The Secret to Achieving CRM Success: Setting Goals
Browse the Internet for the failure rates of customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and you’ll find figures ranging from 20 to 70%. It might discourage you from moving forward. However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover the mistake that many companies are making. They’re just moving ahead with CRM software and expecting it to do the job.
What job? That’s the problem. No one knows what the CRM system is supposed to achieve. Also, company players most likely don’t have a shared vision of what success looks like and, thus, are likely to be disappointed.
Managers who fail to lay out their goals for CRM fail at CRM.
What is the secret to CRM success? Set CRM goals, or as Stephen Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.”
Tips for Setting CRM Goals
1. Be Specific
Many companies may implement CRM to achieve increased sales and profitability. If, however, you set your CRM system goals as, for example, “increasing sales and profitability by 10%,” it will provide little guidance to your CRM implementation.
Why? These goals are too broad to provide direction. You need narrower goals, each one a stepping stone leading towards your company’s planned destination.
2. Make Goals Measurable
If a goal is not measurable, you’ll never know if you’ve achieved it. And that’s another reason you shouldn’t use sales or profits or even customer satisfaction as a goal.
You probably think that all of these objectives are measurable. They are, but you’ll never be able to measure the impact of CRM on profits, sales, and satisfaction. That’s because too many other variables affect them. Your company may, for example, hire new sales and customer service representatives or introduce new products. The economy could be on the rebound. It’s simply not possible to isolate the effects of CRM.
You need goals that enable you to determine with ease: “yes” we accomplished this, or “no” we did not.
3. Gather Input from Key Stakeholders
CRM affects people in many roles and departments. Sales management requires a dashboard showing the sales pipeline and reports on how each salesperson is performing. Marketing leaders need to nurture leads. Customer service and sales people want to have one place where they can view aggregated lead and customer data. Before setting goals, fine out what each stakeholder wishes to accomplish.
4. Set Priorities
You’re unlikely to be able to tackle every issue on day one, so set priorities for which goals will have the biggest impact on your organization.
Goals that Work
Our clients have been successful implementing CRM initiatives when they have prioritized some or all of the following goals.
Centralize data on accounts, contacts and leads to ensure the most robust information is available to those who need it.
Track service and sales activities to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Provide management with a dashboard to view the sales pipeline, top customers, lead sources and more.
Generate and track price quotes.
These CRM goals are all concrete and measurable. You either achieve them or you don’t. These objectives will all help move your organization along the path to the broader business goals of sales, profitability and customer satisfaction. It’s much easier, however, to implement a CRM solution when goals are bite-sized.
Claritysoft can help you to achieve success with the online CRM system. To learn more, contact us now.
