The new Customer Relationship Management CRM functions

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The new Customer Relationship Management CRM functions

By J.C.Melo

The Customer Relationship Management CRM system was born because of the need for a software to analyze customer's data - as for example its preferences - changing rough data that usually exists in any customer's database, into important information about the same customer. That is to say, a new modern sales & marketing tool.

In this first period the data of an online and real-time accounting & management system was analyzed by this stand-alone CRM software, and in the following period those accounting & management systems integrated this initial marketing & sales functions of a CRM.

Soon after, this new accounting & management system - now integrated with the CRM functions - included a Call Center system of the last generation with or without a voice processing system - input and output - through the telephone system usually so loved by us.

Soon after appeared an obvious question: If the CRM support my customers, why don't change it to support all the external functions of my company, as for example my suppliers, distributors, representatives, branches, affiliated companies, employees's families, etc., each one with different needs and processings?

This is the current Customer Relationship Management CRM system, for everything concerning the external world of a company, and consequently its original name no longer represents its current functions in spite to be widely used.

Today we should split the IT system of a company in two great sides but in the near future will be only one system:

1. Enterprise Resources Planning ERP, for the internal world of a company, on which we will write another article in the near future,

2. Customer Relationship Management CRM, for the external world of a company.

However it's absolutely necessary to understand that a CRM is not a software package that can be installed and immediately will be ready to work, but yes a system that obligatorily should be implemented by IT specialists together with the whole company in a continuous job, besides to be adapted to the specific needs of the company. And because the CRM was not interpreted correctly by a large amount of companies, recent research showed that 42% of purchased CRM systems are inoperative for been interpreted as a push-button software.

However if very well designed and installed, a CRM is a powerful tool for a company to grow on this digital business Century, certainly surpassing your competition and generating reasonable ROI Return on Investment.


The new Customer Relationship Management CRM functions

By J.C.Melo

The Customer Relationship Management CRM system was born because of the need for a software to analyze customer's data - as for example its preferences - changing rough data that usually exists in any customer's database, into important information about the same customer. That is to say, a new modern sales & marketing tool.

In this first period the data of an online and real-time accounting & management system was analyzed by this stand-alone CRM software, and in the following period those accounting & management systems integrated this initial marketing & sales functions of a CRM.

Soon after, this new accounting & management system - now integrated with the CRM functions - included a Call Center system of the last generation with or without a voice processing system - input and output - through the telephone system usually so loved by us.

Soon after appeared an obvious question: If the CRM support my customers, why don't change it to support all the external functions of my company, as for example my suppliers, distributors, representatives, branches, affiliated companies, employees's families, etc., each one with different needs and processings?

This is the current Customer Relationship Management CRM system, for everything concerning the external world of a company, and consequently its original name no longer represents its current functions in spite to be widely used.

Today we should split the IT system of a company in two great sides but in the near future will be only one system:

1. Enterprise Resources Planning ERP, for the internal world of a company, on which we will write another article in the near future,

2. Customer Relationship Management CRM, for the external world of a company.

However it's absolutely necessary to understand that a CRM is not a software package that can be installed and immediately will be ready to work, but yes a system that obligatorily should be implemented by IT specialists together with the whole company in a continuous job, besides to be adapted to the specific needs of the company. And because the CRM was not interpreted correctly by a large amount of companies, recent research showed that 42% of purchased CRM systems are inoperative for been interpreted as a push-button software.

However if very well designed and installed, a CRM is a powerful tool for a company to grow on this digital business Century, certainly surpassing your competition and generating reasonable ROI Return on Investment.

J.C.Melo is a 73-years old IT professional with 54 years of experience in computer science & technology entrepreneurship. He was the owner of the first minicomputer factory in South America and Consultant for the U.S. Government in several contracts. Now is the CEO of the organization
http://mba-open-university.net

CRM -- Turning Customers Into Clients

Estimates that 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of total revenues in some businesses is a wake-up call! Finding new business a climate like that is expensive, and often unrewarding. As Barry Stamos points out in 'Best' Customers: More Profitable Relationships (Email Marketing Newsletter), Why spend resources attracting new customers until optimizing the profitability of your client relationships?

Estimates that 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of total revenues in some businesses is a wake-up call! Finding new business a climate like that is expensive, and often unrewarding. As Barry Stamos points out in 'Best' Customers: More Profitable Relationships (Email Marketing Newsletter), Why spend resources attracting new customers until optimizing the profitability of your client relationships?

More Bang for Your Buck

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is organizing and maintaining strategic connections with clients and customers to turn that sorry 20/80 stat on its ear.

Successful CRM is about competing in the relationship dimension explains Bob Thompson, CEO, CustomerThink Corporation, Not as an alternative to having a competitive product or reasonable price- but as a differentiator. If your competitors are doing the same thing you are (as they generally are), product and price won't give you a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage. But if you can get an edge based on how customers feel about your company, it's a much stickier--sustainable--relationship over the long haul.

Putting Clients First

Service is a client-centric activity, but theres plenty in it for you, too. For small-business owners (SBOs) and independent professionals, developing and managing healthy client relationships and providing superior service increases cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and can spin off endless chains of high-leverage qualified referrals. Building on your client base also increases profitability, by cutting front-end marketing time and costs; but its the quality of those relationships that affects persistency, enhances your professional reputation, and can lead to future business from your hard-earned clients.

Technically, of course, when you make a sale, you dont have a client, you have a customer. A customer is someone who buys from you once; a client is someone who will buy from you, again and again. Clients who trust you and your expertise will come to you (and maybe only you) for your products or services. A client relationship is one in which both the buyer and seller agree that the first transaction was not a one-time event.

Client Relationship Management goals are clear:

Being seen as confident, competent professional;

Proactively servicing your existing business and providing extra value;

Meeting additional needs as clients situations change, and

Earning prestige recommendations or introductions to other qualified prospects.

The buyer must accept Client status, however, its not a label that can be stuck to the buyer by the seller. Client relationships must be cultivated and nurtured to stay healthy. To borrow a line from former New York City mayor, Ed Koch, simply asking clients, How am I doing? is a great way to find out.

CRM is typically characterized by continuous contact, shared expectations and mutually beneficial relationships evolving over time. The post-sale period must be carefully managed. Thank-you messages are courteous and business-like; progress reports may be useful in some situations.

Make a point of contacting clients informally several times a year, in addition to holiday messages and regularly scheduled service contacts. It can add up, but todays SBOs and independent professionals have a really simple and powerful way of delivering much more value to clients with less effort, since virtually all client service contacts can be automated.

E-Communications Its Expected!

People have come to expect email service notifications and other communicationseverything from thank-you notes, birthday and holiday greetings to cross- and up-selling messaging. If youre not using automation technology and a Web presence to the max, youre at a disadvantage (because your competitors are!).

At the same time, a lot of businesses are slow to acknowledge customer inquiries and service requests. Business research firm, Jupiter Research (http://www.jupiterresearch.com), found that nearly one-third of companies either took three days or longer to respond to customers' email inquiries or never responded at all. Bad on them!

But that can all be fixed with automated messaging built into e-mail systems. Meeting basic customer service needs in these ways improves persistency and client loyalty.

Just as understanding the people you're looking for makes it easier to find more of them, a markets unique make-up can help you tailor appropriate client communications. As consumers become increasingly sophisticated, so does the benefit of targeting client communications, not just promotional messages, to their needs, interests and buying behaviors. With today's technology you can readily customize client communications to each market segment.

Smart CRM Another Way to Succeed

CustomerThink Corporations Bob Thompson: Said another way, you can succeed with CRM by being SMART: Define a customer-centric Strategy; use appropriate Metrics ; ensure your organization is Aligned with your objectives; Redesign work processes as needed; and use appropriate Technology tools as enablers. But it all starts by putting your customers first and creating a better relationship with them than your competitors offer.

Want More? Send questions and comments to w.willard3@knology.net.

Bill Willard has been writing high-impact marketing and sales training for over 30 yearsbut as Will Rogers put it: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. Through interactive, Web-based "Do-While-Learning" programs, e-Newsletters and straight-talking articles, Bill helps small-business owners and independent professionals get the job done.

CRM - Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategy employed at corporate level. For any company, it is the focus on the creation and maintenance of lasting and meaningful relationships with its customers. It can perhaps be described as a holistic approach of a company's philosophy where the emphasis is placed primarily on the customer.

To simplify this process, there are a number of commercial software packages available. Two of the market leaders are GoldMine? and ACT!?. Their programs allow a high degree of mechanization through a central database. Many tasks can also be automated, which allows greater overall control and sophistication.

However, simply installing and integrating a CRM such as the GoldMine? software, or the ACT!? software is not enough by its own. A successful CRM strategy requires the correct response at all levels to reshape a company's business activities to incorporate a fully customer-driven approach. In the design stage of implementing a CRM, it may be wise if a decision is made to retain greater and more extensive information on primary customers, and keep less information on clients with a low margin.

Sales, marketing and customer service all need to be seamlessly integrated. In this way the contact management software can keep track of all the relevant aspects involved in selling to customers, or following up on leads and prospects. The success factors in gaining customers can be highlighted for re-use, and the approaches that failed, or were marginal, can be abandoned, or even revisited for further evaluation at a later time.

A CRM can be considered in three distinct but equally important parts. There is the operational part, which focuses on basic business processes such as sales and marketing, as well as customer service. There is the analytical part, which can analyze the behavior of customers and produce reports, show returns on investment, and report on the pattern of the sales team, either individually or as a whole. Finally, there is the collaborative part, which focuses on the basic contact with the customer. This can be direct, or through automated follow-up emails, for example.

Any company considering scaling up to utilize a CRM software should think equally about staff training. Only through properly identified and properly delivered training will a CRM, such as the GoldMIne? software, or the ACT!? software, be found to be cost effective and worth the expense and trouble of implementing. While a good CRM can be worth its weight in gold, it will only be as good as the management who run it, and the sales team who use it.

A good CRM software will provide reporting and analytical tools, which can be used as highly effective feedback. Analysis of sales can identify hidden opportunities, expose weaknesses, highlight areas of strength, and reveal the current performance level of sales people. Using intelligent reporting facilities to maximize strengths and eliminate or minimize weaknesses, is indeed a powerful tool to have at your disposal.

That, coupled with the proper training in how to put the tools to their best use, will provide any company with a solid customer relationship management strategy that will prove to be highly effective.

Syed Ali, is the lead CRM consultant for a Toronto based company. His company offers, GoldMine CRM and ACT! Software CRM Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email :asyed@cqsolutions.com

Customer Relationships And Your Financial Health

Customer relationships are what will determine the health and prosperity of your computer consulting business. It is critical to understand the different dynamics of customer relationships. By doing this you can identify places of risk in terms of non-payment.

Customer Relationships - Two Distinctions

There are two main customer relationship types:

Long-Term, Steady Clients

Your long term clients are your bread and butter clients. These people see you as an insurance policy: they have the ability to call you, the ability to pay you, and you're going to be there; pretty much right away to take care of things. The customer relationship you enjoy with these people is one of trust. They know that if they have a problem they can call you and you will fix it.

These clients pay on time. If they didn't they would undermine the customer relationship and this is too risky. Would you feel comfortable calling your accountant if you were 5 months late in paying him or her? No. Likewise these people will pay you on time, every time.

Stepping?Stone Clients

Stepping stone clients do not enjoy such a healthy customer relationship. These clients perceive you as a commodity. If you don't show up to fix something - Oh well. They'll just call the next company in the phone book. They're not interested in building solid customer relationships with you and therefore have no qualms whatsoever about stiffing you on an invoice.

The Bottom Line on Customer Relationships

If you want to get paid you have to understand the dynamics of customer relationships and use them to your advantage. The stepping-stone or cherry-picking clients think of you as replaceable. You want to build your business by building long-term customer relationships with steady clients on maintenance agreements. These are the sort of clients that will be almost offended by a past due notice and that?s a good thing for your billing and invoicing.

Joshua Feinberg helps independent PC Support professionals get more steady, high-paying PC support clients. Learn how you can get more monthly recurring PC Support revenue with Joshua's free training recording now at http://www.PCSupportTips.com

5 Minute Guide to Sales Force Automation

 

In today?s technology driven environment, many businesses have decided to use sales force automation to allow faster and more efficient production and better customer satisfaction. This technique is actually the use of software in order to automate the business tasks of sales, which includes processing orders, sharing information, inventory monitoring, order tracking, customer service, and employee performance evaluation. This type of sales automation does raise the productivity of a business but it does have its downsides. These machines are actually taking the jobs that people could otherwise perform. Unemployment could actually rise because of sales force automation, and jobs in the country have actually decreased because of it. But perhaps the up sides to SFA outweigh the down sides.

After applying SFA in a company?s sales division, salespeople actually become more efficient and can get more work done in a day. Because SFA eliminates the need to fill out forms and then transfer them into the computer after printing them out, SFA saves a lot of time and effort for salespeople. The SFA software is also a valuable training tool for employees. Because it holds the information for the products and may even have sales technique training, it will eliminate costly seminars that employees may be reluctant to go to. The bottom line is, SFA will increase the productivity of a company. It will give a company the comparative advantage because it will take fewer expenses to produce the same amount of goods.

But let?s not forget the down side. Many online businesses use automated customer service systems that give auto responses to customers who have issues or problems with their products. This gets rid of the employee who would be responding to these problems. Automated emails may also frustrate the customer and make the whole exchange feel impersonal. Also, SFA requires continuous maintenance that would incur added expenses to a company.

With that said, mobile workforce solutions has made sales force automation easier than ever simply because the software used for this type of technology can now be connected to a company?s private network even on the fly. Because of mobile computing and mobile communications, companies can now relay important sales information to the technology used for sales force automation.

Sales force automation is, all in all, a great idea for many companies. It will most likely increase productivity and will increase efficiency of workers. In economics, this is a great thing and will guarantee long term success. SFA seems to have rooted itself in this country as a solid way to increase profits and with mobile solutions getting stronger and more innovative everyday, it isn?t showing any signs of slowing down.

Natalie Aranda is a freelance writer. With that said, mobile workforce solutions has made sales force automation easier than ever simply because the software used for this type of technology can now be connected to a company's private network even on the fly. Because of mobile computing and mobile communications, companies can now relay important sales information to the technology used for sales force automation.