A great way to get important information about your products and services from your customers and prospects is to use surveys.  You can allow them to respond anonymously or you can provide them an incentive such as a drawing for a free iPod, PDA or laptop.  I recently offered reduce consulting fees for a certain period.  Your questions should be focused around a single topic with no more than 5 questions.  If you send too many questions, you will lose people’s attention.  Look for a 1-5% response rate.  Offering an incentive people want can increase that to 10% or more.

There are a few companies that offer this service.   I used SurveyMonkey and was very pleased with the ease and functionality it provided.  It also provides good reporting so you can statistically see how well the survey did along with all the responses.

You should feed your responses back into your CRM solution so you can easily share the information with different teams in your organization such as sales and R&D.   If you cannot automate that process, you can do a manual import into your CRM solution.  While the responses will give you great insight into what your customers need and how well they feel you are doing, it is also important to know which customers or prospects care enough to participate.

Doing surveys are a great way to get the information you need to ensure your product, services and customer support are aligned with your customer needs now and into the future.

Tags: crm, Marketing

A great time saver when working with your CRM solution is to invoke bookmarks.  This allows you to access specific information with one click.  The thing to remember about bookmarks is to keep them current.  You do not want to have a large collection of bookmarks because it makes it harder to find the ones you want.  The bookmarks you have should only pertain to current deals and situations you are dealing with currently or everyday tasks.  Once they are resolved or the deal is closed, you should remove them. 

Some solutions let you also bookmark items outside you CRM data.  That becomes useful if you are accessing things like Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.  This way you do not have to leave CRM to access this information. 

Utilizing bookmarks is a great way to drastically save time searching for the data or documents you need.

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

One of the greatest tools for sales reps of the 21st century so far is web conferencing. Products like GoToMeeting, Webex, and Sametime dramatically changed how sales rep work. These products allow reps to avoid costly plane and overnight trips to show a prospect or customer their products and services. It has become the single most important technology in qualifying customers at a fraction of the cost it did before. While video conferencing has been around for a while it was too costly and complicated for sales reps that need speed, simplicity, and flexibility.

Any CRM solution you want to use should have direct integration with a web conferencing tool. The ones I have used like Relavis CRM and SalesForce.com have integrated these solutions directly into their activity management component. When scheduling a meeting within CRM you are able to hit a button on the form that will automatically create the web meeting, place all the connection and phone information into the invitation and mailed to the attendees. It is a great time saver for reps as well as allows you to track these meetings back to a specific lead, opportunity or contact. Web conference solutions keep track of number of attendees, length of time and you can record the entire meeting for play back later.

While I am sure many reps are now taking advantage of this technology with either corporate or individual accounts you should be tying it into your CRM solution so you get to create and track it in one place. It is an amazing time saver especially if you need to go back to review the history of the account. Or if a team member or manager missed the meeting and wants to review what happened.

Prospects and customer find web meetings far less intrusive on their time. It can be done totally at their convenience and at their desk.

Web conferencing should not totally eliminate visiting with your customers and prospects. Remember 90% of closing business is showing up. But it is a great tool for qualify and delivering information quickly and cost effectively.

Example of Web Conferencing Integration When Creating a Meeting in CRM

(Double click to enlarge)

Tags: crm productivity

One of the most overlooked components when trying to manage a complete picture of your customers is your post sales activities. This includes all project services that were part of your deals. It is important to track these projects in CRM so anyone looking at this account can see what projects were completed or in progress. It allows others in your organization to leverage post sales activities in deals they might be working in other divisions or locations. It also helps transition teams be consistent.

Tracking your post sales projects helps new reps be credible when talking to the account for the first time. What can be more embarrassing than not knowing your company has a services engagement currently active in the account.

Project management with CRM is not meant to replace software like Microsoft Project. It is only meant to be used as a place holder and track some basic information. Most customers will attach the detailed project plan to the CRM project record. You can also track all your activities against the project.

Post sales activities should round out your 360 degree view of your customer. Many CRM solutions will have a component for it. If your does not you can create a new activity type and use that as your place holder. I have included some basic information you might want to track on the project record. Again, remember this is not meant to replace project management software, it is just a way to account for your post sales activities within CRM.

Sample Project Management Record

(click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity

In a previous post I talked about the importance of having a CRM mobile solution add-on to your application. I talked about the different ways you can store the application and data (Thin, Thick and Rich clients). While I am still an overall fan of the thick client, having any mobile connection will make life so much easier when you are on the road. In this post I will address the specifics the mobile solution should have.

There is some basic information you must carry. The first are your organizations and contacts. The benefits to look up company and contact information quickly are obvious. So at a bare minimum your want to carry: name, title, address, email address and phone numbers. I would also include personal info such as birthday and account type. The great thing about carrying email and phone numbers is all PDA devices will allow you to automatically dial right from your contact record on the device or send an email.

You application should allow you to create emails which pull the contact from your CRM application on the device and not just from your PDA address book. Some application will make you synchronize your PDA address book with your CRM contacts. This is not a great way to do it but better than nothing. You also want your solution to be able to store emails you receive or send from your PDA. If your solution does not do it then you will have to wait until you are on your laptop and grab the emails from your sent box and save them.

You also want access to your opportunities and leads on the PDA. Again, you only want to carry the fields that are important for you. A good way to judge is to ask yourself what you would need to carry in order to never have to open your laptop up when on the road.

Some solutions allow you to automatically link everything together. This means that when you open up an organization or contact on your PDA you will have a list of all the opportunities and leads associated with those entities. I have some really good examples below.

It is important that you are able to add and update all the data on the device in conjunction with your security model. And you should have security on the PDA that allows your IT group to purge the data remotely if it is lost. There is a solution from Vaultus that automatically locks the device when it is not authenticated within a time frame you set.

And finally if you are using a disconnected application you want to make sure the solution will automatically be synchronizing with the production server back in your data center on a regular basis.

Mobility is one of the most important futures for CRM and getting a jump on it now will really help your team’s productivity, responses times to customers and staying well informed so you can be more proactive in your business.

Organization List Organizations (click to enlarge)		Organization Details (click to enlarge)		Organization Details You can see all the related contacts, opportunities, etc… for this account (click to enlarge)		Contact Details You can see all the details about this contact plus what is related to them (click to enlarge)
Contact Details (continued) You can also see related leads and activities (click to enlarge)		Initiating Actions You can quickly call the contact, send email, get directions, create and update lots of information (click to enlarge)		Composing Emails You can have the ability to choose from your CRM address book or the PDA (click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, crm productivity, Mobile crm

A key benefit of having a CRM solution is to easily access as much information as you need about a customer or prospect. We talked about the usual items like contacts, leads, opportunities, etc… But what about unresolved issues or complaints that were reported. It could be issues on a product or service, or some open issues about a bill or shipment.

One of the key components of CRM is customer service and support. The most common information sales reps need from this area are tickets and activities. Before talking to a customer you want to know if there are any outstanding tickets or issues. This way you can be proactive in telling them you are aware of what is going on, any new status and when it might be resolved. When a sales rep can provide that level of knowledge, it is very impressive and not forgotten by the customer. You NEVER want to be caught off guard by a customer that has an open issue that they ask you about.

If your support group is using the service component that comes with CRM then you can usually have access to what you need through a simple configuration. If your company uses a separate service module it will require more work to get access within your CRM application. Your IT group will need to map the data you need to your solution. It then needs to be pushed to your CRM solution. It does not need to be real time. Having it batched hourly or even daily will suffice. Good CRM solutions will allow you to create tabs and pages you can easily map this information to.

Now when you look up a customer, you will not only see all the contacts, leads and opportunities people are working on but also any open and closed tickets as well as actions taken. While mapping from an external service application requires a little Yak Shaving, it will allow you to never be caught off guard on customer issues that can cost you dearly.

Sample of 360 Degree View with Tickets

(click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity

Now is the time to take advantage of year end deals. All (and I mean ALL) CRM vendors and third party add-on vendors will offer you great year end deals. This is the time to add on more licenses, mobile components, dashboards, BI and reporting tools. With next year’s budgets at risk, locking in what you might have left this year will guarantee you added value for the coming year. If you have a use it or lose it remaining budget and will need some additional services next year, CRM vendors and consulting companies will put your money on account. This way you can draw it down over the coming year.

Many of the larger vendors are offering interest free financing, buy now and pay later and new leasing options. Figure out what you can still do this year while anticipating some pretty steep budget cuts next. Everything is up for negotiation and you are in the driver’s seat. I am sure all offers will be seriously considered. Let your vendor know what you are faced with and challenge them to be creative. Their number one objective should be to make you happy and successful.

Tags: crm

Sales people who do not have a CRM solution as one of their core applications are not maximizing their earning potential.  But CRM alone is not enough to make a real impact with prospects and customers.  You should also try to tie in tools such as Instant Messaging (IM), Web Meeting and Team Rooms.  Besides allowing you to handle many more deals in an organized fashion, the customer’s perception of you will be huge.  Customers want to work with vendors that show initiative, innovation and sincerity in supporting them.  While CRM helps you manage and share your customer information these other technologies help you execute.

IM provides presence awareness into your organization so when you need to communicate with someone about your deal you can initiate a chat immediately.  Remember time is always your enemy in sales.  Lotus Notes based CRM solutions have seamless integration with IBM’s Sametime IM software so you see a little green light next to anyone who is currently online.  Microsoft solutions do not have this seamless integration but you can use any IM as a stand-alone application.

Web meeting software like GoToMeeting or WebEx allows you to schedule online demos and presentations that are directly related to your opportunity or contact.  It should fully integrate with the contact management component of your CRM solution allowing you to create, schedule and send invitations directly to your customers or prospects.  In order for it to be effective, it should be as simple as hitting a button within CRM to trigger the process to create the web meeting.  Most web meeting products allow you to integrate directly into your CRM solution. 

Team Rooms like IBM’s Quickr, Sharepoint or WebCenter allow you to store and share documents with your customers.  These are internet based rooms where you can easily share this information without having to deal with firewall issues.  It is bi-directional so customers can also post information they want to share.  I have used it for both pre- and post-sales support.  Allowing your customers to easily share their requirements and supporting documents is great for team rooms.  Your post-sales team can also use it to manage project timelines with the customer. 

Customers love these additional technologies which make their side of the sales process easier.  And when you are competing with other vendors, your prospect will feel it is much easier dealing with you because your interactions will be more streamlined and organized.  It impresses them tremendously giving you a huge competitive advantage.  Ask your IT person for assistance in getting these great add-ons to be part of your CRM desktop.

Tags: crm, crm productivity, IM, Team Rooms, webinars

As I was watching Sunday football I got to thinking about how teams work together to score a touchdown.  Every man on the team has a job; every play has a specific set of moves; and there is a predetermined amount of time to execute.  They work off a playbook that details the play and what everyone needs to do.  But once on the field they are faced with the opposition which will make everything unpredictable.  The army recognized this and created a document called the Commander’s Intent.  It specifies a battle goal but does not specify the steps necessary to accomplish it.  A commander’s intent requires periodic review as missions, conditions, and therefore, priorities evolve.  It’s left with the people in the field to figure out how to get there based on what the enemy does.  So why bother with a playbook or battle plan when they break down immediately?  It is because the planning process forces people to think through the right issues.  Just like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no sales plan survives contact with the customer.  

This leads me to this week’s topic on sales methodologies.  All companies should have one.  And, regardless of whether they are from a third party or developed in-house, all sales reps should be following one.  Companies that have longer sales cycles need to consider third-party methodologies such as Miller Heiman, Solution Selling, Holden or Samurai Business Group.  The underlying philosophy of these methodologies is to force you to continually qualify and re-qualify your opportunities.  Sales methodologies work on the premise that the customer is constantly shifting their position.  They are talking to your competitors and being faced with changing business issues that have them shifting their feelings and positions on the deal at hand.  A good sales rep will understand this and is constantly reevaluating the status of the deal.  A good methodology helps a rep determine where they actually stand on the deal.  It provides them with the questions and processes to follow in order to understand their position in the deal.  Are they ahead, behind or neutral?  You want to make sure you are spending resources on deals you feel you have a better than even chance of winning.  For companies that have shorter, less complex selling cycles, should still be following some proven sales process, even if developed in-house. 

Most CRM solutions allow you to configure your own sales cycle and steps needed to move you to the next level.  You need to do this and give it the proper time and thought even when using a third-party methodology.  Most sales methodology companies offer free or low cost plug-ins to be used with your CRM system.  However, they often require that you go through their training, which can run about $500-1500 per person.  Companies like White Springs supplies these electronic add-ons for quite a few CRM solutions. 

Some Yak Shaving will be required but worth it.

Tags: crm, Sales methodology, sfa

I finally understand what it means to be a “CrackBerry” user.  I have never had an addiction before and did not know what to expect.  I feed it, clean it, talk to it and keep it safe from harm.  I take it on vacation, family outings and all my errands.   It was at the US Tennis Open this year (10th row base line seats), Yankees and Mets games and many nice restaurants.  I guess it stays in pretty good shape too since it goes to the gym, gets to go jogging with me and is always there at my tennis matches.  I am ashamed to say I have taken it to bed more than my girlfriend.  I guess I am not alone (Technology Can Be ‘Berry, ‘Berry Addictive).

What is this perversion?  Why do I panic if I can’t find it?   It gets more attention than anyone else I know plus I hate the way it looks when I carry it around on my belt. 

The reason is, it’s a tremendous help in the day to day management of my life.  It allows me to be timely with customers, colleagues, friends and family.   

From a work perspective, having my CRM application on the BlackBerry frees me from my computer.  Most CRM users only utilize 20% of the solution for 80% of what they need to do.  It has my calendar, to do list, account and contact info, email, sales library, my leads and opportunities, all in a streamlined format.  Whether you are struggling with your CRM solution or not, getting the application on your mobile device will simplify working with the solution, increase your productivity and keep you well informed on you customers and news events that can affect business (CRM for the Professionals on the Go).   

Yes, it can have you working on your off hours, but if you are like me I prefer no surprises.  I check emails a lot.  Most require no action and take a few seconds,  but every once in awhile it is important and I am glad I checked.  And you also have the option to turn off your device when not working.

There are a few ways to get mobilized with CRM.  You can go browser or local application.  I have found that for a mobile solution to be effective, you cannot worry about your wireless connection.  We all know how simple phone connections get interrupted, but with a CRM application these dropped connections can cost you wasted time and cause frustration.  You don’t want to be in the middle of trying to access or update information and find you lost your connection and then need to start over.  And we all know how much clicking and scrolling you do with a browser based connection.  The best way to go is with a “thick” client option.   A thick client has both the application and data on the device.  You never have to worry about a connection and you totally avoid all the excessive clicks and scrolling prevalent in browser access.  You do your work as if you are in the office and the device will synchronize when it can.  There is a “rich” client option as well.  The application is local to the device but the data is being accessed on your server.  You do get a simpler user interface but still have to deal with the connection.

In the end you want to get something sooner than later.  Go with whatever your IT group can give you right away, even if it’s a browser built application.  It will help you when you are out of the office.  But get your request in to get a local version on your device as soon as possible.  You should only go with CRM vendors that offer a thick client add-on. 

Some small Yak trimming might be required.

Tags: crm, customer relationship management, Mobile crm, mobility, sfa