Help! The CRM world is scary, there are too many options and I’m not sure which of the features are genuinely beneficial to me and the organisation. Why does everybody keep talking to me about a sales funnel and support tickets and where on Mother Earth did that price tag come from?
This scenario is so common during consultations that I’ve even decided to write a blog about it. Our happy clients will stand testament that Grant Management in CRM is seamless if you have the right implementation partner.
CRM stands for customer relationship management and typically focuses on four areas. These areas are contact, marketing, opportunity, and service management. Now, contact and marketing management could be of use to you, but opportunity and service management makes little sense and I agree with you. So, let’s focus on the unknown first.
Opportunity Management = Process Management
I’m going to try and get through this entire section without mentioning the word funnel, whoops, there it is. Well, we’ll just have to crack on. The interesting thing is, some business processes have nothing to do with a ‘Sales Department’, there isn’t a ‘¬£’ in sight yet they operate exactly like a funnel does. One could argue that there is a funnel element to any organisational process.
So, what you need is a partner that understands Grant Management in CRM the processes in your sector and a CRM platform that can deliver an environment that helps you to manage different processes more efficiently and effectively.
That’s where we come in.
Service Management = Experience Management
Have you ever looked at the reviews and ratings attached to a restaurant and decided not to go? Don’t be shy, we have all done it and we have the right and the power to do so.
In the past, your reputation was managed through word of mouth, if your customer had a bad experience, they would talk about you negatively to their peers. Please don’t get me wrong, this still happens, the only difference now is that a one-star review can be seen by anyone who simply googles any business or organisation, and it has therefore become even more important to ensure that the experience of the people and organisations that deal with you are positive and rewarding for both parties.
The right CRM platform will allow you to define how you would manage a complaint and then gives you the tools that you would need to ensure that the complaint is dealt with swiftly, improving the overall experience with your organisation.
The Easy Stuff
Contact Management, you need it. Any platform worth its salt should be very good at helping you with contact and grant management in CRM. Group your contacts by Grantees, Suppliers, Partners, and Funders, the list will go on and it will be different for every organisation. Create custom fields to help you profile each relationship in more detail, track dates, manage appointments and tasks.
Every relationship you have is a story worth recording, the CRM platform should become the book in which you record them, and the platform should also make it easy for you to analyse the stories you have written to see where you are succeeding and where you could improve things.
Marketing Management, you should probably be using this. Imagine you have all your contacts in one platform, they are all profiled accurately, spelt correctly, and grouped accordingly, I know, it feels like a pipedream, but it really isn’t. Now imagine that you can run advanced searches to build lists based on a combination of some of the profiling fields. What you now have are audiences, groups of contacts that you can send relevant material to. Invite people to events, share newsletters and good news stories, engage with your contacts in whatever way you feel you need to.
Have you heard of Low-Code/No-Code technology?
This has now become a critical element in what separates good CRM platforms from great CRM platforms. I have spoken about configurable elements a lot in this article, from process management to marketing management there are things that need to be configured and these configurations will need to be tweaked over time.
Configuration and the cost required to change it is the driving force behind why CRM platforms can become very expensive. Low-code/No-Code technology means that an educated amateur within your organisation can configure and make the tweaks themselves without the need to incur extra spend. This makes the organisation AGILE and vastly improves the rate at which you will receive return on investment.
Who is Collier Pickard?
Well, if you have made it this far, then I know that you have found this article useful.
Grant Management in CRM does not have to be difficult to understand, implement and manage. The problem is, CRM is difficult to understand, implement and manage. Every single one of our clients at Collier Pickard approached us because they were struggling with one of or all these areas.
Collier Pickard is a Team of Independent CRM Consultants; we have been providing solutions to our clients for nearly 20 years. We take the consultative approach to selling and only partner with organisations where we know we can deliver a solution and ultimately a return on investment. We take Low-code/No-Code systems to market and are fully equipped to implement and support the CRM platforms that we have so carefully selected.
