Manage circumstances equally as well as timing.

The obsession with time can’t be underestimated. Whether you are measuring your lifespan, war, microwave oven setting or sales cycle, these all involve a definitive time element. To better manage time elements, it’s important to manage circumstances equally well. Every month, week or day we sit down and try to make sense of our sales numbers. One of the greatest errors in our ‘subjective’ judgment may be our over-reliance on time as the driving factor. Like wars, deals are not set by time, rather by circumstance. So what does this mean?

Look for circumstances.

The Pareto Principal can come into play in a big way. It’s the 80-20 Rule. Think about your Pipeline in the same way: 80% of your sales will come from just 20% of your Pipeline Opportunities. As a salesperson or manager, we can never get away with violating the laws of nature without paying the consequences. Step off a building, and gravity will get you every time. With forecasting, while we may not experience consequences “every time” we ignore circumstances, sooner or later the laws of nature, like Pareto’s Principal, take effect. Usually it’s horribly inaccurate numbers and time lines that are difficult to make sense of.

Prima facie is Latin for ‘at first view’.

Whenever you forecast, Prima facie means you should see it the first time e.g. it should be obvious. But before it becomes so obvious there’s some homework to do. It’s important for any forecaster to know the circumstances that make up alternative directions of action. When it comes to Pipelines, analyze the number of circumstances and the order of magnitude of each.

This analysis can be as simple as a Ben Franklin plus and minus columns or more a definitive set of criteria. The circumstances affecting opportunities for your organization probably fall into five or six categories e.g. Delivery, Credit, Pricing, Customer Service, Customer Loyalty are a few. You might want to spend a few minutes creating your own list and ranking the order of magnitude each has with your pipeline opportunity.

 Two circumstances affect your Pipeline Opportunities.

1:Listing those customers that have the fewest reasons not to buy from you.

2: Define the biggest reasons why they won’t buy from you.

In either example, there will likely be a number of items. However, your task now is to separate the vital few from the trivial many. Then assign a value to each item, naturally, ranking the highest value items first. And it’s these high value items that you have to solve/analyze first.  

Set priorities for action.

Just like a general, you have to set your priorities based not so much on your wishes but what reality looks like. How this affects your forecasting accuracy will become obvious. You will now look closer at what will make the most difference in your sales success. The circumstances have a time line of their own. You simply can’t ignore a major item. Now you have to establish a timeline to the circumstance, or series of circumstances. This will result in a more accurate completion date.

The stronger the confidence in your pipeline, the less threatened you are.

We have to accept the fact that some customers are going to react irrationally. Maybe I can call it the ‘Irrational Principal’ where out of the blue you get broadsided by 20% of your opportunities. In these cases you can’t control the game, only your reactions to it.  I’ll bet that the stronger the confidence you have in your pipeline, the less threatened you will be by what happens around each opportunity. Having a high level of confidence in the vital issues surrounding your pipeline can be as a result of good ‘circumstance’ management.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

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!

Not unlike the logic behind a Credit Score, it pays off to have a formula that gauges and monitors the level of customer commitment. This might seem obvious, but commitment is often misconstrued somewhere between your splatter of features and benefits and the ensuing oohs and ahhs from the client. So it is vital to know and manage the difference between being simply involved in the selling process, and the customer being committed to its success.

One of the biggest gripes or gaps in traditional CRM landscape is the inaccuracy of Sales Projections. The traditional rating schemes ‘Probability % and Stage’ are relatively useless categorizations to define commitment to success.

The real key is evaluating ‘commitment’ at each ‘Stage’ of the sales process and not just the sales opportunity phase. Rather than inserting a Probability % based on little more than your eagerness to wish it so, it is more effective to equate the potential outcome based on the Commitment % Level. This adds an interesting twist, rationale and accuracy when commitment levels equate to a level of certainty (probability).

MosaicCRM Experts Tips

So many factors affect the transition from the prospect to customer that they seemingly appear beyond control. In reality, many CRM selling processes simply lack a structured and regularly timed commitment report card. Here are a few examples of info fields you can add to CRM to back up your Commitment rationale:

• Project Finalized  (or not)
• Budget in place (or not)
• Valid change prompting need
• Prime business application for product (or not)
• Clear competitive advantage is…

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 individual pipeline opportunities and its ability to hone in on opportunities that have a high probability e.g. commitment to close. Click on the image to view how Pipeline Triangulation works.

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Commitment Separates You from the Competition

Meet a Marine and you begin to recognize the character of people deeply committed to something. Their exuberance is contagious. It’s no wonder why. They did more than just join the Marines they have now become Marines. Their level of commitment is expressed as total and only total excellence is the goal.

Their example is a reminder how just how important it is to be committed because customers sense a superior and sincere level of commitment every time. It’s often the one and only thing that separates you from the competition.

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

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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In the world seemingly on a rudderless course steered by automated ‘personalized’ marketing; we are inundated with the latest and greatest sales behavior predictions using social media, networking, blogging, video platforms… a digital cornucopia of the ‘it’ factors pointed at customers that will buy.

Beware of sales behavior predictions.

Some of the statistical data is downright poor and maybe that’s because simple statistics rely too much on buying habits under a limited number of situations, markets or conditions that bear little resemblance to what you sell. Few experts are willing to debunk these easy and simple hypothetic links e.g. a social network platform that works for selling Pepsi may have little relativity for selling houses.

Yet many a marketing guru would have your company totally revamp its selling process based on these statistics; worse yet with relatively ‘green fielding’ methodologies in lieu of tried and true methods.

Social Media Sales Stats: Does this mean the end of Wal-Mart?

Even when demographic and econometric modeling is added, a statistic hypothesis of a certain sales behavior doesn’t necessarily mean anything. For example, Twitter touts 200 million users. Even with such screaming growth, does this new wave of internet marketing spell the end to Wal-Mart? Hardly, for many solid reasons, not the least is new internet platforms are a figurative drop in the bucket. The 176 million living and breathing customers that visit Wal-Mart stores weekly and ‘stay’ awhile and ‘buy’ vastly outnumber Twitter and MySpace.

Stats tell you what customers aren’t buying.

Car crashes killed 34,000 people in 2009 and in 2008 there were six million accidents, about a one in five chance it will be your time. No one could possibly sell cars based on these statistics alone. Car manufacturers avoid the poor statistics and replaced them with items that do not change the statistical facts: zero interest loans, free this and more that. They have used poor stats to their benefit: ignore what customers aren’t buying.

Great stats can fail to sell.

Airlines can statistically prove air travel is many times safer than traveling by car. However, many a travel plan is based on a perceived and intense decision not to fly for safety reasons. As infinitesimal as the risk may be, the buying decision for air travel is not based on favorable safety statistics. So airlines ignore statistics that won’t sell: a hugely favorable safety statistic is something they can’t sell because many passengers aren’t buying it.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner
Maximize your statistical edge: “Sell a ‘Trend”

Even with exposure to the unlimited ‘customers’ on the net, selling a trend is possibly the only edge over blanket numerical statistics. What makes a trend is selling to good markets and ignoring weak markets, niches or products with proven methods and options that accentuate your edge.

At MosaicCRM we rely on tried and true statistics, particularly in the two vital areas of activities and sales opportunities.

• Market Analytics show aging, margin, unit volumes and revenue distribution is a single step
• Track Stalled Opportunities as an indicator of competition, sales programs and sales cycles
• Identify Customer Buying Cycles to minimize the selling cycle and maximize personnel deployment

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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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.

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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

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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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.

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8 Ideas For Sweeter Sales.

Forest Gump said it best: ‘Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.’ Sales results often share the same fate. Here are a few ideas that might help you chose the best chocolates!

• A big part of any sales function is continuous and rapid prospect qualification. The key measurement is whether or not they are going to buy. This differs from what they want to do, as compared to what they can do.
• Focus on what you have to offer, and not just what you are selling.
• Continually expand your product applications to new markets and/or customers. This minimizes your reliance on fragile markets or domineering customers.
• Focus your creative energies on strategies that promote consistent wins. By doing so, you will lessen your natural tendency to fall back on the blasé behaviors that just can’t produce the long-term consistency you need.
• If your pipeline seems to be managing you, then manage your prospects much earlier in the sales cycle. Two aspects of managing prospects are rating them as a company and the value of their opportunities. If either doesn’t fit your business, move on.
• Once you have your customer’s attention, keep it focused only on them.
• Simple selling techniques work. If nothing else, try something simple to improve, innovate and demonstrate your product.
• Promote customer satisfaction, but sell loyalty. Loyalty is the reason customers want to buy from you.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Nobody said CRM is sweet but here are a few ideas to keep your sales process on track:

• Qualification: Set out predefined Rating and Profile descriptions for your Account and Contacts. How well  each fits the ideal target can speed up this all important sales step.
• Customer Retention/Loyalty Process: Don’t leave retention and loyalty programs to chance. MosaicCRM offers ‘Marvel’ a unique system of multiple contact processes that keep your organization in front of customers.
• Daily Activity Manager: This eloquent system makes daily activities a breeze so sales staff can concentrate their energy and time on selling.
  
• Deal Nurturing: Nothing is dropped or forgotten with PipelinePro methodology and alerts systems.
  

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Written by
Bill Noonan, Founder & CEO, MosaicCRM

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Pre-CRM Planning Tips for SMB’s

I’ve put together this slide presentation that covers a number of key elements that can help in your CRM Plan or Re-Start program.  Some of the topics include Beware of ‘Quick and Easy’ CRM promotions, The Human Factors, Competition Applications, Abilities, Resources and Sales Process Design, Budgeting and more.
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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.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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Mirroring our Masters

In America over 77 million dogs have owners. Then it’s not so unreasonable to imagine that in the scheme of modern urban life that they have an affinity to look like their owners. During a recent lunch my guests discussed this phenomenon and for an added wrinkle we even went so far as to match a few business associates with the dog they owned. One commented how uncanny it was that their General Manager looked remarkably like his mutt. Upon further reflection the business too was beginning to look unremarkable, like her GM. This was not an appealing spectacle.

How does the leader look?

With dogs or business, one reason we might mirror our master is that we tend to seek out those things that are most familiar to us and readily adopt those traits. Some may argue that it starts out when owners pick their dogs, or staff, they unconsciously choose them because they truly reflect the owner, or boss as the case may be. The lesson learned is be careful of what you want your business to look like as it will invariably reflect just how the leader looks.

The Customer’s perception is everything.

I believe the same logic applies for customers: a reflection of them. They find what appeals to them and what doesn’t. This is beyond nettlesome because the ‘look’ or perception for most customers is everything. Worry too about the fact that most people don’t necessarily act in accordance with your reality quite as much as they do on their own individual perception of ‘reality’. To that end, our customer’s reality, good, bad or indifferent, is formed to a large extent by what companies do and not what they say.

Follow the bouncing ball.

As business management and customers accelerate even further away from each other, success is often influenced to an immense degree by decision makers who have little experience or a ‘look’ for sales. In fact, your surroundings can begin to look astonishingly unfriendly, even somewhat dog-eared; particularly when the company’s current nirvana is simply the latest Guerrilla tactic that entirely ignores ‘reality’. Or the brains behind the new budget has patently little appreciation for brand or value; like the premier airline I flew last week whose management believes a fraction of an ounce of pretzels, a half of a can of soda, with questionable housekeeping and seats so close I could perform dental work will, of course, endear me to fly with them again.

Solution: Perception Truths.

If you find yourself or a client in this position what are you to do? Well there are a few Perception Truths I devised you can always use as a fall back.

• Brand Personality: Product Excellence and Superiority a.k.a. Value

Be ever vigilant for someone mucking it up. Your fundamental task is to correctly identify the customer’s preference for brand over price.  Look for customer clues where they value the significance of a great reputation, or beneficial cost of ownership matters like durability, warranties, multi task applications and even pretentiousness and esteem are striking buying qualities. If you’re not attracting enough of these types, then either you, the company’s marketing or its business style needs correction.

• Service

Practically nothing beats a high level of customer satisfaction, it’s not hard to understand why: customers want a pleasant buying experience together with attentive and responsive customer service, from both the sales and support staff. Lose this and you have lost the profitability associated with ‘value’ …and likely the customer. Now tell me again how much airline ‘A’ saved on those pretzels?

• Costs

Everyone knows that better products cost more and cheap products are made up of cheap bits and pieces. When it comes to cost, it’s the thing your customer perceives as price, your task is to hone in on what’s superior about your product or service. That’s because surprisingly few customers will bother to take the effort to figure it out on their own. Worse yet I am given to wonder why some salespeople can’t let go of customers that have little conscience of cost.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

There is no better tool than a well configured CRM program to monitor and manage perception truths. At MosaicCRM, we add simple yet effective fields to account monitors and specific reports in these key areas:

• Buying Qualities:
  

  Monitor and record customer preferences and translate that data into optimized sales cycle management tools

• Service Factors:
  

  Customer satisfaction, service and Case Management components tie the entire company relationship to the customer experience

• Value:
  

  Monitor where you are wining against competition, one click recording of sales factors, value milestones, even managing road blocks

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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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

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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.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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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.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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