Business : Why is CRM "not" delivering on it's potential?

Why is CRM "not" delivering on it's potential?
By Adam Williams


How CRM should work?
Salespeople and other users enter what they perceive to be relevant customer information, leads, account updates, last visits, notes on conversations and interests etc…
Other information is added by management, marketing and support so as to maintain full visibility of all activity for a particular account or customer.
With all this valuable information up to date the sales person has better visibility and is better able to make informed decisions on how to approach customers prior to each call, therefore the sales person makes better sales.

How CRM often works?
Some Salespeople leave their laptops in their car or at home, they probably use their experience and knowledge to do what they've always done. The marketing team enters some valuable/vital information into the CRM system, the salesperson doesn't pick it up because they don't have their laptop with them, the valuable piece of information the salesperson was unaware of has just cost the company a customer because they have gone elsewhere. The Sales manager finds out that the salesperson hasn't been using the CRM system and they have a heated conversation, the salesperson starts using the system for the rest of that week. And so the cycle begins again.

What's the problem?
In short the answer is: "The salesperson".
There are a few major facts about salespeople that the designers of CRM products forgot.
The most obvious of these are:

• Sales people are usually only interested in things that deliver results "NOW". So to spend weeks or maybe months entering tiny and seemingly useless bits of information in order to build a bigger picture for use in the future seems to them to be a waste of time.

• Sales people usually have daily targets and often are unable to look at the bigger picture. Yes they are concerned about the future but the pressures of a daily target means that the focus is usually "here", "now" and "today"

• Sales reps usually feel that they can be as effective if not more effective without using the system. In other words, the benefits of CRM don't seem significantly greater than the investment of time and effort required to use a CRM system every day.


So where is the value in CRM?
If the salespeople don't use it or the quality of the information is poor or incomplete or there just isn't enough of it, then there is little value in it at all.

So where should the value be?
CRM can be a very valuable tool for salespeople if you can get them to use it properly, but most salespeople won't use something unless they can see an immediate benefit.
The problem is not with CRM, the problem is often the way it is implemented, if it were incorporated in the sales process it could be very effective. So if we are honest there are two problems, problem 1 - the salesperson, problem 2 - the implementation.
So the value in CRM is in the implementation, because that is the only part we can do anything about. Incorporate the technology into a strong sales process and the salesman will follow suit.

An element of CRM in anyone's business could be a huge advantage but the most valuable thing to have in sales is a structured selling process with the right tools to sell