CRM - March 2008 - (Page 40)

SELLING CRM TO SALES for years: Executives foolishly believe the technology will magically solve organizational problems, or salespeople mistakenly see the tools as primarily benefiting executive-level micromanagement. a process and workflow enabler.” Once that wisdom became common, CRM sales dropped off as potential customers learned to evaluate their needs and build the technology into the organization. Still, CRM takes more than mere alignment with processes you already have in place—Dickie calls it an enabler for a reason. The goal is to enable the right things, and you can’t sell into an organization unless you make a case that gets to the heart of its needs. “Executive-level sales decision-makers should know CRM can be a tool for motivation, to empower productivity for reps underneath them, and to maximize repeat business,” says C. Sean Rollings, vice president of products and industries marketing for ondemand business software provider NetSuite. That includes customer service capabilities and the ability to emphasize the “relationship” part of CRM.“Tools for service management influence lifetime customer value” by maintaining the conversation after the deal is done, he adds. the company to serious legal and financial problems. “Salespeople are volunteers— they choose how they do their jobs, and if they’re making their percentage of the quota, they want you to leave them alone.” But selling is really a team sport. Actually, an army might be a better analogy: Salespeople (soldiers) work singly and in teams (platoons) accomplishing directives set by managers (noncommissioned officers) on orders from executives (officers) in order to meet the goals of the C-suite (generals). Whether you buy the military metaphor or not, sales operations must fit with corporate management’s goals.“The CSO [chief sales officer] is never the sole decision-maker,”Dickie says.“For CRM to succeed it must be cross-functional,” and so must the buying process. According to Harris Fogel, president of handheld-applications provider O4 Corporation, a major misstep is having non-sales decision-makers buy a solution for sales. The technology, he says,“has got to meet the needs of the organization, and that means the sales organization.” A system imposed from on high will never stick, even if it’s otherwise the right solution enabling good processes. On the other hand, Fogel continues, “[if] sales is involved in process-mapping and defining needs, it will have a vested interest.” Still, the top sales executive is likely to be one of the biggest hurdles, especially one who’s not aware of what CRM can do for the sales team. “The buyer should know what he wants, whether it’s an order-entry system that works through handheld devices for field sales reps, or just something that gets presales people off the phone in 10 minutes or less,” Fogel says. “Overall strategy, user needs, and supporting organizational needs— usually the IT department—should work hand-in-hand.” This is true no matter the size of the customer, though the velocity will vary. “Typically you go through the same steps, small or large,” he adds. “It’s just faster in a smaller organization, as one person takes the place of many.” According to Rollings, the challenge is showing the sales team the benefits of not having information in isolation. Yes, Virginia, silos still exist. “In larger organizawww.destinationCRM.com ORGANIZATIONAL The first issue is selling into the organization itself. Once upon a time, this wasn’t too difficult—CRM used to be heralded as the latest miracle technology that would invigorate flagging sales, sharpen marketing acumen, provide customer service that felt like a warm hug, and deliver actionable operational data to executives. Unfortunately for early CRM vendors (and their customers), the reality was far from the hype. “If you throw tech at lousy processes, you don’t get anywhere,” says Jim Dickie, managing partner of CSO Insights. “To quote [technologist and author] Jessica Keyes, ‘Technology does not beget competitive advantage any more than paint and a canvas beget a Van Gogh.’ ” Salespeople choose how they do their jobs. If they’re making their percentage of the quota, they want you to leave them alone. Selling CRM into a sales organization really means selling into the company as a whole. While it’s fair to say that selling products or services is the reason businesses exist in the first place, the selling function doesn’t exist in a vacuum. “Sales groups often have different processes than the rest of the organization, and need a different mindset,” Dickie says. One of the reasons for this is that salespeople typically have more latitude in how they accomplish their mission. “Accounting is indentured servitude—they must do what they do using the company’s system,” simply because, if they didn’t, they could expose Nowhere was there more emphasis on CRM’s potential value than in the sales department. “Ten years ago, CRM was the promise of technology that will deliver new productivity to the sales force,” recalls Peter Callaghan, chief executive officer of Maximizer Software. “We bought into the promise without thinking of how to use the tools we got.” In Dickie’s experience, one indicator of how well a business has used CRM technology is how it describes what was accomplished: “Failed implementations start with ‘We installed CRM.’ Successful ones say ‘We solved a problem.’ CRM is 40 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MARCH 2008 CRM http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - March 2008

CRM - March 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Re-shoring Contact Centers NetSuite’s Sweet Ride Takes Another Turn SaaS X.0? destinationCRM Dashboard Retailers Dream Big Detroit: Driven to Distraction Required Reading The Markets Within the Masses In Search of... Selling CRM to Your Sales Force Quixtar’s Quick Fix Travelocity’s New Traveling Companion Chasing Down First-Call Resolution Governing Better Marketing Secret of My Success Re: Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - March 2008

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