“Just the Facts”: Why You Absolutely Need CRM

We gathered some important new information from recent studies and reports about CRM present and future, CRM ROI, and the resurgence of emotional marketing, We’ve summarized it here, so you can easily see “just the facts” as in the old series, Dragnet. We think good ol’ Sergeant Friday would be proud of us!

Gartner Reports on Present State of CRM, and Predicts Future Growth Highlights:

• Gartner sees CRM usage increasing 15% (23% for SaaS versions) through 2017. Next year, more than 50% of all CRM deployments will be SaaS (Cloud-based).. By 2025, that percentage will rise to 80-85%.

• Customer behaviors are changing entire industries faster than many companies can keep up. Enterprise companies find it difficult to change quickly from legacy systems designed when customers had different (lower) expectations for service, support, and general responsiveness from companies.

• Today, companies make choices for CRM vendors on agility, speed of implementation, and ability to train quickly. Additionally, they are looking for products that permit them to quickly adapt sales processes as new strategies are needed. Organizations want to be able to asses new strategies, measure effectiveness, and make course corrections seamlessly.

• Gartner recommends that companies leverage CRM technologies as systems of record, differentiation, and innovation.

The Explosive Growth of the Global CRM Market

Our CEO (Nikolaus Kimla) contends that soon it will be unthinkable for any business not to have a CRM system in place, WhaTech.com is reporting that Reportstack’s new market research forecasts that the Global CRM market will grow at a CAGR of 15.5 percent over the period from 2013-2018. The revenue considered encompasses service and support, sales, marketing, and ecommerce.

CRM Payback? Almost $9 for Every $1 Spent!

Good news! New research from Nucleus Research offers support for CRM ROI!  According to their research, CRM pays back $8.71 for every $1 spent. In analyzing Nucleus ROI case studies on CRM, they found the average returns from CRM have increased since 2011, from $5.60 to $8.71 for every dollar spent.

Companies are continuing (and will continue) to make new investments in CRM to take advantage of new analytics, social collaboration, mobile, and other capabilities.

These are the factors that affect this trend-bucking statistic:

• Fierce competition leads to competitive pricing and favorable deals (sometimes free years with a multi-year commitment)
• Cloud CRM is faster to deploy and augment with lower upfront costs
• Cloud CRM causes minimal disruption
• Cloud means new features and capabilities come faster
• Buyers are more knowledgeable and vocal, and skepticism leads to aggressive negotiation
• Decisions are largely driven today by business, not IT. Business users are closer to planning, developent, and design.
• Businesses are more demanding as their interaction is directly with the vendor, not an internal IT team (who they don’t want to alienate).
• “Applications are becoming more simplified and streamlined, more focused on productivity and results than record keeping and reporting, and more automated to free up manager and employee time for meaningful coaching and conversations instead of pipeline and status reports.” (Nucleus)

Nucleus sums it up:

Conventional logic suggests the rates of return should be going down, not up. However, CRM bucks this trend because tremendous investment in the space, changing internal expectations and roles, and, quite simply, better technology are uncovering new ROI opportunities.

It is this trend that drives Pipeliner to continue to quickly and prudently add analytics, social features, mobile improvements, and more in order to bring higher ROI to our customers as the decade moves forward..

Marketers Take Notice: Bring on the Emotion!

New data presented by Google (in partnership with CEB’s Marketing Leadership Council and marketing research firm Motista) substiantiates that customers who are emotionally connected to a brand:

• Are 2x more likely to consider a purchase

• Are 2x more likely to purchase a product or service

• Are 4x more likely to defend their purchase decision

The magic sauce? Storytelling. Everyone loves a story, even B2B customers.

More from the same study:

• B2B buyers need 21 touches during the buying process to build trust and connection.

• Buyers are confidently foraging on their own before connecting with brands during their buying process.

• Touchpoints in the buying process should include sales touchpoints, digital touchpoints, and social touchpoints.

Watch the trailer for the 1980s Dragnet movie, with Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks.

Photo credit: www.openculture.com