If I were with them, one of the things I would be experiencing is the interesting riff between traditional downhill schussers and the new-school snowboarders. The former refer to the latter as knuckle draggers. The latter mostly ignore the former. Each tends to take sides on the split in the sport – one looking at the other in disdain and the other looking back with indifference. I understand it, but I don’t participate. I actually prefer both. I’ll choose two boards for some conditions and go with a single board under other conditions. I get enjoyment from pairing the right equipment with the right condition, like a good wine with the right entrée.

In the technology world there is something similar developing, but perhaps with less enmity. We have some folks who are all about the Enterprise 2.0 thing, and then we have another set of folks who are jumping on the Social CRM bandwagon. They tend to have different blog sites and on-line communities for sharing articles and case studies. Yet, I don’t get the need for the split.

Enterprise 2.0 seems to be all about the new age of collaboration within the organization, and the technology that supports it. You can find stories about how product development is improved with more creative input through better collaboration; customer issue resolution happens faster and better with similar collaboration; and the pursuit of deals are accelerated and converted more often again due to the collaboration of the right people at the right time.

Social CRM is more directed at customers, attempting to leverage the evolution of societal behavior onto social web platforms. As more people spend more time on Facebook and LinkedIn, it makes sense to manage brand value through social monitoring; drive prospecting through social networking; and perform in-platform customer service issue resolution right at the point where people are ranting within a tweet.

Why have these two disciplines formed as separate interests? Combined they are much more powerful. So, I my suggestion is to combine the two and call it Social Business. Harnessing both internal and external collaboration tools and processes combines the benefits of both and leverages the entire organization in the pursuit of customer business outcomes. Becoming a social business means that you utilize better collaboration internally and engage with customers on social platforms externally. The two together are the perfect combination and are starting to be combined technically within the more powerful CRM platforms.

So, don’t take sides – swing on both sides of the plate. It provides more flexibility and delivers better results. Develop your social business competencies internally and externally and harness double the power to achieve CRM program objectives more effectively.

Enjoy the snow while it lasts.

Yet, not all is good. While the concept is fantastic, for most hotels the execution has been dismal. There are two primary problems. First is the shower curtain rod. The physics are different – the rod does not extend simply from point to point. Rather, the arc that the rod travels from wall to wall puts immense pressure on the wall mounts because of the lateral weight of the rod bowing out sideways. Simply stated, the rods in most hotels where I stay are barely hanging on, with screws pulling out of the walls ready for catastrophe. The maintenance folks replaced the new rods with a few screws pushed into the drywall and expected everything to be fine. Don’t be surprised if you have a shower curtain crash around you some morning while in the middle of an otherwise pleasant shower.

The second problem involves the curtain. The rod travels further away from the edge of the tub as it bows out, which requires that the curtain has to travel a further distance to safely drop into the tub, especially in the middle. Those same hotel maintenance folks who mounted the new rods placed them at the same height as the old rods to prevent splash and spray. However, if the hotel purchasing folks did not buy longer curtains when they acquired the new fangled rods, it is likely the old curtains don’t completely reach, or stay neatly tucked into the tub as they encounter a brisk shower spray. I you wake up to dripping from your hotel ceiling it just may be that the guest above you is not paying attention to this curtain deficit while showering.

Ultimately, this all boils down to the challenges of installing new technology onto an old structure. If you do not accommodate the requirements of integrating the old with the new, things may not work out all that well. When I see these new curtain rods in my hotel rooms I cannot help but think of Chatter, the new collaboration tool on the Salesforce.com CRM platform.

When a company turns on Chatter (or similar collaboration tools) it is much like installing these new rods - most of the time it involves new technology being placed within an old structure. And similar to the problems introduced by the new rods, Chatter as well does not always work out as intended, especially if the organization does not take appropriate steps to adopt the new technology to the old structure.

One of the big misconceptions surrounding the use of Chatter is with regard to the belief that all you have to do is turn it on and everyone will flock toward utilization with wonton abandon. This could not be further from reality. Yes, over the last decade, the general population has embraced many collaboration sites in the social ether-sphere. But this has been accomplished through the process of naturally affinity – people group together over common interests. Unless you form similar interest groups that fit your business users, your Chatter application will not be viewed by most users as useful or beneficial. This is like mounting the rod to the wall without taking into account the change in physics. You need to assemble it with the correct hardware, which in this case means that you need to introduce Chatter with the correct connections built in. You need to form groups from the start, such as customer accounts, target opportunities, or priority service cases. This leverages the natural affinity around which your people collaborate, and serves as a tool for easier collaboration, which drives utilization.

Additionally, the build-it-and-they-will-come mentality also leads to dissatisfaction because it assumes that people will not need attention for the proper use of Chatter. Yes, it is simple and intuitive, not something that one might expect will require a whole bunch of instruction. But, it does require direction. It requires expectations to be set uniformly. For example, if 75% of those who need to collaborate on a topic or issue use the tool, but 25% don’t, this will lead to 25% of the problem or task unsolved. Expectations for use need to be set, communicated, and reinforced with frequency. It cannot be a casual thing if you want success. This is a change after all, and, similar to the length of the shower curtain, if we do not make changes to the existing process, things will come up short.

The bottom line is that you cannot just turn on Chatter and expect great things. It requires a certain amount of intervention to get right – it needs to be properly connected to the old structure. It is worth the little bit of effort required, because the results can be powerful.

I truly like having the extra space in the shower these new rods provide, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that I am not the one who pulls back the curtain and ends up with a curved rod at my feet.

Death threats!

A dropped ball and a missed kick led to death threats. Last week during the title matches that produce the participants for the Big Game in American football, two players suffered season-ending miscues. As a result, two teams went on vacation. Those with a stake in the outcomes were devastated, and a tiny fraction displayed their contempt in a seriously anti-social manner. With so much at stake and such great visibility, it is not a big surprise that these high-profile bungles received so much attention.

So my question is, what happens when your sales guys fumble? My guess is that they don’t get death threats if they drop the ball on an opportunity. I am fairly confident that most dropped balls go unobserved.

I don’t think it is unfair to compare your sales team to a football team. The selling process is often discussed in sports metaphors, particularly hunting – the thrill of the chase, and all that. In fact, it would be pretty interesting if sales SVPs could pick their fantasy sales team and compete with each other on a weekly fantasy forecast.

But, getting back to botched plays, it would be great if sales reps were monitored with as much visibility as football players. In fact, the concept of Moneyball, borrowed from the statistical analysis performed by some baseball teams, makes even more sense when it comes to sales as a sport. It would improve overall sales performance if we could track more information about sales activity and compare that to results. We don’t need to see the sales rep up on the Jumbotron in slow motion replay, but it would be better if we knew more about what happens along the way.

It is possible to make progress when it comes to improving sales rep performance. I believe it starts with a formal approach to opportunity management. Deals should be tracked and the activities that go into moving deals along should be tracked as well. Opportunity stages should be defined, and key activities for advancing deals should be outlined. Sales managers need to enforce the discipline of this method, primarily by measuring and reviewing results.

All of this gives us a better chance to coach, another sports metaphor. When a sales rep does make a misstep, it is best to know what went wrong, and what will make it right next time. It is much harder to self-correct than it is for a sales manager and a sales rep to work as a team to make improvements. This is why teams review game video footage – the equivalent of tracking sales activities by opportunity stage and discussing once or twice a month.

What we need is more visibility into fumbles, but what we don’t need, however, are death threats.

On a regular basis I will go through this with a client. Not to select their president but to select their CRM platform. It doesn’t always happen for the entire company, like a presidential election works for the entire country. Most of the time it is more like selecting the governor of a state. We pick the best technology for a division, a country, or a function. But, every once in a while we go for the whole enchilada – one platform for an entire multi-division, multi-geography enterprise.

When is it a good idea for a large complex organization to rely on one technology to run all or most customer interaction management? From my experience, not all that often, but it is possible.

Size Matters

As your organization grows and becomes more complicated, it starts having more parts with needs that differ from other parts. Getting the organization to use one ERP is one thing. CRM is a different beast. Geographies have different business models; business lines sell to different segments. Acquisitions cause more differences, in some cases that should remain, in some cases that should not. If you are not too complicated, it might not matter. If you are big and complicated it probably does.

The first question to ask, if you are big and complicated, is why would you want to go to one system? There are common answers:
- Executives want one pipeline and forecast
- IT wants to manage one system instead of 20
- Many groups don’t like what they have, and just want to change
- Clients are irritated that they are treated differently by different groups that can’t communicate
These are fairly valid reasons, but might not necessitate one technology platform. The easiest way to kill an initiative looking into a single technology approach is to request a business case. Can you justify the expense of migrating everyone to a single platform in order to resolve one or more of the above issues? That kind of business case is usually a quixotic endeavor. The other challenge is whether you can satisfy everyone with one system. Looking back at recent elections, it is hard to get a country to accept one president.

The other question to ask is whether the conditions that drive you to investigate a single technology approach might be satisfied with another approach. There are a number of things that must be accomplished to satisfy most of the issues raised above. For example:
- You probably need to standardize your data. If you can agree on data standards, you will solve much of the need for bringing together technology.
- You probably need to standardize some processes, in order to have the chance of achieving data standards. Again, this will possibly take you much of the way there.
- The final component of getting this all to work is the connection of platforms, although this can be a challenge under the wrong circumstances. Integration can be more expensive than migrating to one platform, but in many cases it is a better solution, especially when one platform will not satisfy every group.

So, when does it make sense to go with one platform?

The biggest condition is when each customer-facing function across the whole organization is willing to perform most processes in a similar approach as each other. The sales team in one group is willing to perform similar process steps as a sales team in the next group. Timing is another condition, when the majority of the business is ready for a technology upgrade or change. The business case is much stronger when there is a need to change many groups at one time. A third major condition is when moving to a single cloud environment enables you to reduce technology management costs to offset the migration of business units that don’t need a change. If you can stagger your migration over time, the business case gets even better. Don’t make everybody change all at once, but get there eventually.

Still, all in all, I don’t see this all working very often in big and complicated companies. Business units get frustrated that they are performing processes in a way that satisfy another business unit’s needs (or at least that is their perception). Regions feel they are different and can’t conform to the region that the system was built to satisfy (in their perception). The technology gets thrown under the bus and the business unit or region goes rogue – they go out and get their own CRM and disconnect from the mother ship. I see it continuously. It is just like an election.

We have to go with the majority vote but there is always a new majority that wants to change, sometimes very four years.

There is a strong relevance regarding the concept of stretch to your CRM program, and even though I am not a motivational speaker, I am going to tell you about it.

Every CRM program needs a strategy – it provides the guidance and direction for the program to deliver results. There is pretty strong evidence that links the presence of a CRM strategy (and strong buy-in of the strategy) to eventual program success. One characteristic of a good strategy is that it pushes the boundaries. If you want to have your CRM program really deliver, don’t make the status quo your focus. Build your program around the future, and a future that is a stretch for your organization. Stretch leads to success.

However, it is not sufficient to set stretch goals. What is really necessary is to set stretch capabilities.

Every business analyst knows that you need to define business requirements in order to build a CRM technology platform. The identification of requirements is a critical path step along the way to delivering CRM automation to the organization. However, building business requirements based on the current state is not what we do in the critical path toward a great CRM program. Rather, identifying the capabilities needed to achieve stretch goals is. If you want to be successful, define what should be in place, don’t replicate what already is in place. Stretch capabilities takes you to a successful end state, requirements keep you locked into the status quo.

How do you define stretch capabilities? Great question, glad you asked.

I think there are two great stretching sources. First, building out business requirements based on best practices is an excellent start. This helps define future capabilities needed, based on historical precedent. Best practices guide you to create something that others have proven successful already. But, sometimes you also have to a take further step. A second source of stretch capabilities comes from differentiation. How do set yourself apart from your competition? Sources of competitive differentiation are always changing, by definition – everyone is always keeping up with the Joneses, so the bar keeps getting higher.

For example, a source of differentiation right now is to build out your social business capabilities. However, a year from now this will be simply table stakes. Two years from now we won’t even talk about social – it will just be endemic to how we work with customers. But, there will be something new that helps you differentiate. Stretching constantly stretches into new territory.

No, your requirements are not good enough – not if they are based on the way things are today. If you are going to go through all the trouble of investing in a new or upgraded CRM program, you deserve better. Get more for your investment.

Stretch.

I have been experiencing this same situation with a number of clients lately. They have established a CRM program with targeted deliverables, a time frame for completion, and an approved budget to fund the implementation – the three proverbial sides of the “Scope Triangle”. The challenge with this, invariably, is when there is an immovable deadline. Deadlines are normal within CRM programs and don’t have to be problematic. Sometimes you have to get a release out by a certain target –before year end rush, in time for a global kick off meeting, within a funding window.

Meeting program deadlines is also normal, but success is completely based on the effectiveness of the original estimation. Poor estimations lead to scope negotiation – if too much was promised in too short of a window, something has to give. We all know the levers – push out the date, reduce the quality or quantity of the deliverable, or engage more resources and incur more cost. This is the traditional scope negotiation and tradeoff process. This is all fine, except when the scope is set arbitrarily such as a line-in-the-sand deadline or budget ceiling. There is no business reason driving the timeframe or the spending limit, just a threshold that is not to be exceeded. Period.

It is the period that causes the problem, especially when the original program estimation is a rough estimate used to establish a budget approval. Things like that are meant to be refined. Typically, large CRM programs are funded before all the details are ironed out. Estimations are meant to be directional. However, in some organizations they become a line in the sand not meant to be crossed, and that causes problems.

Three of my current clients have scratched this arbitrary line in the sand - each one with a different leg of the triangle –quantity of functionality, timeframe for delivery, and budget ceiling (less than funding). Invariably, once the more detailed analysis is completed, we find that to successfully satisfy business requirements the line has to be challenged. More functionality is needed for success; or the amount of effort will take longer than the targeted timeframe; or the budget ceiling will not enable the program to deliver on the promised business benefits.

So, what do you? If there is a scope parameter that cannot be moved for very rational reasons, then you have to work within it. Find the trade-off that comes with the least baggage. However, when scope parameters are set without merit, then my answer is to push hard to satisfy the business need – don’t be limited by the line in the sand. Every CRM program that I have seen fall short of meeting business requirements ultimately ends in poor adoption at best, or getting the proverbial plug pulled at worst. Arbitrary scope parameters can be the demise of an otherwise good program.

Does this mean that you should boil the ocean with your first phase just to satisfy all the different business stakeholders? Not at all. However, there is always a threshold of business value that needs to be reached for every program and for every early program phase. If you find that the line in the sand does not let you reach that threshold of business value, you need to push hard to move it.

And, if you are an executive that has drawn that line in the sand, I hope you will listen to reason. Your investment is riding on it.

The leaf peepers are out. New England, as happens this time of year, is awash in color and the tourists are here in droves. It drives some to Burlington and it lures some to North Conway. The Duckboats in Boston are jammed. Mystic is still attracting visitors even if they have to wear a light jacket while dockside. Cruise ships are lining up in Portland to discharge passengers into the Old Port. Portland, Maine we are talking about here, not Charlotte Amalie or Nassau.

Fall foliage time brings folks to New England and the tourism dollar pours in. In some of our states here it is the # 1 industry. But, a misconception surrounding this is that tourism is a consumer industry only. The New England economy swells this time of year, but the benefits are very broad. When those 17 story floating cities cruise into the Portland Harbor, many businesses kick into high gear, not just the trinket shops and restaurants. Business to Business activity also thrives as a result of the loss of chlorophyll in our leaves.

I am finding a similar misconception coming into play with the emergence of Social Business. Many within the CRM industry believe that the growing Social CRM scene is limited to B2C, but that is a myopic perspective. The power of Social Technology spans both universes and is ready for serious B2B exploitation.

Part of the problem with the misconception is that virtually all business folks’ experience with Social Platforms is from the perspective of a consumer. They have interactions primarily with B2C selling – they have not yet had a chance to receive an offer as a business person or get help as a business product user while within a Social Platform. That will be changing.

Another problem with the misconception that Social Business is limited to B2C is from those cloud vendors who are trying to sell their Social Technology. One key sales tool is the case study. Unfortunately the preponderance of Social Business examples is limited to consumer buying. It is perpetuating the myth and limiting the market. We need more stories about how and why the social B2B thing works.

Social Business Technology provides companies with the ability to reach their customers using a new and growing channel, the Social Platforms where so many prospective buyers and users are engaging. Social Business does not replace the marketing function, the sales force, or the customer service center. Rather, it gives each of those functions more reach – it helps them engage with customers and prospective customers where they are being active. There are current successes today and even greater potential for the future. For example:

Customer Service Experience – today in cyberspace users of business products are engaging with their peers on the use and adoption of those products. Physicians are discussing procedure difficulties regarding stents and titanium hip sockets. Engineers are discussing the use of reflective windows in skyscrapers and issues with solar gain. Human Resource Managers are discussing their challenges with insurance claims and benefits management. Customer service contact centers have the ability to monitor those discussions and offer point-of-discussion insight to help with resolution. Some contact centers are already employing these tools for improving the customer experience.

New Business Prospecting – likewise, there are business shoppers out there on the Social Sites performing inquiries and getting advice from their business peers. New technology enables sales professionals to monitor those activities of folks within their patch and reach out when the time is right with an offer to help answer some of their product related questions. Those discussions at the point of inquiry are bringing new business into the sales pipeline for companies utilizing these new tools.

Brand Management – going one step further, there is more ability today to both advance the brand and protect it from social erosion. It is common today for companies and trademarks to be named specifically when inquiring or ranting. Marketing functions now have the tools to monitor these social conversations as they take place. Depending on the situation, offers can be made when the conversation is focused on inquiry, or defense can be the action when the conversation becomes destructive. Companies that have started using these tools are attracting new prospects and helping to protect brand value.

What we need now is for more success stories involving these new capabilities to come out. As examples of effective B2B Social Technology wins become more mainstream, the misconceptions will fade and even more focus will be given to the real power of Social Business.

With the unexpected downtime, we got a number of things done around the house, which might have otherwise been delayed. For one, the house finally got a good cleaning to accommodate the party guests. I performed a number of other chores that had been piling up on the to-do list. And my wife baked a batch of banana bread that was to be sent as care packages to the kids away at school. This is a fairly normal occurrence for us – every time a banana gets a bit too dark it gets tossed in a basket in the freezer. When the basket fills we make banana bread. It is the best way to not waste an overripe banana and it gives us a regular excuse to make a bakery item that is truly a staple at our place.

Sunday afternoon finally came around, Irene showed up as forecasted, and our neighbors trekked through the horizontal rain to ride out the storm in our kitchen. There was gas in the generator, plenty of liquids to make it through any size catastrophe, and very coincidentally, four variations of banana bread. For some reason, the Saturday of that weekend inspired nearly each family gathering for the party to bake banana bread. So, that gave us the opportunity for a bake-off of sorts.

It turned out that two of the four specialty breads were significantly better than the other two – according to all tasters. As one might expect, recipes were compared to determine the cause. When everything was analyzed it came down to the bananas. Normal eating bananas, that appetizing yellow of peak ripeness, proved to be the difference. The best bananas for bread, it turns out, are those that are beyond peak – the blacker the skin the better. Baking with bananas before they are ready creates a much less desirable outcome.

Bananas are just like marketing leads. Sending them off to sales before they are ready creates a less desirable outcome as well. Here is a case in point, if we took a poll of 100 companies whose marketing programs include a booth at conventions and conferences, we would learn something disconcerting. Consider this question for that poll, “do you qualify or nurture trade show leads prior to distributing to sales?” I can confidently predict that more than half would respond, “no qualification or nurturing”. Likewise, if we polled the sales functions from those same companies whether they value leads coming from smarketing, more than half would say. “trade show leads offer no value”.

The problem is not running programs at trade shows. The problem is really about sending along bananas before they are ready for baking. Marketing cannot ship leads off to sales that are not ready – they have to be ripe according to sales preferences. Marketing may think that a yellow banana looks good, but sales owns the taste test.

Interestingly, this is still debated. The same thing happened within our kitchen during hurricane Irene. Two chefs argued vehemently about only using quality bananas – neither could tolerate the idea of using a banana beyond its eating prime. However, the taste testers own the decision. Sales owns the decision about what is a “ready lead”. Marketing owns the process of getting them ready.

What I have learned works well in this situation is for marketing program managers to speak directly with sales folks to learn firsthand the criteria and characteristics of lead readiness for them. Most of the time it turns out to be some pretty common stuff. The prospect has a budget, there is a timeframe for a purchase, there is clarity about the fit between the need and the product – these kinds of things. What is universally not accepted is a business card thrown in a fishbowl at the booth on the tradeshow floor. Don’t laugh; there is a huge percentage of leads today that are delivered to sales with no more qualification than that.

So, my parting suggestions:

- save your overripe bananas in the freezer and
- make sure you know what sales expects from your leads and what it means to be sales ready.

Go ‘Canes!

Having overcome that small internal crisis I then moved on to thinking about the concept of hunters versus farmers in the corporate world. It is amazing how the mind wanders while you are in the process of pulling little round purple things off of a branch and dropping it in a plastic container. Sales hunters and sales farmers started to drive my cogitation. The interesting thing to me about this while I was out in the patch that day was that according to the paleontologists the hunters were the more advanced cultures, but according to today’s corporate cultures, the sales hunters are the more revered species. Those that go out and bring in the big game are more highly rewarded than those that just keep the annuity flowing.

I don’t get that. I think the paleontology-minded view of this is more accurate.

Hunters don’t attract the glory, perhaps because their actions are invisible and because their corporate contribution is too steady. Landing a big account and with a big up front sale has big numbers attached to it – rhinoceros and elephant kind of stuff. A steady stream of beans and corn just pales in comparison, although that is what keeps the village alive during the long spells between the big deals.

As our culture moves toward a greater volume of social-based buying, driven through social marketing programs, we will become even more farmer-like. How will this be perceived? Will this drive a bigger chasm between sales and marketing? Will the value of the hunter finally be recognized in our corporate culture?

My advice is that we need to embrace farmers, recognize their contribution, celebrate the fact that they keep us fed. Let’s reward those who drive loyalty, who ensure contract renewal, who do the cross-sell. Perhaps more importantly, we need to make sure that the hunter-type selling is done correctly. Do you have the role defined? Do those how farm have clear direction or does this conflict with another element of their role. I often see that this is the case with many of the organizations I work with. Hunters are not only more regarded, farming is often performed on the side, by people who are tasked with something else as their primary focus.

One tangent we might ponder, continuing with the metaphor, is how the social CRM trend will impact sales as a function. Interestingly, I think one thing that might happen is that we may see hunters become more like ranchers. Too bad ranchers and farmers have never been all that good at getting along.

Stay tuned.

What is happening here is that the playbook is stronger than the rulebook. For some teams, every pitch starts in the dugout. A sign is flashed to the catcher who then relays it to the pitcher. The pitcher may have the right to disagree, in which case the catcher has to flash a second sign. Pitchers sometimes shake off 3 or 4 signs from the catcher before the ball is thrown toward the plate. This whole cycle of silent communication requires seriously more than 12 seconds.

Until the rulebook gains more credence than the playbook, baseball is going to be a slow going source of entertainment.

We also have an analogous situation within the world of CRM. The concept of the playbook is one of the hotter topics right now for those who follow sales force effectiveness. In theory, the sales playbook is intended to outline selling scenarios and provide actions (or plays) for the sales professional to follow. This can include topics such as the right product messaging for the situation, how to overcome objections, which buying role should be prioritized, and what steps to take to reach the close.

As a concept, the playbook is a great idea. It should provide sales folks insight into selling new products or within new situations. The problem is this: playbooks are typically developed by individuals who don’t sell, nor have they been in the situations for which they are designing the plays. The playbooks are typically written from the perspective of the product and jammed full of untested sales theory.

The last playbook I encountered with one of my clients was written by folks from marketing. It conflicted with the sales methodology in use, did not match well with processes built into the SFA tool, and was written with so much detail, that the few pieces of useful guidance were drowned in endless PowerPoint slides.

During the 5th inning of a typical game, the dugout has good intelligence. The coaches have monitored what pitches worked against each previous batter in the earlier innings. While a player is at the plate, the coach can indicate that the smartest pitch to get the desired infield grounder or strikeout for example, will be at the outside corner. The pitcher most likely does not have the means for remembering every batter’s weak spots. Those signals coming from the dugout are based on good intelligence and drive up defensive performance.

Likewise, the sales playbook could be based on intelligence. They can be built with content that outlines competitive differentiation or scenarios for effective action based on CRM analytics. Sadly, I have not seen this as a common practice, even if it is a best practice. So, if you are from marketing, this means that a good playbook is one based on evidence, rather than theory. Otherwise, your playbook will eventually be ignored. While I have not seen any comprehensive studies yet, the anecdotal evidence indicates that a significant percentage of playbooks are not developed based on successful experience driving the plays.

So, my open questions are, who’s calling the plays, and, are they being developed through CRM analytics or simply product management hunches? Are the playbooks written by people who actually sell or just someone developing product collateral? Your best chance for playbook adoption and effectiveness will be to create this new tool from the perspective of the sales professional rather than the product manager.

Let’s play ball.

One of the other big differences of our competition is that everything has a 12 hour life span. This is because the sculptures are all at risk from high-tide waves – most of them get washed away with the next tide. These amazing works of art have a very fleeting life – after all they are built on sand, which conventional wisdom dictates is a terrible place to build.

And, we have come to learn this within the world of CRM as well.

We started up working with a new company recently that has struggled with being successful using social channels for their customer contact center. They were utilizing newly acquired tools to uncover dissatisfied customers asking for peer help on major social sites. Once engaged, the customer interaction would eventually move into more standard channels such as phone and e-mail; yet they were struggling with getting their customer satisfaction scores to improve.

With a bit of investigation we learned that the social part of their CRM process was really working well. The problem was with the conventional portion of the process. They had a very poor case management mechanism and their CRM platform was automating a poor process, which then made it even worse. Cases would age without proper attention, closure was inconsistent, and their escalation policies led to more frustration than satisfaction. Once we got those addressed their voice-of-the-customer feedback improved immediately.

Ironically, they expected that the use of the social channels would improve satisfaction by offering further engagement options, but they did not bother to clean up the foundation of the servicing process, which is based on a strong case management capability. This was our first encounter with this kind of situation, but I have a suspicion we are going to see more. I suspect that it is very enticing to think of the emerging and sexy social CRM opportunities as a way of fixing customer satisfaction issues. However, adding a channel into Facebook is not going to improve things if it is done on top of a poor conventional servicing process. You don’t want to build your Social CRM strategy on sand - it needs to be done on a solid foundation.

If you are in the middle of working out a Social CRM plan, I encourage you to continue, but I also encourage that you use this as an opportunity to audit your CRM program and best practices. The benefit of adding the social channel is huge, and probably the table stakes in today’s B2B environment. So, I don’t propose delaying that. However, in parallel you may need to improve some things to gain the benefits that Social CRM promises.

Otherwise, your efforts might get wiped out with the next tide.

If you want to lose weight, one of the best techniques, which you might not hear about from the folks who want you to buy low calorie / high margin meals, is to set a weight-loss goal that includes both the number of pounds or kilograms to lose and by what date. It also helps to have a personal motive that corresponds with that goal, such as fitting into a bathing suit prior to a long awaited cruise.

What I have learned over the years about effective strategic planning it that it works the same way. You set up a target to be achieved by a certain date and have it tied very strongly to an important business gain. This is pretty straight forward stuff. Yet, an important lesson I gained early on in my career was from a colleague who observed that a good strategy means you have to choose an end state that is different from your current state. This may seem obvious, but it is a really key concept. It means that a good strategy requires that you declare that where you are today is not good enough – you have to change.

Effective strategic planning demands that you have to work toward a place you are not currently – you have to be dissatisfied with where you are. But, it also requires that you then have to take action to get to the new end point. This of course is where so many people fail at weight loss – I don’t believe I can get there so I won’t take the steps to get there, and then I’ll eventually stop setting the goals and just pretend I am happy with where I am. This again parallels the strategic planning process – you have to choose a strategic end state that requires you make effort to achieve – you have to work to achieve a change.

So, my question is, if you have to change in order to have a good strategic plan, when does the execution of that plan cross over from simple implementation of the plan and into the notion of business transformation. The old acquaintance of ours had truly gone through a transformation – she appeared to us as a different person. Does this mean that business transformation demands that you must become a different company at the end of the process? I am going to cut to the chase on this – I don’t have the answer. I don’t know when you cross the line from simple execution and into business transformation.

Your question at this point, and I acknowledge that it is a legitimate question; what possible difference does it make? My suspicion is that there are two camps of thinking with regard to the answer. One camp is that simple execution requires a different level of effort than business transformation. The latter requires more focus on the change. This follows the line of thinking that losing 10 pounds requires a different approach than losing 110.

A second school of thought is that everything is business transformation when it comes to effective strategic planning. The logic would be similar to the idea that if you want to lose 10 pounds you have to make some changes, otherwise you are going to gain the 10 pounds back in a few weeks. Likewise, if you are truly building an effective strategic plan, you need to set a target that requires you to change, to achieve something that you are not going to achieve anyway (this is the crux of the folly for many strategic plans).

Bringing this back to CRM, specifically, if you want your CRM program to make a difference, you will need to make some changes. You need to introduce best practices, you need to ask for new behavior, you must expect that technology will be used in new ways (for example, see my recent posting on Social CRM).

Well, I guess then that begs the question, does every good CRM strategy require that you take a business transformation approach and not just a simple execution of planned tactics? I am going to go out on a limb and get radical with a, yes, as the answer. Successful CRM initiatives require real change, not just what will happen if you go with inertia to carry you forward. Do you need to lose half your body weight to be considered successful? Absolutely not. Would a 50% drop in the amount of time that deals hover at stage 3 be considered a big success? Absolutely!

I don’t know about you, but all this talk about dieting is making me hungry.

I have a serious case of crabgrass. It is shooting up absolutely everywhere. I have never had an invasion of this magnitude – it is going to be quite a battle for supremacy in my yard.

Crabgrass follows a very interesting growth strategy. It sends shoots in all directions and hopes that where it pops up will be a successful place to branch out. Those that end up in the driveway are doomed. Likewise, those that end up in the middle of a healthy patch of grass have difficulty making it as well. But, if they make it through to a spot that is distressed – perhaps a bit of clearing without other grass coverage – the new shoot quickly settles in and starts to expand.

This is an expensive strategy. It requires large amounts of shoots that are destined for failure. It also requires a very aggressive growth capacity – the new shoots have to grow faster than the surrounding grass in order to gain an adequate foothold for expansion. This requires a very deep set of roots to feed the shoots with the requisite water and minerals. It is as if the crabgrass has a rich uncle somewhere constantly funding its expansion without concern for cost.

I find crabgrass really, really irritating.

E-mail marketing has a lot in common with crabgrass. For those that don’t want to receive the offer, it is like having this invasive species in your inbox. Campaigns that utilize e-mail as a primary vehicle often follow the crabgrass growth strategy – send shoots everywhere and hope that one pops up in a location that will allow a foothold. The ultra low cost of e-mail as a channel is that analogous rich uncle funding the crabgrass. It does not really cost that much to send out 1000 e-mails, even if you only expect two to be opened. You can afford to end up in somebody’s driveway without much loss. But, two will get opened and they may lead to business. Crabgrass eventually does get a foothold and does thrive.

On the other hand, not very many homeowners are happy with a crabby lawn. Crabgrass has a pretty low brand value. If you have been utilizing a crabgrass growth strategy you might be doing the same to your brand. However, you can’t really blame crabgrass for its approach – millions of years of evolution have trained it. It is not smart enough to target those open patches in your lawn. But, your growth campaigns should be smarter. You do have the ability to target where you will have a better chance of being successful – reducing the irritation of messaging sent to the wrong buyer. Likewise, targeting also prevents making offers to those that are going to buy anyway. You want to use special pricing to entice a new buyer, not reduce your margin with existing buyers.

Targeting does require a bit of extra effort. However, e-mail campaign techniques that utilize a sound web strategy have proven extremely successful – topics for another post. Buying lists and pounding folks with offers is just so last century.

I wish you a green and happy lawn.

Have you been dragging your feet too? Acting anti-social? It was not very long ago that I made a presentation on CRM trends to a client where our stated position was that Social CRM was a trend worth keeping an eye on, but maybe not something to take action on quite yet. I have officially changed that presentation – it is time to take action and get social.

The statistics are hard to argue with. Half of those business professionals that utilize social media sites are there seeking to access thought leadership. More than a quarter of business users are researching business decisions. B2B commerce is being performed within the cloud and your company is involved, whether you are there or not. Your customers are talking about you; your prospects are asking about you; there is priceless feedback being offered up for your R&D; and very possibly, there is a firestorm eroding your brand value. There is no industry or type of company that is left out of the dance – anything from a lemonade stand to NASA is in play.

Yes, it is true that from a CRM perspective we are breaking new ground, but that does not mean that we have not learned what is working. Here are some things that we know: first, social media is not a new function – it is just another channel through which all functions can reach and engage your customers. You have to weave it into how you attract, acquire, and retain customers, like any other channel. The difference is that this is a channel that they control. And that is the second major learning – social media is extremely democratic. If you don’t provide value with it, your attempts at engaging won’t work. This leads to the third major learning – in order to understand how to provide value, you will need to listen well. The conventional wisdom, if we can use that term with such a new business phenomenon, is that the most effective way to get started is by monitoring your customers’ activity. Learn from it and then act upon it.

Social media is technology that lives in the cloud. It is very accessible, which is why it has become so prevalent. But, that is also the risk, because it also very easy to just start doing stuff. And the technology is advanced to the point where it truly delivers. The most consistent piece of advice I have seen from all the research I have conducted on this topic, and my own experience supports it, is that the very, very first thing a company should do when deciding to attend the social CRM dance is to build a strategy first and only then jump into the technology. You must decide what business outcomes you are chasing before charging down a path that may be fruitless at best or become a branding disaster at worst.

So, if you listen to the advice on how to get started from the early adopters it goes something like this:
1) Define your targeted business outcomes
2) Identify how social media will be utilized within your existing customer-facing functions
3) Establish the capability to listen and analyze
4) Engage customers or prospective customers in a limited capacity
5) Repeat

Everybody seems to think that this is crawl, walk, run territory. And that means if you have not embarked on the social CRM path it is time to at least crawl out to the dance floor. I learned that it is hard to dance the merengue the first time out, but getting started is everything. And, iIt does not hurt to have the right shoes.

There are many things required for the boat to be fully functioning so that when summer finally arrives in full glory you can turn the key and be off in the sun and spray. Back in April, weather permitting; an endless list of chores unfolds, all with the hope of being out on the water serving as the motivation. With any luck the investment will pay off and when that magical long weekend arrives with a blue sky forecast, the boat will serve without disappointment.

Those that take short cuts or procrastinate on their preparatory chores will invariably pay the price. I am not sure what is worse: never leaving the dock with a boatload of happy people and an overstuffed cooler due an engine that won’t turn over; or being towed back to shore with a boatload of irritable crew and a long-emptied cooler due to an engine that died in the middle of a far-away bay. Those visions also serve as my motivation during spring prep.

This is a seasonal activity for boaters, especially us New England types. Some cycles are annual and some cycles are longer. I have learned that CRM programs also go through cycles. They are not annual – more like every two or three years, but there is a cycle. There is a start to the cycle, comprised of planning and preparation; there is a period of deployment and enhancement; and then, unfortunately, there eventually is a period of decline. User adoption drops off, data quality decreases, managers relax their vigilance. It is a lot like a kind of CRM winter.

Then there is talk of something new. Sometimes there is a desire for a new CRM platform. There might be a change of senior management and a direction for the business. Sometimes there is talk about raising the bar – wanting to take CRM to the next level. This, ladies and gentlemen is the CRM spring, when it is time to get the boat ready for a new cycle. While it is not always the same organizational dynamic that causes the cycle to start again, but there will always be something to drive it. You can sense the signals, just like seeing buds on trees and robins in the lawn. It is time for getting your CRM program ready for a new cycle.

The start of a new CRM cycle means that you do the same things that were required when you started for the first time. You plan for what you are going to accomplish – where are going to take the business with this revolution, what do we need to build, what actions do we need to take to get the folks ready to perform? You may already own the boat, but you need to change the oil, do some polishing, update some electronics, and maybe even upgrade the engine. Your CRM program needs the same type of attention.

So, if you are starting to witness the signs of CRM spring, think of what you want to experience when summer comes around – do the preparation to gain the benefits. And remember, don’t take any short cuts. The last thing you want is to have your CRM platform towed back to shore because it died while you were out having fun in the middle of that long holiday weekend (which would equate to the middle of your peak sales season).

Enjoy your summer!