[Note: I’m proud to welcome Bill Brelsford as a guest author here. This post was originally posted on Bill's Blog and is re-posted here with his permission. — Tim]
Over the weekend, I read an interesting post on the CRM & Tech for the Small Business Blog titled – Top 3 Reasons Why Changing CRM Software Won’t Help. The post describes three common scenarios where small business owners decide to try to solve a particular problem by purchasing a new CRM (customer relationship management) system.
The post provides several counter arguments to the “excuses” typically raised in these scenarios. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the arguments raised in this post, it did remind me of a common theme that is often the root cause of these frustrations – putting tactics before strategy.
Of course, we usually don’t see the lack of strategy as the problem. We see the symptoms, the biggest being frustration from having spent a lot of money and not seeing any significant returns.
This practice of selecting a tool and then trying to “back into” a strategy is one that I have seen and have been arguing against since my early days (those dark days before the internet) of automating business systems. I still believe that we need to create a business system before we try to automate it.
In the case of CRM, that means having a sales and\or marketing processes defined before trying to select a tool to automate it. If you purchase a technology with the idea that it will “give you a process”, you are in for a frustrating journey. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but if it does work, it will take longer and be more expensive than needed.
Many businesses have learned the hard way, that there is a big difference between conducting a free webinar and conducting a webinar based marketing campaign which includes planning, promoting, presenting, and following up.
The same thing happens with web sites, blogs, social media tools, email marketing, and webinar services. Often we are told we must be doing these things, so we make the purchase before knowing how it fits into our strategy. Then we either try to make-it-fit later or just let the project die.
“Strategy before tactics” may be one of those phrases that seems cliché, but it can save you a lot of money and frustration if you put it into practice.
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Bill Brelsford is the owner of Rebar Business Builders. As an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Bill works with professional service firms and independent professionals who want to spend less time chasing business and more time serving profitable customers.
For the rest of us, especially the startups and the real-world small business, the high-value high-price strategy is far more likely to work.
I don’t know all of the details about the campaign mentioned above, but during the discussion, I recognized some common mistakes that you should work hard to avoid in your next direct mail campaigns. Here are a few:
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