E-Commerce Blog

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If you haven’t heard that one multiple times, you aren’t really in business. It’s a truism — and part of being a truism is that it’s true, for the most part. When a new business strategy emerges, it can temporarily topple truisms — but soon, they’re back and as applicable as ever. That disruptive period can be confusing, but also exciting and rife with opportunity. Such is the case with Social CRM.

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Strike While the Social CRM Iron Is Hot

There’s an adage in the CRM industry that every successful CRM implementation is customized in some way. That may not be as much of an absolute as it once was. But, in order to gain a true competitive advantage from CRM, your business needs to find ways to use it differently than your competitors do. While CRM is often seen as a remedial tool — it cleans up disorganized data, it allows disparate people to communicate about sales and marketing, it gives you a better view of the customer when service issues arise — it can and should be more than that.

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Tricks of Your Trade: Little Things That Can Make CRM Better

Had a meteor hit the Dulles Westin outside of Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, it would have set social CRM back 10 years. That meteor, in addition to melting a lot of snow, would have vaporized in a trice the vast majority of the world’s serious thinkers on the topic of social CRM. The journalists, consultants and business leaders gathered there shared their ideas about the impact social CRM will have in the next few years, how it will transform businesses, and how it will propel smart organizations toward truly becoming customer-centric.

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Social CRM: Walk Before You Run

CRM solutions have a long history of helping B2B marketers achieve greater ROI from their leads. Yet for companies that sell their products and services direct to consumers, CRM solutions frequently miss the mark. A quick Google search for CRM helps prove this: The search returns plenty of B2B products, but sifting through the results to find solutions designed specifically for the B2C sale is like finding a needle in a haystack. Why is this?

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B2B vs. B2C CRM: What’s the Diff?

Although service is gaining in importance as the economy is forcing customer retention to the fore, sales has long been the dominant leg of the CRM stool. Many CRM efforts were spearheaded by sales, and in many organizations, the SFA functions of CRM software remain the only features that actually get used. That said, sales pros continue to voice problems, concerns and worries about CRM. Although enthusiasm for using CRM has increased in the past two years — thanks to desperation brought about by the recession — many people in sales still view it as a necessary evil, at best.

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Why CRM Keeps Sales Reps Awake at Night