Managing your Customer Relations

I think everyone would agree that customers are the life blood of a business. As I have said before, without customers you really do not have a business. Keeping your company and the products and/or services you provide in the forefront of their minds is more important than ever in our current business environment. Fortunately there are numerous CRM(Customer Relation Management)software systems on the market that are designed to help you organize and keep track of all forms of contact with customers, prospects, and other business associates.

A simple Google search for CRM will provide a good start to finding a software system that meets your particular needs. I personally use a management tool designed by an independent software developer, so I not recommending one system over another. What I am recommending is that anyone who has daily, weekly, or even monthly contact with people that are vital to their business have some kind of system in place to keep track of your communication efforts.

Time has a way of slipping by, and if you do not have an organized approach to maintaining consistent communication with all of your contacts, opportunities will surely fall through the cracks. One of the biggest benefits of a CRM system is the ability to track your efforts and record your results. This enables you to create consistency in your selling efforts by developing regular campaigns that can deliver your message to both existing customers as well as future prospects. A trackable system prevents you from bombarding your contacts with too much information or even worse, forgetting about them altogether.

As we close out another year, now is a good time to analyze your current CRM efforts. If there is no system in place, make plans to implement one. If you have a system in place, make sure that it meets the needs of your business and most importantly, it is being used to its full potential. In a tough market, nobody can afford to loose customers. An effective CRM system provides an important tool that works to help ensure your company remains relevant in your customer's mind.

Recapture Your Vision

In business you often hear companies refer to their Vision and Mission statements. While a mission statement tends to define the actions needed to accomplish the company’s objectives, a vision statement should point the direction to achieving them. The vision gives the company something to strive for by creating an identity they wish to achieve for themselves. It should be able to define the expectations that have been set by the company’s leaders. The vision needs to be the driving force that provides a company its present and future motivation for being in business. While having a vision is important to starting a business, following and maintaining a vision is crucial to the success of that endeavor.

Many times the reality of business life will cause a company to loose sight of their original vision as they battle the day to day fires that constantly arise. As you get caught up in working in your business you will tend to forget to work on your business and its future path. Sometimes just getting through another day is the main focus. Unfortunately these days turn to weeks, then months, then finally years. While by many standards you may see yourself as successful, this is often based on the fact that you have survived long enough to still be around. The reality of your present situation is most likely radically different from your original concept of what your business would be like.

Another potential scenario is having an outdated vision. While you have been successful in achieving what you set out to accomplish, your original vision may no longer be relevant to your future goals and objectives. In a good way you have outgrown your expectations and now need to set new goals and objectives. In setting the bar higher you need to develop a whole new vision. To maintain success a company must always have something to aim and strive for. A company can never stand still, as it will actually begin to slip backwards. Truly successful businesses are never satisfied with the status quo. New visions provide new innovations that continually drive the company’s growth. If you sit back to admire all you have achieved, get ready to watch your competition go speeding by.

At any given point in time of the business life cycle you must be able to know and understand where you are and where are you going. In order to do this you must be able to maintain or update your company’s objectives. In other words you need to recapture your vision. If you take an honest approach to this task it will lay the groundwork to continued success.

Sourcing Information from Website Forums

Up until a few months ago, I was not really familiar with the benefits of participating in forums that are starting to pop up on many company, community, and special interest websites. I belong to a few professional organizations that have an open forum for members on their website, but other than skimming over some eye catching topics, I never took the time to actually read and respond to other member's posts.

Recently I started to seek out websites that have forums relevant to my business or special interests. I began to read some threads, which are basically a topic starter, and the posts that follow, which are a response to that thread. Once you are registered in the forum, you can add your own threads and posts to any of the listed topics. While the majority of the information contained in a forum revolves around people's opinions, you can still learn quite a bit from actively participating in them. If you are looking for information on a particular topic, you can add your question as a thread and then see what kind of answers you receive back.

Some of the benefits I have personally derived from business oriented forums are links to websites and organizations that I never knew existed, advice on a particular issue, and feedback on my theories and opinions that I expressed in my own threads.

There are also many social forums out there on just about any subject imaginable. They provide a great place to exchange experiences with other people who share your same interests.

While every forum may be a little different in nature, they all work on the same basic premise, an exchange of information and ideas. As long as you remember that for the most part people are expressing opinions, not facts you should still be able to use them as a valid resource for obtaining information.

The Power of Self Assessment

I spent close to twenty years as the sales manager for a wholesale distribution company and one of my main tasks was to constantly track and measure the sales team's performance. There would be weekly one on one reviews as well as monthly and quarterly performance evaluations all designed to align individual goals and objectives with those of the company. It was extremely time consuming, but beneficial in driving growth and improving the bottom line. It was this constant assessment that contributed to twenty years of profitable growth.

Now that I work for myself I have adopted this approach to evaluate my own performance. I have put processes in place that track my weekly results in four critical areas that are directly tied to the overall growth of my business. I conduct a monthly review of my efforts to ensure they are in line with my goals and objectives. On a quarterly basis I review my overall marketing plan to make sure it is still on track,and then make any necessary adjustments to my current strategies. This self assessment is designed to keep me moving forward, but more importantly to keep me committed to the vision and mission I established for my company.

I wish I could say that I have accomplished all the goals I set for myself, and everything is going according to schedule. The reality is that starting any business is hard work and extremely demanding. I have changed my business model numerous times and have made countless mistakes along the way. The one constant through the whole experience has been the process of self assessment. This is the single most important reason I even have a business. It has kept me focused and committed to the tasks at hand. It has allowed me to learn from my mistakes and make the necessary adjustments to get me back on track. It prevents me from making excuses and holds me directly accountable for my efforts. Most importantly, it gives me a reason to get up everyday and get back to work.

Assessing your performance is not the easiest thing in the world to do, however it probably the most important thing you can do for yourself. People close to you tend to tell you things they think you want to hear. You are the only person in the world who can honestly assess your efforts and performance. Utilizing this powerful tool and all the benefits it can provide will be directly tied to your eventual success or failure.