For every business that has adopted Customer Relationship Management software, they also need a CRM strategy.
Whilst the benefits of CRM are universal, every company is unique.
As such, you need to not only choose the right CRM, but consider the optimum CRM strategy.
Doing so will ensure the technology works for you, fits to your operation and maximises impact and output.
What Is A CRM Strategy?
A CRM strategy is an extension of your company’s goals and objectives.
Whether in relation to boosting revenue, improving customer experience or reducing wastage, CRM technology sits at the heart of the strategy.
With a robust, tailored CRM strategy you can gather invaluable customer data, convert it into actionable insights and streamline communications or enhance best practice workflows.
“The most important, and only adage is, the customer comes first.”
Kerry Stokes
CRM strategy allows you to put your most valuable asset first. Your customers.
Creating Your CRM Strategy
When it comes to creating your own CRM strategy, there are 9 simple steps to follow.
These can be broken down into “before” and “after” stages, falling either side of adopting CRM technology itself.
Each is vital for long term, customer centric success. Let’s take a look…
Before CRM
Audit The Existing
The first step is to do an in depth audit of your existing setup.
This can range from reviewing processes, studying shifting consumer trends or analysing the competition to find where you can win.
Without doing so you have no yard stick from which to measure improvement.
Nor can you pick the right CRM to suit your needs.
Outline Your Goals
Speaking of improvement, what are you specifically looking for your CRM strategy to achieve?
This will vary significantly depending on your circumstances.
But whether you’re running showrooms, online retail or a combination of both you need to be clear on what you want to do with your information and why.
Not only will this make measuring progress much simpler, it will be aligned to your overall strategy to ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Identify Ideal Customers
The traits of your ideal customer will dictate the information you want to gather as well as how it should be stored and acted upon.
You want to have a firm understanding of who your ideal customer is.
Only then can you appropriately reach them and cultivate long lasting, meaningful relationships.
Understand The Buyer Journey
Directly linked to knowing your customers, you need to have an appreciation for their desired buying journey and how that is interwoven with your processes.
Are they sector educated, requiring minimal engagement that is loaded with complex terminology?
Or do they need to have their hand held, with lots of contact and explainers to increase trust and reassurance?
As your customer base grows, you will have different buyer journeys across different mediums and channels for your different customer segments.
By acknowledging and accounting for variation, you can better service your target audience through thoughtful communications rather than creating blanket engagements that satisfy no one.
After CRM
Establish Your Why
Make sure everyone understands the importance of CRM. And more importantly, why you’re using it.
It should be clear for everyone in the business why collecting accurate customer data and applying it to individual opportunities can make a major difference to your and your customer’s success.
This is especially useful if multiple teams are contributing to maintaining customer relationships, helping reduce duplication and reconciliation of data.
Ultimately, your CRM strategy is about improving internal operations for external customer experience.
Ensure needs to know that.
Agree KPIs
Prior to implementation, you should’ve outlined your goals.
Now you need to establish the metrics by which you can gauge success and mark milestones of progress.
By communicating these across the team, everyone understands what is being tracked and why.
Once your staff knows who or which department owns what, they are further empowered to better collaborate and communicate with one another.
Predicting The Future
Once you start gathering enough customer data, you can begin to glean insights about what you can expect moving forward.
Trends will emerge that allow you to predict outcomes based on YOUR data, for individual customers to the company as a whole.
Predictive analytics elevates your insight from acknowledgement to action.
It can help your company gain competitive advantages and adjust your operation to meet shifting client needs ahead of the curve.
Your CRM strategy should shift in line with your knowledge. It is a passive approach to customer experience, rather than reactive.
Single Source of Truth
With one central hub for customer data, instantly accessible to all across the business, your CRM becomes your single source of customer truth.
In your CRM strategy, outline processes that will make this a reality, including employee education, keeping data error-free, and system integrations.
Customer-Centricity
Every CRM strategy is geared toward the customer.
And the future of CRM is about connecting your whole team to serve the customer in a more holistic way.
This won’t happen without careful planning to put the customer at the heart of everything you do.
Ready to explore how Anthill can help you develop a CRM strategy? Schedule a demo today.
Intrigued to learn more? Check out our Insights Hub to keep your business at the cutting edge.
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