So tell me, when did you last swear at your computer? Just now? Yesterday? Last week? Today I swore at my printer. My wife called out to me thinking that I’d injured myself. The poor printer had run out of yellow ink – an integral colour of the CRM SuperStars logo – making it tough for me to print out a proposal in colour as I wanted to take to a client. Not happy. Though it got worse, my Mac froze this evening – first time ever – right there in the middle of writing the aforementioned proposal. Cue more expletives. Perhaps I’m getting a sign…..
As a strong advocate of technology, all this swearing made me think about how those less inclined to adopt the latest and greatest wizardry cope when presented with a new system that’s sole purpose is to help them build and grow their business. It’s a little daunting to trust this technological beast with the inner secrets of how your company works. Some business owners don’t trust ‘the cloud’. Some say they’re ‘too old’ to learn. I even heard one business owner claim that the internet wasn’t as popular as everyone made out. Technophobic business owners are everywhere.
The truth is that those who are intimidated by technology, scared by what it could do or not do for their business really need to start gently easing themselves into it. Because the world is changing.
Taking a big-bang approach and jumping feet first into an expensive technological solution when you’re already out of your depth can do more harm than good. So start small and take it step-by-step from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. Start by reading up on the subject of CRM – your friendly search engine is a good place to start – and ask other business owners how they look after their data.
Pop into your local supermarket and use a loyalty card. Start to think about what that supermarket is doing with the information it’s getting about you and your purchases. As you think about it more and more, your brain moves from not realising how much you didn’t know about CRM (unconscious incompetence) to figuring out how much you don’t know (conscious incompetence). Whilst conscious incompetence is a painful and unpleasant place to be – realising how much you don’t know or are not good at something – it’s a great place to start from. You can only move forward.
So, what’s the safest and easiest way to start to use a CRM?
You guessed it, you’ve just got to start! There are plenty of CRM solutions on the market that are based in the cloud that are either free or offer free trials. These are a great place to start as you can improve your understanding by investing time not money. You probably won’t stumble upon exactly the right CRM for you at first but you will start to become aware of what you can do with a CRM.
And as your understanding grows of what you can do and how powerful CRM could be for your business – so your understanding of data, the information you’re capturing or not capturing from your clients and prospects, improves. You’re starting on the road of conscious incompetence to conscious competence. You’re learning, bit-by-bit.
So now you’re learning, it’s time to start thinking about a strategy not the technology. So there’s powerful software out there that can do all kinds of clever things with business data to help you sell more of your products and services, improve your customer experience and ensure that your business operates smoothly whilst you’re not there – but how does this fit in with how you want to develop your business?
If you just want to plod along for the next few years until retirement and then fold your company, then your strategy might just be around retention of existing clients – building loyalty until the end. You might want to grow your business, branch out into new sectors or unveil new product lines. Your CRM is there to support you and your business in meeting its strategic aims.
You cope with CRM by not worrying about the technology. The actual software is just a way of doing thing with and storing bits of information. You cope with CRM by seeing the bigger picture. By asking yourself how CRM enables you to do what you want to do with your business – whatever that may be. And then by working with someone you trust and who can understand your business aims to make sure that it delivers the results you need it to?
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Are you a technophobe? Are you using a CRM application? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you cope with technology and how much you ‘trust’ the internet.
