Read this paper to gain insight
“How a hybrid closed-loop “Outside-In and Inside-out” thinking – will help businesses build a sustainable CRM!
1. Outside-in CRM
A customer-centric perspective seeking to improve the customer journey, customer experience, and customer delivery is Outside-in CRM. Outside-in culture focuses on the Customer-First approach.
Few key highlights of an Outside-In culture are:
- Customers participate in the mapping of their sales process into a new product or service
- Branding, promotions, marketing are an alignment with their products & services partners – these are all driven by the needs of the customers
- Field salespeople apply to pull strategy more than push – wherein, they create the right solutions/packages for the customer by aligning with the customer (products, pricing, routes, etc.)
- Customer service & support are a part of the solution which leads to overall CX and journey improvement
- Performance KPIs and drivers are linked to customers goals, strategies, targets, and roadmaps
- Customers have mechanisms to provide feedback in real-time and on the go.
2. Inside-out CRM
A business, operations, employee-centric perspective; designed to improve overall business & field sales efficiencies is Inside-out CRM. Inside-out culture focuses on the Business/Operations-First approach.
Few key highlights of an Inside-Out culture are:
- Business and sales teams assume products the customer wants, price points, promos customer will need to run, etc.
- Field salespeople apply push strategy more than pull – wherein, they pitch the products, pricing, routes, etc. to the customer by themselves
- There are different field sales working in silos to provide solutions and services to customers basis the business efficiency only. There may or may not be dedicated reps assigned to customers to deliver CX
- Performance KPIs are linked to business goals, operational sales targets, and the business roadmaps
- Customer service & support are added costs to the customer
- Customers may or may not have mechanisms to provide feedback in real-time and on the go. Usually, feedback from customers is taken monthly/quarterly/annually, but not real-time.
Looking at both the approaches above, it becomes crucial for businesses to think of what will fit best to them and they then apply either strategy. If businesses go only with “Outside-in” approach, businesses will look at what customer wants, where are the growth markets, what are customer trends and how we can serve needs better. Companies may miss out looking at the limitations of what one has in its business, changes in technologies, alignment of field sales to markets, etc. If businesses go only with the “Inside-out” approach, businesses will look at what they have got in terms of core competencies, like field sales, talent, product, distribution network, technology, etc. and how these can be leveraged. They may often overlook the customer needs, where are the markets, customer instinct, instant customer feedback, etc.
All too often, we see businesses getting into trouble due to minimal or no focus on one of the above approaches, and this may often lead them to fix problems arising on the less focused approach.
It becomes imperative for businesses to have both inside-out and outside-in focus, which will help them run a smooth CRM. These approaches need to go hand-in-hand to deliver better outcomes, reduce inefficiencies, improve the overall journey and customer experience. There needs to be a closed-loop methodology in place for driving the approaches.
What Salesforce has to say…
“Outside-In CX Strategy Needs Inside-Out CRM Alignment: Only 84% of companies aspire good CX, yet only 20% succeed. Failure of “Inside-out” CRM alignment of CX ecosystem to “outside-in” strategy magnifies problems and wastes millions. Whereas CX leaders differentiate with powerful outside-in strategies based on revenue predictive outcomes to transform both culture and operations”.
We, at FieldMI, have developed an end-to-end Product portfolio on Field sales and CRM, wherein, we have used methodology for having a hybrid closed-loop outside-in and inside-out CRM alignment within the portfolio.
Following is a snapshot of our 9-pointer Outside-in & Inside-out CRM added in our FieldMI product portfolio.
Applying the above, we have helped our clients to improve their:
- Value-driven CRM strategy with the above methodology had User Adoption increased by 40%
- Improved Sales reps productivity by 30%
- Improved deal close rates by 50%
- Improved customer retention ratio by 15%
Connect with FieldMI to future-proof your seamless hybrid closed-loop Outside-In & Inside-out CRM.
Schedule a 30-minute demo today! Write to us at sales@fieldmi.com or call on +91 7722011669
Check out our customer Case Study here – “https://fieldmi.com/case-study/ “