In the land of sales there are many rules but none more reliable than the first two: ABC (always be closing); and, it’s always easier to sell something to someone that you have sold something to before. In 1993, Don Peppers and Martha Rodgers authored the book The One to One Future, from which the acronym CRM emerged. Their thought leadership helped create an entirely new software industry that leveraged business intelligence technology to build data warehouses, data marts, query and reporting tools, OLAP and now predictive analytics. Peppers and Rodgers followed on with a great series of books One to One B2B, One to One Manager, etc, all of which are valuable reads even today.

In the mid-1990s CRM took off and one of the most famous business stories emerged from Wal-Mart. A brilliant CIO named Randall Mott built a huge data warehouse on customer purchasing data and discovered that baby boomers bought beer and diapers when they came to shop. So Wal-Mart put beer and diapers near each other in their stores and significantly increased the sales of both.

In 2007, I took on a new role at SAP and became the leader of what we call the Business Influencer Group. BIG works with industry thought leaders and luminaries that influence what we call the C suite. This role has enabled me to build relationships with some of the most brilliant thinkers at the top universities in the US, as well as other luminaries and key thought leaders. This week I will share some of their insights into the world of CRM--a key business initiative for any company big or small.

During the 1990s many of the original CRM thinkers focused on large enterprise implementations and the technology was extremely expensive. That is certainly not the case today, as CRM has become a commodity and can be leveraged by companies of all sizes. Thought leaders today such as Ranjay Gulati of Harvard, Mohan Sawhney of Kellogg, and the modern day father of CRM, Paul Greenberg, are excellent resources for small business leaders in search of customer intimacy and loyalty. "CRM at the Speed of Light" by Greenberg is one of the most popular books on this area and is excellent practical guide and resource. Paul Greenberg also is one of today’s most popular bloggers on ZDnet (as well as here at MVP).

The research and teachings of Gulati and Sawhney focus on the total customer experience from a perspective of product, cost and experience. Small business owners can benefit from their thinking by looking for additional ways of creating customer value and enhancing the customer experience.

Sawhney defines what he calls routes to customer value:

“Routes to customer value – there are 3 ways: ultimate goal is functional, economical or emotional value, this maps to the other 3 to achieve superior customer value – genetic routes to customer value.”

Lower cost offering
Best customer experience
Most innovative product

Sometimes these thought leaders have their heads way up in the clouds and think out of this solar system. As Ranjay Gulati says, “I like to keep my head in the clouds, but my feet on the ground." That means that he spends a great deal of time listening to, and consulting with, customers and companies. According to recent research, CRM is again one of the top three information technology- oriented business initiatives for companies of all sizes.

Personality of Fish

You're waiting for this week's fish story, right? Here goes. I spent nearly one year of my life on research vessels floating on the Georges Bank, 100 miles east of Cape Cod. One of my most memorable experiences was the day we cruised into a pod of 100 right whales. As we slowly moved through the pod each whale breached and turned to look up at the ship and then continued feeding on the rich plankton. Trying not to be too anthropomorphic, I can vividly remember how human-like the eye of each whale looked, and it almost seemed like each one had its own distinct personality.

Whales are like fishing boats that operate 24 hours a day in the ocean eating nearly everything in their path. They were, in fact, one of the only parameters that we could not quantify in our fisheries population models. Remember several posts ago we traveled into the world of biological oceanography and learned about how cod and haddock spent part of the first year of their lives in the plankton. I can only wonder how many cod and haddock eggs, larvae and juveniles ended up in a whale stomach. One thing I did learn for sure is that in every model there is almost always an unquantifiable parameter. Until next time, good luck marketing and selling and know your customer’s personality.