Here are several excerpts from an interesting article by Andrew Boyd, Chief Research Officer for the Aberdeen Group, 3 Low-Cost or No-Cost Customer Management Tips for Uncertain Times:

In a recessionary environment, sales and marketing managers should prepare themselves for lengthened sales cycles and decreased pipeline velocity. Tried and true tactics that have always worked — e.g. month-end discounting, bundling and promotions — will begin to sound increasingly desperate as sales reps struggle to make the quotas that were set months ago in the budgeting process. Customers — those in a buying mood — will buy on their own terms, and it is increasingly unlikely that they will be “sold to.” Therefore, price erosion will take hold as vendors struggle to adapt the new competitive conditions.

With reduced headcount and frozen budgets, organizations may be tempted to put technology and capabilities investments on hold. However, now is the time to act; below are some low- or no-cost actions organizations can immediately take to retain a competitive edge though tough times…

1. Get marketing and sales aligned through the establishment of unified goals, common metrics and aligned compensation plans. All too often, objectives and metrics are departmentally aligned. If marketing is incentivized to do one thing (such as increase quantity of leads) and sales something entirely different (focus on highest value leads), the organization is ultimately going to get what it pays for — i.e., disharmony and angst. In this tough environment, sales and marketing leadership needs to agree on a common set of organizational objectives (e.g. revenue, profit, market share, cross-selling, etc.). More specifically, sales and marketing leaders need to create and agree upon a cross-departmental definition of what constitutes a “lead.”

2. Profile both successes and failures. In a November survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, respondents recognized a top (51 percent) strategic action as the ability to identify high-value prospects by analyzing and segmenting the characteristics of desirable customers. If the organization is not already doing so, it should immediately create processes to identify and focus resources on the most promising leads based on the newly aligned goals and objectives.

3. Go collaborative. Next, the organization should establish an iterative feedback loop between departments to continually refine the lead definition and prospect profiles. This includes putting mechanisms into place for team members to provide feedback and rate the quality leads and campaigns based on the organizational objectives and the lead definition outlined above. In the same November study referenced earlier, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the respondents had already implemented internal social media capabilities (such as a wiki) to facilitate this type of knowledge sharing. Whatever the mechanism, employees should be encouraged and incentivized to share best practices, tips and success stories. Creating an alignment and a knowledge-sharing culture will teach the organization to repeat successes and avoid mistakes of the past.

Aberdeen is currently conducting its annual State of the Market survey of key business challenges, competitive threats and technology trends for 2009. Click Here to participate.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Jim Berkowitz is a seasoned executive with more than 30 years of professional services and project management experience related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Financial Management (Accounting & ERP) software solutions for small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies. As a Sales Force Automation and CRM Consultant, Jim has assisted more then 100 companies with the design and implementation of custom CRM solutions.Mr. Berkowitz is the founder and President of CRM Mastery, Inc.; a company dedicated to serving small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) by offering affordable tools and guidance to help them plan for and succeed with their CRM initiatives.