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What is a CRM and how do I use it?

Often you here the fact that you must have a CRM package in your business, but often people fall into 3 camps:

• They have a CRM but don’t actually use it properly
• They have heard about them but don’t know what good it would do their business
• They don’t even know what the term means!!!

So lets talk a little about what they are and how they can benefit your business.

A CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and that phrase itself is important. The art of implementing and using a CRM is how you build that relationship with the customer and therefore increasing your Sales. The 3 ways to increase sales:

• Generate New customers
• Increase the unit of Sale
• Make more Sales to existing Clients

A CRM can certainly help in these cases though some more than others.

The principles of what a CRM will do for you are very simple. It always you to store factual data about the company. Who they are, what they specialise in, even turnover and employee numbers if you have done your homework and the data is relevant. You then make sure you have recorded the names and numbers and email address of all the contacts and whether they are willing to accept mailings from you.

Its important you also capture peripheral data as well relevant to what you sell. If they are a pub do they have a beer garden, a dining room, do they offer Sky Sports.

If a consumer perhaps what type of dwelling do they own their own home. No good trying to sell garden sheds to people who live in flats or double glazing to those who rent.

But sometimes as well information about the contacts, dates of birth, have thye got kids, are they married where have they been on holiday. This helps you build a rapport with then because you have show an interest in what they do and have also remembered.

Remember we do business with people we like, and most people like people who seem genuinely interested in them (which is a point, you must be interested - this is just a tool for recording!!).

In other words you are now building a profile of your customers. So when you have a new product you know who will be interested, when you have any offers on you know you is likely to be interested. But also you can use this to help work out both your typical customer and the profile of your more lucrative customer.

So for new marketing you know the type of customer you are looking for.

But we need to make sure other information is recorded and collated. The sales we make to them, their order history, every contact we have them and the type of contact that was, Were their any issues, have they been resolved. When was the last time you spoke or marketed to them what was the result.

You know their average spend per order, how many orders they make the sort of products they are interested in. If your sales people are going to ring them they can check the comms history to find out if there have been any unresolved problems that need to be dealt with.

You can look at similar profiled customer and see what they have been buying extra. You can see if regular customers spending has dropped off or stopped altogether and make contact with them. To ask why.

You can also attach documents to the record so you can quickly access them, such as invoices sent, contracts, quote letters. This means you will have instant access to the information which you will save time locating and allow you to be more responsive to when the client on the phone.

This is the essence of CRM’s having good quality information about your customers and Sales to allow you to build a relationship with them in order to be identify Sales opportunities. Customer with little or no contact with their suppliers can often simply drift away because another supplier has come in and built a better relationship. But as a bonus you have also gathered information bout the type of customers you deal with their likes and dislikes, their profile and this is invaluable information when searching for new customers.

So simply buying a CRM is not enough it must be used properly and the information then monitored and acted upon. Often the problem is that people by CRM but don’t really use it. When you do and look to build that relationship and the data that goes with it then your sales will increase and you will look more professional you will waste less time.

It takes time, it takes discipline, but it is worth it.