Customer Relationship Management – CRM
Introduction to topic Customer Relationship Management.
Without Sales many businesses would not exist for long. When businesses engage with customers, they collect specific information about their customers for better to perform in the marketplace and ensure optimal customer service.
To become even better than the competition, collecting specific information can be challenging to remember without a system to organize this information – Customer Relations Management (CRM).
CRM has been around for many years, even long before systems became digital. CRM is part of the concept “Know Your Customer (KYC)”, and contains the basics of customer corporate data, contact data, specific employees at the customer, leads and active cases, historic sold Solutions and Services and much more.
Contact Management
Basic company information of all interactions the business has with existing and potential customers is valuable when segmenting and executing on the sales plans. This information must be updated at all times to improve sales efficiency. Many CRM’s are able to integrate into public directories which monitor local and global business information.
Sales people should spend their time on working with elements in the sales process and not updating basic information.
Relationship Management
Manage key employees at the customers. Who should we talk to, who has we already spoken to and what was the outcome. Rank your contacts for who are valuable for your sales. It is popular to rank each individual in the following categories:
- Power Sponsor
- Sponsor
- Recommender
- Influencer
- Challenger
- Gatekeeper
Pipeline Management
Take control of the many leads and cases – active, won or lost. All cases serve a purpose for how to proceed in the short run and the long run. In the short run, the sales team knows what to do with each case and all closed leads and cases can provide valuable insight for how to proceed in future selling. Everything about a case should be monitored and registered for current and future usage
Performance insight
It should be key for any business to track the performance of the sales team. Not to monitor each sales individual’s every move, but to collect valuable information about the sales process and evaluate what works and what needs to be even better.
Prospecting statistics
Conversion rates from leads to cases
Average time spent to sell a specific Solution or Service
Discounts offered to close deals
Forecasting
Customer Relations Management serves a valuable purpose in time spent in meetings internally. How do Sales Managers, Finance and Business Unit Managers get insight in how businesses are performing. The CRM system can provide this information, which limits the need for forecast meetings.
Sales Managers should be able to pull relevant sales information for reporting purposes and spend time in forecast meetings on solving challenges and building new potential pipelines instead of going through each and every lead and case.
Partnership Relationship Management
Looking into the future, some CRM systems could be directly integrated to the customers themselves, empowering the customer to be in charge with their own basic information and updating if employees are leaving the company for other opportunities. Even access to the pipeline could be possible. Why not let the customer indicate where they are in the sales process.
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