CRM Delivers the Best Results When Everybody Plays

Posted on April 18, 2012 by admin

“The Collaboration Curve – ‘World of Warcraft’ players improve their performance by leveraging a broad set of discussion forums, wikis, databases, and instructional videos that exist outside the game….The more players participate and interact with World of Warcraft’s knowledge economy, the more valuable its resources become, and the faster players increase their rate of performance improvement. Said more generally, the more participants in number – and interactions among those participants – you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up….In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. This is called ‘the Network effect’ (see right for picture). These leaps in performance describe the shape and power of the collaboration curve, a new force in our professional and personal lives” (Hagel, Brown, Davison, “Introducing the Collaborative Curve,” Harvard Business Review, 2009).

CRM databases are of the highest quality when they are fertilized by a rich and continuous inflow of accurate, complete, and current information from everyone who has anything to do with customer relations. Massive accumulation and aggregation of information from as wide and diverse a population as possible ensures that the CRM database can generate the patterns and trends that give all players solid understanding, strong analytical material, better decision making choices, and more trustworthy and proper action. The knowledge rich and fertile CRM database available to and used by all is the reason the organization bought and implemented CRM in the first place.

But how do we enable and encourage this “Collaboration Curve,” this “Network Effect,” where we see “leaps of performance as participants get better faster by working with others”?

The only way to get ideas, thinking, and learning moving within an organization is a voice-based CRM data entry system. People have to be enabled to speak their minds, share their insights and experience, ask for information, challenge concepts and facts, ask for help in ‘playing the game’, and otherwise talk and ask and communicate with others in the organization. A voice-based CRM data entry system is simple and direct, using voice and phone, two technologies that are profoundly simple and intuitive and robust today for all kinds of stationery and mobile applications. Speech recognition software is too “closed” and limited to be the tool for this kind of collaborative/networking high-volume discussion and communicating. Only a human transcriptionist-based system, one that joins human capabilities with the finest computer technologies of today is capable of enabling such a Collaborative/Networked environment.

Any company considering a CRM implementation and any company considering how to improve the user adoption or the value of an existing CRM system should take a few minutes to put the words “Voice-Based CRM“ into the web browser to access information that teaches the value of such systems.

Report Immediately/Respond immediately: Value of Current, Accurate, and Complete CRM Information

Posted on April 17, 2012 by admin

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.

‘TALK TO ME!’ ‘Thinking Out Loud’ to Make Sense of Things

Posted on April 12, 2012 by admin

Interesting how, in our high tech and highly digitized and automated world, some wonderful intellectual work gets done with simple human abilities – like talking and listening.

We often hear the suggestion, when someone has a difficult task or is troubled with something -

“Talk to me; what it is you are thinking; just talk it out so I can help you.”

Talking as a way of thinking is a common and proven way to work out a problem or a task in the mind. Many great writers and scientists go on long walks each afternoon, so they can talk to themselves, hear themselves express and connect ideas, and form sentence and paragraph expression patterns. We often seek a friend or a colleague, a family member or a mentor to talk to when we need to think out loud and, thereby, hear what it is that is trying to form in our minds. One psychologist said that, if you just stand someone near a post and tell him/her to talk to it and explain to it the issues, that act of talking helps tremendously in working the things in the mind out and into understandable form. Sometimes the people we talk to aren’t much more responsive or helpful than the post, but it doesn’t seem to matter – they are there and looking at us and listening.

Explicit knowledge. Some of our knowledge and the experiences we have deal with “explicit” information, structured information, the kind that is easily spoken or written, that makes good sense, and comes out of our minds easily and fluently. This is the kind of information that is very comfortable for us to talk about and explain. It makes good sense to us. This information is easy to write/keyboard and comes out easily and naturally. Often this knowledge is highly quantifiable or numerical.

Implicit knowledge. On the other hand, much more of our knowledge and experiences deal with “implicit” information, unstructured knowledge, the kind that is forming in our minds, the kind that is “out there” needing “thinking about” and discussion. These are feelings, impressions, instinctual reactions, and perceptions that are not easily articulated and made good sense of. These are the “felt” ideas that we struggle to express, the ones we intuit, the ones that we try to say one way, stop, try another way, stop, and then go at it another way. Implicit knowledge is “messy” and “uncomfortable.” Sometimes expressing “implicit” information is very frustrating for both the speaker and the listener – it takes time and patience. Finally, and especially if a friend will help by restating or rephrasing the ideas in different ways, we begin to get the “implicit” information to convert, to transition into “explicit” information where it is understandable and easily expressible. This is a wonderful process and is a significant “engine” in any organization’s intellectual stimulation and development. Often this knowledge his highly qualitative or subjective.

Talk/Walk, Talk/Draw. Some people like to walk when they talk, as they think things through. They Talk-Walk. We hear often of poets and writers, of philosophers and administrators who walk by alone and talk to themselves, around and around the block, up and down the stairs, up and down the long hall way. Sometimes they do this with a friend or while walking or jogging.

Also, some people like to draw when they are trying to think. They Talk-Draw. They stand at a black/white board and as they talk they draw diagrams, pictures, charts, doodles, mockups, and other sorts of free flow art as they talk to themselves. They can’t think without sketching and doodling on a napkin. Often walking or drawing as a complement to talking is very powerful in getting “implicit” information to form such that it can be “explicitly” stated to others.

A simple voice-based communication and feedback system can be a significant assist tool for these kinds of intellectual activities. This is true especially in a powerful sales planning and reporting system, where a person can talk out the planning information as best as he/she can at the moment, get the information transcribed quickly and back, and then when reading it, start talking again and recording it. This activity is especially powerful for helping teams to think. This process of talking/recording/sharing, reading, talking/recording/sharing again, reading, and then doing it again is one of the most powerful ways to cause minds to come to see what is trying to be expressed and to form the “implicit” into a “explicit” communication. Often we cannot see the “point” we are seeking until after several rounds of talking/recording/sharing, reading, talking/recording/sharing reading. The mental understandings and structures grow and develop as the information moves around and around in several double loops. It is a great way to prepare an important presentation or proposal or submission or to think through a difficulty with an important customer or challenge from a competitor.

Quite outside of today’s high tech, digital, automated world is a set of powerful intellectual comprehension and understanding tools that are invaluable, that never go out of date, that always produce sophisticated intellectual understanding. The human brain finds powerful expression through the simple speaking voice and the hearing ear.

When CRM systems match (1) top-level management information planning with (2) sales-team level information gathering and reporting through a voice-based system, marrying and integrating the management need with the sales team gathering capability, then the CRM databases become the instruments for understanding, analysis, decision making, and action CRM systems are designed to deliver.

Three Essential CRM Knowledge Categories

Posted on April 3, 2012 by admin

“In chess, as in everything else, we tend to give the most attention to whatever is in the middle of our line of sight. But the chess grandmaster understands very well that the crucial piece might not be in the center of his line of sight. He considers every piece on every square of the chess board, to make sure that not a single one escapes his notice” (Slywotzsky, 1999).

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?

After we consider all of the knowledge, the facts, details, observations, names, and everything else, that is flooding into CRM databases and demanding attention, we argue that there are only three basic categories of information essential to “customer relationship management.” All of the rest of it is interesting for enterprise management, but only three knowledge categories are important enough for senior management to track strategically and carefully.

The three knowledge categories are Product, Pricing, and Competition.

All other knowledge categories related to customer relationship management can be subsumed into one of these three categories of knowledge. Let’s consider:

Product

Anything to do with planning, design, testing, fabrication, production, packaging, distribution, shipping, performance onsite, evaluation, repair/parts, customer reaction, or anything else connected with the lifecycle of the product are the subjects that all subsume under this Product heading. Thus, the CRM system should be set-up to flag or channel or direct any of these Product categories into one database section. Management should consider this category of knowledge as one focus area, with all of the pieces interacting, to understand the momentum and opportunity of the products in the marketplace.

Of most importance is that the sales reps out on the road look specifically, but everywhere, for product-oriented issues with the customer, in the customer environment. What do they buy, why are they buying it, for how long, how it is working, what about service, who are our champions? These sorts of information should be watched for with a keen eye, articulated quickly and completely back into the CRM database system, and analyzed carefully by senior management.

The strategic intelligence embedded in this knowledge base is invaluable for correct understanding, proper analysis and decision making, and forceful confident action.

Pricing

Interesting how much of 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?

Many of the most important decisions in an organization have to do with the monetary value of the work of the company. So much of what is important to the success of the company has to do with pricing issues.

Again, repeating a paragraph from above, the strategic intelligence embedded in this Pricing knowledge base is invaluable for correct understanding, proper analysis and decision making, and forceful confident action.

Competition

An incredible array of organizational issues can be subsumed under this knowledge category. The action in the marketplace, the industry space, the actions of competitors and of partners, the decisions of customers, the specifications and competitive purchasing/buying rules and regulations, the competitor products and their features and benefits.

Who is beating us? Why/How? In what markets, with what customers? What are the competitive differentiators of their products or services? What are our customers saying about the competitive situation? What obstacles are we having to overcome to sell against our best competitors? How big is the market and what share do we own?

Surrounding this knowledge category are many subcategories of pertinent information concerning competition that is critical for management understanding, decision making, and action.

So, what does a wise and experienced senior management staff look for with their CRM system? The entire field of strategic intelligence (looking at the entire chess board), with specific patterning of that information into three decisive and penetrating focus areas: Product, Pricing, and Competition.

A CRM sales force reporting system that could bring all information on these three knowledge categories together into analytics that make general sense of the information and present that sense to management on a simple and quick to read dashboard, minute-by-minute up to date with current, accurate, and complete knowledge is of incalculable value.

Using Spies”: CRM Systems Success Depends on Sales Reporting

Posted on March 30, 2012 by admin

“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.

The Big Three CRM Issues: Simplifying CRM Systems

Posted on March 28, 2012 by admin

“I found three Big Problems for CRM: … (1) DATA: Effectively managing the data we collect has now become a Big Problem…. (2) KNOWLEDGE: Knowledge cannot support CRM automation…. (3) PURPOSE: We don’t know what CRM is doing” (Esteban Kolsky, “Connect,” Customer Relationship Management, April 2012, 39-39).

From the perspective of the Voice-based CRM data entry industry, these three BIG PROBLEMS FOR CRM all stem from the same two causes: (1) ignoring 90% of the qualitative customer relationship management information available, and (2) overbuilding the 10% of the quantitative or numerical information.

Let’s see how this assertion explains the Three Big Problems and suggests a direction for a solution to those seeking to improve their CRM implementation or are thinking of implementing a CRM solution..

1. DATA: “Data is the reason we implemented CRM in the first place. Whether transactional, operational, demographic, attitudinal, behavioral, and now sentimental, the core of what CRM does is collect and store data from all interactions…. Effectively managing the data we collect has now become a Big Problem.”

CRM today collects too much information of the wrong kind. The key point to remember is that the service is named “CRM” and at the beginning that stood for “Customer Relationship Management.” ONLY CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT! In the beginning of the CRM movement 20 years ago, the concern was human and dealt with the needs and concerns, the background and context of customer values and desires. The need was for ways to handle the qualitative knowledge regarding the insights, feelings, aspirations, perceptions, and interests of the customer. This information was expressed through words and sentences, through conversations, discussions, shared collaborations – highly qualitative inter-human and interactive expressions. These expressions were at the heart of ‘customer-concentric or ‘customer-centered’ selling approaches and systems.

The primary source of data, information, or knowledge about the customer relationship was the sales rep and others at the front end or cutting edge of the contact with customers and the marketplace. Tom Siebel (who pioneered Siebel Systems and the early CRM industry) worried two decades ago about the possibility of CRM failure if the sales team did not participate fully in entering current, accurate, and complete knowledge of the customer interaction. The sales team’s qualitative knowledge from the field was the key to CRM success.

Today with CRM, the focus is on IT quantitative (numerical) solutions, and EVERYTHING IN THE ENTERPRISE has become content for CRM systems. The original intent of CRM, qualitative customer relationship information, has been lost and all of the information now being included in CRM systems has overwhelmed the service. However, if we choose it to be so, CRM can return to simplify and be about this limited set of qualitative knowledge again, focus again on the sales team, and be a very powerful service in successful organizations.

2. KNOWLEDGE: “All of the details you need to know are what constitute knowledge, which should be readily available and constantly updated for automation to happen effectively. As you can imagine, not all these elements are always easily available nor are they always updated. Knowledge cannot support CRM automation.”

CRM today does too much, includes too much, is far too complex! What is it, after all, that we “need to know” for CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT? Just that simple qualitative knowledge that reveals the human essentials of the customer relationship right now – knowledge from the sales reps that is current, accurate, and complete. A very limited set of fields in the database. And where does that information come from? From the sales team speaking or reporting religiously and fully into their simple database system. THAT IS THE ONLY “KNOWLEDGE” THE ORIGINAL CRM SYSTEM WAS INTENDED TO PROVIDE AND IT WAS AND IS SUFFICIENT! When we focus exactly on the CUSP of the organization/customer relationship, at the moments where our people meet their people in business transactions that affect the relationship, then we begin to get the qualitative knowledge “we need to know.” If we define knowledge only as that related directly to simple customer relationship management, how much do we really need to know to manage it well?

When CRM became everything for everyone, all things IT and digital, it grew out of simplicity and into complexity, expanding far beyond the capability of simple CRM to handle. For many years now we have all of the systems capability needed to handle true, simple CRM qualitative knowledge very well. How can we handle something that includes EVERYTHING?

3. PURPOSE: “What job (or jobs) did you hire your CRM solution to do for you?… Most organizations I have worked with have almost never been able to answer this question before implementing CRM….Whether you are spending time, money, and resources on a system that does not allow you to have full control of your data, that does not support the automation of simple tasks, and that you, well, don’t know why you have it. Could this be true?”

CRM has lost its focus and purpose. Over the years CRM has left its roots, has been taken over by IT and numbers, computers, money, talent, complexity, and high tech imperatives and demands and has focused entirely on processing the 10% of the information easily digitized and handled by computers. Most companies today are admitting that they don’t know why they have a CRM implementation when they are still struggling to stay abreast of simple, human, qualitative interaction and information.

If you want a simple Customer Relationship Management system that handles qualitative knowledge and helps your sales team capture and enter into the system the information they are generating out in their meetings with customers, then go back 20 years to the beginning of CRM and look at those early solutions – a little, sufficient digital, a lot of talk and text and explanatory information (qualitative knowledge). Sadly, high tech has drawn all of the talent and money away from the development of “human” or qualitative solutions. A little creative and innovative improvement over time would have made CRM systems today simple, clear, and powerful in providing the organization leaders with usable customer relationship management knowledge.

They were sufficient and can be again!

If you want to improve your CRM implementation or if you are looking to implement a CRM solution, stop for a moment and think about it. Turn your back on complexity and over-built IT solutions. Go looking for RETRO solutions, like VOICE-BASED CRM DATA ENTRY and databases that can handle qualitative information. Look for the generic and effective solutions to a very straightforward and simple HUMAN need to know what is going on in the customer relationship – ‘out there on the ground’!

One humble spy with critical observed information from the battlefield is more important to the success of the General and the battle operation than the trillions of computer bytes flying back and forth among the technologies in the battlespace. One humble spy who saw something ‘out there’ and has important things to say.

The Two-Part Human Dictation/Transcription Solution: Voice-Based CRM Data Entry System

Posted on March 21, 2012 by admin

Only a voice-based dictation system can capture longer, more complex explanatory information simply and quickly and sync or push it directly into the CRM databases.

Capturing explanatory knowledge requires processing capability far beyond that of speech recognition or speech-to-text applications today. As interesting as 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.

A two-part voice-based CRM data entry system starts with (1) human dictation and human transcription and finishes with (2) sophisticated technology that syncs the information automatically into the CRM system database. First we have to capture and process the explanatory information; second, we have to move it automatically into the databases.

PART 1 HUMAN DICTATION AND HUMAN TRANSCRIPTION. Let’s talk about the first requirement, the human dictation and human transcriptionist, for a moment. Many is the man or women a little older who enjoyed the environment where a manager was supported by a human administrative assistant. Let’s call the person ‘Sam’ (male or female). Sam has been with the “boss” (man or woman) now for many years, knows exactly what is going on with the business, runs the major office systems, processes the dictated information, and otherwise is, in most cases, the most important person in the office. Sam takes dictation using shorthand, types it, and prints it out for signature. It is near (if not completely) perfect. He/she knows what the boss is talking about, listens with a perceptive human mind to make adjustments even when the wrong things are spoken, and otherwise “manages” the dictation/processing system to make sure the end result is as perfect as possible. One person is speaking or dictating; the other is listening and processing. The dictation/transcription channel is clear, so the information transfer is accurate.

That kind of applied intelligence is what the voice-based CRM data entry system provides to the sales team. The sales people are the speakers, and their clear dictation is the start of the process towards the database. The transcriptionists are native-English language speakers, experienced business environment adults, and U.S. Citizens living in the United States. They are using company-specific glossaries of names and terms, so they can produce a transcript that is near 100% correct in all aspects. It is these essential human characteristics that the voice-based CRM data entry system brings to ensure a clear channel of communication for accuracy. This means the sales reps speak in the information once and is done with it – no lengthy and time-consuming editing of documents machine processed poorly, with the revision of complex explanatory information often taking longer than the dictation, thus doubling the demand on the sales rep.

PART 2 SOPHISTICATED TECHNOLOGIES. Now, let’s talk about the second requirement, the sophisticated software and hardware of today that syncs or pushes the information automatically into the CRM database fields. As a company sets-up a voice-based CRM data entry system, the leaders determine the fields of information they are most interested in gathering from the customer relationship meetings. These fields are then listed on a prompt card given to the sales reps to assist them in directing the focus of their sales meetings, taking good notes, and then reporting. The sales rep then speaks into the phone in his/her information and hangs up. The human transcriptionist converts the information from audio to digital and enters the various information threads into technologies that prepare it to push into their proper CRM database fields. All it takes then is a “Submit,” and the information is now synced or pushed into the CRM databases.

GoToMeeting demonstrations and discussions are an excellent way to see voice-based CRM data entry tools in action. Put “Voice-Based CRM” or “Voice 2 CRM” into your browser and look around at the solution offered there. Perhaps you will see there a tool that you can add to your existing or being implemented CRM system to ensure (1) user adoption and (2) the most fertile and rich CRM databases possible for understanding, decision making, and action.

After all, isn’t that why you bought CRM in the first place?

“Voice 2 CRM”: Why CRM is going RETRO!

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

“Apple Hit With Class Action Lawsuit Over Siri. New York City iPhone 4S customer sues Apple, claiming Siri advertisements are misleading and that the service doesn’t work as depicted in commercials. [Writer says,] From my perspective, it’s hard not to disagree with Fazio [man suing Apple]. I have an iPhone 4S, and I find that Siri works less than 50% of the time. I’ll ask Siri a question or issue a command, and more often than not Siri tells me that she didn’t understand what I was asking her to do or simply fails to do it correctly. I’ve had Siri dial the wrong phone number, inaccurately transcribe dictated messages (despite my perfect diction), as well as completely time out or crash.” (InformationWeek Mobility, Eric Zeman, March 13, 2012)

Oh, well. That’s just a ‘beta’ version of Siri. Right? So, after a while Apple will get it right, and Siri will do the amazing things it is advertised to do. Right? Apple Siri is the ‘Holy Grail’ for sales reps. Right?

NOT!

For twits and tweets and notes and jots and thumbs in closed environments, Siri will develop over time into a very useful and practical tool. However, for longer text-based and more complicated open environment reporting, Siri or any other speech recognition, voice-to-text application might never be a useful tool and these efforts are heading in the wrong direction.

Think about it (as in the movie ‘Back to the Future’) – maybe going FORWARD into glamorous and expensive technology is not the path to a solution for simple and fast sales reporting. Maybe going BACKWARDs in time is where we will find a critical ingredient for a great CRM application for the FUTURE.

Consider this – a sales rep out on the road after a customer meeting sits on a bench or in his car, with a good phone cell connection, and speaks his long and complex sales report into his cell phone (4-5 minutes and several paragraphs) and hangs up. Within hours, the voice-based system processes and syncs the report automatically into the correct fields of the CRM database, with 98% accuracy and with professional formatting and appearance. Sweet!

THAT’S THE HOLY GRAIL! VOICE 2 CRM!

Millions of dollars are being spent to find a practical solution that is already operating effectively among us and has been for years. Voice and phone, the ultimate mobility and efficiency tool! RETRO! Who would have thought! As much as we try to develop “modern” improvements, sometimes something from the past is brought forward, added to the brilliance of the new computer tools, forming a new blended tool that is far more powerful than anything the new tools can create by themselves. The older RETRO capability of simple voice is given new vitality and viability in business work.

Put the words “VOICE-BASED CRM” into your browser and be surprised – a vibrant new industry is developing to provide an effective sales reporting tool that is simple, fast, and intuitive. Your CRM system or implementation will gain significantly if you add a voice-based CRM data entry capability.

CHECK IT OUT!

Testimonial for Voice-based CRM Data Entry System

Posted on March 13, 2012 by admin

3/12/2012

Perhaps a recent testimonial will help you see the value in a voice-based CRM data entry tool.

If you are looking to adopt a CRM solution or if you are looking for ways to improve the productivity of your existing CRM application, take a few minutes to go looking for information on a voice-based CRM data entry tool.

Put “VOICE-BASED CRM” into your browser and enjoy a few minutes of some informative reading.

Here is the text of an email to the vendor from a Senior Vice President in a large healthcare organization, giving his observations after implementing a voice-based CRM data entry system. It is broken down according to his thoughts:

1. “My thought is that – finally, a service is available that can enter information into SFDC for an entire organization based on a phone call!

2. This is an easy to use, cost effective, well supported service that eliminates manual record entry into Salesforce.

3. It drives adoption through the roof!

4. According to our Sales Manager, this service allowed the reps to enter more than 2,000 Account, Contact, Activity, and Patient Referral records with associated comments into their new SFDC in 5 days! Manually, that would have taken a month or more.

5. When a rep leaves an appointment, the call they make to V2I allows fresh information to be entered immediately.

6. Our Sales Manager estimates that this service is saving the reps 3-6 hours a week in manual record keeping and activity reporting and assures our company that appointment information is timely and current.

7. No longer do our sales reps have to wait until the end of the day (or worse, the end of the week or never) to enter results into Salesforce.

8. They calculated that each rep pays for the cost of this service in about 3-4 hours a month of saved data entry time.”

Now, that’s interesting!

Perhaps a voice-based CRM data entry tool that really works is an interesting idea for you. Put “VOICE-BASED CRM” in your browser. Check it out!

Five Advantages of Voice-Based CRM Data Entry

Posted on March 5, 2012 by admin

What can you do as an organization leader to provide the Sales Team with the most effective tools for CRM data entry? Tools to make sales reporting so appealing to them that they will adopt them easily and use them willingly, so the best data available flows continually into your CRM databases?

The traditional data input choices are keyboard or voice, whether the means is a computer, smart phone, or tablet or whether it is voice mail, a voice conversation, or dictation into a machine or to a live person. That’s about all we have to accomplish the task of CRM data entry. (We don’t have technologies yet that read our minds or filter information through the skin.)

If we focus on the sales rep as the principal information entry person into the CRM system, reporting immediately after a sales experience with customers, competitors, and industry forces, then here are five reasons a voice-based CRM data entry tool is by far the best solution. Focusing attention to this tool makes CRM data entry attractive to the sales reps so that they use it easily, willingly, and with increasing competence over time.

1. They like to speak on the phone – voice is intuitive; writing is learned. From infancy we have been speaking and, almost as long, we have been speaking into the telephone. Unlike writing and keyboarding, which are learned and practiced skills that some master and many do not, speaking on the telephone is intuitive and natural. We all can do it! We do not have to be taught to speak, and we do not have to be encouraged or motivated to speak on the phone. Sales reps using their phone to report sales information can do it easily because they perform this activity over and over during any given day. They are good at it, naturals, highly competent. So, when asked to report their CRM information this way, they do it easily and with no cause for delay.

2. They like to do it immediately – Quick and easy are compelling; hard and problematic are repelling. User adoption, procrastination, avoidance behavior – these are all manifestations that the sales reps to not enjoy or look forward to their CRM data entry tools. Keyboarding/writing is too hard, takes too long, requires unnatural thinking and skills, and is not pleasant to anticipate. It is hard and unpleasant work and is, therefore, avoided and procrastinated! Speech recognition software has major editing limitations (as discussed in the next point).

3. They appreciate efficiencies – Just once is good; several times is bad. Any system that requires the speaker to return to the text to edit after putting it in will fail. Speech recognition for the kind of textual information we are talking about here leaves the speaker with text that is often 80% – 90% inaccurate (catastrophically difficult to correct when nouns become verbs, adverbs become nouns, etc.), requiring hours of editing time to make it professionally acceptable. Despite their dislike of it, when considering the alternative of speech recognition, sales reps laborously keyboard in their information to avoid speech to text inefficiencies and having to edit what comes back – it is faster and easier to just keyboard it in. Clear and accurate meaning, coupled with professional presentation, are essential in reports that are circulating throughout the organization. Sales reps want to speak it in the information and hang up, having a the system process the information and delivery a professional report into the database. That quality of work is only possible with native-English speaking, U.S. Citizen based human transcriptionists, working in partnership with the sales reps.

4. They want to tell their story – Explanation is satisfying; just numbers is frustrating. For customer-centric and needs-based selling, background and contextual information is critical for an understanding of what is going on with the customer, the competition, and the industry. Thus, explanatory information requires talk, text, sentences, and paragraphs. When management reduces CRM reporting to just numbers, jots, twits, tweets, or thumbs, just 5% or so of the pertinent information is being required or accessed. This is “activity”-based management attention, which places no value on the information of most importance to the sales reps. They see that nothing much is being asked for, so they stop giving anything beyond the number required. 98% of what they care about in their customer-centric sales work is being ignored by management. “Who cares about reporting?” is the cynical reply to such un- or mis-management of the sales reporting activity. Many, thus, choose not to participate or to participate at the bare minimum.

5. They want to know someone higher up cares – High feedback is invigorating; low feedback or none is debilitating. “Does anyone read these reports?” “I just put anything in because no one reads them anyway.” “I do them about once a quarter – if I am forced to, because everything important is being taken care of over the phone all of the time. The sales report is meaningless.” When upper management communicates to the sales team the kinds of information that are important to them, and when the sales reps see and report those kinds of information back, and then upper managers respond to those reports, then we have the kind of “virtuous cycles” of understanding that make the CRM databases rich and fertile and CRM a winner application for the organization.

When senior managers provide a voice-based CRM data entry tool for the sales team, there are at least these five reasons a voice-based CRM data entry tool will make the CRM database a winner and CRM a success.