Be it customer acquisition or customer retention, the strategy for both these sales and marketing functions hold CRM at its fulcrum. While CRM is working hard to play catch-up with the fast changing digital paradigm, a lot of other variables are coming forward to lend a helping hand to the move towards exceptional customer engagement. The articles featured in this roundup are mostly of the reflective type, and appropriately so. Good to get started with your right foot forward!
Why CRM Projects Fail and How to Make Them More Successful – By HBR
The title tidily sums up why you should read this article. It does a very good job of hitting the nail at the head — CRM has failed front-line sales when it comes to selling more. The article urges companies to re-think CRM as a tool to increase revenue, not just a tool for inspection.
As we take a fresh stab at our Sales and CRM strategies, among others, for the year that unfolds ahead of us, let’s look at it for what it is. While CRM serves a lot of masters, it needs to be established as a tool to help sellers sell more, access support resources during sales cycles, and manage their territory or “book of business.” Now that’s some incentive for your sales team to keep up with the data entry requirements, and keep the data quality in the CRM relevant. Read more
Because the sales team had so little incentive to keep up with the data entry requirements, the quality of the data in the system became less and less reliable over the following year.
Smart Data can Help you Build Meaningful and Profitable Customer Relationships – By Forbes
And once again data integration is the key to treat customers to relevant and non-redundant interactions. In order to stay ahead in the game, you need an ongoing understanding of customer needs, and that includes product interest, payment, financial preferences, and other relevant information. And the lesser you ask off them directly, the better you are in the game. Read more
Intelligent & Integrated — The Future of CRM – By SelectHub
No roundup would be complete without a version of one of these! While this one clearly qualifies for TL;DR it does give you the bang for your time spent by presenting you a close lens view. The core of the article is the following — The dynamics of customer relationships are changing fast, with experiences winning out over transactions and satisfaction usurping experience. CRM systems need to change if they are going to meet customer-centric goals. They need to have greater precision, focus on customer needs, quantify customer behavior and predict that behavior. Additionally, today’s CRM systems should suggest or recommend potential tactics and strategies to marketing and sales teams that deliver results — tall orders, but CRM ecosystem does seem ready for the challenge. Read more 
By offering greater contextual insight, customer intelligence provides predictive accuracy of when and where to sell in order to deliver measurable results.
Customer Data Upheaval — The Open Data Initiative, and More – By CustomerThink
It all comes down to one thing – a single, comprehensive view of data — and finding new ways to provide amazing customer experiences. The article is a take on the coming together (or not) of tech giants to rewrite the Customer data model; all with a single objective of providing unprecedented customer engagement. Read more
