How to create a B2B CRM strategy for your cannabis business

Customer relationship management (CRM) is essential to business success today for one very simple reason. Customers expect companies to know who they are, understand their wants and needs, personalize communications and create experiences just for them.

Your cannabis or cannabis-related business cannot meet or exceed customer expectations if you don’t know who they are and deliver what they want at the right time. Luckily, a solid CRM strategy combined with CRM software can help you meet your customers’ needs across the entire customer lifecycle – from prospect to loyal customer and outspoken brand ambassador.

The secret to developing a working CRM strategy

Today’s consumers (both B2B and B2C) do not tolerate irrelevant marketing communications or sales leads. To create a CRM strategy for your cannabis business or side business, you need to put the customer above everything else.

You can do this by changing the way you think about customer relationships and communication from transaction-centric (a sales-centric approach) or brand-centric (a product/service/brand/business-centric approach) to customer-centric (a prospect/customer-centric approach).

In the customer-centric model, the customer relationship requires much more ongoing management. One-off marketing tactics and one-off sales outreach tactics are ineffective when customers expect you to know who they are and what they want. This means that generic communications no longer work in a world where customers expect (and demand) personalized communications and branded experiences. In fact, anything generic will send you straight to a competitor who will take the time to get to know you and meet your expectations.

Customer relationship management is not just CRM software

There is a very important foundation for your CRM investments and efforts to achieve positive results for your cannabis business or cannabis-related business that you must understand. CRM is not just a CRM software tool. CRM encompasses the entire philosophy of putting your customers first and providing communications and experiences that meet them where they are along the buyer’s journey.

Therefore, investing in a CRM software platform is only one piece of the puzzle. You also need to change how you think about customer relationships, and you need to understand the customer journey and how it aligns with your marketing, sales, and customer service experiences.

The CRM software you use will help you streamline tasks, save time and money, reduce redundancies, improve collaboration, and more so you can effectively implement a plan to achieve your CRM goals. However, before a CRM tool can help your business, you first need the CRM buy-in leadership, customer-centric trained staff, and a CRM strategy. Think about the strategy before you implement it. CRM software supports implementation and helps you track results, but CRM isn’t everything.

5 steps to creating a B2B CRM strategy

A CRM strategy will help your business improve customer experience, increase sales, reduce churn, improve team collaboration, save time and money, track prospects and customers, and more. Below are the key steps to creating your B2B CRM strategy.

1. Assess your readiness and define your CRM goals

Are you and your employees ready to shift to the customer-centric thinking required to get the best returns on a CRM investment that includes time, training, execution, software and more? If not, you need to prepare for this necessary shift in thinking before you can develop a CRM strategy. Education is key, so before you do anything else, do your research and educate your team on the importance of a customer-centric approach with today’s B2B buyers.

When you’re ready to prioritize customers, it’s time to define your CRM goals. Remember that these goals are not about your CRM software. It’s about the results your business will achieve when your business manages customer relationships effectively (CRM software is just a tool to help you with that).

Therefore, consider goals related to closed sales, more qualified leads, more repeat purchases, fewer customer service calls, increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and so on. Identify realistically achievable metrics and timelines for each of these goals (e.g., 20% more sales-qualified leads from email marketing campaigns by December 31st).

2. Define your target group(s) and their customer journey(s)

If you haven’t already created buyer personas for your ideal customer profile and other key audiences, now is the time to create them. You can’t build strong relationships with customers and deliver personalized communications and experiences – the kind they want and expect from your business – if you don’t know who they are. You can even waste time with unqualified leads if you don’t identify your target audience(s) in advance.

Understanding who is likely to buy from you and why is critical to customer-centric thinking. If you haven’t developed buyer personas yet, start by studying the data you currently have about your customers and prospects. This includes demographic and behavioral data (e.g. what email campaigns they opened, what products they bought or viewed on your website, etc.). You can also do market research and ask your audience questions to learn more about who they are and what they want or need.

Your work doesn’t end with developing your buyer personas. You also need to map the customer journey so you can always deliver the most customized and relevant communications and experiences. This information also determines who is accountable for a lead or customer throughout the customer lifecycle, allowing each team (i.e., marketing, sales, and customer service) to review their communications and tactics to ensure they are being as successful as possible.

3. Define roles and processes

When does an unqualified lead become a qualified marketing lead? When does a marketing qualified lead become a sales qualified lead? What determines whether a prospect is a Sales Qualified Lead or not? These are just some of the questions you need to answer to define the roles and processes required to achieve your CRM goals.

Roles and responsibilities should be defined to reduce redundancies and make the right people accountable for leads and customers throughout the customer life cycle (e.g. pre-sales, sales, post-sales). Processes should be written in such a way that everyone is on the same page and CRM plans can be executed without questions or challenges.

It’s also important to educate team members about customer-centric thinking and the philosophy of CRM so they understand why it’s important to the business and how it will help prospects, customers, and themselves. Without employee buy-in, they won’t commit to CRM, and your organization’s efforts to manage relationships to drive better business outcomes will fail.

4. Identify key performance indicators to measure success

Based on the goals you have set for your CRM strategy, what metrics are required to evaluate your success in achieving those goals? By defining roles and processes in step 3, you can map performance metrics to the right team members and appropriate goals.

For example, goals and metrics could relate to sales, customer retention, revenue, profits, customer satisfaction, and more. Tracking things like email marketing campaign open and click rates, customer service requests, Net Promoter Score (NPS), closed sales, and sale deal values ​​can help you quantify the success of your CRM strategy and investments.

5. Implement CRM software and train the team to work together

CRM software makes the entire process of managing customer relationships easier, less time-consuming, and less expensive by streamlining processes, reducing duplication of effort, improving team collaboration, and centralizing data, including prospect/customer histories.

For example, when you integrate email marketing and CRM, your team saves time and has access to all the data needed for marketing, sales, and support in one central location, rather than in separate silos. When marketing and sales teams work together, results improve.

Key takeaways for building a B2B CRM strategy for your cannabis business

There are so many benefits of CRM for companies working in and with the cannabis industry, but you need to develop a comprehensive B2B CRM strategy to get the best results from your efforts and investments. Follow the steps above to create your CRM strategy and ensure everyone on your team is committed to a customer-centric approach throughout the customer lifecycle.

Ready to get started on a CRM strategy for your business? The Cannabiz Media License Database is the CRM software for connecting to verified cannabis and hemp license holders in the US, Canada and international markets. Schedule a demo and see how it can help you achieve your business goals.