With customer relationship management (CRM), companies are finally able to put the customers at the forefront of their business. Even though CRM has been shown to increase revenue by 41% per salesperson on average, if the CRM is used correctly and to the highest ability.

 

Without an effective CRM strategy, businesses run the risk of missing the mark on delivering superior customer service and value.  We are going to share with you, tips on creating a CRM strategy that can help you put your customers first and take your business to the next level.

 

Your Business Strategy

Your CRM should help your company achieve its goals it has set in place. Your first step in implementing a CRM strategy is to identify those goals. Once you know what your goals are, your next step will be to determine how you plan on reaching those goals. Breaking your goals down into smaller, achievable objectives will map out how and when you plan to complete these steps. This map should be flexible, allowing for revision along the way.

Here are some steps to help you break down your business strategy:

 

• Develop A Unique Selling Proposition – What sets you apart from your competitors? What can you offer that they can’t?
• Know Your Customer – By understanding the business’s potential buyers, helps to determine who and how you will be marketing, selling, and servicing them.
• Know Your Employees – Employees, particularly those that interact with clients, have a wealth of information since they hear the challenges, goals, and even how they like to do their shopping.
• Survey Your Customers – A survey can help streamline the process of gathering the data you need and also provide a clear picture of who your buyers are.
• Know Your Competition – Knowing your competitors allows you to spot industry trends and understand how your competitors are marketing and selling.

 

Customer’s Journey

The customer journey is a roadmap showing how a customer interacts with your company. This encompasses your operations, marketing, sales, service, support, or any other aspect of your business.

 

Prepare for initial contact with your lead by using your CRM to track what kind of information your prospective customer shares across social media channels. This will give you an edge in understanding your customer wants, how they expect you to deliver on those wants, and what they are likely to want in the future.

 

Establish a Sales Process

If you plan on growing your sales team and business, creating a sales process is crucial. The more complex your sales and the longer your sales cycle, the more detailed your process should be. Start by identifying the pipeline stages which can be tracked by your CRM. These are the steps in your sales process needed to move someone from a prospect to a customer. Here is an example of pipeline stages:

1. Prospects
2. Contacted (via chat, email, or call)
3. Follow Up
4. Proposal review
5. Won
6. Lost

 

Define Your Team’s Goals

Your CRM may be designed to handle large amounts of data and to help facilitate communication throughout your team. So involving your employee in every step of the process will help you reach your goals. This will help them take personal ownership over their operation. Employees who are invested in the company will be able to integrate new policies and technologies in a way that will benefit the company all around.

 

It is essential that the company sets SMART goals and establishes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

 

SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound):

• Specific – Don’t be vague, be very specific
• Measurable – Track and measure your progress
• Attainable – Make sure you can reach your goals
• Relevant – Do all your goals align?
• Time-Bound – The goal needs to have a timeline in place so it puts the goal into perspective.

 

KPI (Key Performance Indicators:

KPIs are metrics used to measure the performance of a person, team, and organization as they relate to their goals. The KPIs selected should tie directly to your company’s overall goals and strategy.

 

KPIs are typically broad at the top of the company. And for example, at the mid-level, a sales team might have a departmental goal of increasing product demos by 20%. KPIs, at this level, help both goal achievement and building team cohesion. For an individual salesperson, the KPIs will be more specific to the success of that person as it relates to their particular targets or goals.

 

Break Down the CRM Components

This is the more detailed stage of the CRM strategy, where you define the who, what, and how. It includes setting contacts, creating pipelines and deal stages, identifying requirements, and selecting any additional software necessary for a successful sales team.

 

CRMs can very quickly get over-stuffed with contacts from various sources. Because not all of these need to be in your CRM, define what makes a good contact.

 

For instance:

• A lead may be someone who downloaded an ebook from your site.
• A prospect is someone who has the types of challenges that your company solves, which you may know because you met them at a tradeshow.
• An opportunity can be someone who has a challenge you can solve and is considering your company to help them solve it.

You will want to make sure that you are putting the right leads into the right pipelines.  You don’t want to send an opportunity your thank you letter for buying an ebook from your site.  This is not professional, and the client will lose trust in you and your company.

 

Once you have established your pipelines, you now need to break down the CRM components within each pipe. Within each pipeline, list all of the steps necessary to take a contact from lead to customer. These are things like first contact, discovery call, demo, proposal review, and so on. If you’ve created a sales process, these should be easy to plug in.

 

Conclusion

CRM is nothing more than a highly-advanced tool by itself. However, when combined with a detailed-yet-flexible business strategy, the right CRM can help you place your customers at the forefront of your business focus. It may take a little time, effort, and a few trips back to the drawing board to make sure everything is aligned. But if you make it a point to develop the right strategy, you’ll find that CRM has the potential to perfect your business.

 

CRMs are designed to: help your team sell better by cutting out the busy work, helping to focus their efforts, making sure nothing falls through the cracks and helping to resell by retaining existing customers.  We at ReachOut Business Solutions want to make sure that you have the right CRM for your business.  Feel free to email us if you have any questions or are ready to set up your consultation.

 

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