CRM – CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
How to succeed with CRM projects and why they often fail
Author
Christoffer Hansen
ch@hanei.se
Customer Relationship Management software is used to drive growth and profits. Designed for sales, marketing, and service.
How does it work?
CRM is a platform that gathers information from all channels; social media, website, email, etc. help the company obtain more customers and keep the existing ones. The CRM gathers everything and tracks leads, customer needs, offers, and conversions, in one place so that you can organize business processes, workflows, close deals, and collaborate. You save time since CRM keeps track of all data due to machine learning and analytics, which lets you streamline and improve customer interaction, sales, and marketing campaigns. Automating tasks and analyze data.
BENEFITS OF HAVING A CRM SYSTEM
- Improves customer service –Manage all your contacts, leads, and customer profiles.
- Increase in sales – CRM helps improve the sales process, sales pipeline, automating tasks and analyze sales data
- Retain customers – Automation of human customer support and service improve retention and analytics reveal why churn happens and why
- Improved analytics – Data is collected and made easy to understand and relevant to your business needs.
- Higher efficiency – Everything you need to do is gathered in one place, which results in higher efficiency
- Sharing knowledge – Teamwork gets easier since all information is in one place, so everyone has the same knowledge
- Transparency throughout the organization – Everyone has the same visibility into the business process, which results in a collective understanding and collaboration.
WHO
NEEDS
CRM?
Companies that are doing sales, marketing teams, service, support, startups, community manager, nonprofit, volunteer org., editorial teams, ad agencies, productions. Everyone can benefit from better organization, task management, AI, an automation tool that makes work faster and better with less time and effort.
CRM allows you to build a sales pipeline, track leads, and get a better visual on sales opportunities. Workflow is easier to simplify, and you can manage the message you put out to customers.
WHY CRM PROJECTS OFTEN FAIL
Implementing a new CRM system can be difficult if you do not have a clear strategy for it.
Everyone in the organization must be on board with how and why it is being used. For example, if the sales team does not understand the value of entering data into the system, it will result in insufficient quality data in the system that does not provide accurate information.
Why do CRM projects fail? A shortlist sums it up:
- Poor CRM strategy – Not having clear goals and strategy of how to achivee them
- Poor executive support – The CEO is not advocating for the system
- Poor attention to the process – Not enough understanding of the business and customer needs
- Low adaptability to the system – Personal do not see the importance or have the right knowledge of using the system.
HOW TO SUCCEED
So, how do we make the process of implementing a new CRM system successful?
- Start by developing your strategy together with the people that are going to be using the CRM system. When the people affected by the future change are involved in the process, it will be easier to adapt to the new system, and the project is more likely to succeed.
- It is also crucial for the CEO to voice the importance and be committed to the project for the entire organization to get behind it genuinely.
- With the CRM, you get a comprehensive view of the business process, which should support the customer experience. Instead of focusing on selling the product, the business process will align with the customer journey.
- Before you move your old customer base to the new CRM, the data needs to be cleansed to ensure that you have accurate personal data.
Everyone in the organization should think of the new CRM system as a tool for your company to increase revenue. Especially if the sales team understands that the CRM system is a tool that helps them sell more, manage their territory, and receive support during sales, they will provide you with the proper data input and forecast information.
CRM STRATEGY
A CRM strategy is your plan for how to increase the company’s revenue and improve customer service.
- Define your vision and goals
What is your overall business strategy and goals? What do you want to achieve with the new CRM strategy? - Who is your target customer?
Create a persona which represents your ideal customer. What are their behaviors? Demographic? Interest and challenges? - Customer Journey
You need to map every step your customer takes in their buying journey. Then you can match that with good customer experience. - Sales Channels & Sales Process
Are you selling direct to the customer, or are you using a distributor or reseller? Define the steps in your sales process that are needed for a prospect to become a customer.- Presales – How do you analyze customer needs, gathering information, and set up business cases?
- Sales Process – What can be automated for higher efficiency?
- Customer relationship management – Are your offers and communication personalized?
- After-sales – Do you have proper customer support in place?
- CRM roles and goals
Determine who in your team needs access to the CRM system and for what they will be using it. Also, set goals that can be used to evaluate the performance of your team that will be using the CRM. - Set KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
To measure the performance of the team and organization, set KPIs that are connected to the overall business goals.Examples of KPIs:- Customer satisfaction
- Retention
- Profits
- Select CRM software
There are many different CRM software on the market, so a good idea is to review, research, and test drive the software to
Having a good CRM strategy is vital to increase a company’s revenue and improve customer service.
SO WHAT?
CRM projects often fail due to lack of a clear strategy and little to no involvement of the people that will be the once to use the new system.
When leaders are committed and involve all the right people in the strategy from the beginning, and everyone sees the new system as a tool for increasing the company’s revenue, the project will be more likely to succeed.
If you want to learn more about CRM systems and how it can help increase revenue, feel free to reach out to us at Hanei Consulting Group.
If you want to learn more about CRM systems and how it can help increase revenue, feel free to reach out to us at Hanei Consulting Group.
About us
We are a team of independent professionals from diverse backgrounds who want to make consulting simple. We have extensive experience from strategy- and technology consulting firms, start-ups, and corporations, where we have solved problems in 50+ countries – from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. We are the architects of your growth.
