What is CRM?

Being an ex-business owner that managed 32 employees and 5000 clients I can tell you it's an analytical and data-driven nightmare. The majority of my time was spent tracking down lost receipts, records, billing, following up with clients and simply figuring out what was the next priority. Above all, my time was spent on data entry and data validation. Our clients were able to communicate with us through five different channels, Facebook, DemandForce, Chat, Phone and Email. We could not hire enough people to stay on top of all the inquiries and many clients got frustrated and went to our competition.

Like most business owner's I was driven to grow and accelerate as fast as possible. This is not actually a good thing unless you are prepared to handle the onslaught of clients you'll receive. With the little bit of time, I had available I would dream up ideas to automate the majority of these time consuming, profit losing procedures. I knew with the technologies that were available this should be easy. I just couldn't find them from my office chair that consumed all my time.

We were able to plug in some CRM systems, but they were clunky and did not communicate well together. For a small business we did an okay job at minimizing these time-consuming duties, but in the end, falling behind on secondary none profitmaking duties ultimately spelt the end for my company.

I bring this up not only to explain what a CRM is but why it's so important to your business, your profit and your sanity to implement the best CRM system available. The simple definition of CRM is Client Relationship Management. This sounds easy and when you are new it is, but as your client information grows you'll have to turn to spreadsheets to keep all the data. The next step is to have a database built. Now you need to train your employees on how to use that database. You'll have to hire someone to input the data, oh and hire someone to verify that this data is up to date. Before you know it your whole office is working on your database and the data within it. You'll have multiple systems that hold your needed data. At the end, I had 5 systems: A File Server, Quickbooks, DemandForce, Service Depot and 8x8. Of those only two communicated with the each other. You can imagine the redundancy and how much time was spent tracking down information. I also needed to train my employees on all 5 systems. I actually ended up doing most of the work myself. This pulled me away from where I excelled and made money. It broke me into a pieces on the floor and left me never wanting to touch any of the systems again.

If I only knew then what I know now :) You see I know exactly what I needed back then. It just came too late, but it's not too late for you, your business and your sanity. Not two businesses are alike and rightly so they do not need the same solution, but they can use a lot of the same base solutions. Watch the video below and then let's continue our conversation.

You see the goal is to build a system that has the best engine available but is customizable to suit your needs. The interesting part is this creates a new problem. The problem is know how to customize without breaking the bank? If you are not aware of all the features that are available and if those features are applicable to your company you'll lose and break anyway. I love that I just provided you with a solution with a new set of problems. This is defiantly starting to should like business. I'm not going to leave you in the dark and this is self-serving in a way given my new position. You see I work sells for a company that solves this problem and I'll tell you if I had run into this company or I should say if this company had existed when I was in business they could have solved all these horrible, time consuming, profit stealing, headache causing problems for me. Say hello to Vye Consulting.

They have built an entire company around this problem and I have never been so excited to be working for a company before. Their solutions and implementations are impeccable and worth every penny and more. Most businesses will find that they will add more money to the bottom line than it cost to use Vye Consulting. I hope this was informative and I'm sorry for the long sells pitch, but as you can tell I'm really excited to help business owners because I was one and this would have saved my business and my sanity.