Tag Archives: reporting

Using Spies”: CRM Systems Success Depends on Sales Reporting

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“In Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’, competitive success comes from competitive intelligence.  You can only understand your competitive situation if you know how to gather the right intelligence….The title of Sun Tzu’s original chapter on competitive intelligence was ‘Using Spies’…. Sun Tzu wants you to remember that the ultimate source of all information is people.  The closer you are to them and the better your contacts, the better your information” (Gagliardo. The Amazing Secrets of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’).

Sales reps, out on the road, visiting customers, watching the competition, observing the marketplace and the industry – these are the eyes and ears of the organization, the “spies” who are in a position to see and hear what is going on “out there” and then reporting it back to the leaders.  Enabling the sales team to perform at its peak capability should be one of the highest priorities senior management. 

The only value of the CRM database comes from a continuous flow of current, accurate, and complete information into the databases from the sales team.  Missing, bad, incomplete, or biased information, strictly numerical information with no sense of context or background filling CRM databases is a tremendous threat to management effectiveness.

One marker of a dysfunctional CRM implementation in an organization is given the name “User Adoption Problems.” This is the CRM industry terminology for “sales reps who won’t use the system for reporting their sales meeting information.  They won’t use it!”  Many leaders seem to assume that just because “they build it, the sales reps will come.”  Just because they pay out all of the money and disrupt and stress the organization to implement a CRM system they assume the sales team will jump on board happily and willingly and keyboard in their sales information.

Interestingly enough, attention to how the sales reps enter their information can bring tremendous benefits to leaders trying to improve or to implement a CRM system.  They need to realize or remember two truths concerning sales – (1) sales reps hate to type or write because it is administrative work that takes away from selling and they don’t like keyboarding and (2) sales reps like to talk, to explain, and CRM user interfaces are too complex, too hard, too much, and take too long. 

Thus, by its very nature, the CRM system repels those it should most attract.  Rather than the sales reps willingly and happily entering their sales information into the CRM system, they are being frustrated because the system is forcing them to keyboard and is restricting their ability to explain, to discourse.  All the CRM systems want is a box checked or a number or a word or two.  For a sales rep, what the system is saying is “We really don’t care about what you want to say, what you think is going on.  Just give us the numbers and facts as fast and as simply as possible.”

So, unfortunately, the result of this failure of CRM to consider its primary source of information, is “user adoption problems.”  Procrastinating, delay, short cutting, simplifying and understating, ignoring – we begin to get the behaviors associated with distrust, alienation, cynicism, and chronic negativism regarding the sales system.

BUT THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE SO!

Sales reps love to talk on the phone.  It is natural, intuitive, and necessary for them.  Voice-based CRM data entry tools, therefore, come naturally to them, easily, with no learning curve or difficult adjustments or hurdles.  The organization identifies the kinds of information it desires reported, the sales rep takes good notes in the meetings, and then when the meeting is over, he/she finds a quiet place with a good cell, dials into the Voice-based CRM data entry system, enters a PIN or security ID number, and then, in an open dictation system, speaks in all of the information from the meeting.  All of the facts, observations, decisions, commitments, insights, problems, competitor discoveries – everything.  This talk might take three to four minutes (the equivalent of 60 minutes keyboarding under stress), and the communication is complete with context, background, and all of the associated information of the interaction with the customer.  When finished, the sales rep just hangs up and gets on with working with customers, selling, and making money.  The voice-based CRM data entry system, based on a human transcriptionist model, processes the information into the desired CRM database fields and syncs it automatically into those fields.

Thus, all the sales rep experiences is a phone call.  Nothing hard, no difficulty, no keyboarding, no hassle.  Just a phone call and hangs up.  All of the complexity happens through the voice-based, human transcription system.  Because such systems use native English language human transcriptionists, the transcription is highly accurate (near 100% accurate), meaning the sales rep does not spend any time editing the document and it is appearing in the database as a professional communication.  This accuracy and professionalism are what discriminates a voice-based, human transcriptionist model from speech recognition or voice-to-text software options.

Leaders trying to avoid “USER ADOPTION PROBLEMS” either in an existing CRM application or with a new implementation, should put “VOICE-BASED CRM” into their web browser and read about the benefits of a voice-based CRM data entry system based on a human transcription model.  Based on the cost of CRM failure, the cost of CRM User Adoption problems, the cost of a voice-based CRM data entry tool – specifically to help the sales team participate happily and willingness and fully – has astounding ROI calculation results.

In Sales work, SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN!

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The President of the construction company was an ornery and abusive man. As a salesman with his company in my territory, I really did not like to visit his company. About a year ago, I sucked it up and on a Tuesday mid-morning I walked into the office to meet with him. He complained, bad mouthed, and generally trashed me and my company for about an hour.

After I left, after I had calmed down, I called in my meeting report and in it asked senior management in my company for help. The report got routed to a senior VP in Product Development that I didn’t know. He was in the same Golf Club and Church group as this man. At a social gathering, our VP stepped in as a friend, explained to the man how it didn’t help either company to have such a negative relationship, and sincerely asked the man for his help. The next time I visited, he asked about me, talked about his company’ needs, and outlined a buying/selling strategy for the next year with our company.

If I had just been mad and suffered in silence, nothing good would have come. By reporting my experience, and because our reporting system pushes our meeting reports up in the organization to all senior managers, a solution was found and implemented. We have to talk about our customer encounters, good or bad, and the organization must have a system that pulls our reports up to people who can make a difference. SILENCE IN SALES WORK IS NOT GOLDEN!

Continuous Reporting and Feedback System

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Organization leadership should consider the sales organization as a partner in strategic data collection, with the organization leaders being the specific generators of strategic interest. This means that the Executive Council (all division or unit VPs and Sr. VPs), responsible for the operation of the organization should decide what they need to know from the customer base and the marketplace and then communicate those needs to the Sales team. Then, when a sales person is traveling to meet with customers, he or she will “look around” with the needs of the organization leaders in mind. The sales rep is now a partner with the organization leaders, gathering the specific information that leaders need to run their organizations and feeding it back into the organization through the sales meeting reporting system.

This teaming creates a tremendous learning environment for both the organization leaders and the sales team. The organization leaders have “eyes” out there in the marketplace, looking out for their needs, and the sales reps have “needs” in the organization that are asking for answers and information. Both are seeing, listening, learning, sharing, and collaborating. If the organization leaders communicate regularly with the sales team, and if the sales team members report accurate, complete, and current information immediately after the sales calls, we have a synergistic system of strategic knowledge sharing that has tremendous power to make an organization and individuals successful.

Thus, the Product Development VP might ask the sales team to look for customer or competitor product features that are positive or negative. This VP might ask the team to look around the property or ask around the offices about competitors and competitor programs, services, or products now being purchased. The Customer Service VP might ask the sales people to look specifically for any indications that current service is not serving the customers well, or to look for competitors who are serving the customers in new or improved ways, and then to report that information back to the VP through the sales reporting system. The Marketing VP might ask the sales team to promote a certain product or to sell according to a new promotion and then report back how the packaging, the names, the prices, and the products are received. The Finance VP might ask the sales reps to introduce a price increase or to change the pricing structure and to see how these changes are received. This VP might ask the sales team to inquire about competitors and if they are raising prices and by how much. All of this information is then reported back to the VP through the sales reporting system.

If the organization leaders “PULL” the information they need from their partners on the sales team, then give continuous and helpful feedback to the sales members when the information comes streaming back, then the sales people will feel a sense of belonging, a sense of importance and value, and a desire to work hard to meet the needs and expectations of their partners on the organization leadership team. Thus, the organization creates what is called a “double loop” feedback system, driven mostly by the organization leaders but maintained by continuous reporting and feedback among the leaders and the sales team members.

The Strategic Value of Sales Report Intelligence

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Nobody reads it! Nobody cares! Why am I doing this? We recently saw a sales report from a field rep who had been traveling on the road for several days. At the end of his sales report near the end of his trip, clearly discouraged, he puts these words in the report: “Is anyone reading this? Who are you? If you are reading this, please call me at [number]. I want to know who reads these reports. Does anyone care?” To be alone out on the road for several days is bad enough, but to think that no one cares is really de-motivating and discouraging. We hear often from the sales reps that reporting is all a waste of time because no one reads sales reports anyway. Stop to think for a moment – we try to motivate people in a thousand ways, but there is no greater motivator than a sales manager who reads the sales reports and gives immediate, honest, and helpful feedback, and then who moves the strategic information forward and upward in the organization, all the while giving the sales rep (by name, with cc: to sales rep) credit and praise for the information. The organization must “pull” for the information from the sales reps, want it badly, and earnestly seek it and reward it with attention and recognition and dignified and honest praise. After all, accurate, timely, and complete reconnaissance from the field is the dominating force that gives the Generals what they need to win the battle.”

Who’s Got The Monkey?

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Don’t let the monkey jump! A Harvard Business Review article titled “Who’s Got The Monkey?” talks about how weak managers let their employees push their responsibilities off on them rather than insist that they shoulder the responsibility. Weak sales managers who do not require their sales reps to report regularly on customer sales meetings have “let the monkey jump” onto their backs for gathering strategic information and disseminating it throughout the organization. To shift to another metaphor, these weak managers are letting the “tail wag the dog,” with the sales reps in control of the flow of strategic information from the field into the company. “Would you fire your top sales rep if he/she does not report regularly?” – Who has the monkey? Is the tail wagging the dog?

Business Intelligence System – control of data coming in and reporting going out!

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Critical to business intelligence and knowledge management is early rapid accumulation of information from as many diverse (credible) sources as possible – both quantitative data and qualitative knowledge. Massive aggregation or accumulation of the most accurate, current, and complete information, in a form that is usable easily and quickly must be a high priority for organization management. Every morning, leaders should be able to open their knowledge management dashboard and see the total information profile or graphic with the information processed and presented for maximum rapid understanding and action. We cannot talk about “organizational intelligence” or “strategic knowledge” or “knowledge application” unless we have a steady flow of reporting from all those out in the marketplace, especially those who are working with customers and competitors. Sales reps, technical field leaders, executives and managers, customer service people, manufacturing and product innovation and development leaders – anyone directly connecting with the marketplace needs to be reporting continuously, quickly, into the business intelligence system. At the touch of the “Refresh” button, a leader should be able to see at a quick glance exactly what is going on with the marketplace, customers, competitors, products, customer service, product performance and reception, etc.

Fast and timely reporting, with accurate, complete, and current information, processed quickly into usable form, given to the right people who have the power to collaborate and come up with strategic understanding, proper decisions, and forceful action – that is what a business intelligence system should deliver. Control over the data coming in, and control over the reporting of the data coming out!