CRM plays a crucial role in elevating the overall customer experience, particularly from a sales perspective. When implemented effectively, CRM can transform a vendor’s status from a commodity supplier to a trusted, strategic partner. A well-optimized customer experience not only improves retention but also fosters customer advocacy, positioning the seller as a true consultant in the buyer-seller relationship.
Most businesses start their CRM journey with the best of intentions. They’re excited about the prospect of collecting data to better manage their customers, products, relationships and business opportunities.
They are used to having an ERP to manage the back end of their business. They assume its rollout can’t be much different and proceed to hand it over to their IT person to lead the charge.
Selecting a vendor may be one of the most complex and confusing aspects of your customer relationship management (CRM) project, but it doesn’t have to be. I developed a systematic approach for uncovering inefficiencies in your operations and a script that clearly communicates your needs to potential partners.
Mike Lewis has spent his career automating processes to help customers remove bottlenecks and operate more efficiently.
The goal of customer relationship management (CRM) is to efficiently and effectively grow your business while improving the customer experience. When implemented properly, CRM can give companies a competitive edge.
Brian Gardner, Founder and Lead Evangelist for SalesProcess360, knows firsthand how to get the most out of your CRM.
“I was the son of the boss. I grew up in an industrial sales organization from the time I was a small kid, stocking shelves and playing with demos in the back of my dad’s car. I worked inside sales, outside sales, was a division manager and ultimately the VP of sales. I lived and breathed distribution.”
For a variety of reasons, most service providers (VARs and integrators) are closely affiliated with a major CRM company. Often, it’s for the installed base access. In this relationship, the company hands over a list of customers (installed base), usually in a geographic territory, so the provider can service the accounts, push modifications, and new add-on capabilities. However, CRM systems are not all the same, and they don’t carry the same feature functionality. Users must be careful to use platform-agnostic providers to get the best form, fit, and functions in their CRM solution. This approach is critical to preventing trips and costly false starts.
Onboarding is a challenge for most technical companies. In my 30-plus years as a hiring manager in the industrial automation business it took, on average, three months to learn the product and application basics. Even with three to five years’ experience, it took six months to become proficient enough to make effective sales calls. Despite this lag in performance, many companies have no effective policy or procedure that ensures efficient and effective onboarding.
With CRM, 80% of us suffer from low adoption leading to poor ROI-itis. Fortunately, this condition is not terminal and can be fixed by following five easy steps.
Get insights based on decades of experience in industrial markets, including why you should think beyond outside sales, how to take a proactive approach to sales opportunities and how to let sales process drive your CRM wish list.