Best & Worst Practices Launching CRM Strategies

When you read about best practices in CRM typically it's in trade and industry magazines and newspapers even the Wall Street Journal at times has these stories of success with CRM.

And if you're like us you think to yourself I can't afford best practices! I can barely afford practices?

Well here's some good news - no one buys their way into best practices, they earn it through solid execution and making CRM strategies part of lasting change in their companies. So get over the misconception that best practices can be bought - as you read through this section you'll see that best practices for your company is completely different than any other, and that best practices is more about setting a high bar of performance rather than subscribing to and trying to emulate someone else's' results that you know don't really fit your company.

Why Pursue Best Practices?

Many people hear the term best practices and think it's just another buzzword used by system integrators and software vendors to separate companies from their cash. In fact best practices is a relative measure of who's getting the best results in a given industry, and is meant to be instructive to other companies interested in getting the highest possible performance.

So beware of anyone who tells your company if they spend enough they can get to best practices in CRM; it's all about internal change 70% of the time - changing how people work and changing the processes they use first - and then selectively applying technology.