How your agency can come back stronger. Part 2: CRM

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles to help agencies come out of the Covid-19 crisis stronger, specifically where business development is concerned.

From the many conversations I’ve had with agency owners, this is undoubtedly a time for reflection. For some, it’s a chance to press the reset button. For others, a time to fix stuff that has been on the business development ‘to-do’ list for too long. If that sounds like you, and you can escape the home-schooling and Zoom calls, stick around.

Because let’s face it. Never has business development been so important. Done well, it connects the right clients with the right agencies, helping both to survive, make sense of, and thrive in a world which already looks and feels quite different. And, of course, the new challenges and opportunities it presents, both now and longer-term.

Last time, I looked at positioning, the goal of which is ‘ to become more relevant to fewer people’ (a lovely turn of phrase that I’ve borrowed from David C Baker). Once you have defined what the right client looks like for your agency, you’ll need to build intelligence on the companies and people you seek to engage with. The more you know about your prospects, the more timely, relevant, and tailored you can be with your communication.

But first, you need somewhere to house all that lovely data and insight.

That house is called a CRM…

Standing for Customer Relationship Management, this is where you store contact details and manage communication with prospects (and potentially clients too). It can also be used to organise and segment data, ‘score’ leads, set reminders, run reports, and help with forecasting, amongst other things.

Despite the well-known benefits, and with a lot of CRMs being free (or low cost), I am staggered that so many agencies still try to get by with spreadsheets. I love Excel as much as the next person. But I draw the line at trying to manage a database of contacts in rows and columns.

Now, I don’t pretend to be the world’s foremost expert on choosing and implementing a CRM. However, I have used one consistently from my very first day in business development, way back in 2004. It might have been nothing more than a customised Access database, but the principles were the same; to get stuff out of my head and into a system. And not just for my benefit but also for those around me to be able to dip in, as and when required. That just can’t happen when stuff is written down on scraps of paper, in emails or worse, in your head.

Since those glory days in recruitment (I lasted 6 months), CRM functionality has advanced greatly. So, I thought I’d bring in a proper expert for this. Zuber Vindhani is COO at White Stratus — they help agencies get their operations in order. A CRM is, of course, an integral part of this. I posed him a few questions:

So, Zuber, why should an agency use a CRM?

“There are many solutions on the market that can help with keeping track of conversations: online to-do apps, project management systems, spreadsheets and so on. But, whilst many do the single thing they are designed to do well, there often isn’t the full picture view that business developers really need. Add to this that teams now work remotely and will do for the foreseeable future, and you can see why agencies need some method of collating and sharing information for all to see without anyone pulling their hair out. Modern CRMs follow the client from the beginning of the journey with your agency to the very end (which is hopefully a long time away). A CRM enables the magic ingredient of personalisation, which is the key to help keep clients on the books for the long term. With a well-oiled CRM, stakeholders can also leverage valuable insights from intuitive reporting so they can plot a course and steer the agency with confidence. Put simply, a CRM will help you communicate more effectively, improve team efficiency, enhance productivity, provide data-driven insight, and deliver a far more personalised service — the real question is why wouldn’t an agency use a CRM?”

Despite these benefits, loads of agencies still shy away. Why?

“From experience, the main obstacles are often the inability to articulate business objectives and how a CRM can solve them, wrong perception of CRM suitability and available resources needed to map out a successful implementation. However, in my humble opinion, most agency leaders know they need a CRM but use these obstacles to mask the real issue at hand — fear of change.”

What should agencies look for in a CRM?

“For me, the single most important aspect is the ease of use. Get this nailed and the rest will follow. Your team is going to be responsible for the health of your data, so make sure the CRM is not an over-engineered monster that will just sap energy. However, in today’s climate, a CRM shouldn’t be explored in isolation. It’s important to take stock of what kind of features your agency currently needs, and what you’ll most likely need in the future. To save a ton of headache and expense later, take a look at what kind of integrations the CRM supports and if it matches up with what you’re currently using in your tech stack. This is especially important if you’re utilising marketing automation software. Getting these two platforms to be friends will solve your biggest challenges to building better relationships — personalisation, being timely and keeping relevant. CRM integration will also allow you to leverage much-needed automation so you can plug any gaps in your team by improving workflow efficiency and removing the mundane from your team’s plate: so, they can focus energy on building stronger relationships. Another pointer is looking for a CRM that’s flexible enough to fit your current process instead of reworking your entire business to fit the CRM. Here, I suggest taking advantage of any free trials to test-drive the platform and dive a little deeper into the onboarding process and aftercare of the vendor.”

Once the decision has been made, how can agencies ensure they actually use it? Consistently.

“It is well documented that more than half of CRM implementations simply fail to get off the ground! Why? Because there is little focus on change management. Any digital transformation is a human one too. So, it’s important to have the team involved early on so they can help drive the implementation process and ensure the best value from a CRM investment. Change management is an area that is well worth the investment. Not only does this ensure a CRM implementation will be much more successfully adopted by the team, but the silver lining is the vastly improved customer experience it ultimately provides at the other end. A connected team + personalisation = improved customer experience.”

Great stuff, thank you Zuber.

White Stratus specialise in Copper (formerly ProsperWorks). If I used G Suite, I’d be all over it. The way it integrates with Gmail, for example, is a joy. But of course, Copper is just one of many options, including Hubspot, Pipedrive, Capsule and Zoho.

So where do you start?

As Zuber suggests, narrow your options by exploring how each CRM fits alongside your existing platforms and tools. And then get yourself a free trial with two or three and have a play.

As you do so, I recommend avoiding 75% of the functionality you see before you. It will probably frighten you half to death. And some of it, quite frankly, you might never use. Instead, focus first on using your CRM to manage all contacts and the communication you have with them. That’s it. Make this habitual. Above everything else, this is the primary function of your CRM.

Managing pipelines, running reports, setting up automations, and so on can come later. Eventually, you will need to build processes around and alongside your CRM (and any accompanying tools). This is where the more advanced features come into play. But that’s for another day.

The bottom line

Without a CRM you will be wasting time on tasks that could otherwise be done more efficiently. There is also a much greater chance your efforts at relationship building will lack focus and subtlety in messaging.

As Zuber concludes, “ we’re in a relationship era now and the notion ‘people buy from people’ has never been truer. That means being highly personalised with any outreach efforts. A CRM will ultimately help you achieve this by moving away from messages that resonate to businesses to ones that resonate to people.”

I’ll be back with part 3 soon, focusing on something that is important in ‘normal’ times but even more so now: researching prospects (properly) before you even think about trying to make contact.

Until then, keep on truckin’.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.