CRM Insights - The CRM Blog

Actually, this blog has nothing to do with CRM. It also has nothing to do with business intelligence, software updates or even clever marketing tricks.

With the end of the financial year rapidly approaching many organisations are looking to bring in some last minute orders. What can you do to close sales quickly without reducing your price? Is it even possible to do quick deals whilst maintaining professional standards?

Sales management tools play a key role in any CRM system because it's the link between any business and its customers and prospects.

One of the sales team is planning on leaving, and they have access to your entire customer database. How worried should you be? How can you stop someone stealing your data? Would you even know if it had been stolen?

The new Alternative Business Structure (ABS) could herald major changes to the way that law firms conduct themselves. So called “Tesco Law” has the potential to attract clients away with aggressive retail marketing techniques. How can local independents survive in the new marketplace for legal services? How can you retain clients when they are being targeted by new competitors?

If you need to renew contracts with your customers on a regular basis, you'll know from experience that it's not always easy to keep track of exactly when you should call to arrange the renewal.

This is the final blog in a series that has looked at CRM Maturity as a tool to assist you in designing and implementing a successful CRM solution for your company. I've been involved with CRM over many years, and am convinced that it's an essential tool for modern businesses. Beyond helping you to acquire, retain and develop customers, what else can CRM do?

As the dark days of winter turn into the (hopefully) sunny days of spring, what better time to do a spring clean on your CRM data!

So far in this series of blog articles I have discussed CRM Maturity levels 1 and 2. I'm using CRM Maturity as a convenient method of describing where an organisation is and where it is trying to go with CRM. So why do I believe that the lion’s share of the CRM benefits are rarely achieved by companies? More importantly, how do you ensure that you get ALL of the benefits for your company?

In my last blog I wrote about CRM maturity as a tool to help organisations map a path from where they are today, to a successful CRM implementation. If you're looking to reap the benefits of CRM then having such a plan is essential. So how can you build a plan that maximises the returns on your hard work in creating a Single View of the Truth?