The Monday after Thanksgiving is called Cyber Monday, and it’s perhaps the busiest on-line shopping day of the year. However, for me it is also a day when our phones start ringing off the hook with an all too familiar prospective client lament. The message – can you help us pull together our data for getting out holiday cards and gift baskets?
Over the years this question has shifted from being a simple indicator of why an organization needs a CRM system to a benchmark on how well the system is working. As these callers share their current procedures, like the passing around of files and lists, one can get a pretty good idea of how well customer and prospect information is being managed, or not.
Who gets a card, and who is on the VIP list for a gift basket? Asking the following questions can provide some valuable insight into your processes and data management:
- While you may know who your customers are from your accounting system, do you know who are the right contacts to receive a card or basket?
- Where do you draw the line between a good customer this year and the lifetime value of another customer?
- Do you know what was sent last year and how it was received?
- What address do you use?
- Which organizations would rather you make a donation than send anything?
Whether or not a company can accurately answer these questions can be a telling sign as to how well everyone in the organization knows and shares information about their best customers. If you’re having an issue with something as simple as pulling together holiday thank you cards, how are you going to do with bigger issues like: customer life-time value, evaluating up-selling or cross-selling opportunities, and achieving the sales results your want? There is one additional question that might be even more alarming - Do you know how often your team is communicating with these customers throughout the rest of the year? If you don’t, you should assume that your competitors know.
This type of real-time information should be at the fingertips of everyone on your sales, marketing and service team. This is the very least of what a sales and marketing system or in other words, a , should be doing for you.
If you need help starting next year with everyone on the same page, give me a call. (800) 897-9807 ext.224
by InfoGrow
