When you’re about to make a decision about a CRM system, you don’t need, and can’t afford, to get bogged down in customer data. It’s about putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, and using just the information you really need.

Many years ago when I started my CRM consultancy and gained one of my first clients, my starting point was to take the existing data collection forms the firm’s salespeople used and add in every single question I could think of about the customer. I took their form from 1 page, to 4 pages! It was an absolute work of art – trust me.

Two key things happened – thankfully.

1. None of the salespeople used the form. (It was far too complicated and they could see no relevance to their job – which was to sell houses. They could not see how taking all that extra time would benefit them.)
2. The company had no way of utilising the data even if they had!

It was a great experience to learn. I lost sight of the customer through too much “insight”.

I went back to their one page form, and simplified it further. I only added one question – “What is this person interested in?” The salesperson simply had to tick a box as to whether they were looking to sell or buy a residential property, or looking to sell, or buy, an investment property.

Then, as Jim Barnes – author of Secrets of Customer Relationship Management, states so succinctly, it was a matter of putting yourself in the shoes of their customers, and thinking, “What would I want to know about if I was in their shoes?”

If a salesperson was trying to gain a listing to sell a house, a key thing their prospects wanted to know, was that whomever they chose as their agent, would follow through with them, and their leads, diligently. So we implemented a series of letters (before email days then) that kept in touch with them throughout the evaluation period.

Interestingly – the agency made a profit on my fees from just one of these letters. If the agent lost the listing, the prospect received a letter thanking them for the opportunity and that although they were sorry to lose the business, all going well they would be moving house within 3 months, and they would need a good cuppa! We enclosed a gift wrapped tin of Twinings tea with the agent’s compliments. All too often, another agent would win the business based on an unrealistic appraisal – ie – they led the client to believe their house would sell for more than its market value. When the house didn’t sell, who did the prospect come back to?

The second key group of people, were those who had bought a house from them as an owner occupier. This agency also had a Property Management Division, managing properties of behalf of investors. What do we all want to do when we buy a new house? Put our own stamp on it. And that means tradespeople. And tradespeople are notorious for not turning up on time if at all – with too many horror stories around as to “dodgy” jobs.

This agency had been through all that process finding reliable and trustworthy tradespeople to handle repairs on their own investor properties. So we sent a letter out to new purchasers within a week of them moving into their new house, offering the name and direct contact details of their key property manager – “please feel free to contact them if you would like us to pass on the details of the people we deal with. We’ve been through this exercise many many times, and are more than happy to help.”

The next key group, were those looking to buy an investment property, and those who had recently bought one. Here in Australia, there are strong taxation incentives available to those who buy investment properties. So we teamed up with a major accounting firm who specialised in property taxation advice, ran joint information evenings, and posted each new investment property owner a copy of their specially prepared booklet “Taxation Issues for Property Investors”.

We had a number of other key segments, but suffice to say, it was really all about putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.

When we have a business which sells products or services, we have so much more knowledge in our area which we rarely impart. And yet, people have bought from us because they perceived us as having the best or most convenient product at that time, to suit their needs. It is easy for us to build on that relationship if we take the time.

Most businesses today already have some accounting or point of sale system in which we record those details – and we have their contact details. There is not a whole lot more we need to know – we just have to use what we already have, and think about “Customer Insight” from our customers’ viewpoint.

 

Some years ago, I was a keynote speaker for a Direct Marketing Association conference. The organizers had speakers with excellent theoretical knowledge on how to write campaigns, rules for segmenting a database and understanding the key customer touch-points, but they realized they were lacking expertise on what systems people could actually use to enable this. My topic was comparing a mid-priced and low-priced CRM system and explaining when each would be relevant. An executive with a well-known Australian winery came to me for some advice.

The winery dealt with distributors and media in 26 countries, and each played a role in promoting and selling the company’s wines internationally. The company was not just renowned for its wine but also for its restaurant, events and food and winery tours. Within these two broad categories, the winery needed to communicate different news to different types of people. If the winery was marketing to the United States, then only U.S. media were relevant. If it was promoting a special restaurant or food event, the winery first needed to communicate only with food writers and media. Eight staff members regularly communicated with this network. It took them days to find the relevant people to communicate with, and once they did, they then had a laborious process of communicating individually through basically copying and pasting. (In this instance, they did not require access to purchasing information.)

‘The response rate from the network to this level of communication has improved by more than 100 percent.’

So when you have a small or medium-size business and you need to be able to communicate with your suppliers, distributors and media and other key segments of your network more efficiently than they way you are now, where do you start?

As I told the marketing people with the winery, you don’t need to spend the big bucks to get the big benefits!

Winery executives thought they wanted a high-end CRM system. When we looked at the winery’s actual needs, though, it was clear that the organization didn’t need a high-end system. The winery simply needed everyone in the organization to be able to access up-to-date databases, segmenting or filtering data so that relevant information went to the relevant people. I could have sold a high-end system to the people I was dealing with, but that’s not what the company needed.

 

Low-end solution

Instead, we amalgamated the organization’s 38 different “databases”—some in Microsoft Access, some in Excel and some in individual users’ Outlook folders—into one, using an Excel spreadsheet as the “working repository.” This was the most time-consuming and expensive part of the exercise. (Don’t let your business get to this stage … ever!)

We standardized the way the winery collected information, so people could use the information in different fields to personalize their communication using mail merge and we could easily identify duplicate contact information. We standardized their list of categories, applying relevant categories to the relevant contacts.

Finally, we imported this entire cleansed list into the winery’s low-cost CRM solution. We trained each staff member on how to enter new contact information or update existing data, ensuring that the right information was typed into the right fields. We gave each a list of the key categories and explained what they meant and how to apply this to their contacts.

The winery has been using this system for nearly five years now. It can easily send out personalised press releases and news of events, reviews, tastings and international or interstate showcase events in, literally, seconds. And there’s no question that the right information is being sent to the right people. The response rate from the network to this level of communication has improved by more than 100 percent.

So what was the low-end system the winery went with? It was, in fact, the system the company already had, one that each staff member was already familiar with. The winery didn’t have to spend any money on for new software. The only costs were for training and cleaning up the existing data.

It was Microsoft Outlook. Because the winery already had Microsoft Exchange installed, we simply used a public folder and gave relevant access to the relevant people. And we trained people in using it properly.

You don’t have to spend big bucks to get big benefits. You simply need to understand what it is you are actually seeking to do and judge what is presented to you on this basis.

 

So you’re a small business, and you need or want to look at this buzzword that is called CRM?

There has been much written and discussed about the theory of CRM—or Customer Relationship Management. But what about the “practice”? What is it, and how do you actually implement it and combine the theoretical “feel good” talk with practical actions which work and achieve results?

First, we need to understand what CRM actually is.

CRM is simply a method of selling products and services by recognising the value in building a relationship with clients and prospects.

In an era of increasing customer skepticism and education, it is quite simply the only common sense way to sell within an increasingly sophisticated marketplace.

The days of the hard sell are dead. You saw what happened to Gordon Gekko with his “Greed is good”. Customers today are simply too smart and too educated to be “conned” or “sold”. The key is to make them want to buy—from you!

You need to build a “relationship” with your customers and prospects.

 

What is a relationship based on?

Trust. Think of your personal relationships. Is it possible to have a relationship with someone you don’t trust? Is it true that your best relationships are with those people you trust the most? The same principle applies with a business selling products and services. People will buy from those businesses whom they trust the most.

So how do you build trust in a business relationship?

In the same way as you build trust in any relationship—by going out of your way to give, and to continue giving consistently until that client or prospect builds up a trust in you, and what you are offering.

Research conducted in the early 90’s by US Life Insurance Association, “LIMRA” analysed the habits and traits of their best salespeople against those of their average salespeople. Their findings were stunningly simple. The average salesperson stopped trying at 2/3 contacts. The top salespeople made up to 7 contacts. They developed a relationship of trust through their consistency—and they were top of mind when that prospect wanted to buy.

Just as we don’t form lasting personal friendships from just one contact, neither do we form lasting business relationships—it may take up to 7 contacts. And those contacts have to be about:

• recognizing the customer/prospect for what makes them special, or unique, or different,
• communicating with them in a manner which is relevant to them, and,
• doing what we say we are going to do, when we say we are going to do it! (Think of the “friends” you bump into from time to time who say “We must catch up for a coffee!”, and then you never hear from them—do you trust them or the friendship?)

 

What is the benefit of building a relationship with a client after they have bought?

Quite simply, not only repeat business- but potentially far more powerful and profitable—is the prospect of referral business.

Clients have the power to grow your business exponentially. Don’t you feel better when a friend or colleague tells you about their successful experience with a product or service they have purchased rather than you starting out “cold”?

So come back to those 7 contacts. Assume you or your company has just sold a client their first purchase from you. They are obviously at their most susceptible and most impressionable at the very early stages after their purchase—because your product is something new to them. Your objective now is to build a relationship with that client to turn them into an advocate—a source of referrals—for your business.

You do this by winning their trust to refer that business to you—without the need for you to ask. How? By the way in which you communicate with them!

Collect the information you need about your client—usually the basic information which your salespeople normally collect when they are taking an order will suffice. Your salespeople will be introduced into CRM without the need for massive culture changes which have so often destroyed CRM intentions. (Overkill in the first instance may lose them forever!)

Clients can then be “grouped” or segmented” into like interest or trigger areas. You develop a contact strategy based on those segments—which gives them 7 contacts from your business over the first 12 month period. (Timeframes will differ according to the type of product being sold—this timeframe generally suits products and services which have a longer product life cycle.) These contacts are made up of a combination of 5 personally addressed and signed one page letters or emails, with information directly relevant and of value to your client. The other 2 contacts are personal telephone calls from either the salesperson or a senior executive—but with genuine “giving” reasons for the call. (For example—1 week after the sale to ensure the client is happy with the product—and on the yearly anniversary.)

Remember that your objective with this strategy is to gain sufficient trust from that client to both retain their business, and to give them the opportunity to talk enthusiastically about your product or service to others. If you have not taken the effort to find out enough about your client and to ensure that the information which you are giving them is of genuine value to their particular needs, you will not build that trust.

The second and subsequent years do not need the intensity of contact. If you have carried out this part of the strategy sufficiently, you will have created a position of trust. Newsletters—brief, easy reading, and of value, can be used say 3 times per annum, with a personal telephone call or letter providing a 4th “human” contact.

Can you imagine how you yourself would be reacting about a company who had followed you up in this manner after say a 2 year period? Say you had bought a house from a real estate agent who had followed you up like this. You are sitting down one night with a group of friends or family—and someone mentions they are thinking of selling their house. What is your likely reaction to be?

Even though you have not once responded to any of the contacts from your agent?

 

You are likely to suggest that they contact your firm. Why?

Because it makes us feel good to assist our friends/family by telling them about a positive experience which we have received in a similar situation, and by giving them the opportunity to achieve the same. Provided we have built up that trust element, we will want to share our positive experience with others to help them.
The next step is how to implement this process. Tell me, do you simply map it all out and leave the responsibility to your salespeople? No way! Because salespeople’s motivation is on the next sale! They simply will not maintain this—except for the exceptional few.

Technology plays a critical role here—the entire process needs to be easy, and it needs to use the information and systems you already have.

The objective of CRM software is really to give you an easy way of managing the communication process with your customers and prospects