Overview of Maximizer CRM software and what it can do for your business.
Maximizer CRM Software – Interview
May 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Daniel Maimba of Maximizer Software discusses the benefits and value of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems to grow, develop and sustain your business in a biznetwork television interview.
Maximizing Profit through CRM and Networking!
May 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Although the term CRM is now synonymous with software it is a concept that has been utilized for decades by companies that operate customer centric policies. It basically involves the processes and methodologies employed in managing the relationships between the company and the customer.
Customers are fickle creatures. They want to be looked after, nurtured, and made to feel special. A typical customer’s basic instinct is to be loyal. It’s like any relationship. It may not be everything you want but it’s familiar and comfortable. But just like a relationship, if you ignore and neglect your customers, they may get a roving eye… and your competitors are always out there trying to snap them up.
If you only have a few customers, it’s possible to remember and manage them with a minimum of technology. Provide a good service, keep track of their orders, call them every now and again to see that they’re happy, send them thank you cards and so on. That’s effectively customer relationship management.
But what if you have ten customers, fifty? Will you remember every aspect of every transaction? Will you remember to follow up on every call?
The purpose of CRM software is to enable you to manage multiple customers personally. To automate processes that ‘touch’ your customers on a regular basis and then to remember every instance of every conversation, email, appointment, or transaction of any kind. All of these transactions are stored directly in your customer’s unique record so that your total relationship with that customer is always available.
Good CRM systems feature ‘Activity Managers’, which can automatically create a sequence of tasks and events.
Let’s say you meet a bunch of people at an event who express an interest in your service. You’ll enter them into the CRM system and then apply an ‘Activity’ from the Activity Manager Library. A typical activity (series of tasks and events to be posted to the client’s record) would be:
- Do immediately: Send an email to express how happy you were to meet the person
- In 1 day: Send a flyer or brochure of your services by mail
- In 3 days: Make a phone call to reconnect and confirm that your flyer was received and is there anything more you can do at this time.
- In 10 days: Send eNewsletter (and add to monthly newsletter mailing list)
- In 21 days: Invite to your own network meeting
- And so on…
Multiple activities can be created and applied to existing customers, new prospects, network partners or anyone else in your database. The whole series of events is immediately applied to the customer record and the system updates all the relevant task lists, to-dos and appointment schedulers.
No matter how many customers or prospects you have, the CRM system will be managing the relationship, sending out reminders and thank you cards, scheduling phone calls, remembering renewal dates and so much more. And all of these events and transactions will be neatly filed against the individual customer records.
Good CRM systems offer full synchronization with portable devices like your PDA, Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device. Synchronization works both ways so that if you’re at a meeting and enter an appointment into your Blackberry, it will synchronize and update your CRM system. If you constantly use Microsoft Outlook to schedule appointments, then it too joins the party and synchronization becomes a 3 way process.
CRM software has evolved over the years to accommodate new technologies and methodologies. It used to be the preserve of big companies but nowadays, highly intuitive but hugely powerful systems are affordable by the smallest of businesses.
In my experience, a fully utilized CRM system typically increases business by over 30% because it encourages you to treat your customers the way they expect. Where, in the past, you may have neglected to follow up, thank, send out renewal applications, cross sale and up sale notifications, special offers, anniversary cards, newsletters and so on, your CRM system will methodically churn out personalized materials and your customers will continue to love you and do business with you.
CRM software has become an incredibly important category. How well you know your customer will determine how much business he or she will do with you. As Sir Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is Power”. That knowledge can be contained in your CRM system.
CRM Software can Double your business!
May 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Despite the pressures of an economic recession this year, along with indicators reporting technology spending taking a downturn, the market for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is expected to continue steady growth. One of the reasons for this is that a CRM system can be a valuable tool for companies to leverage to turn the trend.
In a recession, CRM can be viewed as a Company Recession Management tool, providing ways for companies to guard against the typical pitfalls of recessionary thinking. In fact, the value of CRM has recently been proven by AMI-Partners, a research firm specializing in market intelligence for small and medium-sized businesses. Their research shows that companies with CRM systems out-perform those that don’t by over 140% higher revenue per employee. With this level of performance, CRM is clearly a must-have during a recession to get more out of every staff person.
Our research and case studies reveal exactly the same as the market research so to illustrate this I’m going to describe the experiences through one of our CRM clients.
Our client, which I refer to as XYZ Corp, had a good business but was running their prospect to client processes through a series of Excel Spreadsheets, a homemade Access database, Large White Board, Outlook and Paper Forms. It worked up to a point but failed miserably when it came to managing the relationship and following up. The system even managed to lose track of jobs resulting in forgetting to invoice.
We came in and backed up their entire system. We exported everything we could out of the Access Database and Spreadsheets, and then installed the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Next step was to import all of that data into the CRM system and create a system to manage it.
We created relevant User Defined Fields so that every prospect could be ‘profiled’ correctly. So in addition to collecting Name and Address, Phone Number etc, we also entered details of: Service Required, Date of Inquiry, Source of Inquiry (Web, Word of Mouth, Yellow Pages etc), Sales Representative, Detailed Description of Job, Special Instructions, Date Job Required and a more… Every inquiry, every prospect became a potential customer whose relationship was going to be managed.
Once the details had been taken, often a site visit would be scheduled. This would simply involve a mouse click in the CRM system to match a scheduled time for the prospect with the appropriate XYZ Corp representative. The CRM system manages the schedules of all Staff Members and as well Company Resources. A Company Resource can be a Board Room, Vehicle Work Bay, Computer or anything else that can be booked or time/service allocated.
The next step was to send out a quotation. This would go directly from the CRM system, and a copy would automatically be saved to the Prospects CRM record. At this stage an Activity Plan would be activated to ensure that follow up was scheduled. This could be that an email was sent 2 days after the quotation, followed by a phone call. A week later and information package could be sent by mail. The CRM system automatically scheduled all of these events to take place.
Incorporating this practice saw immediate results. More prospects were turning into clients but we wanted more. So if a prospect hadn’t ordered after 30 days despite the follow up and nurturing, the CRM system would flag these prospects for a Special Offer. This offer usually took the form of a letter which regretted that XYZ Corp had not managed to win their business for whatever reason, so perhaps they would like to go onto a special Standby Program whereby if they made use of the service with 48 hours notice, an additional discount of say 25% could be offered. This pulled more of the prospects in!
By taking meticulous details of the prospects from First Contact, we were able to analyze key data such as where the leads were coming from. With the click of a mouse, XYZ Corp was able to see the Return on Investment from General Advertizing, Networking, Direct Marketing, Bill Boards, Advertizing on Buses, Sign Writing on Vans and more.
At the end of first month after installing the system, we looked at their Prospect to Customer conversion ratios and then did the same after 12 months. The figures speak for themselves.
Month 1:
- Total Inquiries: 111417.61
- Total Unconverted Inquiries: 79151.61
- Total Orders: 32266.22
- Percentage of Converted Inquiries: 28.96%
Month 13:
- Total Inquiries: 99302.01
- Total Unconverted Inquiries: 44875.34
- Total Orders: 54426.67
- Percentage of Converted Inquiries: 54.81%
The automated follow up processes definitely secured more business but invaluable data was also being stored. XYZ Corp began to understand its customers much better. If there were any Customer Service issues, the Customer Service Rep. had the whole relationship in front of them through the CRM system. They could see every communication, what products or services were purchased, how much was paid for them, who sold them, what add on products were bought, which fitters/technicians provided the service and so on.
The key to long term relationships with your customers is to know them well and provide excellent service. CRM systems are available to all businesses, large and small. Companies that are not utilizing CRM Software are losing business. Period.
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