We rarely venture outside of the ‘familiar’, especially for such mundane things as the route to the office, or where we buy our milk, to what we eat. We constantly make decisions based on the ‘familiar’. As for more the important items such as a car or a home, the ‘familiar’ factors become increasingly more important and the degree to which we will pay is premium because ‘familiarity’ is virtually unlimited.

How important is familiarity?

It’s everything. We instantly and consciously (sometimes unconsciously) seek to satisfy our need for familiarity. It’s almost primal. If you don’t think so then why would a giant brand like Disney release blockbuster animations using familiar actor’s voices? The main reason is because it sells. It sells because we are enamored with the familiarity of the voices and the story. It’s a one-two punch that’s for all practical purposes, we find irrestable. This one-two formula works really well in the endorsement world as well. I hazard to guess what portion of the retail price Nike budgets on their endorsement athletes, but whatever it is, it’s huge and nobody is complaining about the results. More than that, it keeps one brand, Nike, ahead of all others by using the personal (and big) brands of the athletes.

Does familiarity breed content or contempt?

Familiarity may breed contempt in some circles but in selling it only creates confidence. If you doubt we buy everything based on the level of familiarity, then put this example into perspective. You get a call to pick up a half-gallon of milk for your kids on the way home. Now on the way to your car, a person unknown to you, dressed in dingy clothes and definitely in need of a shower proposes to you that he has some milk for sale, unbranded of course, and it’s only a buck.  If you’re like most people, this simple product purchase is made only where you trust the vendor and perhaps even the brand. Naturally you will pay five times the strangers price and like Elsie the cow, you feel contented. Whether it’s milk or scotch, or a toothbrush, everything has its ‘contented’ price for the simple reason that we strongly relate to the things we know.

How does a customer decide?

It’s no mystery how most people make their decisions. If a machine made the decision then that’s a different story. However, you are dealing with a human being and most of the human race can’t avoid the emotional side of the buying equation. Get ‘familiar’ with these parameters because we all make decisions based on these factors: 

• Customers prefer to choose familiar things
• Customers rely on the familiarity of relationships

Why? That’s easy. We want to minimize or even hope to eliminate our risk. And besides, customers are only interested in themselves.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

The bigger the decision, the bigger the ‘familiar’ factor comes into focus.

We rely on ‘familiar’ relationships to satisfy our needs, either physical (logical) or emotional (feelings), to minimize our risks. The most pointed ‘familiarity’ example is ‘brand name’ choices. With brand names and ‘known’ references, there usually is little to decide about from a buyer’s point of view.

• With the advent of CRM tools like routine contact scheduling, key date tracking and automated personalized marketing, becoming familiar has become a straightforward job even for the most junior sales member.

Brand yourself. Maximize the risk doing business with anyone else.

Don’t have a billion dollars and a little shy on a $100 million endorsement account? No problem. As a sales person, manager or executive, you can accomplish a level of ‘brand’ familiarity to achieve the one-two punch.

• Try maximizing the risk of doing business with your competition in your customer’s mind. Your prospect must develop confidence that you’re the best choice. Your customer wants the confidence that they should continue to do business with you and not just at the ‘close’ of your sales cycle, but at each point in the sales process.
• This means that you can’t shortcut the business rapport development (familiarity of relationships) or forget about properly designing your CRM database as an information base (familiar things) from which you can then be ‘more familiar’.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Pipeline Triangulation

Triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end. In MosaicCRM terms, triangulation is the process of determining the points that make up your pipeline and its ability to hone in on opportunities that have a high probability of closing. Click on the Icon for more information on how this works!

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Nothing comes close to beating the zipper.  

Tired of ‘innovate or die’ hype? YKK zippers has an interesting branding lesson. The zipper is an old invention with relatively new applications. It was the brainchild of Whitcomb Judson of Chicago in 1893. Only in 1913 did Gideon Sundbach re-engineer Judson’s fastener into a more streamlined and reliable form. And it wasn’t until the mid 1930’s that zippers were embraced and became a viable business success. No other high tech solution has replaced it. Velcro doesn’t come close.

Most zippers have YKK on them. 

If you have wondered why there is an interesting history to the modern version of the zipper. In 1934, Yoshida Kogyo Kabushililaisha was founded. In 1994 the privately held firm headquartered in Japan, changed its name to YKK Co.  In size and complexity the company would rival any major high tech international firm and consists of 80 companies at 206 facilities in 52 countries. They manufacture everything from the brass to the dyes used in the cloth and made over 1.5 million miles of them last year. 

“A fair company on which customer’s can depend.”

This is how YKK describes itself. It makes a lot of sense and is a great message for sales personnel to carry to their customers.  The point here is to state a clear message of who you are. So many companies and personnel fail to get this message across to their customers and suffer because of it. Forget the marketing hype for a minute (because your customers ignore it as well).

What makes you different from Brand X?

How is your company known? How would your company like to be known as? You need the answers to these questions because your customers frame them in another way: What makes you different from Brand X? If you don’t have the answer or simply haven’t learned it, stop everything until you do.

And for goodness sakes, don’t state some slick marketing line. Unfortunately, sales people are often perceived as a little suspicious until the customer gets to know you. Using a slick statement can trigger an even greater defense. Whatever you say, make it real, simple and natural. Branding yourself and your company into a one liner is a hard but valuable task. Take a few minutes and get your team together to create one. Maybe even ask some of your customers for ideas.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

CRM is a good platform to standardize branding though communication protocols that can be imbedded throughout the customer interaction routines.

• ‘Marvel’ allows a prescribed series of activities that are specific to email content, brochure distribution and even talk scripts
• Template files are an easy way to provide branding and content standardization especially when used in licensed or controlled industries to ensure compliance
• MosaicCRM’s ‘Sales Intelligence’ is a suite of modules designed for specific Product Knowledge, Features/Benefits, References and more

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

So began Rod Sterling’s eerie narrative that prompted the viewer to mentally visualize portraiture of the fantasy, horror, or sci-fi of what was to follow next. What’s important to note here is the impressive power of visualization.  The technique wasn’t new either. It worked for decades in radio and was equally effective for the power of television. Today, even the medical establishment has watched the power of mental imagery assist patients in their healing process.

Visualize Your Competition and Relationships.

Great sports competitors have realized for decades that developing their power of visualization is a valuable means to improve their performance.  Sports psychologists agree that to do something successfully; we must first be able to visualize doing it in our own mind. The reason why visualization is so effective is that our brain is not able to distinguish between the real event and the imagined one. When I visualize an event, it’s has a powerful effect of reducing what I am looking at. It’s like any race. There’s a lot of people on the track but in reality, very few are actually in the race.  Visualization has that tendency to focus you on one or two competitors that are truly in the race with you.

Selling provides some unique ways to visualize your competition.

On the literal level, it can very well be the named competitor. How do you visualize the brand competitor and just as important, can you visualize what’s in the mind of your customer? Can you visualize the problem or problems? On the practical level, what does the product look like, how does it perform? Can you visualize your customer using it? If so, how do they look?

On a personal level, can you, like athletes, run through a demonstration or sales presentation? How about dreaming up a few closing scenarios? These mental rehearsals can prove invaluable as preparatory tools.

From a CRM perspective, we spend a lot of time and money ‘visualizing’ our customers.

These visualization tools can be as simple as a standard street map to the complexity scrubbing demographics and target market data. These ‘business geographics’ help visualize what the customer looks like. And everybody does it. The one’s who do it best, like Wal Mart, not only know what their customer looks like, they have intimate knowledge and experience with any and all competition.

Visualization could well be your sixth sense.

Visualization provides you with that sixth sense when it comes to the real thing. It only stands to reason that we can gain a heightened sense of familiarity and the confidence that ‘been there, done that’ promotes. Use these mental dress rehearsals to enhance your skills and improve your ability to better judge business situations. Not so unrelated is the power of positive thinking that results from being a skillful visualizer.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner –

Visualizing your database goes beyond just metal images. To be practical, CRM is the best way to take a large number of disparate data streams and convert these into a very clear picture of your customer, and how and when they buy. To make that happen, here are a few suggestions to follow:

•  Pipeline design and management is clear, concise, easy
• Automate everything that manages the customer buying cycle and sales cycles
• Optimize activity planning with strategic business processes

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sell More With 100% ‘Real’ Visibility!

Unlike most CRM’s that organize data into lists and simple ‘recording functions’, MosaicCRM AccountPro provides incredible visibility of accounts. This effectively converts prospects into customers with uniquely designed sales processes that match your style, culture and customers.

• Customized business processes that drive successful sales operations
• Highly automated management of Pipelines, Key Activities, Closing Dates, Revenue Streams and Contract Renewal dates
• Strategic activities and objectives that match client buying cycles and preferences
• Maximize sales with structured activity and sales opportunity tracking for New Leads and Accounts

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

About AFDB’s: Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

Visualization has often been related to many forms of mind control. If you are concerned that too much visualizing will leak out of your head and into that of your competitors, or you’re just a little paranoid of the whole Rod Sterling thing, I draw your attention to this product. I know this appears to be just cheap commercialism but it’s not. It’s billed as ‘An Effective, Low-Cost Solution To Combating Mind-Control.’ Still not sold, read on:

“An Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie (AFDB) is a type of headwear that can shield your brain from most electromagnetic psychotronic mind control carriers. AFDBs are inexpensive (even free if you don’t mind scrounging for thrown-out aluminum foil) and can be constructed by anyone with at least the dexterity of a chimp. This cheap and unobtrusive form of mind control protection offers real security to the masses. Not only do they protect against incoming signals, but they also block most forms of brain scanning and mind reading, keeping the secrets in your head truly secret. AFDBs are safe and operate automatically. All you do is make it and wear it and you’re good to go! Plus, AFDBs are stylish and comfortable.” What are you waiting for, order yours today!

Do we enhance sales with customer satisfaction or is it customer loyalty? The differences are night and day and the effectiveness of each needs careful scrutiny. To hear the gurus talk about the value of customer satisfaction, one would think it’s the beginning and end of the customer relationship. Maybe that’s because it’s easy to define the satisfaction mission: what business practices result in the highest customer satisfaction.

In turn, the rationale is the more satisfied the customer is, the higher degree of customer loyalty and more loyal customers buy more.  Right? Not necessarily. This is not to belittle the satisfaction process in any way because a lot of our selling is often directly related to the JD Power and Associates or Consumer Reports or similar evaluations about your product and company. This is where it starts to get confusing.

What is satisfaction?

It’s hard to find a constant relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. It depends on the value weight that the buyer assigns to the purchase. It could rate with little or no value, such as in the case of a commodity like cars. If what you sell is a commodity, the satisfaction value will usually be on par with your competition. In these cases it should not be the focus of your sales efforts because in the mind of your customer, he has placed little value on it and hence you are no different from anybody else.

What’s loyalty?

Loyalty is best summed up as the reason the customer wants to return and buy something from you. There is so much less said about customer loyalty relative to customer satisfaction, yet from a sales perspective, it might be the most important buying reason of all time.

Successful organizations have a common denominator: a long history of providing value.

What drives the ‘reasons’ behind customer loyalty? I believe strongly that loyalty is driven by value. And value is what the purchaser deems appropriate at that time.  Herein is the key: you must provide the exact value equation to the customer at the time of purchase. Equally valid is the fact that to maintain loyalty, you can’t rely on past levels of satisfaction. Your customer has likely changed and so has their perception of value. As sales people, our task is to recognize and uncover our customer’s ever changing value system. Change with them or lose them. It’s that simple and it’s that easy.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

CRM is an efficient method to acquire the satisfaction and loyalty drivers unique to your customer. This could play a key role in helping you manage what the customer perceives is the life cycle of your product (buying cycle) and tracking the current ‘value’ of why they want to buy from you.

• Monitor buying ‘reasons’
• Target buying cycles
• Strategic activities and objectives that match buying cycles and customer preferences
  
• Pre-formatted customer/prospect nurturing programs
• Case/Customer Support modules
• Integrate with social network/media venues

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Protocols for Measuring and Optimizing Activity Results

Helping organizations and their users achieve their activity objectives is the hallmark of MosaicCRM. Our business processes offer a unique and important approach to measuring activity ‘results’.  This differentiation is particularity valuable when it comes to Account Retention and Acquisition: our activity protocols are vital to optimize activity effectiveness and success.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

CRM manages obsolescence better than anything else.

Ever ask yourself how we got here from index cards and a ballpoint pen? What made CRM the darling child and a must have? Let’s take a step back to 1959. Harley Earl, who for over 30 years as the Chief of Design and Styling for GM, may best be remembered for designing the classic Corvette. For sales and marketing professionals, more important was his design for the tail fins on the 1959 Cadillac.

First Key: Planned Obsolescence

This Caddy marked the epitome of planned obsolescence. By any measure, no one would confuse this masterpiece with any sort of a vehicle that would last a lifetime. Just the opposite was true:  this car was purely about style, a river of chrome, cool colors, and even cooler fins and what it said about the Customer. This is the First Key in what would forever mark the change in how we sell all goods: planned obsolescence changed our sales strategies to customer buying cycles.

Key Two: Ralph Nader added to the CRM chain

The Second Key would involve Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate who gained notoriety by killing the Corvair with his 1965 authorship of “Unsafe at Any Speed”. Few know that he actually got his first stab in this field with the ’59 Caddy. My guess is Nader felt it was unsafe at any speed because people might impale themselves on the tail fins. Nader ensured that consumer rights gained momentum and laws demanded auto manufacturers keep track of buyers (customers) for recall notices.

Key Three: Cheap and easy to use, PC’s was the breakthrough for CRM

Well, not all this Customer data was put to waste as simple mailing lists or be the privy of major corporations. Much has been said about the personal computer but what’s not evident is its role as the Third Key to the modern selling puzzle. The result of this data journey is every nuance, of everything you buy or want to buy, is available to anyone who cares to know. For miniscule cost, with equally miniscule computer or marketing skills, anyone can use this data.  

Key Four: The Internet changed buyer’s relationship habits

The Fourth Key is the Internet: Information is cheap and available to everyone. Customers are addicted to finding out what they want to buy on the net. This doesn’t eliminate the need for a sales relationship. For many organizations, just the opposite is true. Once the object of desire is found, consumers want to connect instantly in a ‘relationship’, no matter how short term they need it to be.

What this all means today is for a great many sales people, economic survival relies on the consumption of the constant turnover that obsolescence requires and how the customers prefers their client relationship.

Modern selling recognizes customers changed to a buying cycle process

Why they buy and what they expect to gain is often measured in terms of their short-term buying-cycles. Hence, we need CRM technology to stay tuned to our customer’s wavelength and gear our sales pitch to exactly what the consumer wants to buy at that very moment. Unfortunately, most CRM program designs are still back in the 1950’s mode: lots of data lists, extraneous info and doodads that do little to recognize or respond to buying cycle strategies. 

Here’s the rub: Buying and setting up a CRM is ridiculously simple….

• But this bears no relation to what you need CRM to do: support a structured process that defines the buying cycle and the enterprise-wide activities essential relationship events that surround it. 
• CRM to be of any sustainable value to an organization is a strategic process that should eliminate the clutter of extraneous data, activities and tools, the polar opposite of the soup to nuts offerings that are sold to CRM users.   

I am not here to debunk anything or upset the latest CRM guru’s solution. Rather, to illustrate that a lot of what we have learned or assumed about CRM role in sales automation starts on the wrong assumptions, neglect the relationship needs and the vast majority die quickly e.g. obsolete before they get started. That’s not entirely your fault: it’s just that many of the CRM programs and gurus fail to navigate a sustainable buying cycle relationship management strategy. Instead they see obsolescence (a river of technical chrome, doodads and bells and whistles) as a better reason to engage CRM.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

The basic roots that make up CRM ‘work’ fall into this simple summary:

• 1: Deploying a process that acknowledges the ‘Customer’s’ buying cycle as critical to whatever comes before or follows next in the sales relationship cycle.
• 2: ‘Managing’ the customer’s short-term needs and bridging the attention gap is the ‘Relationship’ job of the sales person and must be in sync with the CRM process set up.
• 3: CRM must manage the degree of automation required in the sales role e.g. the shortest route possible to the customer.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

When business was flying and financing was easy, getting the sale was sufficient enough and adopting a strict CRM protocol, along with a lot of other ‘protocols’, usually went by the wayside. Fast forward a couple of years into a deep recession to upset that status quo: Account Retention and Acquisition protocols are absolutely vital to success, mainly because nobody has the money or enough runway to wing it or buyers who have money or time to chance it.

1: Break the Outlook habit to optimize sales potential.

CRM users always gripe it is time consuming to enter data. Well, in comparison to what, Outlook or a spreadsheet? Outlook is pathetically inefficient and like cigarettes, has everyone addicted to it and a habit that needs to be broken. There is no possible way a contact manager or excel can be more efficient and effective than CRM to optimize sales.

• Use CRM to maintain a customer relationship e.g. manage all things related to revenue

2: ‘Vital’ information minimums.

As a company, detail exactly the vital information needed to acquire and maintain a sales relationship with the customer. You don’t need a record of every voice mail message, or the type of dog the contact has. Yet typically vital info is ignored e.g. full names, telephone numbers, email addresses, decision making authority. The lack of vital communication factors makes for a crippled CRM database that can only reference historical data and not the future.

Warning: The Social media craze might be killing your efficiency. So much of the contact/account data included in these programs is useless to your mission. Rarely will it qualify or add to a sales opportunity. Be very wary here of value versus results.

• Set out the required info
• Insist on 100% compliance

3: Monitor Results, not Activities

It is simply all about the results and not the volume of activities. The value of recording activity numbers with non-result actions e.g. leaving a voice mail message or sending a generic email is negligible.

• Your CRM must be monitoring next step ‘results’ of activities.

4: Ratios

What is working really boils down to ratios: how many calls develop how many appointments that result in so many proposals etc. Sloppy activity management will come home to roost in a big way.  Measuring results is the only way to can find out e.g.

• Power Caller User: 100’s of calls and low appointment results are telling in so many ways
• Least Resistance User: Low Calls-High Email is this opening opportunities or not?

5: Get Maximum Activity Coverage

Scheduling one activity at a time by ‘opportunity’ is a really hard way to plan ahead. You’ve profiled and rated accounts right? Good, then sort your database and start scheduling en masse. Plus, dedicate a given time every week for scheduling.

• Insist there is a scheduled activity at all times for every Key Account, Pipeline Opportunity Account and Qualified Prospect. It is impossible to argue this from a sales person point of view… even harder to explain why not to management.
• Monitor activity ‘results’ associated with Opportunities: what’s open, closed, lost, a maybe… this is the most important criteria with which to measure activity efforts.
• Add another activity when completing one.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Helping users achieve their activity objectives and making each one count is the hallmark of MosaicCRM. Here are a few built in systems we deploy to manage customer retention  and acquisition activities:

• Automatic Reschedule: Past due activities are automatically rescheduled by the system
• Mosaic ‘Marvel’: This tool pre-configures any number of specific activities by specific users in one click. Superb for customer retention routines, lead nurturing and prospect hunting.
• Daily Activity Manager: One simple screen for adding and completing all activities
• Dynamic Activity Objectives: Set number goals for Calls, Appointments, Presentations and Email and get instant monitoring by day, week and month
• Activity Results: Monitor results achieved by activities across the board or by individual
• Comparison Results: Activity comparisons for scheduled, completed numbers and overall database coverage
• Priority Alerts: All activities affecting accounts are profiled  and instant alerts issued

______________________________________________________________________________

Mastering Simplicity

At MosaicCRM we try to imitate a paper clip: master simplicity and keeping it simple. The traditional paper clip is a wonder of simplicity and the essence of form follows function. For over a century, it still works in spite of the fact that a lot of imitators have come and gone. Seemingly everybody’s got a simple this CRM or a simple that CRM to sell. The reality is there’s nothing simple about selling. Making CRM look simple, however, is the mark of a professional.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

The numbers game is dead. Long live strategic ratios.

The business climate in 2011 is projected to be brutal with less money, tighter budgets, fewer sales people and scarcer customers. In spite of this many companies will thrive. How? By changing the way they view prospects and the selling process.

Method 1: High Volume Low Results

The traditional approach to sales activity has been volume gets results. In other words, given enough volume, anyone can reach the desired results. The approach to the high volume is often too costly or too many factors skew the results. Take for example, simply adding more telemarketers to make more calls. If they are poor quality personnel with low skill levels, two things occur: The number of calls goes way, way up. The quality of the prospect goes way, way down.

A point of diminishing return becomes apparent.  Processing tons of prospects doesn’t guarantee more sales. Worse, numbers game activities can eat up valuable runway space and results in closed opportunities that carry a terrible, even unaffordable, price. It’s no longer sufficient to say any organization can sell (or manage) to the tune of just numbers.

Method 2: Regulated Volume – Strategic Results

The key management factor here is to regulate the volume to better qualify the prospects before engaging the costly sales process. With fewer resources or even with the same resources but higher quotas, defining the prospect, managing the prospecting process and inspecting what you expect are time- tested actions.

+ Don’t allow prospects into the pipeline (or prospecting channel) that don’t fit simple yet concrete parameters.

+ Deal with the ripe bananas, only the ones that can take advantage of a limited window of opportunity.

+ Deals won will increase because you have much fewer distractions and more on top of your game.

MosaicCRM Experts Tips – Looking at an improved management role for CRM

Allocating resources is critical, so is monitoring results to optimize these resources. Our CRM platforms provide a number of methods that go beyond traditional ‘activity measurement’ reports.

• Manage Call Ratios & Results: The key analytics determine how good the prospect demographics are.
• Monitor promotions with ‘Opportunity Source’ analytics: From Prospect to Customer can be a tricky course. Analyzing what prospects become customers  reinforces the call ratio and delivers a ‘success’ criteria blueprint to copy

• Aging Analysis: Tracking the time periods through the sales stages provides data to modify promotions/sales processes to shorten the sales cycle.
• Measure Deals Lost Analytics: Lost Deals tell a lot about customers, competitors, pricing, timing and more that will enable you to fine tune the next offering.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Optimized Data Quality Beats Quantity Hands Down

The data explosion and subsequent mash up of mis-aligned information has led to the biggest area of frustration for users and probably the top reason why CRM programs flounder.  CRM data quality is far more important than all the programming doodads put together. Without high quality, strategically defined data, the value and function of the CRM program will drive sales people (and customers) away in a hurry. I have found these techniques to be helpful in the creation, maintenance and ongoing user policies for CRM:

1: Define Value

Data should be proportionate to the value you can gain with it. In other words, limit your diet of customer knowledge to only those items that will help you to better predict the outcome of your sales efforts.

2: Nail down your objectives.

Clearly spell out what the data requirements before you enter the first file. What does the ideal client look like? What is going to make them buy? What must sales and marketing personnel do with the data and when?

3: Minimize the time it takes.

Nobody has any extra time and even less patience with globs of undefined information/data fields. All that data might look impressive but in reality, it is a sales killer.

4: Link any and all data to your mission critical business priorities.

The reason is obvious: there’s not much point to the whole leads and account intelligence thing if you don’t know what you’re going to do with it.

5: Standardize the customer info needed.

Too often sales personnel (and list buyers) take whatever customer/data information is available with no plan of focusing only on the vital few factors that can clearly lead to business gains. Develop a vital data information ‘needs list’, make sure everyone is aware of it, and stick to it.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Word of Mouth had gained our trust.

As consumers, we’ve all experienced and usually welcomed ‘word of mouth’ information from our friends, family and peers. Long ago the marketing guru’s declared you will live or die on the word of mouth reputation of your company or product; and for the past millennium it was a personal experience, often face-to-face and it became a natural extension of our conversations wherever we shared a common interest. It is precisely this long social history and deep relationship we have with word of mouth that social network marketing imitates.

For many consumers ‘caveat emptor’ applies here.

When it comes to social media, technically speaking, it’s no longer word of mouth and it’s never face-to-face. Social Media has the feel of something personal but to a great degree it is entirely manufactured. The big stars and entertainment shows that promote some networks are paid, yet you think it’s personal. It’s an ad but doesn’t look or feel like one. It has little to do with what’s real or who is real and the lines get really blurred. So just when you thought you were following your favorite movie star, guess what: there’s an ad masking as his or her personal favorites.

Word of Net Marketing is often a poser.

The problem is that a lot of online viral marketing that poses as social media is really aimed at creating a ‘buzz’ about the product. Instead of customer’s opinions, you are likely to get skillfully crafted hype by marketing ‘posers’ that, more often than not, stresses what you should think.

In this world you don’t need satisfied customers to promote your product by word of mouth: now all you need is a powerful spin (real or imagined) and away you go! Want to make millions using Social Media? Join the masses of promoters with the fast and easy way to make a killing using social media. Their premise: From toilet paper to elixirs, there’s a surefire way to get your message in front of millions of customers who are eager to buy the product. All you need is their special brand of social media marketing and you’re all set.

Social media does work.

For legitimate social media organizations it works because the ‘buzz’ is real and real customers support the value. On a personal level you can exchange your thoughts about a product easily and usually you are sharing this among other interested users. Perhaps social media marketing is best served up to compliment the traditional word of mouth conversations, calls and personal emails. Just to be sure, I’ll check out anything I learn online face-to-face at the water cooler with my homies.

Will it last?

The life cycle of any latest and greatest media tool is unpredictable for most of the stuff floating around the Internet. I suspect it lasts right up to the time something else replaces it. But based on SM’s ever growing popularity, there’s no end in sight for the magic of social media networking.

MosaicCRM Experts Tips – CRM & Social Media Integration

If relationship marketing is important to your organization, managing and collecting social network data and transposing this into your CRM program is radically different from the traditional historical based ‘interaction-transaction’ type recording. There’s a lot of talk about ‘Social CRM’ but hang on a minute, adapting traditional CRM with all the tools that work is possible, even preferred.

• Social networking requires you to adapt CRM to recognize the instant real time data and transpose this into live response data

• More than ever customer centric response models are vital: Re-engineer your CRM to optimize this closed loop marketing process
• Evaluate the type and degree of customer information needed to assist sales efforts in this medium

• Use CRM to spread the results of the customer experience within your organization

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by Bill Noonan, Founder and CEO of MosaicCRM.

I welcome your inquiries, questions and comments.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alchemy was the medieval attempt to turn lead into gold. Jean Dubuis described alchemy as the “art of manipulating life and consciousness in matter to help it evolve, or to solve problems of inner disharmonies”.

Modern CRM isn’t so different: data bases follow the alchemies operation of separating the ‘the prima material’ or so called chaos by taking this unstructured data and putting it into a structure to capture, index and store it.

On a simpler plane of thought, alchemy could easily be used as a metaphor of transforming prospects into customers. It’s this process that is almost magic, but not quite. It does involve a simple, yet demanding process of turning dumb or chaotic data (leads) into usable information (customers).

This is where the magic ends: CRM by itself does little to help you turn data into information and knowledge. Let’s take a look at how to make your CRM task a whole lot easier and beneficial.

1. Get better outcomes in less time with strategically focused sales behavior.

Begin at the beginning: rank and prioritize your leads. After all, who or what makes it into your database, and then subsequently into your pipeline, will determine to a great degree your success in turning these leads into customers.

2. Set out a clear and easily defined selling stage process.

I hear it all the time: my database is no good… bad info, leads are crap, I need more accounts…etc. Sales automation provides a huge volume of information; however, separating what’s needed to advance the sales process can often be an excruciating exercise that too often bears too little fruit. If everything makes it into your pipeline then you have a fantastic bowl of goop and nothing tasty. Unlike poor Oliver, you don’t want more of the same no matter how hungry you are for a deal.

The easiest method is to plainly and clearly describe each phase of your sales process, even a basic rating scheme will work. Then when a lead doesn’t make it to the next desired stage you know why and when and can manage your time and efforts much more confidently.

3.    Manage your pipeline on a daily basis.

Regardless of the advances in CRM, you still need to figure out not only what to do, but what to do next. It’s often too late for management to have any significant impact on the outcome when they are only managing what’s closing this week or only get involved at the later stages. Rather they should be involved on a daily basis and knowledge of what works, what doesn’t and guidance on plan b.

Daily attention should not be an issue. CRM technology allows us to sort through leads, pipeline candidates and sales opportunities easily and effectively. Properly designed, it now forms the way we manage sales and activities by dictating what strategic value or action is necessary as opposed to blind sporadic oriented actions e.g. call everyone again.

4. Nurturing long term leads.

We all wish everything happened today. Alas that genie never seems to come out when we need it. Eventually it may by adding a structure to the lead nurturing process including understanding how each customer wants to be contacted and frequency. CRM make this a relatively brainless task of turning data into buying cycles.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

At the end of the day, any CRM is only as good as the data in it and how the users manage that information. To make CRM outstanding, we follow a strict methodology so users avoid the chaos:

• Implement sound business process and logic by concentrating on a vital few objectives that gain sales
• Eliminate fluff and duplication: ignore anything that doesn’t add immediate value
• Constantly improve the system: Step by step, month by month
• Vital tasks like qualification, stages and pipelines require little effort and are easy to understand
• Tracking, maintaining and developing contact points that match customer buying cycles

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

______________________________________________________________________________________________

P.S. We ask questions that no CRM vendor wants to ask:

CRM Discussion Points – Getting CRM right begins with asking the right questions.

I have written this comprehensive discussion points guide that covers topics that no CRM vendor wants to ask mainly because they can’t pass you off to a junior menu list type techie. That’s because now you know what it takes to meet your CRM objectives and it is a lot of work to demonstrate how to get there. Far too many CRM vendors won’t put in that sort of time.

What this worksheet creates is the right atmosphere for discussion and strategy building your CRM. Let me know if it would help you on your CRM journey. Use the ‘Contact Us’ tab on the website and I would be pleased to email it to you.

Bill