Year: 2016

Best sales practices for your business

Sales teams are facing a tough time. With most organizations having a suppressed budget, the pressure is on the sales professionals to increase top line revenues.Add to it is the prevalence of fewer selling opportunities and increased competition which has further deteriorated the situation. While sales strategies are being made, the daily trenches are putting them down the drain, Let alone new solutions, sales managers are being unable to implement the already-decided strategies first.

Best sales practices for your business that rules the industry. Sales teams are facing a tough time. With most organizations having a suppressed budget, the pressure is on the sales professionals to increase top line revenues. Add to it is the prevalence of fewer selling opportunities and increased competition which has further deteriorated the situation.

While sales strategies are being made, the daily trenches are putting them down the drain, Let alone new solutions, sales managers are being unable to implement the already-decided strategies first.

In reference to the above-mentioned context, below enlisted are the best sales practices followed by organizations. Read, analyze and implement these in your sales process to achieve long-term success.

1. Emphasize upon sales handbook

Ideally, every sales team should have its set of sales protocols well-defined in a living blueprint. While the blueprint should involve every sales aspect such as roles, processes and rules for engagement, it should mainly focus on two factors –

  • Customer understanding

Most sales leaders think they know their customers intimately and bypass the step of customer analysis. What they fail to realize is that applying a one size fits all sales strategy will not give them any gain. Since there is no single customer definition, it is essential that they analyze customers profile and pursue customers by segments. Benefit: they can exactly know the most profitable customers along with the ones which represent the greatest lifetime value. Applying optimized treatments for highest value customers will not just boost revenues but also maximize operating margins and customer share.

  • Incentive plan

A well-laid out incentive plan will deliver countless downstream benefits. Instead of sales managers brainstorming ways to impose strictness and discipline among sales reps, they can be much relaxed in their approach. Right incentive plan will serve as the productive method to keep the sales reps gung-ho about delivering high sales numbers. Benefit: there will be no tiff between the manager and the staff.

Note: Follow the sales handbook but do not create a rigid sales environment. Remember most effective sales managers respond to change rapidly. If the situation demands alteration, do not hesitate to do so.

2. Data-driven approach

Relying on theories or gut feelings can ever generate the desired amount of productivity for the sales team. Instead, they need to concentrate on hard data to derive actionable insights. For example, monitoring and analyzing past conversion rates can reveal loopholes in sales process. Sales managers can know about the team’s weakness in qualifying opportunities at the top of the funnel.

With knowledge of specific areas of improvement, you can coach your team much more evocatively.

3. Integrate Sales & Marketing

An unaligned sales and marketing team creates a gap in which business processes break down and the company suffers. To avert any such type of similar plight, ensure that your marketers and sales professionals work in a cohesive group. And there can be no better way to do this than by merging departmental processes and aligning compensation models.

After all like sales reps, marketers’ behaviors too are greatly dependent on incentive plans. And when marketers and sales people share mutually benefiting incentives; they work enthusiastically to common processes.

4. Changed approach of marketers

Simply acquiring the leads and throwing them over the fence to the sales reps is no more sufficient now. It will just result in wrong lead management and sales resource waste.

Today, buyers frequent online communities and social networks. Considering which, things can turn in the favor of the company if marketers leverage social media tools to engage, acquire and manage leads. In addition to social media tools, marketers can use other thought leadership strategies to further engage with the leads. Following which, marketers can distribute leads to the sales team when leads are ready to buy.

5. Sales Coaching

Even the best sales generating companies do not rest on their laurels for long. In the present state, where things are so dynamic, laurels should be used as a motivator to make the next quarter better. And the best way to inspire this mindset is sales training. Regular team meetings combined with one-on-one discussions can really add value to the sales reps. You can talk about sales performance metrics to identify specific areas of weakness. Consequently, you can decide the steps to shore up the weak areas.

6. Review and analysis

The only way you can gain sustainable advantage is to learn faster than your counterparts and implement the lessons learnt. This is precisely why sales experts emphasize upon identifying performance metrics.

Tip: Opt for a reporting package that includes monthly reports, progress measurement and remediation plans. And the best tool that can help you accomplish all this is CRM software. Most of the renowned CRM applications have reports module. With all the data feed in by the sales reps, not only will CRM keep track of the sales reps’ work but also help you detect if your sales reps are:

  • Focusing on wrong customer segments

Or there is

  • Wrong alignment of compensation plans.

In sum, CRM will pin down the wrong areas in your sales process.

7. Common vision

You cannot expect your sales team to perform if they do not share a common vision aligned with the company’s goal. Hence, make sure that you communicate to them regarding: What you are trying to achieve as a team.

This will give you full buy-in where each rep will work hard not just to hit the numbers but accomplish the collective goal.

8. Business processes and technology

Software technology has come a long way when it comes to streamlining and automating sales process. Enterprise applications like CRM have salesforce automation module that holds a key role in sales productivity. They are designed for medium-to-large enterprises with mobile work forces.

SFA software automates tasks, namely – inventory control, sales processing, sales forecasts and performance analysis. Thereby, choose the right CRM system integrated with SFA tools that double up your sales productivity.

9. Take feedback

Collect and act upon prospect and customer feedback. Implement surveys to get an insight into the opinions and mindset of the customers and prospects. You can do this after every won and lost sale opportunity. Based on the feedback, you can modify strategies and predict future sales wins.

Patricia is a full time CRM consultant at ConvergeHub and part-time blogger. She has earned herself quite a fame as a specialist and market expert in CRM software. In the last five year she has worked with various companies as CRM consultant to help them move their businesses to cloud. Her expertise lies in offering cloud CRM consultation, CRM customization and integration solutions to small enterprises. For last one she is engaged in building ConvergeHub, cloud-based CRM solution for SMBs, as a consultant.Follow her at Twitter: @convergehub

Learn Sales Pipeline Management & What is a pipeline in marketing

In sales, driving prospects from initial interest to conversion is challenging. To ease out the process, sales pipeline is required that empowers the sales agents to track the progress of the leads in the sales process and modify the approach accordingly. However, to get optimum benefit out of the sales pipeline, it is essential that it is properly managed. In this blog, we discuss three easy ways on how sales pipeline can be managed and optimized for maximum returns.

Are you struggling with dwindling sales numbers? Hit Your Sales Numbers by Doing This One Thing Better …

Sales Pipeline Management.

It should be no surprise for you to learn that effectively managing the sales pipeline is crucial to sales success. However, you might be shocked to learn that very few companies are actually good at it.

According to sales expert James Kerry: 63% of sales executives do not pay much attention to sales pipeline management or do it in the wrong fashion. That is why in spite of putting in a hell lot of effort, their isn’t any increase in sales performance.

To ensure that your sales does not suffer because of pipeline mismanagement, below given are three tips (suggested by Chuck Schaeffer) on how should organizations manage and optimize the sales pipeline management.

Do not worry. These tips are easy to implement and can improve your top line revenues, in a flash.

1. Do not design the sales pipeline as Siloed Storage Container

Most organizations do the mistake of designing their sales pipeline as a storage container with separate compartments for sales and marketing.

For Example:

  • Top of the Funnel (TOFU) managed by marketing
  • Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) managed separately by both marketing and sales
  • Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) managed by sales.

As you can see, in this type of funnel structure, there is no cooperation between the sales and marketing teams. Once the leads enter the bottom of the sales pipeline, marketing agents have no idea as to what happens to them. The same holds true for the sales agents too. They do not have a clear knowledge about the kind of treatment given to the leads at the top of the funnel.

Solution:

Combine the three parts of the funnel together. This will give your marketing and sales team a bigger and clearer picture. They can keep a track of the inflow, outflow and movement of leads in the pipeline. They can brainstorm ideas and understand what works and what does not work at different levels of the funnel.

With these insights, sales agents can define an accurate sales process in the CRM, which helps them to steadily push the leads through the sales pipeline and increase the bottom-line revenue.

2. Do not jam the sales pipeline with inactive Leads

Often sales agents find the pipeline clogged because it is filled up with leads that are lying dead or un-stalled in the sales process for long. This make the sales pipeline messy and sales agents are unable to provide attention to the most profitable leads.

Solution:

Clean the sales pipeline. Review all the leads stored there and remove the ones that have been for longer than twice the average sales cycle. Resend these leads to the marketing agents for further nurturing. Once they become sales-ready, they can be forwarded to the sales team via the CRM software.

Note: Following this practice regularly will remove all the inactive leads from your sales pipeline and ensure that the sales agents do not get a false picture of the estimated revenue generation.

3. Do not push unqualified leads into the sales pipeline

In 6 out of 10 occasions, the leads transferred by the marketing agents into the sales pipeline are not ready to make a purchase. So the result is obvious. No deal conversions.

Solution:

Unify your sales and marketing teams.

a. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring empowers marketing agents to rate the leads on two factors:

  • Demographics – company size, industry or geography and whether or not it is aligned to the target market or ideal customer profile of the business.
  • Behavioral activities – prospect actions such as the kind of response shown in the marketing campaigns, or the types of content consumed.

Based on the given score, marketing agents can understand:

  • How much is the lead suitable to the company profile as a customer?
  • How much is the lead interested in dealing with the company?

Accordingly, they can only forward the sales-ready leads to the sales force.

b. Service Level Agreements (SLA)

Draw a Sales and Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA) that mentions pointers like:

  • Quality and Quantity of leads to be delivered by marketing to sales
  • Follow-up actions and time frames that sales will commit to those leads.

In this way, there is a great level of transparency between the sales and marketing teams.

Tip: To keep the SLA program effective, monitor and resolve SLA disputes. Hold meet-ups to dissipate the issues timely.

c. Lead Recycling

Do not throw the unmaterialized sales opportunities. Instead, use a sales and marketing CRM for lead recycling activities. Collect the leads who got transferred to the sales team too early and got stalled midway in the sales process. Instead of letting them die a slow death, resend them to marketing for more nurturing.

Final Thoughts

Often we are so focused on the sales numbers as the sole metric that we neglect to put a process for managing a sales pipeline. However, once you start managing the sales pipeline, you will be able to forecast sales with greater accuracy.

But then these are just some of the sales pipeline management tips discussed here. There are many more. So let us know the ones that you follow. What is your step-by-step process to effectively manage your sales pipeline? Share it with us below.

The Importance Of Knowing Your Customer

Understanding the minds of the customers has become the main priority for most entrepreneurs. That’s because customers have become empowered due to factors like the onset of social media, easy comparison-shopping, and a proliferation of choices. As a result, customers are not even taking minutes to switch their allegiance which has made it imperative for every business to offer good proactive service that helps in high customer retention. In this blog, we provide six easy ways to get close to the ever-demanding clients and understand their psyche well. Take a look.

Know your customers better because only they can help you get more lead and more business. Understanding customers is the key to giving them good service which in turn results into strong customer relationships and new sales through positive word-of-mouth recommendation. However, understanding the customers’ psyche is not easy and most often requires a thoughtful analysis to identify their preferences or purchase patterns so that you can anticipate their needs and exceed their expectations.

In what holds further is a list of six easy ways to understand your customers better. Read, comprehend and imbibe them in your working approach to engage with the customers better and ultimately sell them more.

1. Track Customers’ Real-Time Behavior

Today’s customers demand nothing less than a seamless experience across both traditional and digital touch points. To do this, a business needs to be prompt and proactive in its approach. It needs to anticipate the customers needs to serve them on all platforms even before the requirement is actually placed.

And all this can only happen when you have a tool that gives you a peep into the real-time behavior of the customers. Experts suggest investing in a customer relationship management tool (CRM) that provides an in-depth analytics of the customers’ activities. One of the best instances to corroborate this is CRM’s email marketing functionality.

Most of the renowned CRMs offer robust email marketing functionality with real-time tracking.

Using the software, you can

Track the performance of your email marketing campaigns
Track each campaign result through fields such as Total Sent / Attempted; Opened / Viewed; Link clicked; Un-subscribed; Bounce / Invalid
Understand your target audience better by jotting down a list of their likes and dislikes
Presenting their preferences with highly visual, context-rich Bar, Pie, and Line charts for quick analytics.

Jane Miller comments – Majority of the Big Players in the market do ‘needs anticipation’. All thanks to the easy to use CRM technology that has given them the power to extract, blend and analyze real-time customer data to identify customer preferences and purchase patterns and predict customer needs before even customers say so.

2. Identify the different categories of your Customers

Tagging them together in the same group only leads to generic cross-selling campaigns that do not generate any fruitful results. It’s important to understand the different parameters on which you can segregate your customers. Let’s say – the type of products/services they buy, frequency of purchase, geographic location of the customers and so on.

Once the categories are formed and customers are segregated, it becomes easier to frame precise marketing and cross-selling campaigns with targeted messaging. Needless to say, these campaigns drive more value for both your business and your customers.

3. Invest on Social Media Customer Engagement

Reason being that reports like IBM CEO Insights has stated that consumers are active on social media channels for no less than 6 hours a day. This clearly explains the indispensable role that social media plays in shaping and influencing the opinions of the consumers.

In such a scenario, it becomes essential for every business to invest exhaustively on social media engagement. So frame strategies to engage with your target audience and customers on all social media channels as they are clearly the best place to reach them.

Tip: Do not opt for push advertising in social media. Unlike other traditional platforms where these old-school marketing tactics can work, social media calls for compelling, authentic campaigns that involves real and informative elements. We suggest using Social CRM tools to run social campaigns. It will empower you to run different campaigns on all leading social channels and aggregate user data across all streams.
Not just this, integrating your customers’ social profiles into the Enterprise CRM will provide you a live feed of all the updates done by your customers. This will act as an added resource from where you can get a better idea of your customers like the type of discussions your customers mostly participate into.

4. Leverage Customer Service Interactions

This is one of the best times to get a peep into the customers psyche. So frame a questionnaire and hand it over to your customer service representatives.

On every occasion when your customers contact your service representatives, they can ask queries about the customers likes/dislikes in relation to the product or service usage. Example:

How they are using the product or service?
Are they satisfied using the product/service?
What are the changes they would like to see in the product/service?

Practicing this experience regularly, will help you accumulate a database of valuable customer insights that can be used to frame targeted messaging.

5. Focus on Customers’ Personal Tastes and Preferences

Nurturing your customers with informative contents about your product/service is good but do not limit yourself to only that. Sometimes facilitating to the generic interests of the customers serves a great purpose too. It gives the impression of how attentive you are towards your customers and brings your buyers inches closer to you.

Many startup ventures follow this policy where they use the consumer data in CRM database to frame materials/resources that resonate with the other interests of the customers. For instance sharing of articles around the newest trends that is happening in some other industries not necessarily related to the company’s own product/service.
The idea is that instead of continuously sending contents in relation to the product/service (which often gets monotonous), sparking conversations around other universal topics generates multiple opportunities to create a conversation thread with the customers.

6. Build Comprehensive Contact Information

Make sure you have one centralized database that holds an accurate and detailed contact list. Although there are different methods to it, notion comes close to a robust easy to use CRM application. This is the reason why millions of businesses per annum implement a cloud based CRM solution to neatly store every piece of customer data. Needless to say this helps to build a rich customer profile and ably handle the ongoing interactions between customer and the company.

If you have found this article informative, kindly leave your comments below.

Why Customer Feedback is Important, Voice of the Customer (VoC)

In today’s age, a business is successful only when it meets customer needs and provides superior service value. In order to do that, it is essential that businesses understand the needs of their customers. It is in relation to this that the concept of “voice of the customer” has emerged. It includes capturing and analyzing the customers’ feedbacks and opinions to understand their needs or requirements. This blog gives you a detailed outlook on the concept of Voice of the Customer and highlights two steps of building an effective Voice of the Customer Program.

Learn Why Customer Feedback is Important as you can gain from it. Customers are now ruling the roost. Operating in this Age – businesses are at the mercy of their customers and their ever-changing demands. This shift of power (from the businesses to the customers) has redefined how businesses treat their customers.

Confused? Read further to understand:

It is no longer enough for businesses to provide a decent customer service. The expectations, needs, and wants of the customers are changing in seconds and that is why businesses need to be very careful on how they treat their customers. A slight glitch in service can lead to a severe loss of customers.

The introduction to Voice of the Customer (VoC)

According to the experts, the best way to provide a stellar customer support is through understanding the Voice of the Customer (VoC).

To explain in simple words – Voice of the Customer (VoC) refers to customers feedback about their experience of dealing with a business and the kind of expectations they have from a product and service.

Importance of knowing Voice of the Customer

Voice of the Customer empowers a business to understand the customers’ needs and expectations related to product and service. Based on these insights, they can proactively serve them with the desired quality. This is the reason that approximately:

36 percent of businesses have deployed Voice of the Customer Programs to connect and engage with customers at key points in the customer journey.

The benefits of doing it are as follows:

  • Identification of customers needs and wants
  • Prioritization of crucial issues in relation to product and service
  • Framing of new concepts, ideas, and solutions to improve customer experiences.

Businesses are implementing these VoC insights for customer experience (CX) improvements. They are doing products, services and add-ons customizations to meet the needs and wants of the customers and maximize overall profit.

Building an Effective Voice of the Customer Program

Every business has multiple touch points throughout marketing, sales and customer support. As and when customers move across these, businesses need to gather their opinions and use the information in a well-timed way.

1. Voice Capturing:

Although online surveys and customer feedback forms are easiest and common ways to garner customer feedback – sales, marketing and customer service representatives are the best resource to dig into the customers’ minds.

That is because these are the customer-facing professionals who interact with targets, prospects and customers always. So they can exactly tell the opinions, grievances and preferences of the customers. Right?

In addition to using sales, marketing and customer service agents, there is another way to capture customer opinions – KENNETH A. CROW suggests Direct interaction of Product Development professionals with customers.

What will be the benefit?

Regular interaction with the customers will empower the product development team to be better at their job. They can understand the customers’ experience of using the products and services and can modify their approach accordingly.

For instance, product developers can focus more on factors like ease of use and flexibility to enhance customer experience. On the other hand, customers too can develop a greater empathy towards the brand, after looking at its effort to serve better.

Tip: Some businesses often rotate their sales, marketing and customer service professionals with product development team. You can do it too.

2. Feedback Organization and Analysis:

Once customers’ voice is captured, it needs to be organized for a detailed analysis. So all the customer data needs to be transferred into a centralized database that is accessible by the key members of the business.

Use Customer Service software such as CRM for carrying out this activity. It allows the business to store the data in one central platform and avoid any data discrepancy and data redundancy. Members throughout the business can use the CRM to analyze customer data, identify the key points and instruct clear actions to the employees.

Not just this, it also empowers you to have a 24×7 pulse on the customers to discover feedback trends and make improvements across the process.

To sum it up, CRM software performs the following roles in a VoC program:

  • Streamlines all touch points to collect feedback across all channels
  • Organizes the customers’ voice in one stream and stores in a centralized database
  • Enables collaboration across departments to work collectively upon the customer voice
  • Helps analyze customer voice to obtain actionable insights.

Do not worry about the implementation aspect. The new-age CRMs are flexible, easy to use and incredibly powerful. Simply choose a renowned cloud CRM software and get on with it. Capture the customer data through the CRM, analyze it and start benefiting from your VoC program in a few days. It is that easy!!!

For any further doubts on Voice of the Customer or CRM, put in your comments below.

What else do you think can be included in the Voice of the Customer Program? Write in to us at the comments section.

What is social CRM, Use of social CRM, learn it from Paul Greenberg

2013 witnessed mass integration of social media channels into business operations. From just experimentation, entrepreneurs embraced social business and simultaneously adopted social media monitoring tools to deliver on-time social customer service. In the words of an expert – ‘’ Businesses have recognized the value of human connection; which is why they have put the effort to build authentic and relevant connections more than ever. Last year, nearly all the major networks attempted to make themselves socially attractive with the introduction of analytics tools and more unconventional advertising models. Consequent to which 2013 saw Twitter make its debut in the corporate social media.’’

What is social CRM, how to use the Social CRM for our best productivity. 2013 witnessed mass integration of social media channels into business operations. From just experimentation, entrepreneurs embraced social business and simultaneously adopted social media monitoring tools to deliver on-time social customer service.

In the words of an expert – ‘’ Businesses have recognized the value of human connection; which is why they have put the effort to build authentic and relevant connections more than ever. Last year, nearly all the major networks attempted to make themselves socially attractive with the introduction of analytics tools and more unconventional advertising models. Consequent to which 2013 saw Twitter make its debut in the corporate social media.’’

However, in spite of the high implementation ratio, many social media #fails emerged as an obstacle for the major networks.

Reputation Risk vs. Reward

While the rewards of social media are many, there is something that has held back many small and large companies to continue further.

Deloitte’s National Study – Many businesses perceive social media as the biggest threat and “technology disrupter” to their business models. They have become hesitant to continue embracing it, fearing corporate reputational risk.

What Paul Greenberg says –?

The sole factor behind the failure of social media customer service initiatives has been failed understanding and implementation of social CRM. The most common factors for social CRM project failures are similar to the factors associated with CRM software failures, such as

  • Ambiguous strategy
  • No measurable objectives
  • Cultural failure
  • Lack of understanding regarding the actual benefits of social CRM

Most companies assume to know what the customer wants, without actually having spoken to them. Inevitably, this leads companies to implement strategies, processes and systems which even when correct, fail to achieve the business goals.

In the words of Paul Greenberg – ‘’while there seems to be a consensus on the definition of social CRM, most of us see social CRM as the use of social and traditional CRM tools to automatically support and improve a strategy of customer engagement.’’

‘’How to use social CRM needs an escalation now. Enterprises need to figure out the business models, applications, processes and social characteristics that are required to actually implement the social CRM. Then only can the social media customer service begin to happen.’’

In what follows is a condensed version of how Paul Greenberg has defined and explained the use, functionality and implementation of social CRM to deliver the right type of customer service.

  • To define precisely, Social CRM a.k.a. SCRM is an extension of CRM solutions, not a replacement of it. In a much dramatic way, it adds to the features, functions and characteristics of CRM. Like the CRM, SCRM is also based on the long-established principle underlining the importance of customers to a business and that every business (big or small) needs to run itself effectively to continue climbing up the ladder.
  • 2004 has been the landmark year which sparked the need to have a SCRM. During that year, what got witnessed was dominance of the cellphone/smartphone and new social web tools. The instant availability of information in an organized way proved important to enterprises for getting the right intelligence.
  • Part of the SCRM popularity has been due to word-of-mouth recommendation. Peer trust is how the influence and impact of social CRM had got germinated and propagated so quickly worldwide.
  • Considering the present nature of customer expectations/demands, SCRM business strategy needs to be built around collaboration and customer engagement, not traditional customer management.
  • Businesses need to map their goals and objectives synchronized with the customers’ goals and objectives.
  • They need to recognize
  • Enterprise value chain
  • Personal value chain of customer needs
  • Companies should focus on providing products, services, tools and experiences that satisfies the personal value chain of the customer in relation to the enterprise. Intersection of enterprise value chain and the customer’s personal value chain leads to the birth of a collaborative value chain.
  • Collaborative value chain comprehensively engages the customer in the activities of the business. Example –
  • Involvement of customers in service/product development
  • Customer suggestions on company process improvement
  • Customers taking initiative to solve other customer service issues.
  • Collaborative value chain satiates both the company and the customer by providing each with what they need from the other to derive mutual beneficial value; which is primarily the core purpose of a SCRM.
  • SCRM shifts companies focus from attaining satisfied customers to creating advocates. It emphasizes upon Customer Referral Value (CRV) i.e. how valuable customers are when they refer the company to others.

Final Thoughts

Looking ahead, Paul Greenberg has predicted social CRM to empower a new transformation of businesses. With Google already creating news in the SCRM industry by announcing a new feature in Google+, it is likely that CRM companies will extract ideas out of this (Google+ feature) development and integrate in their social CRM apps to give a better and improved experience to the businesses.

 

Use of Hashtags in social media – What every company should know

The trend of using hashtag has become a key part of most business strategies. From the small businesses to the large organizations, every enterprise is determined to capitalize the potential of a hashtag for social media marketing. What are hashtags? Twitter users tag and categorize their content on the basis of hashtags. Some users feel that hashtags help them define their tweet as per a keyword. However, hashtags are much more that. Right use of hashtags can help build up movements, conversations, trends and collections. It is interesting to see that while hashtags initially originated in Twitter, they have gradually spread across all important social networks (Google+, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, to name a few). Regular social networkers are making optimum use of the hash symbol (#) to create a tag, categorize posts and group them together with similar themes.

Use of Hashtags in social media not only builds the voice of people, its a great marketing strategy. Starting from News Creators to Social Elites to Companies all use it for their growth and benefit. Let’s Learn what is it and how to use it.

What are hashtags?

Twitter users tag and categorize their content on the basis of hashtags. Some users feel that hashtags help them define their tweet as per a keyword. However, hashtags are much more that. Right use of hashtags can help build up movements, conversations, trends and collections.

It is interesting to see that while hashtags initially originated in Twitter, they have gradually spread across all important social networks (Google+, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, to name a few). Regular social networkers are making optimum use of the hash symbol (#) to create a tag, categorize posts and group them together with similar themes.

According to a social media expert, hashtag has revolutionized the world of social media and promotion. It has come as a boon for companies who have struggled to get their social media marketing right. With so many big names already using this grid-like character for social promotions, there are multiple ideas to take reference from.

Top 3 hashtag campaigns till date:

  1. #SmallBusinessSaturday – American Express created this hashtag which went on to generate quite a buzz in the social world. It spoke about small business management and was a much needed help for the SMB owners. In addition to the valuable information cited here, it also indirectly promoted the businesses that got associated with this hashtag.
  2. #letsdolunch – Domino’s Pizza came up with an interesting promotional scheme. They asked their followers to add this hashtag to their tweets. The popularity of this hashtag became so high that soon the number of tweets mentioning #letsdolunch rose to 85,000. This was a big high for the brand value of Domino’s Pizza. As a gesture of gratitude, Domino’s gave huge discounts for that day lunch. This acknowledgement gesture was highly appreciated by the followers who were engaged in the promotion of the hashtag.
  3. #TreatReceipt – Starbucks introduced this hashtag to promote one of its monthly events, “Treat Receipt” deal. This deal offered discounted drinks (in the afternoon) to those customers who would show up their morning purchase receipts. Unlike other brands that mostly use one tag at a time, Starbucks smartly used other promotional tags to promote Treat Receipt campaign. It added #heatwave in the status posts tagged with #TreatReceipt.

In addition to the above-mentioned examples, hot shot brands such as EA Sports FIFA, Special K and Cadbury’s Dairy Milk have also come up with innovative hashtag campaigns for online promotional pushes.

How well should you use the hashtag?

The success stories of several hashtag campaigns have resulted in many companies blindly following this trend. Well, is it right to do so? While there are no two opinions about the effectiveness of hashtags, wise thinking and smart planning is required for using them.

For instance, the habit of hashtagging every word (that many companies do) should be a big no. Excessive use of hashtags in the tweets can show the inadequate knowledge of the company about the modern technology. Users might look upon the company as uninformed and can get tempted towards a technologically advanced competitor.

Joining an existing hashtag instead of creating a new one is a good way to start. This can help you get new followers quickly. Let’s say by joining a trending movement or conversation that most of your potential/present customers are engaged in can help you come under the spotlight. While your potential customers might not do a @YourBrand, their association with the conversation can put you up on their radar.

Again for doing this, you need a free cloud CRM system where you can track the social feeds of your leads and accounts 24X7. With round-the-clock access to the social feeds of your prospects and customers, inevitably it will be easy for you to join the important trending topics.

Note: Avoid hopping onto a Twitter hashtag which is not legitimately connected with your nature of business. To gain optimum benefit from existing hashtags, make sure to add something meaningful to the conversation and not spam it.

What is the reason behind high CRM implementation failure?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is often misconceived as an extension of the sales team’s address book. The few progressive enterprises (make an exception) by using CRM software to manage customer service calls as well. However, most organizations (surprisingly both big and small) assume that the CRM alone will miraculously ‘fix’ their business. But then is this perception right? And most importantly is CRM only a software application? In the words of Mark Sauter, president and CEO, GTP Associates Inc – ‘’ CRM is more than just software – it’s an ethos. It’s a behavior called CRM, not a technology”

What is the reason behind high CRM implementation failure, learn the secrets of marketing with us. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is often misconceived as an extension of the sales team’s address book. The few progressive enterprises (make an exception) by using CRM software to manage customer service calls as well. However, most organizations (surprisingly both big and small) assume that the CRM alone will miraculously ‘fix’ their business. But then is this perception right? And most importantly is CRM only a software application?

In the words of Mark Sauter, president and CEO, GTP Associates Inc – ‘’ CRM is more than just software – it’s an ethos. It’s a behavior called CRM, not a technology”

The question whether the perception of the business leaders about CRM is right or not has come under focus after the increasing rate of failed CRM implementations.

CRM software failure

According to industry studies, CRM implementations continue to fail at an alarming rate. Forrester Research suggests that close to half of all CRM projects fail to deliver the expected benefits.

 

This table stated below lists the year, different organizations conducted the research, and reported CRM failure rate.

  • 2001 Gartner Group: 50%
  • 2002 Butler Group: 70%
  • 2002 Selling Power, CSO Forum: 69.3%
  • 2005 AMR Research: 18%
  • 2006 AMR Research: 31%
  • 2007 AMR Research: 29%
  • 2007 Economist Intelligence Unit: 56%
  • 2009 Forrester Research: 47%

Is high CRM failure a case of CRM vendors overstating the potential benefits, or do people wrongly assume that the CRM software alone will miraculously ‘fix’ their business? Why do CRM software implementations continue to “fail”?

Throwing light on this context, here is what Bill Band, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research has stated – ‘’Many businesses, post implementing an online CRM software solution immediately assume that their sales and efficiency levels will rise. They operate their business operations as usual, waiting to see what happens. After a few months when the expected results fail to materialize, CRM is dismissed as a failure. It falls into neglect, or becomes an over-glorified address book.’’

‘’What businesses fail to realize is that they have missed the point of the exercise. They have simply implemented CRM software, rather than adopting it as an ethos.’’

How to get CRM software implementation right?

20% of CRM implementation problems are related to strategy and deployment – Forrester Research.

For a successful CRM software implementation, it is essential to carefully analyze internal business processes. Business owners/entrepreneurs need to answer questions like:

    • How does each of your business unit value its customers? Are they the focus of all their efforts?
    • What is the overall organizational focus – Long-term customer retention or short-term profit?
    • Are you ready for the new “social” business model?
    • What change you need to bring in your business?

In regards to this context, Peter Weedfald, vice president of strategic marketing and new media at Samsung Electronics America stated – ‘’Without answering to the above-mentioned questions, an organization cannot undertake the next step of the CRM software implementation process. For example my goal is to [use CRM to] suck the air out of my competition and to do so it’s necessary to unify the company under one CRM vision.’’

Next…

1.Establish and communicate vision, strategy, purpose and goals. Communicate specific goals and expectations to your employees.Let them know that CRM requires a new corporate culture and mindset and not just software training.

2.Streamline sales, marketing and customer service processes before implementation so that processes can be automated and data can be shared across the company.

  1. Establish processes for dealing with change management. Failing to adapt business processes to meet changes will make CRM software implementation fail. There are two key changes required:

Cultural change: to place the customer at the centre of every business operation.

(The senior management needs to first adopt cultural change before implementing it downwards throughout the organization.)

Adam Honig, CRM consultant and strategist – ‘’If executives aren’t committed to the CRM project, don’t expect middle managers to buy in. Likewise if the head of sales or service won’t lead by example — and make employees work differently — don’t expect CRM project success.”

Process change: to ensure business activities are undertaken with a focus on meeting customer needs.

  1. Provide full training (through classroom, web-based lessons and live webinars) to ensure staff is using CRM to the full potential.
  2. Set incremental goals, create incentives and mark achievements. Make your employees excited about the CRM project.

Also remember:

CRM software helps underpin cultural change – and to bring about this change:

  • Reframe processes that do not focus on customer needs.
  • Adopt, implement and enforce customer-focused policies.

What is the latest marketing trend with a new approach

The past ten years has seen a dramatic change in marketing. However, it has been the changes in the recent years which have impacted the marketing discipline more profoundly. Confused? Read further, as we bring for you selective excerpts (paraphrased) from Marketo report. The rise of the new and evolved buyer, who holds more control of the buying process, for instance – Buyers read 3 pieces of content (minimum) about the company for every 1 piece sent by its marketer or sales rep. (Forrester)

Do you know What is the latest marketing trend? If not read across. The past ten years has seen a dramatic change in marketing. However, it has been the changes in the recent years which have impacted the marketing discipline more profoundly.

Confused? Read further, as we bring for you selective excerpts (paraphrased) from Marketo report.

The rise of the new and evolved buyer, who holds more control of the buying process, for instance –

Buyers read 3 pieces of content (minimum) about the company for every 1 piece sent by its marketer or sales rep. (Forrester)

Alternatively, the job has just got tougher for the marketers with constrained budgets and long to-do lists.

Average marketing budget for B2B marketers is about 2% reduced from 7-8% in 2005. (Forrester)

Not to forget – the compulsion of interacting with prospects and leads across a dizzying array of channels.

Buyers prefer engaging with potential solution providers through 3-5 different channels. (Forrester)

Further complicating the matters is the fact that marketers are increasingly being asked to show quantifiable results for their lead generation and nurturing efforts. As a consequence, 22% of marketing budgets, on average, are now getting allocated to lead-to-revenue management.

Although, revenue has always been one of the main concerns of the marketing executives, they haven’t really done anything about it. Reason: absence of means to measure the impact of marketing on revenue. However, now the tools are available for measuring the marketing efforts and suggesting possible incremental changes to improve the results. Hence, now the businesses are strongly demanding the marketing executives to impact the top line.

Obviously, marketers have started to feel the pressure. A host of new challenges has risen for them and only the right attitude and approach can help them make the leap from average to successful.

Prospects today are 70% through into the buying process before they reach out to a sales rep. (Forrester)

This has clearly illustrated the fact that marketers have a much bigger and significant role in the buying funnel than we all thought. Inevitably this has led to a transformation of the marketing, sales and buying funnel.

Not anymore can the marketing do away by only focusing on the activities at the top of the funnel. They need to undertake more responsibilities along the funnel, because buyers aren’t ready to talk to sales so early in the process.

So does the funnel transformation hold negativity for the marketers?

Not really! In Forrester’s opinion, increased role in the buying funnel has brought more opportunities for the marketers to achieve greater results.

How can this change happen?

To stop being defined as a cost center and becoming a fundamental driving force in the organization, change of marketing approach is needed. Using the numerous advanced technologies like marketing automation software, marketing executives can tie their efforts to revenue.

Fortunately, there are a few companies who have already pioneered this change. (You can simply follow their footsteps to start the ball rolling).

In a survey of 400 companies, Marketo has found that the companies who have made this shift are achieving tremendous results on their revenue plans. They are generating about 55% of the revenue compared to organizations that are still relying on traditional marketing methods.

These companies have organized their lead-to-revenue processes around buyers. The agenda is simple: to develop the correct understanding of the buyer personas by learning about their behaviors. With this insight, marketers can easily answer buyers’ questions to shepherd them through each stage of the buying process.

But there is a word of caution too.

The transformation to a changed marketing approach is indeed very challenging. Marketers need to undergo it in times of great stress. Even those that have made the transformation are finding it tough to lead and manage the change at the expected pace.

In relation to this context, Forrester states a few pointers. These are general tips that can be used by all marketers when implementing the new marketing approach in the organization:

  • Adopting buyer-centric thinking
  • Building new process around lead nurturing
  • Removing barriers and giving employees the freedom to address new challenges
  • Concentrating on short-term wins that result in more buy-in
  • Implementing programs based on best practices
  • Cloning effective programs instead of creating new ones from scratch
  • Leveraging advanced technology to automate processes
  • Collaborating more with sales.

In addition to the above-mentioned pointers, there is another pointer that deserves special mention and a slightly more detailed explanation – communication with the marketing team

Its common knowledge: a marketing leader cannot make the marketing approach shift as long as his team is not entirely convinced about it. Thus, it becomes essential that the marketing leader addresses its people, and its processes – explaining everyone the new point of focus i.e. buyer’s journey.

Merely rewarding the team on traditional metrics, such as number of click-throughs, will not serve the purpose. To create a new mind-set, marketing leaders need to reinforce new goals, such as how their activities can contribute to the pipeline. Plus, they need to emphasize upon delivering the right content that moves buyers through the purchase process.

What is your social media strategy for 2017

2013 and 2014 has been tagged as the year of social networking! With multiple social networking platforms coming into the picture, choices have multiplied for the companies. However, simultaneously, it has become a challenge for the enterprises to exactly know which social platform to commit time and resources on. Nearing the end of 2013, industry experts feel each enterprise should be well-planned with their social marketing strategy for the next year. Considering the dominant role that social media has gained in business promotions, it is important to anticipate where social networking is going; the oncoming social media trends and most importantly – how we can get on board.

What is your social media strategy for 2017, that will give your company the required and expected returns all wishes. The 2013 and 2014 has been tagged as the year of social networking! And 2015, 2016 saw a huge change in the perception, use and implementation of social strategies. This is the reason apps like hootsuite and others generated tons of clients. With multiple social networking platforms coming into the picture, choices have multiplied for the companies. However, simultaneously, it has become a challenge for the enterprises to exactly know which social platform to commit time and resources on.

Nearing the end of 2013, industry experts feel each enterprise should be well-planned with their social marketing strategy for the next year. Considering the dominant role that social media has gained in business promotions, it is important to anticipate where social networking is going; the oncoming social media trends and most importantly – how we can get on board.

Here’s a brief snippet on the anticipated 2014 social media trends –

Image/Video-based content will see more success

A consistent trend in social media has been the sharing of images and videos. And according to the experts’ opinion, visual content has created a better viral impact than mere text-based content. In similar lines to this trend, businesses are likely to become more attentive about the type of videos and photos they share on these platforms. As the sharability factor of visual content rises, image-based social media sites such as Pinterest, Slideshare, Path and Tumblr are estimated to grow in the coming months.

LinkedIn to continue benefiting the B2B marketers

The launch of the Influencers program has positioned LinkedIn as not ‘one of the’ but ‘the best’ social platform for professionals. With more than 238 million users, LinkedIn has already proved its caliber for professional content creation. LinkedIn is especially the perfect platform for B2B businesses that are on the constant hunt for CEOs and CIOs.

Google+ all set to become #1 social networking site

Although Facebook is leading the pack with 1.15 billion monthly users, Google+ is quickly gaining the momentum. Boasting of second highest number of monthly users (343 million), it will be interesting to see how and when Google+ overrides the success of Facebook.

The main reason behind the mounting popularity of Google+ is the liberty it provides to collect personal information. In fact, according to the SEO experts, Google+ will very soon become an integral part of the overall SEO scheme. Its personalized search experience and social signals prevents it from being just another social network. Businesses that have a weak social media strategy are more likely to turn to Google+.

Micro video – bite-sized videos to replace the traditional video content

Micro video has come to the rescue of those who always grumble while writing 140 characters or taking 3 minute long videos. Thanks to Instagram’s video sharing feature and Twitter’s Vine that 3-15 second videos has become possible! Now online addicts are more likely to create and share real-time video from their smartphones.

MySpace – to come back into action

Now this one is a bit contradictory. Early 2013 has seen MySpace undergoing a re-branding. As a result – a section of experts have hinted at a second successful stint of MySpace. Now whether it actually gets its second wind or continues to decline as earlier is a question of doubt. However, considering the radical makeover that it has undergone (introduction of an iPhone app that offers users multiple facilities), it is highly anticipated that MySpace will return on track in 2014.

Conclusion

At present, Facebook and Twitter continue to be the golden children of social media marketing. But then the question is for how long? Other social platforms are fast coming up with better advertising and communicating opportunities. Hence, which up-and-coming social media sites grab the market share will be exciting to observe.

With social media showing no signs of decline, it is advisable for companies to use it not just for marketing, but for sales and customer-support too. This is precisely why that you can see many enterprises integrating free cloud CRM solution in their business process. The aim is to transform into a social enterprise by creating a unified social platform for employees, partners and customers to share and collaborate.

 

Why Gmail and CRM integration is important for business

The new-age CRMs are providing a host of functionalities, all thanks to the multiple third-party app integrations done within them. One of these apps is the very own Gmail that enables business entrepreneurs to fetch Gmail messages straight within the CRM platforms. Users are just required to configure the Gmail account within the CRM and get all the incoming and outgoing emails there. This blog provides a detailed insight on the several benefits that business entrepreneurs experience when they merge CRM and Gmail together.

Why Gmail and CRM integration, how important are they for businesses. Whether you have just started your business or it has been ten years holding the reigns of entrepreneurship, you need a business management application to manage the key areas. And when this business management application comes in the form of CRM – nothing like it!

Recent study has found that a new bracket of CRMs have come up in the market. They are advanced, flexible and suitable for the hottest startups to even the biggest large-scale enterprises. Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Collaboration, Project Management, Reports & Analytics, Automation – they are the broad integrated business management applications who can do it all.

How? With some key integrations.

Starting from Mail Chimp, Outlook, QuickBooks, Xero, Google Contact, Google Calendar,Twilio, Fonality, GoToMeeting and DocuSign – the list is endless.

However, among these, the most critical integration to happen is that of Google Mail or what is popularly referred to as Gmail.

Gmail – the messaging and collaboration platform is widely used as a means of effective communication medium by businesses across the globe (approximately 900 million users). With a major chunk of interactions happening via Gmail, it is ideal to have the email software integrated within the CRM so that it works in complete synchronization with the CRM application. This ensures that the business entrepreneurs get a consolidated view of all the customers, leads and partners interactions in one shot from a single interface.

This is a great time saving activity. For instance, without opening a new tab for Gmail, entrepreneurs get to access and manage the entire Gmail data inside the CRM. The trouble of maintaining two sets of customer data platforms becomes a passé.

Some key benefits of Gmail integration within CRM happens to be these:

  • Quick management of all Google mails from the CRM repository
  • Better management of client and partner relationships with a consolidated view on all email communications from the CRM itself
  • Prompt email responses and follow-ups by replying to both CRM and Google mails from a single platform
  • Easy collaboration and sharing of Gmail information right through the CRM.

Moreover, when Gmail integration happens with renowned CRM applications, then business entrepreneurs get an additional benefit of always viewing the current Gmail data in the CRM. That is because majority of the renowned CRM platforms offer an automated cron running functionality that keeps importing Google Mails after a set time span.

This automated cron running process ensures that what owners see in the CRM is the most recent and updated Google messages. Their is no such hassle of manually syncing Gmail with CRM. It gets taken care of automatically.

Having said all of this, let us take a look at the different tasks that business entrepreneurs get to do once they have the Gmail widget within their CRM account.

What users can do from the Gmail option within the CRM?

  • Send and Acquire Google Messages inside the CRM account
  • Associate the emails with corresponding CRM data – contacts, accounts, leads, partners and tasks
  • Create new sales opportunities (contacts, accounts, leads, partners and tasks) in relation to the emails.

In lieu of all the pointers discussed above, it will not be wrong to state that Gmail stands as one of the must-have CRM add-ons.

It’s worthwhile checking out Right Inbox’s CRM integration. It allows you to automatically sync important email threads in GMail with your favourite CRM tool.

Final Thoughts

You as a business entrepreneur need to comprehend the fact that while running a business, it is always ideal to have as much data as possible streamlined and neatly indexed in one common place. And this is precisely what CRM and Gmail integration offers. You get one place from where you can manage your targets, leads, contacts, accounts, deals and simultaneously can send and receive Google mails.

There is no confusion of moving back and forth between tabs to sync data between Gmail and CRM. Instead you get your Gmail inbox and sent items right within the CRM.

Why you need Business Process Management

Learn how Business Process Management tool is the perfect solution for your business NOW by making it more efficient, agile and profitable. Do you want to improve efficiency, enhance agility, and make your business more profitable? If yes, then Business Process Management is your perfect solution!!! Wonder how??? Your answer lies below: In today’s dynamic business environment, any enterprise (big small or medium) needs to be agile enough to respond to whatever challenges come their way.

Why you need Business Process Management, have you ever discovered that? Do you want to improve efficiency, enhance agility, and make your business more profitable? If yes, then Business Process Management is your perfect solution!!!

Wonder how??? Your answer lies below:

In today’s dynamic business environment, any enterprise (big small or medium) needs to be agile enough to respond to whatever challenges come their way. BPM provides that agility by making the management and the employees at the end level have a greater control over the operational processes. It involves a rare combination between the business and IT division that brings about efficient and effective business processes.

The result is:Lower operational cost, increased revenues and better customer service. Most importantly, your entire enterprise becomes far more AGILE & RESPONSIVE.

Here are the THREE ways, how an agile business process helps you:

You make QUICK decisions

Using any good BPM tool, your managers have an easy and instant access to data to help them make decisions quickly. They get the power of automating high-volume operational tasks so that they can be done more quickly and in a highly repeatable manner. In this way, managers get more time to look into the key crucial matters and easily make important decisions quickly or at least on time.

You make BETTER decisions

Using any BPM tool, your managers get unimpeded access to complete information. Hence, they’re able to make better decisions more in line with the goals of your organization. In addition to this, BPM’s automation feature accelerates majority of the decision-making processes. Hence, decisions are made in a much more consistent manner.

And with BMP tool, it’s not just about faster decision but better too. So Business Process Management reports and analytics enable you to see your processes in action and evaluate how they affect your bottom line. As a result, you’re in a position to proactively improve the process to better manage new opportunities.

You save MONEY

Using any BPM tool minimizes time spent and maximizes the use of resources. That’s not it – it further gives you and your team the right insight to make important financial decisions. As a result, you are no longer in dark when it comes to making fiscally responsible decisions for the enterprise.

BPM is one of the select tools that also help you quantify processes in terms of financial results. Thus, it won’t be wrong to say that Business Process Management tool not just improves your decision-making process in terms of speed but also in terms of intelligence and finance.

Take advantage of the Business Process Management (BPM) tool NOW

Today, it’s not possible for companies to have monopoly over any market. According to Forrester Research, companies are dealing with one new competition every day. As a result, you simply can’t afford to sit and hope for your company to flourish.

What do you need to do?

Implement a Business Process Management tool.

It will make your otherwise rigid process – flexible and orchestrated that work together to create substantial business value. It will help your organization to adapt to the ever changing business climate.

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What is the right CRM implementation

WE need to implement a CRM to get things right. We know that. But how do we implement the CRM? Is there any tutorial on it? The above-mentioned statement was stated by an SMB owner in a cloud computing conference. Needless to say, it caught the attention of many bloggers who are regular at writing about cloud CRM, CRM customization and other aspects of enterprise customer relationship management. After reading the statement, I realized that while more than enough has been spoken about importance/benefits/advantages of CRM, ‘how to implement CRM’ has remain untouched

Do you know What is the right CRM implementation, if not then let’s understant it together. WE need to implement a CRM to get things right. We know that. But how do we implement the CRM? Is there any tutorial on it?

The above-mentioned statement was stated by an SMB owner in a cloud computing conference. Needless to say, it caught the attention of many bloggers who are regular at writing about cloud CRM, CRM customization and other aspects of enterprise customer relationship management. After reading the statement, I realized that while more than enough has been spoken about importance/benefits/advantages of CRM, ‘how to implement CRM’ has remain untouched.

Is right implementation of CRM that important?

Implementing a CRM application can be a challenging project especially for organizations with multiple complex departments. After all, it is not a joke to roll out a solution that caters to marketing, sales, customer-service and development etc. Inevitably, the implementer requires having a thorough understanding of the different processes, and products across the teams. Ideally CRM implementation requires the alignment of staff training and business processes with customer needs.

As a technological expert puts it – ‘’CRM is not just limited to being an enterprise application. An ideal CRM solution equally encompasses the people, processes, and applications. It automates and consolidates customer information. If a CRM solution doesn’t makes use of the consolidated customer information to make business more effective, improve staff satisfaction and increase customer retention – then there are chances of loopholes in the implementation process.’’

Reports suggest that large corporations have a better success rate at implementing CRM. Why –

Generally speaking, MNCs and other large organizations emphasize upon forming a well thought out implementation plan for CRM. Inevitably, doing this helps the organization in several ways such as:

Better understanding of customers

  • Reduced cost of ownership
  • Better governance of IT services
  • Positioned well for future shifts in strategy, regulations and customer needs

What are the common CRM implementation pitfalls?

  1. CRM is not the silver bullet: Thinking that CRM itself will solve all the pain points of the organizations is wrong. Why do I say that? Because CRM is not a strategy rather it is an implementer of your strategy. Enterprise CRM is a solution which when implemented with a well-thought out plan; delivers a high business value in a complex environment.

Note: When a CRM implementation lacks the required planning, it often ends up as a shelf-ware that is not adopted by the users.

  1. Lack of budget alignment: There is often a monetary issue between the cost of the technology and the cost of the changes required to support the business’ processes. In most instances, it is the result of a wrong enforcement of the enterprise vision.
  2. Lack of vision: Most business professionals believe that satisfying donor management/development needs is only enterprise implementation. Such implementations are doomed to fail if there is no future roadmap involved to manage other aspects of the organization’s mission.

How to do it right?

A constantly evaluated planned approach is the key to a successful CRM implementation. To identify the right approach, resources, and tools for the implementation, an assessment of the organization’s CRM strategy, staffing, processes, and technology is required. Then only, can a successful CRM implementation take place which will result in consistent processes, cross departmental coordination, and enterprise innovation.