Special Speech

CRM software specifically designed for the automotive industry has many features that auto companies will find useful. Automotive sales are the most demanding when it comes to marketing, service requirements and customer relations. Having software that can consolidate all of the necessary information in one convenient centralized location greatly improves an auto dealer’s relationship with their customers.

The ability for car dealerships to follow up on customers is very important to their overall customer satisfaction. Using automotive CRM software, a dealer has the ability to give their customers a choice of the level of interaction they desire to maintain with the dealer.

This software will design a database for all of the customers a car dealership may have. This allows the dealer to analyze the data they have of their customers, and perhaps predict the needs of other potential customers. The feature that allows the software to create a report by analyzing the data that was entered into the database will allow car dealers to see how their business is doing and what their sales trends are. Knowing these facts are important elements in running a successful business. Being able to adapt and change with the needs of your customers will increase customer satisfaction as well as overall sales.

Software alone will not guarantee that the business will succeed. Ultimately it is up to the senior management to make the necessary decisions to make sure of the company’s success. However, with the aid of CRM software to analyze customer related data, the senior management will have the necessary information to make an intelligent and well-informed decision that will surely benefit the business.

Entrepreneurs are hardy stock. But sometimes hardiness can get you
into trouble.

Especially when you’re over committed and could use a little help.

All too often, new business owners decide they don’t need to hire any
outside services. You know how it goes….”I can do this myself. How
tough can it be? It’s just a simple direct mail campaign.”

Big mistake! Trying to do it all yourself …unless it’s your area of
expertise….usually costs you more in the long run. And most of the time,
the work looks pretty unprofessional.

Here’s the scenario…

You’re starting a consulting business. You decide you need business
cards, a logo, a handout of some sort and a website. Pretty basic. You
figure you can hire the right people and manage these projects yourself.

So you do. You brainstorm some names for the company, run them by a
few friends and select one for your business. Next you find a designer
whose work you like and meet with her. You describe the services you’ll
offer and what colors you do and don’t like. Maybe you’ll even have
some sketches of what you think your logo should look like.

So the designer (working with minimal direction) starts to work. Unless
you’ve given her detailed information on your target market, your niche,
how you see your identity developing, this designer is pretty clueless.
But she comes up with some designs. Once again, you go to some
friends and family members for feedback. Based on the general
consensus, you select a design (hopefully, it will fit with your company
name and what you do). You can now either leave it up to the designer
to get printing quotes for your business cards and stationary. Or you can
do it yourself and get some price comparisons. You’ll need to know
what type of stock you’d like, paper weight, quantities, etc.

Next you want to start on some sort of handout or brochure. Do you stick
with your logo designer? If so, better make sure you’ve seen some
samples of brochures she’s done. Often designers specialize in one
product or another. I’ve worked with great logo designers who can’t do
other collateral.

And what about your web site? Is your logo designer also able to do
site design? What about development? Not all designers are
developers. In fact, most aren’t. The best developers I’ve found started
out as web folk, whereas my best designers are sticking to what they do
best - graphic design.

You also need to decide how many pages your site will be, what they
are (the menu), how you want the site to lay out (site map), whether or
not you need a dynamic or static site, what elements need to be
included, etc.

Still happy with your decision? Better make sure you nail down the
costs on all of this so you’re not surprised upon completion.

Lastly, don’t forget about the copy. You need some for your brochure.
You need different copy for your website. They’re different types of
marketing tools and the copy needs to be written in a different style for
each. But everything needs to work together (be integrated) so you
don’t look like a fractured company. Your brochure and website should
have the same look and feel….but the approach is different.

If you’re still managing this yourself — kudos. Especially if you have time
to do any selling or networking or research. Because you’ve taken on
full-time work as a marketing person/project manager.

To think…. you could have saved yourself a lot of aggravation and time
if only you’d called in a marketing specialist at the beginning. Then
you’d have one person who could manage all the above projects for you:

• working with the designer (or designers) and developers to making
sure everyone involved understood what you do and who you do it

• reviewing, rejecting, and/or approving designs before you ever see
them

• writing copy appropriate for each product

• proofreading
• overseeing all the various vendors to make sure workflow is on
schedule and work is correct

… and only calling you for selection, fact verification or final decisions.

Then again, maybe you like a challenge. Or maybe you just need to
micromanage everything. Because by the time you’re done, you’re
likely to end up with a disjointed marketing “program” (for lack of a better
word). And when and if you finally do call in a marketing person to
revise your marketing material, you’ll probably find that turning
everything over to a specialist — who does this all the time - would
actually have cost you less than doing it yourself.

At least you’ll know better next time.

Rickey Gold & Associates is a small, hands-on marketing
communications firm that helps clients identify, reach, entice and sell to
their target markets.
http://www.rickeygold.com
rg@rickeygold.com

773.348.4973

IBM Lotus Notes Domino and Microsoft CRM (Client Relation Management) from now on can work in tandem. Microsoft CRM Lotus Notes Domino connector from Alba Spectrum Technologies provides seamless messaging in MS CRM through Domino. Our customers suggest future direction for the connector. Considering our consulting practice experience in MS CRM and Lotus Notes customization, upgrade, integration - in this small article we’ll reveal our half year development plans

• Messaging Servers. Former idea was to have MS CRM SDK side standard and develop plug ins for all the other email server: CommuniGate Pro, Sendmail, PostFix, Exim, Oracle Collaboration Suite, GroupWise. Probing the market in earlier 2005 we realized that Lotus Domino is 90% of the requests and Novell GroupWise has the rest of the market responses, however in the case of GroupWise customers, realizing the connector development phase decided to switch to Microsoft Exchange. So at this moment we decided to stick to IBM Lotus Notes Domino and support other email platforms, if customer is willing to pay for the plug-ins development (abut $4k)

• MS CRM and Lotus events two-ways synchronization. This is out of question and will be done. Lotus Notes serves large corporations, investing into Lotus user licenses and the synchronization is the must

• INI file. Where you can select if you would like to store in Lotus outgoing email, sent from MS CRM

• Support Contracts. We do understand that our connector will work in the MS CRM environment with 30+ users, which means that it will be midsize or large corporate business. If MS CRM is business critical and Lotus investments should be protected - we recommend our customers Lotus Notes Domino support contract.

• Annual Maintenance Program. If you purchase Microsoft Great Plains, Oracle eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, or other ERP application - you will have to pay one or another type of annual fee to get new version and regular support from the software vendor. We’ll try to be more liberal to our clients, but considering large demand - we’ll have to implement the plan to improve the service to existing clients.

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) - Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia. Alba Spectrum serves corporate clients in Aerospace & Defense, Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics, Pharmaceutical, Food Processing, Placement, Healthcare & Medicine, Beverages, Agriculture, Non-profit, Distribution & Supply Chain Management, Financial Services, Furniture, Textile, Apparels, Conglomerates, Wholesale & Retail.