CRM For Sales Success

By Anthony Muhl

23 April 2010

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software provides opportunity for business to standout from the competition by providing custom solutions for each client. The main focus of any CRM application is to enhance the interaction between your client and your company. If your company sells a wide range of products it would be beneficial to know what range of products a particular client orders on a regular basis.

The information that you can collect from CRM software will help cut down your phone time, plus gives the sales force the opportunity to up-sell clients. Most markets today are saturated and companies that find ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors stand the best chance of long-term survival. A company that understands the importance of going the extra step not only will increase their client base, they create an advantage of holding on to existing clients longer.

CRM applications do more than track client names and phone numbers, dates and times a client called; value, is the purpose of the software in terms of the products and spending patterns clients demand. Consider automating your distribution force with automated client satisfaction surveys. Imagine the ability to send out surveys directly to a customer’s . PDA right after a shipment is received or a service is completed. This survey will give your company valuable information as to how well your company stacks up in today’s competitive world.

It is noted that not all clients will participate; however, the clients that do – their feedback is one that your company will benefit from. Every business relies on a balance of serving clients efficiently, thus, providing the products/services that clients demand with a minimal overhead. Given a statement like such, reason dictates that acceptable automation from clients will cut your cost of business operation.

With the proper implementation of a CRM system, advantages bloom, such as the ability to send out targeted marketing campaigns which result in increases in orders – your ROI. Imagine a pet store sending out coupons to all of the stores clients informing them of a sale on a 25 pound bag of dog food. Unless the client has a dog – the coupon just went into the trash. With CRM in place, that same pet store will create a marketing campaign to email out coupons to existing dog owners that their favorite food is on sale; while, cat owners will receive a coupon offering a cat treat with every purchase. The pet store may elect to offer as part of the campaign an upgrade to a larger bag of food based on dollars spent in the store from past purchases.

By storing client information in a central database, your sales team, customer service, and accounting will all have access to the latest versions of street addresses, phone numbers and credit ratings. As clients move or have a change in personnel, as a business entity you can update your clients CRM record while the accounting software, Outlook, and any other shared system will be automatically updated. This powerful feature will eliminate errors from employees updating multiple programs in order to keep client data current.

CRM adds powerful features such as the ability to run customized reports on your clients. These reports include information such as the profitability of clients. What is the true cost to service an account? A known fact of running a business is that the more a client calls in for support the higher the cost to support them. Eventually you will reach a point of diminishing returns whereas your company will be better off asking that client to find a solution elsewhere. I do not subscribe to the idea of shedding clients mainly because your competition may just be able to accept their business with a higher level of service.

As a suggestion, rather than shedding your difficult clients, why not try to understand them and sell to their real needs. This is the point of implementing a CRM application in the first place. One recommendation is to have a retention sales force in place that is trained in the skills needed to serve hard to please clients. This sales force will have the task of up-selling the client when they call; thus, eliminating the need for your customer service team to try endlessly to find a solution for them.

Since there are many ways to serve your clients, your company can immediately benefit from the implementation of a CRM. The first step will be to gather all of your clients’ records and as accurately as possible, enter the data. Once this information has been gathered – you are ready to begin defining how you will use the system to your benefit. Since there are many consultants that are able to suggest marketing campaigns using the data from the reporting capabilities, you may want to seek professional guidance while you are getting familiar with your options. Whichever road you travel, CRM will help mesh the relationships you create with your business.