Implementing CRM for Sales (SFA). How To Get Buy-in

Satak
Member

Posted 04-Sep-2005 11:12 AM
We are implementing CRM in a Old-Economy Organization in India. The company is in exitence for last 15 years and had been pretty IT-Unsavvy.

While the CMO is very keen on CRM implementation for the sales team, the Chairman and lower levels are not gungho about it.

Couple of problems we are facing are:
1. Sales team finds it a waste of time to sit and learn the system.
2. The Pilot users also feel that they are not able to make sales because of their time spent with the CRM Software.
3. While the CMO is forcing the sales team to cooperate, it is obviously turning into non-cooperation.

What can be done to overcome these problems? Are there some best-practices which ensure we do not get blocked by these sort of "Reluctance to Change" issues?

Thanks
Satak
Satakarni Pamidipati
Director—Implementations
HalaSoft Technologies Pvt Ltd

Alan Piesse
Member
Picture of Alan Piesse

Posted 08-Sep-2005 08:24 AM
Satak

Yes I can help. or at least share my experience.

I just implemented a Sales CRM system (5th Sept)for a global Financial services company. The big learnings were
1. Make it a sales initiative. Talk about lead generation and not CRM.
2. Phase it and position it as a trial. Ringfence a few salesmen who are interested and push up their bonuses using your solution. The others will follow. My current project has got all the salesmen not on the trial nowbegging to get on it. Apparently they didn't realise that by managing customers properly that you can generate business.
3. Adapt your solutions to fit the culture. We wanted to put in a fully blown diary system but when we looked closely we found that it would be too much for the salesmen to learn!! So the diary is still paper. However in time....
4. We used Siebel's on demand CRM system despite having a fully blown Siebel solution in the rest of the business. Fraction of the cost, fraction of the time to implement, etc..

Alan Piesse

Christian Maurer
Member

Posted 09-Sep-2005 02:07 AM
Stak,
the IT-unsaviness is not the issue. Furthermore the resistance you see is not uncommon.

Succesfull CRM implementations have overcome this resistance by using a wholistic approach encompassing people, process and technology fused together with a strong governance. I would suggest to attack governance first by aligning executives and management on the CRM initiative.

To do this, your CMO has to do is clearly articulate to the Chairmen what business impact is to be achieved by the use of CRM and thus getting his buy in.

Then the lower levels in the CMO's organization have to be turned into sustaining sponsors, by giving them a vision of the future state working with a CRM system.

Finally the CMO together with the sustaining sponsors should craft W.I.I.F.M. (What is in for me)messsages for the sales people. Great care has to be taken that these messages are really specific on how sales people can benefit from the use of a CRM system for their own tasks . Just broadcasting the expected benefits for management and the company can have devastating effects.
These messages should then be delivered by the sustaining sponsors preferably in regular staff meetings. Avoid e-mails as a delivery mechanism.

Good luck.

Ed Sander
Member

Posted 09-Sep-2005 05:53 AM
I've had quite some experience with implementing CRM systems, one of which with a very reluctant sales force which had chewed up and spit out the system which was implemented before I joined.

Here's some suggestions

- use an application with screens in their native language and easy, clickable menu's
- try to go for a realtime web based database instead of tiresome synchronisation
- make sure that most of the standard data like names and addresses is already in the database, even if just as prospect data, so the amount of data entry is minimized
- when using webbased give the sales force tools to use it 'on the road', e.g. handhelds with Internet Access. Sales people are quite 'gadget-eager' and will see this not only as a time-saver but will also like to show it of to other sales forces.
- include some enthusiastic sales force people from other companies that already use the application and have them present their experiences in your training
- reward good usage and have penalties for bad usage (e.g. usage of the system should be part of their bonus targets)
- start simple and add a new procedure or functionality every quarter instead of starting with a full blown application
- assure that the sales force has friendly and full-time support while they learn to use the application
- start with a few enthusiastic users, it the system is good and lives up to its promises they will brag about it
- most important of all: make sure you include several functionalities that actually make their work EASIER like e.g. sample requests or price change requests through the application instead of other forms and templates. An additional advantage is that these requests suddenly become measurable in the database.

Especially the last one has resulted in the concerned CRM/SFA application being rolled-out to several other countries since we started the implementation.

If you're interested, check out some of the articles I wrote about the subject on http://www.failsafe.nl. They are in Dutch though.

Cheers,
Ed

Ed Sander

Business Development Manager
Viking Direct/Office Depot

Database Marketing Specialist
Failsafe Database Marketing

Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 09-Sep-2005 06:00 PM
Satak,

This issue is inherent in most CRM implementations even in companies that are IT-Savvy, since it involves inter-departmental and people dynamics within an organization. I have done several CRM implementations from small companies to large multi site deployments for multinationals. They all have some degree of ‘change' management challenge.

So, the good part is that you are on the right track, since all these are symptoms of change!

I will attempt to target your specific problems though everyone above as given responses to the same flavor.

Sales team—it would be good to understand the nature of a sales team and why they view this waste of time. Salespersons don't like to sit in front of ‘systems' to update them with their inputs, contacts and reports. They do so only if they are ‘made to' OR if there is a way to show tangible gains from doing so. In most cases they view a CRM system a ‘management ploy' to get them to share all their contact and information, which in turn makes them feel insecure and dispensable. Having worked across various countries, I feel this is more so in Asian economies including India.

So, one way is to set correct expectations with the sales team on the ‘scope' of the system and within that, its benefits.

You may make it as easy as pointing out that it would make their weekly reporting or pipeline reporting easier, where they don't have to spend time writing reports but just entering some information in a system on a frequent basis, that takes care of reporting.

The bottom line is to find out the ‘pain' points that your sales team feels in its day-to-day activities and to target those pain points with a solution via the CRM system. With this approach, if you can show them tangible benefits like improving chances of closing deals because of better customer relationship management, then that is a bonus. However, this really depends on regions, cultural impacts, ways a sales team operates and its maturity in terms of sales methodology.

Pilot User—this is a classic user adoption issue. Whether it is sales or any other department, when users are exposed to a new system and asked to learn and use it, there is a phase of adoption where they take more time to do a particular task through the system than without it. Probably we, as users of a new system, would do too.
This is where I would focus on practice, showing them tip & tricks and actually working with the pilot group on an ongoing basis, so that they are able to adopt the system in their routine. Depending on the scope of roll out, if your are considering giving them mobile tools like PDA's etc for CRM access, that may alleviate the problem a bit, but that would also require a ‘getting used to' time.

CMO vs. Sales—You cannot ‘force' system adoption. It just does not work in the long term. The CMO may have his/her value proposition for getting in a CRM system, may be for better sales tracking/planning or for a strategic reason. However, if the value proposition is not translated into a tangible benefit for the end users, then they will not buy in to the system or be ready to adopt it. It will always be a ‘management initiative' that they feel they are being burdened with and they will resist it OR if forced, then blame it for slow sales or inefficiency. Your CMO needs to engage with sales force at their level. Make a steering committee for this initiative that has the users as a part, to capture pain areas where they need immediate help and where the CRM system can show quick results.

From the Chairman's perspective, the investment vs. return aspect is important. If you can build a ROI case based on the benefits that you think the sales team can derive from this system (in terms on increased efficiency, better relationships, increased sales, etc), then that would have more impact rather than intangibles.

I am afraid there is no ONE right answer to these issues since they are dependent on the organizational set up, history, environment, cultural aspects of the sales force and community.

I think some of these ideas with strategies suggested by others (along with time and patience) should help you resolve these issues.

Best,

Vishal Sarkar

CRM Principal
Ascentium Corporation
www.ascentium.com

President
CRM Association of Northwest
www.crma-northwest.org

Doug LeFever
Member

Posted 10-Sep-2005 02:41 PM
As a sales guy who formerly rolled out a Siebel CRM system, I have learned a great deal about effectiveness with CRM and the sales user. Great ideas discusssed already...I'll just add a few from a sales guy's prespective...

1) Sales people are motivated by three things...(1)money, (2)career development or (3)job satisfaction. Try your best to tie your CRM project objectives to at least one of these three. Communicate project objectives early and regulary to get sales buy in.
2) EVERY training session MUST be structured as a "day in the life" of a sales professional. Don't fluff your training with corporate objectives BS. Show the reps how they can win buy using your system.
3) Offer an effective "user voice" system where reps can provide their feedback of what is working and what is not and make sure that you have frequent updates (at elast quarterly) to your system to DELIVER based on the feedback from reps.
4) Tie compensation to user adoption. We offered a $1,000 quarterly bonus for reps using our system and we achieved 98% user adoption.
5) Make it fun...DON'T use boring tech trainers. Best to use sales management to train their team and set expectations.

Best of luck!!!

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 14-Sep-2005 01:03 PM
[Posted for Silvana Buljan, Smartworxx, Training and Cultural Change Guru]

Regarding your problems in convincing your sales organization, here some recommendations for handling the situation:

1 and 2: Sales teams always see a CRM software with a Sales Force Automation (SFA) functionality as a "waste of time." They're used to personal visits to their clients, appointing the orders and next steps in their personal agendas, rather than in a shared system. They say there's no time to do administrative work and lose value-added selling time with their customers.

Here the key issue is to make them understand that CRM is also a working methodology with the aim to share customer information to better serve the customer in the future and to keep track of opportunities, incidents, etc.

An organization cannot rely on personal relationships between sales rep and customer—this makes you vulnerable if the sales rep leaves the company and goes to the competition. This is the buying-in factor for the Sales Director/Manager--he depends on his sales team's performance and is more than interested in making customer relations more transparent.

Regarding the buy-in for the sales team, it can only be formulated as an obligation and part of their annual evaluation / bonus negotiations if they shared information into the CRM system. This case only works top-down.

3: If there's a management conflict between the CMO and the sales manager, the CEO should be included in the top-down decision-making. We have a changing world due to technology developments and the ability to track and control our employees' activities and performance. To be more oriented towards a customer-oriented culture, some things cannot be solved with a change management initiative, but rather top decisions that have to be followed.

In one of our client projects we have a general understanding issue of CRM from CMO view and CRM director view. In this case, only the intervention of the CEO has helped to position CRM, agree to clear distinction between roles and responsibilities and decide the next steps of the operative day-to-day activities.

Regards,

Silvana

Smishra
Member

Posted 10-May-2007 05:11 AM
I would also like to ask a couple o them .

I am a CRM Manager in a Semi IT (Training & Learning Organisation) ... since we are a startup... a lot of sales and CRM mixup are there.

For example ... I am expected to accompany the sales and BD team in the sales pitch.

am expected to create sales presentation for the team. n numerous such tasks which are typically sales and operations tasks.

How can i define my role ...... i.e CRM in a semi IT platform.

Vishal Sarkar
Member Council
Member

Posted 16-May-2007 03:56 PM
Sales and CRM roles are not mutually exclusive. Sales has customer and prospect touch points that feed relationship management programs and initiatives.

It seems to me that you are providing support to the sales team.

What was the role definition of a CRM Manager in your company when you signed up? Are there activities that you are charged with that are beyond sales support?

You need to evaluate what CRM means to your organization (in short term and long term) and how the activities that you spend your time doing impact that that vision.

That will help you objectively define your role or discuss it with your management.

Best,

Vishal Sarkar

CRM Principal
Ascentium Corporation
www.ascentium.com

President
CRM Association of Northwest
www.crma-northwest.org