Protect your investment with a good CRM strategy

Well, for about a year now in our regional area, I have been trying to figure out how I could get a cohesive message out to the VC Community about why CRM is so important for them to think about. It just seems to me like a natural for the companies they invest in. After all it can save them money and help protect their investment. With a low cost of ownership CRM system in place, like our CRBM Platform, if a company goes south you still have all of the business intelligence assets. They own the assets which live in a virtual space that can easily get repurposed with a new front end opportunity. No need to keep starting from scratch and if you are successful you can clone it for your next venture. I have to say that Paul Greenberg's recent blog post helps reinforce my thinking path.

http://the56group.typepad.com/pgreenblog/2009/06/guest-post-a-most-unusual-area-crm-for-the-vc-not-invested-in-by-the-vc.html

Where I got involved

As a entrepreneur trying to grow our business away from a lifestyle model into a sustainable organization propelling the next best thing, I have been getting involved in a lot of networking groups where venture capital groups or "VC guys'" linger in hopes of finding bright entrepreneurs to help grow future opportunities. Unfortunately when I have tried in the past to get our CRBM Platform message out, which can often be very difficult to get into an elevator pitch, they just shrug me off as another software vendor trying to make a sale.

Investors know what they don't want but they need CRM

Investors typically run from lifestyle businesses and from what I can tell are shy about businesses that only offer labor based services. As a guy that has build more than 20 small businesses, I think any great business can be built from a foundation of a service model if it includes some kind of residual income platform. However, it is important to get out of the coal mine mentality if you want to attract investors. In order to scale a company in the current Global Economy and build a business based on roles and processes, a CRM strategy and associated technologies are a must have. Well implemented and thought out CRM is a platform which can yield greater profitability to virtually any organization trying to climb this mountain to the top. To me it seems like a no brainer... If I had a boat load of money (and hope someday I will) and wanted to invest wisely in companies with the next big idea, I would look at the, grandness of the idea and talent for sure but equally as important is the infrastructure available for the company to scale, retain and manage it's knowledge assets.

Where this idea originated

I remember back to when I started down this path of CRM, I read Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat" and I got the light bulb on how the right CRM platform was the key to connecting a global team. Glue for a competitive service model that would meet the next generation of businesses. I also read Paul Greenberg's book on "CRM at the speed of Light" . This book was filled with endless statistics on how CRM has saved large companies tons of money and improved their efficiency across the enterprise. When I merged these ideas in my head and built our service and support platform, I tried to think who is going to be the perfect customer for our CRBM Platform ? I thought about how much we could save, how much more efficient we could be, how much more power we could have under the hood of our business. Then hey... if it works for our model why would it not work for other Small Business "Start-up's"? This idea of building a solid foundation first just screams out the loudest to me. The company I came from previous to starting CNP Integrations was struggling with tremendous pains of Change Management. Mostly because they did not have a CRM in place and they grew too fast with nothing to scale upon. If you can start from the beginning with technology platform built into the way you do business, right out of the shoot, you can jump leaps and bounds above your competitors while gathering and retaining better business intelligence to future proof your business.

Our new case for Value Building

Like any good marketing soldier when hit by a brick wall, I dust off and try to reinvent my message to find out how I can get our target audience to see the value. After endless round table discussions and our mini focus groups often filled with passion, we came up with the whole concept methodology of our "Value Builder Program" . While we know our CRBM platform very well and can tell if it is the right solution, often our potential customers are struggling to sort out the right tool for the right job as their first pain point. What we concluded was that customers needed more than just a needs assessment but a mapping of these needs to the right technology solutions and a real picture of the value and benefits they can bring to their business and associated processes for engaging with customers. Then as part of this they need a realistic action plan to implement this new technology within their means and over time. Our new Value Builder Program is just that. Though we explore our CRBM Platform as a model the VBP methodology is universal in concept and platform independent.

So now with the light bulbs having sparked in the Venture Community that this technology adds real value to protecting their investments and with our new found message and service model of building a value case first, I hope we will fare a good conversation that leads to new opportunities for everyone.

Attention all VC's: check out our new Value Builder Program and see if this idea of a solid CRM infrastructure would be good to have on your list of requirements for the company you want to invest in. Or maybe even for tracking your deal flow opportunities. :-)