When we designed Salesgenie CRM++, we were convinced that small and medium sized enterprises can profit from having a sales and marketing tool which help drive their core sales and marketing activities.

In our first month after having softly seeded the product into some customer sites, let me share our first impressions of what the market really is like.

Firstly; our assumptions about SMEs; how small was small?

We expected to get inquiries from companies with very few sales guys. Say less than 5. Most if not all of our serious inquiries are from clients with anything between 20 to 100 sales and marketing force.

Why is that? Is it that folks with 5 salesmen do not need a CRM? I still think they do. But, the marketing effort needed to reach them is prohibitive. And, with all of them, the marketing effort starts at selling the benefits of CRM rather than “why us”.

And, being an SME ourselves, we understand what they seem to be saying: Get customers first.  Investment in CRM systems can follow.

CRM softwares are great farming tools. The deeper your engagements are till date, the more insights you have in his needs. Perhaps at the level of 5 or less salesmen, the focus is on hunting.

Here is what we think:
It is never too early to log your interactions with your clients. As you grow, the quality of the interactions need to be better. An established customer (and, even when you are a year old, you have several) will certainly appreciate your keeping his past dealings and preferences in mind. And, automating some of the routine tasks will only free your sales force to scout for more business in newer areas as also help them cross-sell or up-sell to existing accounts.

What should you remember of your customers?
Log payments and or purchases.  As the electorates vote with their finger on the button, customers vote with their money.

Continue to do profile based targeting but back that with his past behaviour. Actions speak louder than words; look for signals which have a bearing on purchases like customer initiated requests for quotations, literature or demo.

The tendency is to postpone the investment in CRM systems and processes. But, remember, when you actually do invest, it will take you time to build up the historical data records relating to your customer contacts’ profiles and actions. Will you have the patience then to wait for a couple of years for your investment then, to show results?

CRM systems are only as good as the data you log about the customers: their profiles and behaviors and engagements in the past. Their true power is the ability to harness the past data to build compelling marketing campaigns for the installed base. So, couple your investment in CRM systems with robust processes for logging customer interactions and keep the profiles updated.

Start now!