Seek Continuous Improvement rather than the “Quick Fix”

As the economy limps through the recession, companies have heightened their focus on acquiring and retaining customers. But, with resources and budgets limited, they must continually look for more efficient and effective ways to sell and market. Inevitably, this need leads to discussions around customer relationship management (CRM) systems, the primary tool used to support these activities—and specifically, how to modify and improve the CRM system to help the organization market more effectively.

Functional application deficiencies, lack of training and usage, poor data quality, and other common CRM issues often leave marketing and business development functions confused about what to do. Many ultimately examine the costly option of replacing the existing system. But, with technology budgets highly constrained, these efforts typically stall before they produce a solution.

There are some steps that companies can take steps to improve their sales and marketing functions—inexpensively—regardless of the current state of their sales processes and technologies. Those that attempt to continually evaluate and improve their sales function rather than looking for a quick fix to their sales problems tend to have more success. This approach of slow improvement is less daunting and will help to move the company down the road towards a better sales and marketing function. These are some easy ways to begin.

Define your sales and marketing process.
Putting more definition around how your organization markets and sells will begin to move sales in the company from an art to a science—without taking a lot of time or money. This should not be confused with defining your company’s go-to-market or marketing strategy. Rather, it is the effort of improving definition around managing sales leads, and it includes:

• A company-wide sales process and nomenclature, including distinct sales stages
• Responsibilities for managing activities at each stage
• Processes for tracking activity
• Expectations of each user

Improving definition around these areas will give the company a common baseline for communicating about leads. This is a step that can be accomplished in a matter of weeks, as long as the company strives for consensus without getting too bogged down in the details, which will evolve with time.

Follow the process.
This step is not costly, but it often is very difficult. First, make sure that company leaders support the process and the importance of consistency; if they don’t, it will be hard to implement any changes. Once leaders have bought in, be sure to involve them in communications that call for people to modify their day-to-day activity. In addition, it is important to make sure the process is not so cumbersome that it detracts from an individual’s day-to-day responsibilities. Finally, develop a communication mechanism that spotlights the results, including key business development meetings, new opportunities, and key wins. Communicating results in key meetings or through portal technologies will help people recognize progress or even highlight non-conformance—further reinforcing the right behaviors.

Make sure your technology is supporting your processes.
Companies often kick off their CRM efforts around the implementation of a new technology. This can be very costly. Technology enables effective processes, but it is very important to recognize that the technical component of CRM is only part of the solution and that top-of-the-line technical solutions do not always lead to success. A company with a well-defined and utilized sales process supported by Microsoft Excel-based tracking is likely to be more successful than a company with a state-of-the-art CRM system but no unified sales process.

Many companies fall into the “grass-is-greener” syndrome after implementing a CRM system. For a variety of reasons, the system fails to fulfill all functional requirements. There are often low-cost options for filling these functional gaps, such as extending the current system through customization. If functional gaps are too great and it becomes necessary to look at a new system, this isn’t a bad time to be doing so. With the difficult economic climate, some CRM vendors are offering larger discounts and other incentives than they traditionally have; for example, a certain number of free licenses for a period of time.

Extend your CRM capabilities.
Companies that have an existing CRM tool and well-defined and established sales processes in place can extend their CRM capabilities through steps such as:

• Conducting cross-business unit key account planning meetings focused on pursuit strategies.
• Enhancing data analyses—manually or through a business intelligence solution—to uncover trends and hidden opportunities that can help the company hone its pursuit strategies.
• Tracking costs and wins associated with marketing campaigns to understand the true return on these investments. This information, in turn, can be used to refine future campaigns.
• Augmenting opportunity data with additional customer profile information to refine prospect segmentation and fine-tune pursuit activities.

Sales and marketing are more important than ever. Even though marketing resources are limited, companies can utilize some creative solutions for improving marketing and business development effectiveness—without a substantial cost.

For more information about customer relationship management and improving marketing and business development effectiveness, please contact Mike Buhrfiend.