If you’re an employee what follows may upset you, but if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur then read on.
The current climate is an excellent time for businesses to get back to core competencies and business practice with a focus on streamlining both through the affective adoption and utilisation of technologies as business tools.
We are firmly of the belief that businesses who focus on effective utilisation of technologies as integrated business tools will do well in the current environment and will be positioned well to take advantage of opportunities and growth as and when the economic climate thaws.
Our message is one based around save the business… this may mean consolidation on a number of fronts including cutting employee numbers. But, such decisions should not be made in a reactive way, which does seems to be the mode that many businesses laying off staff are following.
Instead a company should look at a number of factors and their technology infrastructure should be on the top of this list. If your infrastructure is old, segmented and high maintenance then you need to seriously make changes in this department. The advantages to business using integrated business tools are tremendous giving you instant access to business performance when you need. Read more…
admin CRM Articles CRM, economic crisis, recession
Forget the four P’s of Marketing and concentrate your efforts on the 3 M’s of Customer Relations as we head deeper into the global recession. What are the 3 M’s I hear you ask? Quite simply they are Manage, Maintain and Measure. Why? Because people, that is your market, are becoming far more prudent with how they spend their income.
In today’s market, referral and word of mouth mean more than slick adverting campaigns and promotional gimmicks. And although we are not advocating that you stop your marketing efforts, we are saying that it makes great sense and logic to reinvest in that one area of your business that has perhaps gone untapped for some time – Your past customers.
It may surprise you just how many businesses never go back to their past customers with offers and promotions. Bizarre when you stop to consider how much you spent to acquire these customers to begin with.
An essential tool in managing your current customer base is a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System. A good CRM allows you to do far more than just store contact information and customer notes, it will allow you to manage sales campaigns whether they be part of your acquisition marketing strategy or your re-engagement strategy.
Once you have secured a customer you need to develop a long-term strategy to re-engage with them. This requires that you take off your ‘drive instant revenue’ hat and put on the ‘how to add value to my customers’ hat. Remember that your customers brought from you for a reason, now turn that reason into a compelling proposition for them to continue purchasing from you. Read more…
admin CRM Articles, CRM Success Recipes, Contact Management, Customer Service Systems CRM, customer relationshps, Customer Service, referrals
A simple search on Google for define crm will display its main definition as customer relationship management. While it sounds interesting, what does it really mean? Well, the expanded definition gives some hints – CRM could be interpreted as a way to manage the relationship you have with your customers (business relationship). While this is a shallow definition of CRM, it points however in the right direction, it’s all about the way you do your business so that you gain, keep and maintain a good relation with existing and future customers. Read more…
admin CRM Articles CRM
The whole idea of a software being available as a hosted solution is enveloped in a cloud of confusion and poorly represented information. It is important to understand the critical differences between hosted software and installed software.
We assume you are looking for a CRM system because you want to keep track of your customers and find ways to market to them. Live CRM is a great way to do that, since it collects information and allows you to use that information to build a long lasting, strong relationship with your customers.
So what is hosted CRM?
A hosted CRM works through a separate company so that the company that is interested in collecting the customers information (i.e. you) does not have to worry about how it is going to do that. In addition, most hosted CRM is much less expensive than the CRM software that is used on-site by companies. This cost savings can be very important, especially in the case of small business CRM where a company might not have a lot of money with which to create CRM solutions, but may still need CRM and its advantages in order to keep the company growing and working well against its competitors. Since hosted CRM does not come with any added burden of maintaining an in-house I.T infrastructure or deploy specialised hardware equipment, is far more affordable. Read more…
admin CRM Articles Hosted CRM
