There is an ever-increasing product offering with an ever-increasing number of people offering it to the same target audience. With escalating market forces and rapidly declining consumer confidence, a strong understanding of the market in which you operate and how you respond to and manage clients is vital. It is easy to be swayed by the current pessimistic outlook and while many small businesses have been forced to take a more cautious approach to the year ahead in terms of spending and borrowing, there are a number of activities that can be employed to work smarter and better. Customer Relationship Management or CRM is one of those and unfortunately is a term that gets thrown around the office and often with little understanding.

Once thought of as an expensive type of software, CRM used to be a product that only large blue chip companies could afford to use. With the advent of web-based sales solutions, these systems are now a fraction of the cost and don’t require a series of IT experts to run the system. In addition, because solutions now are web-based, there is no extra cost for installing it or receiving updates. Compare this to four or five years ago when a company would have been looking at £22,000 plus per year for a non-web based system, which only could be operated by a team of IT experts and needed expensive updates every year.

Without boring you too much, CRM is not just an application running on your computer but a smarter way of doing business. If implemented successfully, it will encourage better customer retention, more loyal customers, more repeat business and overall, a significant increase in potential income. In a market place where consumer confidence is low, any tool that enables you to improve productivity and profits is an opportunity worth considering.

However, despite the fact that CRM solutions are now incredibly accessible and affordable there still seems to be some resistance. For many companies busy focused on outside market forces, the customer relationship is severed when the lead is converted or the enquiry call logged. It seems people are still using the phone; email or post to follow-up leads and many are still using paper files, Excel or Outlook to keep track key pieces of information. A CRM solution can be as simple or as complex as you require and web-based bespoke options won’t break the bank. Unfortunately, the reasons why people have chosen their CRM solution are not reflective of their needs and demands. Common answers to this question include: ‘The salesman threw in three free months’; ‘We already had used their product and thought it was the easiest solution’; ‘I am mates with their sales guy.’ Fortunately, there are some key questions you can ask when choosing the right solution for you:
• How valuable is my database?
• How much will the solution cost me in comparison to what I will gain in turnover? (eg. Increase in sales)
• How can I be cleverer in tougher times?
• How much do I value existing business? (Cost of a new lead is five times higher than an old lead)
• How fast or regularly do I need an up-to-date report on my team’s activity so I can respond quickly to problems and opportunities?

While this is only a brief overview this particular sales solution, it highlights the need to work smarter than your competitor in uncertain times.