How can a strong CRM strategy help companies attract and retain customers in today’s difficult economic climate?
Integrated CRM systems deliver relevant information to the right people at the right time to improve every aspect of customer relationships. Embarrassing delays due to credit holds or incomplete approvals are avoided with integration into back office systems. Sales and support teams no longer give customers conflicting information. Sales offers customers better solutions based on their improved familiarity with support functions. Support bolsters sales efforts by advocating for the sales team’s current proposals.
In difficult economic times, people only buy things of strategic value and postpone items of tactical importance. We perform a comprehensive analysis prior to a CRM installation determine how the company has positioned its offerings. If positioned tactically, they must be repositioned to provide strategic value to the target buyer. We do this with a unique positioning process that identifies the strategic value delivered to the client and determines the best sales process to imbed within the CRM system.
What benefits does CRM technology offer small to medium sized companies in particular?
CRM technology provides small to medium-sized businesses the ability to deliver a quality customer experience without the overhead of capital-intensive IT solutions that many large corporations are burdened with. Today’s CRM solutions link all of the customer-facing parts of the organization, people and technology so that all team members have the information they need to deliver exceptional service to customers, while maintaining efficient business processes.
CRM automates business processes, including lead routing, quote and proposal management, as well as opportunity and pipeline management. Reps, managers and support functions all benefit from the automation of workflow processes, which are otherwise time-consuming and prone to error. CRM also enforces proper qualification of prospects. so that the sales team focuses on the highest value opportunities
Which factors should companies take into account when selecting the right CRM technology for their organization?
A CRM system must conform to a company’s current sales and account management methodology to minimize disruption to the sales force and other support organizations. The system must also have the ability to adapt and grow, as processes are refined and product offerings or environmental conditions change.
The CRM system must also have the ability to integrate seamlessly into a customer’s applications, such as e-mail, word processing, spread sheets, back office accounting as well as other systems such as proposal generation. Integration capabilities must also extend to the web and customer facing tools. Finally, it is critical that the system be able to integrate to handheld devices such as Blackberries, iPhones etc. These tools provide sales and support staff with instant access to customer information they need keep the relationship moving forward on all levels.
How does your company ensure that the solutions it offers are tailored to companies’ needs?
STI begins the CRM implementation process with a thorough analysis of the customer’s internal sales and marketing processes. Then we insure success by obtaining concurrence at all levels of management and staff on the goals, objectives and requirements of the solution.
We frequently find significant disparities in the expectations of these groups. Because many implementers utilize a top-down design methodology, these disconnects are rarely discovered or taken into account. In contrast, STI obtains concurrence on the process at all levels to ensure a broad-based commitment to utilization of the system.
STI also creates sales tools that help sales reps execute each step of the sales process in a manner calibrated to answer the concerns of target buyers and other influencers within the buying hierarchy. These step-by-step tools are packaged into a Sales Playbook, which is used repeatedly to improve selling effectiveness.
As a result of this unique methodology we have been able to achieve a success rate for CRM implementations well in excess of the industry average.
In the future how do you see the CRM market evolving?
As CRM systems move to WEB-based implementations we will see more integration with other WEB-based services especially social networking systems. Links out to the various social networking systems are currently being planned for CRM implementations.
As always there will be an expansion in the functionality of CRM modules. However, CRM systems today are fairly mature and I do not expect major changes over the next few years. What we do expect is the ability to interface CRM systems more effectively to back office systems.
We also expect to see improved conversion tools that allow for a much cleaner upgrading from one version to the next while providing integration pathways that will significantly reduce the cost of CRM system ownership.
