CRM: Is the Problem the Technology or the Culture?

I've been reading the B2B Lead Generation blog recently.  It's quite good and I highly recommend it for sales staffs.

If everyone read this blog religiously, perhaps more companies would learn to maximize their existing CRM/SFA systems and not succumb to the urge to invest tens of thousands in a new one expecting it to solve all of their problems.

One of the best posts I've seen regarding technology vs. culture was captured on Brian's blog.  While Brian makes some excellent points in the vein that if you keep up with the data input today you increase productivity tomorrow, the comments are all over the place, typical of every excuse one hears about why SFA isn't being optimally employed:

- data input is marketing's responsibility
- data input is for minimum wage clericals
- I don't have time for this, I should be selling
- the technology doesn't fit with our sales process
- whoever designed this wasn't a sales person
- etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum

Are these points valid?  Of course they are.

At about the same time Brian posted this, I was hired to do some work with an organizer to help them process and reach potential exhibitor leads faster.  They had almost 10,000 contacts in their exhibitor database, about half of which had addresses, about a third of which had been called during the previous show cycle.

Without getting into a lot of detail, we worked together to set up tiers based upon the amount of information available for each record.  Tier A was segmented out and immediately fed to the sales staff while Tiers B and C were given to another group for qualification and database updates, B by email or fax, C by phone.  Tier D was sent a re-qualifying postcard.  Tier E was for all intents and purposes archived until there was appropriate time and resources to deal with it.

The process was basically akin to unclogging the plumbing.  Too much stuff was in the pipeline and some had to be removed.  The immediate effect was a boost in sales productivity and results. 

And I walked away with more than enough to buy a booth and some ads at the show.

Most of this client's problem could have been avoided had sales been regularly updating the prospect database according to a well-defined series of steps which, while perhaps inconvenient to the typical Type-A sales personality, would have resulted in significantly more productivity.

The question is, how do you sell this concept to sales?

Perhaps the best comment on Brian's post that illustrates the clash between technology and culture was from Don Hicks.  Since there's no comment link, I'm copying the whole thing below.  It's well worth reading.  And if you see yourself in the first role play, odds are pretty good you've got a culture problem to address. 

Let's role play.

Management: "Some of our sales people are really good and some are not so good. How can make the not so good ones as productive as the really good ones?"

Management's idea man (CFO?): "We measure their activity with CRM software. The metrics will tell us what good activity is."

Marketing: "Since we are getting CRM anyway, if we have the sales people enter key demographic data we can do our jobs better."

Product Manager: "If you can collect this additional information we can better determine what features to add to our future products."

CFO (idea man?): "With additional data we may get better forecasts and therefore I can do a better job of managing our cash flow."

Management Announcement" "OK team, we have this really cool application that is going to let us know who the really good sales people are and who the not so good sales people are. And if you fill in all the boxes, the marketing department, product managers, and the financial department (who we know are ALL really good at their jobs even though we don't measure that) will have MORE data so they can be really, really better."

Common Sense:
The really good sales people know who they need to talk to, where they are in the sales process (even if the company doesn't have a sales process), why the prospect is going to buy, and who is going to sign the check. A "traditional" CRM system is NOT going to make the really good sales person more productive. The really good sales people are also probably generating their own leads.

The not so good sales people don't want you to know that they're not so good. Just like the not so good marketing, production, financial, cleaning people don't want you to know they don't know what they're doing.

Hence, nothing good will come from the data in the CRM system anyway. The really good sales people will enter the minimum data required and the not so good sales people will "pad" their data with garbage.

There are technologies that can make sales people more efffective, knowledgable, and professional (CRM/SFA are management tools not sales tools). But, in order for these to work, the foundation of a sound CRM system supported by a well designed sales process must be in place.

New Role Play:

CEO Announcement: "We have decided to implement a new CRM system to help us better communicate with our customers and prospects. We understand that an additional administrative load will be placed on our sales team. We have the best sales team in the world and I am sure they can handle the additional load. If you work diligently to be thorough and keep the data current, I promise our effort and investment to make you better and more professional sales people.

I promise I will use the CRM system as a management tool to better interact with you, the life blood of our business, and help you be more effective, knowledgeable, and confident when representing our company value.

I promise I will use the CRM system to focus more resources toward your success.

I promise to never again ask you "What will you close this month?", and instead I will be prepared to speak to you in terms of what resources you need to close your most immediate opportunities and advance your other opportunities through the sales process.

I promise better collaboration between management, sales, marketing and customer service.

And finally, I promise continuous improvement of the system, driven mostly by input from you, our customer-facing teams."