CRM - January 2009 - (Page 42)

WHAT ABOUT MANAGEMENT? We’ve been talking about these tools and tactics in the context of the individual salesperson, but all that focus on individual productivity may obscure the bigger picture: the importance of tech tools at the management level. “Sales 2.0 has been about sales reps, but what about sales managers?” asks Jim Dickie, a partner with CRM consulting firm CSO Insights. “If it’s a 2.0 staff and a 1.0 manager, guess what—you’re a 1.0 team.” Just as executive buy-in is crucial for any CRM implementation, managerial support is necessary to take individual successes and make them enterprisewide—in fact, all of these tools work better with the active participation of the manager. “If you think of sales data as tribal wisdom, the manager is an elder, an expert,” Dickie says. When the most experienced person on the team—the manager—is engaging in discussions about how to succeed, and what tools are available for use, agents should be listening. When the manager shares high-level business information gleaned from analytics, is available as a resource or backstop on sales calls, and is always just one instant message away from a conversation, there’s the possibility of sales magic. “Find what things you’re doing that have an enabling technology— and use it,” says David van Toor, senior vice president and general manager for Sage CRM solutions North America. “Managers should forget about ‘compliance’ [or] ‘enforced adoption of CRM.’ Give them a product they can’t live without, and they’ll use it.” Not every tool is right for every situation, though, so the manager must know the needs of the staff. “You’ll always have adoption issues, so you must work to mitigate them,” says James Wong, cofounder and chief executive officer of Avidian. “Work the way your people work.” In the end, adding smart technologies to the sales team may require a big change, but that’s nothing to fear, provided there’s a payoff. “Salespeople really aren’t any more resistant to change than anybody else,” Dickie says. “If Ed McMahon shows up at the door with a prize check in hand, it’s change—but [we] don’t resist it. We resist change without value.” THE SOCIAL re you using collaboration tools? You should be—there are few better ways to energize CRM than to pool an entire team’s knowledge, resources, and insight. Whether via Web conferencing, social networking, or other tools, social computing is an effective way to leverage relationships. “‘How do I involve other people in my call?’ is the question to ask,” Dickie says. Involving others means breaking down walls, a lesson that Dickie recalls being critical to a conglomerate that rolled seven insurance companies into one. “Each rep [could] sell all seven lines of insurance, but kept selling only the line he knew,” he says. No surprise there: Salespeople are always going to sell what’s easy. Make it easy for them to work together across specialties and they’ll all sell more. The solution for that insurance firm, he says, was to use Web conferencing to train personnel to sell the unfamiliar products. Nothing could be simpler, he says. “All you have to do is schedule the call.” Purpose-built collaboration tools, such as Cisco Systems’ WebEx or GoToMeeting from Citrix, have proved their worth already, but social networking technologies are only now beginning to find a foothold in the business world. LinkedIn is popular with businesspeople of all stripes, and companies are finding there’s also a place for consumer-friendly services such as Twitter, Facebook, and others. A consumer-tech pedigree can make some technology managers nervous—especially when the staff is hooked on broadcasting tweets to the known universe—but a little moderation goes a long way. Properly deployed, social networking tools can actually save time, not waste it—and, as Sage’s van Toor says, “Time is the most valuable asset a salesperson has.” (For more on the penetration of consumer technology into the enterprise, see “The Google-ization of CRM,” page 22.) An asset as valuable as that needs to be allocated wisely. “Be 42 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2009 social careful where you spend your time on social networking; [people] have relationships in many different places,” van Toor says. “Think about the wisdom of separating business and personal personae. The Internet is blurring the lines for us on this whether we want it or not, though.” Best of all, van Toor adds, because so many of the socialnetworking tools are usable via handheld as well as computer, they can be used to stay in touch while on the go. “Mobility is one of the most overlooked uses [of social networking],” he says, adding that social-networking widgets and other tools on the sales desktop can personalize the way you work—and many of these can sync with mobile devices. But there’s more to it than merely maintaining access to contact information.“Data from the [social] network can help to qualify the likelihood of a deal,” Rothschild says. “See if the prospect or somebody else in the association has a relationship with your competitors,” he suggests, and you may get an idea of what you’re up against. He also advises tapping into social networks to keep tabs on your own workings: “Be aware of negative or positive comments about your products—especially from your customers or prospects.” Contact Senior Editor Marshall Lager at mlager@destinationCRM.com. www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - January 2009

CRM - January 2009 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Shots Heard ’Round the World 30,000-Foot Views Of the Cloud Stuffing the Ballot Box— With Complaints The Marketing Line for ’09 CRM on Twitter Technology Helps Insurance Weather the Storm Required Reading The Google-ization of CRM The Feedback Funnel Email: What’s Inside? Shake Your Moneymakers Lead Sweet Lead Incentives at the Speed of Lightpath Sales Contentment for Content Management A Worthwhile Excursion Into Call Recording Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - January 2009

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