During our tight economy, cutting wasteful costs and optimizing sales performance must be top priorities. Are your current CRM operations part of the solution – or the problem? How can you find out?
Ineffective CRM is very expensive:
• Marketing delivers inadequate lead flow
• Sales rep time is wasted on manual tasks and low value busywork
• Customer service generates no new business
• Up-selling and cross-selling efforts are constrained by data quality
• Sales managers have poor visibility and control of rep activity
• Best practices are not defined, measured and enforced
• Sales forecasts are time consuming and unreliable
• Decision makers lack information on key performance indicators
In addition to the hard dollar costs these problems impose, ineffective CRM hinders teamwork, innovation and agility.
If the real costs and the path to improvement were obvious, few business leaders would hesitate to act. However, every company is unique and an effective solution requires understanding of both software capabilities and specific business needs. The challenge is to make the costs and improvements visible and actionable.
Some companies who already have a CRM system achieve poor results due to weak adoption. The good news for these firms is that shifting into high gear can happen fast. It just takes vision of the possibilities.
First Plan has extensive experience in the implementation and application of a wide range of CRM software. To help our clients understand their opportunities for improvement, we offer our CRM Assessment Workshop. During this workshop, our consultants meet with your key stakeholders to identify:
1. Marketing, sales and service shortcomings – that can be solved
2. Improvement goals – that can be achieved
3. New, high value capabilities – that better software can make possible
(In other words: “WOW – We didn’t know we could do that!”)
During the workshop, we will help you understand:
• Contortions – Inefficient processes that hurt productivity and cost you money
• Sandbags – Low value chores that can be automated or eliminated
• Blinders – Information and communications barriers
• Handcuffs – Skills people need, but don’t have
• Roadblocks – Workflow, skill and technical impediments to teamwork and coordination.
The easy stuff gets done, the hard stuff gets postponed (usually forever). The key to optimizing business results is making high value activities easier. The most valuable work is that which helps you find, win and retain more customers.
After the workshop we will prepare your CRM report card describing:
• Problems identified
• Improvement opportunities
• Solution components we recommend
The Discovery Workshop is offered to organizations that meet certain qualifications and requires an investment of one day of your time. Please contact me directly to learn more.
Cordially -
================
Michael Johnson,
President
503-221-2020
mjohnson@firstplan.com
