Whether you’re already invested in a CRM like Salesforce or you’re interested in developing a new roadmap to success, a data plan is important in order to build a robust platform that accomplishes your goals and objectives and maximizes your investment.
Over 17 years spanning hundreds of data projects; I’ve seen rushed analytical initiatives miss out on core customer data collection points resulting in millions in lost revenue and a decline in market share. For example, a display advertising analytics firm spent 3 years investing in a data platform that stored a petabyte of raw data. From this data set, a customer profile data store was created containing over a billion internet users. Unfortunately, key data elements were tossed out in the data ingestion process due to insufficient requirements. As a result, predictive algorithms were less accurate and customers were lost to more accurate platforms. It’s best to collect and keep “everything” about your customer and save it for a rainy day.
To solve these issues before they begin, we look to the CRM concentric circle.
The CRM concentric circle has three phases that work in concert to build an actionable prospect profile.
Phase 1: Internal Customer Interactions with Your Business
First-party data is digital gold in this day and age. Emails and conversations with customer support, support tickets, and visits to a landing page on your company site are often times the best data sets to seed your customer profile. This is data you know and understand deeply as a company and have unfettered access to (barring regulatory restrictions of course). Kick off your customer profile project by integrating with your first-party data. Customer sentiment can be measured and analysts can dig into the 360-degree view. Trends arise and gaps are identified which can then be filled with third-party datasets in Phase 3.
Phase 2: Social Interactions Between the Customer and Your Business
Phase 2 is all about capturing the meaningful ways your business interacts with customers and prospects. In this phase, gathering all relevant social data touchpoints and professional relationships is the focus. Properly leveraging that data to understand the customer connections and get a sense of who the customer is requires including as many platforms as possible, from Facebook to LinkedIn and Twitter. Bringing together these disparate social interactions takes us to Phase 3.
Phase 3: Behavior of the Customer and Your Business
Given the intangible nature of preferences and behavioral markers of personal relationships, going for the extra step of purchasing data is a smart investment that allows you to target the high-value customers you need. It’s worthwhile to go that extra mile with information like Data.com for targeted data around personal relationship information if you believe you aren’t getting the full picture with your existing data captures, but this should be done sparingly to round out data you already own.
Alongside that information, perform and monitor drip campaigns and web page browsing to derive interests, and create your own tracking for business specific information that aligns with your sales goals.
Retaining and optimizing existing customer relationships through the concentric CRM circle methodology is more cost-effective than constantly recruiting new customers.
Proper planning using the concentric CRM circle with customer retention in mind allows you to leverage those loyal customer relationships into a subset of potential customers based on the loyal customers’ social interactions within their social group, gaining you a qualified pipeline to mine for new business prospects.
The key to a business’s success with CRM is proper planning based on a hierarchy of needs. Phase 1 and 2 complement each other, while Phase 3 sums up the whole. Invest the time gathering that data based on your business goals and objectives. Evaluate the data you have and the data you want to have, and your business will reap the benefits.
Silverline stands ready to help your business with data advisory services. You may not be ready to start on your own, but Silverline is a great resource to figure out what you need to leverage the power of the Concentric Circle of CRM. Check out our recent Data Services webinar or contact us today to learn more.
