CRM: Make Your Case for a Tool Your Organization Needs

A 10-Step Strategy to Obtaining Buy-In for a CRM

Being in a marketing or business development role, you have undoubtably come across or used a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform at some point and understand its necessity to executing a successful operation.?But what can you do if your organization needs one and you are struggling to obtain buy-in??You may need to take a more detailed approach to the what, why, and if not.

1. The human experience of change is complex, and CRM means different things to people.?To establish your best chance at obtaining buy-in, be as transparent as possible when defining CRM and its purpose for your organization – the problems CRM will solve.?
2. Define the capabilities of a CRM and what staff will be able to accomplish with it.?As a comparison, analyze what it will mean to your organization if a full-scale implementation occurs vs. conducting a trial run, building a CRM internally, or maintaining the status quo.
3. Relate to the people in the room.?Describe the overall impact from each key stakeholder’s perspective.
4. Give an understanding of the scope and timeline for implementation.?Most likely, you will be looking at a phased approach based on industry best practices – data gathering, initial planning, design/setup, data migration, training, rollout, and system optimization.?If not, you should seriously reconsider if the vendor and product are right for your organization.
5. Make sure the factors to a successful effort are understood by all.?Company buy-in is not the only one.
6. Everything up to this point may seem great but explaining the evaluation criteria and methodology used to shortlist viable products are important too.?Your colleagues will want to know!
7. Analyze the costs if you have already developed a shortlist and evaluated those products.
8. Discuss the qualitative and quantitative benefits.
9. Be clear on the risks, and any necessary mitigation and contingency plans.
10. Give your recommendation.?State what resources are required to move forward and provide an action plan.