A CRM Consultant Can Make a Difference

Now, I was in college when PC's, as we know them today, were almost ready to break onto the scene. So my early years in the business world were PC free since I was in construction and then banking; and trust me when I say banks were on the trailing edge of personal computing in the mid 80's.

The point I'm trying to make is that I didn't go to school to become a CRM Consultant. We didn't know what that was then.  I didn't even learn to write code in school, I was an Economics major. That all came much later; after a series of course corrections in my career that still baffles anyone who gets a copy of my resume.

I actually started with a manufacturing company as field based project manager. That's where I first learned that planning was essential. That's right, I didn't learn that in school! Then I moved on to commercial banking where I learned, as bank examiner and portfolio risk analyst, that I was creative. But there was still an element of bean counting involved and it got old, so I decided after 7 or 8 years to move on.

It just so happened that my last banking project was a technology project. This captured my interest for 2 years and ultimately led me to search for an opportunity in this arena. This new term SFA (or Sales Force Automation) kept coming up in this CompuServe forum in which I participated. This forum was related to a really cool (at the time) distributed database based PIM (personal information manager) that was originally created in conjunction with IBM.  I really became quite an expert with the product, although I still hadn't heard the term CRM consultant.

So, I moved back to my hometown and .....proceeded to get involved with a corporate finance business (you thought I was going to say I became a CRM consultant!). This turned out to be a really big waste of my time. And finally, after two years, I took the plunge to work for an up and coming value added reseller of this product I mentioned a moment ago. Ever since that point, I've been working with middle market companies, and some enterprises, to employ the use of PIMs, SFA and CRM platforms to improve the way the work.

And what have I learned over that time? Well, this website will give you a picture of it. But, in a nutshell, I've learned that there have been many a whitepaper written about CRM that love to use the business school buzzwords of the day. And I'm sure most of them were logically thought through and seem to be on point, most of the time. My thoughts are based on years of working in the trenches with all types of businesses, all types of people and all types of budgets.

And to really sum it up, most of these companies would lock the doors if an army of suited 24 year olds stormed their building with 100 page PowerPoint presentations and methodology diagrams. The first time I saw one of these presentations even I was confused and I had been involved in quite a few projects. I can't imagine how small the average middle-market executive must feel when confronted by this approach. I know this approach works, I've seen the sales numbers. But, I've seen the failures as well! To be fair, anyone who has been with this segment since its infancy has had CRM failures, or been involved with failures, to one degree or another. I've seen a few successes too.

As a CRM Consultant, I'm a bit different. I don't start by demoing the latest features of my favorite CRM software.  What I do is put you through a CRM assessment so opportunities for huge ROI become obvious! We identify, together, where your business is, and where it's gotta be relative to customer-centricity. And then we devise a plan to get there. A simple, manageable and measureable plan! Oh, and yes there will be some software involved but we'll talk about that later.

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