InfoGrow Blog

Dear James, 
 
Sellers do have limited time, and in deciding how to focus many rely on guesswork or intuition. That leads to sub-par decisions and incomplete actions when interacting with customers or following a sales process. Here are 4 steps you can start taking today to help them improve their outcomes. 
 
1. Cut anything that is not sales related.
When organizations assign or let account managers perform customer service tasks or get involved with marketing, they are providing a manager with the number one excuse for not selling.  

Dear Bob -

​My CEO is frustrated with the lack of progress the sales team appears to be making with the CRM system we installed two years ago. How do I help her move the effort forward? I too must have an effective CRM with current customer and prospect data to meet my needs. -- A Concerned Marketer

Dear Concerned Marketer  -
​I expect the frustration your CEO is experiening with not achieving the expected value out of the CRM is around all ROI. The evidence I usually see includes: missed or no alignment between sales and marketing, an ineffective sales pipeline, data silos dependent on Excel files for marketing-sales-service, no one-view of the customer engagement, just to name a few.   

You, with our help, can resolve this frustration for your CEO with a four-step exercise I have developed.  

Dear Bill,
We have all encountered service bots that are not as smart as we would like. Well Microsoft's newest member of the Power Platform, Power Virtual Agents, looks like to be heading in right the direction for smarter Chatbots.

​These bots feed off Dynamics CRM and the Common Data Platform, which opens up a whole lot more connections to other data sources.  In addition, with the power of Microsoft’s AI behind the bots, these chatbots can learn how to improve. 

Bob,
 
I have a client who is a CFO and she is concerned that her sales team is rapidly becoming Zoom-Zombies on time-consuming internal web meetings. Isn’t there a way could help them see that they could be using our CRM to help their team work better from home?
 
Jack
 
Dear Jack,
Meetings aren’t all bad – and can be a great way to stay socially connected. However, we know that in general internal meetings are:

• Expensive (Employees aren’t selling or billing) AND
• Inefficient (Good weather today? Can you hear me? Sorry, bad connection

​Dear Amy,
I am sure you have heard the saying – You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. 

Your efforts need to be focused on the “What’s in it for them” approach.  Package your training and communications on what the benefits are and productivity savings they get out of using CRM.  

​Most CRM systems fail because upper management, IT, marketing, sales, customer service, and others who use the software do not establish clear, well-defined, measurable goals. Consequently, it can be difficult or impossible to determine the effectiveness of a CRM system.
​ 
This happens because CRM is often thought of as a technology solution for a company's business; however, CRM is a really a business solution.
 
Even if when your company deployed CRM you did not have defined measurable goals or had ill-defined goals, you can “mend" a failed CRM, in four simple steps.

What an interesting week we had. It just underscored how important it is to approach working Dynamics 365/CRM from a process and change management vantage point rather than as a technology. We saw the following:
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• Manufacturer with 30 account reps > They knew that they were missing something for getting the value out of their CRM and Marketing Automation system.  InfoGrow stepped in with an assessment and found that their system had been configured wrong.  Not only was it costing them money with web form hosting and significant additional database space charges, it was costing them productivity time due to poor performance and account rep confusion.  We made the necessary corrections and are building them a roadmap for the next 12 months to guide their maturity with Dynamics and ClickDimensions. 

What is so special about Marketing Automation vs. continuing to drop bulk emails?
-- Amy
 
Dear Amy,
​
If you are concerned about the low click-rates of your bulk emails, or being seen as a spammer, or your messages always only “selling” this week’s special offer, then you might want to look beyond bulk emails and at marketing automation.  

​Want more and better leads? Of course you do!
 
The key to getting rock-solid sales leads is understanding your best lead sources – and how you can find more prospects just like your best customers. Customer relationship management software like Dynamics 365 for Sales / Dynamics CRM can help you:
 

• Identify your best lead sources
• See the big picture
• Accelerate the sales and marketing process

 
If you’re in a sales management or executive position within your company, see if you can easily answer these three questions: 

Marketing Automation software serves a company's marketing department beyond what a CRM system does, and a CRM system serves sales and other departments. When integrated, Marketing Automation and CRM tools enhance each other, resulting in even more and better-qualified leads and, ultimately, more sales and satisfied customers. If you have one of these productivity tools, here are reasons to have both, in a single, centrally located, easy to use, integrated system.

Most software ROI calculations are built off of two tenets: sell more or cut cost. The problem that most organizations run into is that they have no solid numbers to address either; “sell how much more”, or “save how much time” are elusive concepts.

I suggest that there are three fundamental business objectives that sales, marketing and service must focus on: find more customers like our best ones, keep the ones we want, and increase profitable transactions.  The way to justify a CRM system is to start by asking:  "What is the cost of inaction in effectively supporting and measuring progress associated with these three fundamental business objectives?"

The most fundamental requirement for growing a business is having sound sales processes that can be tracked, measured, and audited. Such processes must be written down and followed closely, not shared through word-of-mouth like an urban legend. A documented sales processes allow your clients to create a repeatable blueprint for success.

So where do they keep such data and monitor their results?

I am often asked by managers how to improve the user acceptance of their CRM system. In the eyes of the questioner, the answer lies in how to encourage, or even make, users use the platform more, in order for the organization to achieve their established expected benefits of investing in CRM. That’s the wrong focus.  The issue is not how do we get the user to use CRM, but rather, is the CRM itself designed to be useful to the user so that they want to use it. Although the difference is subtle it should not be overlooked.

​Today's CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is better than yesterday's because: (a) CRM systems can now deliver greater productivity returns and (b) vendors' software usability is much improved. These advancements (and others) mean less time and lower costs to implement a CRM system. And the more people in a given company who use a CRM system translates to more benefits and a higher ROI on a CRM investment. Research notes that for every dollar a company invests in a CRM system, it earns $5.60.
 
But not everyone who has a CRM system is experiencing the expected return and, thus, some are CRM haters. It may depend on how you choose and implement your CRM system. To help you get the most from your CRM, here are some common mistakes and ways to avoid them.

As reported in DestinationCRM.com, the most recent “CMO” Spend study by Gartner showed marketing budgets falling from a high of 12.1% of company revenue in 2016 to 11.3% in 2017. While cuts have varied across industries, retail and manufacturing were the hardest hit. While retail is going through some major changes, the study suggests that “manufacturing is adapting to emerging yet complex B2B2C opportunities”.

​Some B2B companies run their sales and marketing activities with Excel because it is easy to use and well known by employees. However, to more efficiently manage and profitably use data, other B2Bs use a relational-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management). A CRM consists of a database and a user-interface with which you can easily create, update, manage, process, share, and report data across the organization.
 
While Excel spreadsheets are great calculators, they are not good as a shareable database. That is because, in part, Excel has no relational tables and limited interface capabilities. Excel becomes cumbersome and difficult to manage with thousands of items.

If your account reps could sell more, marketing could target better, and customer service was more responsive to key accounts, life would be great, wouldn't it?  It may not be as hard as you think using CLV with Microsoft Dynamics 365/  CRM.

​You’ve probably heard that it costs less to keep and grow an existing customer than to acquire a new one.  And it’s true. But, for many organizations this truism seems to have fallen on deaf ears, as companies still spend a large amount of their time and resources on chasing after new, potential clients.  Even then, their efforts can be fragmented and the results less than desirable.  This is hard to understand because keeping and growing current customers, and finding new ones like them does not have to be hard.

I am often asked by managers how to improve the user acceptance of their CRM system. In the eyes of the questioner, the answer lies in how to encourage, or even make, users use the platform more, in order for the organization to achieve their established expected benefits of investing in CRM. That’s the wrong focus.  The issue is not how do we get the user to use CRM, but rather, is the CRM itself designed to be useful to the user so that they want to use it. Although the difference is subtle it should not be overlooked.

I was reminded this week of how much fun this business can be working with clients. As I met with three different clients on their Dynamics Roadmap for the next few quarters, it reminded me of why I am in this business of strengthening customer engagement.
​
Each of the clients has been with us for some time and each understand the value of CRM to the organization’s profitability and growth. However, it was good to hear that they also view CRM as a tool to strengthen a deeper relationship with their clients for all the various touch points that they have with the client.  CRM is a tool to guide existing and new users in their behaviors while getting everyone in marketing, sales and customer service on the same page with the client needs. 

Generating leads and acquiring new customers is the lifeblood of every organization. Many organizations believe that satisfied customers and referrals are their best sources of leads. That’s certainly a sound principle and something to strive for but unless you’re measuring and tracking where your leads are coming from, this belief is anecdotal and little more than company lore.