marketing campaigns to prospects, partners, clients, past customers, friends, and anyone else you want; track responses to marketing campaigns and report the effectiveness of marketing pieces and campaigns
2. Sales tracking that allows sales people to manage prospects and customers through various stages of the sale; know exactly what to do with a lead and when to do it; automate the process.
3. Central Contact Management Database: Store prospect and customer data in a central system; manage tasks; store documents electronically; keep customer’s communications logs; group contacts for organization and efficient communications; import & export data from virtually any source.
4. Management Tracking to assign leads to sales people and keep tabs on the progress of those leads; customize the sales pipeline to reflect the sales stages used in your company; identify bottlenecks in the sales process (bad leads, bad lead sources, bad sales people?)
Technorati Tags: contact management, crm, marketing automation, sales tracking
Making a sale can be a time consuming process, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many steps in the process that can be automated in such a way that saves time and makes it easier to close the sale too.
Good follow-up with your prospects and detailed tracking of their progress through the sales process is one of the keys to success in sales. This can, however, be a limiting factor due to time constraints. There is hope however, since many of the necessary steps can be automated. Below is a list of steps in the sales process that can be organized and automated to make the job of selling easier and less time consuming.
1. Sending relevant, valuable information to EVERY PROSPECT on a scheduled, recurring basis helps you keep your name in front of the prospect and increases top of mind awareness. It also helps set you up as the helpful expert, which is better positioning then a begging salesperson.
2. Communicate to prospects efficiently, aside from the normal, time-consuming, one-on-one methods. This can be done in several ways, including such things as a newsletter, special reports, how-to tips, market updates, advice, etc. These communications can be sent via email, direct mail, voice broadcast, or fax.
3. Log all communications between your office and the prospect in an organized fashion. One of the keys to good follow-up is good record keeping, especially if the prospect is being contacted by more than one person. Even if you are doing all the contacting yourself it is impossible to keep every detail for every prospect in your head, and the more prospects you have the harder it gets. You need to keep track of these details accurately to get the most out of each contact with the prospect. Otherwise you will miss opportunities to make upsells and cross sells, not to mention the primary sale.
4. Arm yourself and your sales reps with an arsenal of specific information that can be sent to prospects upon request. These different marketing tools should be designed to educate the prospect as to how you do business and what sets you apart from your competitors. It should also move the prospect along through the sales process and help them in making a buying decision.
5. Track the progress of each lead through the sales pipeline, so you always know where every lead stands. This way you will know which prospects to focus the most time and attention on and you will also be able to spot holes in your sales process where prospects may be falling out.
The good news is that it’s actually very easy to do all of this automatically. There are several good customer relationship management systems available that will make many of these steps a breeze.
Technorati Tags: crm, customer relationship management system, sales automation
How to Get Ready to Implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Your Company
If you want to get the quickest return on investment from CRM implementation then it will pay to have a plan. Check this list to make sure you are going to get the benefits of CRM right from the start:
1. Set strategic and tactical goals that CRM will accomplish.
How is this going to help you serve your customers better?
2. Resolve any problems with your sales and delivery system.
If your sales and delivery system is not working properly, CRM won’t help, it will just make it more obvious where the problems are.
3. Get senior management buy in and agreement on expectations and make sure you have buy-in from the important functional areas of the company.
It’s better to get everyone on the same page going in. Some will always resist change but remember the big picture and benefits that will occur company-wide.
4. Make sure that short-term expectations are realistic, yet long-term goals are most important.
You will see immediate benefits of using CRM, but the greatest benefits will be long lasting.
5. Set a tracking system on a few key metrics so that you can see the improvement you are making over time.
Motivate your employees to embrace CRM with incentives tied to metrics.
6. Position the project as a cultural change project to improve the whole company.
The main philosophy of CRM is focusing on the customer and their needs/wants. For some, this may take an attitude adjustment, but for the success of any company it is critical.
CRM Reviews
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