The decision to buy big ticket items like software similar to SalesForce.com or ERP software from Epicor or Infor SXe or SAP , can be a mind numbing experience for many. And usually it is because there are too many chefs involved in the implementation process or the wrong chefs.
And once decisions are made, the financial clock is ticking … IT consultants are getting paid so let’s get it done and “we know what sales needs and they can just input data.” There is the rush to get the installation over with.
But in the background, the way it is installed can kill profit. If Finance or Operations or IT drives the process and doesn’t involve sales or marketing leadership, you are guaranteed a dud. If you want sales to use the system, you need to involve them. But if you don’t, what do you do?
The Boss is explosive
The decision to buy is usually made by corporate level personnel and sometimes the people who actually use the software to make money for the company are never actually consulted (think salespeople). Think about that for a moment. The people who make sales calls or enter orders in a lot of cases are not consulted about what they need to generate profit and new customers. In many cases the company doesn’t have a vision of what it wants to achieve. It just knows that it needs a CRM system (because everyone is talking that they need one!). A business case is rarely done.
Nothing happens in wholesale distribution unless someone sells product. That is true with other companies as well. So if the sales side of the company was denied critical information about customers or prospects (demographic information, knowing their key contacts, looking at sales information) and they couldn’t update the information (or add new information), how can the system be effectively used, or leveraged?
It’s a given that you’ll load product and pricing information. But what if you didn’t load sales history because you were concerned your salespeople may see it! Maybe the sales people are blocked out of seeing critical information.
The sales person complains to their sales manager they don’t sales history, customer information or information about a company. The sales manager responds that he had no say in the set up of the system or security levels and that the decision has been made by the Boss or Finance. And if the decision maker (senior management / owner) is a really good friend of the software salesperson and no one is willing to say anything for fear of disturbing the friendship with the Software Sales person….who tells the Emperor that he has no clothes?
And while he may be the Emperor, that doesn’t mean he has the knowledge base for effectively launching, and using, a CRM system. If he only wanted a contact management system, ACT or MS Outlook can work at a lower price. Salesforce.com and the coming CRM packages in Eclipse and Infor are designed to interact, and leverage, with demographic information and sales information so that salespeople (and others) have knowledge, can share information and the company can conduct campaigns designed to grow sales.
So, rather than the Emperor, or finance / operational sidekicks, running a business development initiative, they should empower their sales leadership to run with business development / revenue generation initiatives. The Emperor can still make his friend happy with a large order, but once the deal is signed … get out of the way!
But why write about this (and we’ve heard this story from a few distributors and others)? We’re hearing from a number of distributors that they are looking at CRM or marketing automation systems. They know they need to aggregate their customer information (we’ve heard “too many different people have email lists and we can’t get one and can’t manage them”) but the power of CRM is the ability to implement a vision that drives enhanced service and generates increased revenues.
Are you looking at a CRM system? If so, which ones? Do you have one? If so, which one?
And, perhaps most importantly, other than IT being involved for implementation and technical evaluation, who is driving the initiative?
5 Comments
Your observations are probably correct, but may oversimplify a more complex issue. In my experience, salespeople and sales managers want the information that CRM can provide providing it does not provide information that suggests that they need to make some changes in the way they approach customer opportunities and that they do not need to contribute information to the CRM database. In the case of sales managers, who arguably would benefit most from a well implemented CRM system, they are often “too busy” to contribute to the configuration and implementation process. Many studies in failed CRM implementations suggest that the biggest problem is not configuration of a CRM system, it is the change management that must take place in a sales organization to make sure that the sales force is USING the system and contributing information that brings the potential for deeper understanding of an account than just sales history or demographic data may provide. Properly implemented and fully adopted, CRM is a very powerful tool for sales and marketing. Like any major company initiative it takes commitment across the whole organization from the CEO to the sales team.
We know a buddy who’s company has this problem. He tells me the gate keeper is the problem and has excluded their infield sales people in the set up. They have a problem.
We have Sales Force and it is great….once we got all the data loaded in it.
ED of the West Coast.
We had the same problem at Mayer when they didn’t include input from sales. The software was NOT SALESFORCE.com
It was suppose to be bang up ERP system. The lawyers got involved.
It did get straighten out.
We agree that sales does not want to provide info that suggests that they need to make changes. We feel like that is a universal problem from what we hear from others.
I think the vision that Allen is referring to, has to do with upper level management getting caught up in a ego trap where they think they know about a program, when they really don’t know and they let someone in their management structure take over the installation and exclude sales input.
Sometimes it takes firing that person who is in the way to get the software to work as intended.
In our case it took removing a VP and loading up the data into the CRM….and bingo. Everything started to work out.
Looking back on the whole experience, we should have had a common vision and complete buy in. Software works great.
As someone who worked for a company that programmed, sold and implemented ERP systems to wholesale distributors (primarily the fastener/seal/o-ring industry), we WISH the “nuts and bolts” users could have had some input!! In our experience, from multi million dollar global corporations down to the Ma and Pa shops, the biggest obstacles to a successful installation can almost always be narrowed down to 3 reasons: 1) Upper Management (often the owner) cannot relinquish control long enough to trust the people working for him/her. 2) Their IT guy fights it every step of the way because he feels empowered as the “go-to” guy for the current system (especially for homegrown or heavily modified systems) and feels his job security is threatened by the new system. 3) Lack of training!!! Training is almost always a cost that owners either refuse or skimp on and the system can only be as productive as the users are well trained.
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