Business Owners – CRM Justification
Today I received an email reply from the president of a prospective vendor whom we had been in contact with via their outside sales person for the last 2 months. If you have ever been in this situation or fear of being in this situation, you know exactly why you need a CRM system. Business owners – if you ever needed justification to invest in a CRM system the email below is exactly why you need to move forward today!
I will be the first to tell you that it’s about more than the technology as technology by itself won’t solve all your business issues but it will create a framework from which you can manage your business.
The email snapshot is the actual reply (redacted) I received today from a possible but now ex-vendor to our company to a ‘what the heck email’ I sent earlier this morning.
Would you want to be in his position for the last month? How much business did they lose? How many people will never, ever consider doing business with them? How many prospective clients went somewhere else in the last month?
Here is what a CRM system would have done for him:
- Provided immediately visibility into all the open opportunities owned by this salesperson.
- Contact information at the prospective clients.
- The current status and the next item due in the pending relationship.
- The history of any meetings and correspondence.
- Specifications and/or quote documents.
- A method for quickly and proactively communicating the news to the prospects and who will be the new contact person going forward.
All of the above would be residing in a central location for the president to review and hand off to the replacement salesperson. Who knows where this information is now? Yellow pads of paper, spiral binders, Excel Spreadsheets, the salespersons head, some other island of automation personal account organizer, or even worse – on the salesperson’s personal iPhone?
