Do we really need CRM?

Now, more than ever, we need to keep hold of our existing customers, as well as nurture any new prospects. We need to ensure that costs are kept to a minimum and that we are not wasting money and resource chasing the wrong type of business. We need to understand who our customers are and what our prospects really need. CRM will help us do all of these things and more.

Gone are the days of “letterbox pricing”, where tenders and enquiries were dropping through the door at a relentless pace. Pricing for work is getting harder, with more and more companies being squeezed by ever shrinking margins. Companies are now considering how they should best approach their tendering processes; which ones are quick wins; which ones require the least resource; how many they can actually price in time; and which ones will give the best return. So in fact they end up turning down the opportunity to tender for some work!

In parallel with this, sales, business development and marketing staff are being pushed to bring in more and more enquiries to ensure they meet targets and secure a full order book year on year. Amidst all this activity, administration tasks often take a secondary role, so customer service staff are not being provided with all the necessary details about contracts and orders. They can’t present a coordinated approach when dealing with customers’ issues.

At present all staff involved in pre-tender work, namely sales, business development and marketing, are all running around like headless chickens trying to get as many new chances to bid for work as possible. They are gathering frightening amounts of information about new schemes, project plans, enquiries and opportunities, companies they are dealing with, people they know and have met. In some cases staff have resorted to storing this information on spreadsheets, and have created beautiful, yet complex reports and analysis. In some cases companies have purchased systems to allow them to keep track of some of these details, but most of these systems fall short and only cater for Customers and Contacts.

Tendering staff also have their own way of working. Some still use pen and paper, spreadsheets are commonly used, some use complex estimating systems, allowing detailed bids to be put together. Now all of these approaches are fine, except, they are pricing on work as it comes in, and are not forewarned of potential work by their sales and business development colleagues, unless of course they participate in weekly tendering meetings used, in most cases, to pass information between the two departments. Thus valuable time and resources are being wasted.

It makes sense for a company to unite its marketing and pre-tender processes, its tendering processes and after-sales care, to create some “joined-up thinking” and ensure that the right hand knows what the left hand wants and needs, and vice-versa. This presents better service to prospective and existing customers, and enables staff to work more efficiently.

How are we able to get these sets of staff in harmony? How can sales and business development generate and track ever increasing numbers of projects in the knowledge that their estimators aren’t going to “black ball” the bids as soon as they come in? How can estimators be alerted to future possible workload and balance their resources accordingly? How can we ensure that both the “project finding” and “project pricing” elements come together and work together? How can Marketing gather enough information to make decisions about their marketing spend for the coming year, and how can we ensure that the customer service staff are not left dealing with issues and problems without the tools to back them up.

So CRM is the answer?

Staff are performing under immense pressure and ever increasing targets. They all have their peculiarities in terms of how they work. However, there is an awful lot of “common” information, which, when shared through a CRM solution, would save an awful lot of time and money. Why is it that when an opportunity is passed from sales/business development to the contracts staff they basically start from scratch again, entering their own information into their own systems. Is this not common information, which in most cases is captured electronically? Is there not a lot of valuable sales and business development information which does not get passed over and is therefore lost as part of the bid/contract process? This information could be shared by the entire company!


Sales and Business development use CRM to continually track individual opportunities to the point of order, as well as maintain relationships with key players within the companies they deal with. A centrally held database also allows a common view of all their customers and prospects, as well as other parties involved in the decision making process; Customer Service staff have access to information across the board, thus providing a unified approach to how they deal with customers and their issues; Marketing can run marketing campaigns from within the system, analysing response rates and their campaign effectiveness; estimators are kept informed of upcoming tenders and future workload. With a common database everyone within the company can see instantly the latest “state-of-play” of their projects, clients, tenders etc...

A win-win situation all round, with savings in time and resources and increased customer satisfaction and retention.

And that’s why you need CRM!