Customer Relationship Management in B2B

CRM is understood as the combined scope of technologies and processes of the business which spotlight the realization of the customers’ needs, wants, wills and requirements.

CRM intends to develop the long-term value and the increase in the financial outcome with the help of the customers. CRM demands the acquisition of the customers’ data and sellers’ interaction in the process of satisfying the customers’ needs. As the result, the sales performance is improved together with the right perception of the customers, inno-vative service and minimum made costs. For the effective achievement of CRM, compa-nies use the SIS and SFA. SIS contains the technical information for the advancement of the sales process. SFA is known for as an activity of the front and back office which aim is to ease the information empowered sales that leads to the progress of sales force and the relationship with the customers. For the long-term relationship with the customers, sellers move their actions from closing a single sale to building up the long-term elements of sales which modernize the way of selling and attitude to the customers. (Donaldson 2007, 113.)

Customer relationship management process includes the active method of acting which is concentrated on the potential goal to develop the interaction with the existing and future customers. CRM achieves the customers’ loyalty and trust and turns the relationship with them in a long-term meaning. For the trader it is essential to see that customers are ready to cooperate again in the coming future. Moreover, in this type of process sellers are able to get an access to the personal data of the customers by finding out their tastes, predilec-tion, favoritism, preferences, touching points which can match with the offered products or service of the company. (FinancesOnline 2018.)

CRM supports selling ventures to sell the offered products, service with the future positive feedback and experience from the customers to provide 100% confidence that the cus-tomer will want to come back to buy the next product with a pleasure. Otherwise the gained costs can overweigh the spent investments if the client’s refusal to cooperate and the company has to move on the next customer with additional expenses. (Finance-sOnline 2018.)

CRM provides perspective benefits for sales operations which give a guarantee of the growth in business sector. Firstly, CRM saves time and increases about 40 % of sales hence employers use Cloud CRM systems which opportunities are to send efficiently and quickly out the messages through email and view profiles of customers, for example, through LinkedIn. Secondly, CRM systems grant possibilities to control the achieved goals or setting up them. The drawings, in other words the graphics like SalesForce views the history of whole sales from the beginning up to the end. (SalesForce 2018.)

The sellers can evidently see the progress of sales in the measurement of percentage, count the achieved and not achieved sales targets and have the future forecast. Thirdly, it is a great chance for the companies to develop and track the sales of products with the help of Cloud CRM Application. In this system, the sales people can easily view the top of people’s trending products with the help of Internet connection in any place and analyze and focus which product are mostly used and bought by the customers in different parts of the world. (SalesForce 2018.)

Additionally, CRM can solve the problem of many companies which have difficulties with the calculation of the sales representatives’ compensations. According to the words of Dickie, a partner of CSO Insights Since, sales compensations drive the sales motivation for the effective work, if this means significant for them, then the companies need to invest in creation of the CRM applications for the observation of the compensations. Then, CRM application is considered to be important for all the spheres of the business development,

not only for the sales department starting from the marketing finishing up to the financial accounting. (SalesForce 2018.)

CRM application is meant to be in usage not only for big businesses but also for the small ones. Besides, according to the words of Denis Pombriant, the author of the book called

“The Subscription Economy”, CRM systems are focused on the sufficient delivery of prod-ucts to the customers even in exceptions when the prodprod-ucts are needed to be delivered at once with risks. He also points out that CRM system makes the total control over the sale by ending up in the correct final destination. Sometimes, without knowing the customer, it is a risk for the company to start the cooperation. (SalesForce 2018.)

That is why, in this sense the CRM reviews the data, history of the customer to provide in-surance to the companies in further business deals. The CRM also illustrates the custom-ers’ amount or orders, unaccepted quotations, any positive or negative feedback. The sellers can make some opinion about the analysis of the customers’ feedback and change the situation to the better side by correcting mistakes and behaviour. (SalesForce 2018.) At last, the CRM process reminds the selling company about that the customer is the king and the service and operations over him should be taken under serious consideration and care. Having all the information about the customer in one application lets the sellers con-nect quickly to the database of the customers, analyze the selling process, make modifi-cations, updates and start the process of negotiation by knowing exactly what the cus-tomer wants. For the sellers it is much easier to communicate using CRM process since they can be ready for any requirements of the customers and can smoothly escape the exceptions. (SalesForce 2018.)

There are three types of CRM used in practice of the business cycle. Below, Figure 8 marks three important types of CRM.

FIGURE 8. The Types of CRM sourced from (SalesForce.com 2018)

Operational- This type of Customer Relationship Management is responsible for the pro-gressive work of sales, marketing, products and service control including previous experi-ence of the deals with the customers. Operational type includes sales force automation, marketing automation, and service automation. Sales force automation is focusing on op-erating with the current customers and gaining the new ones. It also automatizes the sales in all stages of the sales cycle, marketing, views the operational progress and failures, ad-ditionally adopts to the actions of the sales promotion. Speaking about the marketing auto-mation, it focuses mostly on the appropriate marketing approaches and process of opera-tions. The main target is to insure that the company uses the right way of selling otherwise it is modified with finding best ways of offering the products. Finally, service automation makes certain that the quality of the service provided is satisfied by the customers based on the evaluation of Key Performance Indicators. It also involves the development of the sales management based on customer’s behavior.(SalesForce 2018.)

Analytical- focuses on the development of the experience and service of the clients with the help of the whole team work of the company. This type of CRM analyzes the customer data received with the range of methods which come up in the form of support for the pro-gress.(SalesForce 2018.)

Collaborative- This type of CRM process leads business with the cooperation of external part of the company mainly suppliers, vendors, agents by informing them about the needed quotations which customers are interested in. So the external partners can be

Operational

Collaborative

Analytical

aware of the selling process and be on the same flow with the customers. Such a cooper-ation results in effective working atmosphere which achieves goals of successful selling at the end. (SalesForce 2018.)