Customer Relationship Management

Most business brokers I know use contact management software such as Outlook or ACT to manage information about potential sellers, buyers, and other advisors.

However, there is an entirely different way to manage contacts that will result is more leads, better client service, and more closed deals.

I am speaking about Customer Relationship Management or CRM.

CRM is a broad term that describes all the processes required for managing a client relationship.  It fills the gaps between contact management and marketing and gives you the ability to generate leads, manage customer service, track communications, and measure the results of your marketing campaigns.  In addition, some CRM applications provide automation of campaigns, appointments, document management, and everyday tasks that keep you connected with your clients.

Today there are hundreds CRM solutions for small and large businesses alike.  They are easy to setup, easy to use, and extremely powerful in their functionality.  Many of these solutions provide advanced functionality for executing direct mail and email campaigns with the greatest of ease.  Contacts are automatically flagged with reminders to follow up with important leads and tasks.  You can even receive text messages on your cell phone reminding you to do certain things to stay connected to your clients and contacts.

When our firm went through the process of selecting a web based CRM solution we struggled with the amount of functionality built into these systems.  Looking back now I can say that the key to finding the right CRM solutions is to first understand how your firm works and then find a solution that matches.  Here are the steps for finding the best CRM application for your business brokerage firm.

Step 1. Define You Business Processes

The first step in implementing a CRM application is to define the processes used by your firm.  This means breaking down each process into step-by-step actions that need to be completed to achieve your goal.  A short list of processes may include the following:

·        Generating leads for potential Sellers

·        Performing a brokers opinion of value

·        Finding and qualifying buyers

·        Closing the transaction

An oversimplified sample diagram of our firm’s Seller Lead Generation Process is shown below.

Step 2. Identify a Short List of CRM Applications

The next step is to cut through the hundreds of CRM solutions and identify 5 to 10 vendors that you would like to demo.  Most web based CRM vendors will allow you a 30-day trial at no charge to see if the program satisfies your requirements.  When we went through this process we focused on 4 criteria to govern our analysis.

1.      Functionality that matches our processes

2.      Ease of use

3.      Cost

4.      Reputation of the vendor

SalesForce.com – a well-known web based CRM program – is a good example of a solution that had way more functionality then we would ever use.  InfusionSoft.com is another vendor that we thought was really good, but too expensive compared to others that we tried.  We liked the cost of FreeCRM.com because it was free, but the ease of use was really poor.

We also wanted a solution with integrated email marketing so we could stop using ConstantContact.com.  The other functionality we thought was important was the ability to import and export contacts from Outlook and Microsoft Excel and categorize the contacts different dimensions such as contact type (seller, buyer, attorney) and status (active, inactive, do not contact).

Our short list is shown below:

·        Pipejump.com

·        Salesforce.com

·        Netsuite.com

·        Landslide.com

·        CLPSuite.com

·        Sugarcrm.com

·        Infusionsoft.com

·        Soffront.com

·        FreeCRM.com

 Step 3. Demo Your Short List

You can be up and running with a web-based solution in no time at all.  Simply visit the web address and find the trial sign up page.  (I strongly recommend that you consider only web-based solutions)  Complete the sign up form and follow the directions for setting up your personal preferences.  Next you will need to populate the system with contacts from your current list of clients and potential clients.  Most systems include a way for to import contacts from Outlook, ACT, and even Microsoft Excel.

I was amazed how quickly I formed an opinion on the ease of use and functionality of the solution just by setting up my personal preferences, importing my contacts, and configuring a process or two.  I pretty much knew if the solution was going to meet our needs or not by the time I was ready to conduct business.  

Step 4. Evaluate Customer Support and Training

After conducting a handful of demos we narrowed the field down to two and then jumped on the phone to talk with the sales representatives.  Our goal was twofold: (1) to see if the customer support and training was going to be any good and (2) to see if we could negotiate a discount of any kind on the service.  After a couple of communications with the sales rep we were confident which vendor was going to be there when we ran into problems. 

Conclusion

Every business brokerage firm can benefit by using a CRM solution.  Be sure you understand how you do business.  Take some time to define your business processes.  Understand what is most important to your firm in selecting a CRM solution.  Identify the top CRM solution vendors and narrow the list down to those that you want to try out.  Be sure to contact the sales representative so you will know before hand if the customer support and training will be any good.