Why its all about your customers: Find, Engage, Service & Retain

What makes a business successful? Great products, inspiring leadership, the best people, the right strategy and flawless execution.

All of these things, of course.

But no business can survive without the most important factor: customers. And preferably, happy customers.

This may seem obvious but so many companies almost take their customers for granted, rather than as core assets.

This is why a robust system should be set up to follow these four key tenets of Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Find, Engage, Service & Retain.

Find

Clearly the starting point for all customers is finding them. And it’s not always easy.

Word of mouth, recommendations, networking, digital marketing, advertising, exhibitions and conferences, even a chat in a pub can all lead to finding new customers.

Every day is an opportunity, every conversation is a chance to tell your story about your organisation.

Recently, a friend of mine told me about how he made an important business connection with a woman he was randomly standing next to at a Bruce Springsteen concert. What are the chances?

However, you can reduce these levels of chance to become more systematic and targeted in finding the ideal customer in the right industry sector using CRM.

And establishing the right levels of communication to move them from being an unknown prospect to the next level.

Engage

How you engage with prospective customers is critical to how you sign them up and what you provide for them.

Your sales people are among your most expensive and valuable resources. You need them focused and clear on how to engage with them in the right way and to “sell what you build, build what you sell”.

So many companies mess up offering the wrong products and services to the wrong customer.

Keeping track of conversations and engagement is a critical part of the process. You don’t want to over-communicate so that they get fed up with you, but equally, you don’t want to leave them feeling that you don’t really care.

Being able to track conversations and actions as they move through the sales funnel is vital, as is being able to monitor in real time what activities are successful.

We find that organisations without a CRM system – and, most importantly, a defined and well-managed sales process, simply miss out on a ton of great opportunities.

Service

How clear do you think you are on how well you manage your customers?

Are you able to establish immediately if the right actions have been taken, whether they have any issues, whether there is opportunity to upsell or expand the relationship?

Has it ever come as a surprise to you when a valued customer tells you they want to churn and end the contract? Did you realise that they felt they were being taken for granted?

There shouldn’t be any of these difficult situations if your organisation is on top of managing the customer relationship and providing the right levels of service to ensure happy clients, preferably ones who will tell their own network how great you are. You can’t beat a good recommendation.

Being able to drill into the ongoing service relationship with your customers is a critical part of maintaining and growing your business.

Retain

It’s much harder to find new customers than it is to retain current ones.

Hopefully, you know each other well, there is a level of trust and appreciation that you are providing the best service for them, they know that you have their interests at heart.

You can adapt to their business needs and offer them solutions, often before they even realise they have a problem.

When it comes to contract renewal time, your team is on top of it and understand everything they need to know about your customer.

A great CRM tool follows your customer throughout their journey with you, seamlessly handing them from marketing to sales to account management, billing, procurement, logistics and all the other key functions.

The right people in your team have all the data they need at their fingertips, there are no surprises and no black holes in the relationship.

I find it hard to understand how companies in this day and age operate without an effective CRM and would love to chat with you about how setting one up can improve your organisation.