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Microsoft CRM Services For Your Business

No names to spare the blushes of the poor CEO who posted it. But I just could not resist quoting and commenting on this question from Linked In.

Is Your CRM Lying To You

“Let me begin by saying that we use ?????? and LOVE IT. However, what we find is that in many cases the data that sales reps load into our CRM is outdated and does not reflect the true value of the sales pipeline. It appears that statistically, about 80% of deals in a pipeline are dead, thus the analogy “Is your CRM lying to you?”.

Obviously the software is not lying, but the data you are relying on might be. I’m curious what experience others have had with the accuracy of pipeline information and how you’ve gone about cleansing/validating pipeline data?”

My Thoughts?

This guy badly needs some help.

He’s paying a bunch of money to sales managers and sales reps, and presumably the CRM vendor..

In return he’s getting complete garbage! Worst of all he’s displaying his own ignorance and corroborating the Peter Principle. What a mess.

These guys obviously bought a marketing message from somebody – “Use this software and your incompetent sales organization will suddenly transform into sales management best practice.

Automotive CRM Software

As with most business decisions ROI should be the main concern in deciding whether you should implement a Customer Relationship Management solution for your organization.

CRM Software Selection – The Basics

Any business who sells products or services would do well to use a Customer Relationship Manager, or CRM, especially for a business that sells remotely. Additionally, a CRM is an important efficiency enhancing solution for any organization that uses a call center. The purpose of a Customer Relationship Manager is to organize and track all of the processes and data associated with each lead and client.

A CRM automatically fulfills many of the responsibilities a sales agent would have to perform. The many software solutions designed to compliment the data and task management of a CRM increases the versatility of it dynamically. With supporting computer telephony integration software, a Customer Relationship Manager can instantly capture leads from web forms filled out and submitted by interested contacts via the company’s website. Coupled with a telephone auto dialer, a CRM will upload its list of leads and route those calls through to the best available sales rep for each call. A CRM can even quickly send templated email messages or leave prerecorded voice messages to the lead that the sales rep is contacting with only a single mouse click by the agent.

By acquiring the services of an outside company, Customer Relationship Managers can be provided for remote sales operations without the capital investment into software design or hardware purchase. Instead, all of the necessary components of the CRM are hosted by the providing company. These Customer Relationship Managers are referred to as hosted CRMs or online CRMs.

These hosted Customer Relationship Management tools often provide a very high level of customization within their programs, in addition to having an outside firm that can specifically develop software solutions for a particular business’ or organization’s needs. This includes options such as “drag and drop” functionality. This is a common software function, when applied to CRMs, allows CRM users to individually customize their CRM to their specific business model. The users can add new layouts and fields, customize size, color, and placement of fields, and do so at either the company or sales rep level. Data can be dragged and dropped in whatever position the sales agents want on the screen.

A hosted CRM provides remote sales businesses the tools needed to effectively use all prime business time by reducing wasted time and making the tasks associated with sales easier to accomplish. It is a worthwhile investment even for very small operations, and scales to be productive for much large businesses as well.

David Harlow is an SEO consultant for InsideSales.com
As a firm believer that people should know the facts, Harlow’s blog Inside Sales Adventures
seeks to inform new comers to the industry about important terminology in insides sales, as well as to give tips on what to look for when shopping for industry software.

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The power and versatility of telephony software allows inside sales companies to increase their calls, contacts, impressions, faxes, emails, and callbacks. All of this serves to increase conversions and revenue. Telephony software solutions are available to complete the myriad of tasks that call centers or remote sales organizations need to accomplish. The software that manages all of the processes that need to occur for a remote sales professional to meet the needs of their clients and their employer is Customer Relationship Management software.

Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM, serves as a database for the storage of an organization’s information. A CRM calendars private and company events and tasks. It automatically captures information on new leads and incoming calls, and a CRM manages customer accounts through the entire sales process.

CRMs can be integrated with other computer telephony integration (CTI) software solutions. Perhaps the most important piece of software to use alongside Customer Relationship Management would be a telephone dialer.

Dialers automatically call through a list of leads, or a similar list of phone numbers pulled from the CRM. A dialer then patches that call through to a live sales agent. Several different dialers exist, from the speedy but sometimes unreliable ratio dialer to the effective and methodical power dialer. No matter what dialer is being used, they all become more effective when they are allowed to pull info from, and up load data too, the CRM.

CRM can also integrate other telephony business solutions with their own database and the dialers they empower. Voice messaging software allows sales reps to leave prerecorded, relevant voice messages on the voicemail of leads they attempt to contact. The CRM will automatically leave the message while the sales rep may move on to take another call. Alternatively these messages can be broadcasted by the CRM. The dialer will call through the list of contacts and automatically play the prerecorded message, freeing the sales rep to receive inbound calls or dial through a separate list. Generally, at any time the contact listening to the message may choose to speak to a live agent.

Email messaging is another example of a CTI solution. Pre-composed email templates may be selected and sent by the CRM during a conversation by a sales agent. These messages can automatically pull information to be included within the email, such as the contacts name or business. Instantly the lead can receive additional information promised to them by the sales agent.

Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

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CRM web based solution is an easy and cost effective way to maintain a healthy relationship with your customer on the Internet. It is the latest trend in modern business organizations. With the wide use of the Internet, business organizations have become more reliant on web based CRM services.

Customer relationship management, abbreviated CRM, is a comprehensive business strategy planned to maximize profitability, revenue, retention, and customer satisfaction. However, CRM business strategies mainly focus on customer satisfaction only. With the coming of CRM web based solutions, the entrepreneurs are able to offer support to the customer through the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Depending on the needs, CRM web based solutions can be availed by any type of businesses. For example, specialized CRM web based solutions are available for client profiles, frequently ordered items, automatic replenishment systems, one-click ordering, and market basket analysis. Mostly, CRM web based solutions are built after systematically understanding the needs and demands.

In a CRM web based solution, the Web is used as the platform. The software is generally installed on a single server. Hence, a user from any remote location can access the facilities of the CRM web based solutions through the Internet. Any slight change in the software of the main server will be reflected throughout the system. CRM web based solutions are cost effective and easy to maintain. Apart from these, CRM web based solutions also provide accessibility through wireless devices such as PDAs and WAP-enabled mobile phones. Thus, CRM web based solutions overrun all the downsides of their counterpart, client-server CRM solutions.

In the past, CRM Web-based solutions were used mainly by medium sized business organizations. But in recent year, almost all small and big business organizations have started using the facilities of CRM Web-based solutions.

CRM Solutions
provides detailed information on CRM Solutions, CRM Business Solutions, CRM Call Center Solutions, CRM Software Solutions and more. CRM Solutions is affiliated with Live Customer Support
.

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Installing a good CRM software package is the cornerstone of any customer relationship management program. Without good software, gathering and storing the multitude of details gained about a customer from each interaction would be very difficult.

Small business CRM systems has gone ahead in leaps bounds in recent years, with several top quality packages now available to choose from. Prior to beginning the search for good CRM software technology however, there are a few basic features you should seek in a potential CRM package:

CRM Web Based Solutions

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Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

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So, What Can My CRM Do Anyway?

Customer Relationship Management is the backbone of remote sales, and the industry has responded by producing plenty of business solutions to amplify it.

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CRM Free Software

There are several benefits attached with a properly managed and maintained CRM system, which has made it the buzzword in the business community.

In any business, it helps the organisation in lots of ways, both in terms of delivery more to the customers and also in terms of gaining more from them.

Using CRM, a business can:

Provide Better Customer Service

CRM systems give businesses many strategic advantages such as the ability to personalize relationships with customers regardless of which employee is service them.

Using CRM, a repository can be maintained on customer profiles, thereby treating each client as an individual and not as a group. This way, every employee can be better informed about each customer’s specific needs and transaction profile.

CRM also helps the organisation to easily adjust the level of service to reflect the customer’s importance or status.

Better customer service through improved responsiveness and understanding helps in building customer loyalty and decreases customer agitation. It also helps the company in getting continuous feedbacks from the customers on the product they have bought.

A good electronic company would always like to follow-up with its customers on the items they have bought, so as to rectify the problem (if any) even before it gets logged as a complaint.

Increase Customer Revenues

Using CRM data, marketing campaigns can be co-ordinated more effectively by ensuring that promotions do not target customers who have already purchased that particular products.

It also ensures higher customer retention by introducing loyalty programs. A business would never like to see a product to a customer who has just bought it recently.

Discover New Customers

CRM systems help the organisation in identifying potential customers. By keeping a track of the profiles of their existing clientele, the business can easily come up with a strategy to determine the kind of people they should target such that it returns them maximum clientage.

For example, if several students in a university sign up for a particular mobile service provider, the business can come up with a strategy to target rest of the community in the university.

“Cross Sell” and “Up Sell” Products More Effectively

CRM systems facilitate cross-selling (offering customers complimentary products based on their previous purchases) and up-selling (offering customers premium products in the same category).

It helps them to gain a better understanding of customers and anticipate their purchases (e.g. someone who purchases grass seed in the spring will need fertilizer later in the season).

Help Sales Staff Close Deals Faster

CRM helps the businesses in closing deals faster, through quicker and more efficient responses to customer leads and customer information. The turnaround time has decreased drastically for organisations that have been able to implement CRM systems effectively.

Make Call Centers More Efficient

With each employee having access to customer details and order histories, targeting clients becomes easier.

CRM helps the organisation’s workforce in knowing how to deal with each individual customer depending upon the customer’s archives available through CRM. The information can be accessed instantly from anywhere within the company.

Simplify Marketing And Sales Processes

CRM helps in developing better communication channels. Interactive Voice Response System, web sites, etc. have made life easy both for the organisation and also for its sales representatives.

It allows the business to give its customers the option of choosing how they want to communication with the business.

For more information visit CRM Software Center
– All the general information and resources for everything CRM – Customer Relationship Management. Visit http://www.crmsoftwarecenter.com
for more articles and info on CRM.

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The application, Customer Relationship Management helps a business to organize the data associated with their clients. CRM software organizes the data from the marketing, initial lead, sale, and to the ongoing support and follow up. This full profile of the customer relationship allows members of your team to access the information and network more efficiently.

Often times you will have a client email a simple ‘response’ to you. Imagine receiving an email that simply said okay and you and other members of your team have no idea what the client is referencing to. With CRM you will be able to track down what the original message from your company was. This will help to greatly improve customer relations.

Something important to note about CRM software is that it will help you save money because you can spend less to find new customers by earning more money from your current clients. Finding a free solution may not always be the best choice because you will be skimping on a very important area of your business.

CRM software is not always cheap, in fact, purchasing the CRM software may be a hefty investment for your company. This is especially true if you have a rather small business. Many CRM software companies will allow you to take the software for a test drive. An internet search can bring up several CRM software websites that offer free trials of the software. If you are unsure if the software is right for you and your company, by all means, take advantage of the free trial. You may realize after using the software that your company does not require such an application, or you may be amazed at benefits of using CRM software.

Additional Resources

Sales CRM Software

Small Business CRM Software

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Advantages of CRM

There are several benefits attached with a properly managed and maintained CRM system, which has made it the buzzword in the business community.

In any business, it helps the organisation in lots of ways, both in terms of delivery more to the customers and also in terms of gaining more from them.

Using CRM, a business can:

Provide Better Customer Service

CRM systems give businesses many strategic advantages such as the ability to personalize relationships with customers regardless of which employee is service them.

CRM also helps the organisation to easily adjust the level of service to reflect the customer’s importance or status.

A good electronic company would always like to follow-up with its customers on the items they have bought, so as to rectify the problem (if any) even before it gets logged as a complaint.

Increase Customer Revenues

Using CRM data, marketing campaigns can be co-ordinated more effectively by ensuring that promotions do not target customers who have already purchased that particular products.

It also ensures higher customer retention by introducing loyalty programs. A business would never like to see a product to a customer who has just bought it recently.

Discover New Customers

For example, if several students in a university sign up for a particular mobile service provider, the business can come up with a strategy to target rest of the community in the university.

“Cross Sell” and “Up Sell” Products More Effectively

CRM systems facilitate cross-selling (offering customers complimentary products based on their previous purchases) and up-selling (offering customers premium products in the same category).

It helps them to gain a better understanding of customers and anticipate their purchases (e.g. someone who purchases grass seed in the spring will need fertilizer later in the season).

Help Sales Staff Close Deals Faster

Make Call Centers More Efficient

With each employee having access to customer details and order histories, targeting clients becomes easier.

Simplify Marketing And Sales Processes

CRM helps in developing better communication channels. Interactive Voice Response System, web sites, etc. have made life easy both for the organisation and also for its sales representatives.

It allows the business to give its customers the option of choosing how they want to communication with the business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Casey_Gollan

Problems In CRM

Like all other things, CRM systems also have few shortcomings that they need to overcome. The technology is still new and has lots of areas of improvement.

Following are the major disadvantages that stops CRM systems from becoming a perfect solution for any business:

Customer Dissatisfaction

Although several businesses have implemented CRM systems to focus on customers, several clients are still dissatisfied with its execution.

They term CRM as “technology that delays” or “stops service”. For instance, lots of them find automated voice systems (or Interactive Voice Response) as a big headache and look for companies which have eased its use.

As per a recent study conducted by Accenture, receiving poor customer service remains the number one reason why consumers abandon one service provider and move on to another, be it a mobile service supplier or a credit card provider.

Other factors weighing heavily in consumer defections include lack of customised products and senseless corporate bureaucracies.

Authenticity of Remotely Hosted CRM Services

Lots of businesses these days tend to contract out CRM. At times, cost becomes the driving factor in outsourcing CRM systems and not the vendor reputation. In such scenarios, it’s possible that the CRM service provider can disappear overnight, along with all official records. It is also possible that information kept with the service provider might get used for other purposes.

A good CRM service always allows the company to back up/export data so that the outsourcing company has a control over the information. Also, in some cases corporate and government laws stops the businesses from keeping all client information (such as Social Security Number, Home Number, etc.) at an external location.

Cost and Complexity Involved In Setting Up Locally Hosted CRM Software
Frequent technical expertise required for setups and upgrades of CRM systems, makes the businesses pay for ongoing support of the application.

Security becomes company’s responsibility, which can cause a few headaches – especially as is the case with many applications, security patches are rolled out and one needs to install them very quickly.

As the business grows, needs from a CRM package also changes and adding these extra features can be quite expensive.

Improper Vision For Tomorrow’s Needs

Bottom line is that salespeople are only interested in things that help them sell more now.

A sales representative’s only resource is time; their most important goal is meeting quota or budget for this month, quarter, or year.

Yes, they are concerned about the long run, but if they don’t make quota now, they know that they probably won’t be around to worry about the long-term.

It’s not completely fair to say that CRM doesn’t benefit a salesperson in meeting short-range goals because in some respects it does, but most sales representatives feel that they can be just about as effective in selling in the short term without it.

In other words, the benefits of CRM don’t seem significantly greater than the investment of time and effort required to use the system each day.

Training Sales Staff

As the CRM is still evolving, businesses are required to devote enough time and revenue in training sales personnel. The workforce should be able to judge how to use the stored data in best possible manner.

If they don’t use it (or the information they do put in is out of date, inaccurate, or spotty) then they can be of little value to the company who “rolls up” all this “junk data”. Inept call center employees can further worsen the situation.

Essentially, companies that don’t provide service representatives with sufficient training or information, or forms that make people fight their way through repetitive, fruitless support systems are going to lose more customers. That’s no big surprise.

In a nutshell, bad CRM is sometimes worse than no CRM at all.

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Great Plains Integration Example – Importing MS CRM Hours to GP Service Invoice

Microsoft Dynamics GP customization tools selection changed with the introduction of eConnect. If you are on version 9.0 or higher (current GP version is 10.0 – August 2008), we recommend you to deploy eConnect in GP integration routines programming. In this small publication we would like to orient you in Microsoft CRM consulting hours capturing and moving them into Great Plains SOP invoice for billing out to your customers. This example allows MBS consulting practice to build their time billing and accounting systems virtually for free, as Microsoft Dynamics certified partners at this time enjoy GP and Microsoft CRM licenses for free

1. Service Activity in MS CRM. You can schedule, assign your CRM users and resources, associate with Account, Contract, Contract Line or even case. In our example we have case, created on contract line level as future Service Invoice in GP

2. Account contract and contract lines. In MS CRM you budget your time and assign hours (more precisely minutely) rates on the contract line level. Then you invoice contract to enable creating case, associated with contract line and toward this case your consultants log their time in the form of tasks.

3. Closing the cases and transferring them to your custom time log table. First of all, you should know that in MS CRM database you should not create custom objects, such as table, view, stored procedure. Instead you should create new database and place your custom objects there. Having time log table, you should create nightly SQL job, which will move closed cases and their tasks into time log table and mark these cases as transferred

4. Creating Service Invoices in GP. This job is done by eConnect application. You scan time log table, and create SOP Invoice with non-inventory item lines simply by placing consultant name as item number and description as task title. Finally, when your eConnect routine creates Sales Invoice for the case, you should mark case as integrated in your time log table

5. Dexterity nature of GP tables and fields. Great Plains Dexterity places some limitations on the length of GP SOP invoice line records. Please, read about the field descriptions in GP tables in Tools->Resource Description->Tables

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum http://www.albaspectrum.com

help@albaspectrum.com
1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Great Plains USA and Canada nationwide. Local service in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Diego.

Please visit our information portal Pegas Planet: http://www.pegasplanet.com

If you need custom programming for GP, we are happy to help you with Dexterity, eConnect, VBA/Modifier, SQL Stored Procedures, Crystal Reports. We also provide instant support to new and existing clients via web sessions for the customers in CA, IL, WI, NY, FL, IN, MI, TX, GA, NE, NM, AI, NC, SC, OR, WA, DC, DE, PA, VI, AZ, LA

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Increase Referrals by Using Contact Management Home Care CRM

Using a CRM system you can view and protect all of the up-to-date activities of all sales representatives, gain insight into their standings with referral sources, track sales data, and analyze territory progress. Proper information management is critical to building relationships with customers, and relationship building is critical to home care success. In the past it was hard for home care agencies to keep track of up-to-date activities of their sales representatives, gain insight into their standing with referral sources, track sales data, and analyze territory progress.

Agency owners pay sales representatives to go into the community, nurture contacts, input data, track information, and bring in referrals. This is important for agencies because it allows them to get as many clients as possible with a minimal amount of resources. In most cases, when a sales professional leaves, they take all of that valuable information with them at a significant cost to the agency. Historically, it takes upwards of a year for an agency to effectively manage the territory again, not to mention lost revenue and the investment of filling the spot of the sales representative and effectively training them.

Having the right CRM in place mitigates most of those losses, enabling the agency to pick up where the sales representative left off, allow for an easy transition, and offset some of the consequences of staff turnover. The password protection and data encryption ensures that a home care agencies, intellectual property will be safeguarded by putting these systems in place.

The agency is able to maintain account relationships and get the new sales representative on solid footing quickly. After all, a new representative will immediately know all of the pertinent information related to the account, such as what the A, B, and C accounts are, who makes the referrals, what discharge planner to deal with, referral sources, favorite foods, favorite sports teams, special interests, office hours, best time to call, if they were dissatisfied in the past and what made them dissatisfied, and whatever other information prior sales representatives have input into the account. All of which can be managed using a customer relationship management system.

With the growing sophistication yet easy-to-use functionality of customer relationship management tools, home care executives are realizing increased efficiencies, better time management, improved customer service to referral sources and an easy method of maintaining client information after a sales representative leaves another can pick up right where they left off, ultimately leading to stronger and lasting account relationships and more referrals.

Adam Bishop, Founder of PlayMaker CRM. At Last! A customer relationship management (CRM) tool that is specific to home care. http://www.playmakercrm.com/free-trial

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CRM-Toolkit.com

CRM, Customer Service

Microsoft CRM Services For Your Business

Automotive CRM Software

So, What Can My CRM Do Anyway?

Great Plains Integration Example – Importing MS CRM Hours to GP Service Invoice

Increase Referrals by Using Contact Management Home Care CRM

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