Have you ever fielded a question or comment that sticks with you for days until you finally wrestle it to the ground and understand why it keeps coming up? The result of these internal deliberations is that you are jarred awake, and forced to reset your sights. A recent conversation with an old friend gave me one of those gentle jarrings. After catching up for a while my friend, an old Oracle cohort, said "I understand the CRM part of your business, but I don't understand the tie-in with corporate blogging. Blogging has nothing to do with CRM, right?" "Oh, no, no, no," I started, (it's never good when you have to start an answer with no) and went on with an erudite explanation of the synergy between Blogging and CRM. He's a patient guy, but he still looked at me like he does when he orders Budweiser and I take a Guinness, a little puzzled. The incident raises three points: I have not done a good job of linking the world of CRM and the world of blogging, and that's all on me; my friend still thinks of CRM, as much of the market does, as the enterprise, consumer goods model (think data mining through hard rock); and he assumes that blogging is the public vetting of the banal details of one's life, like buying new tires for the family sedan and enjoying a nice lunch out to pass the time (incredibly, I did not have to make this up). What a ball of spaghetti! So let's untangle this. CRM, at least the CRM that I sell and implement for small and medium sized businesses, who largely sell to other businesses, is not about data mining, but about collaborating around and with the customer, or client as the case may be. Sure, there is a process to sales, marketing and customer service, but these processes enhance the collaboration and communication with the customer. CRM, in this model, is about opening up your business to let customers, partners and prospects work with you collaboratively, and allowing your internal people to collaborate, also. Again, collaboration around the customer, for the customer's benefit. This CRM has a web presence as all collaborative tools, going forward, must. Blogging, corporate blogging, is also about collaboration. And again, it is another way to open up your business, your knowledge assets (but not your secret sauce), to customers, prospects and even employees. The interaction can help you and the customer understand each other. Hey, that's starting to sound like a relationship. Business people are thought leaders, and the blog is a perfect medium to expose your leadership in your area of expertise. The value proposition for CRM has to be about more than processes, as Louis Columbus writes in a great article. It has to be about relationships and the basis for any relationship is interaction and collaboration. OK, time for a Guinness, and a plate of spaghetti (and incredibly, I am not making this up!). |
