Using CRM To Leverage Sales
By Jack M. Germain October 4, 2005 8:55AM
While one of the central purposes of any CRM tool is to help manage sales leads, the software only helps sales reps better leverage those leads if they are using a CRM product that meets their company's unique needs. Clearly, one size does not fit all. In a recent report about the proliferation of new CRM initiatives, Gartner Research noted that organizations are using CRM now as a way to focus on creating value from a truly customer-centric perspective that enables them "to acquire, retain and cross-sell customers effectively." That report concluded that businesses, large and small, realize CRM tools are critical today for creating a single view of the customer and establishing the processes necessary to manage the customer experience through every interaction. Despite what might have been unhappy results with earlier experiences of CRM, CIOs today have new choices in CRM packages that offer better analytic capabilities and can create more efficient and friendly customer-interaction hubs. But even today's highly sophisticated CRM products, by themselves, do not create sales-force nirvana. While one of the central purposes of any CRM tool is to help manage sales leads -from campaign to initial contact to literature fulfillment and sales closing -- the software only helps sales representatives better leverage those leads if they are using a CRM product that meets their company's unique needs. Exerts say that because no CRM product will produce the desired results right out of the box, companies must focus on building a custom foundation. Clearly, one size does not fit all. In producing this report on using CRM to monitor sales leads, we turned to several experts in the field to get their take on the current state of CRM software and how best to leverage it to gain competitive sales advantage. These experts include Ken Arbadjii, vice president of North American Sales for Stayinfront.com; Oscar Alban, global market consultant for Witness Systems; Lewis Miller, president of Sant Corporation; and Johnathan Tang, president and cofounder of Salesnet.com. No Perfect Solution Movers and shakers in the CRM industry readily admit that the latest generation of sales-force software does not guarantee sales growth. The greater sophistication found in today's CRM products is, by itself, insufficient to bring about increased customer response.
"CRM software is often not efficient at the sales-rep level," explained Lewis Miller of Sant Corporation, a company that develops software applications to enhance existing CRM packages. "It takes the sales staff time to input data about customers into the system," said Miller. "If the sales staff doesn't use it, CRM presents no value to the company. This is the reason why CRM systems fail." Jonathan Tang of Salesnet.com, a company that offers an on-demand CRM product, could not agree more with the idea that CRM users often fail to use the products properly. "We recognized early on that people saw sales-force-motivation software as a silver bullet. It isn't," he said. "It failed for so many companies because they were automating a faulty sales process. They were doing the equivalent of driving too fast down a one-way street the wrong way." As Tang sees it, the way some enterprises use CRM programs often resembles what happens when workers pave over a bad roadway. The traffic rumbling over it causes stress, which causes the ill-repaired roadway to fall apart again. Despite the bad rap that CRM has acquired over the years, experts and users alike say the software as a sales tool is not flawed. It simply has not been used properly. According to Ken Arbadjii of Stayinfront, a company that offers a broad suite of tools for customizing CRM applications, how a CIO implements and uses CRM determines how successful it will be. "CIOs have to learn not to bite off more than they can chew in starting out with any CRM program," Arbadjii said. "CIOs will meet with more success if they start out with a simple system and add to it as needed." The size of the company is not a factor in whether CRM software will be successful, said Arbadjii. What does matter is how the CRM program is used. And what determines that is the need of the particular company. Creating a Plan According to Oscar Alban of Witness Systems, a company that offers a software product designed to help enterprises improve their workforce performance and customer intelligence, people in the 1990s did not understand CRM and the concept behind it. "CRM got bad rap because there was no strategy applied to using it," said Alban. "CIOs need a game plan." Once that plan is in place, he explained, enterprises need a measurement process to assess the success. The goal for any CRM campaign is getting sales agents to ask for the order, said Alban. Without a way to measure the effectiveness of the CRM interaction, everything is reduced to guesswork.
For Tang, the first step any CIO should take is to understand the project's plan. CIOs should map out how the company's sales process works. For instance, what hierarchy do potential leads go through to become qualified? Then, what are the next cycles in turning those qualified leads into closed transactions? Tang said CIOs need to know what they are so the CRM software can make that process more successful. Next, stressed Tang, the CIO must start small. This, he said, is absolutely critical. For instance, the CIO could first set up the CRM program with the inside sales team. Then the CIO could expand the application to other departments, one by one, when the process is in place and working smoothly. Arbadjii suggests a three-part deployment plan for integrating CRM into an enterprise sales program. The starting point for any CRM scheme, he said, should begin with the head of the I.T. staff. The CIO should determine the most critical needs for the company. For example, does the company's sales force need content to help increase sales? Or does the company need a way to track customers? Maybe the company needs a marketing center that can track a sales campaign. The second phase, said Arbadjii, is for sales reps to follow up. It is at this stage where CRM programs can put the plan into high gear. After that is working, the final stage is to extend the plan to the front-office system. Salesnet's Tang emphasized that the only way to get maximum return out of any CRM program is use it for fixing what is broken. "Analyze the company to find the best application to serve that particular problem," said Tang. "There must be a vision. Without one, CRM is nothing more than a database. The CIO is part of the vision and must be a part of the staff that develops the strategy." Embrace and Extend Today's typical CRM application is an integrated suite that handles sales-force , contact-center solutions, analytics and automation, marketing automation custom applications. However, a new type of CRM treatment for enhancing sales power is becoming popular. This strategy is to use highly customizable add-on programs that take existing CRM software to new levels of efficiency. "A product like Sant Suite is software for improving sales effectiveness," explained Sant's Miller. "It is different from CRM efficiency. Sant Suite taps in to an organization's way of collecting data about customers. It creates a record of reference for what went on in the client transaction." The Sant Suite approach extracts sales information already resident in an existing CRM application and uses that information to build structured sales documents,
which it then puts back in the CRM database. "This encourages sales agents to use the CRM system," Miller said. Many of the sales technologies developed for the latest generation of enterprise CRM products are designed to enhance what already is available in traditional salesmanagement software. This is the case with the approach taken at Stayinfront.com. Arbadjii explained that his company's suite of tools can be configured to any CRM program. "The modules extend the normal CRM features and allow different services for different CRM needs," he said. Tang sees the enhanced-CRM trend as a marriage of technology with a new way of doing business. He contends that the technology in the Salesnet products can help a company make the selling art scalable and repeatable across the entire team. Ultimately, determining which type of CRM system to implement -- and then how best to exploit that system for leveraging sales leads -- is one of the most basic choices confronting any CIO. Given the vast amount of options available today for software that can help companies acquire and retain customers, CRM nightmares associated with installations gone awry might well become a thing of the past.
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