Month: November 2017

Generating Leads for Your CRM System

Posted on by Charles Kemmerer
CRM System

Every company wants a full pipeline of qualified leads in their CRM system. When you fill your lead funnel or pipeline, you always have qualified customers moving along to a successful sale. But how do you generate leads for your CRM system?

Companies typically put in place a consistent process for attracting qualified customers. Some of the techniques may vary, but you can adapt this process to fit your company’s needs.

Creating a Pipeline of Leads

Add an opt-in form to your website: Create a landing page with a lead capture form for your website. This makes it easy for people to choose to receive emails from your company and to respond to any offers or pitches made as part of your lead generation activities. Be sure to include opt-in language so that people understand they are giving permission to be contacted by your company. This helps you comply with the FTC’s CAN-SPAM Act, laws intended to protect against unwanted emails.

Develop a free whitepaper, e-book, or other enticing content: Many companies offer unique and highly valuable content in exchange for customers opting into their email list. This works best if the content offered directly benefits your customers and is only available if they opt into your list.

Promote the offer online: Promote the offer via your social media sites, online advertising, and a link from your email signature.

Ask current customers for recommendations: Offer the same paper or give-away item to your current customers list, and invite them to share it with colleagues and friends.

Request guest posts: Guest blog posts with a link to your website builds traffic. Close your guest blog post with an offer for the free paper and link to the opt-in form. To get a guest blog post published, find websites that reach your customer base and email the webmaster with an idea for a free blog post. Then, write the post, or hire a ghostwriter to write it for you.

Collect cards and contacts: At your next networking event, trade show, or other industry event, collect business cards and ask permission to add them to your database. Drawings for enticing prizes at trade shows can help you collect even more business cards.

To assess the success of your lead generation activities, monitor the number of contacts on your database before, during, and after the campaign ends. Also check your open rates on subsequent marketing emails and lead nurturing campaigns to view the effectiveness of your marketing messages.

If you’ve focused your lead generation efforts on customers who fit your target demographic profile, you’ve successfully filled your CRM system with viable leads. The next step is to continue the lead nurturing sequence, using your CRM system effectively to communicate with customers along every step of their buying journey. Thankfully, your CRM system makes this much easier by automating a great deal of the work.

CRMPlus Consulting

CRMPlus Consulting helps companies find the “right size” CRM system for their needs. By working with you to find a great solution, we match you with the best software to help your company achieve its sales goal. Visit usor call 813-343-2173.

Four Tips for Effective CRM Implementation

Posted on by Charles Kemmerer

It’s exciting to launch a new CRM system or upgrade to a new system with all the bells and whistles. That said, it’s also important to make sure that the entire CRM implementation runs smoothly from project inception to completion. These four tips will help your project get off to a strong start and finish with a flourish.

Four Tips: CRM Implementation

  1. Find an internal champion: Critical to the successful implementation of your CRM system is an internal project champion. The term “champion” comes from the Middle Ages, where royalty would select a special knight to be their champion in tournaments and battles. The champion represented royalty and thus had the power to advocate for the royal person’s goals. Within a company, the CRM champion should be a senior-level executive who has the ear of the CEO and other top brass, and who believes in the power of the CRM to meet business goals. The champion can advocate for the CRM project, ensure complete buy-in, and secure the resources necessary for the project’s completion.
  2. Assign a project manager: Although a team will work on the CRM planning and implementation, one person should be assigned the responsibility of guiding the project’s timeline and deliverables. A project manager can review all of the tasks associated with completion and implementation, prod anyone behind on deadlines, and keep the entire project on time and on budget.
  3. Train a super user: Super Users don’t wear superhero capes, but they should. These are people on your team who will learn the system inside and out so that they can train others, answer questions, and perform basic troubleshooting for your company once the system is launched. Ask for volunteers from the teams using the system the most, and ensure they receive adequate training.
  4. Launch with a flourish: Your project’s final launch should be a celebration and well-publicized within the company. Launch with a flourish! Have the Champion make a grand announcement and congratulate the Project Manager publicly for a job well-done. Build a launch training meeting into the schedule with subsequent follow-up training sessions so that there is plenty of hands-on use of the system. Continue to promote the system for several weeks and months until it becomes second nature for everyone to use it.

Other Implementation Tasks

Successful implementation also includes the development of a CRM guideline, process, or training manual. This document can be simple and streamlined but should include guidance for teams on what to input into the system, how frequently to update the system, and how to use the system.

Lastly, be sure you have a feedback system in place. Users need to report bugs, problems, and requests for future updates to a designated person so that this information can be acted upon during the next upgrade.

CRMPlus Consulting

CRMPlus Consulting can guide you through your CRM project from inception to completion. We are a small, boutique firm specializing in personalized service. We know that technology is the servant of a good overall strategy. We evaluate the processes you have in place and help you find effective solutions to maximize your use of technology. For more information, contact us or call 813-343-2173.

Three Surprising Benefits of CRM

Posted on by Charles Kemmerer
CRM

Adding a CRM system to your company this year? Most companies consider the benefits related to the sales department when they think of a CRM system. CRM makes it easier to organize, track, monitor, and work with leads and customer information but there’s more to CRM than sales benefits. These three surprising benefits of CRM may make you think again about how customer relationship management is used within your organization.

CRM: A Philosophy Rather than a System

CRM, or customer relationship management, is more a philosophy or guiding principle for an organization than it is a computer system. Sure, there’s software involved, but it is more about your organization’s approach to lead nurturing and communications then it is to choosing a great software package. Software makes CRM easier, faster, and better, but you will get more out of it with a smart and focused approach to CRM as a holistic, organization-wide way of thinking about customer service and management.

Three Surprising Benefits

CRM systems make communications a lot easier but they also add value in surprising ways.

  1. Improved analytical data and reporting: CRM systems store a lot of customer data in one place, which makes analytical data and reporting easier, faster, and more efficient. They also integrate with other systems within your company to share consistent data. This makes running reports easier with cleaner, more accurate data. The fewer times you have to input data into a system, the fewer chances there are for data entry mistakes.
  2. Enhanced teamwork: Because contact information, call details, and other communications information is entered into one system, the entire thread of a customer’s narrative is in one location. Teams including sales, marketing, and customer service can all see the same information and work together to resolve problems and improve customer service. The shared data fosters a collaborative environment that’s helpful to all.
  3. Simple automation: Common tasks can be automated in a CRM system for time-saving efficiency. Simple automation, such as automating reports, forms, responses, and other messages can save a great deal of time. You can store report formats and templates, too, so you don’t need to “reinvent the wheel” every time a specific report is requested for a client. All of these innovations lead to time-saving and better work.

Improved Customer Service with CRM

Customers often voice frustration at having to repeat their information during conversations with different people at the same company. A CRM system logs those details into one central location so that all team members can access the information. You’ll be able to see the customer service history and provide better information to resolve customer complaints faster. Customers are saved the inconvenience of having to repeat themselves, and you’ll be able to provide better service.

CRMPlus Consulting: Choosing the Right CRM System

With the right CRM system supporting your work, your company can reap these and many other benefits. CRMPlus Consulting offers a free “CRM Success Kit” you can download to help you master the art of CRM. Contact us for more information on CRM systems for your business.