Mastering the Long Game of Customer Relationships—How I’m Learning to Love CRM

If we want to grow as professionals and open doors to our future potential, we need to grow our relationships. In this newsletter series on “Current YOU and Future YOU”, I have talked about the importance of juggling current and future goals, productivity, creativity, and content creation in opening doors to your future self. But there’s another flywheel that’s even more important. It’s how you grow, manage, and follow-up with the people you meet throughout your career (and personal life). This is, in business lingo, the world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM).?

However, IMHO, there’s a stripped-down approach to CRM that cuts through the noise, overpromises, and complexity. It took me a while, but now I’m a convert. So let’s dive in.

Why We’ve Gotten CRM All Wrong, and Why I’m Finally Falling in Love with It

I began and abandoned various efforts at CRM over the years. I once tried to implement a best-in-class (but too big and complicated) CRM system but failed miserably. But recently, with an improved attitude, new tools (like this newsletter and my new email platform), and various experiments (and failures), I started using a slimmed down system that has started to bear fruit based on a handful of lessons:

1. CRM isn’t about “opening the door,” it’s about the psychology and mechanics of keeping the door open.?

You can create brilliant content, webinars, demos, and presentations until you are blue in the face, but you will never increase your sales by a dime if you don’t have the skills to follow-up.?

Some say that content is King. I say that follow-up is Supreme Ruler.

Content and content marketing are powerful ways to develop your ideas, build trust, and expand your connections. But without 1-on-1 (or closer to 1-on-1 follow-up), you won't close the sale (at least for most traditional businesses).

CRM is about the long-game for business connections. It’s easy to stay on top of your immediate opportunities, especially if your business is newer or you are just starting out. But the game gets harder the more balls you have in the air. From my (ample) experience, there are so many opportunities that don’t work out in the short-term (e.g., timing that’s not right, proposals that are lost, canceled projects, clients that move on) but they turn into new opportunities when those doors are kept open over the long term.?

2. CRM isn’t about the tool, it’s about having a process (as rudimentary as it may be) to follow-up with people.

A CRM is a system to manage your business contacts and the related follow-up. But a lot of us get tripped up on the technology and tools rather than the actual purpose of the system. That’s where I got stuck too. So many articles focus on the capabilities and mechanics of CRM systems, which is all well and good, but I’ve discovered that a strong CRM system—however rudimentary— is more about the habits.

You don’t need a best-in-class tool to get started with a?“CRM.” You can get started by building your own workflow to support your relationship, business development, and sales cycle (let’s call it a “makeshift CRM”) using tools including:

• LinkedIn — to connect with and find business contacts.
• Spreadsheets —? to record names and emails.
• File folder — to store your notes for follow-ups.
• Outlook — to set yourself reminders to follow-up.
• Project Management tools (like Asana) — to set yourself tasks and reminders.

The time may come when you want to try a CRM tool. I recently started using the CRM that came with my newsletter provider. I have found advantages from using an automated tool, over the more manual processes, that include:

• Stopping the spreadsheet sprawl (I had dozens of lists of business contacts).
• Having a central list of people and opportunities and campaigns.
• Sending newsletters and other communications to targeted team members.
• Attaching notes and follow-up items for people, organizations, and opportunities.
• Maintaining a central task list of follow-ups to allow me to attack them at once.

But before you purchase a CRM, however, remember that standard CRMs are expensive and take work to maintain. You need your human workflow in order first. With the tips I show you below, you can recreate the CRM process with a few easy tricks, and then you can contemplate whether you want to use a CRM system after you have the basics figured out.?

3. CRMs are even more important for “non-sales salespeople” who aren’t selling all the time.

I love expert sales trainers and books like Sell or Be Sold by Grant Cardone and Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi , which are two of my favorite business books (buy them, even if you aren’t in sales!). This intense style of selling and business development doesn’t work for most of us in our current situation. I believe a strong CRM process is more important for people who aren’t selling all the time because, unfortunately, we are more likely to get rusty or out of practice or get side-swept by client deliverables or other projects — and we need a nudge to follow-up.

A CRM makes you more systematic and less reactionary. You aren’t relying on the chance of bumping into people downtown or new work falling in your lap. A follow-up ”system,” whether manual or a platform that you use, takes away the decision-making, info overload, and second-guessing. You create built-in moments to send “touches” without having internal debates about when, where, and how. A strong CRM system also gives you the ability to take a break. You have a system and a queue and a strategy to follow-up and to step away.

There's a “Zen” of sales and business development if you look for it and that’s where a CRM steps in.

My Simple “CRM” Cheat Sheet – 4 Components to Get Started

Whether you have a best-in-class CRM system or are using an Excel spreadsheet, here are four key components to get started with your CRM system. Don’t worry about all the YouTube and Google tutorials you see. If you start with these components, you’ll be on your way.?

1. Contacts

The first ingredient is your contacts (PEOPLE!) who can be:

• Current clients, business associates, or coworkers
• Past clients, business associates, or coworkers
• People you met at conferences, networking events, or courses
• Connection you made through others
• Prospects for projects or future opportunities
• People you have met or had conversations with through social media.

These are people you want a deeper, more direct business relationship (or potential relationship) with than your connections from LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social platforms.

You can start your CRM by dumping these contacts onto a spreadsheet with their email addresses. Write a few details, like where you met them, how to follow-up, or ways you can help them or they could help you.

Your list of people should be growing weekly, if not monthly, depending on your current level of sales and business development activity. And voila, you have the start of a mini CRM!

2. Campaigns (or “campaign-like” groups)

By “campaign,” a term I use loosely, I am not talking about automated email blasts per se. I am talking about organizing your sales or business development efforts into strategic groups of either similar products and services or groups of people and organizations.

For me, “campaigns” in my CRM are:

• Podcast and conference submissions (this is free work for promotional purposes)
• Book sales and speaking (companies to sell books or speaking to)
• Risk Oversight (prospects for my internal control and audit firm, Risk Oversight)
• Prospects (referrals, warm leads, pie-in-the sky)

Organizing your CRM allows you to “batch” your follow-ups. You will likely have similar messages or emails drafted and these groupings can help you cover more people at the same time.

3. Open leads or opportunities

Open leads are the prospects or opportunities you are actively looking to push along or close. They are the ones you should be the most diligent and persistent at following-up on.

I have spent a ton of time on proposals and then never heard back, and have forgotten to follow-up the first, second, or third time. Keep a list of your open leads and opportunities close at hand and in plain sight. Review it regularly and follow-up to close as many as you can.

4. Task lists and reminders

You can set up a task list in your spreadsheet, a tool like Asana, or in Outlook. If you have a CRM system, you can create a central task list across your contacts, campaigns, and opportunities. You will have tasks that have a specific deadline — like for a proposal due, project coming up, or job opportunity. For many other follow-ups, there isn’t a due date or expiry date.?

We’ve all had people we were “supposed” to follow-up with or truly wanted to develop a relationship with, but work or life got in the way. This is where a task list and reminders are useful for following-up with people over the long-run.

My Two Favorite Ways to Follow-Up?

Following-up with people is a dance. There’s a fine line between tenacity and being a nuisance. Follow-up takes organization, pacing, and intuition to know when to move forward and when to back off. But, nothing ever happens (ever, ever, ever) without follow-up.

I recommend that you experiment with two techniques. They are completely opposite, yet their combination is powerful.?

1. Dripping

Dripping is about keeping in touch a little bit at a time. Following up with two people a day? (with whom you have a valid business relationship) can have an enormous ripple effect on your career, income, and net worth. While contacting two people takes minimal effort on any given day, let’s do the math to see what this means in 5 years:

5 years x 250 working days/year x 2 follow-ups/day = 2,500 follow-ups!

Consistency reigns. Dripping gets you in the mental game of connection and follow-up and makes reaching out natural. As an introvert, this is especially important for me because I am more likely to go “heads down” and out of touch. A philosophy of dripping helps to make follow-up more natural.

2. Batching

While I love dripping as part of my personal CRM system, I love batching (which is the polar opposite) just as much. Batching is about working in strategic pushes or “bulk” reach-outs to your contacts, prospects, or clients. Batching is something you might set aside time to do once a week, once a month — or a few times a year, depending on your goals and the time available. It’s a powerful technique if you want to ensure a result from your efforts.?

While this isn’t an exact science, at the stage of my business, I have figured out that if I sit down and send about 20 emails to warm leads, I am (almost) guaranteed to make a sale (albeit, it could be a small sale). Business is based on trusted relationships but it’s a quantity game too, which is why batching works. The more you follow-up, the more doors you open. We don’t always know where our next opportunity is coming from and our best bet is to cast a wide net.?

Whatever CRM system you use, start now (if you haven’t already) and remember that it’s not a system designed to “save” information but rather a system designed to “take action” on the information (people) you already have. By dripping and batching your follow-up, you discover a natural momentum. And you’ll be surprised that your efforts are two-way. You’ll reach out to people more regularly, but other people (known to you and not) will reach out to you more regularly as well. Happy connecting this Fall!?

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