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

Sales & Marketing Business Brief offered 4 selling strategies to focus on in 2010 given the state of the economy.  While they seem obvious, I thought it was worth restating.  Times are tuff and being remaindered of certain strategizes never hurt.

1. Maximize your lead pipeline: Now is the time to perform an audit of your sales from the past two years to determine who your high-probability buyers are now (based on SIC, region, executive title, etc.). I would also evaluate who were you most profitable and highest revenue clients in the past.   Once the audit is complete, frontload your pipeline with those leads to give salespeople the best opportunity for success.
2. Sell value over price: Many companies try to win buyers back by offering one-time discounts and bargain-basement prices. That short-term strategy does little to promote customer or brand loyalty. Now’s the time to reinforce the long-term benefits of doing business with your company — and keep salespeople talking to prospects about the return, rather than the investment of doing business with your company.
3. Embrace new marketing channels/modes of communication: Cell phones, e-mail, social networking, web marketing, text messaging, BlackBerrys — they have all changed the way prospects communicate. Sales organizations that capitalize on them will be in a position to gain an edge over competitors. Some companies use Twitter to maintain contact and promote new offers. Others use Facebook or LinkedIn. Many salespeople ask prospects how they prefer to communicate upfront, so there is no confusion about the best way to contact them.  The key is to find small, low-cost ways to use technology and new modes of communication to improve your relationships with buyers.
4. Differentiate your offer: Right now, there are more companies competing for fewer buyers, which mean it has never been more essential for salespeople to convey what separates your offer from competitors’. Sales organizations should be developing their own competitive analysis in light of the fact that prospects now have instant access to competitive prices and low-ball offers thanks to the Web. Creating and regularly updating your own competitive analysis allows salespeople to control the process. It also keeps them on top of what other competitors are offering, as well as where an incumbent supplier may be coming up short. One other approach: Create a sense of urgency by quantifying the cost of not doing business with you.

Tags: crm, Marketing

How would you like to reduce the number of clicks a rep does during the day by 25%. That can equate to 100 or more clicks in just a day. It is a huge productivity gain for both neophytes and expert users.

Key words/drop-down phrases are the answer. They are easy to setup, dramatically reduce the amount of typing a rep has to do, and enforces consistency. It allows a rep to use two clicks to enter a full phrase or word. Therefore, unless the word they wanted to use had only one letter they are ahead of the game. As a byproduct, it allows you to enforce consistency for reporting and analysis. You do not have to worry about people entering things all different ways.

In the end, you want reps to quickly record the information and move on. Drop-down key words and phrases allow you to provide that. Many CRM solutions have this available. You just need to ensure they are turned on, have the right information and show the reps how easy it is to use. Imagine 100 less clicks each day, 2100 a month, 25,200 a year, all per person. Worth the effort to put in place? I think so.

Example of drop-down key phrases:

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Example of drop-down words:

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Tags: crm, crm productivity

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of segmenting your customers. It is one of the most important pieces of information for the sales team and the company. By staying diligent, it will allow your sales and marketing teams the ability to do very focused marketing. It also makes sure you are staying focused on your core customer base as well as spot new types of customers.

Segmentation options should be centrally maintained to ensure consistency. To make it easy for reps and marketing it should be a pick list to choose from when entering or editing a new customer or company record. Below is an example of how it would work. Most CRM solutions allow for some level of segmentation. However, company policy drives it.

Once entered, doing mailings and events to specific segments are easy. But you also get to see pipelines and forecasts in terms of your segments. This allows the sales team and management to be more proactive based on certain tends you are seeing in specific segments.

As I mentioned while most CRM solutions will support this field it takes a strong company policy to ensure people are properly entering it. Making it a required field when creating or editing a customer record will help.

Segment Pick List Example

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

When tracking an opportunity in CRM most systems allow you to track not only the sales cycle step but what your feeling is on closing the deal. This is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked. When looking at deals in a forecast, rating them by Gut is at least as important if not more as where you are in the sales step. Many times you can be early on in the sales cycle and the rep can get a good sense of the likelihood of winning the deal. Also if this is an existing customer with add-on business, you can have a large spread between sales step and gut.

Tracking Gut along with the sales cycle provides the team a really clear picture of the opportunity. It allows you to better balance resources and ensures you have the right strategies in place.

Forecast Report with Gut factor

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

This past weekend I experience what I am afraid is becoming more of the norm. I have gone to this same bagel store for many years. I would get a toasted bagel with whitefish salad. I loved it because the salad had large pieces of whitefish perfectly blended with herbs and just the right amount of mayonnaise.

I guess due to a drop in business they changed the preparation of the salad. Now when you order it you get this pile of pureed slop on the bagel. Gone are the chunks of fresh whitefish. Gone is the right mix of mayonnaise and herbs. They are trying to take the same amount of fish and create a lot more salad from it. They added a lot more mayonnaise and put everything in a blender. But they thought giving more would make up for the near soup they put on the bagel.

It seems a lot of companies think that people would rather have more of a bad thing than less of a great thing. Is this true? I know I will never go back for that sandwich. I believe most people would be fine (or not even notice) a little less salad per serving. Getting so much more of something fair diminishes the quality and value we expect from American business. But worse than that for companies is that it erodes their customer loyalty. I will no longer go to the store and when the economy turns around again and they can go back to making the sandwich the way they always did, I will have found an alternative.

Customers understand the difficulties vendors are under. I don’t believe getting a few ounces less for the same price while this crisis’s is in place would be an issue. Organizations need to be very careful not to alienate their best customer base by implementing changes to save money. There are many ways to get to the numbers you need.

CRM is great for not only understanding your customers buying habits and key issues but a great way to communicate with them easily. Let your customers know beforehand the cost cutting changes you are putting in place that might affect them. Some might choose another alternative in the short run but will value your integrity and caring for them. As soon as you can provide the same level of service again they will be back. Mass mailings are an easy way to get the message out to individuals. They will be happy to know you are doing your part to stay in business and maintain profitability. They need you around.

Tags: crm

I thought the topic was worth talking about again as I continue to find lead handling one of the biggest challenges companies face.

Companies spend a lot of money generating leads, the life blood of their organization, but allow the lead process to break down as soon as they are entered into a system (even worse if there is no system to collect them). They complain that their leads fall into a black hole. So just having a place to collect them does not solve the black hole problem.

Lead capture should be as automated as possible. Only buy a CRM solution that gives you the capability to capture and route leads into a database. There should be a plug in for website capture as well as the ability to manually enter them. Most CRM systems provide a utility so you can input leads or lists as well. It should also allow you to easily track activities against them and convert them to an opportunity.

Now that you have them in one place you need to ensure you are tracking things like source (where did it come from, i.e. web, tradeshow, campaign, etc…), status (suspect, prospect, hot lead, etc…), and rep (who is initially responsible for it). Of cause you need the usual fields such as contact info and what products they are interested in. By carrying this information you can always see what has transpired with the lead. Even if leads are sent to channel partners this information is even more critical so you have a complete record and can question your partners about it. You want a system that has seamless integration with your email platform and a workflow process that automatically notifies the appropriate rep via email of a new lead. This really helps timely responses back to any lead inquiry.

Another must have is the ability to see lead to opportunity statistics. You want to easily analyze the effectiveness of various lead sources with statistics on closed opportunities resulting from leads. This is the only way you can really see if your marketing dollars are being spent wisely. My guess is most companies would be very surprised on what is really working. Solutions like Relavis CRM provide both real time analysis as well as reports you can run.

Some other nice to have features are:

• Lead Categorization and Search
• Duplication of lead handling
• Automatic Lead Routing
• Lead Scripting
• Lead Conversion
• Lead History
• Rep Generated Email Prospecting

Example of a lead form

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

A friend of mine shared an experience he had at the new Yankee Stadium a couple of weeks ago that I felt important to share concerning customer service.

When he arrived at the stadium there were dozens of people with signs that said” Hello, may I help you?” This was the first time he had seen this at the stadium. They were there to help people find their gate and answered any questions they had. My friend did not need this help and proceeded to this gate. Upon handing the usher the ticket the guy said “Thank you, there are people inside that will help you”. As soon as he walked into to the main area someone came up to him and said “Hello, may I help you?” He gave her the ticket and she told him to go down the corridor and take the elevators on the left. When he got to the elevators a person was there that said, “Hello, may I help you?” He presented him the ticket and told to take the elevator to the 250 level and someone will help you. When he was exiting the elevator, sure enough there was person there and said, “Hello may I help you?” That person proceeded to escort him to the suite. Since this was my friends first trip to the new stadium he was looking at all the great pictures and stories that lined the corridor. The customer service person shadowed him far enough behind so that my friend did not feel rushed. When they got to the suite there was a person there that greeted him with, you guessed it, “Hello may I help you?” He was then shown into the suite and given a tour and had all his questions answered. Throughout the entire game he was asked if there was anything they can do.

The story amazed me for two reasons. The number of people visibly out in the open proactively trying to help their guests and the consistent mantra they all were using. There was no question they were all taking their customer service role seriously. When your customer is spending their money and time with you, the Yankees, at least for the time being wanted to make sure you have an easy and enjoyable experience. You never had to look far for help.

My friends totally experience left him feeling really good about wanting to come back for more.

Tags: crm

One of the most basic features of any CRM solution is the ability to manage your calendar. Sounds simple, but with the way sales people work there is more to it than meets the eye. There is your CRM calendar, your Lotus Notes or Outlook calendar, your BlackBerry/iPhone/Nokia/Motorola/G1 calendar. While many companies have been trying to standardize many still allow a combination of devices. And even if you do need to use one type of PDA for business many reps will then have a personal PDA.

Besides the different phones and operating systems there are also the types of entries you want to keep track of. Lotus Notes and Outlook keep only scheduled activities on the calendar. That means things like phone calls will not show up. Many CRM solutions have their own calendar which allows you to see all your activity types and also synchronizes with your corporate calendar (less calls and to do’s). I have found it to be more work and not as reliable. You really want to use your corporate calendar and a CRM solution that uses all the native forms of it. It makes it much easier for users since they are already familiar with it. It allows them to work right in their calendar and still be using CRM.

In order to make using CRM easy and part of your day to day routine you need to have all activities show up on all the clients/devices you use. This means there will probably be some IT involvement in making it happen. The good news is it does not take a lot of effort. Lotus Notes and Outlook calendars have synchronization between Blackberry and Windows Mobile calendars. Some CRM solutions like Relavis CRM allows you to easily track not only synchronized activities but Call’s and To Do’s in the same native calendar view. Dynamics CRM keeps track of it in a separate section plus those calls will not be synchronized with your PDA device. Integration with iPhones and other devices is available but not yet widely used with CRM.

Finally there are the issues around seeing your team’s group calendar. It is important in order to better track and work together as a team. While Lotus Notes has group calendaring built in Outlook requires a third party tool.

To really empower your CRM users try to do what is necessary to keep all their calendars in sync so they can be just as productive out of the office as they are at their desk.

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity

There is a new acronym you might not be familiar with in the world of customer satisfaction.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is about moving beyond traditional CRM, which for the most part is about automating customer touch points, and addressing a full end-to-end customer experience. CEM is about emotions. According to thought leader Colin Shaw you are trying to address two key questions: “What’s the experience you’re trying to deliver?” and “What emotions you’re trying to evoke.

To do this you need to go beyond conversation logs and call reports. You need to get more in the head of your customers. You need to know what is stressing them out. What is keeping them up at night? What challenges and obstacles they are facing?

I do believe that sales reps know a lot about their customers at a micro level. But we need to get a macro level understanding of the customer. Social media technology is paving the way for vendors to better understand, address and work with their customers on a more macro level. I plan to go into social media in a future blog.

But to address how you can start today working with your customers on a macro level here is a simple way to get started. Define a Business Objectives and Relationship Rules section on your Organizational profile. This is where you define things such as: customer’s business objectives; customer’s relationship expectations; and your objectives with the customer. This will allow you to chart a much broader strategy in helping your customer achieve their short and long term objectives. It is not just about your product line. It is about you caring and taking an active role in helping move your customer’s total agenda along wherever you can.

Supporting this within your CRM solution allows your entire team and company to always be aware of what everyone’s expectations are for the relationship and what everyone is looking to accomplish.

Below is a simple addition you can easily add into your CRM solution to start to track this information. It is just the beginning of a broader strategy and technology you might eventually consider to share ideas and issues, solve problems and co-design design new products and services with your customers.

Organization Profile Example

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Tags: crm, crm productivity