MODULES IN CRM

What is CRM?

CRM means ''Customer Relationship Management'', i.e. the concept of a planned and structured means of managing the relations with your customers. A CRM tool allows a business to manage

customer relationships in a structured and organized way using software that is normally hosted in-house or on demand, in the cloud, for example, Zoho CRM.

Application of a well thought out CRM implementation strategy combined with implementation of the right CRM tool for your business, helps give insight into your sales and marketing and customer

support processes and improve team efficiency.

In addition, companies that implement a CRM often see substantial improvements in business processes, Sales team collaboration as well as business profit.

Most normal CRM systems are divided into three (but not restricted to) main modules:

Marketing Sales

Customer Service

MarketingThe Marketing module allows your marketing team to plan both long and short term Marketing related

activities within your business.

Marketing PlanningMarketing Plans can be entered into the CRM and budgets, targets and campaign related tasks can

be set against the campaigns themselves. Campaigns can be specific to company size, location, preferred products etc., as all of this information is stored within the CRM.

Campaign ManagementMarketing 'campaigns' might take the form of trade shows, TV ads, magazine commercials, and may target different potential customers, but leads gathered from these campaigns are entered into the

CRM, thus giving you an accurate measurement of the success of each marketing campaign.

Your CRM can be combined with an e-marketing application to target the right customers with the right products and to analyse their behaviour during an email marketing campaign. Over time, you can build up an understanding of what attracts customers to your products/services and how they behave whilst viewing the information in your marketing email and in your website. This provides you with a very powerful means of reaching your target audience and giving them best information in the best

format.

Lead ManagementA key purpose of a CRM Marketing module is to generate leads for Sales to qualify into real sales and

thus revenue for the company. CRM lead management entails managing leads in a structured and organized way, evaluating whether they are worthy of follow up and grading them accordingly in order

to convert them in to Sales opportunities for the Sales teams to follow up and close as sales deals.

SalesThe CRM Sales module helps your Sales Managers structure their Sales team processes from

presales through to quotations and deal closure. The CRM allows your Sales teams to capture key

customer interactions (calls, meetings, emails etc). Sales Managers can then process this data and compare sales quotas against actual sales. In addition, the CRM can automatically alert Sales people

with recommended courses of action and provide structured communication templates, decreasing administration and sales ramp time. This is known as ‘automated workflow’ and can be customized to

match your company's sales policy.

Opportunity ManagementOpportunities are potential sales, potential revenue for the company. The CRM helps the Sales team by organizing all the relevant opportunity information into one central database and it helps business

managers by giving a real-time ‘window’ into sales status.

Typically information stored on an opportunity is as follows:

Prospective customer – company details etc, Type of sales opportunity and product interest

Expected sales revenue, Expected sales closing date,

Key people in the sales opportunity and their roles within the deal/company, Key sales-related dates and milestones

In most businesses a sales opportunity will have several stages. For example prospecting, qualification, quotation, negotiation and closed (won) or closed (lost). The opportunity stages can be customized to match your company’s sales process. A CRM system helps improve the efficiency of

your Sales team as well as relations with your customers during each phase by providing functions to assist the Sales representative in performing suggested sales-related activities and / or using

suggested sales-related communication templates, all of which can be predefined by your company's sales policy/process or business model. Many of these can be automated by the CRM Administrator

via liaison with the Business Development/Sales Managers, thus structuring the process further, helping to reduce ramp time and saving on Sales Admin time. Here are a few examples of how you

might use a CRM in your organisation:

Your Sales person has just had an initial meeting with a new prospect – he/she can use the CRM to send a polite ‘thank you’ email, stored in the CRM, which pulls all relevant information and can be

sent in one or two clicks as opposed to thirty minutes of typing. Sales admin time is greatly reduced and your customer receives a courteous and personalised follow up.

An large sales deal has been quoted by one of your Sales team. The CRM can be customized to send automated alerts to the Sales Manager to get involved as well as (for example) an automatic

notification with all relevant details to stock control personnel to prepare for production.

Or, for example, if an Opportunity is lost, the CRM system can automatically notify the Sales person to enter details of why the deal was lost so your company builds up a ‘Lessons Learned’ database.

These approaches are known as "Guided Sales Methodology" and this is where companies benefit from working with a CRM Administrator / Consultant to assist in making suggestion to improve their

business workflow by using the CRM tool.

Quotation and Sales Order ManagementOnce opportunities reach a Quotation stage, they can be converted to a quotation and, if they are set

to the Closed Won stage, a Sales order. Most CRMs have standard functionality which allow your Sales team to quickly and easily create Quotation or Sales Order from an opportunity and this is then

stored against the sales deal for easy reference. Most CRMs, especially those such as Salesforce.com can be integrated to ERP systems if required.

Activity ManagementActivities are such things as Sales calls, meetings, discussions, internal notes, emails). Activity

Management allows you to log all of your sales activities in one centralised platform, helping you to build a 360 degree view of customer communications. Most CRMs will allow you to synchronise these

activities with MS Outlook/Lotus Notes.

Customer ServiceA CRM allows you to effectively manage your company’s customer support capability. This too can be

customized to suit your business process and help you to provide what is stated in your Warranty based services, thus avoiding SLA (Service Level Agreement) non conformance issues. In addition,

they can drastically reduce your support team admin time by building a company knowledgebase which can be used by the support team and even accessed by your customers in a ‘self service

portal’. CRMs usually include the following customer support functionality:

SLA/Warranty Management Resource Planning and Scheduling

Solution Management - answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Call Center Management

Collaborative customer support resource management

A CRM solution can substantially improve your business processes, provide visibility into critical business intelligence and make your teams more efficient

CRM and ERP Integration The need for front-office and back-office synchronization

Do your customer service and sales reps struggle to obtain a single view of customers? Does your finance

department strive to recognize revenues on time? Would you like to fulfill orders in a timely manner? It's

time to get a better return on your data by integrating your back-office ERP environment with your CRM.

When CRM and ERP applications are disconnected, employees find themselves trapped in tedious,

manual tasks that are error-prone, slow down processes, and add to operational costs. Integrating CRM

and ERP applications is essential to maximizing your investment in each system, reducing errors in data

exchange, and improving overall organizational efficiency. CRM and ERP integration can also dramatically

improve the return on investment of both applications and increase effectiveness of both tools.

5 Benefits of CRM and ERP Integration:

1: Get a Single View of All Customer Interactions

CRM and ERP applications both have contact and account information from customers. ERP systems

focus more on the back-end financial and fulfillment processes, while CRM applications contain information

about prospective clients and support for sales. Creating a seamless experience between the two

applications requires carefully creating integration workflows that ensure that all relevant pieces of

information make it from one system to another.

2: Fulfill Orders Instantly in Real Time

When an opportunity closes in your CRM system, it should trigger the ordering and fulfillment process

immediately in your ERP. However, this usually doesn't happen, and a lack of real-time, event-based

communication can mean that a crucial order is missed. CRM and ERP integration helps you ensure that

your customers get their products delivered on time.

3: Accelerate Cash Flows

The cash collection process usually kicks off when a sale closes, and invoices and payment terms are to

be reconciled with the customer. Without proper CRM and ERP integration, there are no workflows to

generate automated reminders to customers, or to alert finance personnel that their cash flows are running

lower than normal.

With proper CRM and ERP integration, it is easier for finance to identify delinquent accounts and to

recognize revenue in a timely manner.

4: Quote Correct Prices

CRM and ERP integration helps sales get access to the latest pricing updates from the ERP system. In this

manner, sales reps have access to the latest promotional pricing from marketing campaigns, and can

target their customers better when trying to meet their quotas.

5: Maximize CRM and ERP investments

Your CRM application helps your reps collaborate better and be more productive. But when it is not

synchronized with your back-office ERP, your sales reps stop using it, thereby resulting in lower adoption.

As a result, you stop receiving the full benefit of your investment in not only your CRM system, but also

your ERP application. Through a robust, easy to deploy, and intuitive cloud integration solution, you can

truly reach your full potential with CRM and ERP integration.

CASE STUDY

How can CRM help grow your business? World class customer experiences begins with your people. By providing them with the right tools to propel their productivity and amplify their impact,

they can drive your organisation to achieve its goals and generate maximum return.

Phil Callaghan

This is the value of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, a truly experienced and proven way to build lasting growth. However, implementation of any CRM solution must be carefully thought through, and the support of experienced professionals can pay dividends in the long run. CRM technology, when placed at the heart of an organisation, can have an almost immediate impact on the top line, helping organisations to win profitable customers and to better serve existing customers. There are three ways to harness the power of CRM:

1. Acquire profitable customers

A well implemented CRM application will bring together multiple sources of information to support decision-making, allowing marketing campaigns to be targeted and managed most effectively. A sales force is a valuable and possibly one of an organisation’s most costly resources. With this in mind, it’s imperative that sales people spend their time selling, and less time chasing fruitless leads or navigating administrative hurdles.

The CRM tool should act as a sales force’s compass. It should help the organisation understand where it stands today, and point in the direction it needs to take. It should be an integral part of the sales team – at the start of the sales cycle it should help qualify leads, allowing resources to be directed appropriately.

Automatic triggers can be built into your CRM system to ensure the desired contact programme is fulfilled, and subsequent win-loss data can be collated and analysed, allowing organisations to continually hone their strategy for optimum success.

2. Retain and maximise existing customers

It’s commonly known that it’s significantly cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. So it makes sense to focus resources that help to build customer loyalty, increase spend and encourage longevity. CRM allows you to analyse customer spend, joining up your marketing and sales processes. Additionally, you can build detailed customer profiles – all of which aids the reduction of customer churn.

A great customer experience must be balanced with the need to control cost. An effective CRM tool can help make service improvements whilst reducing costs associated with managing customers, both by making agents more effective, and by automating data entry processes.

For advisers, the automatic generation of information, complete with pre-populated standard fields means advisers have the necessary detail available to handle queries most effectively, which can save valuable time. And because all information about the customer – including historic data – is held in one place, the adviser can more quickly handle queries as they have access to contextual information.

3. Gain efficiencies

Processes Improvement: All businesses operate with a series of processes, often built around the most basic functions of the organisation and almost always repetitive tasks. These processes are vital to an organisation’s success – they are what drive consistent service levels, fast decision-making and best practice.

Successful processes are key to all successful organisations. CRM reporting makes it easy to identify the most effective processes, and to ensure they are established across the organisation.

Help employees to excel: In an age where information is all-important, CRM tools can play an important role in ensuring employees are able to work effectively, adding maximum value to the business. Customers want to be helped quickly, and by the first person they speak to. They want quick solutions and correct answers. CRM means employees have the right information in the right place at the right time, empowering them to be effective and provide high quality service to customers.

Simplify your IT assets: As organisations grow, IT infrastructure tends to grow too. Soon, a number of disparate systems are in use, often with overlapping and conflicting data. It can be a time-consuming and costly exercise to unravel the discrepancies, and produce a less than ideal experience for customers. In addition, it can be more complex to maintain a number of systems, and adds to training costs too.

Providing one unified system with a single user interface, means employees can access all the necessary information in one place, without the need to switch from one application to another. This makes it easier for them to make good decisions, and reduces the risk of wasted time and effort.

A good CRM system will continue to evolve with an organisation, comprising accessible configuration tools to enable companies to further tailor the user interface. It should also allow companies to further develop their capabilities.

Conclusion

Companies must keep focused on their strategy and find ways to achieve more with less. Tools which help companies maximise revenue opportunities and reduce operational costs will strengthen the organisation and position it well for a secure future. CRM is a powerful tool which, if fully harnessed, can play a vital role in sales, marketing and service provision.

However, to produce the required impact, it must be implemented with care. Correctly integrated with other IT applications, and aligned with business processes, a CRM tool can be immensely powerful, helping an organisation to gain better market positioning beyond an economic downturn. Working with experts reduces the risk of wasted time, effort and money and means you can reap the full benefit of a CRM system from the outset.

CHALLENGES FOR SME TO IMPLIMNT CRM-

Stiff competition, narrow price margins...Sound familiar?

Small and medium-sized enterprises have to overcome their own special challenges, often having to contend with:

a lot of competition, comparable prices, specific customer requirements,

price and product transparency driven by the Internet.

CRM is essential for small and medium-sized enterprises. With countless competitors all offering similar products at similar prices, the only way to stand out from the crowd is through efficient and effective customer relationship management. Our CRM solution meets the needs of SMEs The right implementation of your CRM system is critical for your success. Our professional CRM solution supports you reliably at all times in all areas of your business. Your software has to be as flexible as your are. This also applies to your solution provider whose most important task is to understand you. CAS CRM is the partner of choice for successful CRM implementation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Analytical CRM

Definition:

Analytical CRM comprises the analysis and systematic evaluation of customer data using business intelligence functions. The aim is to filter out the key facts from gathered information and gain customer knowledge. Analytical CRM allows customer satisfaction to be measured, for example, or trends among customers to move to other suppliers to be detected. Knowledge of customers' behavior can also be used specifically for communication and addressing customers in operational CRM, such as in campaign management.Example: Customers' buying behavior is analyzed in analytical CRM. This analysis reveals which customers have not bought anything for a considerable length of time. A mailshot campaign, guided by operational CRM, will address this target group directly and encourage it to purchase various products.

STRATEGIC CRM

Successful strategic CRM is a complex set of activities that together form the basis for a sustainable and hard-to-imitate competitive advantage Strategic CRM shapes interactions between companies and customers to allow the maximization of customers’ lifetime value Recognizes differences between customers with respect to their economic value to the firm as well as their expectations from the firm

Marketing and Customer Service[edit]

CRM systems track and measure marketing campaigns over multiple networks. These systems can track customer analysis by customer clicks and sales. Places where CRM is used

include call centers, heavily used in social media, direct mail, data storage files, banks, and customer data queries.

TOOLS IN RM PROCESS

Comparing the Tools

"CRM" has become something of a buzzword in the nonprofit technology sector, and is often appended to specialized databases that don't really fit the definition of a true constituent relationship management system. This is not to say that these software systems couldn't help you manage your relationships with your constituents, just that they don't meet the strictest definition of the tool. Below, we look at the four systems that do meet the definition: flexible, customizable, all-in-one systems able to integrate with your online communication strategy as well as your fundraising, case management, event management, and other activities.

Free to Acquire, but Not to Maintain

CiviCRM

CiviCRM is an open-source, web-based CRM system offered for download at no charge. However, you'll almost certainly need a consulting firm to configure the software to your nonprofit's specific needs. Luckily, CiviCRM consultants are becoming easier to find, and there's an active community of nonprofit users who help develop and beta-test new developments. It's quite strong in helping you keep track of your constituents, households, and donations, and offers helpful event management and broadcast email functionality as well.

CiviCRM does have a few drawbacks — if your organization requires a CRM with sophisticated accounting and billing features, you may want to choose another system, as CiviCRM will require a lot of additional work. The user interface isn't always the most intuitive, either, although many improvements have been made in the past few years.

With customization, though, it's a system that could help your organization function more smoothly. Some of the out-of-the-box functionality includes CiviCase, a basic case management system; CiviSchool, which is meant to manage educational programs; and a new feature called CiviBox Office, which allows for sophisticated, airline-style seat selection for ticketed events. Beyond these ready-to-go modules, customization of the software could cost anywhere between $2,000 and $50,000, based on the complexity of the organization's needs. A consultant would almost certainly need to manage the customization, and could also manage the migration from your previous system and any technical support that might be needed down the line.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a CRM platform used widely in the for-profit world. The company offers up to 10 user licenses of the Enterprise edition, one of the tiers of the system, free of charge to qualifying organizations. Salesforce also has an implementation called the Nonprofit Starter Pack that's ready-made to fit the needs of nonprofits. The system is cloud-based and doesn't require dedicated hardware or a server. Strong in household management, donation

management, and member management, Salesforce is not as strong out of the box in event or case management.

A defining feature of Salesforce is the App Exchange, a bustling online marketplace where developers sell applications designed to sit on top of the platform. There are hundreds of apps for sale, and many have been designed especially for nonprofits. These are usually offered on a monthly subscription basis, and the cost can add up, but it can also add substantial capabilities to the system.

For smaller nonprofits, Salesforce is technically free, but to properly configure and support the system, you'll need the services of someone tech-savvy enough to navigate its substantial technical intricacies and possibilities. For instance, the apps you'd need to assemble a system that meets the requirements for most religious organizations could potentially cost you thousands of dollars per year. Larger nonprofits that need more than 10 user licenses would need to negotiate a contract with the company.

CRMs with Subscription Costs

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is an open-source, web-based CRM system designed for for-profit businesses. The system vendors make no bones about their desire to challenge Salesforce for the title of most widely used CRM for enterprise. Consultants for the tool have also begun to court the nonprofit sphere.

SugarCRM is a powerful and user-friendly system but doesn't have a widely available customization for nonprofits like the other tools profiled here, so a consultant would have to build in donation management, event support, and other basic features. Almost all of the out-of-the-box language is geared toward the sales process, although the fields and modules can be modified extensively. Still, many basic features that nonprofits need will require workarounds, and SugarCRM doesn't have the ability to integrate with a nonprofit's website as seamlessly as do other CRM products.

An organization looking to implement SugarCRM would need to work closely with a consultant to tailor the software to the organization, but once the customization process was completed, SugarCRM might be a helpful relationship management tool. Pricing for SugarCRM is based on a tiered system — there's an open-source implementation called the Community Edition, which is free. Most nonprofits would want to start at the higher-level options, which range between $420 and $1,200 per staff user per year. And a consulting company would charge fees around the $10,000 mark to get the system up and running.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the software giant's answer to an integrated CRM system, and is designed to be an all-in-one database accommodating all of an organization's needs. The Nonprofit Template, developed by Microsoft and available at no charge to sit on top of the CRM, transforms the out-of-the-box sales-centric tool into a nonprofit-centric platform. The system is pretty user-friendly, especially if you're used to Office products, and is able to handle donation management, reporting, member management, direct mail correspondence,

and email. Event management and web portal capabilities are available for an extra fee but require additional configuration and more advanced technical knowledge to implement.

[Editor's note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available as a donated product through TechSoup to qualified nonprofits and charities. TechSoup also offers NetSuite, an integrated, cloud-based business management software solution.]

Other Options

Other vendors have harnessed the power of CRM and offered managed packages, or products you can subscribe to that are built on CRM platforms but marketed toward specific segments of the marketplace, like cultural organizations. These come with most of the features you'd need already built in, and usually require a monthly or annual subscription.

Conclusion

Whether with volunteers, donors, constituents, lawmakers, or anyone else, your nonprofit relies on its relationships to do the day-to-day work that effects change in the world and meets its mission. Managing those relationships is an ongoing challenge, but finding the right tool makes it easier by eliminating unnecessary obstacles and helping you focus on the personal aspect of these relationships.

A CRM isn't the solution for every organization, and those with specialized needs or highly focused interactions may benefit from a more specific system. It's not uncommon for donors to also be volunteers, or for constituents to donate. By tracking your relationships and making records quickly and easily accessible, a good CRM facilitates your work by letting you map the way people truly interact with your organization — even when those interactions overlap.

CUSTOMER LIFE CYCLE

In customer relationship management (CRM), customer life cycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. Marketing analysts Jim Sterne and Matt Cutler have developed a matrix that breaks the customer life cycle into five distinct steps: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty. In layman's terms, this means getting a potential customer's attention, teaching them what you have to offer, turning them into a paying customer, and then keeping them as a loyal customer whose satisfaction with the product or service urges other customers to join the cycle. The customer life cycle is often depicted by an ellipse, representing the fact that customer retention truly is a cycle and the goal of effective CRM is to get the customer to move through the cycle again and again.

CRM Implementation Process

4 Key Steps in the CRM Implementation Process

1. 1. Identify all areas of your business that touch the Customer or the Prospect.2. 2. Identify all of the business processes that manage the touch points with the Customer or Prospect.3. 3. Select the appropriate CRM and Sales Force Automation (SFA) system that will allow the business

processes impacting the Customer or Prospect to be managed in the most efficient and effective manner.

4. 4. Document those business processes and train the users on the utilization of the CRM system with a focus on how that system will deliver value to their daily work lives and how it will maximize their efficiency and effectiveness in managing their relationships with their Customers and Prospects.

Defining CRM Strategy: Key Functional AreasThe key functional areas of CRM to consider when developing your CRM strategy are the functions of your ERP system and the functions of your sales force. A successful CRM strategy addresses Sales Force Automation and links the functions from both of these areas, closing the loop between the back office and the front office.

When developing a CRM strategy, it’s important to identify all of the functional areas of your business that touch your Customers or Prospects, and then develop and document the business processes that you will use to manage those touch points.

Functions of an ERP System

The first functional area to be considered when developing your CRM strategy is the functions tied to your ERP system. Most organizations already utilize a quality ERP or accounting business system to manage Accounting/AR/AP, Purchasing/Procurement/Production, Receiving, Inventory Management, Order Management, and Shipping. Organizations have typically invested over the years in adopting these solutions and maximizing the efficiency of how they are using these systems to have the most positive impact on their customer relationships.

ERP Systems – Who works here?

Inside Sales Customer Service/Support Purchasing Warehouse Shipping/Logistics Accounting/AR/AP

Functions of a Sales Force

When evaluating a CRM solution that includes Sales Force Automation, it’s important to make sure that the solution provides all of the features and functionality necessary for a sales person to manage and perform their job, while also minimizing the need for that sales person to jump back and forth between multiple applications throughout the course of their workday.

A Sales Force typically utilizes Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents, and Microsoft Outlook for Email, combined with other independent access databases, to manage all of the different areas of their job that ultimately involve contact with a Customer or Prospect. Whether it’s the Annual Sales Planning Process, Project Management, Opportunity Management, Call Reporting, Email Management, Support/Case Management, Expense Reporting, Sales Reporting, or Marketing Management, a sales person typically has to access many independent programs or data sources to perform their job. They are seldom able to communicate or build off of a centralized database of information.

Sales Force Systems – Who works here?

Outside Sales Inside Sales Territory or Area Managers

Marketing Product Managers Senior Sales Executives Management Engineering Project Management Tech Support-

CRM: The Train Coming at YouHow Customer Relationship Management Applications Are Changing Marketing & Marketing Firms

Topics: CRM, Process

March 2012 |

There is a trend within your clients’ organizations that is going to affect the offerings of your firm. It will open up exciting new areas of opportunity that you will be forced to capitalize on. To ignore this trend would be dangerous, I think, because not only will it affect how you deliver your services, for some of you it will represent a whole new service area.

This article is most pertinent to creative and marketing firms whose clients are businesses that sell to other businesses (B2B), not-for-profit organizations or companies that sell expensive consumer items. CPG and other consumer-focused firms might identify less with the changes in the client landscape but should find the net lessons as valuable to their own business development efforts.

Sales and Marketing Collide

The trend is that the functions of sales and marketing are getting closer together. This shift is being driven by advances in online analytics and other tools that allow marketers to gain greater insights into what prospects are doing online.

Marketing’s Heightened Responsibilities

It used to be that the job of marketing was to create leads for the folks in sales. But as the marketing and analytics tools have yielded better data, the pressure has mounted on marketing to not just create leads but to sort through them, rate them and hand off the most meaningful ones to sales, while marketing continues to nurture the less meaningful leads.

The term marketing qualified leads is fairly common now but was unheard of three years ago. While its definition varies from organization to organization, the very term implies a higher standard of vetting from marketing before a lead is turned over to sales for further qualification within the one-to-one interactions that are the hallmark of sales.

The marrying of web analytics with landing pages, email and link tracking tools and other techniques that make it easier to identify visitors now offers a level of intelligence on individual prospects that some might find borders on privacy invasion. Add in other tools that aggregate prospects’ social media activity and the digital fingerprint of individual prospects becomes clearer and clearer.

Marketing used to be relegated to mass communication, while the one-to-one interactions were the domain of sales. No more. Thanks to the new tools, B2B marketing is now largely a one-to-one enterprise where the behavior of individuals is tracked and their predisposition to a purchase or willingness to talk to a sales person is predicted with increasing accuracy. From sales’ perspective, marketing qualified leads are no longer crap shoots – they are highly coveted. (Another impact of this, that I’ll discuss next month, is that lead generation is increasingly being separated from sales, thus changing the make-up of the typical sales person.)

This is the new world of technology-driven B2B marketing. Sales knows marketing has access to these tools and they’re quite right to demand better vetting of any lead before it’s handed over for a sales call. The implications of this extend right through your clients’ marketing departments to your firm.

Most B2B Marketing is Now Online

The first implication is that if yours is a B2B firm, there is no longer any reason to grapple with the digital vs. mainstream (largely print-based media) argument. The vast majority of B2B marketing is now done online. You cannot be a B2B marketing firm without significant digital chops. Even the remaining old school approaches of three-dimensional mailers, display ads in trade pubs and trade show booths are focused on driving prospects to landing pages where their digital trail can be easily picked up and decisions on what to do next can be made from predictive models of online behavior.

So much of the purchasing decision or at least information gathering in a B2B purchase is done online, and the tools of web analytics, marketing automation and CRM are so effective at letting us see who is doing what that the digital aspect of B2B marketing can no longer be seen as an add on. It should be at the core of what B2B firms do.

CRM is the Convergence Point

Imagine your clients’ sales and marketing departments as two different silos being pushed together until they overlap in a Venn diagram. Now ask yourself where in the organization this overlap is happening. It’s not a physical place (the sales and marketing folks aren’t moving in together just yet) but a cyber-place: the CRM application.

The CRM app is both the expression and the record of the entire sales and marketing pipeline. It’s where marketing records the large quantities of leads their programs create, scores those leads and then hands off the best ones for sales to follow up. It’s where sales tracks deal flow down to the individual, recording all pertinent aspects of the opportunity and the sale.

With both sales and marketing tracking efforts within a shared CRM, sales can get a sense of what marketing is really doing and what’s coming down the pipe. Marketing can monitor the deal flow after the hand-off to see if the sales department is following up on all those hard-won leads. Working together, they can agree on what constitutes a meaningful lead or an effective marketing program.

Gone now are the days when marketing can say, “well our campaign generated leads – the sales people just didn’t follow up on them,” or when sales can say, “all these leads are crap.” Each department now has the ability to disprove the other’s claim in their shared planning and reporting environment that is the CRM application.

The impetus is now there for the two departments to work together. One of the trends you will start to see is that when one department gets way out ahead of the other in embracing the new technology, the lagging department will be in danger of being subsumed by the progressive one. More often than not, marketing will start to report to sales, but the opposite will happen, too.

The Answer to the Data Silo Problem

You’re probably keenly aware of how much data you generate in the business development (sales and marketing) efforts of your own firm. There is your prospect database, including existing and former clients. There are various lists of leads, from that business card pile on your desk to the Excel spreadsheet of attendees of a conference at which you recently spoke, to the CSV file of that trade publication subscriber list you purchased. Then there’s your newsletter list - that now goes far beyond a list of names and actually shows you who has read what – and your online subscription to Hoovers or The List. There’s the whole ecosystem of website analytics. There’s social media and PPC traffic sources.

It’s data, data, data piling up quickly, and – here’s the real problem – it’s piling up in different places. Much of it, you feel good about having, but let’s be honest – you don’t really use it, do you? You can’t, because it’s either not in the right form or place or because it’s only meaningful when paired together with other data. What you really need is to bring it all together in one place where you can make sense of it and make smart decisions from simple dashboards.

Your clients have the same problem. Everyone has this problem right now, but the solution is upon us. The CRM application is increasingly the place where all this data comes together to be made sense of, to be made valuable and to be accessed by both sales and marketing.

Salesforce, the 800-lb gorilla and gold standard in CRM, let’s its users pull all this, and many other data types, together in one place, and other CRM apps are following suit. Just as we no longer think of Amazon as an online book seller but the number one place to buy most things online, so too you shouldn’t look at Salesforce as just a CRM app. It’s essentially open-platform computing with CRM at its heart, but with proper configuration, the addition of third party apps and some relatively quick and inexpensive customization, you can run accounting, project management and any other enterprise-wide computing functions through it.

This is the trend in CRM technology: it is starting to talk to everything, rolling up data from numerous sources to become the one windowpane organizations look through to see the whole sales and marketing picture.

CRM is Creeping Into Your Product

To do your job effectively you are going to have to know CRM in general and be able to operate comfortably in various CRM applications and their growing ecosystems of third party CRM-centric

marketing apps. Within two years, perhaps less, CRM expertise will be one of the costs of entry for B2B marketing firms.

Once you gain this knowledge you will start to see opportunities to expand your service offering. I predict that as early as this year some of you are going to find yourselves in the CRM advisory business, offering customization, training and advice on CRM deployment and best practices. While only a few of you will choose to chase the opportunity as far as CRM consulting, many more of you will at least find yourselves having to conceive of, implement and track your clients’ marketing campaigns within a CRM context.

The New B2B Gold Rush

For years I’ve been dismissive of B2B as a vertical focus for a marketing firm (I thought it was just too broad and therefore meaningless) but with the technology changes and their impacts on how these products and services are sold and marketed, I now liken the B2B landscape to the early days of the gold rush. There’s gold in them hills and as of this writing, very few firms see it.

There are a lot of pretenders in the B2B marketing space – firms that were inspired to claim a B2B focus by observing their own accidental client concentration in the area but that never built any meaningful expertise on the subject. Well, now is their moment. These firms with the early lead can evolve quickly and capitalize on the changes in the landscape. If they don’t, they will be pushed out by real entrepreneurs who see the opportunity and are willing to quickly develop the required expertise.

Why Many Will Fail

Many marketing firms are design based, run by designers who have only recently and reluctantly acknowledged that they are not really in the design business. Design as an output is now highly commoditized, while paradoxically, design as a tool (or process) is increasingly valued. Firms that properly employ design as a tool or process to solve client problems have started to accept that the problems solved are usually (but not always) problems of marketing or communication, therefore marketing or communication is the real business these firms are in.

So the designer who has grudgingly accepted that he is a marketer must now come to terms with the truth that he is moving further and further into the world of sales.

It reminds me of my ex-hippy friend coming to terms with the fact that he is now a golf-playing real estate agent, or more correctly, it would be like going back in time and trying to get him to believe a prophecy of his future which would seem so at odds with his core values.

A lot of marketers, and many more designers, don’t like sales. I believe this is why so many of the firms who could and should capitalize on this shifting landscape probably won’t, at the cost of their success and perhaps even survival.

Don’t get me wrong – other than becoming CRM proficient, you won’t have to become a sales expert, but you will find that your diagnostic (discovery) work at the beginning of engagements will see you spending as much time understanding your clients’ sales process and sales people as you do learning about their marketing. You’ll also find that to win the business you’ll have to win the vote of the VP of

sales, who is increasingly sitting at the decision making table when it’s time to hire a new marketing firm. Some firms just will not want to go to these places.

The Rise of the CRM Technologist

This trend of sales and marketing overlapping in CRM will almost certainly see the rise of a new position in marketing firms: the CRM technologist. Similarly to how most firms have replaced onsite web developers with third party relationships paired with an in house technologist whose job it is to marry the client’s technical needs with the right partner’s expertise while understanding the greater trends and coming changes in the tech landscape, the CRM technologist will be charged with keeping abreast of the various CRM options, knowing what to select and how to configure, and knowing when to bring in an outside developer for deeper customization.

Some firms will see the need to bring this level of CRM knowledge to all of their account people, and some will roll it up in one position, but it’s a new and unavoidable knowledge requirement.

Starting with Your Own Business Development Efforts

The logical place to start developing your own CRM knowledge is in your own sales and marketing efforts – what we call business development. Take your own medicine first – and get good at it – then you can think about selling it to others.

You might be interested to know that very few marketing firms are competent users of CRM. It’s ironic, really, that as sophisticated CRM deployment is becoming increasingly central to the sales and marketing efforts of B2B businesses, the firms that are advising them on these marketing efforts are all but ignorant on the subject.

Every once in awhile I encounter a firm or a new business development hire that claims to be a deep and knowledgeable user of CRM X. Once I dive in though, the claims are almost never borne out. Firms or individuals may have used the software for years but in most cases it’s being used as an expensive address book. Very often, entire key components such as leads or opportunities go unused. The more robust CRM applications such as Salesforce which all but require you to customize the setup to your sales methodology are, to my observation, almost always used right “out of the box” with no configuration or customization at all. What I would call graduate level use of CRM – lead scoring, integration of website analytics and online marketing automation tools – is nonexistent except for a very few firms that work in the B2B technology space (software as a service (SaaS) companies in particular are highly sophisticated in this area, therefore some of their marketing firms are too).

I know a few of these firms whose work with SaaS clients has led them to see and capitalize on the converging worlds of sales and marketing. When I ask them about it they gleefully expound in hushed tones on the vein of gold they’ve struck. For the most part, however, marketing firms are poor users of CRM. That’s okay because most clients are big but still poor users of CRM too, but that’s changing quickly.

For years in my own practice as a business development consultant to marketing firms I did not see CRM competence as integral to business development success, whereas today it’s a key component of my recommendations and training. Viewers of Win Without Pitching webcasts will have noticed that

as of about a year ago every sales process topic is now framed within a CRM context. Additionally, an increasing number of my webcasts are now devoted to CRM topics.

The amount of time I spend logged in to my clients’ CRM applications seems to rise every month, and my co-worker Leanne, who joined me last Fall, spends 75% of her time on CRM training, evaluation, configuration and working with outside developers on increasingly complex customizations, both for our business and our clients’.

In my business, in your business and in your clients’ businesses, CRM is increasingly at the heart of everything.

The Opportunity, and Threat, Summarized

This technology-driven shift in the relationship between sales and marketing and the resulting opportunities around the myriad of CRM-related advisory services represent the biggest opportunity I have ever seen for firms that work in the B2B space. Clients are diving in, but with the exception of SaaS companies, they still have a lot to figure out.

I’ve started collecting quotes from marketing firms about their changing experiences which point to this trend. I heard these three statements from different folks in the same week:

“[The marketing department of] our biggest client now reports to sales.”

“Our new client asked me, ‘Can you teach our sales people what to do with the leads once we generate them?’”

“I was in a four-hour [client] meeting on salesforce.com. I had no idea what they were talking about.”

I’ve already likened this opportunity to a gold rush but the more correct metaphor is in the title: it’s a train coming at you. You can get on it and ride it to new, wonderful and rewarding places, or you can stand there on the tracks contemplating the rumbling noise that’s bearing down on you. If your clients are in the B2B or not-for-profit space (other big CRM users) or they sell large ticket consumer items, then you are standing on the tracks, whether you see it or not. Consumer focused firms won’t face the same pressure to change their offerings to keep up with client demands, but the lessons on the changing landscape of sales and marketing have business development implications for all firms that sell services to other businesses.

Like any sizeable opportunity, people are going to get rich off of this. And others are going to get run over. I see the landscape of marketing firms changing more in the next 24 months than in the previous decade.

The CRM Business CyclePrint

Reprints

Email

inShare0

At this point, we have all seen the CRM term applied in a fairly broad context from marketing software, to customer service processes, to sales and service systems infrastructures, to one-to-one architectures for the Web. In larger organizations, there may be 10, 20 or even 30 different initiatives all focused on CRM.

We believe that what is needed, and is often lacking in these initiatives, is a common understanding of the broader underlying CRM business cycle. While all of these initiatives may have merit, failure to tie them to a business purpose can lead to very short-lived success.

There is a universal, underlying cycle of activity that should drive all CRM initiatives and infrastructure development. All initiatives and infrastructure development should somehow be tied to this core cycle of activity.

As a cycle, the stages are interdependent and continuous. As you move from one stage to the next, you gain insight and understanding that enhances your subsequent efforts. You become increasingly sophisticated in your implementation of CRM processes and, over time, become increasingly profitable by doing so.

As shown in the Figure 1, for any organization, business starts with the acquisition of customers. However, any successful CRM initiative is highly dependent on a solid understanding of customers. Thus, our discussion will start there.

Figure 1: CRM Cycle

Understand and Differentiate

We cannot have a relationship with customers unless we understand them what they value, what types of service are important to them, how and when they like to interact, and what they want to buy. True understanding is based on a combination of detailed analysis and interaction. Several activities are important:

Profiling to understand demographics, purchase patterns and channel preference. Segmentation to identify logical unique groups of customers that tend to look alike and

behave in a similar fashion. While the promise of "one-to-one" marketing sounds good, we have not seen many organizations that have mastered the art of treating each customer uniquely. Identification of actionable segments is a practical place to start.

Primary research to capture needs and attitudes. Customer valuation to understand profitability, as well as lifetime value or long-term

potential. Value may also be based on the customer's ability or inclination to refer other profitable customers.

Analysis and research alone, however, are insufficient. To create and foster a relationship, we have to act on what we learn about customers. Customers need to see that we are differentiating our service and communications based both on what we've learned independently and on what they've told us.

At the same time, differentiation should be based on the value customers are expected to deliver.

Develop and Customize

In the product-oriented world of yesterday, companies developed products and services and expected customers to buy them. In a customer-focused world, product and channel development have to follow the customer's lead. Organizations are increasingly developing products and services, and even new channels, based on customer needs and service expectations.

Most organizations today are not able to cost-effectively customize products for individual customers. However, products, services, channels and media can be customized based on the needs of quantitative customer segments. The extent of customization should be based on the potential value delivered by the customer segment.

Interact and Deliver

Interaction is also a critical component of a successful CRM initiative. It is important to remember that interaction doesn't just occur through marketing and sales channels and media; customers interact in many different ways with many different areas of the organization including distribution and shipping, customer service and online.

To foster relationships, organizations need to insure that:

All areas of the organization have easy access to relevant, actionable customer information. All areas are trained how to use customer information to tailor interactions based on both

customer needs and potential customer value.

With access to information and appropriate training, organizations will be prepared to steadily increase the value they deliver to customers. Delivering value is a cornerstone of the relationship. And remember, value is not just based on the price of the product or the discounts offered. In fact, customer perceptions of value are based on a number of factors including the quality of products and services, convenience, speed, ease of use, responsiveness and service excellence.

Acquire and Retain

The more we learn about customers, the easier it is to pinpoint those that are producing the greatest value for the organization. Those are the customers and customer segments that we want to clone in our prospecting and acquisition efforts. And, because we continue to learn about what is valuable to each segment, we'll be much more likely to score a "win" with the right channel, right media, right product, right offer, right timing and most relevant message.

Successful customer retention basically involves getting it "right" on an ongoing basis.

Successful customer retention is based very simply on the organization's ability to constantly deliver on three principles:

Maintain interaction; never stop listening.

Continue to deliver on the customer's definition of value. Remember that customers change as they move through differing life stages; be alert for the

changes and be prepared to modify the service and value proposition as they change.

And so the cycle continues. As you move from one stage to the next, you gain insight and understanding that enhances your subsequent efforts. Your development initiatives simultaneously become increasingly sophisticated as does your implementation of CRM processes.

4cs

Everything your reps need to sell well can be divided into four critical skill areas:

1) customer knowledge, 2) product knowledge, 3) communication, and 4) time/goal management.

Help them master each of these categories and you'll have the foundation for a sales team that's built to last.

1. Customer knowledge.Ethical salespeople make helping customers a top priority, but to help your customers, you need to know what they want and need. To find out more about them, put your mouth on hold and use your eyes and ears. Develop a list of questions to ask each of your prospects, and make sure your questions help you get the facts on them (including current needs, problems, long- and short-term objectives, product benefits that are most important to them, etc.) as well as their feelings about you and your product. To build your knowledge of customers in general, use the information you gather on each sales call to develop an ideal client profile (a list of five to eight criteria you can use to qualify and classify future prospects).

2. Product knowledge.With a thorough knowledge of your product and all it can do for your prospects you'll be better equipped to persuade people to buy it. Be sure you're familiar with your entire product line; a lack of knowledge about any one of your products could cost you a sale.

Try dividing product information into three categories: features, advantages, and benefits. Features are your product's specifications, advantages are features unique to your product that set it apart from your competition and benefits tell your prospects how your product will improve their businesses or their lives - they answer the "What's in it for me?" question. For each of your products, divide a sheet of paper into three sections (one for each category) then fill in the information for that product under each section heading. Before your sales calls, match your prospect or customer's needs with the items on your product sheet to customize your sales approach.

3. Communication effectiveness.Communication skills not only help you make a favorable impression on your prospects, they also make you more persuasive. Pay attention not only to what you say but how you say it.

Your words will be more convincing if you say them with confidence, enunciating clearly in a voice loud enough for your prospects to hear easily. Match your product's benefits to your customer's needs, and when possible, use the same words as your prospects to describe their needs. Listen closely to the way your prospects talk and the language that they use. Mirroring their speech patterns can help build rapport and take you closer to a sale. Customize each presentation, and make sure you don't say anything to put prospects on the defensive.

4. Time and goal management.Managing your time carefully can save you enough minutes and hours each week to make dozens of extra calls. To eliminate the obvious time wasters like long lunches and frequent coffee breaks, think about what causes them. Automation can save a lot of time on tedious, non-selling tasks, so make sure you're using tools like CRM to the fullest advantage. Plan your days a day in advance so you won't have to spend time deciding what tasks to work on and in what order.

New salespeople are often anxious to get off to a good start, but they might not know enough about selling to know what skills will make them most effective. Pointing out the special importance of customer and product knowledge, communication and time management helps them focus their efforts on the skill areas that will help them close more sales more quickly.

Database marketing is a form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes. The method of communication can be any addressable medium, as in direct marketing.

The distinction between direct and database marketing stems primarily from the attention paid to the analysis of data. Database marketing emphasizes the use of statistical techniques to develop models of customer behavior, which are then used to select customers for communications. As a consequence, database marketers also tend to be heavy users of data warehouses, because having a greater amount of data about customers increases the likelihood that a more accurate model can be built.

There are two main types of marketing databases, 1) Consumer databases, and 2) business databases. Consumer databases are primarily geared towards companies that sell to consumers, often abbreviated as [business-to-consumer] (B2C) or BtoC. Business marketing databases are often much more advanced in the information that they can provide. This is mainly because business databases aren't restricted by the same privacy laws as consumer databases.

The "database" is usually name, address, and transaction history details from internal sales or delivery systems, or a bought-in compiled "list" from another organization, which has captured that information from its customers. Typical sources of compiled lists are charity donation forms, application forms for any free product or contest, product warranty cards, subscription forms, and credit application forms.

The communications generated by database marketing may be described as junk mail or spam, if it is unwanted by the addressee. Direct and database marketing organizations, on the other hand, argue that a targeted letter or e-mail to a customer, who wants to be contacted about offerings that may interest the customer, benefits both the customer and the marketer.

Field service management (FSM) is an attempt to- schedule- optimize- dispatchfor service processes and information needed by companies who send teams of technicians or other staff "into the field" (or out of the office). Optimization is difficult (even with a single travelling salesman, the problem is NP-hard), since it involves multiple scheduling and dispatching of technicians to different locations, while minimizing cost and maintaining good customer service. FSM most commonly refers to companies who need to manage installs, service or repairs of systems or equipment.

A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving or transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centers are operated for telemarketing, solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection and market research. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letter, fax, live support software, social media and e-mail at one location is known as a contact centre.