CRM and ERP News

Lean manufacturing’s simple philosophy of 5S has had a profound impact on the bottom-line of shop floors and these same principles can have a profound impact on your CRM project.

If you’ve spent any time at all looking at the principles of lean manufacturing then you’ve come across the idea of 5S. It’s a Japanese concept that has been translated into English (the Japanese words all start with “S” and magically 5 English words all starting with “S” were found too!)

They stand for:

1. Sort - get rid of unecessary items and free up valuable floor space.
2. Set In Order - place things for optimal and obvious usage
3. Shine - keep the shop, machines and the tools clean.
4. Standardize - adopt best practices that are followed by all.
5. Sustain - resist the temptation to go back to old ways and keep pracitcing the first 4 S’s.

Don’t Be Fooled By Its Simple Appearance

I must admit…the first time I came across the 5S philosophy, memories of my mom keeping a neat and tidy house came to mind and I didn’t take it very seriously. However, after hearing and reading about how adopting the 5S philosophy can have dramatic impact on both morale, efficiency and the bottom line, I started realizing that 5S is an example of the power in simplicity.

How CRM Can Benefit From 5S

Inevitably the simple truths have a universal application and this is exactly the case with 5S and its application to CRM.

SORT

One of the keys to getting users to use your CRM system is to give them a simple, easy to use system. Simplifying the user interface by removing all unecessary menu items, buttons, tabs and fields makes the system much more intuitive, allowing your users to focus on their job at hand.

SET IN ORDER

The progression of simplifying the user interface is then to arrange the interface for optimal and obvious usage. This means, doing such things as:

• Arrange the fields visually in the order that users will most likely use them, so they can tab naturally from field to field.
• Consolidate information onto fewer screens so users have fewer screens they need to navigate between.
• Use workflow engines to step users through business processes and where possible have the system fill fields in for them.
• Design the fields in the database with their ultimate usage in mind. If users need to be able to filter or report on various fields, make sure you’re designing the system to make the filtering and reporting tools easy to use for that purpose.

SHINE

A lot of data goes into a CRM system and it’s important to “shine” that data or keep it clean. The old expression “garbage in, garbage out” applies to your CRM system. If you expect to quickly and easily generate targeted marketing blasts or get useful and actionable information out of the system then you need to pay attention to keeping the data clean. This includes:

• Removing duplicate records.
• Keep addresses up-to-date.
• Look for incomplete records. This includes records missing key information (e.g. phone number, address, key demographic fields)

Keeping the data clean will foster a sense of ownership and buy-in with your users.

STANDARDIZE

Once you’ve looked after the first 3 S’s, it’s time to turn your attention to standardizing how the system is being used. Ultimately, everyone’s various inputs into a CRM system comes out as a single output…be it a report, forecast, alert. Therefore, it’s critical that the information going in is standardized.

A great example of standardizing information is with the Sales Funnel. Involve your salespeople in developing standards around:

• What the sales step are.
• How to guage certainty of the sales closing.
• How to estimate sales revenue for a deal.
• What do the terms “lead”, “suspect”, “prospect” really mean in your organization.

By standardizing your usage of CRM and the definitions for the words you use, you’ll be creating a new corporate culture that will pay dividends for you.

SUSTAIN

Implementing a CRM system represents a big change to a company. Not only do users have a new system to learn, they have new behaviours (habits) to learn. Resistance to this change is natural and its critical that the temptation to revert to old ways be resisted. You must sustain your CRM initiative with:

• continued training
• enforcement of compliance
• system improvements to make the system easy to use and relevant to the business objectives you’re trying to achieve

BENEFITS OF APPLYING 5S

While the 5 S’s sound simple on the surface, implementing them can take leadership and follow-through. I dare say that most CRM systems in small to medium sized companies could stand with a good treatment of 5S. The benefits are increased morale, efficiency and profitability.

Take a look at your CRM system and for each of the 5 S’s, ask yourself what you can do to improve your CRM system.

Technorati Tags: CRM, Lean Manufacturing, 5S, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Force Automation

Replay! Listen to Russ Lombardo, host of Sales Talk, with his guest Scott Gingrich, CEO of The CRM Coach as they tackle the challenge of how to make CRM (Customer Relationship Management) deliver bottom-line results and increase sales. Companies invest a lot of money buying and implementing a CRM system inthe hopes of a more effective, accountable and profitable business. Unfortunately, too many of these implementations en dup as a disappointment. Scott goes beyone the promise of CRM and outlines practical tips to transform a poor performing CRM system into a star player.Tune in for a “must listen hour” of unlocking the profit potential of your CRM system.

There are a host of great, meaty business programs available at this Internet radio station

Here’s the replay of Sales Talk Radio Interview with The CRM Coach

Technorati Tags: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, Sales, Sales Management, Sales Force Automation

Not too long ago, we renovated our home office. It was simple stuff…fixing up the walls in preparation for painting, fixing floor trim, putting up shelves…easy stuff. My wife Jen and I put together out budget, bought our supplies and got to work on what we thought would be a pretty straight forward day. Once again, I was about to be reminded of the parallels between amateur home renovations and companies doing CRM projects.

Now, when it comes to home renovations, you need to understand that despite our willing nature and hours of do-it-yourself TV watching, we are amateurs.

Once again, we had underestimated the budget (cupboard handles cost HOW MUCH??!!) and underestimated the time by half! (Oh yhea, we also totally underestimated if not forgot going into this little project the sore muscles!)

In the end, we got what we wanted (minus a few paint mishaps) and are pleased with it. Did it matter that we goofed on estimating this project, not really. We’d still have done it because it was worth it and we’re only talking in the magnitude of $50 and an extra day.

So, why am I talking about my home renovation project? Very simply, it demonstrates the difference between the Pro and the Amateur.

A Pro, would have done our room in probably a 1/4 the time and his estimate would have been 100% accurate. A Pro would have known exactly what he was getting into and wouldn’t have forgotten from the budget the things we did.

Same thing with CRM projects. Except, CRM projects are way more complicated and can spiral out of control very quickly. Most companies implementing CRM are amateurs and don’t know what they don’t know. They forget things (important things) from the budget, they underestimate the time, they pick the wrong software, etc.

Relying on their salesperson, the “expert”, for the kind of clear insights into the project is just a bad idea. A company selling CRM software has a vested interest in closing the deal. Unless there is a gross misfit between their offerings and a company’s needs, they’re not going to tell a qualified prospect to go look at a different package and lose the deal. It’s not the seller’s fault; it’s a reality of the sales/prospect relationship.

What the amateur CRM buyer needs is an independant industry insider to take them through the buying process and point out the traps, hazzards and often forgotten details along the way. That’s one of the founding ideas of the Insider’s CRM Success System.

Perhaps it’s why I love Home Depot’s slogan: “You can do it. We can help.”

Technorati Tags: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Force Automation, Small Business

Job security is not something that is often associated with the call center industry.  Layoffs and an uncertain future are characteristics more commonly found in the contact center world.  Along those lines the term “at will employment” should be one that all employees, at least in the U.S., should fully understand.  Hopefully this cartoon from callcentercomics.com can provide some initial clarification.

Sometimes the simplest way to get closer to our customers and “get in their thead” is to just ask them! And Survey Monkey is a great, inexpensive tool to do just that.

We recently ran one for The CRM Coach using this tool and found it very easy to construct our survey and build in logical branching of questions depending on answers.

[If you didn’t take our survey, we’d still love for you to do so–and you can experience the tool for yourself.]

We were surprised at the percentage of people who did the survey and even more surprised at the great answers we received.

A couple of tips:

• Provide an incentive to increase the number of people taking the survey, but make it something that qualifies them. We used free copies of the Insider’s Guide…not something someone uninterested in CRM would care for.
• Make your survey ANONYMOUS…this increases the quality of response you get.

Consider incorporating surveys into your business practices and fine tune your marketing and product offerings accordingly.

Technorati Tags: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service, Survey

Many companies use tradeshows to generate customer and distributor leads. However, more than 95% of companies exhibiting are missing a huge opportunity to supercharge their leads.

Tradeshows can be expensive. By the time you add up the costs for the booth space, the booth display itself, transportation, having employees out of commission during the show, food and so on, it can be thousands of dollars to display at a tradeshow.

So, wouldn’t it be nice if there was one simple thing that you could do that would not only separate you from virtually every other exhibitor there, but would also go a long way to warming up your lead?

Here it is…follow-up with your tradeshow leads within 24 hours.

A few years ago, I did some “backyard” research around how companies at tradeshows were using their CRM systems (or weren’t as the case turned out). I went to some computer tradeshows and some industrial tradeshows and monitored how quickly companies followed up on the leads they were given at the show.

Here’s what I found:

• Over half the companies didn’t follow-up at all.
• Less than 10% followed up within the first week.
• No company followed up within 4 days.

Granted it wasn’t very scientific, but I’ve affirmed the findings anecdotally since and have heard others reproducing my results. And here’s the more relevant question: “How long are YOU taking to follow-up on tradeshow leads?”

The point is: Companies work hard and spend a lot of money to get tradeshow leads only to waste a lot of the potential with poor follow-up.

What I recommend to my customers is to put in place a follow-up mechanism with their CRM system so that any lead they get will receive a personalized acknowledgement within 24 hours and preferably before they get back to their office!

Don’t wait to hand off an electronic list or a stack of business cards to an admin person after everyone gets back from the tradeshow. Quickly getting your leads into your CRM system also helps prevent leads from “falling through the cracks”.

Imagine being the tradeshow visitor and the only company to follow-up with you within 24 hours is YOURS! Better yet, what do you think your customer will think of you if by the time they get back to their office, there’s a personalized Email or fax thanking them for dropping by and letting them know that the information they requested is coming!

Now imagine being the salesperson who does the follow-up call to this lead days after they’ve received the follow-up communication. That salesperson is going to have a lead who remembers you because you were the only one to follow-up on their visit.

I coach my customers to prepare their CRM system for lead follow-up before the tradeshow. That means, get ready to code the tradeshow leads (e.g. source, priority) and prepare a follow-up Email or fax template.

At the show be set-up to either enter the leads during the day (maybe get a hired Temp to do that so you’re not losing face time at the show) or have someone do it at the end of the day in batch. The idea here is to get a follow-up “thanks for visiting” message to your lead as quickly as possible and well ahead of any other exhibitor.

Many tradeshows today now provide all the names electronically…visitors get a card with a magnetic strip that they can swipe at booths. Then at the end of the day, the exhibitors get the list. Two major problems with relying on this are:

1. If you count on getting the electronic file at the end of the show, you’re more likely to not probe your vistiors for valuable information that should be put into your CRM system…the back of the card notes.
2. You’re not going to be timely enough in getting back to your visitors.

You can easily supercharge the leads you get from your tradeshow booth and significantly increase your ROI by using your CRM system to quickly follow-up with those leads.

Technorati Tags: CRM, tradeshow, lead, lead management, sales force automation, lead generation, b2b