CRM Code Cracked and how?

Before Zoho made it cool to develop software products out of villages, Limesh Parekh was already running a CRM company from Bhilar, a small town on the border of Maharashtra and Gujrat, about 200KM north of Mumbai, since 2004. And it is not a small hole-in-wall kind of operation, but a team of 100+ young boys and girls developing, selling and supporting a cloud-based CRM product that is powering sales and support operations of more than 500 paying customers.

So, when Limesh sent an invite to the book launch, I was keener on why he felt need to write and what’s different in this book. In my mind, all that was supposed to be written about CRM has already been published. But I was in for a surprise. Limesh talked about the pain that he has been seeing all around. How SMEs struggle in deciding about if they need a CRM software for their business or selecting a right one and the battle of implementation! He found most of the businessmen were not able to get the CRM adopted in their business and those who implemented, were not sure if they were getting the benefits.

Limesh, in person, comes out more as a Cult Leader than a businessman. He talks softly in English that is having good mix of Hindi and Gujrati. He keeps on giving examples from our daily life either at home or work. Anyone and everyone can relate to what he says easily. So, when he decided to write a book, it would be for the business owners. He also vowed to avoid all kind of jargon and tech language. Being a voracious reader himself, he decided to follow the style of Goldratt (the famous author The Goal): a business novel!

The book tells a story of four friends who went to college together and then drifted in their own businesses. Their chance meeting leads to finding business problems and then starts their CRM journey. The entire book is in conversational style and one finds it very easy to relate to the characters and the scenes. One interesting thing is the very apt use of dialogues from Hindi movies, especially Amitabh movies.

The book has been a very easy read. Simple language and fast pace or narration helps in finishing the book in few seatings.

By writing this book, Limesh has done a great service to the business community as well as CRM practitioners. This book does not look like a first-time author’s work. Some credit for the same goes to the training Limesh went thru by attending Rashmi Bansal’s writing workshop.

I wish all the best to Limesh and look forward to reading his next book!