Is CRM Right For Your Small Business?
Customer relationship management will help you to find, obtain, and keep good customers

by Brent Leary


December 11, 2007--Thanks to companies such as Salesforce.com and
NetSuite, customer relationship management (CRM) is easier to use,
packed with great functionality, and very affordable. All you need to
use many of these systems is a Web browser or mobile device. So, with
CRM being more accessible it's not surprising to see small businesses
turning to CRM in order to find, catch, and keep good customers. But
should your company be jumping on the bandwagon? Here are a few
questions that can help you decide if CRM is the right answer for your
business.

Are you happy with the status quo?
This is not a trick question. Just about every survey focused on the
concerns of small business owners' ranks customer acquisition and
retention as its top challenges. But there are businesses that are very
happy with the customers they have and are not on the prowl for new
ones. And if you're in this position, more power to you! If things are
going well, you're not going to be motivated to enforce the kind of
organizational changes that come with using CRM. And believe me;
implementing any kind of CRM application can bring big changes to your
business.

Do you consider CRM to be just another piece of software?
One business owner I know went through two of the best CRM packages on
the market and couldn't understand why his employees didn't "take" to
using either one of them. What he failed to understand was his
employees were used to doing things their way and saw using any system
as added work for which they received no added benefit-financial or
otherwise. The owner found out the hard way that implementing CRM is
not like going to CompUSA and picking up a copy of QuickBooks. CRM uses
technology to implement strategies aimed at helping companies acquire
new customers, sell more to current customers, and provide better
service to increase customer retention. So if you view CRM as anything
less than a business strategy it's not for you at this time.

Do you want your customers to view you as vendor or a partner?
Your most profitable and long-lasting business relationships come about
when you are able to devote more time to really understanding what your
customers value. By doing this, the nature of your relationship will go
from vendor-customer, implying just a financial relationship open to
outside competitors, to trusted partner-valued adviser. This is where
your customers view you as important to their business, and in fact
become your biggest supporters inside and outside of their
organizations. But, it can only happen if you can put the time in to
focus on how to deliver what's important to them. And in order to do
this, you must find ways to automate the routine and time-consuming
processes of finding and catching new customers.

The bottom line is that CRM is not for every small business. It's for
those businesses that are looking to get bigger, react quicker, but
most importantly do better by their customers. And if you're serious
about improving the way customers and prospects feel about your
company, CRM may be just what you need.

Brent
Leary's column on business technology appears weekly at
BlackEnterprise.com. He is co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials, an
Atlanta-based consulting/advisory firm. He has been quoted in national
publications such as Newsweek Inc., and Direct Marketing News. Leary is
also host of "Technology-for Business Sake," a weekly radio program
heard on 1160 AM in Atlanta, as well as on www.BusinessTechnologyRadio.com. His popular blog can be found at www.brentleary.com.

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