Focus Research Insight: How did you know when it was time for CRM?

Usually companies realize it's time to impliment CRM when it's too late. Right after they call a prospect and they are told,
"You are too late. We just went with your competitor because we hadn't heard from you for awhile."
That's when they sit back and realize the followup call was scheduled on the back of a business card for the right date but the call is way overdue because they were running around doing something else that seemed more important. Then the boss bangs his hand on a desk and declares, "That can never happen again". Most companies get CRM that way but I suggest being a little proactive and get CRM now. It'll save missing that big deal that's just around the corner.

In my experience, generally the time to implement CRM is when companies start feeling the need for more established & formalized processes in terms of how they deal with customers. In other words, when there are enough moving parts that things get confusing if they don't get structured (i.e. how do we make a sales call? How should the marketing process work? How do we handle a support request?), those issues above "inefficiency, loss of opportunity, untracked processes' start to happen.

If customers and processes can still be EFFECTIVELY 'managed by walking around' then CRM may be nice to have but it's not necessarily a need to have.

I think the time to start using CRM is now, from the first day of business. Capturing critical customer information, organizing your ability to market to your customers, capturing sales opportunities are all things all business's need to do well to achieve their business goals.

Having information in one place, provides the required organizational skills a company needs to be successfull. CRM applications range from no cost to expensive. Pick the one tha meets your needs and start using it right away.

As you grow and pass responsibilities onto other individuals, it is there, organized and ready to use.

Time to build a relationship with the customer is before contacting them, build a relationship means know them, before you contact them is better to find out how your customer is, core business, style, etc. Then you can build a stronger relationship. The rest is maintain that relationship alive (manage). Sometimes companies (and people) do CRM without knowing they are, actually, if its that way, works better, means there is a customer oriented process or company, and benefits will be clear for everyone. About the CRM software implementation, make sure all processes are in place, not only sales and marketing, all chain because in every step of the process there should be a CRM component.

The time to graduate to a CRM system is when the cost of not using one is greater than the cost of moving.

You can run your business on Outlook and MS Office, but at some point the cost of missed opportunities, administrative overhead, lack of visibility, etc. costs a whole lot more than investing in and implementing a CRM system.

As some of the others point out, for those businesses with a solid strategy, benefits can (and should) be leveraged very early on in a company's lifecycle.

The time for CRM is right at the start of your business or as soon as possible. And not just because you need to manage customer relations, but because CRM has gone beyond that.

A good CRM is the platform for Sales Effectiveness, Sales Improvement and Collaboration. Many CRM's have value-add plug-ins available. For Account Planning, Opportunity Management, Sales Intelligence, Social Media, etc.

A CRM shows undiscovered relationships between different accounts, prospects, opportunities, content, etc. A CRM connects Sales with similar opportunities and shows learnings from the past. It connects Sales with other departments like Marketing and Finance through extensive workflow and social media capabilities.

Internet and Social Media are changing customer behavior. Companies needs to sync their activities with the buying process of the customer. CRM has become a decisive factor in this process.

We knew it was time for a CRM tool - multiple reps needed to be aware of the status of each customer and who the primary rep was. Confusion reigned until all of the information was being harnassed in one place. From there, syncing other business activities improved processes, influenced planning and affected decision making.