Does Your Contact Management system work well? Lets quickly clarify the terminology. I am more accurately addressing Customer Relationship Management. Many people use MS Outlook ( not really a CRM) , ACT! or Goldmine… many brands are available. The brand is not significant but I do aim to go on a rant soon. But first a few questions…
- Does your CRM allow you- the owner, to track your prospects and see how your sales staff- or the sales development team is doing?
- Are you able to track estimates- know when estimates will be followed up on? When actual follow up occurred?
- Do you have a readout that shows your estimates delivered for the last month and the month before and which have come to fruition?
- Are you able to track the number of leads that you are pursuing.
- Do you have a system for sorting out leads- best leads to least attractive?
- Are you able to track the time frame between contact and when the estimate is finished? Know what percentage of closings you are achieving?
- If someone asks if you have done any work in his or her neighborhood, can you quickly pull up digital data on past customers?
- If a sales person quits your company, are the contacts, are the prospects gone and his or her business develop dead or was that data integrated into your prospect knowledge base?
This is all critical information when we begin to understand the value of actual results rather than just making sure everybody is busy all day.
Does Your Contact Management System Suck?
Too many people end up with a really complex CRM system that is able to track a complex mix of trivia but leaves you with a cloudy and obscure strategic sense of what is happening.
It leaves too many options for data and everyone is left to figure out where to put the information.
Management ends up depending on spotty information on how business development is going and hears the bad or indifferent news well past when something could be done to make a difference.
OK, It is now time for my RANT
I have had some really bad experiences with OUTLOOK
I have seen multi-million dollar companies with various sales people and the contact information is spread out across so many rabbit holes in OUTLOOK that you can’t really find any information of value.
When you looked into them to see viable accounts- you might as well have been looking at tea leaves. No coherent collection of strategic information at all. No sense that anyone was being moved along steps towards a sale.
Too many sales people don’t know what their strategic next step is or it gets lost in trivia tracking.
OUTLOOK is such a onesy type of technology. One person tracking their own contacts will only lose information when they forget where they put what. But when a sales manager type has to depend on sales people as the interpreter of contact info- this is a recipe for problems.
I once was introduced to Sharepoint with a large entity. (Sharepoint is Microsoft’s solution for sharing) I did a project for them for several months. I never did succeed into getting put into the system and actually sharing anything. IT was too busy with other headaches… I imagine.
Cloud Computing is easy. Cloud based CRM is a cool breeze in August.
Behold! The Possibilities of Simple CRM that is Cloud Based
Simple CRM doesn’t have huge arrays of possible rat holes to put information. Unless you build them yourself. You make the holes in fact. And the true blessing is that everyone in the office uses the same shared software with the same set of shared holes and the right information goes in the right holes and everything works pretty well.
All the information you collect and follow is important because you can define what you are following.
- You always know how many leads you are getting. (Here leads are considered people asking for an estimate.)
- The contact goes into the shared simple CRM system. Access privileges are set by management in cooperation with the sales team members.
- You know how many inquiries you are getting for information. (Inquiries here are follow ups on direct response offers or follow ups on form submitted questions)
- You can track inquires and your ongoing efforts to nurture and mature the inquiry into a lead.
- You know where each of your leads are in the sales process. (leads here are considered calls for an estimate)
- The system tracks strategic intelligence that is gathered. Insights are available to aid the sales process
- What level of project priority is this project. ( All projects are not created equal. High profit, high profile, high opportunity jobs get added resources)
- What is the urgency level of the buyer?
- How can we build buying desire?
- What can we do to enhance our relationship with the owner?
- We can take hints from the Mackey 66
- You have follow up processes at your fingertips to make your follow up compelling.
- We have procedures for following up on estimates and when. We set alerts in our calendaring system.
- Management knows and can support sales staff at all levels, adding resources, encouragement and ideas as necessary to push the team effort forward.
- Effective sales managers don’t harangue and cajole- they can support and encourage.
- Management can add their own ideas for effective follow up- they can help resolve problems with constraints and help team members be more effective.
- Now, tough questions need to be asked at times. Management can do regular performance interviews and help people understand how they can improve performance- but we treat people with respect always- even when change has to be made and people need to be directed to new opportunities.
- Only tired sales managers who are out of ideas fall back to bluster, and badgering.
- And only tired owners out of ideas badger and cajole sales managers…)
- You can always find the information you need as close as a search window.
- Everybody can be engaged in the sales and marketing process because all processes are visible, leadership can help everyone see their critical role in the process and everyone can feel like a significant contributor to success.
Further Strategic Considerations
Such a simple CRM system is a real win for everyone involved. Business management- even empowered employees who have adapted an attitude of ownership- can see what is happening and contribute to the sales and marketing effort. The sales person is not hiding problems in a fog bank to be discovered when the stats hit the fan. Near real time accountability is good for the sales person if management is enlightened- and you are enlightened or you would not still be reading this- The homeowner is being treated better. He or she is being effectively touched- being reminded of what they want and need to do- but not in a boorish way, by the creative and charming ways devised by our sensitive business development team.
Lets revisit our strategy to prioritize leads. All leads do not have the same potential.
- You can create very specific criteria for zeroing in on particular leads.
- You know what a great project is – is this one?
- If it is – what can we do to find and capitalize more such leads?
- What does the future opportunities look like? How much potential do they have for future work?
- We can even create our list of intelligence we might like to gather. I will leave it right there. Do a search for Mackeys 66 and then you will understand why he has a very successful envelope manufacturing business and why he is a best selling author.
- What can we do for this family that can make an extraordinary impression?
- Is this the perfect neighborhood to grow in?
All these questions can be put into the standard information intake form- everyone sees the same quesitons, and stores answers in the same boxes and everyone’s data makes sense.
What Kinds of Simple CRM do I recommend.
I really like a combination of Google Apps and BatchBlue CRM.
This is winning combination. ( Don’t be confused with terms like tags and Supertags. These are new tech slang. Think of them as tags on folders in a filing cabinet. We can find exactly what we want by tagging information or Super tagging. Sounds like we are at McDs.
And BatchBlue provides really slick ways to append excel files and yes, even OUTLOOK information, into BatchBlue. You get to arrange the data you want and you can leave behind the poopy panty stuff and never have it torment you again.
What is more exciting that business development! Really accurate sales information and really clear objectives as to what direction to go in business development – helps reduce confusion and really enhance clarity for the team.
We are on the path here to fun and stress free business development. The beagles are baying.
Feel feel to call me up and pick my brain. This is really fun stuff. It is exciting- it is engaging to help people buy what they want and help them get what they really need.
- Are there questions you have that were not answered here?
- Were significant implications left out here?
- Do you have a question or concern ?
Feel free to call or email with questions. Please leave a comment below. Business Development is a complex issues. It involves the very heart and soul of your business. There is nothing more strategic to success.
