A Really Social CRM

Inspired by Lauren Carlson’s article CRM’s Next 5 in 5.

With Social CRM being a vogue and popular term nowadays, it still gives very little new functionality to a typical CRM user — Sales Rep. We believe that once combined in a smart bundle, the very definition of the term “CRM” will be revolutionized and really social CRM, as a tool with personal value for Sales Reps, will be a brand new industry.

Social CRM benefits are widely known these days and allow companies to:

• Provide better customer support;
• Increase marketing effectiveness;
• Listen to own customers and react faster on their needs.

But what’s in it for typical CRM users? How does it simplify or improve sales people life making them actually love CRM?

In our experience, the fundamental problem is that CRM is still not a sales tool, but rather a reporting tool for a typical sales rep and management tool for executives. Instead of forcing sales people to use CRM for reporting purposes, there should be a value added, allowing them to use CRM because it helps them and they are unable to work as effectively without it.

How? Combine CRM + Social Networks + Personal Information Management (PIM) in one tool with the CRM taking center stage.

What benefits will it give the user they don’t have today in a centralized location?

• Allow users to benefit from the whole of a ‘company’s social network’, not just their personal social network
  (by “knowing” social circles of each employee; e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter);
• Organize social network circles by real communications, not just by who has “accepted the invitation”
  (by rating contact base by number of real communications between people; e.g. emails, calls, meetings);
• Use PIM to learn what people are really doing and how it maps with their contacts networks
  (by automating emails, calls, meetings, opportunities that synchronize with their CRM and collecting statistics);
• Encourage users to rely on real collaboration between people;
• Let CRM users rely on corporate knowledge in addition to their own.

We believe that work through a “really social CRM” becomes more productive than work through separate personal tools.  Sales people will rely on CRM much more often because:

• They would need it for better prospecting;
• They would naturally care about sharing contacts and activities with CRM system because it impacts the quality of search results they have in the end;
• They would value their CRM more since CRM would bring new value to them personally, not only to their managers.