I’ve had two conversations this week with executives about finding the right CRM solution and finding an effective way to manage customer relationships. Regardless of the size of the company it seems that almost everybody struggles with similar issues.
The first conversation I had was with one of the Managing Partners of a consulting firm. We had talked earlier but he had reached out to me again in a state of total confusion. After our initial conversation, he had started Googling on CRM systems to start exploring what options were available, and he found plenty of options. What followed was a call for help, “How do I choose?” Those of you who have gone through this probably recognize the feeling. It is a bewildering array of choices to sort through.
Before you start looking and trying to choose between different solutions, I would recommend sitting down with a pen and paper (or white board with your team) and figuring out what it is that you really need. What is the problem that you are trying to solve for? For example, and this is certainly not a complete list:
- Do you need a master customer/contact database?
- Do you want to share activities on key projects or opportunities?
- Do you want a common mailing list so you can send out newsletter and marketing material?
- Do you want to be able to share documents so you build a knowledgebase within the firm?
- Are you trying to hold each other accountable for following up on leads? Or Penetrating new accounts?
- Or some combination of the above
As I am sure you can guess the answer to this first question suggestions different solutions. I would also encourage you to probe to make sure that you are getting at the underlying need not just the nice to have (i.e. Why do you need a customer master? What would it enable you to do?).
- Suggests an integrated contact management solution.
- Suggests more of a project management solution
- Suggests more list management/marketing automation
- Suggests more document sharing
- Suggests more account planning / project management; maybe shared calendar.
Second step is to think about what evaluation criteria are important to you. How do you weight the importance of different considerations? What are the deal killers?
- How important is integration with Outlook?
- How important is price?
- What is your personal preference or tolerance for a branded solution vs. a lesser-known (hopefully innovative) player?
These two steps should make the evaluation easier and keep you on track. Many (most) companies I have worked with are vulnerable to getting distracted by ‘extra’ functionality once they start looking at solutions. Make sure you stay focused on the problem you need to solve.
Filed under: CRM - Customer Relationship Management | Tagged: CRM, CRM Selection, CRM Success, Customer Relationships | 1 Comment »