If Customer Service is the New Sales, is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) the New Marketing? (And Where does Marketing Automation Fit?)

Every complex problem can be translated into a series of simple problems.

The first step in simplifying any complex problem is to clearly define the goals and the components involved. I cannot accomplish this in a brief post, but I can point us in the right direction.

Let's talk about the purpose and the process first. We'll bring in the tools later, so that they can enable the purpose by facilitating the process.

For the sake of this discussion let us define "Marketing" as the art of generating interest that can lead to a potential sale, and let us define "Sales" as the art of converting that interested party into a customer.

Within Marketing and Sales (as defined above) should be specific pre-defined metrics that are tracked to provide visibility to help draw reasonable conclusions about interest and likelihood of conversion. You must first define the metrics; the tools will not do that for you.

Now, CRM, SFA and Marketing Automation systems happen to be the tools that can provide this visibility and automate processes therewith. Generally speaking CRM systems are used to track internal activity, while Marketing Automation systems track external activity (potential interest). The assumption is that enough of the right activity at the right time can be correlated to interest and likelihood of a sale. Each organization must prove that assumption and adjust as necessary.

Finally, let's deal with vendors and service providers. It is incumbent upon them to seek to understand our challenges and to frame their solutions accordingly. It is incumbent upon us to educate them about our challenges and judge whether their solutions really do solve our problems. If vendors and service providers don't understand our challenges, then we shouldn't have a real sales cycle.

I may not have directly answered the questions posted, but I have simply attempted to bring clarity and provide a context in which we can effectively address it. I leave the rest to you.

Enjoy!

Michael

Customer Service is the bat and ball you need to play in the game of Sales. Its about keeping the customer satisfied and loyal after the purchase. CRM and SFA are tools that help in the process and essential ones, but are just that. There is no golden bullet or panacea. What makes for success in sales has not changed over the years, but has been made more productive through the use of such tools.

The answer is still knowing what customers need, having it (or getting it some way), making them want it more than anything else and making them want it often, or a combination of Sales and Marketing.

Those who are looking for the quick fix, rather than putting in the hard yards will grasp at anything and then complain bitterly when they don't see results. On the other hand, those who build a solid core, then reinforce it with SFA and CRM will find these tools open up more and better ways to stay in contact with their customers and prospects and ensure that they maintain primary share of customer minds.

CRM and SFA tools need to be part of an overall Customer Management or Customer Engagement philosophy and strategy. They need to be part of the business models and at the same time there needs to be recognition that they are support tools, not the philosophy itself. As essential tools, they need to be properly integrated into the business and be a non-negotiable part of the workflow.

As for assessing the effectiveness and consistency of customer service efforts in an organisation, my experience is to ask the customer. They'll usually be pretty quick to tell you good and bad. This can be facilitated using CRM tools, but the big step is speak with the customer.

When it comes to using any information an organisation has or creates, well planned and integrated systems can make this successfull. Combining SFA, CRM and other systems to make data readilly available in real time and with guaranteed accuracy can give an organisation the lead over its competitors. Access to good information can improve marketing efffectiveness and sales efficiency and enable customer service that is memorable for all the right reasons. It can also make inroads by competitors almost impossible. An when people in a business have the right information, they can easilly make the right decisions. So selecting the right tools (CRM, SFA, KM, and MA etc) and integrating them and ensuring they are constantly and correctly used will give your organisation a significant edge.

In my expereince, to few vendors, resellers or integration partners understand the challenges and in many cases the underlying business models, which makes it difficult for them to help. I find I am spending a lot of time with clients getting their current tools to work, getting staff to consistently use them and getting them integrated.

In many cases, instead of linking islands of information, the tools have been implemented in ways that simply reinforced the walls, rather than breeched them. This has opened up a lot of opportunities to get the philosophy right, develop a reinforcing strategy and get the integration working.

My clients will acquire more tools and we will refine how their organisations work, but the current focus if to make the existing investments pay and deliver. When they do acquire new systems, the integration elements will be key.

Great topic!

If you follow what the future holds for CRM regarding social media, then your CRM is able to provide with rich connections to your customer and provides you with multiple channels through which to communicate with them effectively and affordably.

In addition, your CRM could connect to outside sources and find potential customers similar to those you're currently working with.

Now automate all that and you've got a pretty powerful engine to grow your business!

It is all about training. I am an experienced Microsoft CRM User. Our company IT department has posted several 4-6 minute video training segments that we can look at on how to do various functions. What is great about that is that if you forget how to do something, you just go and watch that training segment. It is great!

Great questions! It would seem to me that the basis for business has always been the customer. Fulfilling a need is paramount to making money! I don't necessarily think that customer relations is the new marketing, but i do think that often times it can feel like businesses gain a lot of product/service insight from these types of activities. If one thinks about 2.0 (almost 3.0 now) marketing the mere basis of it is to inspire a new dialog with customers through new digital and efficient print channels. If done right, these efforts produce a great set of data which can be used, in line with these customer relations, to enhance, innovate, and create new products. This is why one sees the top CRM systems integrating more and more marketing activities to aggregate the data into one dashboard. I think that what one is also seeing clearer than ever is that businesses have to be proactive not passive in their product mix. This means that firms must rely more heavily on useful and timely data along with primary information gained through customer relations to settle on a strategic direction.

Someone recently said to me, you need strategy to know when you're making the right decisions. This certain applies to buying CRM, sales or marketing automation software.

People need to take these things one step at a time and it starts with - where are you going? then how are you going to get there? and then, what tools do I need. All the noise about CRM and new initiatives in sales and marketing software distracts people and makes them feel these tools are silver bullets. But we should be strategists first, buyers of software second.

I loved James's post. Up till then I did not get a sense of real listening to the customer as a new focus for business. If we continue to work in our agenda rather than the agenda of our customers then we will lose out to those businesses that become skilled at listening to, then responding to the real (and changing) needs and demands of the customer. The software tools are great when used properly but if we retain our silo driven businesses and don't move to a more cross-functional, customer facing (and responsive) structure that listens to the voice of the customer, then we will miss a huge opportunity.