To People Who Want a CRM System – but Can’t Get Started

By Enabliser Helene

Maybe you are not convinced of the benefits, or there is no one responsible for driving the change involved in implementing a CRM system.

If you fall into category 1, some of the benefits from implementing a CRM system are:

• More effective Marketing, Sales and Service processes
• More integrated processes across functional areas e.g. from Marketing to Sales
• More efficient people using consistent processes, the agreed best way to do it
• Insights about your prospects and customers at your finger tips
• One central system with all the information about the customer (instead of one for Customer Service, for Marketing and for Sales too) which should improve:
  • Customer Service – can see what has happened in Marketing and Sales
  • Increase Sales – easier to upsell and smoother hand over from marketing
  • Better success rate in marketing – know the history of the customer

• Measuring your results in Marketing, Sales and Service, show what you do well and what needs to improve

If you fall into category 2, you can take the following steps to get started:

1. Appoint a responsible person whose main responsibility is to drive the implementation
2. Engage with the users – what is important to them (Important that they feel involved).  It is called Ownership.  Survey Monkey has a free survey tool you can use and it is easy
3. Create a clear vision of what you want to achieve
4. Look at what is most important to the business – what will have the biggest positive impact
5. Break the implementation down into phases and start with the most important first so it is easy for the users to see the value

Don’t forget to read up on How to Choose a CRM System, this booklet will provide you with some great ideas on how to approach your project!

P.S Make sure you select an experienced and outstanding CRM solution partner for your implementation because it is not just about automating your current tasks, it is about streamlining the processes first to find the most effective way and then automating the improved processes.  An experienced partner who does CRM projects all the time will save you time, pain and dollars and make it easy.