This article is from WeChat official account:ToB industry headline (ID: wwwqifu), author : Wang Huixian, the title picture comes from: Visual China
CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is not a new concept in the Chinese ToB market, but after so many years, the capital market still has not given up The competition for a track.
Statistics from IT oranges show: In 2016, the number of financing in the sales and marketing field was as high as 180, and the total financing amount was 8.4 billion yuan. Although the number of financing in this field will be reduced to only 68 in 2020, the amount of financing available is more than in 2016.
Obviously, a single higher financing amount began to flow to the top manufacturers with higher rounds, and the money going to the top means that the industry is maturing, which is not a bad thing.
It is regrettable that the development of the domestic CRM market may not be so optimistic. Two days ago, when a CRM manufacturer released a new round of financing, investors ridiculed, “This is their W round of financing.”
Why is the domestic CRM still being complained by the industry after so many rounds of financing? When will Chinese CRM companies achieve real success? Perhaps the following two fatal problems cannot be solved, and all discussions are useless.
1. Why are domestic sales not accustomed to using CRM?
2. Is the domestic CRM helping the boss or helping sales?
1. Is CRM for sales or management?
“Sales will pay attention to CRM only when the following two situations occur: One is a collision, and the other is a collision is discovered.“Sean, a friend of a CRM company’s marketing operations, told “ToB industry headlines”.
Unexpectedly, in their company, the most frequent use of CRM products and the most demand for them are not sales, but the marketing department.
This is because the marketing department is responsible for the entire process of customer acquisition, cleaning, distribution, and tracking, so the entire CRM product chain must be used. In contrast to other departments, especially for their company’s sales, CRM is not just a tool.
In fact, this is not an isolated phenomenon in the Chinese market, but a common problem. Why are salesmen not accustomed to using CRM? Ordinarily, tools that can help sales improve efficiency and performance will surely have great advantages in the market.
From the actual situation, in many companies, the role of CRM in improving sales efficiency and performance is not obvious. Because this product looks more like a management tool in sales, not a customer acquisition tool. To sign orders and discuss cooperation, you still have to run on your own, or use WeChat to communicate.
Because the management of the domestic sales team is not standardized enough, the company’s sales tend to be result-oriented, and a complete set of business rules has not yet been formed. Many companies still follow the theory that being able to sign is a “good cat”.
If you invite a customer to have a meal, drink a drink, and sign an order by favor, what does this have to do with the good use of CRM tools? Once employees are not motivated to use CRM and the boss no longer perceives the effect of the product, then naturally they will not consider renewal.
These reasons are also directly caused. The boss buys CRM not to get sales to sign orders, but to manage sales. If you don’t believe me, go and see for yourself, how many companies do the first thing in CRM to manage sales and field check-ins? Then check the daily work dynamics of sales?
“I also feel that most of the CRMs currently on the market are driven by the needs of managers.” Sean affirmed this.
It is said that the normal operation of CRM should focus on the function development of sales process and sales data analysis, but many companies purchase CRM for sales attendance and sales management. In this way, even if the sales are not useful, the boss feels that the management effect is better, and it can also facilitate the signing of the contract renewal.
But then the question comes again, Is CRM still CRM? Isn’t this equivalent to an OA check-in tool specifically for managing sales?
2. Three key points for CRM breakthrough
Is there a way out for domestic CRM? And where is the way out?
1. Don’t copy foreign countries, make localized products.
A customer success manager who has been in the business for many years said to “ToB industry headlines”: “Salesforce’s products are not very useful, but why do you still need to do so? The main reason lies in the ability of its products to provide solutions. It’s too strong.”
If domestic CRM products blindly benchmark Salesforce and spend a lot of money to develop products, they will only fall into a vicious circle of technological backwardness. After all, technical capabilities cannot be caught up overnight.
Even if the gap between domestic technology and foreign countries is shrinking, the CRM that sales favorites are not copied from abroad, because foreign CRM does not conform to the usage habits of domestic workers, and the experience is not good.
Although the current boss-oriented CRM can at least sell the product, the essence of the SaaS business is renewal. Employees are not actively using it, the effect is not obvious, and the boss is not willing to pay again.
If you can work hard on localization to create products that are more suitable for domestic use, and then use price advantages to attract more new customers, CRM manufacturers may be able to achieve corner overtaking in China.
2. Go deep into the industry and tap long-tail demand.
At present, domestic companies are entering the initial stage of digital transformation, and most SaaS companies are targeting Internet companies, ignoring a blue ocean. Compared with Internet companies, traditional industries have more demand for digital transformation.
For example, a brand manager who works for a CRM company (focus on the traditional automotive industry) said to the “ToB industry headline”: “Due to the previous The traditional automobile industry emphasizes transactions and neglects operations, leading to a sharp decline in sales. At present, the traditional automobile industry is undergoing a transition period.”
According to the “Digital China Index Report (2020) released by Tencent Research Institute and Tencent Cloud, the growth rate of national cloud usage in 2019 Up to 118%, the growth rate of traditional industries is particularly obvious, such as radio and television, cultural tourism and automobile industries, the growth rate of cloud use exceeds 400%.
Although the traditional industry is more difficult to implement than the Internet industry, from another perspective, is it not a brighter way to reduce the dimensionality of such vertical and in-depth CRM? in advanceGrasping this trend may be the way to break through.
3. Join the ecology, CRM will have a future
The development of China’s industry has always been closely related to the actions of giants. In recent years, Ali, Tencent, and Huawei have begun to deploy the SaaS ecosystem, which is actually a vane.
SaaS sales consultant Dai Ke once said: “SaaS is the business foundation of ToB and also determines the future of ToB. With the SaaS ecosystem, each business of an enterprise has multiple companies and multiple qualified products to provide Service.”
As one of the most representative products in the SaaS industry, only when CRM embraces the SaaS ecology can it have the confidence to compete for the future of the industrial Internet.
After all, every company has sales, which means that most companies need to use CRM tools. Sales connect externally with customers and upstream and downstream enterprises, while internally, it is closely related to the development of products and markets.
It can be seen that the construction of the ecology cannot be separated from the CRM “connector”. Now that the giants have begun to enter the SaaS ecosystem, what reason do we have to believe that CRM will not continue to be popular?
This article is from WeChat official account:ToB industry headlines (ID: wwwqifu), author: Wang Huixian