SFA and CRM - Inverting the Playing Field for SMB

The broad range of sales force automation and CRM systems available on an ASP / hosted basis have revolutionized how small and medium sized businesses can effectively communicate with their prospects and customers. The goal is to be ready and able to engage with prospects as they become active in a buying cycle.

Not only have emerging systems neutralized an advantages held by large companies, it has turned the tables completely.  Now small businesses can more effectively pull together effective, personalized Marketing 2.0 campaigns that are fully integrated with the sales process and the customer buying cycle.

 Just consider how a large company may deal with client and prospect communications:

A company may use Eloqua for volume email distribution to prospects, a CRM for customer communications and Siebel for routine sales / client communications.  The net result from the client perspective is that they will get three different types of emails from three different systems with little correlation to each other.  And what happens when your sales rep becomes active with a prospect - how is this prospect removed from future promotional mailings which may actually sabotage the sales process? 

We have even seen companies create policies that limit prospect contact across these diverse systems so as to not annoy customers and prospects.  These are usually stop-gap measures to correct for deficiencies in their end to end system.  The net effect is significant erosion of the active prospect pool at any given point in time.

And what's even worse is that these companies create structures that force their sales teams to continue to behave with inefficient sales 1.0 process where sales 2.0 / marketing 2.0 techniques would offer much greater productivity.  One simple example of this is in lead qualification and follow up.  Ideally the sales team should be spending more time developing active opportunities than prospecting. That is, they should be spending more time working with prospects who are active in a buying cycle than hunting for these prospects.

At Online CMO, we believe an effective SFA / CRM system should include evaluation of the following:

• How does the system integrate with marketing 2.0 - Google adword campaigns, email marketing and the like. 
• Are the sales process and the marketing process fully integrated? Can sales people instantly take active prospects out of the marketing pool when they are active in a discussion?  Can they return the prospect to longer term "touch" campaigns for a time when active sales engagement would be more appropriate?
• How does the system align with the customer buying cycle? If a prospect is not active in a buying cycle today, how will your company stay "top of mind" for when the time is more optimal? Is this a responsibility of sales or marketing... and what tools and databases can be leveraged?
• Sales productivity / sales enablement.  How is the system making the sales process better, more effective and more productive from the perspective of the sales rep?
• How will the system scale to meet your growth requirements over the next 24-36 months?
• How open or locked in is the approach? Consider this from all angles - technology, pricing / licensing, data migration, reporting and sales training.
• What is the implementation complexity? Can clear benefits be derived in 30/60/90 days?

There are many alternatives available:

• Desktop solutions: including Act, Outlook CRM, Maximizer
• ASP alternatives: including Landslide, Entellium, Sugar CRM, RightNow and Zoho CRM
• Enterprise solutions: including Salesforce, RightNow, Sugar CRM, Seibel

Online CMO can help you select an implement a CRM strategy appropriate to SMBs, startups and emerging businesses - especially for companies that go to market with a B2B model.