Does this scenario sound familiar: Your marketing team is implementing the latest, greatest marketing trends to drum up new leads. Your sales team is out there hustling, attending events and tradeshows and collecting business cards like crazy. You have tons of spreadsheets with great information on potential clients.
But none of these efforts are integrated, so you’re missing out.
What you need is Client Experience Management.
Client Experience Management involves fully understanding the relationship each client has with your business, and then acting on that knowledge to keep them engaged. The goal of Client Experience Management is to create happy, loyal clients by recognizing their needs and preferences and reaching out with the right information, in the right format, at the right time.
You need certain digital marketing technology and systems in place to identify this information and to implement the appropriate follow up system. A key tool in Client Experience Management is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Why Use a CRM?
A CRM system helps you manage your interactions with current and future customers. Simply put, it’s digital marketing software that allows you to Organize, Automate, and Synchronize data about your prospects and clients.
It helps you:
- Organize data about prospects and clients, including tracking their place in the sales funnel
- Observe how people respond to your marketing and sales efforts
- Automate relevant, engaging followup campaigns
The Perfect Tool for Marketing and Sales
A CRM system supercharges your ROI by integrating digital marketing and sales.
Using a CRM, marketing teams can manage communication and outreach results by tracking:
- Where traffic is coming from
- Who is engaging with what types of marketing
- Which prospects sales should contact next
A CRM helps sales teams manage contacts and prospects by:
- Understanding contacts’ interactions with marketing campaigns
- Setting appointments and follow up reminders
- Sending personalized emails
- Prioritizing prospect follow up
- Manage orders, invoicing, and sales
Why CRMs Fail
CRMs seem like a surefire way to increase client satisfaction, and achieve Client Experience Management success. What could go wrong?
Here are a few important statistics on CRM implementation:
- Over 50% of CRM implementations are viewed as failures from a customer’s point of view
- 65% of CRM projects fail to meet their original objectives
- Over 75% of CRM implementations have cost overruns of 2x or more
Source: Gartner Group and Meta Group study
So…why do CRMs fail so often?
The number one reason for failure is…lack of executive sponsorship and leadership.
If your executive team isn’t on board and supportive of a CRM system, you’re bound to have a tough time getting the rest of your team to use it effectively. A CRM isn’t a magic solution to all of your sales and marketing woes—it requires a solid plan and support from your leadership team. Here’s how your executive team can start planning for a successful CRM implementation.
Ensuring That Your CRM Implementation is a Stunning Success
- Make sure your leadership team understands the purpose of the CRM
- Determine strategies and objectives from a holistic (whole company) approach (not departmental: IT, Marketing, Sales, etc.).
- Think about the process. Start with your overall sales and management process, not the tool itself. How do you find new leads? What is your follow up system? Once you have determined this information, you can begin to successfully introduce a CRM, and Client Experience Management in general, into your business.
That was a fairly broad overview of CRMs and the role they play in Client Experience Management and digital marketing, but hopefully it gives you a good idea of why you may want to consider one, and how you can successfully implement one.
Have you implemented a CRM? What kind of successes or failures have you seen? What questions do you have? Tell your CRM stories in the comments below!