Harvey Mackay, president of a Twin Cities envelope company, made a big splash in 1988 with Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. It was the "business book of the year," and explained a 66-question profile that was filled out for each Mackay customer. This was before the CRM (customer relationship management) craze, and well before CRM software hit the marketplace.
Salesmanship has changed dramatically since 1988. We no longer assume that knowing one's products and offering an off-the-shelf, all-purpose answer is a winning formula. Technical expertise is valuable, but it's no longer enough to ensure success. Commoditization has hit almost every industry. (The graphic arts business hasn't been singled out.) Every distributor and manufacturer is challenged to meaningfully differentiate itself to its targeted marketplace. Consequently, sales success rests heavily on a salesperson's ability to ask questions and to understand the dynamics of each customer and prospect.
Trite as it may sound, the best formula is to discard your selling formulas and "secrets." Every customer has its programs, policies, needs, likes and dislikes, and culture. Some hate voice mail, some love it. Some are picky about a particular color, others are satisfied with "good enough color." Some have unique billing needs. The list goes on.
I hear many speakers and consultants extol the virtues of consistency, programs, policies and procedures. There's a great deal to be said for that, but think about your top three or four customers. Chances are, rules were broken to better serve those customers--and your willingness to intelligently deviate from the rules to meet their extraordinary demands is the very reason these are your top customers.
Having established that you can't have too much information about a customer to provide customized products and services leads us to CRM. Everything needs a name before it can be popularized. Having valuable resources was good, but when we called them "strategic alliances," the fancy nomenclature conveyed more legitimacy. Some suppliers were great at handling customer problems without knowing they were engaged in "service recovery."
CRM is little more than a formal program in which you gather customer information from every contact with an account. This dynamic pool of information can be studied and leveraged to increase sales and profits. You might conclude that CRM is something you've been doing informally for years, and you're probably right.
CRM was popularized by software manufacturers. Look in any technical or sales and marketing publication, and you'll find at least one full-page ad or article on the subject. Some large companies have invested millions of dollars in CRM software, but surveys of CEOs consistently have found disappointment in the return on investment for two reasons:
* IT people, who handle the installation of CRM programs, aren't always sensitive to sales and customer service issues.
* Data capture is essential, and often it's the sales and customer service representatives who must input and update data--but selling and processing orders should take precedence.
Let's cut through the CRM hype. The concept is good, and software may be helpful, but there's no reason a professional sales organization in our industry should view the purchase of CRM software as urgent. Successful sales organizations already are engaged in customer-specific information gathering, albeit informally. Probably you can do a better job of recording, analyzing and using your customers' information. Detailed customer profiles that are conscientiously maintained serve the purpose. But the idea that a concept is somehow elevated to a higher life form if it's computerized confuses the medium with the message.
Go beyond those who would have a salesperson knowledgeable about a buyer's pets, vacation preferences and favorite cuisine. Knowing the answers may ingratiate a salesperson to the customer, but likely won't make the rep more valuable to that account.
Going to the next level requires an understanding that one is not in the graphic arts, printing or promotion business. A successful salesperson must profoundly believe, not simply act, that he or she is in the customer's business. Data generated by a CRM program can be useful only if the salesperson understands the customer's strategy and plan to differentiate from competitors.
Software won't--and can't--create culture, value and genuine concern for the customers' well being and success. Those values must first be in place. At best, software may support that culture. Maybe you've been practicing CRM for years without knowing it, and maybe you've instilled the right culture in your company. But no program, computerized or manual, can succeed unless it's based on a culture/ethic that believes customers must know you're able to contribute to their goals and objectives.
Contributing Editor Dick Gorelick is an award-winning authority on sales, marketing and business strategies for the printing industry. As president of the Graphic Arts Sales Foundation in West Chester, Pa., he travels extensively, consulting, writing and speaking on sales training.
