The only value of a CRM system is the quality of information in its databases. What good is information from the field that is a month old before it is reported? Of what help is information to a manager or to the organization when the manager doesn’t read reports regularly?
Here is a note sent from a manager to a sales rep:
“Shawn,
Why are all these reports so old. There are no new reports that have been filed in this last batch. Not really any point filing reports this old; as Jim and I read them, we can’t really do anything with reports a month old. Are you this far behind on your call reports? Have you filed your more recent reports?”
Two things we might surmise from this statement: (1) the sales rep is not reporting his sales meeting information immediately or regularly, and (2) the sales manager isn’t reading reports anyway, as he doesn’t seem to notice the missing information until a month has gone by.
1. Sales reps who do not report immediately and regularly
Again, the problem is the quality of the CRM database. Sales reps who do not report immediately following a sales event are limiting severely the capability of the database to aggregate or accumulate information sufficient for a reader to see and understand patterns. The only information of any worth in a CRM database is that sufficiently accumulated to reveal patterns and trends. We have to have bulk, mass, accumulation from all sources of good information if we are to “see” (discern or detect) patterns. Therefore, it is imperative with a CRM system that the sales team understands its responsibility to create a continuous flow of good information into the CRM system databases. Regular reporting isn’t a merely trivial administrative activity that is forced onto the sales team. It is not something of choice. We need the sales reps to report because the entire CRM database depends on mass and accumulation for meaningful understanding, analysis, decision making, and action. A sales rep who withholds information for a month before reporting it doesn’t understand what is going on with a CRM system implementation. Once they understand, they contribute willingly and meaningfully.
2. Sales managers who do not read sales reports immediately and regularly
This is the most interesting issue with CRM sales team reporting – a manager who doesn’t read the reports coming in. Sales reps are quick to pick-up on this lack of attention by the manager, and they delay, procrastinate, and often fail to report at all, knowing there are no consequences for not reporting and no purpose for reporting at all. In many companies, because sales managers do not read the reports, the reporting function languishes and disappears. What is the consequence of this? What the sales manager doesn’t realize is that the quality of the CRM function for the entire organization depends heavily on the continuous inflow of accurate, current, and complete information from the field, from those closest to the customer relationship experience. By failing to pay attention to the reporting function, the sales manager – not the sales reps – is seriously compromising the value of the investment the company has made into its CRM program.
We encountered a sales rep who was writing this statement at the bottom of each of his daily sales reports: “If there is anybody out there reading this, please give me a call at (phone number).” For over a month, no one responded and he kept adding this statement to his reports. When we flagged this to senior management and they went checking with the sales manager, they found that the sales manager was so busy doing his own paperwork and tasks that he didn’t have time to read the sales reports and respond to them. He was fired on the spot because of his failure to understand organizational priorities.
We often ask, “If your most productive sales rep, the one bringing in the most revenue, won’t report his/her sales activity, would you fire him/her?” If the answer is yes, then the priorities of the organization towards its commitment to a quality CRM database are clear. If the answer is no, then the “tail is wagging the dog,” and revenue production ONLY is the activity of greatest interest in the organization and they should not have invested in CRM in the first place. Any simple activity tracking software would have worked better. Companies often have Lone Ranger hero sales people who “do their own thing” and seem to be successful in producing. If revenue only is the goal of management, then this is tolerated and even applauded. However, if long-term customer relationship and care management (CRM) is the goal of management, then this person needs to change or be let go. The CRM databases need this person’s sales meeting information, without exception, and the person should consider it his/her sales responsibility to report immediately and regularly.
The purpose of buying and implementing a CRM system is the quality of the databases that will result and the power that gives to everyone in the organization to see patterns in the data, to understanding more clearly what is going on, to apply meaningful analytics for clearer sense of pattern, to engage in fruitful decision making, and then to take proper action. With that goal in mind, it is easy to see why a sales rep who does not report any of his/her customer interactions for months on end, why a sales manager who doesn’t read the reports and only talks about the issue after months of non-reporting have gone by are serious constraints to a powerful and successful CRM system.
So, of all of the information presented to us in a customer relationship environment (CRM), what does the seasoned (grandmaster) organization look for – in all directions?
f the information flowing into the CRM system has to do with pricing and how many senior managers are connected to pricing knowledge. Why do we price the products as we do? What are all of the discounting and promotional pricing principles and objectives? How is the customer reacting to price? How are price increases tolerated? What can we do internally or externally to affect price up or down? Why are our selling/revenue goals set as they are? What return on investment do we expect from our decisions/implementations? Why do we maintain cost levels as we do?
s these technologies are to our technological brains and imaginations, they are not facile or agile and not accurate enough to handle the rugged and open environment of the sales reps on the go with noise in the background, the wind blowing, and the cold in the nose of real work on the road. Speech recognition works in a closed dictation environment where the system has been trained on the person’s voice, where the vocabulary is very narrow and well prescribed, and where there are no ambient noises or distractions that overwhelm the clarity of the audio quality.
The only thing valuable about a CRM system is the quality of its database. No data in the CRM database, bad data, missing data – then what good is the system? Little things can have big effects ONLY if the little things are accumulating, aggregating sufficient to form patterns.
CONVERSATIONS! 
Steve Fearson with Oracle continues, “A successful social CRM strategy for sales requires much more than access to social information about prospects. It requires a fundamentally different selling process. B2B companies need to leverage the vast volume of customer data and insights, but how the data is aggregated, transformed into intelligence and integrated into the sales process are the primary factors in determining the success of a sales organization ‘going social’.”
1. Customer Satisfaction Surveys – identify the customer contacts you want to hear from, ask them to participate, give them a phone number to call and a secure (and anonymous) ID number, and then let them call into an open dictation system and answer 4-5 simple and general questions as they choose to answer. This will give you what is truly “the voice of the customer.” Then, use a qualitative knowledge analysis tool to convert the audio to digital, number/code the “thought units” (word, phrase, or sentence with one unique message), and enter the information into the database for analysis.
In a very short time, you can move from the announcement of the proposal to a working prototype with all sections started and everyone discussing the overall structure and content of the proposal. This is a far more effective method of proposal starting than storyboarding. This voice-based data entry is a tremendous tool for “front-end loading” and “rapid prototyping” of a proposal to get the energy up quickly and fully and everyone engaged and participating. One of the major problems with proposals is waiting too long to develop an initial prototype of the final document. This is sometimes left until the end of the effort, the last step. Far more powerful, is a front-loading by voice of all of the content that everyone already knows, getting it out where everyone can read it and evaluate it, and having an initial prototype in hand to force momentum and energy into the work.
1. Quality Data. A solid voice-based CRM data entry tool relies on human transcriptionists to covert the audio information into digital form for database entry and processing. Human transcriptionists (native English language speakers, citizens who live and work in the U.S.) hear and listen to what is being said, helping the speaker to make good sense out of what he/she is expressing. The right words are chosen, the sentences are correct, the paragraphing is logical. Thus, the human transcriptionist is a partner with the speaker, helping the person get the ideas out, arrange them, and put them into a professional document.
A voice-based CRM data entry solution is a kind of RETRO competence, going back to a fundamental tool that has worked well for many years – the partnership of the sales person with a human transcriptionist. If a vendor company can make that partnership workable and profitable, it can provide one of the most cost-effective solutions available today to the CRM data entry and user adoption problems that have plagued the CRM industry since its beginning. Companies should be searching for such a tool. FROM YEARS OF EXPERIENCE WE ALL KNOW IT WORKS!
We are talking about two critical technologies involved in Speech Analytics:
Much talk has been made over the past 10 years about “knowledge workers” and our “knowledge society” and “knowledge is power,” but often the efforts to implement knowledge management in organizations fails. With a 
2. Then, as the project progresses and decisions need to be made, the KM leaders should shift the sequencing methodology for information gathering to CONVERGENCE, or the narrowing and forming of the information into a solution or decision. The literature on strategic thinking makes clear that convergence is the major enemy of thought at the beginning of a project – the KM leaders cannot allow the thinking to converge too early or too quickly. Stay out, stay wide, stay open just as long as possible. When everyone has spoken, when those thoughts have been transcribed and given back to everyone to read, and when they have all spoken a second time and those data are transcribed and given out for everyone to read, then, more than likely, the natural tendency of the human mind will take over and the entire organization will being the process of CONVERGENCE – narrowing down, honing in on a resolution.
CRM systems are intended to move strategic knowledge efficiently around an organization, so conversations are relevant, purposeful, and actionable. Accurate, complete, and timely information flowing up and down and back and forth is the lifeblood of any organization, and the CRM system is the heart that pumps the information throughout ‘arteries’ of the organization.
Does the organization encourage emails and joint meetings often between Senior Managers and Sales Reps? Do these people know each other, play golf with each other, attend picnics and family gatherings together? Do they care about each other and show it? Is there a regular reporting system between the two groups, where Senior Mangers specify what they want to know and where Sales Reps report on those specified subjects? Do Sales Reps go into the Senior Managers’ offices regularly to communicate (sit down together or email messages) to talk about customers, competitors, and marketplace directions? Do Senior Managers go on the road sometimes with the Sales Rep to see first hand what is happening “out there”? And, I am sure, there are many more very effective ways that the two groups can be brought together.