CRM using strategies and tactics

Many people use strategies and tactics interchangeably with anyone with military experience can tell you they’re different.

Senior Management usually defines strategies, while middle managers and those who execute employ tactics.

It’s important to understand how both strategies and tactics work together to build a solid company with principles that have the foundation in a complete CRM solution.

Your leadership guides hang level strategy to unify your team well knowledge of effective tactics to reach your goals make that happen.

Effective strategies

Strategies are high-level macroeconomic ways of looking at how to keep your business competitive.

They take larger forces into consideration and tend to focus on the why of the business.

Before you embark on your journey to build a CRM, you must have a solid strategy in place.

Market forces

Are competitors in your industry emerging?

Are they targeting your customer base?

Resources

Do you have enough employees?

Are they getting enough education and training?

Is their morale high?

Are they sharing information with each other?

Investment

Are your people equipped with the right tools?

Are they comfortable where they work?

Do they have access to the training materials?

Brand

Does your brain convey what you do?

Does it have a personality?

Is it a personality that helps or hinders sales?

If you’re unable to answer these questions or feel as though the answers don’t give you confidence in your organization, focus your CRM efforts on addressing these issues in priority.

Effective tactics

Tactics are about what happens everyday at your business.

They involve the tools people, use and how do you use them. Usually they are monre about the “how”.

These questions focus on the day-to-day operations and you want to have good answers for them.

Customer relationship management

Are you managing every aspect of your customer lifecycle?

Is it easy for your team to access the data they needed to get their job done?

If your sales and support teams are talking to clients do they know enough about those clients to provide the greatest service?

Outbound communication

Are you using all the right channels to reach your leads and clients?

Are you measuring performance?

Funnels and conversion

Are you tracking how people progress through the process of purchasing from you?

Are you following up with them?

How long is it taking for people to make a purchasing decision?

Are you able to automate and personalize any of these interactions?

Access to relevant information

Can you salespeople track what their leads are doing?

do they get alerted when their leads show signs of wanting to buy?

Does your customer service team see how your clients absorb the information you send them?

Does your marketing team have access to cells and support-related data that could help them segmented their communication?

Measuring “Effective”

The word effective can have many different meanings, so it’s important to take the time to make sure what it means to you.

At an organization level, it often translates to efficiency meaning fewer resources to accomplish tasks the company needs done.

At an individual level, it can mean giving people the freedom to do their jobs well.

Take time to think about your overall goals, both as an organization and with your CRM, as those goals relate to being effective. When you know where you want to go with both and what it means for you to be effective if you can check whether you’re on the best for accomplishing both.

In all cases, measuring and reporting lets you know if you’re moving your organization in the right direction.

An effective CRM that means you do more with less with the data is really accessible to back that up.