The CRM Cycle

The CRM CycleFostering more-effective sales and marketing

efforts with customer data collection,

tracking, and updates.

CONTENTS.......................................................2YOU SHOULD READ THIS ARTICLE IF YOU:........3

TAGS.......................................................................3

INTRODUCTION ..............................................4ACQUIRING A PROSPECT LIST ............................5

CLEANSING YOUR LIST..................................5

CHOOSING A CRM ...............................................6

UPDATING YOUR CRM WITH OFFLINE DATA.....6

USING YOUR CRM FOR MARKETING..................6

TRACKING YOUR EMAIL ENGAGEMENT ....7

SUMMARY ..............................................................7

ABOUT SPIDER TRAINERS....................................7

CONTENTS

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©2013 SPIDER TRAINERS

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Are considering implementing a CRM system

Need more information about CRM to email-

automation integration

Have questions about acquiring lists to feed

your CRM system

Wonder about offline activities, such as

phone conversations and sales meetings

Would like to create more visibility between

marketing and sales efforts

YOU SHOULD READ THIS ARTICLE IF YOU:

Customer relationship management

CRM

Marketing

Automated marketing

Offline marketing

Sales management

List management

List acquisition

Lead scoring

Cazoomi

Radiology Data

Spider Trainers

Cyndie Shaffstall

TAGS

Whether you’re B2C, B2B, or B2E, you likely have (or

want) prospects that you will convert to leads and from

leads to customers. How you identify prospects,

engage and nurture leads, and convert to customers is

probably unique to your company and the products or

services you sell; the software that you use to facilitate

this process is called a CRM or customer relationship

manager.

There are myriad CRM applications available, both

standard apps and SaaS models that in and of itself is

not a determination of the scope of functionality.

Some CRMs are a small step up from list management

applications or a series of features within other

applications, such as an email-automation application.

Others are complex end-to-end relationship

identification, engagement, and closing tools, such as

Salesforce.

In 2009, Forrester Research estimated that 47% of all

CRM initiatives fail and the primary reasons for these

failures are centered around a lack of focus, a lack of

buy-in from stakeholders, and approaching the

software as a technology rather than as a solution to

managing customer relationships.

In this article, I’ll discuss how a CRM can be an

effective method for enabling and empowering both

your sales and your marketing teams, while keeping

the C-suite informed and involved.

According to Manoj Ranaweera, CEO, edocr.com,

“The customer-relationship management process can

be illustrated as: lists + enrichment + qualification +

emailing + scoring + sales + updating. Repeat.” I

agree wholeheartedly that the process we’ve outlined

here has nuances that we have not disclosed, but for

the purpose of an introduction, I’ll focus on the

35,000-foot view.

INTRODUCTION

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ACQUIRING A PROSPECT LISTI am often asked by clients to weigh in on the topic of

list rental and purchase, and my answer remains the

same: it depends on the list. After sending millions of

emails for our clients over the years, we know that the

vast majority of commercially available lists do far

more harm than good, but we’ve also found that even

some of the worst lists can be gently nurtured in order

to avoid a total loss.

Direct-mail lists, for instance, have shown to be

powerful aids in the nurturing process and using this

vehicle as an introduction before beginning an email

campaign can mean the difference between expense

and revenue.

List vendors range from the nefarious — lists of

millions for a pittance — to the notorious, such as

those offered by Dunn & Bradstreet or other reputable

companies, and how each vendor collects the data will

be reflected in the deliverability of your emails or

direct mails.

As an example, we spoke with David Ramsey,

president, Radiology Data, and learned that their lists

of hospitals and outpatient imaging centers have been

methodically built through the process of making

individual phone calls to each of the facilities. During

the call, an introduction is made defining the purpose

of their call and information collected concerning the

appropriate contact person, type of equipment,

buying practices, and more.

According to Ramsey, “I see both sides of the coin. I

own a business that needs prospects to whom we can

market, but I’m also in the business of helping other

companies with their prospects. With this unique

vantage point, ensuring that our data is collected in a

manner that produces the best results for my

customers is of the utmost importance. At the same

time, I want to ensure that the prospects’ names that

we collect are high quality and the appropriate point

person for the type of contact they will receive from

our customers. This raises the bar on both

deliverability and engagement.”

“I want to ensure that the prospects’ names that

we collect are high quality and the appropriate

point person for the type of contact they will

receive from our customers.”

— David Ramsey, president, Radiology Data

In short, purchasing or renting a list can be a viable

option for your business, but don’t forego your

homework. Make sure you know how the list was

generated, what expectations the people in the list

have for receiving marketing messages, and, if you

intend to email, use direct mail to first establish the

relationship.

CLEANSING YOUR LIST

Whether you have an existing list or you have

acquired a list, cleansing your list is an important

process and one that should be repeated regularly. A

CRM is a powerful tool and one that will help you to

send appropriate messages and correspondence,

shorten the sales cycle, manage contractual

documents, and more, but it will only be as accurate

as the data within.

An especially helpful best practice is to have your list

processed through the national change of address

service offered by the USPS and licensed vendors. An

NCOA will update the physical addresses for each

prospect ensuring that mail is sent only to valid

addresses (saving postage costs) and that you don’t

head out the door for a meeting at an address that

changed two years ago.

Other best practices include removing duplicates and

appending data to gain information you don’t have

(such as gender, age, income, revenue, and so on).

Maintenance processes can be a great drain on

resources, but with each cleansing session, the process

will go more quickly, and you will find fewer errors.

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CHOOSING A CRMIf you’re just now in search of a CRM, the likelihood is

that you’ve been tracking your prospects, leads, and

customers in a spreadsheet or database application.

The good news is that in most cases, you will be able

to directly import this data without too much effort

and, depending upon the size of your company, users,

and other factors, you will have many to a few possible

CRM solutions from which to choose.

In order to choose the best application, you should

give consideration to the following (but this is not an

exhaustive list):

Available budget

Desktop application vs. cloud-based solution

Who in your company will use the system

Number of system users

Calendar and scheduling integration

Mobile app or access to certain features

through your mobile device

Number of prospects you have

Pipeline management

Opportunity management

Contract management

Extended reporting

Customization

Technical support

Multiple language

Import and export functions

Data sync with marketing lists

Lead scoring

Email sending

Custom HTML templates

Dial phone numbers

Social-media integration

For a feature comparison, information, and reviews on

some of the contenders, visit SoftwareAdvice.com

UPDATING YOUR CRM WITHOFFLINE DATAAs you develop your CRM system, you will use it to

import/add prospects, nurture leads, monitor their

position in the pipeline, track the value as an

opportunity, manage contracts, close sales, and more.

The interactions you have with leads offline in activities

such as phone calls, meetings, trade show visits, and

other events that occur outside the application, will be

critical to an accurate understanding of each lead’s

status.

As we pointed out in the introduction, the inability to

gain buy-in from stakeholders is very often at the root

of a failed implementation. In order to be successful,

the people who use the system need to be involved in

the selection, deployment, and training of which CRM

you will use. Only then will you gain a commitment

and concerted effort from them to add prospects and

keep lead and customer records up to date.

USING YOUR CRM FORMARKETINGYour marketing department is a wealth of information

on the sales readiness of your leads. With today’s

analytics software, marketers have unprecedented

visibility into the behavior and preferences of

recipients. When your sales team is armed with

information about messages read, white papers

downloaded, videos watched, podcasts heard, and

other engagement points, the lead’s interest level in

your products or services can be inferred.

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http://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/

“When you use your CRM, Excel, or other tools

separately from your automated-email marketing,

you’ve probably found yourself searching through

old email conversations trying to determine

engagement or have received an angry reply from

a prospect you emailed who had already opted-

out. CRMs and email-automation applications are

designed to work in tandem. As the account

owner, it’s your job to ensure they do.”

— Clint Wilson, CEO, Cazoomi

TRACKING YOUR EMAIL ENGAGEMENT

Integrating your CRM with your email-automation

system will enable marketing and sales to work more

closely together for the benefit of the organization

through the sharing of data. In instances where you

have chosen disparate systems, software connectors

created by Cazoomi can bridge that gap. These

connectors will enable you to pass sales lists, in

whole or in part, to the email application and data

collected about engagement with the campaign back

to the CRM.

Lead scoring is information with both the CRM and

email-automation system that indicates the level of

sales readiness, usually with increasing numeric values,

but not always. Capitalizing on advanced integration

between your CRM and email-automation application,

engagement with campaigns can increment lead

scores in the same way that sales and offline

engagement that is being tracked by the sales team.

The syncing of this data to and from ensures that

marketing messages are on target and that messaging

improves sales readiness.

SUMMARYYour B2C, B2B, or B2E organization will benefit from a

CRM deployment as it collect prospects, tracks lead

activity, and reports when leads convert to customers.

With dozens and perhaps hundreds of CRM

applications available, choosing the appropriate

feature set and gaining stakeholder buy-in will ensure

a successful implementation.

ABOUT SPIDER TRAINERSSpider Trainers is a company of experts in email

development, web development, search-engine

optimization, analytics, graphic design, ad creation,

multimedia creation, social-media postings, writing,

and editing — and CRM-to-email integration.

As marketing-automation architects, we analyze yourneeds and create campaigns for you that ensure yourreturn on your email-automation software investment— even when you’re feeling the pinch of full workloadsand too-few resources.

At the Spider Trainers’ resource center, we have a libraryof publications designed to help you with yourmarketing efforts. While we may be guilty of givingtoo much information, we know that the empoweredand informed client is the successful client. We hopethis article and our other resources do that for you.

Please call us at 651 702 3793 or [email protected] to learn more.

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Business

The CRM Cycle