Every now and again, someone will send me in a question to pick my brain. Someone recently asked what on earth is the difference between CRM and CMS systems and do we need both?
They also wanted to know how are they different or isn’t there a software that does both? I am going to tackle this the best way I can — so let’s get started.
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CRM Systems
So very basically, CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’ software which basically means if you have clients, if you have customers or if you are in Sales and you contact people, you would record their name, phone number, company name, address and things like that.
It will also record the date you called them or contacted them or an action was taken. You’d record it in a CRM software system and then it can set a date for a follow up in a calendar.
So, for, for example, if you are doing a sale’s call, you should always follow up things. So, if you have just been on to an exhibition and somebody said, “Okay, call us, give me a call in a week”.
You should enter that in as soon as you get back, diary it within the system and it will send you a little note of who to call today, in seven days’ time or in a year.
You could, if you make a note of when their birthday is, it will note that and then, you can send them stuff next year for their birthday. Just as a gift, as a surprise.
You can even go as far as finding out when their spouse’s birthday is and then you can send a gift to their spouse if you have a home address. How impressive would that be, eh? Yeah, exactly.
Say you normally speak to the husband and you sent a bunch of flowers to the wife and said who was it from and he gets home from work and she says, “WOW! See what I got today?”
Isn’t that going to be impressive? I bet you it would be better than what you’ve got. So, you know what men are like.
So, a CRM system can record that but the other thing, it can record notes. So, for example, you are talking to someone and they say, ‘Well, I’m really sorry. Our dog, Jack, a black Labrador is 14 years old and, and we’re going to have to take him to the vet. He’s been really poorly for a while and it’s really sad and I think it’s come to that time.
I don’t want to do it to the kids but I really haven’t got the time because with this, we’re going to have to do this afternoon and can you just, I don’t know, just may be call back some other time.’
Now, so of course, you go on and phone the next person, next person, next person and if you do remember to call that person, are you likely to remember that?
But in the CRM software, once you hang up the phone, you can note that down. So, the next time you call them, you have your sad voice on.
You say, “I am so sorry. Last time we spoke, can I ask what happened with Jack?’ You know, not what happened with your dog, what happened with Jack? ‘And I am so sorry. How did the kids take it?’
Because you noted down that they had kids and do you see how you then, this is how you form a customer relationship because you know more about them, because the system is telling you their notes.
Suddenly you are talking to them as a friend. You are not going to remember all this stuff because you are going to call loads of people.
And you are going to make notes of their preferences, what they prefer. They prefer phone calls, they prefer emails.
They like getting reports. Have you sent them this particular new book? Have you noted that? All that stuff, that’s what that is.
Examples and quite obviously, I have not used them all but we recommend Insightly, Wrike, and of course, we use Zoho.
All of these have free versions by the way, most of these. I think Zoho’s got a free one and we use Insightly.
In the past you may have heard of Act. I think Act was bought by Sage, the accounting software people.
They have one of the biggest CRM systems which used to do linking. So, if you put an address and details in the accounting, it should cross over to that. That’s what it means.
Anyway, there are many but CRM, there are, the SugarCRM but try and make, if you use Gmail, find one that integrates with Gmail like Insightly and all those.
Try and find one that will integrate with your other software. So, it’s easier to transfer. So, you don’t have a bunch of different names and different phone numbers, different spellings and different addresses and so on. So, it’s all kind of integrated and it’s good.
CMS Systems
So now, let’s talk about CMS Systems. CMS stands for ‘Content Management System’ and is something completely different.
So, what that is, is a bit of software online that creates your website content and it manages the whole thing. So, the most, in other words, blogs.
Blogs are CMS. So, it’s better. So, WordPress and Blogger, TypePad, things like that, they are all CMS systems.
The best by far is WordPress. Please, never use the free WordPress version at www.Wordpress.com, the free hosted by WordPress.
WordPress, it’s going to confuse you. WordPress software for your website is free but you need to download it and pay for a hosting service of your own.
So, then you are hosting and it’s your software. It is yours. You own, you have the database, everything. It all makes sense.
If you want to know, if you want to be able to put one together, we have our own special ‘Click by Click’how to build a website course.
To set up a website to, that really really really works and gets customers, go to www.website101.co, website101.co and just read that.
It’s got all the information there.
If you want to know more, just send me an email or message me and I will, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know about it. It’s got the 60-Day money-back guarantee but that is not the point of this. That WordPress is a CMS system.
So, what will happen is you will upload photos. You will write blog-posts. You will add new products and services and things that you do on your website over time, because you should be in control of your own website.
It’s your marketing hub. And over time, over the years, so if you’ve put up a blog-post once a week, that’s fifty two blog-posts a year. Over 3 years, that’s a hundred and fifty. How on earth will you find stuff?
So, your ‘Content Management System’, your CMS, your WordPress. WordPress being the most popular one in the world, will organize all that for you, in order, in archive.
So, you can look back through archive files in one click. It will say all the, show you all the posts that were written in August 2013, for example.
You can look at what was the last post that was written. What was the next post that was written? When were these photos uploaded? It will upload PDFs.
It will upload and store and display PDFs, images, galleries of photographs. If you are photographer, you know, something like that is, WordPress and a gallery site is the best way to display. Or an artist, for instance.
It will show thumbnails of, smaller versions of the images rather than the massive one that takes up lots of bandwidth, and takes up long time to load.
So, yes you need both. No, they are not combined. They sound similar but they are not. They are different things.
Yes, you need both because you must use simple tools, preferably free ones to make your life easier, to enable you to do more. Because there are many distractions, there are many things to do.
If you’re going to work, if you’re going to build a business, sorry to, not to sugarcoat it, you’re going to have to work hard.
There is no magic secret. I can give you tips galore, you’ve got to do them. You can’t just listen and think, “Oh, that’s easy enough”.
No, you’ve got to actually do them. I work hard. It may not look it, but I do and it’s not easy. But it does work and once it works, it’s easier than any other way of doing it.
So, if you want to see all the tools that I use every day and all the tools that my staff use every single day and there are millions but the ones we use every day, go and download this free eBook.
Over, I haven’t looked lately but well over five thousand people have downloaded this, because it’s quite a good one and we’ve got good reports back. It also looks quite pretty, by the way.
Go to www.marketingforowners.com/71 and that is the 71, you think, gosh that’s a lot. You don’t have to use them all but these are the ones and it will explain which CRM.
By the way, for those of you that have gotten it before, it’s just been updated. A couple of things have changed because we don’t use the same ones forever.
New stuff comes out and other stuff gets bad or something better, we update. It has just been updated. You may be interested to go get the new one. Let me know what you think, it’s going to be good.
Drive Time Podcast
Now, special mention. This is going on a bit but I wanted to answer question. The question, its podcast time.
Today I am recommending Isabella Russel’s ‘New Media Europe Show’, alright. It is British. She is great and her husband Mike Russel, they run a fantastic business.
This weekend, I’m actually going and I ought to know. I’m staying there. I was interviewed on this, by the way.
On the 21st of April, so Isabella interviewed me. Strangely, she was in U.K and I was in Canada. It’s every two or three days, it’s 25-30 minutes.
She interviews great people, she’s got lovely way about her, she is really really nice. It’s a good show.
There, if you want to go in London, by the way, if you want to go to the ‘New Media Europe Show’, I’m sure they still got a couple of tickets left.
You can always fit someone else in. So, contact them but go and listen to it, follow their stuff. They are some of the, just the most active.
They do this marketing the right way. They are a lovely lovely couple. A great example how to run and build a business online. ‘New Media Europe Show’, Isabella Russel, alright?
I’ll see you tomorrow.