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.

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.

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