A CRM lets you manage each customer for their lifetime value, not only for the next sale. Before you select or set up a CRM, decide what you want to sell to customers later and how long you expect them to stay.
Learn this skill in the course Key Account Management (SA-KAM).
Signs that your CRM plan has a gap
- Leads stay in email inboxes and on business cards, not in one database.
- Nobody knows which salesperson follows up which lead.
- You bought a CRM for one purpose, and now each new purpose costs a lot to add.
- Customers buy once, and you never offer them the next product.
Plan your CRM in five steps
1. Set the objectives for the mid and long term
If you plan only for the short term, each later addition costs more. Select the objectives that you need in the next two to three years:
- Move quotations through the pipeline
- Track the actions to do and the actions done
- Record the interests of each contact and their level of interest
- Introduce new products and services to current customers
2. Select the databases and modules
A CRM can connect to many databases. Select the ones that you need: contacts, contact centre, communication records, helpdesk, salesperson assignments, price lists, sales pipeline, invoices, email marketing, chatbots and analytics.
3. Send each lead into the CRM automatically
Leads come from many channels: email, web forms, newsletter sign-ups, purchases, QR codes, business cards, chatbots and analytics. Connect each channel to the CRM, so that the fields go into the correct places (parsing). Test each connection before it goes live. After that, control each change carefully, because a wrong change can lose data.
4. Activate each new contact
When a contact enters the CRM, the system can do these tasks automatically:
- Send a welcome message for the newsletter, membership or loyalty programme, and ask for one action.
- Assign the contact to a salesperson, by workload or in turn (round robin). The manager monitors this on a dashboard.
- Use the purchase or browsing history to recommend the next product, with a coupon or another offer.
- Offer related products at the checkout of an online shop (upsell).
Write these rules in a communications plan. The plan also controls which fields the CRM reads and which actions it does.
5. Monitor the performance
Make sure that your CRM can track email and text message opens, site visits and the interests of each contact. It also needs to qualify and score leads. Control each change to the communications plan, from lead capture to automation.
Tools that work with the CRM
A full customer marketing plan often uses these tools together with the CRM: social media management, email marketing, chatbots, and e-commerce with upsell flows.
What to do this week
- List each channel where leads reach you today. Mark the ones that do not go into your CRM.
- Write down the next product that each customer group could buy from you.
- Set one rule for new leads, for example “each lead gets a reply within one working day”.
