I wrote this book for twenty-five-year-old marketing exec Kara Brown and her boss at the time, who didn’t know what to tell me and had no idea what I was doing.
And one of those things was the proper way to set up your CRM.
Before Salesforce was a thing, I used Access databases to track my marketing activities. Fast forward and consider the last ten years, when the democratization of tech tools has occurred, which makes creating a powerful CRM available to all.
Today, we tend to use “CRM” as a blanket statement for all things marketing databases, but most marketers are doing far more than customer relationship management on theirs.
Instead, they’re using their CRMs as prospecting marketing tools, tracking things like:
- Leads
- Funnels
- Deltas
- Conversions
- Attribution models
But whether you call it a CRM or a prospecting tool, its value is the same. Here are the three key things to keep in mind in setting up yours:
1. Its architecture
Using HubSpot, Zoho, or Salesforce isn’t as important as deciding early on how you structure your CRM. Ask yourself who buys from you—human beings or companies—and then use that information to build your foundation.
Even though I share Donald Miller’s view that “humans buy from humans,” identifying a buying committee is just as (or more) important than any individual. And spoiler alert: in B2B, you’re typically selling to companies.
Next, determine how you track your funnels. We like to work with three distinct funnels:
- Prospecting (strangers who don’t know you yet)
- Nurture (no money attached to money attached)
- Customer (upsell or cross-sell)
Understand where the company lands in your funnel based on its status. At LeadCoverage, we ask these questions to determine it:
- What is the disposition of the lead?
- Where does it live?
- How did it get there?
- Who is responsible for it?
- What’s next?
2. Understanding your ICP
Your ICP, or ideal customer profile, matters. A lot. And it’s essential as it relates to your CRM (or sales in general).
Think about it: if you’re selling transportation management software, and your database is full of fitness influencers, those records aren’t helping you because they won’t be interested in it.
The biggest misstep we see is people not doing a good job on list hygiene. I can’t tell you how often a client has claimed to have a list of 60,000. We get in there to discover that, in reality, only 2,000 of those records are within their ICP.
Of course, no one wants to spend time on list hygiene. It’s the least sexy part of marketing (kind of like cold calling), but someone needs to be responsible for it because it’s crucial to the effectiveness of your efforts.
3. Protecting your domain
If you’ve nailed your architecture and ICP, protecting your domain should be easy.
Simply put, the hygiene of your list directly correlates to the hygiene of your domain authority. Remember, with your ICP, aim for quality, not necessarily quantity. A smaller, cleaner list of the right people is better than blasting out your message to those who aren’t interested. Worse, this kind of action is potentially domain-harming.
The benefits of having the right ICP and protecting your domain are numerous. It makes direct attribution easier and helps you better understand how much of the market share you truly own.
It can also save you from unnecessarily wasting precious time, energy, and dollars.
For instance, years ago, one of our clients was a manufacturer of frozen foods that used Microsoft Dynamics as their ERP. After some research, we identified their list was only 2500 companies. Rather than spend thousands sponsoring trade shows and other expensive marketing initiatives, we suggested calling each directly. This ensured we directly reached every potential customer and saved our client from wasting time and money on activities that might be ignored.
By taking the time to determine its architecture, understand your ICP, and project your domain, your CRM can be your most powerful prospecting tool.