Does Your Organization Really Need a CRM System?

There are many people that jump up and down wildly while screaming "yes" to this question, yet they have not contemplated alternatives and are not the ones signing the front of the checks that cover the six to eight figure annual program costs.

While vendors like HubSpot, Microsoft, and Salesforce offer more than just CRM, their core CRM products come with a medium to heavy carrying cost and often rely on additional products or third party services to make it valuable enough to meet basic use cases.

Let's consider two different examples where CRM is overkill:

1. Highly relationship driven businesses with bespoke services
2. Highly transactional businesses that rely on continually marketing

In our first case, a highly relationship driven business providing bespoke services would be something like a law firm, investment bank, or boutique accounting shop.

There's a high likelihood that the interactions with prospects and customers are done via phone calls, emails, and in-person meetings (although that's probably a stretch for the accountants). Calendar invitations might be used, although that's an assumption worth validating.

Services proposed and provided to customers are likely priced and tailored to the value of the work, not necessarily the amount of time or widgets (because that isn't a thing for these folks). Plus, the people involved in outlining and spearheading those engagements are incredibly valuable to the organization, and their time comes at a very high cost.

Could you imagine the look on their face when confetti drops from the top of the screen after advancing an opportunity's stage to "pending signature"?

Plus, why would you want them entering every (substantive) interaction with a customer in their CRM instead of selling and servicing revenue?

In our second case, a highly transactional business that relies on continually marketing would be something like an e-commerce brand, a gig economy service provider (e.g. "UberDash"), or nonprofit organization.

There's a high likelihood that the interactions with customers or donors are asynchronous and bulk in nature, which means they're either self-servicing from online assets (like your website) or receiving mass communications from a marketing automation platform.

Sure, there are instances where you're interacting with someone via chatbot or service desk to resolve a customer service issue, and high ticket donors will be courted into forking over a significant donation. But, this is the minority of how the organization engages with its customers.

Transactions are associated with a person's email address or phone number, plus an address is often included to ensure the customer can receive what they paid for or the donor can get a tax letter.

What value does a CRM system offer in this context, especially when there is a significant amount of work involved to integrate data from other platforms?

TLDR: In both of those cases, CRM is a solution looking for a problem and implementing becomes another problem altogether. Tomorrow, we'll explore an alternative path.