User Review
( votes)
What do we really want out of customer relationships? Yes, we all want to ensure customer satisfaction. Yes, we all want to keep customers engaged with our brand and products.
But let’s cut the malarkey: we mainly all want revenue. (And satisfied, engaged customers are the revenue drivers.)
Today, we’ll share a few tips on tweaking the “M” in CRM from management to maximizing. And it starts at the very first touch point.
“We have received your inquiry and will get back to you shortly.” Talk about a missed opportunity.
D365 (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Field Service, et al) gives you every means imaginable to fire off an email to people who have downloaded a whitepaper, signed up for a webinar, filled out a contact form, or otherwise interacted with you. And there’s no better time to get an open for an email, so why do so many businesses waste what’s basically a guaranteed open with a robotic reply?
Make sure every autoresponder you create in D365 is relationship maximizer: did they download a whitepaper on economic trends? Send them a link to a webinar on economic trends. Did they contact you for a demo? Send them a link to a one-pager or other “demo-primer.”
Don’t just thank them for reaching out to you. Build on why they reached out: give them more than they expected, and you’ll eventually get more in return.
Have you integrated your Dynamics 365 CRM with your ERP system, connecting marketing info (contacts, geo’s, etc.) with critical financial info? Have you connected LinkedIn Sales Navigator to provide “career context” for every customer communication? Have you created compelling customer journeys in D365 Marketing that feed data to customer service and sales reps in real-time?
Microsoft has a greater depth and breadth of tools and platforms than ever before, and they’re almost all centered around empowering a business with a completely automated, instantly available 360-degree view of every customer. If you’re using only D365 CRM to understand your customers’ needs, wants, and behaviors, you’re getting only a sliver of the big picture.
Yes, technically, you’re “managing” those customer relationships. But once you roll in the data of, for example, each customer’s website and social media behavior, career details, and other demographics data the Microsoft stack can provide, you move from customer relationship management to customer relationship maximization.
As stated, in the end (and usually the beginning and middle, too) customer relationships are all about maximizing revenue possibilities. Which means your sales quotes are one of the most critical communications you have with a customer.
Yes, a sales proposal is, in many ways, just another customer communication… just like a contract is just another communication. I.e., it’s important.
Not only that, but in many cases, your sales quote will be the first communication you send your customer that reaches a wider audience of decision makers, so ensuring it’s a relationship maximizer is absolutely critical.
You want the quotes you send to both build your brand and reflect your customer’s as well. You want the product and pricing configurations in your quotes to be priced optimally for you, and fairly for your customer. You want to dot T’s and cross I’s and ensure no detail is missed and no reply is late. You want a system dedicated to these features and functions, and within D365, which is why companies are adding CPQ to Dynamics.
CPQ maximizes every quote, making it more professional and more targeted, and optimizes the quote tracking process as well.
If you’re serious about customer relationship maximization, it’s time to get serious about how you’re creating, sending, and tracking the most critical step: the sales proposal.
