Your CRM is not a Strategy

I’ve seen organizations spend significant amounts of money implementing a new CRM with the expectation that it will accelerate growth.

Salesforce. HubSpot. Dynamics. Pick your platform.

They are all powerful tools.

But your CRM is not your growth strategy.

A CRM can help you manage leads, automate communication, track opportunities, measure conversion and create accountability. What it cannot do is answer the most important questions:

1.      Who are we?

2.      Who are we trying to serve?

3.      Why should they choose us?

4.      And what exactly are we trying to accomplish?

Before selecting technology, building workflows or creating dashboards, organizations need to start with something much simpler:

Start With the Goal

Growth begins by clearly defining what success looks like.

One of the simplest frameworks remains one of the most useful: SMART goals.

Your goals should be:

• Specific – Clearly define what you are trying to accomplish.

• Measurable – Determine how you will know whether you are succeeding.

• Achievable – Make sure the goal is realistic given your market, resources and capabilities.

• Relevant – Connect the goal directly to the organization's larger strategy.

• Timely – Establish when the result needs to happen.

"Grow the business" isn't a strategy.

"Increase new commercial accounts by 15% over the next 12 months within our three priority markets" begins to give an organization something it can build around.

Now we can ask better questions.

1.      Who are the customers most likely to help us accomplish that goal?

2.      What problems are we solving for them?

3.      What is our value proposition?

4.      What channels will we use to reach them?

5.      What does the sales process need to look like?

6.      What are the conversion points we need to measure?

Only then should we start talking about the CRM.

Strategy First. Technology Second.

Think of your CRM as infrastructure.

If you haven't defined your destination, building a better road doesn't help very much. I used to say to my teams, if we are going out to eat lunch, we need to know where we are eating.

Because we might need a car or an airplane.

Once the strategy is clear, however, the CRM becomes incredibly valuable.

It can tell you whether leads are progressing through the sales funnel. It can identify where prospects are dropping out. It can automate follow-up. It can help sales and marketing work from the same information. It can show leaders whether the organization is actually moving toward its goals.

That's what technology should do.

Enable the strategy.

The problem occurs when organizations reverse the order.

They implement the CRM, build dozens of fields, create dashboards, automate emails and develop complicated workflows before deciding exactly what growth is supposed to look like.

Then everyone wonders why the investment isn't producing results.

The technology isn't necessarily the problem.

The strategy was never clearly defined.

Growth strategy ultimately starts with organizational clarity.