Overview This paper explains how an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can pay dividends to an events organiser. From initial cold calling by the sales team through to generation of offers, contracts and invoices, a good CRM solution will: increase sales revenues and profit create a happy events team who are better armed impress exhibitors and generate loyal advocates The Sales Process Many event organisers run repeating events such as a vertical market annual exhibition. The sales team s job is to find potential exhibitors, offer and sell stand space and to hit meterage and revenue targets. It s obvious that the more calls made by a salesperson, per hour, the more people a salesperson will get through to, the more stand sales are potentially made. But for the sales team, they need a good support system that helps them identify the right people to contact and a system that helps them process each call efficiently. Making it easier for them to know things like: Who should be called? Who shouldn t be called? Who has already been called? Who has been called but needs a follow up? The remainder of this document walks through the stages from the initial prospecting of leads and enquiries right through, updating the management accounts and onto to re-bookings for future events. A salesperson needs to know how effective they are being and be able to see where to focus their efforts. Are they calling the right audience? How old is the list? When was the last time we contacted this company? Or, they might want to see this week s conversion rate from cold call to sale. FibreCRM has developed enhancements to SugarCRM by adding a range of time saving features to overcome these common issues found in an event management organisation. For instance, SugarCRM comes with an Opportunities module and a Target List module. Opportunities are stand bookings and offers which are at various stages in the sales pipeline. For example, one potential exhibitor 1
may have shown a bit of interest, another may have signed contracts and a third has said they re unable to exhibit this year. The Target List module is a way to segment the data and use the segments for targeted calling campaigns. For instance, create a target list called Prospects for the Annual Widget Show and add companies to this list if they are a potential to exhibit at the show, (e.g. ABC Widget Ltd). Both modules on their own store information however, out of the box, they work independently of each other. This means that it becomes less useful for a busy sales person who wants to ensure they don t call companies that might exist in a Target List but have already said they are unable to show this year. You may not want to remove them from the actual Target list because they could still be a target for next year s show. So the CRM nearly works but not quite. Here, FibreCRM developed an integration so that the salesperson can see a filtered view of companies based on the status of each company in both the Target List and the Opportunity stage. So now, the salesperson has a clean calling list. The next bit is to ensure they can make the call, log the result and potentially book a follow up call with minimum fuss. When it comes to outbound telemarketing, many CRM systems on the market are good allrounders but few specialise in telesales, which means the calling process can be less efficient. If they do specialise in telesales, then they more often than not lack features in other areas. SugarCRM sits in the first camp. It s a good allrounder but when it comes to call rates, out of the box, it underperforms. Actually all Sugar needed was a few real-world tweaks to turn it into a highly efficient and effective calling solution. For example, from a list of targets, the salesperson accesses each company and opens a window to log a call. They then save it and open the window to create a follow up call and save it again before navigating back to the list to make the next call. This is clunky even when the CRM is installed on the salesperson s PC let alone over the web, where Internet speeds and page load times compound the issue. FibreCRM built an add-on for SugarCRM called Quick2Call. This module enables the salesperson to log a completed and a follow up call directly from the list of companies being called up. The list remains open in the background for fast access and saves vital seconds per call. Ok, now we get to the interesting bit. The sales team know who to call, can make a lot more calls per hour now but that s not the end of the salesperson s responsibilites. There s still the call outcome to deal with: How to manage the interest? What information to send? How to create a contract and send it to a potential exhibitor? How to book the sale? And how to keep an eye on what to follow up? 2
Golden Hours and Prime Time Many sales teams have times in the day when phone activity should be their focus but there are times in the day when it is less productive to phone and therefore administration activity could be handled. The FibreCRM solution provides the team with a dashboard showing who to send information to, who to send a contract to and what inbound messages or contracts need to be processed. To send information or a contract, the salesperson picks the company that requires the information, picks an email template and attaches any supporting files. In fact it goes a little further than that and produces a merged contract pulling in all the contract related information such as stand size and dimensions, cost of stand and key contact information you have on file for the exhibiting company. The Admin Process Typically an event management company will employ administrators to coordinate the delivery of the events once a contract has been handed over from the sales team. Typically this involves: Setting up and coordination of events Keeping exhibitor information up to date Checking paperwork and raising invoices at the appropriate times Keeping contractors informed of stand bookings and alterations The FibreCRM system comes with an event management component enabling administrators to create events, set key dates and view all the stands and offers that are in place. For each event, a set of show brand templates can be defined. These are used by the team to ensure that communication is consistent across the team. For example, when sales send out contracts the system will ensure the right branded contract template is applied. The admin team are able to keep track of key contact details such as who the primary point of contact is, the finance contact and the exhibitor s admin contact. Communication of a lot of information is needed and therefore the CRM system needs to support this process. For example: Mass emailing all exhibitors information about their particular stand and send it to the designated admin contact Mass emailing all invoices to the finance contacts Sending a weekly list of stand alterations to contractors 3
With FibreCRM, these activities can be completed simply and efficiently and ensures everyone in the team has complete visibility of what s been sent or said to whom by whom and when. Finance Integration Invoice and sales order generation is part of the CRM solution. Each stand booking can record many invoices. For example, a deposit invoice and final balance invoice. If a stand is cancelled or altered, credit notes can be generated. All invoices or sales orders are automatically added to the Sage Accounts system or exported to a file, such as Excel, for other accounting systems to import. Website Integration So far, we ve described the back office CRM capabilities or in other words the non-customer facing system however, there is information an events company is going to want to glean from each exhibitor, including: What blurb does the exhibitor want printed in the show catalogue? Who are the key points of contact? Uploading on images Which categories should they be listed under in the catalogue? The CRM has a connection to WordPress enabling exhibitors to log into a secure website so that this information can be added or updated by each exhibitor and the information seamlessly passed to the CRM system. Each event in the CRM can be linked to a different website which means that shows can be branded to suit the show theme. This means that one exhibitor might have many logins to different show websites without you creating duplicate customer details in your CRM. The Marketing Process The marketing department has a responsibility to build a presence and create brand recognition to help drive enquiries into the company. They need a database of potential targets as well as be able to market to existing known contacts. Using the CRM s inbuilt marketing tools, marketers are able to segment data, build and execute marketing campaigns. The CRM system includes the following out of the box features: Email marketing with autoresponders Mail merge Social media integration Marketing Automation Press contacts The database of names and addresses can easily include press contacts and suppliers. Not just exhibitors and potential exhibitors. Press contacts can be linked to events to make the daily communication process easier to manage. 4
A Sound Return on Investment For one client the analysis showed that their average call to conversion rates were increased as follows: Increased number calls per hour from 9.5 to 11.3 Averaged 1 sale for every 23 calls made remained consistent Average stand size of 9.78m 2 remained consistent Reduced admin time increased calling time by half an hour per day Based on this analysis, each salesperson was able to increase the number of calls per week from 237 calls to 310 calls and increase sales from 100m 2 to 132m 2. Pricing The running cost for a fully implemented solution, integrated with WordPress sites and Sage 50 starts at a monthly running cost of 500. This operates in the cloud and is hosted in the UK behind robust firewalls and SSL 128- bit encryption. Users simply log into the CRM via a web browser on any device. The following is a typical shopping list that you might want to consider when planning the overall budget for a new system such as this. Shopping list Monthly hosting fee - 500 Existing data load - If you have existing data you ll want to import it. We can help. Change management - Staff take time to adapt to new systems. Careful planning and execution is required. Particularly when it comes to new invoicing processes. Customer-specific changes - Everyone has a sales process but all have subtle differences in how they operate and therefore processes need to be adapted to suit specific needs. FibreCRM will adapt the system to suit you. Testing - Before a system can be put into live operation it needs to be tested. Thoroughly. This takes time and requires careful planning and detailed testing. No shortcuts, this is time and money well spent. Project meetings/discussions - Coordination of effort needs to be managed by a central figure who takes ownership of the project. They work with the client on a daily basis, usually by phone and email, to build a picture of the solution, coordinate the delivery team and show the client. Third party integrations - Whether it s email marketing integration you need such as connections to MailChimp or Inbox25 let us know what you need. It might be a finance system, existing website or phone system you need connectivity to. FibreCRM has the knowledge and skills to make this happen. Training services - Staff need to be shown how to get the best out of the new system. Our training department will work with you to put together onsite meetups, online webinars and offline video clips. 5
Next Step For a free no obligation trial, complete the online free trial request form, go to http://www. fibrecrm.com/?p=1317 Let us know a little about the areas that interest you and when you are likely to need a system. If you already have information held in another system we can help you move it across to the new CRM as part of the implementation process. FibreCRM works with a wide range of databases and transformation solutions so no job is too hard! To talk about what your business could achieve with FibreCRM or if you have any questions regarding this white paper, please find our contact details below. We found the process from initial consultation to delivery a well-structured and very exciting process that enabled us to clearly view and analyse all of our business processes and improve how we communicate with our customers. About FibreCRM Building smarter relationships for 25 years. Our founder, Simon Leek, sold his first sales and marketing system in 1989. Since then FibreCRM has worked with businesses across all industries, large and small, learning what works well and what doesn t. FibreCRM was established in 2007, and now has a growing team of experts dedicated to finding the best CRM solution for its customers. Working in partnership with specialist CRM providers, we can be sure that we re offering you an innovative, intelligent and cost-effective product that we re proud to recommend. Choose to work with us and we ll be there every step of the way, from the initial consultation and strategy development, right through to implementation, training and check-ups. What was achieved could not have been done had FibreCRM not clearly understood our needs and culture. The possibilities for the future management of our data and processes is now so much more flexible than it has ever been and limited only by our imagination! Mike Anderson Managing Director, Hale Events Head Office FibreCRM Limited Tremough Innovation Centre Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9TA Sales Office FibreCRM Limited 26 York Street London W1U 6PZ +44 (0)203 598 0898 hello@fibrecrm.com www.fibrecrm.com