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Are Your Relationship Management Tools Giving You The Answers to The Right Questions?

Fred owns a lighted sign business. He makes all manner of lighted signs: neon signs, freeway billboard signs that post the current temperature or mortgage rates, marquee signs on the side of office buildings, even restaurant signs.

Fred has 50 employees that include a sales force of five. His sales staff is not only responsible for bringing in new business, but also follow on work with his current customers. A few years ago his senior salesman returned from a sales conference praising the virtues of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

CRM, the salesman claimed, would allow the sales staff to maintain a record of all sorts of data that would facilitate relationship building with Fred’s customers. Not only would it track when a sales person visited a customer, but also what gift the customer might appreciate for a special occasion, the dates of those special occasions, details on past orders, and all manner of useful data.

Fred bought the system and the sales staff became very good at collecting data to input.

How did CRM Work for Fred’s Business?

To answer that question, let’s explore a part of what makes Fred successful.

Fred also attends conferences from time to time. Fred always looks to stay ahead of the curve on new technologies and sign features that allow him to maintain a competitive edge. The challenge with these conferences is the myriad of choices available. Fred has to make disciplined choices about which sign technologies to adapt. How does Fred make good choices?

He pours over information his sales staff brings to him from the field. Fred looks through the reports, reads between the lines, and makes follow up calls to his customers to ask well-prepared questions. Each time Fred attends a conference; he is well armed with a strong impression of what his market’s needs are likely to be.

Fred has had a system in place to collect customer information long before the new CRM system was introduced. It worked very well. You might guess that CRM would actually make it easier for Fred.

How did the CRM system work for Fred’s business?

Poorly!

Technology Can Lead to Poor Habits

Sadly, CRM encouraged Fred’s sales staff to fall into bad habits. To understand how, let’s stand in the shoes of one of Fred’s sales staff for a minute, Sally. Sally has been working for Fred for six years. Like most people, Sally usually does what she is rewarded to do.

Before CRM, Sally was rewarded for identifying customer’s needs. Sally would engage her customers in what challenges they faced and identified how lighted signs might help.

What made Sally good at sales was her investment in the relationship. She would ask questions, converse, and listen. Sally would listen for her customer’s needs and expectations. While conversing with customers, she would attend to the subtle distinctions that would help her uncover their needs.

When the CRM system was installed, everyone was enamored with the bells and whistles. Filling in the blanks in the database—birthdays, kid’s names, alma maters, articles about customers in the press—became fun. Filling the database became the behavior that was rewarded.

One of the strengths of CRM, if the customer profile is complete, is that any sales person can step in whenever needed.

Sally spent her energy completing customer profiles. The CRM technology became the goal, rather than the tool to achieve the goal: meeting customer needs.

When Fred reviewed the CRM reports, he was finding it much more difficult to discern needs and formulate the questions he asked customers. His sales staff had focused on personal data, as opposed to their sign needs.

Beware Quick Fixes

Is CRM bad? Not at all. But regardless of the next new system or hot technology that comes around, meeting customer needs is a pursuit best sought after in relationship.

Appropriately using technology and building relationship requires that you continue to ask and carefully listen to the answers to . . . good questions.

Get Answers to the Right Questions

Here are a few questions that should always be at the forefront of your customer relationship efforts, regardless of the tool or system you use to assist you in building and maintaining the relationship:

  • What do you need?
  • How can we help you?
  • If we cannot help you, can we help you find someone who can?
  • How are we doing?
  • How can we do it better?
  • Is there any point of contact you have with us that you find difficult?
  • Are we doing something or not doing something that really irritates you?

Ask good questions. Get good information. Make good decisions. Choose the tools that will help you do this. Challenge, modify, or reject any tool or practice that doesn’t.

Happy Client Retaining,

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© 2004-2007 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.

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