Why we need CRM

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

By David Bullock, Sales Director for construction specific CRM sales & marketing solutions provider KMS

Now, more than ever, we need to keep hold of our existing customers, as well as nurture any new prospects. We need to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum and that we are not wasting money and resource chasing the wrong type of business. We need to understand who our customers are and what our prospects really need. CRM will help us do all of these things and more.

Gone are the days of “letterbox pricing”, where tenders and enquiries were dropping through the door at a relentless pace. Pricing for work is getting harder, with more and more companies being squeezed by ever shrinking margins. Companies are now considering how they should best approach their tendering processes; which ones are quick wins; which ones require the least resource; how many they can actually price in time; and which ones will give the best return. So in fact they end up turning down the opportunity to tender for some work!

In parallel with this, sales, business development and marketing staff are being pushed to bring in more and more enquiries to ensure they meet targets and secure a full order book year on year. Amidst all this activity, administration tasks often take a secondary role, so customer service staff are not being provided with all the necessary details about contracts and orders. They can’t present a coordinated approach when dealing with customers’ issues.

At present all staff involved in pre-tender work, namely sales, business development and marketing, are all running around like headless chickens trying to get as many new chances to bid for work as possible. They are gathering frightening amounts of information about new schemes, project plans, enquiries and opportunities, companies they are dealing with, people they know and have met. In some cases staff have resorted to storing this information on spreadsheets, and have created beautiful, yet complex reports and analysis. In some cases companies have purchased systems to allow them to keep track of some of these details, but most of these systems fall short and only cater for Customers and Contacts.

Tendering staff also have their own way of working. Some still use pen and paper, spreadsheets are commonly used, some use complex estimating systems, allowing detailed bids to be put together. Now all of these approaches are fine, except, they are pricing on work as it comes in, and are not forewarned of potential work by their sales and business development colleagues, unless of course they participate in weekly tendering meetings used, in most cases, to pass information between the two departments. Thus valuable time and resources are being wasted.

It makes sense for a company to unite its marketing and pre-tender processes, its tendering processes and after-sales care, to create some “joined-up thinking” and ensure that the right hand knows what the left hand wants and needs, and vice-versa. This presents better service to prospective and existing customers, and enables staff to work more efficiently.

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