Sat, 03/31/2012 - 13:17

Amanda Frazier

A simple, step-by-step guide for businesses implementing a CRM process, also cal led a Customer Relationship Management process. Overview of the CRM Process At some point in the business lifecycle, you re going to find yourself needing to set up a CRM process. Maybe you re growing, maybe customers aren t being managed th e way they should. Whatever the reason, here is how to do it in 5 simple steps: Step 1: Clearly Identify Your Target Market & Value Proposition This is the first step in establishing a CRM Process. Most business owners will have this well documented in a business plan; although as many as 50% won t. Ens ure you know exactly who the target market is (this is more than just customer d emographics), and a clear value proposition being offered. List customer profiles in priority, for example: A, B, & C. valuable customer. B would be second priority, etc. A would be your most

Let s look at how the customer priority list in a CRM process looks: Customer A- Past/Repeat Buyers (Conversion rate of 75%) Customer B- Subscribed to Email List (Conversion rate of 34%) Customer C- Website Traffic and/or Walk-in Customer (Conversion rate of 15%) Different customers may also have different value propositions, but knowing what is important to each type of customer is what sets the CRM process up for succe ss. Step 2: Define Your Overall CRM Strategy and Consider Costs This is solely based on what type of customer service and relationship managemen t will work better for your business, and your customers. Believe it or not, yo u actually have many different options for customer relationship management. Th ese can include co-creating the CRM process with customers, having a dedicated o nline social CRM community for your business, or handling customers the old fash ioned way with hands-on assistance. Each has their positives and negatives. Ea ch option in the CRM process also has different prices that you ll want to explore , which can have a great impact on your business s ROI. Choose carefully. For a deeper look into selecting a CRM strategy for your business, read: 6 Great Examples of Customer Service Strategies in Business. Step 3: Define How Each Customer Type Will Be Handled Taking the customer profiles in priority from step 1, and the customer service s trategies in step 2; define how each customer type will be handled throughout th e CRM process. I ll explain this step with a real example so you can see how it s p layed out: Headway Themes sells an online product. They have 2 different pricing levels. The lowest pricing level is for consumers, offering a base level version of the product. This customer receives less dedicated customer service, in the form of access to an online support community where customers help each other (like Des k.com). These customers are a lower priority, due to the fact they ll likely only purchase the product once for personal use.

The higher pricing level is for B2B customers. These are developers who use the product to customize, and then resell to their clients. This pricing level is much higher, so these customers receive lifetime dedicated customer support. Th ese are also Headway Theme s repeat buyers. Step 4: Select a CRM Software to Measure Performance Most of the businesses out there will choose a CRM software to measure the perfo rmance of their strategy. The good news in selecting a CRM Software, is most of the complexity has been taken out of the process now. The best CRM software sol utions include Saas (software as a service delivered online), and innovations in this area improve everyday. This means there is no longer a costly need of an inhouse IT team and server space. At least this will be the case for 97% of all businesses with less than 10 employees. For a deeper look into selecting a CRM Software, read: The Best CRM Software of 2012. Step 5: Continue to Re-engage Customers Customer engagement is a hard task to bring to perfection. Several shown us there is a very thin line between aggravating customers); ing them positively in your business. Three of the most used forms re-engagement in the CRM Process are customer satisfaction surveys, ocial media. studies have and re-engag of customer email, and s

With surveys - You should measure customer satisfaction strategically throughout the CRM process. These customer surveys can help with this. If you find you re not receiving adequate responses with surveys, try giving out an incentive. You can also try adding a fun twist to the otherwise tedious (and not so interestin g) surveys. A few great resources for performing customer satisfaction surveys are: Get Satisfaction Survey Monkey With email- For most customers, keeping in touch with an email newsletter about once a week, or twice a month is more than enough. Send only important communic ations, like the top articles featured on your site for example. For higher level customers that require personal assistance in the CRM process ( like the relationship with a major client), keep in touch on a personal basis. Don t rely solely on an email newsletter as a means of engaging with these types o f customers. Personal & professional attention is more than likely what they pa y for, and that s what these customers should get. With social media - Don t over tweet, or overload social feeds on Facebook. And w hen you do engage, engage with more than just a sales pitch. Have a real conver sation. Be a real person. Be the face behind the brand, and you ll see true succ ess in your CRM process. Tags: CRMIntegrationSocial Media About Amanda Frazier Amanda is a serial entrepreneur, and the CEO of Plan to Start (a digital marketing & publishing company focused o n entrepreneurship).

Last week, we talked about how building a defined sales process into your CRM sy stem can improve the service you deliver to your customers. This week we tackle how to encourage your people to use CRM. Indeed, system adoption can be the biggest hurdle you encounter once your sales process is set up and integrated with CRM. This is frequently more difficult tha n actually designing or implementing the sales process and is also the most crit ical component. The best-designed process won t do you any good if nobody is using it after 3 months. Here are our steps to gaining buy-in for your sales process: First and foremost, make sure it is easy to use and that it will actually assist the sales staff in managing their opportunities. If it takes too much time to k eep CRM up-to-date (or even if it is perceived as taking too much time), staff w ill resist doing it and fall back on whatever methods they were using in the pas t.The process should help them out and make their lives easier by providing ways to keep track of their pipeline, the current status on opportunities they are w orking and things they need to do. Once they realize that following the sales pr ocess is helping them stay organized and once their sales numbers improve throug h repeated use of the process they will be your biggest supporters. Second, drive all reporting out of CRM, and the sales stages within the process. When a salesperson is meeting with the sales manager to discuss their current d eals, the reports they are looking at should be CRM reports and those reports sh ould be utilizing information from the sales process.This helps the salesperson because they don t need to compile any extra reports for their meeting and it help s their manager because he or she can check out what s going on anytime they want by just looking in CRM. The better the reporting in CRM, the less time is needed to individually review each deal, saving time for both sales staff and manageme nt time that can then be used to close deals. Tie the credit a salesperson gets for sales to the data available in CRM and the y will strive to keep that information updated. The best way to get a salesperso n to do something is to tie it to their commission check, so consider basing com missions on how accurately sales are tracked in CRM.If they can get credit for a completed sale that was not entered in CRM and did not follow the process, they will quickly learn that they don t need to use CRM, and you will lose the value o f the process and the reporting. Finally, you need to have the support of upper management to enforce usage of th e system and the process. Again, if the salespeople are not required to use the sales process in CRM by their managers, they will avoid it.If the managers are n ot viewing the data and reports in CRM, and are checking their own spreadsheets instead, the sales staff will be more concerned with the spreadsheets than CRM. Their job is to sell and to prove they are selling they need to keep their manag ers aware of their actions. If the manager isn t looking in CRM for that data, the y have no reason to put it there. Accurate Data Drives Sales & Revenue Having a sales process in place can help drive additional sales and revenue for your company, and managing your sales cycle within a tool like Microsoft Dynamic s CRM makes it easier for salespeople to keep track of their pending opportuniti es. Plus Microsoft Dynamics CRM excels at providing better and easier reporting and data mining, while helping salespeople stay organized and selling. By combining the tool and the process, your organization gains additional insight into the sa les pipeline, driving company growth and long-term success. -Without an integrated CRM system, your company s relationships with customers, sup pliers and employees are suffering. It s easier for mistakes to happen: wrong orde rs are delivered, invoice details incorrect and complaints unfiled.

An integrated Business Relationships Management (BRM) system can multiply the va lue delivered by a traditional CRM system. Discover how to effectively implement BRM by: Boosting the success of implementation with internal systems champions. Managing expectations to more easily overcome expected issues. Setting appropriate metrics to reflect the value received or measure desired cha nges. Cultivate your Relationships Gain access INSTANTLY to our complimentary white paper on Relationship Managemen t: Using Information to Enhance Supplier, Customer and Employee Interactions by completing the form to your right. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A sales process is a structured methodology and process to help move a prospecti ve customer through to a sale. Generally a sales process will be customized for your specific business and industry, under the assumption that most of your cust omers will be going through the same process for buying. How to Select a Sales Process There are a number of sample sales processes available for different selling mod els, but the most successful process for your business should be based on your o wn selling experience. You should also be able to track, from your historical in formation, which stages of the sales process make the most sense, as well as the probability a deal will close at any given point. Again, the idea is consistency, both of your process and of your target customer s because your customers are all going to have similar elements to their busines s (hence their interest in your offerings) you should be able to maximize your e ffectiveness in selling to them. If your business sells across a variety of customer types, it may be necessary t o have different processes for each customer type. However, it is recommended to maintain the same sales stages across all of your processes to ensure your pipe line reporting is consistent and meaningful. Sales Process Benefits Having a defined sales process can benefit an organization in a number of ways: It will provide a consistent company image and customer experience in the market place. Also, should one salesperson need to step into a deal already underway, t hey will understand where the prospect is at based on the sales process stage, a nd handling the sale will be much easier. It will help the delivery portions of the company, because they will know exactl y when in the sale they can expect to either be and plan accordingly. For exampl e, in a service organization like OTT, a structured process can help define when a project manager will need to be alerted to a pending project, or when a consu ltant might need to be scheduled for a demo. You get the ability to consolidate sales reporting in a useful and meaningful ma nner. As mentioned above, sometimes multiple processes may be needed to handle d ifferent types of customers, or different product lines. It will dramatically help in training new sales staff when they enter the compan y. When this is structured within the sales tool, such as a process built right into your CRM (customer relationship management) system, training is much easier because the tool the salesperson uses to manage the sale will help guide them t hrough the steps they need to take. Guided Steps & Workflows

These guided steps usually take the form of a workflow, which automatically crea tes new tasks to advance the sale and updates the opportunity automatically with the current sales-stage information. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the versatile workflow engine allows us to generate t he task or tasks that need to be completed in the current stage and wait for tho se activities to be complete. Once completed, the workflow will advance to the n ext stage updating the opportunity to the new stage, increasing the probability of a sale for weighted revenue forecasting, and creating the next task or tasks that need to be completed. Through this process, the salesperson is guided through making the sale and the information that is automatically updated keeps management apprised of the curre nt status of all pending deals. But this means nothing if your people refuse to use your CRM system. Read Part 2 of Steps to a Successful Sales Process with CRM next week and discover how to e ncourage adoption of your CRM system and sales processes. Related Posts: Steps to a Successful Sales Process with CRM: Part 2 Enhance Supplier, Customer & Employee Interactions What You Need To Know About Social CRM Finding the Right CRM Solution