Defining a CRM StrategyCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term that refers to the practices, technology, systems, and strategies associated with managing your customer through the customer lifecycle. The goal of CRM is to maximize customer lifetime value and relationships over time.CRM is perhaps, in my mind, one of the most misunderstood terms in marketing today. As I think about it, it is a rare event when I pick up a marketing publication and I don’t see something about CRM. Frequently, articles reveal frustration on the parts of authors at organizations who have missed their objectives as it relates to CRM. Part of the disconnect is simply because CRM does mean so many different things to different people.What follows is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 1 of the Inevitable Success Podcast with Damian Bergamaschi and special guest Gary Beck. (Listen Here)How do you develop a CRM strategy?Whenever I think about building a roadmap for CRM, it begins with defining clear business objectives and goals. The goals should be associated with both short-term and long-term objectives. In fact, frequently the driver of CRM is tied to creating the right customer experience over time. And certainly, if we have the right customer experience, our customers are going to be more satisfied and tell their friends about their successful relationship with our products or services. At the same time, they will buy more from us because they are satisfied. So, it makes sense to orchestrate the customer experience in a way that is best for our customers.Frequently, CRM programs and techniques are used to collect the information necessary to understand the current customer experience. This understanding allows us to know where we are being successful, while identifying those areas that need to be improved.There are typically four phases when we think about building a roadmap for CRM success. The first phase is a discovery phase. This includes identifying goals and objectives. It also typically includes some data exploration and understanding the assets that we currently have so that we can better create those goals and set meaningful metrics at this point in time.During the discovery process, no matter how small or large the company, we frequently have stakeholder interviews. It’s important to discuss ideas and create consensus regarding where we want CRM, the customer experience, and the customer relationship to go.Executing a CRM StrategyThe marketing department obviously has to take a leadership role, and they will need help across the organization. We need to have finance involved so that we understand the cost parameters associated with all of the activities that we’re thinking about in the future. We know of course we need our Information Technology organization because so much of what we’ll be talking about involves technology delivery to help guide these customer relationships over time.We also need customer service and the sales organization. In fact, any place where we touch a customer with communications, any department that has that interaction needs to be involved in a CRM initiative. Finally, people from product need to be involved. So, both those who are managing current products and understand them inside out and those who are developing the next wave of products, because as we think about CRM, as we think about the future, we want to incorporate where the company is going as well as what we’re offering today.It is imperative that top leadership within a company embrace any CRM initiative. And embrace the goals associated with those initiatives because there are ...