Marketing starts with the customer. As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, so aptly put it: “We treat our customers as guests, at a party where we are the hosts. It's our job to improve their experience a little more each time.
Placing the customer culture at the heart of the
company's concerns is the leitmotif that guides all projects related to
customer relationship management. Any commercial strategy is defined by a
permanent concern to place the customer at the center of the strategy, the
objectives and above all the decision-making process. For this, it is essential
to acquire a good knowledge of its customers to provide them with a
personalized relationship and optimize customer contact throughout the sales
cycle.
Step up your strategies with CRM software
Many technical solutions make it possible to get closer to this relationship with the customer. The implementation of a CRM software makes it possible to integrate the customer into his organization. Objective: to detect opportunities, to transform prospects or former customers of the company into active customers, to retain and sustain the commercial relationship and to capitalize on its knowledge of customers. These actions make it possible to intensify its commercial strategies, while gradually abandoning unprofitable customers.
On paper, this all seems pretty easy to pull off. You
might think that all you have to do is interface your information system with a
customer relationship management tool to boost your company's productivity. Yet
marketing is always tricky. While it is true that integrating a CRM increases
sales productivity by up to 40%, things are far from idyllic. In the field,
making better marketing decisions and creating shorter, more efficient sales
cycles is not easy. Worse, a simple analysis error can compromise the success
of the product, the great disappointment!
Demystifying myths about CRMs: 5 mistakes to avoid
Fortunately, CRMs cannot do everything. And it's important for entrepreneurs and marketers to understand how it works.
To avoid falling into the trap, Act! makes you
discover what a CRM really offers, and above all, what it does not offer.
Misconception 1 – Believing that CRM should remain
static
The CRM is the focal point of all sales support tools. This should not remain static nor should it be thought of as a simple receptacle for data produced by third-party applications. It should be intelligently combined with the new sales intelligence and sales automation solutions, i.e. open to the application ecosystem.
Solution: Integrate these features into a flexible,
customizable and connected CRM like Act! keeps pace with market developments
and innovations. Because the consumer is becoming more demanding and targeting
more and more complicated, the CRM must evolve to adapt to the evolution of the
activity. It will be necessary to think about constantly evolving the CRM
according to the evolution of the economic environment.
Misconception 2 – Assuming that technology makes the
CRM
Many business leaders believe that the CRM must have the latest technological advances to support teams in developing business strategies. This is not the case. Indeed, customer relationship management does not necessarily involve a huge investment in technology, but often by motivating teams to be more attentive to customer needs. Simply relying on a technological solution or assuming that a state-of-the-art solution is better than a less sophisticated one is a pitfall that can cost the business dearly.
Solution: Many failures in marketing strategies come
from the fact that most targeting campaigns don't really need to rely on great
technology. Marketers must therefore allow for an experimentation phase and
continue to seek solid evidence that the technology works. To realize this,
start by checking out the alternatives. You may not need more. Then,
sequentially increase the technology so that each stage strengthens the next.
Misconception 3 – Confusing customer interaction with
harassment
A CRM should be used wisely. Just because you can contact people doesn't necessarily mean you should contact them. The idea is to woo your customers, not stalk them. How you use information determines your success.
Solution: Marketing managers could use CRM to design innovative methods and approaches. The most important thing is to identify Identify the right customers, i.e. those who really want to establish a relationship with you. Then you have to find a way to contact them so that they continue to enjoy the exchange without spamming them. There is nothing better than Spam, for example, to completely destroy the customer relationship.
Another approach is to better understand the socio-demographic criteria of the main segments, to carry out a survey on the most popular types of communication to spread your message. For some this might be through direct mail, for others through seminars or personal meetings.
To help you better structure your communication, Act!
helps you better strengthen the management and organization of contacts. It
also allows you to easily send and track professional email campaigns and
useful recommendations of customer interactions.
Misconception 4 – Thinking that sales will evolve
automatically
Another misconception, certainly the most answered, is to believe that an increase in sales is 100% guaranteed. In the end, the CRM is only a decision-making tool, not a salesperson or a VRP. The CRM will not create a marketing campaign for you, send a contract to sign, or update your customer's last order.
What is a CRM for after all? What the software does is organize your data so you can better anticipate failures and trends. It thus makes it possible to collect and structure information to improve the productivity of the sales, marketing and other departments involved in the sales cycle. This is useful for knowing trends in sales cycles and knowing which customers are ready to buy.
Solution: CRM software must be exclusively thought of as a tool to help manage business processes. It makes it possible to organize the commercial function and to manage all the actions in the prospecting and sales process.
By relying on the data and information collected by
the CRM, sales can thus increase by 29%, and the productivity of the sales
force can evolve by 34%. Act! allows for example always on top productivity
with easy automation of business processes to optimize your time and work and
increase productivity.
Misconception 5- Create your own CRM to save money.
The idea of creating and customizing your own CRM software can be appealing, given that you have the freedom to customize it and add all the options you want. But it has many problems.
When you create your own software, which will certainly be more expensive, you will not be able to evaluate it beforehand. The evaluation process is very important in the selection of the CRM. It helps you to question and optimize existing processes. It also helps you identify weak points to determine what improvements the business should expect from the CRM solution.
This gives you the opportunity to take a closer look at your business processes and make changes or adjustments to improve them. This value is also seen in the actual implementation and use of the CRM, not just in the evaluation phase.
Solution: When you build your own CRM, you miss those
opportunities. And when you start using it, whether now or later, these
shortcomings can have a significant impact on the overall success of the
software. It is also more complicated to train new employees on the solution,
and especially to lose employees who played a role in the implementation and
integration of the system in the company. Better to choose a CRM software that
offers a guided tour of the product like Act!.
Also, to help you in this choice, here are some
elements in this link that will help you choose the best CRM solution for your
business.
Conclusion
The process of integrating and implementing CRM
software is not always easy. It is further complicated by hasty projects, which
are sometimes implemented simply for reasons of technological updating, or even
because of unrealistic internal choices, misunderstanding of the environment,
or even poorly documented objectives. Adding to this is a lack of understanding
of the business requirements and needs by the implementers or consultants.
Business leaders must be aware of these challenges in order to be able to
integrate the CRM solution into a marketing suite logic adapted to the reality
and evolution of the market.