Category Archives: Change Management

The only ways to report that anyone knows is keyboarding, calling the sales manager on the phone for a conversation, calling a secretary and dictating the information to her, or leaving a voice mail message for someone. All of these have major limitations – keyboarding takes too long and is too hard, calling the sales manager leaves no record, someone has to listen to and perhaps type the voice-mail message, and secretaries these days just don’t transcribe sales reports for miscellaneous sales reps. To change, however, even to something far superior, requires serious management willpower and persistence and determination. We believe most organizations need significant coaching as to how to make changes to long-established work habits however dysfunctional they may be.

CRM Meets Its Worst Enemy: “I don’t want to”

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Henry Thoreau in Walden talks about a gnat’s wing on the rail of a railroad track that derails a train.  He felt that sometimes nature, despite how fragile it seems, has power to thwart our most sophisticated technologies.  Remember the story of David and Goliath – a little guy with a single stone brings down the heavily armed techno-giant.  Remember the “Butterfly Effect” in chaos science, where butterfly wings moving in Asia mean terrible storms soon in New England.  Little things and the individual person sometimes can have a powerful impact on much larger things.

Despite all of our CRM sophistication and computer/web complexity, all it takes to derail the CRM purpose and investment is one, little, individual human to exercise his/her free will and say, “I’m not going to tell you.  I don’t want to.  I’m not going to do it.”

Spoken or just felt, the powerful decision to not participate – “I’m not going to do it” – stops the most powerful information gathering software.  “I don’t have time.”  “What’s it to me if management knows or doesn’t know?”  “Who cares anyway?”  “CRM is just another ‘fad’ that will pass just like all of the other fads management has foisted off on us.”

In an organization, the positive benefits of a vigorous, continuous flow of accurate, complete, and timely information from the field into the CRM databases are realized when analysis of those data by managers reveals patterns that lead to clearer understanding, mature decision making, and proper action.  That is why we buy and implement CRM systems; the purpose is good and positive and worthy of support by all sales reps.

Why is it that, somewhere along the CRM implementation timeline, individuals “opt out”?

TWO KEYS TO SUCCESS.  As far as the sales reps “opting in” to participation in the CRM system, we have found two keys to making a CRM system run smoothly for those who will use the information from the CRM databases and those who will enter information into the system:

1.  PARTNERSHIP.  Upper management and the sales team need to partner in the work of gathering and using intelligence from the field – tie the upper management information needs to the sales reps information gathering capability.

For example, the relationship between a military General in a battlespace and his spies (intelligence gathering specialists) is critical for winning the battle.  The General has to know what information he would like to obtain, and he has to communicate that need to the spies, so they can look for that intelligence and bring it back.  It is the PARTNERSHIP between the General and the spies that wins the battle.  Both sides know they are important and that what they are doing is valued and essential to the other and to the overall mission 

In far too many business organizations, the sales people have no idea what management wants to know in the customer, competition, and industry marketplace, and the top managers give no instructions, no feedback, no collaboration to let the sales reps know that what they are doing is essential.  A total disconnect exists between the two, a gap that separates whatever is going on at the top floors from whatever is going on with the reps or “scouts” on the street.  Forming a strong, vigorous partnership between management and the sales team, so the information gathering function is respected, has dignity, and stature for all partners, eliminates the “I don’t want to” attitude quickly and decisively.  TOGETHER they are working to develop business intelligence and insight to guide their striving together towards mutually-beneficial success.

2.  SIMPLE. INTUITIVE VOICE-BASED DATA ENTRY TOOLS.  The reporting function must be simple and intuitive – mouth and phone.  Management must focus on tools that make the sales reporting function easy, fast, and natural.  Ironically, the attempts to use IT (high tech) solutions thwart the partnership goal because they trivialize sales rep intelligence and motivation.  They are a very quick “turn off” and “opt out.”

What is needed from the sales rep is his/her best insight and observation – very human capabilities.  What is needed is explanatory, voice-based information going into the CRM databases, not merely activity numbers, jots, tweets, twits, and thumbs.  Smart phones, tablets, speech recognition, and other “technological” solutions make the sales reps into “dummies.”  They “dumb down” or seek to eliminate the complex (some would argue “messy”) human thinking, intelligence, and insight gathering capability of the sales reps, which causes them to lose interest quickly in the CRM system.

These “high tech” solutions trivialize the data gathering activity and, thereby, demean the sales rep function.  “All they want is a number.  They don’t care what is really going on out here.  They wouldn’t understand what is going on with the competitors and the failure of our latest products if I explained it to them.  They don’t care.  It is too hard.  Marketing just takes everything so personally; they don’t want to hear about it.  Stay down under the radar!”

It is the obliteration of responsibility for insight and explanatory information that is so dispiriting and disheartening to a customer-centric, needs-based selling person.  They want to talk.  They have a story to tell.  They see things and want to explain them and get management’s attention.  They want to tell management the decisions the customer is making, but the tools they are being given to do so are either keyboarding based or gadget based, such that they are difficult, time-consuming, trivial, or dysfunctional.  They need straightforward, intuitive, and respected voice-based CRM data entry tools.

So — (1) PARTNER UP top management and the sales team so they are working closely together to employ CRM to achieve shared and worthy objectives, and (2) GIVE VOICE-BASED TOOLS to the sales team to make reporting simple and intuitive.

Give the sales team a reporting tool like voice-based CRM data entry that uses the telephone for data entry, human transcriptionists for intelligent and accurate processing, and powerful software to sync the data automatically into the CRM system.  All the sales rep has to do is dial the number, put in the ID number, speak in the words of the sales meeting, hang up, and then go on about the customer care and selling activity – 2-5 minutes rather than hours, 98% accuracy rather than 20% with speech recognition (requiring serious and time-consuming editing).  The supporting voice-based system, then, processes the words into digital and enters them into the CRM databases.

Now, the PARTNERSHIP is working – Management is getting “good” data; Sales reps are HAPPY AND WILLING.

WIN-WIN!

Data Hoarding: CRM’s Worst Nightmare

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“Information hoarding involves people who intentionally withhold information from others to make themselves more valuable to their company.  Many information hoarders seem to believe it’s not worth their time to teach, train, or relay information to others.  They feel either that others don’t have any need for this information or that they will have to spend so much time explaining what this information means that it’s not worth the effort”  (Van Hoozer, “Beware of Data Hoarders,” InformationWeek, May 23, 1994, 100).

So, an organization spends serious money and allots precious human energy and time to finding and installing a CRM system.  The fundamental premise behind such systems is that critical information from those who interact with customers and the competitive marketplace will enter those data so everyone in the organization can understand and react properly to what is “going on out there.”  CRM systems need timely, correct, and complete information streaming into the databases for them to have any value.  Without that information, CRM systems are merely very expensive empty filing cabinets.

“Would you fire your key sales person if she/he will not submit sales reports on customer meetings into the CRM system?” 

We ask that question of many sales managers and company executives installing CRM systems, and, to our astonishment, the answer we get often is “No.”  Mind boggling!  The tail is wagging the dog!  Astonishing lack of will and clear intention in management and indicator of total failure of CRM implementation.  We cannot believe what we are hearing!

The entire CRM system investment and asset are made meaningless by such a decision because it says that short-term revenue and a “Lone Ranger” who produces it are more important to the success of the organization than a vital communication system at the heart of the organization.

FIRE IMMEDIATELY ANY SALES REP WHO WILL NOT REPORT WILLINGLY, REGULARLY, AND COMPETENTLY INTO THE CRM SYSTEM!

Why do people hoard critical customer and marketplace information?  Why do they refuse to report into the CRM system?

Data hoarding is a hold-over from times in organizations of very poor management will or strength and very poor communications management or discipline.  In such times, “all of the cockroaches” of bad human behavior manifest themselves and spawn debilitating results.  “Protecting turf,” “building fiefdoms and silos,” “ego power plays and power politics,” “negative competition and dirty tricks and dirty dealing,” “weak decision making systems with little to no shared information among the power players,” “nasty people playing nasty games.”  The list of dysfunctions in organizations could go on and on.   All of which lead to people hiding and controlling and protecting information so as to protect their jobs, control their power circles, and leverage their knowledge to maximize their return and benefit. All symptoms of dysfunctional management attitudes and practices.

When a CRM system is purchased and installed, ALL OF THE MANAGEMENT TEAM must be convinced it is the thing to do and be TOTALLY IN SUPPORT OF IT AS THE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM OF THE ORGANIZATION.  NO DISSENTERS!

(1) Top level management must make their needs clear as to the information they need and expect from the sales people on a regular basis.  They must have the dashboards and other metrics that tell them, exactly, what is going on based on the information they are requiring from the sales team.  ANYONE ON THE SALES TEAM WHO DOES NOT PARTICIPATE NEEDS TO BE LET GO IMMEDIATELY!   (2) The sales team needs to know that top management people are watching the dashboard metrics and using those indicators to understand, make decisions, and take proper action.  The two groups need to be communicating with each other constantly, working as a team to make the best use of ALL POSSIBLE GOOD INFORMATION from the field for everyone’s best good.

Only when (1) the stream of accurate, complete, and current information flows strongly from the sales reps to top level management and (2) the stream of feedback of appreciation and direction flows just as strongly from top management to the sales team will the CRM system realize its greatest value in the success of the organization.  A voice-based CRM data entry and communication system is critical to maintaining such healthy streams of information.