People often ask me, as is social etiquette when meeting someone and getting to know them, “so Dean what do you do?”. The answer is simple while at the same time, complex. The short answer is that I started my own digital marketing and HubSpot partner agency, and it’s called Digital Compass. And they say oh, that's great but what do you do?
People at least think they know what digital marketing is, assuming its basically a mystical blend of social media, website and online stuff... we’ve all seen the memes of what people think I do vs what I actually do. And so, this is the easy part of the explanation.
The second part involves explaining “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM) and the way HubSpot’ inbound philosophy of marketing, sales and customer service enables magic. Explaining this is not as simple because people don’t generally have familiar reference points for all that this encompasses. A CRM tool is more than the sum of its parts. While at the same time, a tool without a craftsman is a ‘paperweight’.
In this blog, I am going to break it down.
And so, to explain it to a five-year-old I would have to say that doing CRM is like being friends with mommy and daddy, letting them know you love them and always remembering to make them feel special (lead nurturing using marketing and sales strategies). You can do something special for them every day, like going outside and picking them a flower, or cleaning your room, or giving them a hug and so on (one-on-one emails and calls to prospects and clients for example). The more you do this, the more you want to make it easier and so you keep your toys in a bucket, you give them a hug every day when you wake up so you don't forget... and so on (reminders, tools and automation that make it effortless).
But, luckily I don't have to explain it to five-year-olds very often.
The reality is that if you work for a company, you’re in the business of managing customer relationships. And just like in any relationship, the other party is happy when you keep your side of the relationship and invest in them.
How organisations do this on a relationship level is unique to them. They know their clients and they know (or should know) how to keep them happy. This is the relationship process of CRM.
How organisations do this practically, differs too. It is often the case that marketing and sales staff are used to managing their clients using some combination of notes in a notebook, excel spreadsheets, email folders and reminders (in the case of marketing they use spreadsheets and a bulk email service). These tools are often not integrated, and it can be an administrative nightmare for managers to keep on top of things – especially when the company grows. This is the technical system behind CRM.
Are you using a CRM tool to get your relationships right?
This is how I would explain the question of what is “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM) and the way HubSpot’ inbound philosophy of marketing, sales and customer service, along with their suite of tools enables magic (long term customer relationship) to a prospective client;
The HubSpot CRM tool centralises all your customer contact records, as well as the company/s associated with them. Not only that but imagine you had a central point for each contact and company record where all the activities your organisation has taken gets recorded – irrespective of department.
A simple example is this, you have a contact named “Bob Brown” and he works for “Bob Motors”. You now have a contact record for Bob and a company record for Bob and these are connected.
Bob is a prospective client, and you would like to reach out to him. Your marketing team might send Bob a newsletter (assuming you have permission to), and or your sales team might call Bob to invite Bob to an introductory meeting and or a product/service demo.
When these actions are taken from within the HubSpot CRM, they get recorded against Bob’s contact record. No matter if it is a sales or marketing activity. This central activity feed informs all staff in your business of the relationship activities relating to all your contact and companies.
This principle of one source of truth for the client relationship is extended across business unites from marketing, sales and customer service activities. And when you integrate your other system with HubSpot, the data is further enriched. CRM reports are more meaningul and reporitng becomes useful and action oriented.
Book a meeting with us to discuss how we can help you strategically implement and align your marketing and sales efforts, so that you can reduce friction in your organisation, build and strengthen your customer relationships, and achieve your goals.
We can help you focus on the things that will deliver the most value for your business.
Header photo from Unsplash
