About two years ago, I was on a CRM kick. I wanted a system that could track my communications with clients so that I knew who I had talked to, about what, and how often. It might be a little anal, but I like exploring new applications.
This last couple months, I dove into CRM software again. And I have to admit – all those claims of it producing 3 times more sales is true!
Normailly, in the day to day hustle and bustle, it’s easy to lose track of phone calls and emails. What’s worse, you might forget about something a client said that you can sell them on!
Customer Relationship Management software aims to fix all that.
Here’s the basic premise of CRM apps:
- You upload a list of clients and/or prospects. With those details, you can attach communications such as email messages, phone conversations and notes.
- You can plan meetings and phone calls by attaching the ‘action’ to the client’s name
- You can define marketing programs and attach who they’re going to. For instance, if I am sending a direct mail piece to 1000 people, I can define that list and track results.
- From the marketing, you define leads. The leads are formatted so you can follow up on them easily and efficiently.
- From leads, you can put in projects and affix tasks to those projects. And those projects each represent a dollar figure.
Think of CRM as more of a progression from prospect to lead to project to close…
Most people don’t get into CRM software because it is difficult to understand unless you are under the correct assumptions as to what it can do. In fact, I am going to put together a video podcast on how to use SugarCRM, my weapon of choice, which will be available in the next couple posts. But the basic premise applies to all of them – Salesforce.com, Basecamp, etc.
The beauty of the software is it helps you recognize leads that you wouldn’t look twice at before!
Do you have any experience with CRM applications? If so, which ones?
No related posts.
{ 1 comment }
Hi Jason,
Nice post. I think you’ve described the basic premise of contact and lead management of CRM really well, particularly with respect to hosted or SaaS applications such as Sugar and Salesforce.
CRM can do a lot more than contact, marketing and lead management, plus it about more than a software application – it’s a strategy in itslef. When approached in this way organisations can achieve significant benefits in terms of improved efficiency through better business processes, workflow and communications. So things like reporting, business intelligence, better decision making and achieving an in-depth understanding of your customers and market all start to come into play.
I’ve used several CRM applications, personally I like Sage CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but whichever application you choose really depends on your business requirements and what you’re trying to achieve. We’ve produced a variety of whitepapers – ‘How to Get Started with CRM’ and ‘Getting CRM Right – a Project Methodology’ which are useful (and non-product specific) to anyone embarking on a CRM project, please feel free to contact Concentrix if you’d like a copy.
Peter