The CRM as it has been

There are so many vendors, so many solutions, so many different marketing packages, but all the CRM solutions come down to the same:
A CRM a relational data base having:
- Input forms: leads, customers, projects, salesmen, products
- Search screens: on all the above and many of their combinations
- Reports using the same data

Standard relational data base systems
All the CRM solutions are based on the standard Structured Query Language (SQL) statements for inserting, appending and retrieving information in or from the relational data base.

In order to imagine what is a relational data base: a spreadsheet where the different worksheets are the tables with data:
- The rows of each worksheet are the records: a record for every customer
- The columns are the fields: customer name, customer address,…
Several worksheets make up the complete information about the customers: contact details, contact history, projects,…
SQL allows to querying and inserting data into the different tables.
More on CRM and relational data base here.

In order to solve more complex problems of data located in different tables, the different relational data base tables are being joined.
All these features and methods are standard for relational data base systems.

All this relational data base technology was commercially available on a large scale since the mid-eighties from several vendors: like Oracle and several others. Thus there is nothing technically new since long ago.

Variations on the same CRM theme
Many flavors and other approaches have been created addressing different segments of the market: CRM for call centers, CRM for after sales, CRM small businesses, CRM for project companies, …
All of them are variations on the same pattern: a relational data base with entry forms and reports.

Web service as innovation?

Since 2000 the new technology feature is offering a CRM as a web service (Saas Software as a service), eliminating the setup, running costs and no IT expertise required.
However this is no innovation as the functions and features remained the same.

Mobile CRM

At the same time several attempts have been made to use the CRM on mobile phones.
The high cost of mobile data communication has limited the adoption of mobile CRM.
Thanks to the availability of Wifi, the cost of mobile CRM has become affordable.
As the quality of the displays of mobile phones is increasing CRM on your mobile will become a standard feature.

Disruptive changes in business

Since the nineties email, Internet and mobile communications have been introduced and have changed radically the way people do business.
As businesses have undergone disruptive changes in their methods of work it is time to change the CRM too.

Disruptive changes in CRM

New innovative CRM solutions are required in order to cope with the changes:
A solution which helps the sales and marketing people by collecting all the electronic available data from multiple sources:
- The email communications
- The Internet: company website data, news feeds, social website data
- The website where your leads and customers visit: visit data
- The intranet for data from within the company

Instead of a data entry and reporting system, the CRM needs to change into an aggregator of data from different sources.

All data that already exists in electronic format needs to be used by the CRM, without being re-entered, for lead generation, customer nurturing and selling.

The evolution of CRM:
1. The first new solutions have aggregated the email communications by customer.

2. Then solutions have integrated information available on the Internet.

3. A next step is to integrate the visit data from your website by company (leads and customers).

4. Finally the information locked up within disparate systems within the company will need to be integrated. This is the most difficult as there is no standard or uniform data storage use and no uniform data retrieval available.

The benefits of CRM changes:
This change is very disruptive from the fairly simple data entry and reporting systems to complex data aggregator systems that will serve sales and marketing in order to:
- Better lead generation
- Improve nurturing customers
- Increase sales
- Decrease significantly the amount of administrative work and time wasted
Thus increasing profits.

Note: LEADSExplorer provides email, Internet and website visit data aggregation as a web service.

Customer retention costs less than generating new leads and acquiring customers as the latter is a long lead and sales process.
Retaining your customers is at a fraction of the cost as you are already within their trusted vendors circle and know the decision makers.

There are 3 problems when nurturing your customers

The frequency
How frequently will you communicate to them?
- Too often and they will not pay notice anymore
- Not enough and they might forget about you

The content
- Information needs to be relevant
- Information should not repeat previous messages
If not relevant and repeat messages, there will be a decrease in getting their attention.

The timing
- When to call, email?
- When to visit your contacts at their offices?
If they don’t call or email you, then you don’t know:
- When to call
- What they are planning or not

Solution: visit alerting web services

If there is a renewed interest in your solutions, then customers will visit your website again.
In order to be alerted when your customer is visiting your website, you only need a web service that alerts when the company or your contacts are visiting your website again.

The frequency:
If the frequency is too high, then the interest represented by the visit quantity and duration of visits drops.
You will be able to measure this by their activity on your website.

The content:
If the content isn’t matching their interest or not relevant, they will:
- Not visit
- Immediately click to pages with other subjects.
If you repeat your content you will see your number of visits by company dropping.

The timing:
When they visit you can contact at the moment of their interest knowing their interest by the pages visited.

Thanks to this web service you will be:
- Prepared for the questions to ask and better prepared for the questions they will ask.
- Providing appropriate information as you know their interest by the pages visited.

The benefits are:
- Saving time for both your sales force as for your customers
- Limit efforts
- Limit marketing expenses
while increasing your revenue.

These solutions are to be found in “Post-click marketing analytics” or “Website visitor identification“.

How do you measure your nurturing?

Putting aside all the negative news and the amazement of the Madoff $50 Billion Ponzi fraud scheme entangling many finance institutions, the rich and the famous, there is the question how did Bernie Madoff achieved this?
How did he convince people to invest so much money and such a large portion of their assets in his investment operation?

How did he sell?

1. Trust
He was former chairman and was on the board of governors of the Nasdaq Stock Market. That has enormous trust.
Moreover most of his customers were living in the same area (New York and Florida) and were playing golf on the same golf courses.
Moreover his busienss address was very appropriate: East 64th Street, a few blocks off Central park in New York.

You have to be trusted or trustworthy by a reference.
Preferably a reference of a well known name as people assume well known names should know better than they do.
Having an address in an expensive neighborhood can help too.

2. Don’t show your need for a sale
To all his investors he said to start with a small investment and if you’re happy after the first year or two, you can put more in it.

This is an important part of the sales success:
- Don’t show you are in need for a sale.
- You have to have the attitude as if you don’t care if the potential customer signs the deal or not.

3. Proof benefit soon and bring confidence
Investing in Madoff Investment Securities LLC brought steady growth and returns quarter after quarter, year after year (10-12 percent).

Bring benefit (tangible or intangible) to your customer early after they have bought.
People do want to see results of their investment or expenses.

4. The word of mouth
As several investors had been investing with Bernard Madoff decades ago, new investors were being referred by a friend or relative who had known the Wall Street veteran even longer.

This is the most difficult to obtain: how can you achieve a word of mouth campaign, where people actually are promoting your products as they have become your advocates.
You have to aim for and hope to succeed.
Making customers happy helps.

5. Privilege – exclusivity
Madoff only took on new clients only reluctantly and if it was a favor.

Don’t go after all leads.
Don’t try to close on all opportunities.
Of course everybody needs sales.

6. Philanthropy and Charity
Madoff used charity probably to show his kindness: The Madoff Family Foundation was a multimillion-dollar private foundation that donated money to hospitals, art and theaters.

If you can spend money for a good cause, you are showing that you are not in need for money. Spending on and taking time for charity brings relationships and status: respect.
Thus find a good cause or charity project and spend time and money to support it.
The returns will be bigger than you expect.

7. Sell on sports events
Madoff used playing golf to get into contact with wealthy people.
In order to sell to the European financial institutions he used ski competition events organized by the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Thus if you are a sportsman, use your interest in sports to sell during the activity or at events.

Stick to these rules and your sales should fly.

This is a quote by Warren Buffett: “Be fearful when everyone is greedy. Be greedy when everyone is fearful“.

The Bernie Madoff (The Wallstreet’s Wizzard of Oz) Ponzi fraud scheme relied upon the greed of the rich people.(see victims list or here)
In those days we all should have been fearful.
This era is hopefully gone.

Maybe now it is time to be greedy as everyone (even the rich people and famous) have become fearful.

Gordon Gekko said: “Greed is good“, but apparently “Greed Kills” even the rich and famous.

In relation the question about to companies that are narrowing focus or in this recession panic filled time trying to please everyone, Drew McLellan refers in his blog wrongly to Mark Twain: “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
Which is actually a quote of Herbert B. Swope.

Still the question remains the same:
Will you
- Try to maintain and focus on your current products, solutions and market
   Or
- Try to sell any product version or develop a new solution in order to capturing leads and acquiring customers?

Reaction upon recession
If the market is retreating or shrinking is size, wouldn’t it be best to focus on your opportunities: the market segment with the highest margins and the lowest expenses?

In the current economic situation trying to expand by pleasing everybody is probably a death end as it will cost too much money, effort and time for R&D, development, product management, marketing, sales, logistics and support.
More products or more solutions will just cost more money to develop, promote and maintain, which in harsh times seems not appropriate.

Doesn’t it seem better to stick to your current products or solutions in your markets where you are still successful?
Aim for keeping and gain market share in this market segment with the best product or solution offering.

What will you or what are you already doing?

Natural search of Fortune 500 companies

According to the report from Conductor, a New York-based search/analytics agency, the visibility of the Fortune 500 companies in natural search is extremely limited for these keywords they have the most interest in paid search as reported by SearchEngineLand.
You can get a copy of the report here.

According to Conductor the Fortune 500 companies have:
- Limited presence in natural search: 28%
- A low or mid presence in search results: 20%
- A low or non-existent visibility for their most advertised keywords: 72%
Thus the Fortune 500 companies are scoring badly in SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

The large companies are paying for the Internet services thanks to their advertising spending and the small to medium sized companies get listed in the search results for free.

Fortune 500 laggard reasons

Large companies offer and support many products or solutions creating internal competition between their own products for interest from the Search Engines.
It is not only many the offering but also the multiple of audiences to address, the multiple languages in many countries and the hierarchical problems.
Additionally there is the problem of regulations from the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) for public traded companies limiting as what they can disclose or not, slowing down all communication processes and opportunities.

On the other hand small to medium sized companies have a limited number of products or solutions that much easily promoted to the search engines.
Thus the large companies get outranked in search through their own distributors and resellers.

As the Internet and the search algorithms change frequently, the larger companies have problems adapting to these new rules of the game, whereas smaller companies can react quickly thanks to the short decision lines.
This seems like the survival of the fittest (Herbert Spencer): The natural selection (Darwin).

Blogging and posting comments

Moreover the smaller company can:
- Have the CEO write a blog that increases presence on the Internet.
- Post comments on other blogs that generate interest and links.

A Fortune 500 company will:
- Have problems editing the blog as they have too many issues with the communication and who will take credit or liability?
- Not be allowed to post comments on any blog as it takes to much time to get approvals in order to participate in the conversation.

Advantage: small and medium companies

The small and medium sized companies take advantage of this fact and should be grateful that the Internet is paid by the larger companies through the paid advertising, for the keywords the smaller take advantage of.
For the first time in history a smaller company can beat a big company in the media, still they need to acquire and prove trust.

As Seth Godin wrote this summer: “Small is the new Big”
Are large corporations doomed due to the Internet, management and legislations?

So you blog. That’s great.
However are you a bit successful?
- Number of subscribers to your RSS
- Number of comments on average on a blog post
- Number of bookmarks
- Number of links from other blogs
- Ranking on Technorati
- Number of visitors on your blog
Still great or is this appalling?

Is it worth the effort and time?

Maybe you should reconsider and switch over to just posting comments on blogs for many reasons:

The No Need reasons for commenting

1. No need to set up a blogging subject, concept
A blog needs to have a concept
A comment not: Just shoot from the hip.

2. No need to build an audience
Writing a blog is one thing, getting readers is a different thing
A blog needs to build an audience over time or the blog needs to get subscribers on the RSS feed which takes time too.
A comment on a blog steals the readers of the blog post.

3. No technical hassle
No need for RSS or any other technical aspects (installing, linking to your website, setup, layout, formatting)

4. No need to promote your blog
A blog needs to be promoted like a product
Promoting by registration, posting comments on other blogs, writing posts for other blogs as guest author.

5. No need to register and claim your blog
In the myriad of blog aggregators you can get lost. Each of them have different requirements and it takes time to register and claim your blog on all these sites. In several cases the procedures are not working causing some frustration.

6. No need to stick to your subject
A blog needs to build a community and the subject can not be changed.
Posting comments are one shot – “hit and run” – actions that can address different matters and different audiences.

7. No need for continuity
A blog requires regular posting thus a continuous stream of content.
Commenting can be done when you find the subject, just when it suits your case.
There is no time pressure.
Commenting can be discontinued for a while without negative effect as nobody is waiting for your next comment.
If you don’t post on your blog regularly several times a week, your audience will forget about your blog.

8. No need for missing SEO (Do-Follow blogs)
If you post on “Do-Follow” blogs then your link to your website that sits under your name gets indexed and is good for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Especially in case the blog has a Pagerank of 5 or higher you will score for your website.
Additionally your comments can appear in search results too.

9. No need investing much time and effort
A blog post requires an investigation on the matter, writing content and layout which requires time.
A comment is a reply or add-on to a blog post that requires much less time and effort.

10. No need to illustrate the blog post
A blog post without an image or illustration scores less high with the readers and the blog aggregation sites.
A comment doesn’t require an image.

11. No need to compete
Currently the popular and high ranked blogs are in most cases team work: written by several people in order to maintain originality and sufficient content.
Commenting can be handled by one person on many blogs.

12. No need to be consistent
In a comment you can have multiple and even different visions and opinions, whereas a blogger you need to stick to your vision and opinion.

13. No need to please your reader
In a blog you need to please your reader in order to keep him reading and give him value for his time.
A comment is just another opinion that can have the opposite opinion than the blog post or the general opinion of the readers of the blog.

14. No need to be entertaining
Blogging is a part of the entertainment that people enjoy.
A comment doesn’t need to be entertaining, just remarkable or to the point is enough.

Finding blogs to comment on

The best overview is Alltop that has blogs ordered by category or matters.
Top blog lists can also be found on the Internet like on Technorati.
You can search for “Do-Follow” blogs using InlineSEO.

If you want to comment on blogs, you need to know the blog content and context.
Make sure your comments a valuable and add to the blog post.
Don’t spam as spamming will turn against you and your website quickly.

Will you keep blogging or will you switch over to posting comments? (Start with this blog for instance)

R&D or development

R&D or development needs to design and develop the products.
They can explore different methods or systems to obtain the aimed goal of the solution or product.

Production use of resources

Production has to build the products or solutions according the design at the best price and with the least use of resources or optimize the use of the available resources.

Marketing to communicate

Marketing sends out their communication message aimed at a certain group of people. Their messages can be received by the potential customers, but also by many other people.
Marketing has the advantage to test their messages during small trials.

Marketing is about spreading the word, distributing information and generating interest.
Marketing is about addressing large numbers of people, where one person more or less isn’t that important.
Marketing is part of the preparation part of the sales cycle.

Sales needs to score alone

In sales the building of relations and communications are to be personalized and adjusted to the moment, circumstances and conditions.
The salesman needs to be spot-on with his communication. He has not much room for error.
Still the salesman can adjust his message during his conversation with the different people involved. This allows for some kind of freedom the salesman has during the sales process.

Selling is about direct or face to face communication moving to the goal of closing a deal.
During this process the Salesman is in most cases left on his own, with no fall back on other departments.

The Salesman needs to close

Sales is about:
- Retaining the interest of the lead
- Defining the problem to be solved
- Bringing, serving and positioning the solution
- Convincing the proposed solution is the best suited
- Converting leads into sales (into money)

As in the picture: the man is trying to sell products made by crafted people and he needs to convince the tourists to buy. If he fails, all the people relying upon him will fail too.

In the end it is the salesman, who closes the deal and makes the company operate.
The future of the company depends on him – everyday.
Thus the entire company should be helping and serving the Salesman in order to close deals or bring more sales to the company.

This would make the Salesmen the most important people in the company.
Would this make the Salesman king of the company?

What is the status of the Salesmen in your company?

In corporate blogs they don’t trust

According to Forrester Research Corporate blogging is ranking at the bottom of trustworthiness.
People just don’t trust company blogs states Josh Bernoff after his research as only 16% of those who read them trust them.
You can download the report here (registration required).

AttentionMax is the opinion that Forrester has it completely wrong as blogs are a communications channel and a medium.
This is pointing to the Cluetrain Manifesto that has been defined 10 years ago that markets are conversations to start with.

Rethinking corporate blogging

Thus it may be time to rethink your corporate blogging as it is a serious investment for any company; moreover most corporate blogs are boring as Debbie Weil points out.

On the other hand, according to Chris Bagot; if you can tell stories that your customers or potential customers recognize, then you have the change to have an audience.

As Mitch Joel writes, real blogs need to be written by real people and will require time and effort to build a community and to engage in it.
You have to build and earn trust over a longer time frame. 

Corporate blogging requires continuity, quality content, and dedication and in the end the result can be minimal as hardly anyone trusts your writings.
Moreover the blog cannot change the subjects too much as then it starts addressing a different audience and thus losing the already acquired community.

Solutions: micro blogging or posting comments

The quick and easy: Micro blogging
Instead of writing and editing long blog posts, micro blogging is easier, faster to produce but will have the same problem of trustworthiness and the requirements to obtain an audience (the Followers) and stay within the same matters and subjects in order not to loose them (Quitters).

Be the parasite: Posting comments
Posting comments is of a different kind, as they don’t require continuity:
A comment is a one time event that doesn’t require having the same quality all of the time.
Commenting can be seen as a parasite living on the work and popularity of others.
- You don’t need to build a community
- You don’t need to generate the same level of quality
- You can address different subjects and matters as each of the blogs have their audience and community.

The comments live upon the popularity of the blogs like parasites.
If your comments are valuable, they will generate traffic to your company or product website from many different sources.

Still each comment on a post is retrievable by name and subject and the Internet together with the search engines have a long memory.

Never forget that your comments need to match and be appropriate to the blog post in order not to be considered as spam.

Comments can also be used against your company, products or solutions as they address the public beyond your potential or current customers.

Advice

The take of ReadWriteWeb on the Forrester company blog research is:
If your corporate blog is successful and meets its goals, keep on going. If it doesn’t, then can it.

Our additional advice is: if blogging doesn’t work, then consider to posting comments on blogs that are popular and are addressing your market( See: Alltop blogs by market)

Will you keep on blogging?
Or will you switch over to posting comments like a parasite?

The oldest marketing discussion

The oldest discussion in the Marketing book as Joel Mitch of Twist Image states:
- focus on keeping your existing clients engaged and thrilled
or
- teasing and convincing a new Consumer over to your brand?

Lead generation for customer acquisition

Companies spend on most of their marketing budget on lead generation and customer acquisition, forgetting about customer retention, even though most of the revenue will come from existing customers.

Marketing will go through many efforts and expenses like advertising, trade shows, email campaigns, landing pages in order to acquire new leads.

It is like shooting in the dark in the hope to hit someone. Thus waste a lot of ammunition (money) and effort.

Once a lead is found and qualified, the prospect needs to be nurtured and converted into a customer.
The road to obtain a customer is long and expensive.

Make existing customers to buy

Mark Klein of LONGBOW has a new perspective on lead generation: “Retention is the new acquisition“. This is based upon the fact that existing customers can bring increased revenue at a lower marketing and sales cost than new lead acquisitions.

Instead of getting more and more new leads, it is more economical to focus on the existing customers for increasing your revenue without increasing your marketing expenses significantly.
Making to buy your existing customers more frequently.
The facts are that your current customers:
- Have already been convinced of you products or services.
- Can be kept up-to-date with your changes in offerings by newsletters
- Call on regular time intervals.
- Could inform with you for the next purchase.

The goal of your communications or relationship is to try to engage your customer in order to make them buy more frequently.
This can be selling the same products or solutions as before, or cross-selling (s8eight) or up-selling (Jim Connolly).
If you want to increase your sales at a low cost, then focus on retaining your customers.

Where pays your company most attention to? Generating leads or nurturing customers?