CRM Strategy and How to Implement

How to Implement a CRM Strategy

Today, many companies need a CRM strategy. This article introduces the basics of this strategy, so refer to it.

In this age of overflowing goods and services, high-quality goods and services do not always sell. In most cases, there are many similar products on the market, and they are not unique. Ten years ago, you could have increased your market share by selling high quality, but today’s customers are always looking for the best fit.

It does not have to be high performance, and it does not have to be multifunctional, and as long as it can solve my current issues, I consider it the best product for me. This trend has intensified as the Internet has improved and devices such as smartphones have become more widespread.

Customers can now actively gather the information they need and can easily compare products with each other. In such an era, can you survive in the marketplace with conventional marketing activities alone? The answer is No.

What is a CRM strategy?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

To understand the importance of CRM strategy, imagine that you own a bakery. There are five bakeries in the city, and your store is located the furthest away from the train station. There is no significant difference in taste, quality, or price range, and now there is a big difference in sales due to a simple difference in location. Naturally, the bakery sales near the station where people gather the most are the highest, and the further away from the station, the lower. What do you think your store should do to make the best sales out of this?

One of the answers is a CRM strategy. It is easier to increase sales if you create opportunities for customers who have visited your store once to come back a second or third time, rather than conducting activities to attract new customers. In short, by building a good relationship through communication with customers and increasing the number of times they visit your store, you will be able to secure continuous and stable sales.

Although the industry is different, I believe many companies are in the same situation as this bakery. In such a case, it is necessary to implement a CRM strategy to retain customers and keep them doing business with your company for a longer time.

What are the benefits of a CRM strategy?

CRM strategy is not about funnily communicating with your customers and making friendships with them. It is more strategic and involves implementing various measures and pursuing the goods and services that customers want. And when you implement a CRM strategy, you get a lot more benefits than just retaining customers. Let’s organize the benefits here.

Knowing the deeper needs of your customers

There are two types of needs and issues that customers have: superficial and deep. 

Superficial needs are those that come from the mouth of the customer. Since the customers themselves are aware of them, it is not difficult to provide solutions to them. The problem is that customers do not talk about or are not aware of their needs. If you can understand your customers’ deep needs, you can offer various solutions from a different perspective than your competitors.

Providing customized products and services for each customer

As mentioned above, today’s customers are looking for the best-fit products that directly address their needs and issues. They do not want high performance or multiple functions, which they consider to be the cause of increased costs. What if you could provide customized goods and services for each customer? It will give you a high competitive advantage and further enhance the brand value of the company itself.

Improve customer support and increase customer satisfaction

A CRM strategy consolidates customer information in one place and relies on all the information to conduct business. A side effect of this is the enhancement of customer support. By compiling transaction information and past response history for each customer, it is possible to respond quickly and accurately to customers’ inquiries. Customers do not want to spend as much time as possible to solve their problems, so shortening the response time will increase customer satisfaction.

You can switch to a data-driven business with customer analysis

When implementing a CRM strategy, customer analysis is a must. By managing all the information collected from customers in one place and analyzing it, you can identify measures to invest intensively and understand what customers are looking for now. It is to promote data-driven business, which is one of the most required skills for future business.

In this way, there are many benefits to a CRM strategy. If done correctly, you can enjoy these benefits and expand your business, which is why a CRM strategy is still essential for many companies.

How to implement a CRM strategy

CRM strategy is not about being the customer’s errand boy and putting the customer first. It is about gathering all kinds of customer information and analyzing it to understand their needs and challenges, and providing them with solutions that they need. Therefore, the first thing that is required to promote a CRM strategy is a CRM system.

A CRM system is a software product that contains a set of systematized functions to implement a CRM strategy. By implementing a CRM system, you can consolidate your internal customer information in one place and use the system’s analysis functions to accelerate your efforts.

Salespeople will start to input customer information into the system, which they have input into Excel, and customer information will naturally accumulate. 

CRM strategy can be realized by systematically managing various information such as the details of each customer’s transactions, details of negotiations, information on the person in charge, impressions received by the sales staff, and visit history.

The next important thing is to gain an understanding of the CRM system from the sales force. In the early stages of implementation, many salespeople are reluctant to adopt the system because of the temporary increase in data entry burden. However, since the system is only as good as the data input, it is necessary to ask why the CRM system is being implemented. 

What is its significance? What are the benefits to salespeople? It is necessary to explain these points to the sales force to encourage them to use the system.

The last thing to keep in mind is that implementing a CRM system doesn’t always make your CRM strategy a success. CRM systems are just tools, and their effectiveness depends on how you handle them. Therefore, defining your company’s CRM strategy, selecting the right product in line with it, and having an operational plan in advance will increase your CRM strategy’s success rate.

I hope you will take this opportunity to consider implementing a CRM strategy and CRM system.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management