How a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Can Help You Build a Customer Base
Want to grow a more profitable business? Learn how a CRM can you serve better people.
You have a proven product or service. You’ve refined your elevator pitch. And as a result of your successful prospecting strategies, you’re bringing in more leads from making dials, social media outreach, and in-person networking than you can keep up with! At the end of the day, time is finite.
What you really want is to meet ideal prospects, turn them into happy clients, and acquire more of your leads through referrals. The aforementioned will allow you to upgrade your capacity by hiring better talent, to offer a higher quality or quantity of services thus increasing your value proposition. In other words, you want to systematize the process of finding and engaging ideal clients and upgrade your business. How can a good customer relationship manager (CRM) help you achieve all of the aforementioned?
CRM’s Help You Mine Your Business
One of the greatest benefits of a CRM is helping you identify who and where your focus should be. At some point, business owners need to identify their ideal customer and curate our marketing and prospecting strategies to attract that persona. What do I mean by this?
Over time you will identify “Class A,” “Class B,” and “Class C” Prospects.
Class A Prospects: These prospects are very motivated to buy what you’re offering, they have enough disposable income to easily afford it, and they appreciate your approach to business.
Class B Prospects: These prospects require some education about how conducting business with you can improve their lives, they have some disposable income, and they’ll arrive on time for appointments.
Class C Prospects: These prospects require your assistance, but choose to wait until the brake pads are whittled down to nothing, the engine light is blinking, and the car is spewing exhaust into the atmosphere before they make a buying decision. They cause chaos. Working with them might cost you more than you’re going to earn, and their arriving on time to appointments with you would be a good starting point.
In an ideal world, you want to spend the majority of your efforts and resources contacting and engaging your Class A Prospects. If you have over 100 contacts and you’re still waking up in the morning and calling prospects from a list on a legal pad, prospecting worksheets, or an email list, it is imperative that you switch to a more systematic approach. Transitioning to a CRM will also help you track where people are in the sales process: How many times has this person been exposed to what you’re offering already? When did they ask you to follow up with them? When did you set the appointment to onboard them as a customer?
CRM’s Help You Transition from Transactions to Relationships
Let’s use an example of two Salon Owners.
Salon Owner #1 sends text messages and periodic emails highlighting special discounts, appointment reminders, and general advertisements to their list of customers. (Here’s the thing. If most business owners just took the time to do this alone, it would result in a dramatic increase in sales activity. Ultimately, you want to be top of mind as much as possible, so when someone is ready to make a buying decision, they think about you first.)
Salon Owner #2 does all the aforementioned, and actually takes the time to leave a personalized voicemail or message wishing their clients happy birthdays. (And yes, Facebook does track birthdays, but everyone is not actively engaged on Facebook.) This Salon Owner also tracked clients’ favorite retail stores and restaurants, and passed along coupons and a small gift certificate every once in a while, as a “Thank You.”
With Salon Owner #2, the client isn’t just receiving a phone call when the Salon Owner needs to drum up business or as a reminder to spend more money. With this approach, clients begin to welcome your calls, because they know it may be about something other than buying your wares. I still remember the first and last time a business owner sent my daughter a birthday card after I patronized him. It was followed shortly thereafter by a gift card to my favorite bookstore at the time, and thereafter a birthday card for me. Despite the annoying commute, and his prices being higher than some of his competition, almost twenty years later I still patronize his establishment.
How do these business owners remember things like customer birthdays and favorite bookstores? More likely than not, they store this information about their customers in a CRM.
CRM’s Help Remove Call Bias
You’ve religiously committed to making 50 to 100 dials a day. You’ve spent nights responding to every Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn interaction. You respond to email inquiries and requests religiously. Yet you’re still setting less appointments, giving less presentations, and closing less business. You’re growing mentally fatigued of appointment reschedules and hearing prospects say, “Please call me later.”
This is a sure sign that you’re falling victim to an internal bias that influences who you call. You’re calling the same people over and over again! More than likely, you’ve stopped filling your prospecting funnel with new contacts, and you’re falling victim to hearing the sweet sound of familiar voices.
Employing a CRM keeps you honest, because it allows you to track the number of times you've reached out to someone. As a general rule, you should ask for the sale 7 times, and attempt to make contact 7 times.
Example: After the first attempt to reach someone verbally, I may call back the following day. Then I may follow up via voicemail or text 2 business days later; then 3 business days later with an email, then weekly for a couple of weeks with a combination thereof; then monthly for a quarter; then the prospect ends up in some type of automated funnel whereas they begin to receive related content.
To this day, the majority of my clients have come from the 6th or 7th attempt to contact them. Without a CRM to keep me honest, I’d either stop at the 4th or depending on the nature of the relationship continue calling indefinitely and waste a lot of time.
Think about it like this. Calling and expending mental energy attempting to reach the same people is like staying in an unfulfilling relationship because it's familiar. That person is taking up valuable space (time) that you’d be better-served spending (investing) with someone else. We have all fallen victim to this behavior at one time or another. Cut it out. There are 300 million people in the U.S. market alone, and everyone knows someone.
Picking a CRM
There are endless CRM options available to choose from. Some are nothing more than digitized address books. Some will allow you to record everything from your client's email address to the color of their toenail polish. Others are sales and marketing funnels dressed up as CRMs. There are some CRMs that require you to be a technical specialist, and some that are simple enough for a 5th grader to use it. And everything in between.
I've employed several over the years and settled on a select few, given my affinity for information and aversion to spending minutes or hours troubleshooting IT issues. Do some online research to generate a short list of CRM options that you believe will be best for you. Then try scheduling demos with a representative of each, and make a buying decision.
Are you looking for support in your business?
JSB Business Solutions is here to help. Whether you're a startup looking to establish a robust sales framework or an established company aiming to enhance your current process, our team of experts is ready to guide you.
During our consultation, we will:
Analyze your current business development processes
Identify areas for improvement and growth
Develop a customized strategy tailored to your business
Provide actionable insights and best practices
Take the first step towards elevated performance by scheduling your consultation with JSB Business Solutions. Click this link and schedule a day and time that works best for you.
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