Small to mid-size businesses are struggling to differentiate themselves from the competition and acquire more customers, but help is on the way. Several CRM software providers are teaching their customers how they can use CRM software to get re-focused.

What does getting re-focused mean?

It simply means to get a better understanding of what you do well and to use that against the competition.

One quick way to do this is to ask yourself two mission critical questions.

1. What customers do we serve better than anyone else does?
2. What are these customers competing alternatives?

Once you uncover the answer to these two questions you can begin to examine the products and services you offer and measure how you stack up to the competition.

How does CRM software play a role in this analysis?

That’s easy. Let’s say you have created a number of custom fields in your CRM system for data you would like to capture about your customers. For example,

• what they purchased
• why they purchased a specific product or service
• who were the competition they compared you to
• what industry they are in
• what size customer are they

Once you capture this information in your CRM system, you can begin to run customer analytic reports that identify trends or patterns that may illustrate buying behavior. For example, perhaps a report identifies that more than 40% of new customers come from one or two industries.

This would be a clear indication that something you do, either a feature function or service, appeals to those industries and that you are winning business in those segments. Knowing this would enable you to better understand what you are providing in these two sectors that your competition is not, and to use this information against those competitors. In addition, you can begin to create targeted marketing campaigns that generate new leads where your chance of winning the business is greater than your competition. Not every CRM solution offers the flexibility to capture and report on different types of information so make sure the solution you select does.

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