Name: Francisco

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Posts by fdomingo:

How to approach a CRM

10:45 PM







By definition, CRM is customer relationship management but, depending on the context, it could also mean:

- Management of my customers and prospects.

- Relational marketing management.

- Direct marketing management.

One definition I like is: CRM is any way of interaction that a company has with the customers/prospects and it might provoke an active response and create a direct channel of communication.

We are now very used to knowing many new CRM concepts like, Cloud Computing, SaaS, prospecting with CRM etc. But from the experiences I am having with my customers (sales managers/directors), I am getting very aware that what they are mostly asking for is: “How could I know who what my salesforce is doing”. This is: SFA ( Sales Force Automation) which , from my point of view, it is still the most fashionable CRM concept by far for so many people.

Do you still remember that very often, the sales managers have been managing their staff with the “oldschool” meetings, that normally happen recurrently in Mondays or Fridays?. This is still good and necessary, but for a manager whrn it comes to know what their sales force are doing ( how much pipe are they generating, how many business opportunities they are working on, how much ROI the manager gets for each representative, how much ROI per product/rep. , what are they closing?) It is still pure magic for them to know at real time without using e-mails, or Excel files or calls etc. It is less time consuming for any manager, and also, the control is more accurate. This may still occur en medium size companies.

My intention hereby, is to give the message that SFA is a still a key message for General Business. I know this might be a bit far from normal definitions of CRM, but this is the way I see it is in SMB. (Small Medium Business). My piece of advice here is that, when targeting sales directors of SMB companies, your scoping is going to be right.

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Which company would you choose in recession?

12:00 AM

We see how different companies are going into bankruptcy since this “credit crunch” has started. However, we must say that there has not been “big” collapses in IT companies. They have not been that affected as much as other industries. Anyway, they have indeed had:

- Reduction of their sales.

- Reduction of the forecasting.

- Depreciation of their value in the Stock Exchange.

Regarding the third point, we have seen how shares of big companies from the industry have been reduced across 2008 fiscal year (this is nothing new, if we have a look at the stocks all over the world); Moreover, we have also seen how they are announcing their “new innovative” strategies, very often with workforce cut-downs (as well as other operative costs) to be able to cope with this “transition period”. So well, what they are showing in the Stock Exchange that this could be a real picture of the realistic situation they are having.

Because in this blog we are supposed to be talking about CRM ( Customer Relationship Management), and just a an start-up, I want to throw out a reflexion: “watch very carefully what the capitalization of your provider is, and then compare it with against their competitors.” Would you base the decision on your provider situation?. I my own company, I would do it?. My customer Data should be in “the right place”.



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