Customer Relationship Management (2)
The beginning of a good thing
Since CRM (1), good old CRM for Chinese tycoon is still working today. Meeting customers, listening to their requests, and trying to compromise to make it a working relationship are still key. However, the last point on CRM (1) that mentioned about IT professionals try to move customer information from one's brain to computer systems. What is the benefit?
Customer list is growing year after year, so it's too hard for a salesperson to remember all their names, contacts, addresses, likes, dislikes, etc. A computer can be used to remember a lot of contacts. IT professionals try to solve this problem by making a computer into a contact management equipment. Read Harvey Mckay's list, you'll know what you need to remember as a traditional salesperson.
CRM in its new life is simply a book with search index that is easy to look up. However, IT professionals did not stop there. They try to link customer lists to sales information. So when a customer calls for help, a helpdesk person knows what this customer has purchased, how to direct his call to the people who know about that product. This saves customer's time and frustration.
Since customer list, customer purchase list are already on the system. Customers can call helpdesk for support. Helpdesk staffs could help customers quickly. IT professionals do not stop there either. They want a sales director to know what's going on in the field - what salespeople are doing, who do they talk to, what is the deal size, what is the percentage to win. In addition, IT professionals (now they're called CRM consultant) think of multiplying deal size (USD) and percentage to win (%) as a forecast revenue or sales pipeline.
So the above paragraph is now called Sales Force Automation and it's a part of CRM offerings.
The beginning of too much of a good thing
My personal opinion on customer contact information, customer sales information is a good thing. When SFA comes around, I start to think that this is the beginning of too much of a good thing. A simple sales pipeline report (in Excel) should suffice. Now it's beginning to require too much time to enter all the information.
Let's look at a salesperson's CRM entry before Sales Force Automation. First he needs to enter all customers' namecard information. If a customer's company has 100 offices, 100 namecards may sound horrible to enter. Second he needs to enter customer sales information (when he makes the sale) for post-sale support. Then off he goes to make another sale.
Now look at a salesperson's CRM entry with Sales Force Automation. First step is the same. Second step from above paragraph now is ... Second salesperson needs to enter all conversation with a customer, what they talk in the meeting, what are the action items for customer or salesperson, what are the outcome of the meeting, then update the likelyhood to make a sale. Third salesperson needs to come back to check that all action items are completed in CRM system. If his manager, the sales manager, reads SFA information and does not agree, sales manager could enter his input and ask for explanation. Fourth salesperson then has to reply in the CRM system for a record.
Now CRM system is turning into a record management system for sales team. What do we want from a sales team? Do we need to micro-manage salespersons? Or we need to make sure that they deliver? Sales figure does speak for itself more than sales team activity report. I have worked with salesperson who entered a lot of good numbers but never turned in good sales figures. So this sales team system is all about lie detection.
To go beyond the current IT professionals, do we want to create another feature to track all incoming revenue to compare with sales pipeline to see which salesperson is lying? Call it automatic lie detector automation?
The point about SFA is micro-management. Salesperson is supposed to be out selling not stay in the office entering information to the computer (CRM system).
What is too much of a good thing? Since we already see the beginning, here it is.
Too much of a good thing
IT professionals did a very good job putting customer contact information, customer activity information (sales force automation), customer sales information, and customer support information.
All of the above customer ** systems are CRM. It isn't too much, is it? Too much of a good thing is when IT professionals try to guess the future. It's called Analytic CRM or Business Intelligence.
Who in the world you think you are going to forecast the future? Most customer sales information is history. They already happened. What a customer buys now does not guarantee what this same customer will buy tomorrow.
More on this on CRM (3) ...
I'm going to elaborate about the good things that CRM can bring to you. More on this (3).
Since CRM (1), good old CRM for Chinese tycoon is still working today. Meeting customers, listening to their requests, and trying to compromise to make it a working relationship are still key. However, the last point on CRM (1) that mentioned about IT professionals try to move customer information from one's brain to computer systems. What is the benefit?
Customer list is growing year after year, so it's too hard for a salesperson to remember all their names, contacts, addresses, likes, dislikes, etc. A computer can be used to remember a lot of contacts. IT professionals try to solve this problem by making a computer into a contact management equipment. Read Harvey Mckay's list, you'll know what you need to remember as a traditional salesperson.
CRM in its new life is simply a book with search index that is easy to look up. However, IT professionals did not stop there. They try to link customer lists to sales information. So when a customer calls for help, a helpdesk person knows what this customer has purchased, how to direct his call to the people who know about that product. This saves customer's time and frustration.
Since customer list, customer purchase list are already on the system. Customers can call helpdesk for support. Helpdesk staffs could help customers quickly. IT professionals do not stop there either. They want a sales director to know what's going on in the field - what salespeople are doing, who do they talk to, what is the deal size, what is the percentage to win. In addition, IT professionals (now they're called CRM consultant) think of multiplying deal size (USD) and percentage to win (%) as a forecast revenue or sales pipeline.
So the above paragraph is now called Sales Force Automation and it's a part of CRM offerings.
The beginning of too much of a good thing
My personal opinion on customer contact information, customer sales information is a good thing. When SFA comes around, I start to think that this is the beginning of too much of a good thing. A simple sales pipeline report (in Excel) should suffice. Now it's beginning to require too much time to enter all the information.
Let's look at a salesperson's CRM entry before Sales Force Automation. First he needs to enter all customers' namecard information. If a customer's company has 100 offices, 100 namecards may sound horrible to enter. Second he needs to enter customer sales information (when he makes the sale) for post-sale support. Then off he goes to make another sale.
Now look at a salesperson's CRM entry with Sales Force Automation. First step is the same. Second step from above paragraph now is ... Second salesperson needs to enter all conversation with a customer, what they talk in the meeting, what are the action items for customer or salesperson, what are the outcome of the meeting, then update the likelyhood to make a sale. Third salesperson needs to come back to check that all action items are completed in CRM system. If his manager, the sales manager, reads SFA information and does not agree, sales manager could enter his input and ask for explanation. Fourth salesperson then has to reply in the CRM system for a record.
Now CRM system is turning into a record management system for sales team. What do we want from a sales team? Do we need to micro-manage salespersons? Or we need to make sure that they deliver? Sales figure does speak for itself more than sales team activity report. I have worked with salesperson who entered a lot of good numbers but never turned in good sales figures. So this sales team system is all about lie detection.
To go beyond the current IT professionals, do we want to create another feature to track all incoming revenue to compare with sales pipeline to see which salesperson is lying? Call it automatic lie detector automation?
The point about SFA is micro-management. Salesperson is supposed to be out selling not stay in the office entering information to the computer (CRM system).
What is too much of a good thing? Since we already see the beginning, here it is.
Too much of a good thing
IT professionals did a very good job putting customer contact information, customer activity information (sales force automation), customer sales information, and customer support information.
All of the above customer ** systems are CRM. It isn't too much, is it? Too much of a good thing is when IT professionals try to guess the future. It's called Analytic CRM or Business Intelligence.
Who in the world you think you are going to forecast the future? Most customer sales information is history. They already happened. What a customer buys now does not guarantee what this same customer will buy tomorrow.
More on this on CRM (3) ...
I'm going to elaborate about the good things that CRM can bring to you. More on this (3).
posted by Peter Srivaree-Ratana at 10:10 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Peter
I just came across your post and was quite interested in your viewpoint of too much of a good thing. I completely agree with your observation that sales persons need to be on the field, and not spend too much time entering data in a CRM system. However, a point on which I would like to differ is on the value of pipeline management. In my experience, I find that companies benefit far more from managing their pipeline than from contact management. To explain what I mean by pipeline management, do have a look at http://www.on2.biz/2006/11/27/new-feature-pipeline-report-for-tracking-sales-performance/
. My approach to implementing CRM is to implement pipeline management first, where we pick up sales data from spreadsheets and generate pipeline reports as shown in above post. Sales persons only need 10-15 minutes a day to update their pipelines.
Would love to discuss this further with you to run it by your experience.
Regards
Ashutosh
Sure Ashu, I'll look into your product and see how I could help. I have another idea for Pipeline management that I'm going to share in upcoming blogs. Good luck with your product!
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