CRM as a business strategy

For those unfamiliar with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), it’s time to familiarise yourselves or be left behind.

A CRM is a strategy to manage your company’s interactions with your customers, clients and prospects. Long gone is the trustworthy old little black book. Today, CRMs use technology to streamline and automate information, enhancing business processes. They allow you to measure and record your interactions and keep your sales, marketing and business development system streamlined and efficient.

Not long ago, surveys reported 70-75% of all CRM initiatives failed. That was yesterday. This is today.

Looking at your CRM systems as a piece of software?  Think again. While they’re getting better, easier and cheaper to use, this year more companies are positioning their CRMs as a marketing channel to map the true value of their clients to aid their competitive edge. 

Smart companies position CRM as a strategy and corporate asset from the outset. This dynamic communication system will be your corporate memory and tactical delivery channel for targeted campaigns and will be used by everyone across the organization – not just by the sales team.  Positioned and used correctly, your CRM can be valued as part of your asset register and eventually sold for a premium.

So how do you create the strategy/vision, manage expectations, organise around the customer and implement CRM best practice? And what are the latest trends in CRM? According to www.CRMtrends.com the top five CRM trends for 2011 are:

1) Branding: It’s now more important than ever. Brands are increasingly becoming a surrogate for value, making brand more critical as generic features continue to propagate in the landscape.

2) Value is the new black: Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy mentality. The era of “Because I said so” is over. This will more than likely challenge most companies. 

3) The rise of the Datarati: Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, once described Datarati as companies that have the edge on consumer data insight. “Data is ubiquitous and cheap; analytical ability is scarce. The sexiest job in the next 10 years will be statistician.” How true. There has been and will continue to be an increased focus on data analysis as companies continue to invest in measuring social media, understanding customer value and modeling customer behaviour. If you don’t use your data to talk to your customers, others will. The investment in data aggregation and the hiring of “sexy” statisticians is a major trend in 2011 and will be for years to come.

4) Customer experience: Customers have more choice than ever, and are more frugal. This affords them the luxury to demand more. This is the year the CRM marketer will be charged with offering a consistent experience across all company touchpoints and developing the infrastructure to allow knowledge-sharing and smart communication. Smart marketers will identify and capitalise on unmet expectations. Companies that understand where the strongest expectations exist will survive and prosper. The customer’s mobile and online experiences will begin to evolve and rival the customer’s offline experience – attentive assistants and all.

5) Personalisation and customisation: In order to be effective in 2011 and beyond, companies will seek to increase customer knowledge and use this insight to talk, engage and interact with their customers more often and more meaningfully in new and innovative ways (including dynamic content and blogs to other social networking). 2011 and onwards will be up close and personal, like it or not.

So what is CRM best practice?

1. CRM is about putting your customer at the centre or heart of your business
2. CRM is about building better relationships with your customers
3. CRM can give you a 360-degree view of the customer, which enables you to improve the quality and satisfaction of each customer interaction and maximise the profitability of your customer relationships – a win/win for you and your customers
4. CRM can be practised across all levels of a business, from the ‘C-suite’ to customer service, product development, procurement, distribution, marketing and, of course, sales.

So…

• Do your senior managers, salespeople, and your broader business know why you have a CRM?
• Do they know how to use it and why it will benefit them to do so?
• Do they know what information needs to be captured and how it will be used?
• Do they know how it will help them grow, develop and retain viable clients?
• Does your CRM strategy and subsequent software make life easier for your salespeople, to make sales – or not?
• Does your CRM strategy and subsequent software support everyone in your business to make life easier for clients and each other?

Your CRM needs to be a business strategy and a way of life, not just a piece of software.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something,

Sue Barrett practices as a coach, advisor, speaker, facilitator, consultant and writer and works across all market segments with her skilful team at BARRETT. Sue and her team take the guess work out of selling and help people from many different careers become aware of their sales capabilities and enable them to take the steps to becoming effective and productive when it comes to selling, sales coaching or sales leadership.To hone your sales skills or learn how to sell go to www.barrett.com.au.