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It’s Your ‘Reputation’ Stupid: the Real ‘R’ in CRM

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As the co-inventor of ACT! contact management software, the product credited as the catalyst for the Customer Relationship Management industry, I’m surprisingly not a champion of the concept of ‘managing relationships’ at all. I don’t think entering data, scheduling activities, or even communicating with someone amounts to ‘management’ in any meaningful way.

Even if the concept of managing customer relationships was the premise for the industry, the actual result is little more than a tool for Management to oversee an employee’s activity, communication, and progress with their customers and prospects. CRM systems are often positioned as an employee’s tool for building or maintaining meaningful relationships is little more than a method of ‘keeping tabs’ on salespeople.

Networking Alone Isn’t the Answer
It’s never just what you know, but whom you know that matters. But anyone can purchase a list of names. No matter what industry you’re in, the quality of your connections trumps the sheer quantity of names in your database. Attending events, shaking hands, collecting business cards – nothing wrong with that, per se, but the person with the most business cards doesn’t necessarily win. The same can be said of social networking: sending dozens of connection requests doesn’t equate to building relationships.

[wcm_restrict]Reporting Activity Isn’t the Answer
Submitting a report that you called, met, or emailed a contact shows activity, yes, but it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate the true value of that connection. Numbers on a spreadsheet or notes on a communication log can’t represent the intrinsic aspects of our human relationships. Building and maintaining relationships requires time, intensity, trust, and reciprocity, none of which are accurately reflected by a status report.

CRM Isn’t the Answer
According to a study by Gartner, the leading Information Technology research firm, only 50% of Fortune 1000 companies using CRM systems reap a significant return on their investment. Hence, it’s time for a new perspective! I wholeheartedly believe that meaningful relationships lead to success in business – in our personal lives, too, but that’s a subject for a separate article. Without meaningful relationships, our chance of success wanes, perhaps to the point of nonexistence.

Manage Your Reputation Instead
If you can’t manage others to achieve success, how do you get there? Success comes from managing your own actions and positively influencing their perception of you. In other words, managing your reputation! This new perspective requires a very slight shift, from Customer Relationship Management to Customer Reputation Management. You can manage the ways in which you build and maintain the perception of your reputation with customers and prospects. When you demonstrate professionalism, concern, and commitment to helping others succeed, trust is the result. Trust that the other person is important enough to you to record the details you learn about them. Trust that you will do what you say that you will do. Trust that may even earn you that all-coveted referral.

The Deciding Factor
You may not be able to manage another person simply by entering information in an application. However, if you use those tools to remember the details others forget, you’ll stand apart from your competitors who may or may not offer a better product or service. With each interaction, you can prove that all things being equal, your reputation is the deciding factor.

Reputation Management 101
Maintaining your reputation requires discernment, diligence, and discipline in each of the relationships you’ve built. Strong relationships don’t happen by accident. As your relationships grow stronger, so will your reputation. The foundation of authenticity and trust, once established must be furthered. Every entrepreneur is a business, a personal brand. There’s an adage that business is like an automobile. It won’t run by itself except downhill.

The quality of your reputation, whether good or bad, will be reflected by your overall success. Looking at it from that perspective intensifies the reasons to use relationship management and organizational tools. After all, who doesn’t want to put their best foot forward? Especially when it impacts your bottom-line! Customer Relationship Management systems can only help you to manage contacts, calendars, and communications, but when you do so with diligence and professionalism, the natural result is a good reputation.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.

How to Protect Your Professional Edge

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Not only do we have access to countless types of media and information created by others, we are now able to record, organize, and recall our own personal information in more ways than ever before possible. If you can’t remember where you parked your car, it’s not a problem. Just click the fob on your keychain and listen for that telltale beep. If you lose your iPhone or iPad, again, it’s not a problem. You can use the Find My iPhone/iPad app, assuming you originally enabled your device, of course. If you’re not quite sure how to get somewhere, just plug in the address in your car’s Navigation system, or you could even use a Navigation app on your smartphone. If you forget where you saved that picture from your last vacation, or worse, a legal document that you now desperately need, don’t panic. With online storage like iCloud® or Dropbox®, you can access files anywhere. The examples are numerous, but they all point to the fact that technology is an ever-present part of our lives, saving us time, effort, and even memory.

The Risks and Rewards
Along with the perks I mentioned, there are a few pitfalls. Having access to these tools has negatively affected our ability to actually remember the little things. And of course, there are more things to remember than ever before. Do you know 10 telephone numbers? Okay, ten might have been pushing it. How about five? Yeah, me neither. If we can’t remember five phone numbers, what leads us to believe that we are capable of remembering the essential details of our business relationships?

[wcm_restrict]Person, Place, or Thing?
Remembering, or worse forgetting, important details can have a major impact on our bottom line. Are we willing to risk our livelihoods on our ability to remember the kinds of details that determine our success? Let’s start by sorting what we need to ‘remember’ into the two categories of ‘People’ and ‘Everything Else.’ Although I could, I won’t make a case for which one is more important. But I do believe people incorrectly assume that remembering details concerning ‘People’ is secondary to everything else.

Memory for People Trumps Memory for Things
Most of us are much better at the ‘things’ side than they are at the ‘people’ side. Why? Because those are the details we deal with more often. We have all felt the pain of lost account information or the sadness of deleted photographs. However, many have yet to discover the success that comes from diligently cataloging whom you met with, when or how you met them, their potential interest in your product or service, or even what follow up action they are expecting from you.

Higher Capacity, Higher Demand
Just because we have more gadgets with more features doesn’t mean we are any better at using them. In the same way that ‘going paperless’ doesn’t mean less paperwork, using technology to manage your contacts, calendars, and communication still requires diligence. Most of us schedule appointments. Most of us even show up on time. But what if you could easily scroll through a prospect or client’s ‘dossier’ to review the entire history of your relationship before you sit down with them? Imagine being able to reference that little detail few of us could remember on our own, demonstrating excellence and professionalism that seals the deal. Little detail. Huge impact!

It’s Not Always Business or Pleasure
The lines between our personal and professional lives no longer exist, for most of us anyhow. We are now living in the era of Bring-Your-Device-to-Work. As a result, many of us are managing work and play in one device, which is convenient, as it is sometimes impossible to distinguish one from the other. Personal information about business contacts can help you build stronger rapport. Including professional information about your golf buddies or fellow soccer parents can expand your network of resources, allowing you to make the right introductions that benefit your friends, colleagues, and even your clients.

Protect Your Professional Edge
Protecting your files is necessary, as is finding your keys, your device, or your destination. But it’s not always what you know. In business, more often than not, it’s ‘who’ you know, what you know about them, and how you can provide the most value to others, setting yourself apart from your competition.

Today, we all have more means than ever before to backup our memory for the ‘People’ side of our lives, in the form of apps and applications for our phones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops. Hard work? Perhaps. We’re expected to maintain an exorbitant amount of information, but we don’t have to remember it all on our own. Mobile devices and the relationship management apps available for them can help us deal with more people, more effectively than ever before. Protect your memory for the ‘People’ stuff and discover the benefits of putting your technology to work![/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.

3 Ways to Improve Your Business Bedside Manner

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Good bedside manner can reassure and comfort a patient even when facing a difficult diagnosis, while poor bedside manner can leave a patient feeling dissatisfied or anxious, from a visit as innocuous as a routine checkup. Big difference. But how does bedside manner apply to business in general? Two words: customer service. No, a doctor-patient relationship isn’t the same as a vendor-customer relationship, but when it comes to building an effective relationship, many of the same principles apply.

We all have competition. Giving ‘customers’ the best experience possible goes a long way toward securing future business. Whether it’s bedside manner or customer service, here are five ways to demonstrate concern and professionalism to patients and customers:

[wcm_restrict]Give Your Undivided Attention
Attentive time is among the most limited of all of our resources. We often find ourselves splitting time between the people around us and the constant stream of electronic communication from the various devices we can’t live without. As we split time and attention in more ways than ever before, the amount available per person gets smaller and smaller. Reduce the likelihood that the other person feels you’re not really ‘present’ by putting away your devices and giving them your undivided attention. Not only does this demonstrate your professionalism, it shows you value their time as much as they value yours. Don’t worry; those messages, texts, or tweets will all be waiting for you when your appointment is over.

Build Trust by Keeping Confidences
As more and more of us become accustomed to communicating and sharing personal information through social media, the notions of privacy and trust start to lose their meaning. Real trust is not only earned over time, but it’s earned by each and every opportunity to keep a confidence. Though it might not be spelled out as clearly as the legal obligations of doctor-patient confidentiality, any professional relationship should be built on a foundation of trust. Trust that you’ll do what you say you’ll do. Trust that you won’t share information you shouldn’t share.

Reciprocate in Kind
With the shift from one-to-one communication to the one-to-many stream of social communication, it’s no surprise that society as a whole has shifted to a ‘me-centric’ one-way thinking. Lost is the common courtesy of reciprocating the considerate gestures of others. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have lessened expectations of responding to broadcasted messages. But the type of reciprocity that characterizes strong relationships can’t be demanded of others. By demonstrating thoughtfulness toward others, we can encourage them to respond thoughtfully to us.

The success of any business depends on creating and maintaining meaningful relationships. Dealing with more people, more effectively sets you and your business apart from the competition. When you connect with others in a meaningful way, you become valuable resources for each other. The value you provide for each person in your network can extend outward to and from others with whom you are connected.

Whether your goal is to possess a good bedside manner or just deliver plain, old good customer service, these five tips are a great start. Not sure where your strengths or weaknesses lie? Try asking those on the receiving end? Nothing communicates care and concern more than a genuine customer satisfaction survey, even as simple as asking, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Relationship Management

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From networking events to social networking sites, opportunities to ‘meet’ new connections abound. Exactly how do you make the most of every introduction? Let’s start with what not to do. Whether you associate the ‘seven deadly sins’ with medieval religious teachings or modern-day entertainment, they can be applied here. Build your reputation and your business by avoiding these seven deadly sins of relationship management:

Pride
If you don’t believe in you, who will? Self-promotion requires tact. Toot your horn too often or too loudly and all you can expect is a wave of unreturned messages and deleted connections. People are attracted to authenticity. Crafting a false image is a turnoff to all.

Solution: Share your accomplishments and the spotlight with those who contributed to your success. You might even score bonus exposure by reaching beyond your network.

[wcm_restrict]Greed
If your concerns are your only concerns, why should others care about you? But when you seek to meet others’ needs and do a great job, they’ll be more inclined to reciprocate. Reversing that sequence will surely prevent it.

Solution: Focus your messages and offerings on the interests and needs of your audience, not what you’re looking to promote.

Lust
If you’re too eager or lusting after the attention of others, your otherwise professional efforts can lead to a very unprofessional reputation. Nobody invites crossing the line of acceptable and professional efforts with that of becoming a pest revealing personal cravings over that of the others needs.

Solution: You can’t force someone to reciprocate. Do what you said you’d do or send what you promised and let the rest happen naturally.

Anger
If you read an email with unintended sarcasm or interpret a short missive as an angry one, you might be tempted to reciprocate in kind. The power of a smile and laughter can produce priceless and ever-expanding opportunities, but the consequences of discourtesy are immediately and potentially irreversibly destructive.

Solution: Consider communication carefully. Responding in anger can destroy your reputation and your relationships.

Gluttony
If you’re sending mass emails or group texts in an effort to save yourself time but at the expense of over-sharing information, you risk losing the right to be taken seriously. By default, ‘mass’ is mutually exclusive of ‘personal.’

Solution: Balance group messages for general announcements by inviting personal responses of interest.

Envy
If you’re building yourself up at the expense of others by putting them down, your need for the spotlight will backfire. Don’t focus on what others have or the connections others have made. Set your own relationship goals based on what you have to offer your network, not what you seek to gain from them.

Solution: Congratulate others on their successes instead of stewing on what you haven’t yet accomplished.

Sloth
If your efforts to connect or stay in touch border on the apathetic, you need to shape up, perhaps in more ways than one. A lack of drive and determination to ‘exercise’ meaningful connections will only result in relationship atrophy.

Solution: Schedule regular communication. It may be drudgery as the start of any exercise regimen can be, but positive results will prove worth the time and effort.

Each and every one of these sins is easy to fall prey to but just as easy to avoid. However, it does take conscious thought, determined actions, and purpose of focus toward others to realize optimal relationship value that rewards all parties all the time.

What is ultimately at stake here is development of your personal brand. Fundamentally, there is no value in being unlikable. Generally speaking, the complete antidote to the seven deadly sins is nothing more than simply being nice to all people all the time. In fact, some relationship experts estimated that simply being nice can result in a 30 to 40% increase in success over those people and/or companies that are not nice. Who ever thought that simply being nice could in fact be the very thing that completely sets you apart and distinct from everyone else, and helps pave your road to success?[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.

4 Fundamentals of Creating Successful Customer Relationships

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If businesses exist, as the father of Business Management Peter Drucker proposed, “to create and keep a customer,” then success is defined by the relationships you establish with your customers. Giving them the best experience possible goes a long way toward securing future business. Here are four fundamentals of creating successful relationships with customers and prospects:

Give Undivided Attention
Attentive time is among the most limited of all resources. As we split time and attention in more ways than ever before, the amount available per person gets smaller and smaller. Reduce the likelihood that the other person feels you’re not really ‘present’ by putting away your devices and giving them your undivided attention. Not only does this demonstrate your professionalism, it shows you value their time as much as they value yours. Don’t worry; those messages, texts, or tweets will all be there later.

[wcm_restrict]Prioritize Face-Time
Think for a moment about the variety of ways we communicate with others today: in-person, phone calls, text messages, email, social networking platforms, video-conferencing. The list goes on. While it’s true that some of these methods give us more communicative context than others, nothing is a true replacement for meeting face-to-face. Spending time together in-person allows both parties to make the most intense emotional connection with each other. Fewer distractions. Fewer misunderstandings. Better communication.

Reciprocate in Kind
With the shift from one-to-one communication to the one-to-many stream of social networking, it’s no surprise that society as a whole has shifted to a ‘me-centric’ one-way thinking. Lost is the common courtesy of reciprocating the considerate gestures of others. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have lessened expectations of responding to broadcasted messages. But the type of reciprocity that characterizes strong relationships can’t be demanded of others. By demonstrating thoughtfulness toward others, we encourage them to respond thoughtfully to us.

Consider the Need for Extra Consideration
As we connect in more distant ways – online or through mobile devices – we may find ourselves becoming less considerate of others without even realizing it. The scarcity of our available time also affects our ability to be considerate, in the sense that consideration means considering the needs, desires, or challenges of others. Considering their situation might take a little extra time, but it can save you a lot of time if you’re focused on what you think they want or need rather than their actual want or need. Consideration is one gift that we don’t necessarily know how to describe, but we recognize when we receive it. And most importantly, we know when we don’t.

The success of any business comes from the ability to create and maintain meaningful relationships. When you connect with others in a meaningful way, you become valuable resources for each other. The value you provide for each person in your network can extend outward to and from others with whom you are connected. Whether your goal is to grow an existing customer base or to increase the satisfaction of current customers, success comes from focusing on the fundamentals of customer relationships.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Mike MuhneyCRM pioneer Mike Muhney, the co-creator of ACT! software, is CEO of mobile relationship management purveyor vipOrbit – the first relationship-centric contact manager solution enabling mobile business professionals to manage their contacts, calendar and client/customer interactions across Mac, iPhone and iPad platforms. He may be reached at www.VIPOrbit.com.