Contact Management Systems

Customer Relationship Management Worksheet

This Automation Worksheet is a decision support tool that guides us through the process of determining what features and functions your company needs.

WHO WILL USE CRM SOFTWARE IN YOUR COMPANY?

1. What areas would benefit from the CRM systems? Which divisions or departments and how many people in each will use the system?

TRADITIONAL AREAS

Field Sales ___ Inside Sales ___ Cust Service ___ Telemarketing ___ Help Desk ___ Retail ___

Sales Support ___

NON-TRADITIONAL AREAS - (Departments that should know what Sales and Sales Support people have said, sent, promised, etc., to customers or prospects)

Management/Executives ___ Marketing/Advertising ___ Purchasing ___ Collections ___ Finance ___

Training ___ Shipping/Receiving ___ Human Resources ___ Service/Technical ___ Administrative ___

NOTE: Many companies looking for ways to enhance the relationship building process with customers are using CRM. Specifically, CRM's ability to capture and maintain subjective, detailed, dated note information on each contact with customers or prospects can be used to bond customers to your company through the relationship building process.

YOUR COMPANY'S SALES PROCESS AND SALES CYCLE

NOTE: Successful implementation of Sales Automation (SA) requires that you quantify your sales operation and its processes. What are the steps in your sales process? Who is involved in the process and what do they need to know? What management and administrative reports do you need or would you like? What shape should those forms and reports be? How can you get sales and sales support people to ask for and record the facts and figures needed to run your reports and forms? Should field sales interact with customer service?? ... Telemarketing?? ... What information should they share?? ... How should they share it?? ... and so on...

CLOSING THE LOOP ON YOUR SALES INQUIRIES

2. Describe your sales process or structure (i.e., distributors, dealers, field sales, telemarketing, direct, retail, etc.).

Please list your process in a linear fashion from manufacturer or producer/professional provider of product or service, to ultimate user or consumer.

3. What are the steps in your sales cycle (mail, display ad, telephone qualify, field sales contact, providing quote)

PLEASE LIST:

3a. Do you use tracking or reporting forms for sales cycle steps?

Yes _____ No _____ PLEASE INCLUDE SAMPLES.

4. How do you generate inquiries?

Check all that apply on the left. On the right put the letter A through F to identify how you received response.

A. Hard copy B. Cards C. Electronic file D. Fax E. E-mail F. Verbal

5. How do you develop inquiries into qualified leads?

Additional mailing __ Telemarketing __ Don't qualify __ In-person appt __ Send to Field Reps/ no further qualification __

5a.Do you use tracking or reporting forms for lead qualifying?

Yes ____ No ____ PLEASE INCLUDE SAMPLES.

6. Do you, or would you like to "CLOSE THE LOOP" on sales inquiries, i.e., be able to track and document inquiry from initial interest to close?

Yes _____ No _____ Not Necessary _____

NOTE: Most companies want to "Close the Loop" (CTL) on all inquires to 1.) determine which advertising, marketing and promotion campaigns worked this year, 2.) effectively target next year's budget dollars for advertising, promotion and marketing selections based on what worked, and 3.) quantify actual performance of sales reps. CTL on ALL inquiries will show you how and where to get the largest number of highly qualified inquiries for dollars spent and tell you who did the best job of turning qualified inquiries into sales.

YOUR COMPANY'S SALES CALL, FACE TO FACE OR PHONE ... BEFORE, DURING, AFTER

7.What information do you need for pre-call/pre-meeting planning?

Client Credit status ___ Inventory information ___ Order history ___ Product specs ___ Client profile _____ New product Information ___ Industry trends ____ Competition information ____

7a. Do you use pre-call/pre-meeting forms?

Yes _____ No _____ PLEASE INCLUDE SAMPLES.

8.What information do you need during a sales call?

Pricing ___Prod. specs ___ Inventory ___ Competitive ___ Company ___Notes ___ Presentations ___Times for future appointments _____

8a. Do you use forms for sales calls?

Yes _____ No _____ PLEASE INCLUDE SAMPLES.

9. What's your post-call/post-meeting follow up?

Thank you letter ___ Quotes ___ Proposal ___ Dated follow up obligations___ Fulfillment Materials ___Initiate specific Process ___ Follow through on something _____

10. What steps are involved after closing a sale?

Get check __ Order fulfillment ___ Sign purchase order ___ Order pick ticket ___ Thank you letter ___ Back order ___ Get specifications and measurements ____ Billing ____ Other _______

11. Underline ongoing account management: (periodic visits, client survey, hotline, customer service, periodic telephone contact, post-sales CS training)?

12. What information do you need for account management?

Follow up notes ___ Client history ___ Technical support notes ___ Project notes ___ Financial notes ___ Order history ___ Automatic letter generation ___ Other ______Do you currently use account management forms?

PLEASE INCLUDE SAMPLES.

13. What reports would you like to create, modify, and run?

Personnel list ____Territory list ___ Product list ____ Sales region list ___ Sales office list ___ Company list (alpha) ____ Contact list (alpha) ____ Task report ___ Company information ___ Product line report summary ____ Region report by prodcut line ___ Salesman report by product line ____ Salesman report by product ____ Office report by product line ___ Territory report by product line ___ Geographic area report ___ Product sales by company source report ___ Marketing/Advertising effectiveness report ___ Invoice reports ___ Region sales by company source report ___ Listing of records ____ Statistical analysis ____ Sales analysis ___ Company source summary ____ Management information___ Sales commission report ____ Call Analysis Report ____ Lead Source Analysis ____Sales Cycle Report ____ Key account reps report ___ Sales Forecast Report____

BASIC USER-DEFINED FIELD - A field that you personalized. These fields are on the main contact screen or secondary screen. User has space to put title and area to enter information as defined by field label. Capturing additional facts and figures that you can search later is only a small part of what's possible with high powered UDFs. They let you create order entry systems, inventory look-up systems, bid and quote modules, scheduling forms, and customized pricing calculators. You could create a form that can, with a couple of keystrokes, let you look up a product or group of products, enter a number of units, automatically apply discounts, add shipping and tax, and in a few seconds give you the figure for a customer who wants a "ballpark figure".

Advanced UDFs can be configured to give market research modules and call tracking for field sales and inside sales that can be automated to let reps fill them out with just a few keystrokes. Call tracking can include the stage of your company's sales cycle a prospect is in, how long your rep estimates before the close and dollars the rep estimates the sale will produce.

14. How many user-defined fields do you need? _____ How will you use them?

Add'l business data __ Add'l personal data __ Order entry __ Inventory lookup __ Bids & quotes ___ Scheduling ____ Market research ___ On the fly computation ___ Targeting __ Forcasting ___ Call reporting ___

15. How many RECORDS & SEPARATE DATABASES will you have on your system?

Number of databases _________ Yes _____ No _____ Don't Know _____ Customers ______ Prospects ______ Suppliers ______ Business Associates _______

NOTE: How many different databases do you need to maintain? How often do you separate and combine databases? How often do you search UDFs? Some SA programs will be too slow to give adequate performance in business situations.

16. What hardware platform(s) are currently in your operation? What operating system(s) are you running under? MS/PC-DOS ___ WINDOWS ___ OS/2 ___ AS400 ___ DEC/VAX ___ SYS 34/36/38 ___ UNIX _____ POWER PC ___ MACINTOSH ___OTHER MAINFRAME ___ OTHER MINICOMPUTER SYSTEM _____

If you have PCs, how many are: 286 or below ___ 386 ___ 486 ___ Pentium (586) ___ RISC Workstations _____ Network ____ LAN _____ WAN _____ How many locations _____ Novell _____ NT _____ Other _____

Is your system networked? If so, what kind and what version network or multi-user software is it running under?

FIELD SALES OR REMOTE SITE LAPTOPS

17. Do you have or are you going to buy laptops? Yes _____ Planning to buy _____ How many _____ No _____ How many laptops do you own?_______

18. What communication software are you using on laptops? PC Anywhere _____ Carbon Copy _____ Relay Gold _____ Other package ___________ None _____

HAVE YOU DEVELOPED A PROCESS FOR INTRODUCING SALES AUTOMATION TO YOUR REPS?

19. Training program? ____ Who will participate? ___ How long will it run? ___ Who will conduct the training? ___

20. How many levels of security will you need?

21. Will you upload/download data to to remote users? How often? ____ Via cellular, packet, radio, modem, disk, or direct connect?

22. What program modifications will you make? Computational or adhoc reports ________ Other __________

User Defined Fields _____ Forms or Windows for informational and/or transactional activities ___

23. Will you transfer data into and out of the program? Prospect lists from third parties _____ Sales information in _____ out _____ Call reporting data ____ Forcasting ____ Inventory data _____ Price lists _____ Product specifications _____