It is no secret that many companies have invested millions in CRM systems and not obtained the value they were seeking. They invest time, money and energy, but they battle to quantify the impact on the bottom line, especially when it comes to enhanced sales.
This is one of the reasons for companies' disillusionment with CRM. These systems are not cheap, but companies battle to correlate their investment with a concomitant return in value.
They are struggling to resolve their sales challenges with CRM because they are trying to drive a square peg into a round hole, and these two have never equated. By and large, customers expect CRM to solve sales, when CRM will primarily give them a database and view of their relationship with their customers, based on the past.
In other words, they are in review or historic mode, or looking backwards, when sales is about looking forward at the same time and managing probabilities. This is synoptic, rather than review.
There is no active financial value in review information: all active financial value resides in the ability to predict, rather than review, or in the ability to predict what will happen.
So, in this regard, it has to be asked what value CRM offers to a salesperson.
Missing pieces
To resolve this, it must be acknowledged that there are components missing in the average CRM system. The CRM portion is needed, as history can be used as one of the components to guide the future, but a view of the future needs to be based on qualified information, using the current and historic view, and this requires a qualification process.
By way of illustration, companies are also using business intelligence to look at what happened, rather than what might and should happen. CRM systems, and business intelligence, are the equivalent of driving while only looking in the rear view mirror.
Sixty percent of the success in sales lies in planning.
Geoff Garrett is CEO of TSPI.
By relying on marketing or customer services as the entry point of information, companies are again obtaining information after the event. To bear this out, it is of no value that the CEO becomes involved in the deal after it has closed. Input of information needs to be at the right source as and when it is happening. The source of information, therefore, needs to be the salesperson. And to motivate the salesperson to use the system, it needs to help them with prospecting and add value.
Educated guess
On average, only 20% to 30% of salespeople forecast accurately. One of the keys to improving sales is to apply a qualitative sales process to improve accuracy in forecasting and quality of selling. This means they need a process for qualification.
To ensure the quality is maintained and the input of information is controlled, it is key that the sales qualification process is built into the tool and salespeople are trained with regard to the sales process. This ensures quality of information and forecasting.
Most CRM systems can handle simple sales for forecasting and input, such as basic widget selling. When an organisation moves above widget selling into more complex and high-value areas, such as services, solutions with product and services, and annuity contracts, sales become more complex. Over and above the qualification of stage in sale, the qualification time and when revenue will occur over time, need to enter the fray.
Sixty percent of the success in sales lies in planning. Can I make the budget with the team I have? Few companies, in my experience, have a solid method or tool for doing sales planning. They tend to simply take a budget, do some analysis and projection, and assign it to the sales team. Seldom can they test capacity of the sales team and allocation for types of sales.
Therefore, a key component to sales force automation is to include sales planning.
To achieve success in sales force automation, the right tool is needed (CRM and sales), along with a change in management through consulting and coaching and training. Together, they enable the impact and return. However, this is not a silver bullet and requires top-down commitment to the change to make it a success.
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