Small business customer relationship management strategy.

Mary, I'm very surprised that small companies say they don't need a CRM strategy or even a CRM solution unless they are a very commoditized transactional business.

We are a small company (hoping to get bigger soon :o). and without our CRM there is no way for us to share the sales intelligence we gather from the internet, social media and meetings. We can't engage with our customers without understanding what they think, and feel and knowing what their priorities are.

For us a CRM system is the place where we gather and build this knowledge. It both helps us to execute a customer strategy as well as to continuously adapt it to what we are seeing and hearing.

A story with moral:
Last year, our company deployed a solution based on Microsoft CRM to a small accounting firm. We were surprised (even us...) to see such a small office - a team of no more than 3-4 people - investing to a CRM system in the middle of economic crisis. A year later, the owner shared with me the information that the system helped them grow their business smthg like 15% (in a declining market). When I asked him how, he replied: "simply, because customer communication and info is never lost".
It is true: in small businesses, where people have to "wear many hats", it's many time harder to be aligned, committed & effective - so a tool is required to help them coordinate their efforts around their most valuable possession; the customer.
The moral of the story, is pretty much the same with the well-known, old saying: any business has customers, need to put a CRM system in place.

CRM System is now a necessity for every enterprise because it obviously helps to make things easy, to make the process smooth and so that the customers are well-taken care of. But it is also wise if you should check and compare first before getting any system for your organization. There are websites now who offer this kind of service. You may check this website to get accurate results. www.crm-patfinder.com

This was a great question overall.

As a one person company, I am use to doing everything simple, on my own, and never really saw the need to integrate a massive CRM system (and take the time to retype everyone's info into the new system - which has been always the hesitation point).

But I knew it was important, so years ago, I purchased and struggled through Act 2000! - never really using it to it's fullest capacity.

Many years later, Salesforce caught my eye and I thought this was a better system, but I stuck to ACT, as I had just spent the money and soo much time to learn so much of it.

Ironically, all the web based platforms are sooo much easier to use than ACT!! :) and obviously at this point - more intelligent in their features.

Currently, I am with 37signals -highrise - I love theirs, but after looking at yours, this is definitely more robust/all inclusive. The thing with basecamp was I didn't need all the features as it is just me, so I decided not to go with that.

I am constantly keeping an open mind to this, but I am still not sure a one person company really needs this. If you are organized and take good notes, and create your own sheets & items of what is important information for you - and you can pull it up on a computer just as fast as you can open a web page - then I ask, what would be the reason? Keep in mind, many of these are made to accomodate more of a 2+ company business - so they have sections and tons of features you pay for, but for someone like me, they aren't ever used, or they are useless and I could really use a lot of other things - like personalizing so many of my own items/tabs, etc. The grrr's I found with ACT.

I guess what it comes down to is: when it comes to information on my clients and interacting with them, I don't like to be boxed into how another company thinks I run my business or the questions I ask or how I do things.

Your most basic example would be: The forced things like "identifing where you are with the client" - with the choices: hot, cold, warm. Those are uninformative descriptions to me and I don't even use those terms - never did since I started sales in mid 90s. So that is why I have stayed away from doing anything else. I don't even run ACT anymore - I gave up on that a long time ago and now I have a Mac :)

I do however very much see the immense value and great attriibutes for differently modeled companies - so I recommend them always for more than 2 person companies, but I keep my mouth shut when it's just a 1 or 2 person company.

Your comparison helped quite a bit David - thank you - and thank you for letting us know about Worketc. Will keep this in mind. Either way, I will most likely blog or tweet about your company sometime this month or next :)

Mary-

I have owned multiple companies over the years, from logistics to IT Consulting. In my logistics business, we operated as the sales and marketing arm of over 25 global transportation companies and our job was to service the SMB segment.

It was our goal to be transparent to the customer and always communicate as much as possible. This was our CRM baseline and strategy. When we finally chose a provider, we selected Salesforce.com. We started in group edition and evolved into enterprise edition. We used the tools provided by Salesforce.com to create a superior customer service system, as well as the management tool for all sales activities throughout the US. In addition to traditional service and sales management, over time, we created our own ERP inside of the Salesforce infrastructure and managed invoicing, collections, a freight desk, package tracking, account implementation, and marketing. We also developed a customer portal for the system which allowed our customers to monitor our activities while we solved their problems. We had infinite amounts of business intelligence, could generate reports on all aspects of our business, and were able to effectively forecast sales and financials. Most importantly, we were able to deliver on our goals; we were transparent to the customer and we created multiple avenues for communication.

Below are some of the measured results from 2008 due to the integration of a CRM system (best part, just a click to generate these reports):

- Improved customer retention rates from 66.07% in 2007 to 96.93% in 2008
- Grew revenue by $2.54M (312%)
- Reduced daily outbound collections calls by 85%
- Reduced days sales outstanding (DSO) to less than 10 days
- Managed Partner Marketing program resulting in 10% growth in new sales

By integrating a CRM solution into our business infrastructure, we removed ourselves from the proverbial sales "treadmill” and learned to use a mix of technology, process, and people to maintain our client relationships and keep our accounts longer.

My recommendation is that if you have not implemented a CRM solution yet, you should do it soon.

CRM is only one half of the story. You need to develop a way to ensure that communication channels are clear and filled with content that customers can and want to consume. CRM is the company side, making it easier on the company. What makes things easy for the customer...information, training, promotional material, support FAQ's etc etc.