Three Steps to Create a Successful CRM Strategy

Building a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is a unique process for each organization that nevertheless should always involve three key steps. The three steps needed to create a successful CRM strategy are: setting the destination; auditing the current situation; and mapping the journey to the destination.

"A CRM strategy cannot be developed in isolation. It must be relevant and linked to the overall corporate strategy, and it must build on existing sales or marketing strategies that are already in use. Following these three steps will provide a solid framework for CRM success.

Set the destination: The vision of the company and the goals derived from this vision are the intended destination of the CRM strategy. The vision will be heavily dependent on the leadership of the company and on the selected CRM strategy.

Ensure that the CRM vision is to articulate the future environment for the organization in terms of profitability and customer experience. During the initial stages of the CRM initiative — while the CRM vision and strategy are being developed — the leadership and governance structure must be agreed upon and roles allocated before it is stressed by the impact of change management upon employees.

Audit the current situation: Skills, resources, competitors, partners and customers all need to be consulted in assessing the starting point. Before beginning the CRM initiative, organizations need to identify how mature their existing approach to CRM is. Most organizations have some existing or past attempt at CRM; even if these were deemed failures, there are usually some foundations that can be leveraged rather than ignored by the new team.

Use the audit to evaluate the organization against equivalent organizations in the same or a similar industry. A competitive benchmark is an excellent way to gauge how far behind or ahead the organization is in comparison. Along with these two approaches, there are many other types of audit. Ultimately, companies should use as many of these assessment types as possible to prepare for the development of the CRM strategy.

Map the journey: The journey may take many years, and the map will change en route. It is important to plan for this before starting.

A CRM strategy explains how an organization will achieve the CRM vision. It is the integrated blueprint for how the organization will achieve its sales, marketing and customer service goals. Therefore, it must give quantitative answers to questions such as: What is the ideal customer base? What products or services is it going to sell, to whom, at what price and through which channels? However, it must also be able to give much more subjective answers to more-holistic, organization-wide questions such as: What is the best way to build customer loyalty? How will the organization connect with a customer to create a positive "gut feel"? What will drive customers to recommend the organization, brand and products to others more often to the point that they are willing to pay a premium price?

Setting the destination, auditing the current situation and mapping the journey is an iterative process that may require several revisions before a final CRM strategy is developed. The challenge is to avoid rushing the development process, as the company may be committed to many years of change.

Methods of Sales Forecasting

Sales Forecasting is the process of estimating what your business’s sales are going to be in the future.

Sales forecasting is an integral part of business management. Without a solid idea of what your future sales are going to be, you can’t manage your inventory or your cash flow or plan for growth. The purpose of sales forecasting is to provide information that you can use to make intelligent business decisions.

Sales forecasting for an established business is easier than sales forecasting for a new business; the established business already has a sales forecast baseline of past sales. A business’s sales revenues from the same month in a previous year, combined with knowledge of general economic and industry trends, work well for predicting a business’s sales in a particular future month.

Sales forecasting for a new business is more problematical as there is no baseline of past sales. The process of preparing a sales forecast for a new business involves researching your target market, your trading area and your competition and analyzing your research to guesstimate your future sales.

Sales forecasting is especially difficult when you don’t have any previous sales history to guide you, as is the case when you’re working on preparing cash flow projections as part of writing a business plan. Here is a detailed explanation of how to do sales forecasting.

There are all sorts of ways to estimate sales revenues for the purposes of sales forecasting.

One point to remember when sales forecasting is that if you plan to work with a bank for financing, you will want to do multiple estimates so as to have more confidence in the sales forecast. How do you do this?

Sales Forecasting Method #1

For your type of business, what is the average sales volume per square foot for similar stores in similar locations and similar size? This isn't the final answer for adequate sales forecasting, since a new business won't hit that target for perhaps a year. But this approach is far more scientific than a general 2 percent figure based on household incomes.

Sales Forecasting Method #2

For your specific location, how many households needing your goods live within say, one mile? How much will they spend on these items annually, and what percentage of their spending will you get, compared to competitors? Do the same for within five miles (with lower sales forecast figures). (Use distances that make sense for your location.)

Sales Forecasting Method #3

If you offer say, three types of goods plus two types of extra cost services, estimate sales revenues for each of the five product/service lines. Make an estimate of where you think you'll be in six months (such as "we should be selling five of these items a day, plus three of these, plus two of these.") and calculate the gross sales per day. Then multiply by 30 for the month.

Now scale proportionately from month one to month six; that is, build up from no sales (or few sales) to your six month sales level. Now carry it out from months six through 12 for a complete annual sales forecast.

The CRM Mashup

From small to large, from the enterprise to the mid-size organization, from on-demand to on premises with consolidations aplenty, there's a sea change going on in CRM.

Enterprise mashups aim to bring business intelligence to desktops, with automated tools collecting and integrating selected Web data into a spreadsheet. Business Mashups LLC is conducting a "social CRM" experiment called Social Sales which reduces the need to leave a CRM app to gather information.

If mashups sound like the kind of Web 2.0 application best used for checking traffic jams on Google Maps, think again: Mashups within the enterprise environment are becoming common for functions such as integrating social-networking information into CRM Relevant Products/Services tools. And as they get easier to make, they'll continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.

Business Mashups LLC, which creates mashup environments for businesses, has taken some steps forward in bringing mature mashups into the corporation. In the coming week(s) we will release several mashup products that aim to bring business intelligence to desktops with little human intervention.

CRM Mashups

Customer-service management tools are also benefiting from mashups. Business Mashups LLC will provides open-source tools for rapid Web application development, in a "social CRM" experiment called Social Sales.

Today's CRM application users are tapping half a dozen other Web resources to populate their databases and get their jobs done. For example, when salespeople review trade-show leads, they may come across a familiar name. If more information about that person is not already in the CRM system, then someone needs to start researching on social-networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to find out more about that person, which provides greater social context about the sales lead.

Social Sales will drastically reduces the need to leave a CRM application to gather the required information. Thanks to rapidly deployed Ajax applications and mashup robots, companies can create powerful social CRM applications in a day or two.

Relationship Marketing

The key goal of marketing is to develop deep, enduring relationships with all people or organisations that could directly or indirectly affect the success of the firm's marketing activities.

Thus relationship marketing paves the way for attaining this goal.

Relationship marketing is the process of attracting, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with key people.

In good times and bad, savvy business people have but one focus --- the customer. They know it's much more cost-effective to sell more services to an existing client than to fund new customer acquisition. Their client list is their most valuable asset, but more than that, they develop long-lasting relationships by keeping in touch -- in good times and bad.

Relationship marketing delivers many benefits to a firm, big or small. Slowly but surely, as you build your client and prospect list, you'll be able to reduce marketing expenses, build referrals, and grow your business in step with your clients' needs.

Your marketing dollars will go further if you use it to build, nurture, and develop your customer relationships. This isn't as difficult as you think. Building these relationships just means treating your customers and clients as if they truly are your strategic partners and showing them that you truly care about them. It's important to try to satisfy them with the right products and services, supported by the right promotion and making it available at the right time and location. Customers can easily detect indifference and insincerity and they simply will not tolerate it. Long-term client and customer loyalty is a long-term challenge that you must strive for every day and with every transaction no matter how big or small.

While a growing business needs to constantly capture new customers, the focus and priority should be on pleasing your existing customer base. Companies that fail to nurture and retain their customer base ultimately fail. You will also spend twice as much to get new clients as you will in maintaining your existing customer base.You will also be limited in your ability to attract new clients if you can't hold onto and satisfy your existing customers and clients.

The bottom line is that one of the key components in marketing and business growth is to spend the majority of your time and effort nurturing customer relationships, so that you get business from existing clients and customers. This is a strategy that will move you forward in increasing your sales without increasing your budget.

1. Change your Perspective from "Here's what I do" to "What do you need?"
   
   The cornerstone of successful relationships is to discover precisely what your clients need and want. When you meet with them, you listen to their problems and recommend solutions. When you contact them after a meeting, you suggest resources for helping them address the issues you discussed. The solutions and resources you recommend may include your products and services, of course, but you don't stop there. You also offer answers that don't involve hiring you.
   
   The impact of this kind of generosity on your prospective clients can be dramatic. Instead of considering your calls or e-mails an interruption, they will welcome hearing from you. They will no longer count you as a salesperson or vendor, but rather as a valuable resource and important person to know.
   
   This requires a shift in your attitude, to being of service instead of selling a service.
   
   
2. Recognize your Vulnerability
   
   In the midst of a project, you might be in touch with your client several times a week. But it's the time between projects that is crucial to relationship-building. Once the work is done, you drop out of that enviable top-of-mind awareness position. Over time, your client isn't as likely to think of you as their first port of call for a solution to their problem. This is when you're most vulnerable to replacement by a competitor.
   
   Fortunately, an affordable solution can help you retain those clients you worked so hard to acquire.
   
   
3. Keep in touch
   
   It's such a simple concept, but keeping in touch often sinks to the bottom of the 'to do' list. The single easiest way to keep in touch is to publish an email newsletter. Ask clients to subscribe and insert a subscription box on your site to capture email addresses of prospects who like the look of what you're doing.
   
   The secret to a good newsletter is to avoid blatant self-promotion, and instead offer valuable information to your subscribers. With their permission, you have the opportunity to drop into their email boxes every month with news, tips, case-studies, FAQs, and other relevant info that subtly promotes your services, reinforces your brand, educates your clients, and builds trust.
   
   
4. Position Yourself as an Expert
   
   Words matter. Prospective clients are looking for more an elegant portfolio of sites you've built. Your job is to tell them how you can meet their needs. Your Website is the perfect place to start, but the focus must be on the client, not on you.
   
   Include white papers, special reports, case-studies, and links to other resources that will educate your clients on the best solution to their needs. Be careful to avoid jargon, overly technical concepts and acronyms. If you're publishing an email newsletter, use it to introduce this new content and bring subscribers back to your site.
   
   When you are perceived as an expert, you become attractive to prospects who use the Web to research. They see you as someone who has answers to their questions, and who can help solve their problems.
   
   
5. Grow to Meet Client Needs
   
   Websites are hardly stand-alone entities that need an occasional tweak. For most businesses, they're but one tool amidst many that are used to build brand, increase revenues or minimize costs. And by offering more tools that help your clients reach their goals, you become more valuable. Build affiliations or strategic relationships with specialists whose talents will benefit your clients.
   

The Payoff

The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways. Your client views you as a valuable consultant, rather than a cost center. Your potential for increased revenues and a long-lasting relationship is real.

There's payoff for you, too, including reduced marketing expenses measured in both time and money. If you can retain more clients for longer periods, you'll trim costly space advertising and other marketing costs.

If you ask, you'll get more referrals from your clients. Priceless word-of-mouth endorsements from satisfied customers will result in new business which magically walks in the door.

You won't even have to request client testimonials. You do include several on your Website... right? Start by recognizing when you receive a spontaneous testimonial, whether it's in an email, thank-you letter, or a conversation. Ask your client if you may use his words and name in your brochure and on your site, with a link to his business. Most often, the answer is yes. Testimonials are a critical piece of successful service marketing and worth their weight in whatever precious metal you value.

Case-studies will be a breeze and add a powerful marketing tool - perfect for your Website or for inclusion in printed marketing materials. Follow a 'situation -- problem -- solution -- benefits' flow to highlight how you solved the client's problem, stressing the benefits the client now enjoys as a result of your work. Use a handful of client case studies in industries you're targeting for new business development. Examples of "just like me" situations help prospective clients understand exactly how useful your services are.

Relationship-focused marketing isn't something that will happen overnight. It requires a change in thinking and some discipline along the way. Your email newsletter won't do much good unless you publish it regularly and the content is valued by your subscribers. But the rewards can be significant. And the truth is that no matter how wonderful you are, clients go away. Their businesses close down, change focus, or are sold.

But if your objective is to build relationships instead of Web application software, you'll be one of the designers in business for the long run.

Java App Store

Sun Microsystems used its JavaOne tech conference in San Francisco to publicly launch the Java Store, a new offering for consumers looking to easily purchase Java and JavaFX mobile applications.

The Java Store's web site, available at http://store.java.com, is currently in beta mode, though will officially open to U.S. internet users sometime in 2009. Sun is now inviting developers to submit their JavaFX and Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) programs to the Java Warehouse for consideration in the store.

As Oracle inches towards officially buying out Sun, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made an appearance at JavaOne, promising to help increase Java use by computer users across the world.

Kickstarted by Apple with its App Store, an increasing number of companies are creating app stores targeting consumers. Apple has an established store, Sun's store is currently in beta, and companies such as Nokia plan to sell apps directly to consumers.

Business Intelligence for the Retail Industry

The retail sector was one of the first sectors to make significant investments in collecting and integrating customer data in data warehouses. Retailers have generally earned a significant return on their IT system investments by using business intelligence systems to analyze the data to improve business performance with a focus on reducing operating costs, without sacrificing the customer experience. The levers that a retailer can use to optimize performance include: price, promotion, markdown, assortment, space, allocation and replenishment. Data-driven decision making is key to successful decisions regarding all of these levers.

In the future, firms will need to continue to be cost effective but increasingly will need to focus on using data to drive revenue by better understanding their customers’needs. Increasingly, this understanding will come from supplementing internally collected data with vast quantities of external data generated or made accessible by the Internet. Organizations need a new generation of business intelligence (BI) tools and applications to integrate this cross-enterprise, inter-enterprise and external data in order to achieve insight and transparency, across all channels. Enterprises that effectively harness the vast quantities of information that IT systems generate both within the corporation and outside its walls are poised to gain competitive advantage.

Value Proposition

Competition in the retail sector is becoming increasingly fierce as the complexities of global expansion, rapid product cycles, currency fluctuation and changing customer preferences continue to transform many segments. Putting retailers further at risk are macroeconomic issues such as low rates of consumer’s savings, high oil prices and the faltering U.S. housing market. Each of these phenomena is putting pressure on consumers’ purchasing power and by extension on retailers’ bottom-lines. In addition, disruptive new technologies are coming online that may inevitably commoditize retail sales even further. For example, today in Japan, having your smart phone take a picture of a UPC code on a product in one store may offer you a more competitive price in another.

The historical comfort of 100%+ markups and traditional assurances of profitability for this industry have long passed. In these maturing markets it is not enough for retailers to understand what customers want; they must anticipate customers’ future needs in order to get in front of competitors with innovative, market-leading product assortments. Today, business intelligence is no longer limited to the traditional, narrow definition of “delivering reports to users.” BI now encompasses the use of data to derive insight and achieve competitive advantage by not only answering the question “what did customers want?” but by increasingly answering the questions “what do customers want now?” and “what will they want in the future?”

The potential to do so now increasingly depends on the effective use of business intelligence systems to utilize available data to help create value for customers. As it has for the last 30 years, a portion of the data will come from inside the firm in the form of customer databases that hold information culled from point of sale terminals, online activity, loyalty cards, credit and debit cards and other customer activity. Different geographic markets have different levels of sophistication in the use of this customer data but it is clear that these systems are going to be a baseline requirement in all global markets in the future. Increasingly, however, data will also come from outside the firm in exceptionally diverse forms that will have value in the future. For instance, retailers in Florida may want to track weather patterns off the coast of Africa in the autumn as they will potentially be predictive of hurricane activity several days later. A lead time of several days may provide for the stocking of products such as bottled water and generators that customers demand in the event of a hurricane actually happening.

Historically, inventories could be built to effectively respond to an upcoming marketing campaign but this is no longer always the case. Instant communications and the Internet are enabling consumers to find the “it” product of the day much more quickly and by extension increasing the speed at which items can be either “in” or “out.” The efforts to extract, scrub, transform, and load sales or customer data often occur too late and highlight opportunities now lost, more than future opportunities to be found.

In this paper we discuss how technological advances are enabling improved decision making across three broad axes: simplicity and relevance, agility and integration.

First, new interfaces and approaches to business intelligence are empowering more decision makers by providing relevant data in a user friendly interface. Second, new technology advancements such as inmemory BI are poviding new levels of performance and helping users gain real-time insights into their data. Finally, BI needs to be interated within business processes and more widely distributed to functional business units such as merchandising, warehousing and store operations, so decisions can be made at the point of impact.

Simplicity and Relevance

Effective business intelligence systems are simple to use. Simplicity allows a large number of disparate users to access the information through an interactive, user friendly interface, regardless of the type or source of information. In addition, effective business intelligence systems are relevant in a world that is swamped with data. They allow access to accurate relevant data in a timely manner for all users. There should be no question that the “single version of the truth” is accurate and as all encompassing as possible.

Simplicity

One of the key success factors in harnessing the data to provide simple and effective input to decision makers is to ensure the information is delivered to the right user in the right form. In other words, the goal is to empower decision makers with precisely the information they require for their immediate decisions. For executives this may mean simple dashboard data, for merchandisers or the finance department it may mean powerful interactive tools and for front line workers it must mean easy to use interfaces that require little training. Although many will benefit from access to relevant information, few managers or front line workers need to be (or want to be) BI “power users.” Additionally, the retail industry has also had a proportionately higher employee turnover rate (especially at the store level) than other industries increasing the importance of easy to use systems that require little training.

Whereas new reporting solutions once were only suitable for technically-savvy software developers, Business Mashups LLC enables business users to explore data without prior knowledge of data structures or content. Business Mashups brings together the simplicity and speed of search capabilities with the trust and analytical power of BI tools, giving immediate answers to business questions. Users employ familiar keyword searches to find information hidden in data sources, and then navigate and explore directly on data—no existing reports and metrics are necessary. By increasing self-service BI and maintaining IT control, this technology empowers business users to create their content thereby reducing IT report creation backlog. It reuses existing security, metadata, and other services from Business Objects Enterprise, meaning it’s easy to administer and quick to deploy, often in a matter of days, thereby abbreviating time to market and expediting decision making.

Relevance

Retail employees at all levels of the company are surrounded by large quantities of data sometimes to the point where the pure quantity makes it difficult to act. Data can come from customer transactions through any one of the retailers’ channels, loyalty programs, marketing program response rates or new vehicles such as online browsing histories or RFID tags. The key to insight and competitive advantage is not the quantity of data, but its relevance and because the retailer owns the direct relationship with the customer they have access to the most relevant data.

One way to increase the relevance of data is by utilizing “best practice” templates to help bridge the gap between IT professionals and the business units they serve. These templates include pre-defined data models, queries and metrics while incorporating industry best practices into the implementation process, which not only saves time, but also helps the BI initiative deliver on business needs.

Business Mashups customers that exploit the power of user focused tools can also access “business blueprint” templates. These data models and templates solutions include a bundle of technology and industry knowledge that leverages substantial business knowledge, which was developed over many years while delivering software solutions to the world’s largest companies. By leveraging these “packaged” industry best practices, customers increase the likelihood of a successful BI deployment. At the same time, they shorten development cycles and lower costs. The business blueprint templates can act as a foundational solution that individual organizations can extend to meet their specific requirements. Specific components of business blueprint templates include: pre-defined “extractors,” large quantities of pre-defined data models, master data objects, authorization roles, query views and reports all of which are delivered in the software.

The simplicity of business user oriented tools and the enhanced relevance enabled by bundles such as business blueprint templates are enabling solutions for competitive advantage. The ease of use and enhanced relevance of these solutions build on the capabilities of existing BI systems, thus increasing their value to the organization.

Agility

In order to drive retail performance in the future, a key requirement will be business intelligence systems that can gather and distill the mountains of information from across the supply chain, exchange it between parties in real-time, enable collaboration based on the most current data, and support business decisions regarding inventory, promotion or pricing. The good news is that this data is increasingly available. The bad news is that the quantity of data is growing so rapidly that it is often outstripping firms’ capacity to effectively utilize it.

Analyzing product movement, seasonal and promotional, margins, placement, and product affinity (products typically co-purchased) by, among other things, location is indeed complex. The amounts of data gathered can be staggering. Understanding it all is difficult. Who has time for multiple 30-minute queries through a 10 terabyte database, looking for an insight that may, or may not, be uncovered? Rapid response rates (i.e. less than a few seconds) on queries of millions of entries can provide significant competitive advantage for two key reasons. The first reason is the potential insight that comes from data-driven decision making. The second reason is that employees will actually use them!

Recent developments in hardware and software technology are now capable of delivering real-time decision support through a technology called “in-memory business intelligence.” Traditional business intelligence systems rely on modeling (or guessing) about end user requirements and then optimizing systems to meet those requirements. But technologies such as in-memory business intelligence solutions help solve this problem: with more (and cheaper) memory now available, today’s BI solutions can process reports on the fly by loading complete data sets into memory, and eliminate some of the old bottlenecks.

In-memory technologies provide two significant benefits. For the management team, instant response rates (i.e. less than a few seconds) on queries of millions of entries can provide significant competitive advantage; especially in retail where having the right inventory in store at the right time is the primary profit driver. Additionally, for the IT team, using in-memory technology reduces the need to design, build and maintain intermediary data sets. If the in-memory approach works with the complete original data, that creates a simplified architecture and allows the IT organization to focus on providing more value-added services.

Business Mashups believes that organizations will increasingly load detailed data into memory as the primary method to optimized BI application performance. This trend is a response to the continuing and accelerating pace of technological change and represents a wholesale change in how business intelligence and performance management will occur in the future.

Integration

A significant piece of the business intelligence puzzle is related to how solutions are integrated into daily business operations and processes, and ultimately, how the data is gathered and structured. With effective systems, retailers can react quickly to increased customer demand, out-ofstocks and changing competitor offerings.

Additionally, in today’s networked retail economy, many of the processes and data sources such as inventory availability that will drive competitive advantage will not live inside the boundaries of a single firm. This means business and IT architects should design process-driven BI and MDM solutions for an environment where business processes stretch across multi-company business webs and global supply chains.

The simple definition of a “transaction” can reveal significant discrepancies across departments and users. By the time a particular transaction is completed, so many deductions, rebates, discounts and other trade spending has occurred that it is almost impossible to specifically identify profit centers at a granular level (i.e. by customer, by product, by channel). And without this level of detail, planning for profitable volume growth is no more than an educated guess. The challenge lies in the insight, not in the availability of the raw data.

As business intelligence is integrated with business processes, there is also an opportunity to revisit the existing processes and ensure they are representative of best practices. After all, accurately documenting and measuring an ineffective process is doing nothing to improve the business. Most effective business intelligence solutions will provide industry-specific resources, in the form of expertise (e.g. consultants) or specific technical resources (e.g. templates, queries).

The previous sections address the quality of the insight needed and the importance of linking with business processes. The processes by which data is collected, processed and stored has an immense impact on the quality and the value of business intelligence tools (i.e. the “garbage in, garbage out” maxim applies). For this reason, master data management (MDM), which describes how data is managed from initial collection to final use, is a critical underpinning of successful BI implementations. Combined with tools for data quality management, this provides the trusted information foundation that companies base their analytics on.

The concept of MDM is fairly straightforward: without clean and properly aligned data across the organization, it’s difficult to answer key business questions. And although it might appear just as straightforward to solve it, the level of complexity of today’s IT organizations poses a real challenge. Globalization of supply and demand networks is a large contributor to this pressure to implement MDM. Until recently, when a large global retail chain wanted to see a report of all the products in a specific category that all suppliers had provided, they struggled to piece together all the various customer numbers and products numbers used by different vendors. The implementation of MDM programs is helping to eliminate this issue.

The Payoff

The challenges faced by the retail industry will only grow with time. Trends such as skeptical consumers, increased data volume, business globalization, social and regulatory compliance and complexity are here to stay. To maintain competitive advantage, organizations must leverage internal and external information into an accessible, usable medium and provide business intelligence to a larger number of employees. Business intelligence solutions will continue to evolve as exciting new capabilities such as in-memory arrive and are adopted broadly in the market.

Organizations that enable business intelligence solutions built on the tenets of simplicity and relevance, agility and integration have the potential to sustain competitive advantage in world where change is the only constant. Simple and relevant BI tools can empower employees to make effective decisions with increasing speed and agility. By integrating real-time decision making with mission critical business processes smart retailers can keep up with and even excel in the innovation-driven world of the 21st century.

Retailers have been at the leading edge of the business intelligence wave and those that have executed well have derived significant advantage from their efforts. In the future however, the bar has been raised and evolving to the next generation solutions represents a giant step forward. Corporations will face a choice: execute these best practices or fall by the wayside. The leaders will see empowered employees, rapid execution and adjustments to plan, resulting in both top-line and bottom-line growth.

Sales and Marketing Performance Trends for Small & Medium Busines

Request Your Complimentary Report NOW! "Sales and Marketing Performance Trends for Small & Medium Business" Discover the hottest trends in Small Business Sales and Marketing—and see how the leading on-demand CRM solution can put these trends to work for you. The summary describes three keys to SMB success: Documenting and debugging your sales process. Providing enabling technology. Hiring/retaining sales talent. Offered Free by: Salesforce.com

Is VMware The New Salesforce.com?

Salesforce.com is more than simply the market leader for software-as-a-service (SaaS). While others (notably NetSuite) came to market sooner, Salesforce.com was the first company to successfully sell the idea of hosting software in its own data centers and delivering it as a service via the Internet on any kind of scale.

It did this by becoming the most vocal proponent of SaaS, and in so doing became arguably the biggest pole around which other SaaS vendors organized themselves.

VMware is in a similar position to where Salesforce.com found itself three or four years ago. It is the most recognized name in the industry, enjoys the largest market share, and has taken it upon itself to vaunt the virtues of the technology, which promises to lower customers’ power and hardware costs by replacing physical servers with virtual ones.

Like with Salesforce in those early days of SaaS, there is very little difference between talking up the virtues of virtualization and talking up the virtues of VMware. In the process, it is also helping niche vendors like Parallels, which specializes in virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI).

There is a critical distinction, however, between the respective standard-bearers. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, tilted against the very idea of traditional on-premise software (even proclaiming the “death of software“), but didn’t have to worry about a huge rival breathing down his neck.

His enemies were either established software vendors like Microsoft, which tried to deride the idea of SaaS, or the likes of SAP and Oracle, which offered hybrid versions but were years behind in terms of producing code that could support reliable cloud-based services.

VMware, on the other hand, has long been aware that Microsoft was looming, despite Redmond’s setbacks with bringing Hyper-V to market on time.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Microsoft will become a significant player soon, and market research firm Gartner suggests it may even overcome VMware’s lead within five years.

VMware is using its head start by extending the use of virtualization all the way up the hardware stack, in many cases using partners to add expertise it doesn’t own.

Also like Salesforce.com, which created a business platform called the AppExchange to provide a venue for companies to sell complementary software service offerings, VMware is creating an ecosystem through alliances with the likes of Cisco and Intel that allow it round out its offering.

There is one important difference between them, however.

Companies that want to integrate their applications seamlessly with Salesforce.com’s platform have to develop programs using the company’s proprietary Apex programming language. Salesforce claims it needed to create Apex in order to improve its customers’ ability to customize their applications, but another consequence–whether intended or not–is that once customers build applications using Apex, they are less likely to defect to rival SaaS vendors where Apex is useless.

VMware, on the other hand, has committed to using standards-based technology to make it easier for potential partners to work with it.

This past week has seen rivalries in the space intensify, as VMware announced deals with Cisco and Intel, which Microsoft ally Citrix made news of its own by announcing that it would make its XenServer virtualization technology free of charge.

As the two companies start to lock horns in earnest, it remains to be seen whether VMware continues along a path of openness or succumbs to the temptation of circling the wagons by developing proprietary technology to lock in its customers.

SIMPLE TRICKS TO WIN CUSTOMERS

By : Dilraj Singh, Retail Store Manager, Ode Collection

Don’t forget the power of POSTCARDS. Often that is all you need to get the basic message across.

I read this line when I was new to retail, In the age of 21, I started my retail business with a very small loan amount, one thing I was very much sure about was, as soon my retail will be popular in the area I will have too face heavy competitions. Retailers with more money, man power, better space, and better in everything will soon grow for competition.

So from the very first day we concentrated on customer relationship, and as I told you I read this line in a book and Implemented the policy, we started collecting the data of the customer and tried to write them before every season, In the beginning as we had lack of money I my self use to write it, it use to take four nights sitting but we use to do it manually to save money, our writing by hand was to save money but it gave a very good message to customer and we had excellent response from their side.

This I realized when one time we missed to write and customers started asking that we didn’t receive your post card this time, also after completing my 5 years I shifted my retail shop to a better and bigger market place you won’t believe what I got from customer was, you can feel the satisfaction when a customer who walks in says “Aree bhaiya hume to ab pata chla AAPNI shop yaha aa gayi hai”, you can understand the word AAPNI when a customers says this, it’s a big victory. Anyways I got excellent response although I shifted from the corner to the center of the city but relationship paid me a lot. Although I too am not able to work with that spirit now after being a bit bigger in volume but still my policy of customer relationship is on and instead of postcard I try to stay in touch with customers via s.m.s.

Some very easy tips for all you new guys please teach your staff and try to implement on your self too.

(1) A person without a smiling face shall not open a retail (keep smiling for your health and health of your business)

(2) Try to remember the customer by his name. In the next visit, if you succeed to call him with his name or if you remember what you have sold him last time you will win him all.

(3) If you are attending the customer try to leave him till delivery or payment counter and bid him goodbye.

(4) Sales oriented billing staff why not??{I have observed that a billing staff never try to sell for e.g. ask your billing staff to keep talking with the customer while making the bill, a customer who is buying a dress for baby must be told by the billing staff that your store is selling baby napkins at very good price and so on.}

(5) Try to tell your customer about your upcoming collection or stocks, like we started telling them that this Diwali we will be having great stuff around a month before, or if it takes time to get the Bill ready we ask him, sorry actually half of the staff is preparing for Diwali so we took a little more time of yours. In this way you said him sorry for taking more time and told him that you are heavily preparing for Diwali.

(6) Always remember selling is a noble job, as you satisfy a customers need.

(7) Do a good deed for your customer and be happy for the day.

(8) Try to give a extra touch to your customer{you have to observe what extra you can give with your product}like I m having a Greeting card shop I write on the card with calligraphy and for that customers come to me from far away may be it is difficult for the organized sector but this is what will make you win.

(9) Try to observe your customer while he is busy in purchasing and soon you will find some of the problem he faces in your store.

(10) While selecting your staff try to manage a staff from all over India, what I want to say is is your staff must have members form different region they will tell you about their festivals and attend their customers in the regional language, that create a big difference.

Happy Selling!!!!

Dilraj Singh

Ode Collection,

Indore

Your People Inventory

I came across this interesting blogpost by Tommy "Mack" McEldowney on Organized Business Blog and thought of sharing it with you, so here's Mack for you.


Whether we like to admit it or not, we are you are in the sales business. Professional sales people know that there is something called the sales cycle. Think of the sales cycle as a circle that begins and end with prospecting. If you already have a client base, we are going to take an inventory. If you are just starting and looking for that first customer or client, we are also going to take an inventory.

Successful businesses maintain customer databases of various degrees of sophistication. The only difference between a customer and a prospect is history, a customer being someone who bought from us in the past. Satisfied customers make the best prospects. The more we know about our prospects, the better our opportunity for successful selling, and selling is the business we are in.

We want to create a prospect database that contains both quantitative and qualitative information. We will start with some initial questions about our prospects and work from there. We can always add more layers of sophistication as we develop our inventory. If you have existing customers, be as detailed in your answers as you can. If you do not have a customer base, look at who buys from your competitors.

· Who are your prospects?
· Where are your prospects?
· How many prospects are there?
· What do your prospects want from you?
· What do your prospects know about you?
· How much will prospects pay you?

Who are your prospects?

A prospect is anyone who needs what you are selling and can afford to buy it. Suppose you own a commercial cleaning company that does offices and retail stores. Prospect characteristics might include: people who own or manage buildings, have a budget for janitorial service, employ at least 5 inside people, have three lavatories, a kitchenette, a reception area, and a sales floor. They are serviced once a week after 7 P.M. by two people who and take 45 minutes on the job. Less than 10% are government accounts and about a third of them are retail operations.

Where are your prospects?

Prospects may be anywhere if we are selling online or by catalogue and delivering products by transportation we provide. Otherwise they usually live or work with a defined geographical service area, whether you go to them or they come to you. Assume you own a health club. Prospect characteristics might include: able bodied men and women, aged 35 to 55, who live within 13 miles of the club. Half of them want some training. Half of the men and a quarter of the women use free weights.

How many prospects are there?

This is referred to as market size. Do your homework and keep your estimates conservative because your projected sales will be based on your estimate. Whether your business is land based and dependent on traffic or it is web based and dependant in page views, you can search for and find data on the Internet. Another source of such data is your competition.

What do your prospects want from you?

Prospects want what you sell and they want satisfaction after they purchase. Regardless of product or service, prospects want quality, value and service. However, they want price as well, especially now. Warranties and guarantees enhance value and your prospects’ perception of quality. Sears Roebuck and Company understood the balance of perception by making the claim, “Satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back.”

What do your prospects know about you?

They know either what you tell them or what some else they know has told them. Professional sales people rely on an organized sales presentation to varying degrees. Such presentations contain facts about a product or service and the benefits to the prospect. The objective of the presentation is to build value and to get the prospect to start asking questions. When a prospect starts asking, they start owning.

How much will prospects pay you?

Prospects will pay exactly what they think the product or service is worth and not a penny more. Remember that price is relative to perceived value and to what similar products and services cost. That is called “what the market will bear.” Additionally, you want to be sure that you are not selling for a penny less than your product or service costs you. If a pizza costs you $10 to make, you do not want to sell it for $8.50. If that is all that the market will bear, find a way to make an $8 pizza.
Speaking about payments, prospects pay by check, cash or credit card upon receipt of your invoice or based on agreed, written terms. Otherwise they do not qualify as a prospect.

A sale is the process of turning qualified prospects into satisfied clients. The purpose of performing a people inventory is to be able to identify qualified prospects. Such identification helps us focus our efforts, streamline our marketing, and increase our sales – the business we are all in.

What’s In a Name?

According to Shakespeare’s Juliet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” That may be true, but would you name your kid Skunk?

I didn’t think so.

That’s because we associate things with names - thoughts, emotions, even the memory of how a skunk smells.
For better or worse, language is the primary form of human communication. When we shop for things, we don’t point at them and grunt. We search by name.

I know what you’re thinking. Naming is a waste of money. Customers and investors could care less. Sometimes that’s true, but believe it or not, oftentimes there’s actually strategy involved, branding strategy.

Decisions, Decisions

There are brands and sub-brands, corporate brands and product brands; how do you know how much weight to put behind which arrows?

• Unless you’re Proctor & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson - a loose association of powerful product brands - fewer brands is a more efficient use of marketing dollars, less confusing, too.
• Coca-Cola.
• Richard Branson uses the Virgin name for all his companies.
• McDonald’s use of Mac in Big Mac and the Mc prefix in McRib and McChicken sandwiches is a unique strategy that boosts customer recognition by having product and corporate brands that reinforce each other.
• Similarly, Apple’s product names reinforce each other: iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone.

Market Segmentation

Market or brand segmentation is used two ways: 1) to position similar products in different market segments, usually by price, and 2) to distinguish one company’s products from another’s or from an entire category.

• Toyota created Lexus because Americans would have balked at luxury cars from Toyota - an economy brand at the time.
• Intel created the Celeron brand to compete with low-cost processors while maintaining high margins on its flagship Pentium processors.
• Apple avoided the PC (personal computer) label to distinguish its Mac products from IBM in the 80s, PC clones in the 90s, and now from Microsoft.

Small World

As the world shrinks, so to speak, geographic distinctions are disappearing in favor of global brands.

• On October 1, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. announced that it had officially changed its company name and global brand to Panasonic Corporation - a big move for a 90 year-old company. And National, its consumer brand in Japan, is also gone.
• Apple doesn’t even use a name for its worldwide corporate brand, just a silvery silhouette of a partially eaten fruit. Volkswagon does the same thing with its VW logo.

Life and Death

Brands aren’t just created; they also die.

• In mergers, simplicity and efficiency often wins over brand equity. JPMorgan Chase now includes Hambrecht & Quist, Bear Stearns, and Washington Mutual. The H&Q name has disappeared and the others will likely follow.
• When a brand’s reputation is tarnished in a crisis, most companies - Exxon and Perrier, for example - stick with the brand. But Philip Morris changed its name to Altria. No surprise there.
• When a product name defines a category, like Kleenex, Xerox, Vaseline, Tivo and iPod, that’s branding Nirvana. How do you suppose that happens?

Last Word

I’ve often observed that those who protest the loudest about naming being a waste of time and money are also the most opinionated about specific names. As for me, I’m not big on names, per se, but I am big on naming strategy. Big difference.

6 Things To Know about EVERY Prospect

Before you present to a prospect, there are six key perspectives that you absolutely MUST have (if you want a fast sale):

• #1: Their History. Where are they coming from? How did they get here? What do they know about your and your firm? What dealings have taken place in the past?
  
  
• #2: Frames of Reference. What ideologies and situations might affect their decision-making? Do they have a certain way of viewing your offering? How do they feel about their own firm?
  
  
• #3: Needs and Desires. Where do they want to go? How do they expect to feel when they get there? How do they think they’re going to get there? What do they think will prevent it?
  
  
• #4: Likely Objections. What is going to cause them to balk? How fervently do the believe in that objection? How real is it? Might it block the deal, no matter what you say or do?
  
  
• #5: Capacity to Act. Are you communicating with decision-makers or seat-warmers? If decision-makers, what decision do you want them to make? If not, why are you talking to them?
  
  
• #6: Decision-making Style. If they’re decision-makers, how do they make decisions? Are they all about facts and figures? Or do they decide according to a gut feeling?

Once you understand these six perspectives, you can tailor your conversation or presentation to match what’s really going on…rather than what you might otherwise wish were going on.

For example, if you know that your firm contributed to the prospect’s success in the past, make sure that each contact knows it, because it may have happened before their time.

Similarly, if the decision-maker likes facts and figures, you build your value proposition around ROI. If he’s a gut-feeling guy, use anecdotes and imagery to bring out the emotions.

Want to Kill the Sale? Be Boring.

Here’s a neat video where Terri Sjodin explains some of the basics of how people judge you when you’re giving a sales pitch. And, not surprisingly, the first deadly sin is to be boring.

I might note that this sin applies to telephone calls even more because, on the phone, being a sharp dresser doesn’t give you any momentum, and you’ve only got word choice and tonality to make yourself interesting.