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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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Have you ever asked your customers what they would like you to measure?

by Rick Baker
On Apr 5, 2021

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

You probably think about what your customers want.

You probably measure what you think your customers want.

But, do you ever ask your customers what they want you to measure?


Tags:

Marketing | Measure & Monitor | Questions?: The Art of Asking Good Questions | Sales | Thought Tweets

Social Media provides an excellent opportunity to say what you say instead of do what you do.

by Rick Baker
On Mar 22, 2021

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Are you hunkering down over anti-social media?

Some thoughts about Fake Work.

...yes...pots do call kettles black.

Tags:

Humour | Marketing | Thought Tweets

In business, the best relationships are built when pleasant personalities exchange interesting ideas.

by Rick Baker
On Jan 4, 2021

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

And, of course, the ideas contain value and there's following through on commitments.

Link to Thought Tweet #278

Tags:

Communication: Improving Communication | Marketing | Sales | Thought Tweets

If you want to hit a grand slam in business, use your WOMBAT.

by Rick Baker
On Dec 28, 2020

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

WOMBAT

Word Of Mouth Business Acquisition Team

Tags:

Humour | Marketing | Sales | Thought Tweets

People want to hear positive messages…give them what they want...deliver some positive messages.

by Rick Baker
On Apr 18, 2020

The Thinking Behind the Tweet

We tested positive and negative marketing messages. We tried both "in these tough economic times" and "to build for the future". We found our positive messages were twice as successful as our negative messages. So we work to keep our communications on the positive side of centre.

Stopping to think about CRM tools

by Rick Baker
On Dec 5, 2016

Most small businesses want to gain advantage over their competitors.

Most small businesses want more sales.

Most small businesses want to keep track of their operating activity.

And - the operations of most small businesses become far more complicated than outsiders [and most insiders] would have guessed or expected…and much of that complication is unnecessary. Considering this from another perspective, most small businesses do not perform basic planning activities such as SWOT analyses and 80/20 Rule analyses.

Consequently, most small businesses struggle with business development actions and business development results.

CRM to the rescue...

Well, maybe not!

Here's why [not].

There's lots of small-business talk about finding simple and user-friendly CRM tools and using those CRM tools to improve management of actions, improve monitoring of results, and grow a base of satisfied customers. Yet, relatively few of these small businesses are ready to use a CRM system. In addition to the lack of planning introduced above, there are two main reasons why they are not ready for CRM tools:

  1. they cannot [clearly and concisely] describe their existing operating actions
  2. they lack knowledge about CRM tools, in some cases they cannot even define what the abbreviation 'CRM' means

So - let's start by defining CRM.

Here's the definition-picture provided by Wikipedia -

Now, that picture introduces CRM...as long as you agree "CRM" is an abbreviation of "Customer Relationship Management". And, for now, let's work from that base, CRM = Customer Relationship Management. If we accept "CRM" means "Customer Relationship Management" then we should also be able to agree CRM tools/systems do not include business tools/systems for on-line sales/ordering or inventory-control. While CRM does not include these tools/systems, CRM may or may not link with these and other tools/systems.

More about CRM in future Thought Posts...

 

 

Tags:

Business Plan: Writing Plans | IT & TECH | Marketing | Sales | Thinking as in Think and Grow Rich

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