Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Lol - good to see I'm not the only one who prefers simple CRM.

I used to do a lot of work with big companies who had implementd big multi million dollar CRM systems and got little or no improvements as a result (and often things got worse - the systems became little more than upward reporting tools and their sales teams became bogged down in bureacracy).

It often seemed to me that big CRM systems were a lazy knee-jerk reaction to fundamental problems in the company's sales and marketing approach. Instead of addressing the (potentially painful) problems, they took the easy but expensive way out - buy a system to solve the problem.

They all had big, fancy looking business cases to justify their investments - but often behind the scenes the business logic was staggeringly weak. When you drilled into it the underlying logic was often

Unfortunately, all that data rarely turned into better understanding. And any improvements in understanding rarely translated into better services,products or sales and marketing approaches.

All they got was a ton more bureacracy - and a misplaced confidence from senior executives that they were somehow more "in charge" because they had more data to track.

Instead, I've seen brilliant CRM done on the back of a notebook or on a spreadsheet or simple contact manager as Ben says.

Thankfully, most small businesses couldn't afford to fall into the traps that the big businesses I worked with did. They usually take much more pragmatic solutions and often they get much better results from them.

Ian

Apologies as ever for my feeble XHTML formatting - I hope you still get my point.

Ian

Maybe you can delete the earlier posts John - What I meant to say was:

Lol - good to see I’m not the only one who prefers simple CRM.

I used to do a lot of work with big companies who had implementd big multi million dollar CRM systems and got little or no improvements as a result (and often things got worse - the systems became little more than upward reporting tools and their sales teams became bogged down in bureacracy).

It often seemed to me that big CRM systems were a lazy knee-jerk reaction to fundamental problems in the company’s sales and marketing approach. Instead of addressing the (potentially painful) problems, they took the easy but expensive way out - buy a system to solve the problem.

They all had big, fancy looking business cases to justify their investments - but often behind the scenes the business logic was staggeringly weak. When you drilled into it the underlying logic was often "We know that understanding customers better is a good thing. This system lets us log every bit of available data and every touch point with a customer - so with all that we must be able to understand them better and that must be a good thing."

Unfortunately, all that data rarely turned into better understanding. And any improvements in understanding rarely translated into better services,products or sales and marketing approaches.

All they got was a ton more bureacracy - and a misplaced confidence from senior executives that they were somehow more “in charge” because they had more data to track.

Instead, I’ve seen brilliant CRM done on the back of a notebook or on a spreadsheet or simple contact manager as Ben says.

Thankfully, most small businesses couldn’t afford to fall into the traps that the big businesses I worked with did. They usually take much more pragmatic solutions and often they get much better results from them.

Ian

John - your distinction between CRM systems and CRM software is absolutely correct. If you have a system that works well for you, then you don't necessarily need CRM software.

The reason is because all traditional CRM software does is give you a system to organize your contacts with prospects and customers. No wonder there is always the question of whether or not purchasing a CRM system is worth the money and time spent getting it implemented!

What true small businesses need to start realizing though, is that there are "CRM" software solutions emerging that do more than organize, they automate. That is where the real power of SaaS lies. A system that can automate your follow-up AND keep your contacts and relationships all organized is extremely powerful.

No matter how good your "spiral notebook" system is, you can never stay on top of multi-step follow-up sequences with hundreds of leads or customers.

As true small business owners begin to understand their need for continual follow-up marketing (previously only truly accessible to large corporations) they'll be running towards solutions that can automate those processes for them.

Tyler,

"What true small businesses need to start realizing though, is that there are “CRM” software solutions emerging that do more than organize, they automate."

Your words above are so true. This is the power of leverage that technology and the Internet can bring.

CRM - Customer "Relationship" Management software, in its' present form, is an oxymoron. Software should automate things that can be done manually. Software will never manage relationships, but can facilitate them. Becoming an expert in relationships is the first order. Accomplish that, and the software is easy.

Hi Guys,

I wanted to first thank John for including my quote above and to comment on Tyler's point.

Tyler I had a lot of thoughts rolling around in my mind when I wrote the quote above. My point was not to say that I think a lot of people shouldn't use software at all. It was more to say that they need to come to that conclusion themselves. In fact I'm completely with you on the automation. Heap has something called event templates that does exactly that, and I think it is one of our more important features.

My primary point is that people approach this problem wrong. I fully believe that the vast majority of people will make that list of goals and realize that they in fact do need software.

Part of this point is about acceptance. If you say to a sales force that "we went through this process and this was the result; it will do X, Y and Z for you." That is lot better then just deciding on a software package and trying to get people to use it. None of these CRM packages are of any use to anyone if they don't have accurate data in them (which is what happens when people aren't on board).

My second thought was that people tend to over-buy. In my office I have chart with "customer needs" which was constructed from studies we conducted before we started writing Heap. Underneath it is a chart of the CRMs on the market. On the far right (most complex) there are programs like SalesForce and on far left there is the spiral ring notebook/stickers/note cards. The result of this rather conclusive. The "big" part of the customer graph (think bell curve) was sitting near the medium-low mark. Yet SalesForce is the most popular CRM. If you match up the needs to the program, that doesn't make any sense (i.e. people are purchasing more complex tools then they need).

And finally if you can do everything you need without software, who am I judge? Software vendors sometimes have this thought they need to convince people that they need a particular type of tool. Only the customer themselves can do that.

Anyhow, sorry if I oversold the spiral ring notebook.

Thanks!

I recently took over the CRM admin responsibilities at the company I work for (www.universitypipeline.com). We had previously been operating on salesforce.com (SFDC) and it was great. The problem was we were paying $15,000/yr roughly for the service and they charge for, what one would expect, services that should be free, like auto-backup.

Frustrated, I hit the opensource market and came across SugarCRM. Awesomely scalable, also available as a hosted service, relatively transparent business, and the plugins/widgets developed by the community were, for the most part, not heavily monetized as they are with SFDC's appexchange.

As far as companies adopting software as opposed to hard copy for CRM - software is definitely the way to go, even if its nothing more than an excel sheet.

The ability to manipulate the info and run a report are invaluable (all customers that fall within X region, X spending, etc.). Also, electronic data is much more portable across multiple systems if your business does grow and your needs increase. Trying to make the same transition in a growing business with hard copy is a task that I would only wish on my worst enemy (yes I would wish it). I love the CRM discussion - keep it going!

In our company, a small one, we struggled with getting everyone on the sales team on the same page with the crm we implemented. SugarCRM had loads of features that would track every possible piece of data, but it turned out to be too big a trade off for simplicity.

So we ended up managing relationships outside of software and developed a simple tool to track our sales efforts.

This tool, for us, served to help the sales people organize their efforts and coordinate with the other sales people in a single place. Made reporting and forecasting much easier.

That's what worked for us. There are a few suppliers of simple crm's out there.

If you want to check out ours, I believe it's the only one with a version that's completely free and doesnt expire.

<a href="http://www.simplesalestracking.com
" title="Simple Sales Tracking">www.simplesalestracking.com
demo.simplesalestracking.com

CRM is a philospohy, not a product, as stated in the quote. As a workflow and process manager, my ideal solution is whatever makes it easier for anyone in a company to quickly understand their relationship with a contact.

The new trend to workstyle and automated tools is only beneficial if that is the need of the organization. Personally, I am starting to use my social networking tooks as an adjunct to my CRM. All of my communication history is there, and guess what it is free.

I also think that simplifying the input requirements seems to help.

CRM can be really useful / a nightmare to use (at least at the beginning, and for a long time). I wish they wouldn't over-comlicate these things and keep the users in mind as well as other factors.

I work at a company that just produced LogicBright CRM. We are a small company (under 20 people) and ran into the same problems that every other person seemed to have. We needed a basic contact and lead management system that was easier to figure out than Salesforce and Sugar crm, but more sophisticated than Highrise and ACT.

We don't have all the features of some of the big names have because we felt it would complicate our product. Sorry if this sounds "sales pitchy" I am simply trying to say that sometimes keeping things simple is actually more efficient.

I'm a solo operator, have been looking for a simple combo for so long. So many have some, none have all.

Cool solutions I've come across; Heap, Relenta, Zoho, Highrise, Pipelinedeals.

But need
- ICal export (not giving up my Gcal!)
- Gmail integration (contact-to-gmail history)
- Drip series e-mail/automation
- Simple forecasting
- Simple - and lightning fast - notetaking during conversations

These simple features are currently only available in Etelos CRM - and it is far from sexy or fast, sometimes taking minutes to load.

So I'm using Etelos - and hoping for a worthy challenger.

Kristian, Great insights, I think that's the problem with software in general, everyone wants what they want!

yesterday I decided to go with Heap CRM...

threw GCal out the window (how long can a man wait for completable tasks/todo list anyway ..)

Heap has its limitations, but the user experience is simply awesome and it does most of the things I want it to, and then some. With closer Gmail integration and some improvements to group/category management it would be nirvana ..

I remembered a research made a few months ago when I read this article. Most of the small biz owners (up to 10 personnel) said that, "Softwares in market related with small biz are very complicated than expected.
We can not operate it effectively and must hire someone to operate it.. As a result total software costs (including efforts and personnel costs) are not our Number 1 concern to deal with.. We are just waiting for easier and cheaper solutions"

i was considering act as a crm solution...but its just so expensive!!! plus i needed to set it up on a server. i opted for web based HyperOffice instead which provided me good contact management functionality plus integrated productivity and extranet features.

A year on and the World of CRM has all changed and yet it's not changed at all, traditional values still hold true and keeping it simple and giving customers what they want as opposed to what the vendor needs to sell to improve the share price.

John makes a good point in regard to what the customers want though I felt the napkin may have scored higher.

Cloud Computing - offers many advantages to useers, they step away from a locally installed application that rapidly goes out of date to a browser based solution that has a lower cost of ownership.

Pitfalls to avoid include excessive charges for hosting and being denied the ability to self host.

Keep your eye on the backend database, will you ever be able to manage it, if it's SQL and it's local then no worries. In regard to getting what each department wants then be sure you can control the desktop experience as well.

Once such solution that may fit the bill for some is http://www.wiredcontact.co.uk/

Paul

Changing culture and/or process (as if there's a difference, in some cases) is next to impossible. That's why some companies foot the bill for a custom-designed CRM solution even when they know there are thousands out there off the shelf.