Competitor Monitoring in CRM 2011

There’s an old proverb that says:

 “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”

That’s never more true than in business. The whole ethos of CRM is that of making, maintaining and keeping relationships with your customers – ‘friends’. What about your ‘enemies’ though? – Your competitors. Do you aim to keep them close?

In a perfect business world you would win every sale, contract or project. We are not in a perfect business world, so at times we may lose business, and although we may lose it because the potential customer decides not to buy at all, for the most part we may lose it to a competitor. Being able to tract that information and learn from it is vital.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you the ability to not only record information on your competitors, but then track lost Opportunities against them:

I have to say it’s a part of CRM that in demos, I have tended to mention but gloss over.

So why is recording our losses and our competitors just as important than recording our wins? Simply put, it will give us the ability to track lost opportunities, and more importantly, why we lost it.

For example if we had a product range that we constantly lost sales to, and specifically lost it to a competitor solely on price, that tells us a lot. Should we reduce our price? How are they able to sell cheaper?

What if we lost it for another reason? Is it our service, our after sales care, is it based on location?

Keeping tabs on our competitors, and in particular what we lose to them, is as important as recording our wins, so take this part of CRM seriously and take the time to use it.