Surviving the Recession??? – Smart Businesses Become Sharper with CRM Solutions
Feb 27th, 2009 by Satha
Friends, we have witnessed living examples of popular figures, such as Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton, applying the concepts of CRM and fully deploying CRM oriented solutions and tools to work smarter and stay well ahead of the game.
(some interesting reading: Members vs. Customers: How the Obama and Clinton Online Campaigns Differ, How to Master CRM like President Obama )
Recession/downturn/market weakness – whilst the label becomes irrelevant, the continued deterioration of economic conditions is challenging everyone. Ironically, during these times the tendency is for businesses to get tunnel vision and target attention completely on cost cutting as a means of improving the bottom line. As panic sets-in the focus tends to narrow down to “doing more and more with less and less”.
Whilst fine tuning operational efficiency should be an ongoing process for businesses, during times of recession (market weakness) better run businesses continue to invest in people, processes and solutions that help maintain, enhance and grow the assets that forms the lifeblood of business i.e. existing and prospective customers (leading naturally to market share).
Smarter businesses, view recessionary times as a window of opportunity to increase market share whilst their competition is distracted with the negativity and focused on short term initiatives such as: cutting down capacity, retrenching staff etc.
During a recession, even more than in boom times (if I may say so) a company’s sales organization must prove to be resilient and steely. The sales team must be empowered and supported, with appropriate processes and solutions, to be effective in securing new business and generating ongoing revenue.
In the context a well deployed CRM solution could also contribute significantly towards:
a) identifying inefficiencies in the sales process and optimising sales costs: a disciplined approach to sales processes combined with an efficient sales force automation (SFA) solution will help identify weakness (leading to additional training and development within the sales team) non performance within sales teams
b) visibility of Total Customer Experience (TCE) leading to effective customer retention and marketing strategies: a CRM system could provide a 360 degree view of the customers’ experience with the company, leading to targeted sales and marketing campaigns with an improved ROI on dollars and effort
c) increasing opportunities for customer penetration: with the visibility of the TCE (including historic buying patterns, customer service requests etc…) a CRM system could make up-sell and cross- sell strategies easy to execute and track. For example a CRM system can alert customer service agents on specific cross/ up sell opportunities for customers based on past ordering histories, customer service/helpdesk requests etc..
d) enhanced productivity through the sales ordering, delivery and collection process: CRM systems through interface into sales order and billing systems, could enable the delivery, scheduling, billing and collection processes be automated (and “self service” oriented). Thus the customer acquisition process becomes more cost and time efficient and the customer is left with less time to shop for alternatives
Businesses evaluating suitable CRM systems should do extensive research on solutions and solution providers experienced in the specific industry segments. A recommended starting point for this research is published case studies.
Below is a list of sites that I checkout frequently for case studies:
a) CRM Today