A shared CRM is only the start of alignment

A customer shouldn't have to explain their requirements again every time they speak to someone new in your business. Yet that can happen even when Marketing and Sales use the same CRM. The details may have been recorded somewhere, but the person handling the next conversation can't easily find them.

Imagine a company enquiring about serviced office space for 20 people. Marketing knows which campaign generated the enquiry. Through subsequent conversations, Sales learns that the move is tied to a lease expiry, that the deadline is firm and that another director will need to approve the decision.

Marketing needs to understand whether its campaign is attracting companies whose requirements the operator can meet. Sales needs to establish whether the available space suits this company and what has to happen for the deal to progress. If the company signs, the team managing the building will need the agreed move-in arrangements and any service commitments made along the way.

Each team has a different job to do with that information. It makes sense for Marketing to review enquiries by campaign and for Sales to see the next action against each opportunity. Those views should draw on the same customer record, so important details survive the move between teams.

If the move-in deadline stays in an email, a colleague taking over the enquiry could propose space that won't be ready in time. The CRM might still show a promising opportunity. The customer sees a business that has overlooked an essential part of their requirement.

That has a commercial cost. Time is being spent on an option the customer can't use, and a potentially suitable enquiry could be lost. Putting more information on a dashboard will only help if the relevant detail reaches the person making the next decision.

A colleague who knows the account well might spot the gap and fix it with a quick phone call. That may well save the immediate situation, but it leaves the next handoff dependent on somebody remembering the detail. Then there’s situations where someone is covering for a colleague on leave. That’s where it becomes harder than it needs to be.

A shared status can leave room for misunderstanding. Marketing might mark an enquiry as 'qualified' because the company fits the target audience. Sales might read that status as confirmation that the budget and timing have been checked. Agreeing what must be known before an enquiry is passed on gives that status a clear meaning, so the next person knows what they can rely on.

So, how do you do this?

Well, I'd start with one recent handoff that caused confusion. Find out what the next person needed to know, whether it had been recorded and why it didn't reach them. Then agree where that detail belongs and who keeps it current. For the office operator, that might mean making the required move-in date visible when an enquiry is assigned, with the salesperson responsible for updating it after a conversation.

The useful test is whether the next enquiry moves through with less chasing and fewer repeated questions. That gives the team something concrete to improve in its existing CRM. As other gaps become clear, it can decide whether better views or connections between systems would help.

Customers shouldn't have to compensate for the way a business divides its work between departments. The next person speaking to them should be able to pick up the conversation where their colleague left it.

The discussion of shared customer information and different team views was informed by Adam White's Why the Customer 360 Never Sticks.