Getting a Sales Process in Place

Yolanda
Member

Posted 24-Mar-2005 12:16 PM
We have had our CRM (SalesLogix) for the past 4 years. No one thought to develop a sales process to go along with our CRM tool. Now, with 30 business developers following 30 different processes we are trying to get everyone on the same page. How do we get started? How do we get them to adopt this new process without having them feel they have to change the way they sell our services? Any success stories you can share of case studies?

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 31-Mar-2005 08:51 AM
[Posted for Barry Trailer]

Hi Yolanda,

Like the old good/bad news jokes, I have a bit of each for you. The bad news, as you've already noted, is "30 business developers following 30 different processes." The good news is, you're not alone! A surprising number of companies have launched CRM initiatives only to discover that installing technology, including CRM apps such as SalesLogix, is not all there is to CRM.

Hence the axiom: Get your process straight, then automate.

There are a few things you can do right away. The first is to get your executive sponsor in place. Reasons to support getting everyone on the same page include:

1. A basis for shared learning and identifying best practices
2. More thorough and consistent approach to executing opportunities by seasoned reps
3. Faster ramp up times for new reps
4. Improved pipeline management and forecasting

These are just a few of the reasons, but you get the idea. However, if your executive sponsor doesn't get it, you'll have an uphill battle. OK, let's assume he/she does. What's next?

Two things. First, you'll want a simple and useful framework for mapping your company's sales process(es). Second, you need to get buy-in from the reps. More good news: There are ample resources to help you with both.

In an early CRMGuru article, I briefly overviewed a process format that has proved very useful to companies over the years in mapping their own sales process. Check out:
Another Word for Process Is Accountability . In addition, you'll find additional information on this at CSO Insights . Under "Articles/White Papers," check out: And the Word Was Process . (You will need to register to access articles.)

While there, you'll find another article: Give 'em a Reason Why . This deals with questions you should have answers for to elicit sales rep buy-in.

The main reason usually given is: Higher Productivity. This is not necessarily "goodness" in the mind of a sales rep, since what this translates into is: Higher Quota. You'll need to come up with better reasons than this, and the questionnaire in Give 'em a Reason will help you.

Finally, there are case studies aplenty to help you support your case--once you've determined what problem you're wanting to solve. There are even more instances where people/companies have invested time, money and resources installing CRM software only to find the impact was minor or non-existent because the project objectives were unclear or fuzzy.

Likely, you'll have more questions once you've reviewed your homework assignment above. Here's the last bit of good news: You're asking the right questions! Touch base again after you've gone through the readings; I'll be glad to try and answer some more.

Posted 22-Aug-2005 07:08 AM
Yolanda:

The recent Forrester Research survey revealed the not very surprising conclusion that "user adoption" is now the #1 CRM issue (see http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,37503,00.html).

Is training the way to get users to adopt a common sales process? It's only a first small part of it.

Users don't want to learn stop drilling holes to learn how the drill works. So too stopping productive work to learn about a new sales process and how to implement it in your chosen CRM application is not going to be greeted with cheers by those who have to change.

Learning the new sales process and its use in the application should be a free by-product of continued productive work from day 1. Downtime for training (70% of which is forgotten within 2 weeks) is not a good investment.

Consider a true "performance support" approach where the focus is on work performance rather than new process or application education. You can build wizard-like process support as an intelligent layer between your users and the application that you implement your new process through. This support can allow the users to instantly adopt the new process without having to learn anything (and it can automatically enforce the process and business rules).

A picture is worth a thousand words so ... to understand the concept (whatever tools you chose) you may be interested in seeing a little video at http://www.rocketools.com/video/SalesforceDataInput.htm

Yes, I have the tools that created this example and I think that it is the "performance support" tool for ASP and other browser accessed applications.

You can also download the actual toolbar at heep://www.rocketools.com and run the support against a live copy of the application (salesforce.com in the examples - no account required).

Ray