Guest Post: How CRM Integrates Into Business Development Processes

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Adeline Grosrenaud is  London blogger with a blog dedicated to CRM.  It may seem an out of date concept now that the social web is going mainstream, but I asked her to write about how CRM and biz dev proceseses can be mutually supportive.

She has a helpful check list of  metrics that would be worth checking for your organisation.

Here’s what she has to say.

While the term CRM is often just used to refer to CRM software, true customer relationship management is much more than that. A business ought to have a well thought out and written customer relationship management strategy and plan which has involved thorough research if they want to succeed in their given industry.

CRM technology and software has evolved by leaps and bounds over the last few years from starting as basic contact management solutions and now features a huge array of tools and applications that can be used for a variety of business processes. The most important use for most business seeking out a CRM solution is the development and automation of business development processes.

New CRM technology and features that facilitate effective and efficient business development processes include:

  • Ability to quickly and efficiently integrate new business leads from a variety of sources.
  • Ability to automate follow up on new leads quickly and in a organized manner.
  • Automation of up-selling and cross promoting other products and services.
  • Easy integration of new business development managers, representatives and remote teams or call centers.
  • Creating a streamlined platform for communication throughout the company.
  • Instant access to and generation of reports and financial projections.
  • Easy tracking of a wide variety of statistics and metrics.

These CRM features not only facilitate better and faster customer relationship management and sales but can help a business cut costs and improve the bottom line through a simple, streamlined and automated system. Perhaps the most important among these CRM tools for business development is the ability to easily track a wide range of metrics. This includes times it takes for your sales staff to follow up with new leads, how hard they are trying to follow up and convert sales leads and which members of the sales team are performing best. Good CRM programs also enable rapid changes in the business development process whether it be reassigning accounts to another account manager or changing sales letters and scripts and much more. The latest advances in CRM technology also make split testing a breeze. In this tighter economic times this has become even more essential as businesses strive to maximize ROI more than ever before.

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Top 10 must-read Business Development Blogs

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If you are in business development, it’s important to stay connected to the buzz in the marketplace.  One of the hard things is to find a single place to gather all your news sources.  Biz dev can be written about in marketing magazines,  books, industry magazines, online in blogs and forums.  It’s a disparate subject and isn’t easy to collate for easy consumption.

I find two main sources helpful – Twitter and RSS feeds.  If you aren’t using a feed reader, it is really useful because it gathers all your RSS sources into one place.  Consider trying out Google Reader or Feedly.

Today I publish the ones I read most often

  1. Fuel Lines
  2. B2B Lead Generation
  3. Social Media B2B
  4. Creative Brief
  5. RSW
  6. Alchemis New Business
  7. Blowin’ in the Tradewind
  8. Digital Body Language
  9. BL Ochman’s Blog
  10. Web Liquid

I should add that the last couple are more about internet marketing but they often give me great ideas for campaigns and articles to write for CreativeAgencySecrets.

Any more biz dev blogs I should be reading?  Send over your suggestions.

The Top 6 most popular articles of all time

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How to make inbound enquiries work for you

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One of the nicest things about getting your biz dev working well is when inbound enquiries start to come to the business.

I am working with Websters , a niche chartered accountancy practice specialising in service charge accounting.  They have worked hard on a new website and blog as well as some collateral and internal management structures to support business development.

Websters aren't yet ready for the big formal launch event for the site and while it's broadly complete, we are continuing to use it and improve some of the features.  

And so I am surprised and delighted to find that people are signing up to receive their newsletter, the RSS feed and printed brochureware about the business.

Setting up the fields

When I set up the fields for the enquiry form  I originally thought that a simple Name, Email, Company name and country would suffice. 

But I was surprised by the number of folk who want to receive information about the Websters company.

This leaves them with a choice – send electronic information or print.  But for print we need a postal address.  This gave me an idea….

Rather than change the form to include postal address information, why not just research them online and phone them up. This is good becausse

  1. you can find out if they are a real person
  2. you can ask them if they prefer print or emailed information (customer chooses)
  3. you can do a bit of"digging research" into their organisation for your database
  4. you can ask them straight out if they want to have a credentials presentation or chemistry meeting
  5. you can make a fair assessment of whether they are a prospect and at what stage of the pipeline.

Hooray – i know what we'll do – a targeted phone calling session.

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