In my past blog articles I’ve defined what I believe CRM entails and why companies need this department. The business landscape is changing a rapid pace these days and it’s important to understand what skills are required to be the an expert at CRM.

 To be the ultimate CRM person, one has to posses many qualities and be functionally cross-trained in many of the following areas:
• Customer Service

• Sales

• Marketing (Content, Digital & Social)

• Analytics

• Project Management

• Programming

• Story Telling

Customer Service

– This is a key touch-point in the customer journey.

– Understanding customer pain points or wow factors helps improve acquisition and retention efforts.

– Learn behavior and how to put the customer at the forefront of your work.

 Sales

– Knowing how “Call-To-Actions” work and getting into the drivers of conversion.

– Learning customer emotions helps in crafting talk tracks improving sales.

– Gaining comfort in this area will help in driving acquisition and retention.

Marketing

– The 4’s are obvious here – Product, Place, Price and Promotion.

– Be involved in the creative process to learn how analytics and the 4 P’s come to life in messaging.

– Digital and Social can deliver tons more impressions and content than traditional Retail stores.

Analytics

– Drives decision making by systematic number crunching on sales & marketing activity.

– Reports, Pivot Tables, Charts, Dashboards & Info-Graphs build data patterns & crystallize thoughts.

– Modeling will help with driving predictive marketing and what-if scenarios.

Project Management

– Be prepared for new platforms, system integrations and business intelligence endeavors with IT.

Programming

– It helps to know SQL, R or Python when working with Big Data.

Story Telling

– A good story will bring everything to life and help less technical folks understand your work.

When well versed in the above areas you will become the “Guru” able to develop segmentation and scoring systems, programmatic marketing programs, contact strategy, optimization plans and help improve overall marketing systems & operations leading to improved return on dollars invested.