The WIIFM Lesson
I was at lunch yesterday with a couple of former vendors of mine. Both are software and services providers.
The conversation turned to CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Among the three of us, no one could identify a successful CRM installation. And these guys have been around a long time.
You see, most CRM implementations have a fatal flaw. The entire system depends upon the salesperson entering the related account information, the forecast, the opportunities, the call reports.
And none of this activity actually helps THEM, sell anything. And that's a problem, because that's what you pay them to do.
All of this activity is generally done to provide management with "visibility" to what's going on. The marketing department uses the information to tweak marketing programs and measure the performance of lead generating programs. They get all excited about increasing share of wallet or penetration into an account. The cross-selling opportunities make them salivate.
But salespeople are not compensated to enter data. It's not what they do. They are relationship builders, investigators, probers, problem solvers. They aren't reporters.
They enjoy closing deals. It's what you pay them for.
The lesson here is, before implementing ANY new system, make sure you appreciate and understand the WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) factor. If you can't quickly articulate how an individual (or department) will benefit from the new system or process in a meaningful way, don't bother starting the project.
And for heaven's sake, make sure that your compensation plans support the project goals and aren't aligned against them.
Because it's the employee buy-in and process execution that will drive any benefits. Not the software.
So take a critical look at your CRM processes and find a way of getting the information into the system, without taking your salespeople off their customer's premises.
One idea a former CEO had was that salespeople should simply verbally report opportunities, progress on deals and trip reports etc to an assistant, via phone, as they were travelling to the next customer.
The assistant would then enter all the information into the CRM system.
One assistant could handle several salespeople, would become familiar with the software and could act like a "quarterback" in terms of the data management process. "Hey - last trip you identified an opportunity to sell Product A to Customer B" where does that opportunity stand? Do you still think that pending sale will close before the quarter? Is opportunity XYZ still at a 75% probability? Do you need me to schedule a visit for Jim to do a technical presentation?
Salespeople would then do what they're good at - talking. And sales assistants would do the data entry, thus eliminating the problems of CRM data capture - and keeping the salespeople in front of customers.
Seems to me, that these simple changes would make the entire process more effective. What do you think?
