How to reduce costs and help your company increase sales and revenue? < Challenges to deploy CRM and Inbound Marketing >
Whether we like it or not, whether is virtual or real – and it seems to be real, the economic crisis in Brazil is there.
Talking to business leaders and CEOs or even to my gardener – that postponed fixing his hedge trimmer in order to reduce maintenance costs, all of them are anxious to increase sales/revenue and cut costs, not necessarily in this order. I’m also doing my homework: I started cutting 50% of gardening … :p
But how IT professionals can help their companies to do it? There are at least three obvious answers: reducing IT costs, help other departments to reduce their costs (OPEX) and investing some remaining CAPEX to increase sales/revenue.
Cutting costs is very simple, but not necessarily easy do it. However, increase sales and revenue …
This is the theme for today!
The good news is that to increase sales, tools like CRM, Inbound Marketing, etc, are already quite mature and available for those who want to use them. The bad news for IT professionals is that challenges go beyond the technology itself.
The first is that tools or methodologies require in the first instance some adaptation in the organizational culture, where some companies are especially resistant.
The second challenge is the time required for this to happen. If I use the expression, “in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king”, do you know what I mean? That is, while most fail to delight their customers, or get new leads with Inbound Marketing, the opportunity is there and very fresh for those companies that come out in front.
However, different the implementation of projects like administrative, financial or industrial ones, for projects related to sales force you need first incorporate methods and values that will give all the support necessary for the completed success.
In my standpoint, this is a major challenge for us, IT professionals.
Do you have another standpoint? Share with us!
Flavio I. Callegari
