Leverage Your CRM System to Maximize Your Client Base

John Harrison

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Round Table Topic: Expert Advice on Leveraging Your CRM System to Survive This Economic Crunch

Ronald Lang, the CEO of Majestic Consulting Group offers our readers simple recommendations for leveraging your CRM system to maximize your client base. His insights help both product and service-based organizations discover new revenue opportunities.

Contributed by: Ronald Lang, CEO, Majestic Consulting Group, Inc.

A critical part of building your CRM strategic plan should be an effective “Customer Profile” to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.  While new customers come at an extreme premium today with longer sales cycles, existing clients would be more receptive to hear your offerings, especially if it can be a positive impact to their business.Take the following three recommendations if your business is primarily a product-based sales operation:

1. Are there products you have sold to a client in the last three years that have new accessories or a new model (or discontinuation of the current model)? – if so, this is a golden opportunity to setup a presentation with the client.
2. Do you have service-level agreements (SLA) with your clients?  This is an opportunity for you to strengthen your relationships with your client prior to the SLA’s coming due.  Reinforce your support commitment, response time and quality assurance.  The SLA coverage information should be tracked in your CRM system.
3. Do you have your clients organizations mapped out?  Meaning, if you have done well selling into one or more areas of the organization, it is time to map out the rest of the organization and key contacts with each department or division.  Connect with each of them and/or get referrals and introductions from the current contacts you are doing business with above general satisfaction levels.  Your CRM system should be able to track hierarchy and organization charts of your clientele.

 Take the following three recommendations if your business is primarily a service-based sales operation:

1. Have you done a customer survey lately of how satisfied your clients are with your services?  If not, put together a 4-7 question survey that should take more than 5 minutes to complete.  The questions should focus on the quality of service you are providing. You might want to ask about other services they may require. Track this in their CRM customer profile and target a campaign around their needs.  If the client is not happy, make a call with your manager or CEO to the client within 24-48 hours.
2. Are your customers using competitive services along with yours?  If so, find out how happy they are with them and see if there is an opportunity to win that business.  If they have a contract, find out when it expires and track that with a reminder.  Also have an automated report sent to you when expiring competitive contracts the first week of every month.  This is a strategy to win more business without trying to pitch your services on a frequent basis.
3. If you offer services that your clients use frequently (i.e. weekly, monthly, etc.) look to offer them a services agreement for a year at a discounted rate.  This will provide you predictability and consistency over the next 12 months.  If the client calls frequently now, a schedule can be constructed or a block of time can be pre-purchased as part of this annual agreement.  This will also help with resource planning.  The CRM system can track this contract, hours against it on a monthly basis and most importantly profitability.

 These are just a few simple recommendations to leverage your CRM system to maximize your client base.
[Photo courtesy of digitalmarketinginstitute.]