By Dave Stein, CEO & Founder, ES Research Group
CRM is not a sales methodology. CRM is not a panacea for all sales-related problems. And in too many cases, CRM does not help people sell more effectively, and that's why it's resisted.
At the present time, my firm is auditing the sales capability of a number of companies. Without exception, CRM is an issue--even sales leaders don’t initially see it. What one client company told us is typical. "Our salespeople use Salesforce.com to input their pipeline data right before pipeline reviews. That's the only time they touch it."
ESR had requested a fair amount of information about critical sales opportunities from this company as part of our audit. The VP of Sales Operations told us that he had to call individual sales reps on the phone so they could provide him with what we were looking for. Basic information was not to be found in their CRM database.
Is Salesforce.com capable of storing that information? Sure. In fact, the fields that should contain that data were added as part of this company's implementation. But the data wasn't there because the salespeople hadn't been motivated, cajoled, threatened or rewarded for inputting it.
But that's not the answer. The real reason that data wasn't stored is because that company's implementation of Salesforce.com wasn't focused on the salesperson. Salesforce.com to that company is simply a reporting tool for management. It isn’t even used by customer service or account executives. Since there is no value for the sales rep, compliance across the organization is minimal.
If that's also the case in your company, what should you do? In general terms, reorient yourself to a different application of your CRM tool. Can you redeploy it so it transfers knowledge to the rep, provides them with guidance, offers them a view into the future, suggests to them trends based upon historical data, and helps them more effectively and efficiently manage their workflow so they win more business?
Winning more business should be the real value of CRM for your sales. If it isn’t, don’t expect them to embrace it.
*Read more on CRM on ManageSmarter.com.
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