We make New Year’s resolutions for all sorts of areas in our life and business that we want to improve, why not for your CRM database? After all, there is no tool in your business that is more critical for the success of your business than your prospect & customer database!
Your marketing, sales, customer service, and business management all depend on the usage of your data on prospects, customers, and the activities of your staff. So improving your usage of CRM, as well as the data it contains, will directly impact the success of your firm and the livelihood of its employees!
Where do you start? What could you improve? Here’s a few suggestions:
- Increase awareness and ability of your users
- Find more ways to apply your system to business processes through better configuration, work flow, training, etc.
- Improve the quality of the data and more consistent usage
- Use analysis of the data as a basis for better decision making and giving feedback
- Make greater marketing efforts that leverage the lists and information
- Integrate with other systems and data in order to provide a more complete view of your customers
- Link the use of your CRM features to business objectives, strategies, and tactics
- Budget additional financial and personnel resources to get done what needs to be done with your CRM, and leverage the skills, abilities, and expertise of others who may not be in-house
Okay … as you know, this list is posted with a selfish motive by my firm. Is it bad to want to grow my business by helping you to grow yours? What is “bad” is neglecting your business by failing to achieve the results that are possible because for whatever reason you go another year without taking the steps above. Then again, we all keep our New Year’s resolutions. Hmmm … In other words, I am NOT here to guilt you – I am here to help you!
