Putting the customer back in focus
A CRM blog by Erik van Geest

Those of us who have been working in the CRM arena for a while get a bit tunnel-visioned, I must admit. We talk, eat, and dream CRM to try to achieve that ultimate goal of complete customer satisfaction and everything that goes with it.

It’s easy to forget that of course the market, industry and type of business you are in determines just how influential your customer relationship really is and what the ideal composition of it should be.

As a hobby, I have run a Christmas tree plantation for some 11 years now. I decided I would start a business selling a product I knew nothing about, in a market equally unfamiliar. I met hands on with challenges such as finding a field, baby trees, a planting machine, putting up a fence to keep the baby trees safe from rabbits. They were tough challenges, as I had to build up everything from scratch, including a production/source network.

Now the standard ‘old fashioned’ christmas tree takes about 5-7 years to reach a height of 5-7 feet tall, about a foot a year. This means that from year 1, I had 5 years to build my sales network. The first few years or so, I was busy doing other things, earning money as an IT contractor, building and implementing CRM infrastructures. Life took over and my trees had to take a backseat.

I had been telling myself that it would be years before I was going to sell my trees, so which customer would be interested in me now? Big mistake.

Once I did have time available, I became a member of the British Christmas Tree grower’s association and realised that the larger part of the Christmas tree market is based on relationships, trust, quality and reputation. I call it ‘relationworshipping’, and have come to respect this very much.

A very close-knit group meets regularly, exchanges experiences, knowledge and ideas, and watches the trees grow. Professionals who exchange ideas on species, shearing, pest-control, netting, transport and marketing.

And mind you, all this relationship building is done between January and October. November and December are too busy of course as it’s the peak of the season. The Christmas tree market sales cycle is indeed extremely seasonal.

I learned the hard way. I never quite understood – until it was almost too late – that suppliers and customers in this market, at least those who trade more than 100 trees a year, shape their purchasing decisions throughout the year, to be completely ready to place the orders when the time is right. Start selling your trees as a newcomer without any sales network in October and you will not be taken seriously.

Now don’t get me wrong, in one of my previous posts, I introduced the concept of ‘Relationskipping’ – quite the opposite of what I am presenting here, I know.

It goes to show that CRM is not always as clear-cut as it seems. Factors such as whether you are operating in a B2C (Business-to-customer) or B2B (Business-to-Business) market, what product or service you are selling and to whom, seasonality and market history play an important role.

But without a doubt, finding the balance between ‘relationskipping’ and ‘relationworshipping’ – knowing how much effort to put into managing the customer relationship – is the ultimate challenge companies face in the CRM arena.

As it turns out, I fortunately understood just in time my company was operating in a very seasonally shaped, B2B, ‘no-nonsense’ compact market where everybody knows everybody.

We started to professionally manage our customer relations. We repositioned our trees to reflect a unique competitive advantage, and we hired an experienced marketeer to promote our trees, and to keep track of the market and the relationship with our existing and potential customers. We implemented a mini customer database to keep track of everything.

In one year, we quadrupled our turnover and earned back most of the original startup investment.

With a few bucks extra to pay for some seasonal decorations and Christmas lights.