The Advantages of CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the art of effectively communicating about your products and services to existing and potential customers.  Today we have the advantage of having software to help us accomplish our goals and objectives. Good CRM practices involve initial contact with customer, identifying opportunities, assigning responsibilities required to get opportunities closed, assessing potential value of opportunities, assessing the likelihood of closing a sale, and preparing a schedule of when this will occur. In addition, CRM best practices help to identify next steps such as proposal preparation, delivery method, and time guidelines to maximize likelihood of sale conversion.

Once a sale is secured, CRM best practices dictate very specific steps of the process. This in turn ensures proper delivery of your product or service. If performed correctly, this will ensure profitability and ultimately customer satisfaction.

CRM can be used for many different tasks. Direct email newsletters, customer surveys, and automated customer followup can all be incorporated into your system. Companies that properly utilize CRM software are generally more successful than those that do not.

CRM systems also track the activities of your employees by measuring their responsiveness to each of the tasks assigned to them. Statistically, employees perform better when they have assigned tasks, know when they are expected to complete those tasks, and also know they are being measured and that it will escalate up the ladder if the task is not completed correctly.

As managers you want information at your fingertips, right? You want to know everything is being completed on time and every step that is performed in order to secure a satisfied customer, correct? What you really want is a system that performs all of these steps automatically, and involves you when something is not getting done as planned. You want a system where you can monitor all of the activities of your company from a single screen or dashboard.  This is all part of any standard CRM system.

If you do not have a CRM system, and are considering one, I would be happy to help you determine which system is best for your situation. Some of these systems are free, and some are expensive. But we believe there is no substitute for properly managing your opportunities and your customer interactions. For more information or recommendations please contact me at scotlund@genesisturnaround.com.