From CRM Database Management to CRM Portfolio Management

CRM tools can go beyond the typical Accounts/profile/contacts sections for B2B pipeline management. As a sales manager, constantly managing your overall strategical vertices, a linear portfolio based on the breadth, and synchronous elements of your PO’s can provide an interesting baseline for a head’s up regarding future revenue. Currently, SMB’s are to tech based target revenue, as the myriad of reality and talent shows are to television networks. However individual SMB’s like those TVs. shows just focus on their specific niche, singing, dancing, juggling, telling jokes, boardroom business, traveling and conquering fears. All are reality shows; however the content of the specific program differs, providing the viewer a portfolio of reality shows. Instead of the Monday morning sales meeting definitions of individual accounts being ‘big’ or ‘small,’ combine the two accounts into one balanced portfolio of large and small complimenting each other. Just like your largest personal investment is your home, you still invest in stocks, bonds and mutual funds to balance your investments to encourage growth and decrease investment risk. You know how rapidly real estate can transform from a sellers market to a buyers market; SMB’s have the potential to follow the same volatile path. While your sales teams target, acquire and nurture new business, are you cross referencing vertical targets supplemental to balancing your main accounts to decrease potential beta coefficient swings in the market? A herd mentality to stay with the pack for safety can result in revenue buckets running dry. Are your sales teams focusing on the SMB’s individually, or on a portfolio of prospects? While analyzing your CRM data for pipeline revenue, check to see SMB vertical account stagnation. Alerting your Product Managers to niche specific risks inherent to your SMB’s, such as the 80/20 rule that 80% of your business is generated by 20% of your clients is a good sign that Marketing Managers should step up to the plate to increase that 20%. When analyzing CRM data, diversification is the beacon of safety. The basics of your vertical SMB’s, geography, segmentation, revenue, run rate, sku targets, reseller migration, and marketing programs will provide clues to the intrinsic nature of your target market risk exposure. With defensive CRM data balanced with CRM pipeline revenue projections, you will provide added insight and motivation to your inside sales and account managing teams. During individual sales team members, instead of just asking, ‘Well Sylvia, how are things going? Present her with an account management diversification strategy to balance her large accounts with risk management assessment by prospecting and identifying counter-balancing accounts. E.g. If Sylvia targets the financial market, present the counter balancing suggestion of the video game market, or if her focus is the grocery industry, counter balance with engineering or architecture. . Not putting all your eggs in one basket, or not putting all the same SMB’s in one CRM has a distinct parallel. Like the reality based TV shows, and SMB’s both paramount to their respective industries, CRM portfolio diversification will assist your company from getting voted off.