“The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one’s opportunities, and make the most of one’s resources.” – Marquis de Vauvenargues
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is more than just software, it is a philosophy and a process within your organization. Today less than 25% of companies use any formal CRM software to assist them in managing their customer relationships. Many companies have standardized procedures for Accounting, Staffing and Manufacturing but yet the Customer Relationship Process is not formalized.
Does your company need a formal Customer Relationship Process?
Look at some of the indicators below to determine if you are ready to make the jump and create a formal process of managing customer contacts / interactions:
- You do not know the last time you talked with a customer.
- Who are your top 20 customers, by name?
- You are communicating with customers in many formats (e-mail, phone, face-to-face, direct mail, etc.).
- You do not have any future sales pipeline reports.
- Each salesperson keeps track of their leads and contacts.
- You do not have a formal way of tracking all the contacts at a company.
- Your sale involves multiple salespeople selling to the same person at a company.
- Recently, some customers have started doing business with your competitors (68% of Clients defect because they feel indifference from their vendor).
If you answered yes to a few of the points above it is time to reconsider your Customer Relationship Management tools and processes. With CRM software like it’s easy to gain access to customer information, see sales activities and purchase history, identify additional revenue, see contact activities, track your progress against goals, see a consolidated or individual pipeline and deliver consistent customer service.
Should you invest in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Sales?
There are many tangible and intangible benefits of CRM software for . Including:
- Integration of disparate databases into one cohesive database
- Integration and synchronization with Outlook for accurate and up-to-date information
- Ease of access to top customers
- Complete view of the customer experience (contacts, correspondence, marketing, sales)
- Complete sales pipeline and contact view for Management
- Standardized process keeping everyone on the same page throughout the sales cycle
The question you need to ask yourself is: “What is it costing my business to not have a CRM plan for our sales force?”
By Gary Krist, Practice Director CRM / Cloud Computing at Turnkey Technologies, Inc. – Illinois, partner