CRM Insights from an Independent Expert in Sales Effectiveness

I had the pleasure of chatting with Dave Stein (@davestei) about his company in an e-mail interview.  His company is doing some interesting work, check out the interview.

Question:   How long has ES Research Group been in business?
[Dave Stein] I founded ESR in 2005 with N. Adam Rin, Ph.D.  Adam was a President of Gartner Research. 
 
Question:   What is your core business?
[Dave Stein] ESR is a research and advisory firm (think Gartner, Forrester, etc.) that provides independent intelligence about and comparisons of sales performance improvement processes, programs and tools and the companies that provide them.  We do not provide sales training or sales consulting.

Question:   What offerings do you have that are related to CRM?
[Dave Stein] ESR has performed extensive research on companies with successful and unsuccessful CRM deployments.  We have also evaluated tools that integrate with CRM systems promising to provide added value and a higher degree of compliance. We publish reports about our findings and recommendations.  Those can be found on our website.

Question:   As a sales expert what do you feel are the common challenges sales organizations encounter?
[Dave Stein] First, and most important is making sure the right people are on board.  ESR estimates that 25 to 33% of salespeople in companies with sales performance problems are not suited for their jobs.  That means that neither training, nor tools, nor coaching will help them get better.  Next is a general lack of process.  Sales is dead last in most companies when it comes to process, quality, measurement, accountability and productivity.  Much of this relates back to a seat-of-the-pants approach to selling.  That would never be acceptable in R&D, finance, manufacturing or any other department.
 
Question:  How can CRM products be used to help sales people and sales managers do their job better?
[Dave Stein] There are two ways.  First, it can help salespeople comply with whatever methodology and related processes their company has built.  Secondly it can help management understand how individual salespeople are advancing deals and where assistance should be provided before it’s too late.
 
Question:  In your opinion, what is the next big thing in the world of enterprise sales?
[Dave Stein] There are a few trends which ESR has been observing:

• Some companies are moving some or all of their sales function to an inside sales model to save money.  This will work well in some cases, but is precisely the wrong approach in others.  Enterprise salespeople need to become more effective.  There are proven paths to sales effectiveness, but shortcuts, tricks and tips won’t get a company there.  What will is a strategic approach to sales performance improvement (and sustainability), technology, learning and ongoing reinforcement. 
• Technology-enabled selling is providing many companies with a definite competitive advantage where the automation of existing processes is tuned for increased sales effectiveness and efficiency. CRM is the backbone of technology-enabled selling, but out-of-the-box CRM won’t get the job done.  CRM has to model real-world processes. Only then can other technology be layered in where appropriate.
• Traditional sales training as we know it (three days in a conference room at the Holiday Inn) is quickly transitioning to anytime, anywhere, on demand virtual learning.  There will always be a need for face-to-face, live learning for salespeople, but the economy, heterogeneity of sales teams and how people are now learning are all changing the learning medium.

Question:    Brief blurb about ESR Research Group?
[Dave Stein] ESR provides advice and guidance for our clients through custom advisory/consulting services and online reports.  We work with companies from literally the Fortune 20 all the way to start-ups in helping them understand and benchmark their current levels of sales performance and devising plans for ongoing performance improvement.  The Third Edition of ESR’s most widely-read report, our annual Sales Training Vendor Guide, was recently published.  For more information go to www.ESResearch.com/STVG.

Help change the Twitter terminology

I’m tired of the terms Following and Followers.  They speak to a one way communication where someone speaks, someone listens, not engagement, no relationships.  This is not what Twitter needs to be today, or into the future.

I would prefer to speak about communities within which two way communication thrives.  If you agree, leave a comment with your name and retweet this to as many people as possible, keeping @ev on the list.

Thanks for the support.

John

Advice for future computer science students

I travelled to the DC area last week and had the pleasure of chatting with my waiter, a sophomore in College.  As we talked, the topic moved to classes that he should consider taking.  Without giving it much thought I suggested that he take as many business classes as possible.  Engineers who understand and engage with the business are the ones that will go far, those that only focus on technology will become commoditized over time as there are few research-focused jobs where the technology is almost all that matters.

This week I took a few moments and threw this same question out to my Twitter community, asking what they would have advised.  I received some great input that I wanted to share:

• @emberr suggested:  group dynamics, leadership, (technical) writing.
  • My take is that you must understand how to work within teams for most business projects.  Great call.  Writing, technical and business-oriented, is also something that few engineers do well enough.
• @wallybock suggested:  sociology/anthropology, cognitive science, and learning to write well
  • Wally is dead on.  You must understand the people you work with.  How you communicate with one person may need to be vastly different than how you communicate with another.  People are not one size fits all.
• @next_connect suggested:  Sociology. I thought it was a waste, but now I find it one of my more important classes.
  • Yes, again, it is all about the people.
• @RobPaller suggested:  Public speaking class would be helpful too.
  • Rob is right.  I had the opportunity to speak in front of an audience of over 1000 people back in my mid to late 20s.  I was scared but I knew my subject material and did well enough.  Even if you’re not talking to a group this size you will interact with teams of 5 – 20 on a regular basis, get used to presenting your thoughts and ideas.

Others weighed in with similar thoughts.  It is critical that all members of the corporate team remember that your goals are driven by business needs and delivered by people with their own needs.  The technology is critical of course, but is only a piece of what makes any company successful.

Let me know what you think.

John

The Impact of Social Media on Branding

While chatting with people on Twitter I asked what people thought about the impact of social media on branding.  A response, that is dead on, came back with the following comment:  “Your brand is not what you say it is, it is what ‘they’ say it is. So, against SocMed for Brand is tough, need to monitor” (Mitch Lieberman, @mjayliebs).  I wanted to share my thoughts on why social media is critical for branding (corporate and personal).

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Think of your company as a raft on a river.  The current perception of your company, your brand, is the water flowing in the river around you.  You, and the people in your raft, represent the people in your company.  The oars are the tools being used to achieve your goals, in this case the oars are social communications and your goal is to reach the island of branding Nirvana.

Companies that are new, relatively unknown, have it fairly easy.  There is no existing perception of the company, the water is still.  People can enter the boat and simply row, hopefully in the right direction.  The only waves they encounter are those created by themselves. 

Now, if there are other companies in the same space, they are also in the river, paddling away.  It becomes important that your teammates are at least paddling in the right direction.  It is not critical that they execute flawlessly of course, they must simply row faster, with fewer errors than the competition.

Most companies enter the river with existing perceptions of who they are, their brand is defined for better or worse.  If you have a positive brand the water is flowing in the right direction.  Just paddle, don’t make major waves, the river will carry you to your goals.  If, however, you have a bad brand in place, the river is flowing against you.  You have to not only paddle hard but you must also paddle in unison.  You can make it to your goal but you will have to:

• Communicate clearly where you are going.
• Ensure everyone shares this vision and understands the tactics you’ll employ.  If you are paddling in sync you are more powerful than the boat that is out of sync.
• Keep checking around you, measure and watch.  You might find smoother sailing by following and utilizing some channels, you might encounter problems if you go off message and paddle into the reeds.

What do you think?

John

Why aren’t you using your CRM system more?

I will soon be sharing a couple of posts on usability in CRM systems as well as some thoughts on the role of AI in mining social data for your CRM system.  However, in the mean-time, I am putting most of my mental energy towards some internal projects I have underway. 

Instead of me, and others, preaching our beliefs on why you are not using your company’s CRM system, I would like to ask you directly.  Take a minute and let me know what the biggest obstacles are for you, what is your number one reason for not fully leveraging your company’s investment in CRM.

 

If you do not see your reason listed, let me know and I’ll add it.  If you have additional thoughts you’d like to share please leave a comment, everyone will benefit more.

John

The 10 things I want for Father’s day

I am a pretty simple guy with fairly simple needs.  For those of you that were wondering what to get me on Father’s Day, here’s what I’m looking for:

Personal Request

• Success for my kids in finding what makes them happy and excelling at it.
• Continue to meet and interact with great people all over the world.
• That I can continue to get back into shape to run my next marathon next year.  Number three will be sweet.

Business

• Understand vision, focus on execution.  You get paid to get things done….  Get it done.
• Take care of your best people, if you do not they will go elsewhere. 
• Take some risks but measure the results carefully.  If you never take risks, you never innovate. 
• Be honest but not foolish.  I believe in sharing as much information as possible with my teams but there is some information you must hold back. 

The World

• Improve the overall quality of life for everyone.
• Replace guns with shots of tequila, take a shot instead of firing a shot.  Trust me, everyone is your friend if you take this approach.

Miscellaneous

• That David Ortiz, DH for the Boston Red Sox, continues to return to form.  It’s been sad to watch.

What’s on your list this year?

John

Social CRM: Social Media must support the CRM, not vice versa

Companies in different industries use CRM systems for different purposes. However, the uses ultimately come down to either increasing revenue or reducing operational cost, both leading to higher profits.

Tonya McKinneymade an interesting statement today on Twitter, she stated:  “Turn it around…hook CRM to the Social network and community. NOT hook social to CRM. Relationship is the base.”

The statement made perfect sense to me initially:

• Social Networks enable relationship building.
• If you are not building relationships through open communication you are likely to lose customers.
• I am always open to turning things around and looking for a better way…

As I thought through this further I found that I completely disagree with this view of the world:

• CRM systems, as I noted, are designed to automate defined processes that are in place to increase corporate profitability.  Social networks, on the other hand, are built to enable one to one or one to many communications, nothing more.
  • You would be correct in stating that most CRM systems have been built as if they are nothing more than databases by people that often fail to understand usability.   They will continue to evolve in this area, however, and are a topic for another discussion.
• Social networks provide but one channel of communication and do not enable companies to reach out to a large enough set of audiences.  E-mail, phone calls, direct communication are other critical means of reaching your target audience for many markets, social does not address those needs.

When I think about rolling out CRM software I always step back and think about these points (and several more):

• What is the vision of the company?
• What is the corporate strategy, and the tactics that are being employed as part of that strategy?
• What processes are in place today?
• What data, relationships, etc., must be stored so that the business can model and then analyze how the business is doing?  This is where the CRM system comes in.
• What channels does the company use today for communicating, both inward and outward?  Social media, e-mail, etc.., fits in here.

Social media must come after the fact and is one part tool used for achieving the vision.  Your CRM system is also but one tool being used to achieve this vision.  However, it is the tool that will answer “How am I doing?’, which is ultimately the most important question of all.

This post was rushed, somewhat, so that we could discuss more broadly.  What do others think?

John

Social CRM: Updating customer information

One of the great things about working at Swimfish is that I get to build cool products while helping businesses deploy rich CRM solutions to automate and improve their current business processes.   Working closely with customers is one of the things I enjoy most, and one of the reasons I am always thinking about how to improve the products and services we offer.

CRM systems are only valuable if they contain accurate information.  There are a number of techniques currently in use to keep the information up to date:

• Hire a team of junior employees to scour the web, make phone calls, send e-mails, etc.., to verify that information is accurate.  This is costly, time-consuming, and error prone.
• Use data feeds from a variety of sources such as Hoovers, CapIQ, etc..  These packages are expensive and often require development resources to deploy.  If you can afford to go this route, great.
• Do nothing.  As your sales and support teams reach out to customers, or potential customers, update the CRM system.  While there are clearly costs associated with this approach, short-sighted individuals will oftentimes overlook these costs.  Do not be short-sighted.

Is there a better way?  Maybe…  Could you envision a world where self-reported information on services like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, provide the real-time data necessary to power the bulk of your CRM updates?  Clearly there would be some large challenges, like how do you determine how to map data between the various social services?  There are three John Moore’s in my small little town, how would your CRM system know whose data it needed to pull in?

What do you think?  Is there a path here to a real-time social CRM data feed that is nearly free?

John

Why Seagulls will never be Entrepreneurs

While I was tempted to have the subject of this post be something like “Seagulls:  They taste like chicken”, I thought better of it and decided to get right to the point, business is serious stuff and there is no room for humor. 

The Swimfish office in Danvers, MA is in the second building of a small office park with two other buildings surrounding us.  We recently had a a seagull who spent weeks pecking away at the door of building three.  Fascinated by its’ reflection in the glass, it would simply peck the day away.  While I can’t be certain, I believe the seagull was oblivious to his lack of progress.  Eventually, the building’s owner had fake owls put up near the door, the seagull left, never to return.

Too many leaders spend their lives acting just like that seagull; going through the same motions day-in and day-out, expecting results to improve if you just keep repeating what you have always done.  You must always take time to evaluate the tactics you are employing to ensure they are best suited for the circumstances at hand.  Weekly, if not more often, take moment to look around and make sure you are not like that seagull, attempting to pursue a goal that is not right for you or your team.

As business leaders take away one more lesson from that seagull and remember that the threats to your business are not always obvious and you must look beyond your narrow view of your business to understand all that is occurring in your marketplace.  Sometimes you are watching out for the wrong threats.

We never did see that seagull again.  I hope that it has found someplace else where it can not only survive, but thrive.  If you have a second, could you pass the honey mustard sauce?  This chicken salad sandwich is missing something.

John

The value companies place on HR

On my way from Boston to Philadelphia last night I had the pleasure of sitting next to a lawyer with great insights on human resources, organizational issues, and a variety of other topics.  It was one of the most enjoyable plane rides I have ever taken.

At one point we began discussing various reasons why companies invest in HR:

• They view it as a necessary evil to protect them legally.  You can often spot these companies by these signs:
  • The head of HR does not have a seat at the executive table.  They are at least 2 – 3 levels below the CEO where they can “preach” the value of HR to the troops without bothering the CEO with minor details.
  • They will often preach how wonderful their benefits are, “tops in the industry”.  This is often code for we are not going to pay you much but… the benefits are great.
  • Expenditures on training are viewed as easy to cut expenses since they’re just “frills”.
• They believe that their staff is important and it is cost effective to setup a mutually beneficial relationship to reduce turnover, maximize productivity, increase profits.  This is how companies should operate but not nearly enough understand this balance.  Here are some of the signs.
  • HR has a seat at the executive table.
  • Employee benefits are competitive but not “tops in the industry”.
  • Training is in place and employees can take classes that help them in their current job.
  • Employees are expected to deliver results.  If they do not deliver, there are clearly defined processes for helping them, or helping them find other work opportunities.
• They believe that people are everything, and that they should do everything possible to keep them happy.
  • They will often preach how wonderful their benefits are, “tops in the industry”.  In this case, they really are great, people would be foolish to leave.
  • The expenditures on benefits allow the company to get remain profitable, but leave it in poor position to deal with any “bumps in the road”.
  • Employees are expected to perform, but there is no real enforcement and employees can slide by.

What kind of company do you work for?

John