Importance of CRM in a Recession

Why CRM Is Even More Important During A Recession

There are many reasons why the effective use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application is vital during times of recession.

The sub-prime mortgage fiasco and subsequent global financial meltdown have left many organizations scrambling amidst budget cuts, layoffs and corporate reorganizations. When it comes to IT, the recession is suddenly making outsourcing CRM and other functions more attractive options, according to analysts.

"If anything [the recession is] increasing the focus on spend," said Phil Fersht, research director, global business services and outsourcing with Boston-based AMR Research Inc. Companies are not going to be spending more money on IT and service. They are trying to get more with less, and that means exploring avenues that take advantage of lower-cost delivery. There will be more demand for outsourcing services that have immediate cost impacts on the business and not a heavy initial investment.

‘Recession’ – the dreaded “R” word... I have given up reading and writing about the “R” word, and would prefer to use ‘Economic Downturn’. The “R” word is just SO depressing!

As a salesman I believe that there are two main ways that an on demand CRM solution can help you during an economic downturn. They relate to:

1. Obtaining the complete value from your customers, or, in other words, maximizing your opportunities with them.
2. Assisting you to be more efficient when dealing with your customers, prospects, and suspects.

Obtaining the complete value.

What we are looking at here is maximizing the lifetime value of your existing customers by concentrating more on upgrade, renewal, cross-selling, expansion, referral, and shut out revenue streams.

Let’s look at how a CRM sales & marketing module can help you to maximize the lifetime value.

a. Through improved “Account Management”.

Tracking the purchase history of your customers and analyzing the opportunities for upgrades and cross-selling in future.

Identifying referrals from accounts and contacts for promoting new products and services.

Specifying parent-child relationships between accounts and their subsidiaries or other divisions to accelerate your expansion revenue.

Storing account and contact-related notes and documents in the account history to help you identify upgrade and cross-selling opportunities.

b. Through better “Contact Management”.

Managing the hierarchy of contacts within your customers to have better coordination when dealing with customers.

Tracking all contacts and related opportunities, support cases, activities, and other details from a central database.

c. Through enhanced “Opportunity Management”.

Associating opportunities with accounts, contacts, activities, and other modules to have a better visibility on the opportunities and provide you with a 360 degree view of your customers.

Tracking competition on each business opportunity, in order to increase your shut out revenue stream.

Assisting you to be more efficient when dealing with your customers, prospects, and suspects.

In every company there is room for improvement in business processes and sales executive effectiveness.

Again, let’s look at how the CRM sales & marketing module can help you to enhance your sales processes and improve your sales execs’ performance.

a. Through better “Opportunity Management”.

Tracking all sales opportunities end-to-end in a sales cycle.

Importing potentials from other Business/CRM solutions and services. Even Fortune 500 companies have Excel spreadsheets hidden away somewhere with vital sales information that is not made available centrally!

Again, by associating opportunities with accounts, contacts, activities, and other modules to have a better visibility on the opportunities.

Analyzing the sales stage and probability of winning deals.

Using intuitive sales funnel charts to analyze your the pipeline and eliminate any bottlenecks in the sales cycle.

Alert ALL of the stakeholders in your company when a big deal closes, or is nearing completion.

By setting up sales escalation processes through workflow rules to reduce the bottlenecks in the sales cycle.

By automatically generating quotes, sales orders, and invoices from your opportunities.

b. Through better “Contact Management and Automated Workflow”.

By setting up contact assignment rules to automatically assign contacts to your sales executives. e.g. automating web enquiries to lead assignment.

c. Through improved “Sales Activity Management”.

Logging all important customer-related emails into your CRM account for quick reference in future.

Storing all the details of customer meetings and calls in an intuitive calendar.

Managing daily tasks of the all of the users in order to create a more streamlined sales process.

Inviting your CRM users, your leads, contacts and customers to public events.

Setting up recurring events with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly frequencies.

All of the above can help a business to streamline its sales, marketing and support processes and get them through tough economic times.

Zoho CRM costs just US$12 per user per month, and CRM Asia Solutions can even provide a Rapid Implementation Package for just US$500 and have your team up and running in a matter of days!  If you would like to know more about Zoho CRM then please do not hesitate to contact us here, or at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Do I have any other ideas on how to better serve and develop your customers? Yes, there are many, but I would concentrate on just two more.

1. Firstly, improve your pipeline using a direct email marketing application such as CRM Asia Solutions “Connect”.

2. Secondly, if you are in an industry that provides after sales service, I would look to improve your after sales revenue stream by providing a better service using Zoho CRM’s Customer Support Management modules which provide the means for effective Case and Solution Management.

Again, please do not hesitate to contact CRM Asia Solutions here, or via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you require any further information on these two vital business solutions that will help you during those difficult “R” times.