CRM – it’s a topic that’s guaranteed to derail any meeting with a 15-minute side-bar into why our reps don’t use it.  CRM is so frustrating because very few companies have been able to crack the code and really build a CRM system that is a core part of how they go to market.

There are many reasons why CRM fails…Incomplete data.  Duplicate data.  Inaccurate data.  Too many fields.  Too time consuming.  Not user-friendly.  Redundant.

These are all reasons why CRM is often viewed as a burden and why reps don’t use it.  Although each of those problems must be addressed, there’s a bigger problem that they often mask and it can be traced back to one simple question – why would a rep want to use the CRM?

From the rep perspective, how much better is using the CRM than their own way of selling that they’ve built over their career?  They view CRM as a necessary evil, whose mandatory fields are needed to get resources or help their manager send forecasts up the ivory tower.

Very rarely do reps use the CRM because they believe it actually helps them sell better. And therein lies the problem.

As you’re thinking about investments in CRM in 2012, look at every potential investment through that lens.  Here are some additional questions you may want to ask yourself: Read More »

Everyone who’s worked on rolling out a CRM system knows that getting salespeople to fully incorporate CRM into their daily jobs is far from easy. Sales executives have been struggling with this challenge since the advent of CRM thanks to how sales forces initially perceive it:  rather than seeing CRM as a valuable means to enrich customer interactions, they tend to view it as nothing more than an inconvenience in their already busy schedules.

(To help overcome this perception and convince reps to use the tool, check out the resources on our CRM adoption topic center).

Unfortunately for organizations though, achieving rep buy-in and use of the system doesn’t end the adoption battle. In a recent conversation with one member, an executive commented how tracking CRM adoption is a challenge in it of itself because there’s no set of the “right” metrics that any company can use to measure sales force adoption.

He could not have been more correct. Because no two businesses are exactly alike, it’s not possible for organizations to use a “one size fits all” set of metrics to properly measure their CRM adoption rates.

With that in mind, member organizations have shared the following two approaches to selecting metrics that measure CRM adoption:   Read More »

When it comes to CRM, there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing inaccurate, out-of-date information—or even no information at all.  And as it turns out, 48% of participants in a recent SEC poll indicated that ensuring data quality was the most challenging aspect of CRM.

If the quality of data in your CRM system is unreliable, no one will rely on this heavily invested resource to improve customer interactions and enhance senior-level decision making.  So what can you do to ensure that you’re leveraging the right customer information, and that your reps are actually using CRM?

In order to really get the most out of your CRM system—and make sure that the data is accurate and valuable in the first place—companies have to recognize that the bigger hurdle is getting reps to want to use it. And that begins with designing the system to make sales reps more effective at their jobs and calling on managers to reinforce behaviors.

To make your reps want to use CRM, follow these three guidelines:   Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Traditionally, CRM has been thought of as a tool for reporting and storing information. But, this limited view causes companies to miss out on a wealth of valuable customer intelligence.

Leading companies are overhauling their CRM systems to tap into previously unused customer information and enable the organization to share new insights across the front line.

John Sabino, head of Commercial Operations at NBC Universal, shared details about NBC’s new CRM strategy. NBC created a system that gets inside reps’ heads and enables them to easily share and consume customer information by implementing:

1. Enhanced search functionality

2. Collaborative content improvement

SEC members, get the details on NBC’s next-gen CRM strategy and read excerpts from our conversation with John Sabino.

By Kirsten Robinson

Getting reps to use CRM is a perennial struggle for sales leaders. In an ideal world, reps would use your CRM system regularly to access data, improve their customer interactions, and provide timely customer data back to the center to enhance senior-level decision making.

In reality though, CRM is often viewed by reps as another centrally-mandated task on their already full plates. So, how can your company drive rep buy-in and encourage them to regularly access the CRM?

We recently held a panel discussion on the common challenges associated with CRM adoption and data quality. David Pseja, Sr. Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, and Theresa Russel, VP of Sales Ops at ADP Dealer Services, offered insights and strategies for improving reps’ usage of CRM and maintaining CRM data quality.

Here are a few takeaways from the discussion:  Read More »

If your organization is struggling with CRM implementation, adoption, or utilization, and ROI seems a distant reality, you are certainly not alone.

In fact, a recent Gartner analysis finds that despite a $225 billion investment in CRM over the past 10 years, companies have only seen customer satisfaction increase 3-5%.  And the satisfaction increase is probably not even related to CRM, but rather from an increased focus on improving the sales experience through better sales messaging and rep skills.

The statistic is amazing, but as any Sales or Marketing VP will tell you, not unsurprising.  Yet considering the multi-year, multi-million dollar commitment required to implement and optimize CRM, coordinate across multiple business units, and upskill the frontline, it’s worth a look at what causes CRM initiatives to go off the rails.

There are many root causes as to why companies struggle to truly leverage CRM, but poor data quality and poor rep adoption of the system are chief among them.

In fact, in a recent SEC poll, 50% of respondents indicated that rep adoption was the most challenging aspect of CRM, while 48% indicated that maintaining data quality was the most challenging aspect. (The final 2% of respondents considered selecting a CRM vendor the most challenging aspect.)

So when it comes to data quality and rep adoption, what can you do to overcome these issues?  Read More »

We all know by now that Sales can learn a lot from the field of psychology, but it is worthwhile from time-to-time to have a refresher on some of the more surprising findings coming out of university psych departments.

Here I’ve summarized a few such findings particularly relevant for Sales. A word of warning: it wouldn’t be a psych study if the findings weren’t a bit quirky!

Finding #1: Customers are more likely to say “yes” if you give them coffee and speak into their right ear

• Explanation: An Australian study finds that consuming even a moderate amount of caffeine makes individuals “more likely to agree with persuasive arguments.” Additional research conducted in Italian discotheques finds that people are twice as likely to give a stranger a cigarette if the request is made into the right rather than the left ear (which allows the request to be processed via the “preferred,” left hemisphere of the brain).
• Implication for Sales: Train your reps to suggest a refill and to choose their chair carefully before sitting down at the negotiation table. Then have them use our Controlled Negotiation Roadmap to seal the deal.

Finding #2: People spend most of their time in meetings sharing information everyone already knows         Read More »

I was talking to the global VP of Sales of a member company  the other day, and she said something that made me think of, arguably, the biggest social phenomenon of the 21^st century – the power of social networking , and the role it plays (or could play) in the world of Sales.

The member said, “I love what my twenty-eight-year-old MBA graduates bring to the table, I just can’t stand the way they communicate.”

At the risk of stereotyping, I’d agree that Millenials are generally more informal and bold than the corporate world would like, but they are also more willing to share and listen to each other.

This makes me wonder, in an age when one can have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook and can summarize “War and Peace” in less than 140 characters on Twitter, why wouldn’t sales organizations encourage these informal networks among its sales force for collaboration and sharing of customer insight? 

A study done by The Network Roundtable at the University of Virginia found that networks play a critical role in organizational excellence by feeding organizational innovation, creating sources of competitive advantage, and improving staff engagement and quality of work life. 

So, why not capitalize on these benefits by giving employees an outlet for sharing their knowledge and experience? And, more importantly, why not use this channel to push frontline knowledge to the top? Read More »