Implement a social CRM strategy

Monday

Make it fun and competitive

No one feels especially motivated on a Monday. The realization that the weekend is no longer with us and five days of hard work lie ahead can prevent the get-up-and-go needed to have a successful day with your CRM.

So how about putting a rewards scheme in place to make things a little more interesting? Remember, salespeople are competitive by nature and enjoy the thrill of being No.1. Badges, leaderboards, and rewards can encourage staff to use the CRM more and return when they connect it with praise and recognition.

Tuesday

Capture leads with Web forms

Tuesday's focus is to get a strong call to action on your website and capture the leads from it. We're not talking about those weak " why not pick up the phone and give us a call" lines you see in the footer of almost every website, but something strong and compelling that distinguishes your business from the competition and forces that customer to get in contact.

If you don't already have a Web form on your site, get your developers to create one immediately and create some content such as a free downloadable article or whitepaper, maybe even a free trial—something that's going to appeal to the customer uniquely.

Next, ensure your CRM is syncing with the Web form and collating the entered information. A sophisticated CRM will be able to also automatically assign the contact to someone on your team, set an assignment task for that team member to follow up, and create an opportunity to track the new prospect in your sales process.

Wednesday

Get organized by grouping contacts

If midweek mayhem has set in and there simply don't seem to be enough hours in the day, it's time to get organized. You can easily transform your CRM and make it more efficient by ensuring all your contacts are grouped and categorized methodically.

Open a Word document or a spreadsheet, or simply note it down on paper and begin to identify the various groups, interests, categories, and general opportunities that exist within your current list of contacts. A well-organized database of contacts can help you to build stronger client relationships, increase your sales, and create an overall more productive strategy.

Mid-week motivator: Get senior-level executives on board and have them send out an email to say what they've recently noticed on the CRM. If execs are encouraging the use of the CRM, the staff is likely to use it as well in an effort to make a good impression.

Thursday

Implement a social CRM strategy

You might think you're home and dry with your CRM, whether it's bespoke or out of the box, because chances are you'll have spent a lot of time (and money) ensuring you have the perfect match for your business. Then social CRM comes along and threatens to make your system outmoded. Keep abreast with trends by adapting to them.

Thursday is your day to reinvent the wheel (or at least integrate social media with your CRM). Your first step is to begin collecting data. Social CRM is not possible without social media data, and most firms turn to listening initiatives for data sourcing and analysis. To feed data found in these initiatives, many vendors offer API integrations with some of the larger customer databases.

Testing an outbound pilot using social data is key. Reach out to your customers for sales, support, or marketing—informed by social data in the database. Start with a small, single campaign and recognize how your customers respond. You might identify only a small percentage of customers through their social profiles, although you can easily compile a virtual focus group and collect targeted feedback even with that small amount of information.

Remember, start small and you can scale your social CRM strategies without overwhelming yourself in data.

Friday