Why great sales people shouldn’t be bothered with a CRM
Posted by: Michel Chiasson on: March 26, 2009
I have been there. I have managed it, oh so many times. The expectation. The cost that the company paid to have a CRM only to find that not all on the sales team want to spend time populating the information. Who is the key contact, what sales cycle is in process ok. What are the notes from the call you just made? What did the client say? What are the decision making criterias? Who else do we compete against? I have pushed and pushed again, to no avail. I have even worked for a company that had made the statement – “if it is not in the CRM, it does not exist”! BULL. It does, but you as a manager have a job to do.
That job is to recognize that your top producers have recognized a fact – Money producing activities generate results. Admin time entering data, not so much. It works for the manager to cover his/her ***….but the value to the GREAT rep, ZILCH – NADA – A BIG DOUGHNUT. I have figured this much which I will try to illustrate.
BASED ON REVENUE GENERATED BY REP
So here it is. Who do you want? What do you want your top producer to focus on – generating results or typing so that you look smart in front of your manager? I will take the former. I have seen it.
The rep that can’t generate revenue will hide by making sure that everyone can see how busy they are….how busy typing that is. The reality is – it goes back to one of my older posts…..do you want a rep that is fixing a hole in the roof when it rains…or one that is really busy painting the basement….
Have another approach. There is another approach. I will talk about it in future posts. Limit the involvment your sales team has with your CRM, forget what Siebel, Oracle(two of the same I know) or Saleforce.com says. Let your top reps focus on revenue generating activities, and you, as a manager, focus on either training the rest or weeding them out. Feedback respected, will be posted and welcomed!
10 Responses to "Why great sales people shouldn’t be bothered with a CRM"
Your post highlights poor CRM deployment and bad management more than why CRM’s don’t work for top producers. Good CRM deployments give back to front line users. They bring true value to the day to day process of selling. A CRM should feel natural.
If all a CRM has to show for itself are reports on calls and appointments made than it is horrible. Worse yet is the company that drools over this data and rates people on wasted time. A good CRM deployment makes the job of selling easier for sales people.
For real success a CRM should allow simple proposal creation in less than 5 minutes. It should give clear vision to sales and support for instant access to referrals and technical support. In essence it should become a Top Producers number one sales assistant. This type of deployment is not that hard to achieve.
I’m a big believer in the value of any CRM. I’m also a big believer in the Top Producers. The last thing any CRM needs to do is get in the way of the prize, new customers!
Chris,
Thanks for your feedback. As a partner of a CRM company, your feedback albeit predictable, has its merit. We were selling software solutions ranging in price from 100,000$ to 1 Million dollars. If you think that Salesforce.com could generate that proposal in 5 minutes, and even better, that we would use it, after being generated automatically by the system, there is a lack in management oversight. Every situation should be looked at as if through a prism, and when all scenarios have been evaluated, a specific approach will / should be chosen. Thinking that the CRM is the answer to all evils is not the right answer. Blaming management for productivity of sales stars going down because they are bogged down by administrative duties is also not the answer. It shows lack of creativity. By vertical, by coverage approach, by price point, by size of sales force, by solution or product sold, by leverage level of the sales force versus partners, you can triangulate this model from many angles only to find that no 2 situations are alike. And “YOU NEED A CRM” is not always the answer. CRM is for management(that is the M in the acronym)…not sales acceleration. I agree with you that CRM should allow simple proposal creation in less than 5 minutes, that it should support sales and support for instant access to referrals. All these traits however, are traits that are not found in top producers. The are the killers, the go getters, and those activities should be left to the admin staff.
Since CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, I have never seen the automated version as a tool for driving new business. Salesperson, prospect, and activity are missing words. I do see automated CRM as a fantastic advancement over the old paper-based sales reports, easily making available to the organization that most important of tools, customer information. I am a fan of user-friendly CRM software, such as NetSuite, to get that job done.
To drive new business by letting the tigers run, I favor sales cycle project management software for cycles longer than 5 days that gives hunters a map while at the same time giving management real-time status information. This allows efficient management by the salesperson and the manager and shortens sales cycles which are otherwise unnecessarily too long. I have also found that great sales cycle management drives down the frustration factor for the salesperson resulting in reduced staff turnover.
Use CRM to help the organization keep customers, not to drive new business. New customers cost 6 times more than current customers repeating. Dissatisfied customers tell an average of 20 other people about their experiences with you. Losing a customer is huge.
Ernie,
Thanks for stopping by. I agree with your position, to let what you call the tigers run with the sales cycle management process. I always felt that somehow, the CRM was a great way to justify a lack of management skills on the sales side and to blame the CRM for not having all the info required, was a great way to pass the buck to the rep. High performers can’t get caught with the daily requirements of maintaining all the info that is needed in the crm. It is a great tool for the farmers and admin/support/service to support the client however.
Thanks again for your insight!
Hi Folks,
A small but pertinent comment if I may. It is obvious from the email thread that the focus has been on CRM=Sales Process and Functionality. This is where I strongly believe the whole problem you are discussing lies in. CRM is not Sales. It is so much more. CRM has to be seen to have a measure of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service before anyting comes of it. Your Relationship is not just how you are selling to Prospects.
An example :
You are on your way to meet one of your most valued key clients. You have been workign on your own new sale with this contact for a number of months. You are meeting for lunch and you are late. You open your PDA, login into CRM, find his number and dial. Let him you are a few minutes late but you have good news.
The good news is that you looked at his COMPLETE account details and tracking history. You can see that he has has three customer support issues with you which has gone red light and you now realise he might be meeting you to chew your ear off. You check the communications on these issues and realise that your Support team actually has everything in hand and you print off the reports of these issues before you left the office.
You also know that he has recieved the new marketing brochure on your latest prodyct line from your mrkt department and a colleague of his already replied favourably on this so you have decided to bring the latest demo pack with you to pass onto his colleague while at lunch.
You also know that one your sales colleagues are already in negotations with a different departmet of the client on a totally seperate product and you make a mental note of this and not to offer it or mention prices or otherwise – this is so as not to step on your colleagues toes in his/process.
As you greet your client, you do not launch into your pitch on your own sale but firsh hand over the detail of the support issues ad how they have been addressed, pass on the demo pack for his colleague to see and mention how you are busy in other departments with other products. That that is covered and he looks a lot happier. Now you start to talk turkey about your own proposal for your own sale.
If you can tell me you can do all this without a centralised, transparent data system which show the complete relationship you have with your client, then I guess I’ve lost my point.
Hope you’ve found the view point somewhat useful.
Nice thread to get a chance to reply to.
Cheers
Fran
Fran,
thanks for stopping by. I hope my position doesn’t shock you too much. I agree with you – entirely. The scenario you are describing here, for the – let’s call him/her – “global account manager” (GAM) is a scenario where all the information about support, services and other rep dealing with other parts of the account entered the information. The global account owner you described, uses the CRM as a pull station, to get info / the pulse on what is happening. I don’t expect a GAM to go in and enter phone numbers, birthday dates, notes about the last can of pills that was delivered etc. For other “desk” jobs supporting a GAM role, let there be data entry. Let there be typing!!
My point is that for a GAM, an account leader, “the eagle” managing the account, there has to be a better, quicker way, to gather key information than today. And I posted that, because I have that solution.
As far as your scenario goes on how to leverage the 360 view of a customer, I am with you. Where I am not, is when companies for their heroes to do data entry because “it has to be in the crm”……Again, thanks for your visit and comment!
How about this for a nice story:
A board of directors is looking to guide their company into the future. They are making important strategy decisions based on their pipeline, and other information about the market.
They see that their pipeline is rather weak, and the market is tanking. Their reluctant decision is to reduce their workforce by 10%.
Our hero salesman does not enter any information into the CRM system (heaven forbid he has to do menial work). He is working on a very large account that could put the company on the map. The board has no idea that this is a possibility because the CRM system isn’t used properly.
When the deal comes through, the company can’t handle it because it is too much work for the current employees. They can’t hire and train new people quick enough, so eventually the client leaves in disgust.
The board made horrible decisions based on bad data because they weren’t using their system properly. Gone are the days of the salesman hero who works on his own.
In order to run a company properly, you need good forecasting. Good forecasting requires participation by EVERYONE.
hmm..ok – if indeed the deal that the hero salesman is working on is “very large and could put the company on the map”…my hero would have a junior person figure out the crm data entry and go back to strategic account management…so “junior”…or “admin”, which would be on the account team, will enter that data so the board can decide how to manage their pipeline properly….
1 | tboehm30
March 27, 2009 at 9:51 am
That can’t be true if you work as a team.
I am not a salesman, but I have worked with CRM for quite some time. It seems to me that if your business allows your salespeople to individually control the entire sales process, then your argument is absolutely true.
If, however, you want your salespeople to act as a team, to be able to cover for each other, to take over when someone goes on vacation or leaves, or you want to separate different parts of the sales process, then you need a sharing mechanism.
The CRM system allows their data to be shared. Maybe you are just afraid that if you share information about your clients, then someone will take over your responsibilities, and you’ll stop getting that commission. It’s up to management to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Michel Chiasson
March 27, 2009 at 11:07 am
Thanks Todd. Great feedback, and yes I agree with most. At that point however, the philosophical question is do you want your top producer to work in a team environment that would slow him / her down or is the “team” approach more of a farming job than a hunting job. As an example, one of my colleague was on holidays. I received an email with the potential follow ups because she managed her absence well with her clients. I actually had nothing to do with any of her clients. IT was not that there was scooping of accounts involved or that she felt threathened, but more that she had complete control of her selling process, therefore was able to plan accordingly. Again, great point on working at team level and sharing client information, I just wonder if this is where your top producer typically plays and generates his revenue.