CRM New Years Resolutions
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One of the problems with New Years Resolutions is that they typically have to do with your personal life and it’s tough to keep going with them once you get back to work. So, here’s some new years resolutions that will improve your bottom line and, therefore, give you the flexibility to get outside and become the champion you know you can be!
Love your customer
There’s nothing like an out of date customer database. Full of customer contacts who have retired, or worse. The information hasn’t been kept up to date so when they call in you really have no idea if the information you’re looking at is accurate. That means you don’t get engaged and appear slow to find answers.
2009 is the year you’ll clean up your customer information. There’s no better way to do that than to implement a new system! It’s very cathartic. But, if that isn’t in the cards, schedule some time for your team to call customers, tell them that you care, and update the records. You’ll feel better, they’ll feel better, and I’ll bet you turn up some opportunities for more business.
Show Progress
Is your sales team down in the dumps? Do you field the same complaints over and over about the tools they have to use? There is real value in picking some key pieces of technology and improving them.
Your business systems, CRM, ERP, Support, are what sits in front of users all day. Well, that and email. Giving users modern technology that works they way they expect can do wonders to motivate people. People like to work for companies that invest in productivity.
Show Results
It’s pretty common knowledge that we all need praise now and again. And the younger the person it seems like it needs to be a bit more regular. Personally I like to be given compliments on an hourly basis…
So how long does it take for you to get the information you need on someones productivity? What hoops do you have to jump through to show your boss that report that confirms you are the rock star of the team?
Implement a system that gives, in real time, a snapshot of what your team is up to. It could be sales, website hits, calls made, quotes delivered, cases closed, or forecast accuracy. If you have a dashboard with immediate access to these things it’s a lot easier to call someone up and say “Nice job, thanks for the fine effort”
Fix Problems Faster
If problems would get fixed faster we’d all be that much farther ahead. 2009 is the year that you put in place a system to give everyone in your company visibility into internal, and customer “issues.”
Customers do actually like to know that their issue is being tracked. So if you’ve waited to move away from that excel spreadsheet or stand alone application for tech support maybe now’s the time to look at a tool that can set off fireworks if problems lag for too long.
Go Mobile
One way to make everyone in your firm a lot happier is to offer a little flex time. Working from home can do wonders for your carbon footprint. And, it lets you check on things from the golf course. Shhh. If you give employees access to your systems no matter where they are, you’ll notice that stress levels come down a bit. No need to hammer out some quotes before racing off to pick up the kids at 5. You’ll see people logging in after hours to clean up tasks.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll get an extra 3 hours or work out of people. It just means that by having options, everyone will feel that much better about the work they do do.
Oh, and, from personal experience, trying to remote desktop to the office, or trying to sync apps is not good for anyones morale! Go for a nice, tasty, hosted app.
Eliminate Double Data Entry
It’s 2009. Isn’t it time that you got away from exporting and importing data from a million different systems as a Lead becomes a Customer? Now doing a system integration isn’t exactly everyone’s definition of a good time, but maybe having an integrated system is?
Good Luck
Perhaps the above resolutions give you some ideas. Perhaps they prompt you to take a look at a system like NetSuite or it’s competitors.
