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A White Paper from Touchtone Corporation

How Can You Guarantee ROI on CRM?

Take care of customers, so they keep coming back for more!

“Information is power!” We’ve all heard the phrase. But all too often it falls on deaf ears. Information? Big deal! I don’t get it!

I always tell people, the key is knowing what to do with the information. When I was a salesperson, I learned the “solution selling” method from an ex-Xerox salesperson. I can tell you that there is tremendous power in asking the right questions of a prospect or customer, or any acquaintance for that matter. The more you are able to step out of the role of telling people how great you and your product are, the more you will uncover opportunities. However, the skills of asking the right questions are learned.

Training is needed to get the information you need and then to use that information. All of the information you have now, and have the potential to collect about your customers and prospects has tremendous value for winning and keeping business. And we’re not just talking about “How are we doing?” questions about their satisfaction with your products or service.

You need to know who the competition is, and what products you sell that they are buying from others. Is there cross-sell or up-sell potential? Are they having any problems with products from another vendor that you can help solve? What are their frustrations and problems, and can you help resolve them? What did they lat order from you? Why were you chosen as a vendor? What is the customer’s current credit status?

If your organization is functioning without a way for all of your employees to understand your customers better, then you are living in a 1970s world. Even in the 90s, when I was working in a sales position for a multi-billion dollar manufacturer, I had no way to find out the status of my customers without calling the office or looking at a 2-month old “green bar” report. That’s a big problem. Why? Because I may walk in that customer’s front door to try to get an order only to find they had already placed the order with the distribution center the day before. Do you want to do business with a company that communicates that poorly with its own employees?

ROI? Imagine that your salesperson drives an hour to an account to get an order but the customer was put on credit hold a few minutes before he or she arrived at the customer’s office. An hour drive is not unusual these days and an order is highly valued, but with the average sales call costing $200-$300, it doesn’t take many sales calls to pay for a CRM system. What impact do more of these types of mistakes have on your sales numbers and bottom line?

If the cost of sales calls based on lack of information is not enough, add to this figure the poor reputation your organization gets for not knowing what fellow employees have communicated to the account, the lack of ability to deliver a unified marketing message that fits your organization, wasting your customers time because you can’t quickly look up an invoice or order, or even who you should deal with at an account instead of the president.

Add to this the danger of allowing customer relationships to be maintained only by a single salesperson. If you know all about the relationship, you can continue it. If the salesperson alone has built the relationship and is the only one who knows the details about the account, you could be in trouble if that salesperson leaves to work for the competition. You could lose your biggest account. How many CRM systems would that pay for? On the other hand, if all of your employees have the information to grow and build the relationship with your client, you stand a lot better chance of continuing the account if your sales rep moves on.

This lack of knowledge about your customer also has a huge impact on your organization from a time and efficiency standpoint, in addition to your company’s reputation. Hard costs of being able to do email blasts for free, or handle twice as many accounts in an hour have a real impact on the bottom line profitability of your organization.

Value for the Sales Force

The Sales Team is your front line offense with the customer. Whether they are on the outside shaking hands with customers and prospects, or inside working with customers on the phone, the impression they make is critical. It’s what that customer remembers about your organization.

Will your organization succeed or fail in its ability to service your customers? Here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine where you may need to improve:

Critical Customer Data

Value for the Customer Service Department

Sales Process Program

Searching and Reporting

The Bottom Line

The better your employees are able to meet your customers’ needs, the more business you will do with those customers. But, you can’t help your customers if you don’t know what is happening with their accounts. Uncovering and addressing each customer’s specific needs and maintaining that information in a central database available to all employees – only then offering your products and services – that’s when you will generate new revenue and truly see the ROI.

Wintouch eCRM is a CRM solution that allows users to view data about the customer, such as: recent sales, inventory, orders placed, credit status, opportunity focus, contacts, etc. This data enables all staff members to be up to speed on account status and potential, and empowers your employees to know what to ask, to get more business! Wintouch is available in a client/server version for IBM iSeries servers, which can be fully integrated with your existing AS/400 servers, software and data. For additional information, call today! (714) 755-2810.