Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 21The Power of Technology

One of the two authors of this book – we won't say who (okay, it's Jacob) – has a desk littered with sticky notes of information to be entered into his CRM, half of which he can't read since the notes were written in the heat of a call with a client or scribbled in the car on the way to work.

These sticky notes make up the foundation – pebbles and sand and broken bits of stone – upon which expert services firms are built. Any one of these scribbled notes could double business with a client. The problem, of course, is knowing which one will, and the only way to know that is to follow up on the idea or the introduction.

That's where a CRM comes in. Consultants use programs like Salesforce, Azure, HubSpot, Oracle, SAP, and Bitrix24 to house and give visibility to that data.

Most ERP platforms have accounting as their DNA. What is so pregnant with possibility with CRM software is that it starts with relationships as its base. Historically, CRM software was mostly thought of as a lead tracker. You meet someone at a conference who works for a company with which you would like to work. You exchange contact information and when you are back at the office, you enter this information into the CRM database along with some follow-up notes. Perhaps it is to send a book you think they would find interesting or to set up a call. However, CRM systems today offer the promise of tracking data across your company as well as guiding you toward next steps.

At PIE, ...