If you have ever lead a dedicated, professional sales team then you’ll know that sales people are focused predominately on one thing… Sales! You’ll also know that as hunters, sales professionals can leave behind a lot of collateral damage in their wake and are notorious for not completing paperwork or sales processes.

But, you’ve employed them to do what they do best and that is to sell and often when you look at your process you have to ask the question is all that paperwork necessary? In some cases yes and in others the answer could be, well maybe not… One thing that does make sense is to look at your sales process, in fact; look at all of your processes and ask yourself the question. How much of this can be automated?

You may have heard me say before that in today’s business environment it is no longer a question of big vs small, but of fast vs slow. Workflow automation linked to a CRM system can greatly increase productivity and efficiency within your organisation. A direct spin off of this level of automation is that it also provides the business with a KPI measurement tool.

Workflow automation is the breaking down your internal processes (a typical road to sale) into their major components and sub-components along with their assigned areas of responsibilities. Including any way-points, bench-marks or tasks that are mandatory before progressing to the next step. A simple example for a telesales operator would be:

Step 1 – Read and understand sales brief for current call assignment

Step 2 – Capture leads from database and load into CRM

Step 3 – Make X number of calls per hour noting call detail

Obviously an over simplified example but I’m sure you get the point. Within each step could be a number of sub-steps or check points. This teaches users to go with the process and because workflow automation is a push button type system it also means less chasing up for paperwork etc because if done well the CRM will automatically load the next step for the user. You can use a workflow to produce a check list of items, a stepped “road to sale” workflow, a task driven process (e.g. engineering or manufacturing process) and much more.

By automating the workflow process, training cycles become shorter, the learning curve is generally not as steep and staff become more productive. Did you realise that staff on average work at less than 50% of their productivity potential… Actually it’s way less than 50% but I really don’t want to give you an aneurism when you work out what that would equate to in lost earnings.

Workflow automation when integrated with a CRM has many benefits for both the business and its staff. A well designed workflow increases productivity, reduces time wastage and increases profit potential.

Check out how Live CRM’s workflow automation tool can help you achieve more for less effort.

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.

Such technologies also mean that some jobs naturally become redundant giving the business further savings but without the effect of management putting the axe to the tree before picking all the fruit.

Of course we are talking online technologies here – that open up more opportunities in themselves. Such things like telecommuting become possible cutting costs on office space, using VoIP to reduce telecommunication costs etc.

Integrations of your website, social media and online marketing channels to customer relationship management tools for effect sales force automation and sales management through to distribution, logistic and financial management processes can all be highly automated.

And forget all about taking such demands to the big tech guns… to be honest more often than not they are followers pretending to be leaders. Microsoft is a case in point who as a company, has rarely been the true innovator of any technology.

This is a time to start thinking outside the box; open source technologies have enormous business potential when coupled with technology partners who can take these base technology solutions and customise them to your business requirements. The cost of which would pleasantly surprise most business owners or managers. Security is also not as big a problem anymore… in fact the main security risk to most businesses is internal rather than from external sources. Using services like McAfee Security and encryption technologies can help to minimize such risks.

A great starting point if you are looking to go down this road would be a good CRM and invest in securing your current customer base first. Once you have done this, or as you are doing this look at your website… Is it one of those dime a dozen sites or has it been built on purpose with a very clear strategy as to what as a company you are communicating? Then integrate your lead capture form into your CRM with clear expectations set for your sales force as to how to develop and qualify these new leads. Ensure you know what is a lead and what’s not… one thing you need to avoid like the plague is prostituting yourself on low value tyre kicking leads. Don’t be afraid to be the business that is going somewhere fast, and if you want to be on the train then get on board. The more confidence your business shows, the more confident leads will be to do business with you.

Remember now is the time for top level thinking, not mass media “woe is me” thinking. Look at the business from the top down… if you as the owner or manager don’t have the full picture then you need to change that… Get some professional help to assist you – In today’s times, what you don’t know will hurt you.

Get this top down view, be proactive not reactive in your decision making process, challenge everything in every area of your business and set about a course of action to transition your business into a lean, focused and innovative organisation. An organisation that can manage what it has, grow what it needs and understands the roles of new technologies as integrated, intelligent business tools that can deliver real advantages.

So let the boom times role.

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.

A good CRM can help you in this process by integration with your POS system – customer purchase histories can be stored and used for specific campaigns directed at adding value to that specific customer. Oh’ but what about privacy I hear you say… Let’s get real about that issue, if you are using the information you have gained responsibly you have nothing to worry about. I know that I would rather get offers for things I am specifically interested in than the copious amount of junk mail both electronic and paper based that I currently receive.

In line with email marketing you can always give your customer the option to opt out and in sending personalised standard mail you can also give them the same option.

By tying together your marketing efforts with a CRM application you are able to collect vital information that will help your business to not only focus your marketing even further but at the same time streamline your sales processes. Make customer interaction with your business that much easier to manage because each customer’s history is in one place. This gives you the capability to offer superior customer service. This is essential in service based industries where centralisation of information is now critical.

I recently had cause to contact a particular service provider on what I thought would be a straight forward matter… after explaining my situation repeatedly and being transferred through a number of departments, my straight forward matter turned into a half day marathon… why? Because my records were spread over 4 separate systems… 4!! They no longer have my business.

That’s the thing we need to realise, with today’s technology integration with a central CRM can help your business to perform at more productive levels. Oh… and in many cases the cost is not as blotted as it was just a few years ago.

Web2.0 technology especially is having a major impact on business applications that can be accessed via the internet making it much easier for companies to integrate systems and access live business intelligence without the need for it to be exported from segmented systems, recompiled in an Excel spreadsheet then analysed and turned into a report that’s already now out of date. After which you discover that the competition jumped in ahead of you with slick visualisations and current data.

This is the power of CRM as a central component of business, giving you the tools to manage both new and existing customers on their terms, which allows you to maintain lasting relationships. Through integration of data sources your business is able to draw live measurement data for use either operationally or within the sales cycles.

The next few years are going to be tough; it’s my belief that the businesses that implement streamlining technologies and build strong customer relationships will be winners. Moreover I think they will be the blue chip companies of a very different looking commercial landscape as this financial winter turns into spring.

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.

But in the process of getting new customers and maintaining an excellent relationship with the existing ones there are other factors involved. For instance, let’s assume you produce airplanes (not in your backyard though), and let’s see which factors involve the relationship with your customer:

• Sales and Marketing. To be able to have a relationship with your customer you need first to have a customer. Now that’s a pickle. You have to have well trained salesmen and marketing strategies to touch the right niche and grab your customers.
• Suppliers. You got a customer, now you need to start working on his product. To create an airplane you need good materials from your suppliers and delivered in time (if you don’t have the materials when you need them, the customer doesn’t get the plane in time so the relation is damaged).
• Customer preferences. Now since an airplane involves high costs, you might through in some special customization for your customer. But for that you need to know what the customer preferences are (wouldn’t be a good relationship if you would deliver a pink airplane when he wanted a white one).
• Internal processes. You have the parts, you know what the customer wants. Now it’s time to produce it using your knowledge, services and people.
• Customer communications. It doesn’t take a couple of hours to create the plane, so while the plane is being created you want to be sure that the customer receives the proper information about how the production goes. So you need to communicate with him for a better relationship.
• Delivery. How shiny it looks, now that is ready. However, it’s not something you can send via Fedex, so you need to be sure that it’s delivered to your customer without any scratches or pee smell on its tires.
• Training. Well it’s no use if you give him the plane without an instruction manual. While a manual might work for how to use the radio, to use the plane your customer would need serious training.
• Customer support. Not everything is perfect, and even if it is then your customer still needs some support because he doesn’t know why the tiny red button now looks brighter. You want to offer support when he needs it and right to the point.
• Customer followup. Now it’s been about 4 months since your customer is been playing around with his new toy. Wouldn’t be excellent if you would call or meet him in person to ask if he needs new tires or a new surround system for the passengers?
• Performance management. You’re happy and your customer is happy. That’s a good relationship. But could you have done something better that would have resulted in a better product or a better service (or even driving costs down a little bit)? It’s time for an analysis, so you process all the information gathered and you draw the conclusions. And since this is a process that will be repeating with each new customer, anything you do now to improve it will just improve the relationship with your future customers. But don’t forget your people. They did a good job too and they need to be compensated so that they’ll do the same good job in the future too.

The above list could go on. As you can see customer relationship management involves a lot of functions and is influenced by a lot of factors. Maybe now we’re able to give a better definition for CRM: A business process that has as its main goal your customer satisfaction. Because if your customers are happy, then they’ll purchase from you in the future too and also recommend you to others, so your revenue will increase from a healthy customer relationship. Supporting this CRM business strategy is not done with a pen and paper (at least not only with). There are lots of CRM solutions from big names like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and many others, that include the usage of CRM software. However, to be successful with your CRM strategy, you must align the usage of CRM software with the type of your customers and the particularities of your product.

A little bit more about CRM software and how it helps in the relationship with your customer. A typical CRM program allows you to gather, store and analyze not only the information about your customer, but also the information about the other factors that influence the CRM, such as your partners (suppliers, vendors) and your own people (internal processes). Beside this function, a CRM program also allows you to: plan and execute your sales and marketing strategies, offer customer support and training, manage the performance of your your own processes. Also, there are 2 major types of CRM software: On-demand and On-premise. In a few words, CRM On Demand is the type of CRM program that is accessed as a web service (either provided by a third party for a recurring fee, or installed as a centralized solution in your company), while CRM On Premise is the type of CRM program that is actually installed on your computer and you don’t access it as a web service (though communication and data sharing are key elements too and are available in CRM On-Premise too).

So now can you tell what is CRM? defining CRM is not as easy as saying customer relationship management. It’s much more than that, because of everything else that influences the business process.

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.

Your choice to use a hosted CRM is one of the best choices you can make from a purely financial standpoint. One concern that some companies have is that, if a CRM solution is very cheap, it will not be effective or efficient. This is the get what you pay for adage that often holds true for many things. Where hosted CRM is concerned, though, this does not appear to be the case. It can do so much for a small business that needs good CRM software without being required to pay a high price for it, and this helps both small businesses and larger ones to expand their customer bases and continue to grow and prosper.

When businesses use installed CRM or on-site software, they find that they often have to have someone come and set up the software for them. This costs both money and time for a small business that might not be able to afford either one of them. The unfortunate part of this is that customers also suffer when companies have these kinds of problems.

In order to get the best CRM solutions, companies must utilize all of the information at their disposal, so that they have what they need to make the right decision for their customers and their salespeople. Because CRM software can do so many things, the idea of getting the right type is significant for most companies, and this is especially true of smaller ones that are working very hard to keep up with competitors and allow their businesses to grow and prosper. These companies cannot afford costly mistakes where their customers are concerned, and so they must be more careful. For them, hosted CRM is a great solution. They will basically get all of the benefits of the on-site CRM solutions, but they get these things at a much lower cost, and they do not have to spend the time to set up the software or have someone else do it entailing further expenses that they do not need.

The Live CRM hosted CRM solution, however, is not just for small business. Live CRM has so many features which allow it to be used by almost every type, style, and size of business out there that decides it wants to have CRM capabilities. Because of this, and because of the lowered cost and ease of use that comes with Live CRM, the options for businesses and their customer management today are almost endless.
Here are some of the quick value points for Live CRM’s hosted CRM solution

• No additional I.T investment required
• Turn-key solution – Get started right away
• Time to market is extremely fast
• Platform independent (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Desktop Integration (Windows and Mac)
• Available on demand through www.livecrm.co.nz
• Secured using 256 bit SSL encryption (more about data security)
• Only business application in New Zealand with Hacker Safe Certification
• Extremely low learning curve
• Can be customized to your needs.