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Category Archives: CRM
Use Social Media to Sell More: LinkedIn-Facebook-MySpace
CRM is built on the premise of fostering long term relationships. Often however, personal information on prospects, customers, vendors, partners and suppliers eludes us. Most CRM systems have static information. The resulting profiles inevitably lack information about hobbies, interests, and relationships outside our native CRM. Applications and networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are changing all that.
Imagine being able to find relevant information about a new prospect instantly and before making your first sales call. You can discover common bonds such as a sports team, music, favorite books and restaurants. Clearly the probability of a successful sales call increases significantly when we are able to establish and share interests.
In a similar way an existing customer who has a relationship with a new prospect can help us establish rapport and increase our success rate. Simply we can ask our client for an introduction. As we know referrals are the strongest means to new business.
Faceforce for “Appexchange complements traditional CRM data with dynamically updated personal data and photos. The integration pulls Facebook profile information into your Salesforce Account, Lead, and Contact records in real time, providing a full view of customers, prospects, and business associates.”
The LinkedIn Company Insider widget allows you to paste a Javascript into your HTML page to instantly discover relationships. Try it and also use the script for your own site.
See the LinkedIn Widget page for more information
Example HTML using the popup method:
<html>
<head>
<script src="http://www.linkedin.com/companyInsider?script&useBorder=yes" language="javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
LinkedIn <span id="li"></span> is a wonderful networking tool for professionals.
<script type="text/javascript">
new LinkedIn.CompanyInsiderPopup("li","LinkedIn");
</script>
</body>
</html>
How-to Retain Customers Using CRM
When organizations implement their CRM, the concentration is often on demand generation and getting new customers. Attracting customers can be 10 times more costly than retaining your existing clients. How a company interacts with its customers across all touch points is important not just in terms of the customer experience, but also in tangible terms such as customer loyalty and retention. Customer loyalty is a tangible. If you doubt this, just calculate the average revenue each of your customers contributes to your profitability.
Opportunities coming from the internet, bricks and mortar, referrals, e-mail, lead generation efforts, customer service and support must all be engaged with a connected focus. CRM must bond all these touch points to provide clients a seamless experience. Moreover, having a CRM ecosystem that shares the right information at the right time also increases sales to existing customers.
Imagine customer service sharing with sales customers and profiles based on solid business rules that identify new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Effectively and proactively implementing such strategies will result in greater profits and customer satisfaction. Customer service can become a profit center launching many sales opportunities.
Implementing CRM that is specific to your company requires more than customizing some fields. You must engineer your instance to reflect a cohesive customer centric experience. Aligning with industry specific best practices and your ‘business model’ builds your brand and long-term success.