How can this possibly be the last weekend? It did not help that I spent the last couple of weeks of my summer on the road. That caused me to miss out on a portion of my favorite season one of my favorite pastimes – sitting out on my deck overlooking nature at the end of the day and watching the swallows swoop across for their evening barnstorming. I live in a valley full of bugs, lots of different kinds, and that truly attracts the swallows. They put on an amazing show darting across the sky randomly in a display of absolute wanton abandon. Together with the backdrop of a teal and coral dusk horizon, it is an absolute spectacle.

But I had work to do and customers to visit and so I was away. Then, in the middle of my trip, there was this one evening halfway across the world. I was having dinner, sitting on a large deck and overlooking a harbor full of boats. It was a similar environment as my home, which is why I sought it out. And I happened to look up and there were swallows. I could not have been more delighted. It transported me home.

These swallows, I was later to learn their name in the local language, were following the precise same process as those that perform this ritual over my house at exactly the same time of the evening. It was the standard approach swallows follow for collecting bugs, their evening meal. They got the same training as their cousins who I am familiar with and they carry out the process in exactly the fashion. I was mesmerized at the prospect of this standardization with a squadron of dive bombers so far removed from my own.

But yet, we also attempt to do this with CRM. We define best practices for managing customers and launch them with one flock of customer-facing professionals and we expect another flock on the other side of the planet to follow the same process and utilize the same tools. If it is working with the same bug, should the birds not use the same process if it works? That is our rationale when we manage global CRM programs. And, if my experience with the swallows plays out, this may actually be a reasonable pursuit. If one group is having success, why not expect that process to transpose to other locations as well? It was working very well for the swallows.

But what happens if there is a country where the swallows cannot fly as high as the bugs or cannot fly as fast as the bugs? Are there countries where our flocks are not as capable as other flocks? Ultimately, that has been my experience when it comes to managing customer interactions. Customer facing teams are not always of the same maturity or development. Should we expect them all to perform equally with the same processes and tools? One answer is that we could attempt to drive them all to the same level, taking learnings from one geography and exporting them to others. But then again, some countries may just not be ready.

Or we might accept the possibility that not all geographies can perform at the same level and perhaps we should still set out standards but build them with multiple levels of capacity in mind. Some flocks of swallows may be best suited to capture bugs at high altitude, but other flocks may be better capable to fly just inches over a swamp due to different reasons impacting their development. As you build out your CRM best practices intended for world-wide deployment, you may want to consider setting a number of standards, designed for varying levels of readiness or capability for assimilating your deployment. I recently worked with a client that built three levels of expectations – both for process standardization and also for the accompanying CRM tools that supported the three levels of capability. It was a great approach. And, it increased the chances for all countries to be successful from the start.

This does not mean that we never expect countries or geographies to improve or evolve. But we design our CRM program to accommodate their level of growth and evolution. For whatever reason, Albanian swallows may just have different preparedness as compared to the Danish.

So, I propose that we manage our global CRM programs with this possibility in mind. We may have constructed a great set of best practices and a really robust platform to support them, but we may also crush some of our internal customers with all the weight of those expectations. What you might consider as you build your program plan is to examine the gaps between your future state program capabilities and what the range of deviation is from that ideal end point. If you find that there are wide variations – some countries or units are closer to the end state than others, you might look to stage the closure of the gap. In other words, don’t force everyone to close their gap at the same time if some have farther to go than others. But this requires you to then build staged degrees of achieving the end state. Plus you may have some countries that due to size or economic conditions are never going to be capable of getting to the end state targeted for others. Either way, think it through carefully .

So, enjoy these last days of summer (or the approaching spring for all you down under) and take a glance up at sunset if you are outside and check out how the birds are acting.

People don’t applaud the sun at 2:19 in the afternoon down in Key West, but they will at 8:19 in the evening. What has the sun accomplished at one moment that was not accomplished at the other? That moment at 8:19 PM is a transformational event. We transform from bright to dim, from blue to multi-color, from sun to moon, from work to party. At 2:19 it is just another transaction – the sun moves another degree in the sky – no transformation.

These two words that start with trans have been around the world of CRM with much hype for over a decade. But, I must say, I believe it is no longer just hype. I have seen the Promised Land and I know every CRM program can get there. More and more companies are truly building CRM programs that produce the value of transformation. You can move from transactional to transformational CRM, and I encourage you to do it.

So, what is this transformational thing all about? The way it was first explained to me is what has always worked best in my thinking. The watch is worth more than the sum of its parts. When assembled, the watch is transformed into a device that indicates time. The parts unassembled on the workbench can’t do all that much. With a good design and the correct assembly, the watch becomes a time piece. The better the assembly, the better the result. CRM is the same.

If we monitor prospective customer activities, which are indicators of buying interest, we can combine them together to predict when the prospective buyer is ready. Similarly, we can monitor customer behavior, especially patterns of reduced buying, which can predict turnover and trigger actions to improve retention. When we compare sales activity with buying patterns, especially within long-term sales cycles, we can identify which activities create the best conversion and improve close rates. If we measure buying volumes of distinct customer segments, we can match them to the appropriate channel to reduce the cost of sale or service.

Each of these examples represents a transformational situation. More value is gained through the correct combination of activity and data. There are many more examples to provide and if we were to look at the similarities in the examples we would identify the following characteristics of transformational CRM. Typically we are measuring multiple touch points with a prospect or customer that occur over multiple channels of customer reach. Multiple data elements are brought together representing multiple dimensions of measurement (i.e., sales activity, customer activity, time, buying outcome). Transformational CRM is all about synergy – combining data, collaboration of customer facing groups, bringing together different things to create more knowledge and, therefore, smarter action.

All of this combination of stuff requires some coordination. The watch maker has a design, knows the parts, is skilled in the assembly, and has access to all the required tools. Likewise, transformational CRM requires policies that encourage collaboration, processes that foster collaboration, tools that assist with the capture and aggregation of data, plus all the requisite skills to make it work.

Even the sunset requires collaboration. The switch from transactional to transformational astronomical activity begins when this all goes from one a one planet operation to a two planet operation. Once the sun and earth cooperate, we start the transformation. Even the moon can get into the act, rising at the right time to kick in some extra ambiance.

So, enjoy a sunset tonight and perhaps that will trigger a thought for enhancing your transformational CRM capabilities.

Don’t forget to applaud.

So, with that look back, I considered some options for a review – we could do a little bit of chronology, but that seems too much like watching a documentary. We could do an expose on the CRM software industry, but I would prefer to leave that to the tabloids. Ups and downs could make a good topic – there were certainly plenty of downs to write about. However, I have chosen to look at the 15 most significant things that I believe we have learned over the last 15 years of CRM.

So, here goes my list of fifteen:

1 – We got a new version of the 80/20 rule. In this case we learned that CRM is 80% people and organizational challenges, and 20% technical challenges. Those that had to learn about this the hard way found themselves as a statistic in Gartner research reports. At first the industry came up with the idea of People, Process & Technology as a mantra to get folks to understand the correct balance of focus. But even that term is not really correct (my math says 67/33). The people and process portion of the PPT thing is complicated and requires much more elaboration,n including things like culture and sponsorship and buy-in.

2 – Strategy and planning became popular. We learned that the biggest cause of problems with a CRM program was the lack of a plan based on a solid CRM strategy. It took some time, but the word got out and CRM program success rates have seen improvements over the 15 year trend lines.

3 – Direction is OK, but alignment with that direction is essential. Too many CRM false starts are tied to key executive stakeholders not being on board. You cannot build your CRM direction behind closed doors – every senior manager impacted has to be at the table. It is easy to let them off the hook – we learned that they need to be on board from the beginning, not at the end.

4 – CRM has to be a business initiative. This learning was painful. CRM began with the good people in IT who were the first to envision the power of the technology. However, tied with number 3 above, because CRM was originally considered a technology thing, too many business stakeholders did not understand the ramifications. Large programs were rolled out to provide big improvements, but the intended audiences were somewhat reluctant – it was not something they had asked for. Eventually we got clued in that CRM is something that solves business problems, so it has to be driven by the business and with a clear business case for program funding.

5 – Users of CRM technology must perceive a benefit. Those scoundrels! Why can’t they recognize when something is good for them? Well, it turns out that CRM does not work well when it is deployed to satisfy just the business. It also has to satisfy the individual within the business who does all the work. If not, it does not tend to work very well.

6 – Size matters after all. What a relief – bigger is not better. In fact, bigger puts you at risk. The numbers don’t lie and the stats tell us that chunking your project phases into small manageable bites gives you a fighting chance at success. Of course the challenge is delivering the message to the group who gets to go last or having to explain why the much anticipated functionality cannot be released until phase 3. See again, item number 3 above.

7 – Think process first, technology second. I remember back in the 90’s when I was told by the CIO of a client, “We want to get the technology in first, and then deal with the process changes – and I think they will just work themselves out organically.” He had his way and, oh boy, what a mess he made of the call center for his company. Fortunately we have learned that you do things in the reverse order now. It is important to get the process right first. That does not mean you cannot take advantage of some of the inherent processes that many of the platforms are built upon, but you need to build those into your design and not assume they will just take hold organically.

8 – Yes, the data is a really big deal. This was a learning early on, then it got lost and was found again. The big on premise programs discovered the need for a clear data strategy. Otherwise things did not work. Then the cloud arrived and we thought we could bang-in solutions really fast. The data did not go along with the quick and dirty thinking. Rather, it caused a lot of CRM sales reps to lose face. Even small SaaS projects need to have a clear data structure, cleansing, migration, and stewardship plan. We know that all over again now.

9 – CRM is not SFA. It has been a hard learning to achieve, but we have reached an understanding that CRM is something far beyond the singular focus on one function. Rather, CRM gets its real power by integrating all customer functions together. If you really want CRM to produce, you need to go beyond the parochial approach. This is your big opportunity to finally achieve that integration between marketing and sales. Carpe Diem.

10 – Don’t forget about the roll out. We need people in our CRM programs who understand how to deliver training. We need people who know how to communicate. We need people who understand how to deal with organizational change management. And we learned that you cannot deal with all this as an afterthought. These elements of the CRM program are just as critical as the configuration of the software and we learned that having experienced professionals run the non-technical elements of the program leads to success.

11 – And then there is the concept of owning versus renting. This is something we weren’t expecting to learn. You can be successful with your CRM program no matter whether you buy and manage your own CRM software or whether you use a service provider who does the work for you for a monthly fee. Yes, each alternative has benefits and disadvantages, but both are viable options, and some companies do best by employing both in a hybrid approach.

12 – Customer 2.0 is not a fad. What we figured out is that CRM is not static. Just when many businesses finally got it right, the second web revolution finally took hold. Customers added a preference for engagement with your company and it had www as a prefix. The learning here was that our CRM programs need to keep up. And that includes effectively utilizing CRM capabilities for all channels such as those who prefer to surf to you rather than walk up.

13 – One size fits all, not. Perhaps one of the most important things we learned about CRM programs in the last 15 years is that not every group and every function in the company will benefit from the same solution. One single approach to solving the business problems of many different groups is not feasible, even if it is ultra efficient for the group responsible for providing the technology. The lesson here is that the economy-of-scale benefit of managing technology centrally does not always outweigh the benefit of having a correct solution for each unique contributing business unit.

14 – It’s good to be cultured. You don’t have go to the opera or marvel at Ming Dynasty pottery but you can’t ignore the culture. When the changes planned in your CRM program have the potential to rub up against your company culture, the culture will always win out. It is an easy conflict to want to ignore, but we have learned that is not a good idea. You need to attend to the compatibility of your program with the personality of your company. If you are introducing a bunch of discipline wrapped around some new technology to a traditionally undisciplined field force, it will take extra effort. You can’t assume that the changes are just going to be accepted without some substantial compensatory activity that helps reduce the natural resistance from the culture.

15 – And finally, CRM is the correct term. Over the course of the last 15 (or 20) years there have been attempts at changing the moniker. When things were going rough for the CRM software industry it was a feeble attempt at rebranding. Even the analyst firms and watchdog groups got in on the game. However, none of the changes ever took hold. CRM is still customer relationship management. Perhaps the reason is that what we are actually talking about is managing relationships with customers. It seems like a label that has at least another 15 more years of life.

At the center of this is the whole issue of being able to teach old dogs new tricks. More specifically is the problem of big dogs who are unwilling to even consider the possibility of new tricks. You know what I am alluding to – those tenured and successful sales reps who stand unwaveringly at the epicenter of your change management problems.

Within the CRM specialty of sales force automation an emerging trend is the increasing need to bring best practices and the corresponding enabling technology to support the growing focus on strategic account management. More and more senior-level sales reps are being assigned to complex umbrella accounts that span geographies, markets, or industries, and require coordination of a broad team of sales professionals who drive business within the local account affiliates. This role is not new, but it is growing and demanding increasing attention from the CRM program. SFA is not just for the traditional account rep any longer.

For those of us who are tasked to satisfy this new demand, the challenge lies in the elite nature of the sales personnel assigned to these uber-critical accounts. This is the crème-de-la-crème of the sales gene pool – these people are true rock stars. And, they need to lean on SFA just like their mere-mortal sales cousins, but they don’t all necessarily see it that way.

Here is an example of the challenge. Very recently while wrapping up a two-day session that had gathered together the A List strategic account reps for a client, I encountered a demonstration of this resistance head on. Our task during the session was to identify what was working with regard to their management of these complex accounts to better enable us to export those best practices to an expanded elite flying squadron in more geographies. The final topic of the meeting was a focus on the use of tools, primarily SFA, to support the pursuit of strategic opportunities. We defined the tool requirements without a hitch and the group appeared pumped that we would be rolling out the tool shortly in the next phase of the program.

But, when going around the room to gather feedback on perceptions of the meeting effectiveness, the alpha dog in the pack stated casually, “Just so you know, I would never use this tool – I absolutely don’t need it to manage my accounts!” The room went silent.

After scraping my jaw off the table, and doing my best to maintain composure, I asked the rest of the group for their reaction. The ensuing conversation proceeded along the lines of who actually would adopt the proposed tool and who might choose to pull rank and drive tool free. Old big dogs don’t like to be asked to perform new tricks. So there is the challenge. We don’t want to roll over either, pun intended. SAMs that don’t play nice in the sandbox hurt their teams. They reduce the value of the data captured within the tool, which requires more 90’s era e-mail communication, and results in less understanding of the customer. Marketing has less intelligence regarding what messaging helps to drive big deals. Forecasting suffers. Ultimately we sub-optimize the investment.

We need the big dogs on board.

I think the answer is about adaptation. On the surface, strategic account management looks similar to traditional account management. Most likely you go through similar if not the same sales stages. But the complexity is the difference. Account management is like a game of chess. Strategic account management is like playing 19 games of chess simultaneously. You need to adapt your SFA to account for the complexity. The SAM needs to get something back from using the tool, just like any other sales rep. You need to find what that is for your strategic account managers – it may not be always obvious or the same from company to company.

I think you can win over the big dogs. You need to let them maintain their alpha status in the pack, but you also need to show them how you will help them excel in that alpha role. That may take a bit of research on your part – but the big dogs will play.

Many folks take snap shots – kids, birthdays, vacation scenes, pets, the occasional sunset. You point, click, and the light sneaking through the lens is transformed into an image on film or onto a memory chip. The output is pretty easy to get these days. But most pictures get shot, looked at once, then packed away in a box or a CD and their value diminishes as they get further buried in the closet.

This phototechnic capture of our experiences seems a lot like how we also capture customer data. CRM technology has made the point and click pretty easy to make happen. We store a bit of information of our visit with the customer, look at it once, then store it away just like the overexposed snapshots from last year’s Halloween party. There is an obligation to shoot our guests as they arrive in costume, but we never really do anything with it. We shoot quickly and then get back to the party, putting in the minimum effort. Maybe you look over the snapshots when you download your camera, but you have to move on to the next event and the obligatory shots of your niece’s graduation.

Many of my clients have similar tendencies, asking for a little bit of sales activity to be captured, maybe a tad of information of who the customer is, but really, we don’t want our sales people to be admin folks – let’s have them sell, not enter data on their computer all day. After all, we won’t do anything with the data anyway, other than to monitor that a certain level of sales call activity is happening. Why would we want to put any more effort into it?

I see this as a classic input / output situation. The value of the output is totally contingent on the value of the input and the ability to perform a transformation of the input to increase the output value. I can take 100 images with my camera of a visit to Bermuda, random shots of beaches, candids of my traveling companions, and the random historic building. But, if that is all I do, a view ingof those 100 images is going to be really boring. However, with a bit more input, I can make the output exponentially more appealing. If I decide I want to tell a story about the visit, I will look at things differently, I will see them differently. A sign that I would not have noticed helps deliver some of the message. A close up detail of an object when viewed after seeing a panorama of that object provides more insight. Capturing the activity of my traveling companion then adds yet even more insight. But the capture of the image is not the end. There also needs to be a transformation step before the output really has value. You need to sequence the images, edit them to remove distracting or poor images, and then make sure there is a start and a finish to the story. (Adding a soundtrack also creates an even more enjoyable output, should you be so inclined.)

We can do the same with our customer data. We can build our customer interaction processes to capture key customer information rather than ignore it – because we know what the output possibilities are and we expect more value from the input. We can also combine different data elements to become more valuable in their combination. A customer profile trait combined with a correlated activity helps to perform better targeting just like a sequence of images tells more of the story than a single shot. Having a sufficient amount of data input helps us to perform more transformation, but it is not just the analysis that is valuable. It is also the storage of the data in a central and accessible location that adds to the value. When a service issue is captured and a sales rep can view this prior to making a sales visit, this extra insight can be invaluable. This is similar to the value of shared photo sites. Grandma can access pictures of her grandkids with greater regularity because of the many sites for posting snapshots. The extra effort of loading the pics onto the shared site is far outweighed by the value Grandma experiences from viewing them.

Yet, there is a huge amount of resistance to putting effort into the input. Sales managers, for example, strive to minimize the effort their sales teams have to expend on this task. The problem with this is that they are actually acting rational in this case. If we don’t get much value from the output, why would we put much effort into the input? Let’s minimize that input to keep the balance correct.

That very logical sentiment is one of the primary drivers of CRM program sub-optimization. We need to focus on the output and the expectation of value. From there we need to further examine the transformation – are we building value with the data? If not, it may be that we need to examine the input – are we collecting and sharing the data sufficiently? All three elements of the input/transform/output equation must be in focus, but it really needs to start with the output. We need to make sure we know what value we are targeting, and we also need to know who is getting that value. Many times the data collector does not reap the benefits of the collection, which gets in the way of basic motivation to be a good collector.

So, the next time you have your camera out, think of the output as you are pointing and shooting.

I have helped plenty of companies in my quarter century of consulting, but I think the mangroves need the help even more. This ecosystem located along the tropical coasts of all of our continents serves an incredibly important role. It cleanses the water. Young fish are nurtured until ready for open water. The complexity of roots protects the coastline from erosion. And, when the meteorological feces hits the fan, the mangrove keeps the big storms from washing away the villages. It virtually serves as the lifeblood of the tropical coastline.

Until I get that opportunity to start over again, I guess I will have to settle with helping the organizational equivalent of the mangrove, which is the contact center. You might snicker at the analogy, but there are some significant parallels. The contact center is a critical organizational ecosystem and serves some very similar functions as its marine counterpart. First, their number one charter is all about cleansing customer issues. But, at the same time, they can nurture new customers until they are acclimated to their new product or service. They also protect the company from erosion – defending against customer turnover. And they likewise tend to be the first line of defense when the big storms come, such as recalls, bad publicity, or distribution problems.

Why do the mangroves need saving you ask? Well, there are a number of reasons but the biggest is that it takes up shore line that could otherwise be utilized for something else, such as shrimp farming or creating tourist friendly beach fronts. The problem is that the destruction of the mangrove is the same as the destruction of just about any critical ecosystem. There is a balance that each creates and their loss has impacts on the surrounding ecology. The service it performs is not performed by anything else when it is gone, and therefore problems develop, such as pollution, erosion, loss of fish stock, and less defense against catastrophic storms.

Biologists have been able to calculate the economic losses due to mangrove deforestation to far outweigh the benefits of replacing them with the short term economic gains of farming and tourism. It turns out to be all about the big picture versus the pursuit of quick returns.

This too is parallel with the situation in many contact centers. Pressure remains to squeeze their costs and use that funding for more attractive commercial pursuits. Yet, experts also continue to laud the merits of managing the customer experience as a means of protection from turnover. And the contact center can always be leveraged for other compatible pursuits such as upselling or lead qualification. Limiting the funding of the contact center is pretty much the equivalent to the destruction of the mangrove when it comes to economics. Yet it is hard to get the full picture to be sufficiently visible to everyone that matters.

One thing that has helped me personally to be more appreciative of this tropical ecosystem is to have spent some quality time within it. For example, I have had the opportunity to stay at resorts that harbor a mangrove barrier, which has enabled some up close exploration. Kayaking through a number of mangrove waterways has also been educating as well as totally enjoyable. This exposure has helped me understand it all better, and therefore pay more attention when the experts raise their warnings.

Maybe we could schedule some kayak trips for business execs to paddle through the contact center more than they do. Have them listen in on more calls. Encourage them to read some customer testimonial e-mails when a resolution to a difficult problem made a difference (and drives some loyalty). Exposure goes a long way. Hearing about the contact center in sterile business reviews conducted via spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides is no substitute for a kayak ride.

Go find some paddles and life jackets and take your senior team for a ride.

It wasn’t such a bad thing in the end. If you got the answer wrong, but your logic and calculations were sound, (perhaps a careless transposition error) you probably received most of the credit. On the other hand, if your logic was erroneous but you still got the answer right, you got little credit due to the fact that you did not really know what you were talking about. Ultimately it is not about the answer on the quiz, it is about the problem solving ability. If you didn’t understand how to solve the problem, uncovering this at the time of the quiz gave the teacher the opportunity to help set you straight before the final exam. Working the problem out on the back of the sheet was all for the purposes of coaching and guidance. It was truly in our best interest (even if we did not recognize it at the time).

Over the last few weeks I have been working with a couple of different clients on the standardization of the territory planning process. It has been interesting in that they are accepting this change to their sales force effectiveness methods very differently. One company really gets it and is embracing the need for a more disciplined approach to ensuring that every sales rep has a well thought out plan for making their number. The other company is resisting the idea and would rather skip the process and go straight into pushing the reps out onto the street to make their number.

In a meeting with the management team of the latter client, the whole thing about writing-down-the-problem-solving-on-the-back-of-the-quiz-sheet hit me. How do we know if the sales rep has a chance of getting the problem right on the final exam if we can’t tell if they really know how to solve it (by having visibility to the back of the quiz)?

In the former company of my example above, one district manager was so driven to improve territory planning that he believed it was a good idea to give full commission on achieving sales targets only if the sales rep can show in the plan how they will get there ahead of time. In other words, don’t rely on luck to make the quota, rely on the plan. I guess this is like playing billiards where you have to call the pocket in order to get credit for sinking the ball. Skill counts, luck does not. Perhaps this is acceptable when playing pool but maybe it is a bit extreme when compensating your sales team, but I really appreciate the sentiment greatly.

Let’s not rely on luck for achieving quota. Instead, how about if we show how we are going to work the math problem on the back of the quiz? A good territory plan examines each targeted account and carefully examines the potential revenue to be derived from that account to best project where revenue will be generated. The account projections are rolled up into a territory projection and the logic of solving the math problem is wondrously illustrated. Most important, if the logic does not add up – the fault of the problem solving is exposed. And, what is even more important than most important, this gives the sales manager and coach time to improve the situation before the final exam. We can examine the back of the quiz sheet to ensure that the problem solver is working with the right capabilities.

Why would you not want to have this seriously critical capability in place for your sales team? In my experience, opponents to a disciplined territory planning process are typically victims of their previous success. Companies that I support who have recently experienced escalating growth do not typically want to invest the time – the market vacuum they fill with their product does not need a plan. Rather, it needs a faster fulfillment process. But these conditions change as fast as the weather in New England. It may be that the discipline of territory planning is an unneeded drag on the progress of triple digit growth sales teams. However, as soon as your boon is over, you might want to consider the value of soundly illustrating where your success is based.

Yes, I think it is a good idea to show your calculation on the back of the quiz sheet. Is it because my mother was a math teacher? Maybe. But maybe it was also because sometimes I had a few flaws in my own logic and my instructors were enabled with the opportunity to coach me before it was too late. I believe firmly in the idea of sales manager as coach. If the problem solving is illustrated on the back of the quiz sheet (or perhaps in your CRM system) the coach will have a chance to guide before it is too late, that is, before the quarter closes.

For those of you with triple digit growth – you get a reprieve – don’t worry about territory planning. For the rest of us mere mortals, I recommend writing out the problem on the back of the sheet.

I hope you get an A+.

What is at the heart of this purchasing unpleasantry is the simple fact that people selling used cars have a different selling process than the people who want to buy a car from them. Forcing the buyer into a purchasing decision when they may only be in comparison shopping mode is a complete buyer-seller disconnect. What is an even greater problem is that the typical buyer and seller dyad won’t share with each other their respective buying and selling processes. It is kept secretive, which commonly leads to an adversarial situation due to the disconnect. The seller is trying to pull off a conquest and the buyer is trying to avoid being huckstered.

What if this were different?

What if things changed and the two embraced a single process, mutually agreed, with a single common endpoint? Car shopping would be so much more pleasant. The whole car industry would be in much better shape today in fact. On the other hand, this could also make buying from your company better as well.

Last week I was assisting a client with the redesign of their sales stages. One driving factor of their redesign was to match their sales process with the typical buying process of their customers. We had assembled a team of track-record-proven district managers to share best practices in the pursuit of creating a global standard. During the process a team member offered an example scenario, which included a description of the sales steps shared explicitly with the customer. It was described as a “deal roadmap”. The rest of the team members were flabbergasted – they could not believe that the sales steps would be shared with the customer! You just cannot do that!!

Naturally this became a significant discussion point. For me the irony of the situation was the intention to design a set of sales stages that were to allegedly mirror the customers’, but yet there was a rampant disposition to hide these same steps from those same customers. It was as if there was something deviant with the pursuit of a deal along a pre-described and shared path.

Ultimately the collaboratively selling district manager prevailed and convinced his teammates that this transparent approach was the right way to go. I lobbied for his position, using the logic that they intended to design a process matched to their customer. Why keep it a secret? The tipping point in the conversation was when the benefits of transparency came out on the table. This leads to a less adversarial relationship with less surprises and more predictability. The atmosphere is more partner-like and less stressful ,leading to better long-term relationships and loyalty. Of course the real question is whether it leads to more sales.

I believe it does, but I can’t give sufficient proof here. There is a great article from the Harvard Business Review (sorry I don’t have the reference) that describes a study from the Forum Corporation comparing key sales skills with sales success. One of the top skills correlated with high sales results is the ability to match and follow the customer sales process. Is this the same as transparency? Not completely, but I believe there is a very strong relationship.

So, I guess the moral of the story is the next time you want to buy a car, tell your sales person the process you plan to follow and ask if he or she is willing to follow it. If not, move on because there are lots of available cars out there and many who want to sell them to you.

When we return from a vacation we all invariably get bombarded by co-workers and friends with the same necessary question – “how was your vacation?” And this polite behavior requires that we have to have an answer, and mine is always based on how much enjoyment I experienced. So for me, when it comes to skin diving, the criteria for success is measured by things such as the number of unique fish I got to see, or the quality of underwater pictures I managed to take. So, my answers to these inevitable inquiries include things like – “Great, I got to see my first school of spotted eagle rays!” Then, the fishing thing came back into my head and I thought, if I had been fishing I would rate my vacation on how many fish I caught or how big of fish I caught – such as my co-worker’s sister who landed a 7 foot sailfish! That is a serious success.

But then my warped mind kept pondering this and I wondered if I would rate my fishing vacation on something like how many times I cast my line into the water. Yes, I know this sounds pretty weird. And what is even weirder is that I then pondered the connection between fishing and selling, or, more specifically, the comparison between the measurement of fishing success and the measurement of selling success.

No. Fishermen and fisherwomen do not measure their success on the number of casts unless the measurement is something like how many strikes they get per cast. Otherwise it is all about snagging the fish on the lure.

On the other hand, there are quite a few companies that think it makes sense to measure how many sales calls a rep makes – the equivalent of the fishing cast. For the most part I think this is a mistake. If we measured fisherpersons on their casts, they would be motivated to drop the hook into the water as many times as possible, which would drive bad fishing behavior. They might not reel in the lure correctly, or leave the bait in the water a sufficient time to attract a fish. Maybe they would throw the line in the water too close to shore so they don’t waste time puttering out to the right fishing hole. Rather, the measurements need to be fish strikes, fish brought to the boat, and whether the fish is a keeper.

My point in all this is that we need to measure sales folks correctly. While measurement has to be focused ultimately on the deal (how many keepers did you get), it can also be focused on whether they are using the right bait or fishing in the right spot. But measuring how many times they cast the lure into the water is truly a weak measurement.

If we have a good set of pipeline stages defined, we should be able to know what sales activities are needed to advance a deal. We should measure whether those activities are performed and whether the sales stages have advanced. Those are great measurements, just like how many strikes and how many fish make it to the boat to the type of bait used. The number of casts just doesn’t get us very far. It would be as if we did not trust the fisherperson to fish enough – maybe we suspect they are just sitting in the boat and drinking beer.

OK, there are exceptions. A green sales team may benefit from this monitoring. Sometimes sales visit targets for certain segments can help change call behavior so that higher value customers are being called. But these are limited situations and we should only wield this kind of measurement for this type of circumstance and for a limited duration. Otherwise, setting sales call volumes and measuring against those targets is fairly immature measurement approach.

So, yes – thanks for asking - my vacation was pretty good, and I did get to swim for a while with that pack of rays. It ranks below the outstanding trip where I dove with the 5 foot long leatherbacks one day and saw my first feather duster the day before. But, it ranks above the so-so trip where the water was murky and the only interesting fish were hungry barracuda.

Now, go catch some fish – you decide if you use a rod or a camera.

Eventually I’ll check out all the electronics and mechanics and make sure that everything is in working order before we drop in the ocean. This beginning of the season ritual also brings along memories from the past summer. Barbeques on the beach, watching fireworks afloat, outrunning thunderstorms – these are all the things that make the boating life so much fun. As I was looking over the helm I glanced at the depth gauge and was reminded of one particular trip coming back from a mid-summers dinner celebrating my daughter’s 18th birthday.

There was no moon that night so the trip back to port, following a long stretch of bird sanctuary, was a dark ride with no beach-side houses or businesses to light our way. Eventually this dune-scaped island turns a corner and our harbor appears out of nowhere. However, this presents a challenge as a constantly shifting set of sand bars protects the entrance to the harbor. At night it can be quite a challenge entering the harbor safely, especially with no lunar or artificial lighting. This is where the depth gauge becomes so handy.

When you keep your eye on the up and down movement of the numbers you get a great sense of what is below you, and, if you keep the speed in check, you can tell in advance if you are about to run up onto some undesirable sand. The depth gauge serves as an early warning system – a set of eyes on the bottom helping to keep you clear of an unpleasant journey’s end. On a boat the helm is like the dashboard of a car, and my number one dial on that dashboard is the one that tells me how much water I have below my propellers.

There is a lot of talk about dashboards in the CRM industry these days and, in theory, they should perform the same function as the one on your car or on my boat – help to make sure we steer in a safe and correct direction. But, not all dashboards are created equally. The problem with most of the dashboards I see is that they don’t necessarily measure stuff that helps you steer – they mostly measure stuff about where you have been instead of where you are going. Just like my depth gauge, the most important dial on a CRM dashboard is the one that provides information to keep you on the right direction – especially a direction that keeps you out of trouble. This would be the early warning system.

When it comes to sales, I think it is great to know how many deals you close and what your close rate is. But if you want to steer the boat safely you also want to know what is in the pipeline. If you track the number of deals at early stages, monitoring the conversion rate, you will know if you will make the number at the end of the quarter, before you get to the end of the quarter. If you don’t have enough deals at stage 2 to fill the rest of the pipe, this is your early warning indicator. It means you need to pull levers that drive more early stage deals. This drives up your chance of being successful when the quarter end measures are made.

Marketing has early warning indicators too. For example, you don’t want to finish a campaign before you learn if it is generating leads or not. You need to measure lift early to know if this is a campaign to keep running. More importantly, we want to know if the leads being generated are moving through the pipe effectively. Good dashboards need to look at the relationship between campaigns and opportunity conversion to ensure that we don’t invest in campaigns that don’t pay off, just like we don’t want to run the boat up on a sandbar.

The services function needs its own early warning system. The last thing we want to find out is a poor customer satisfaction rating due to customers being dissatisfied. That may sound crazy, but there are indicators that will predict the possibility of poor satisfaction before it has to happen. Let’s monitor those and take action before we see a drop in satisfaction ratings.

Are you looking at the right dials on the dashboard? Do you even have the right dials on the dashboard? I had a boat without a depth gauge once. It was risky business. A good CRM dashboard needs to have the right stuff in place to make sure you aren’t driving by looking through the rearview mirror.

Stay off of those sandbars!

On the other hand, when it comes to producing the image, the tools for digital production are all about science: getting the brightness right, setting the contrast, improving color quality, removing or covering undesirable elements of the photo, and synthesizing layers of images together. These new abilities enabled through computer software are really powerful. But, in the end, I still find that digital photography remains more art than science. The instant gratification and elimination of film costs makes it all more enjoyable as well.

Certainly there are photographers who would argue that it still remains all art, and I am happy to leave them to their opinion. There is, however, one art versus science debate raging that I will choose to enter into. This debate is with regard to the question whether the process of selling is an art or a science. Much like the separation between the taking of the photo versus the production of the photo, I think it can be useful to also separate the notion of sales force effectiveness from that of sales professional effectiveness. One looks at the total process of selling while the other looks at the individual within that process.

I truly believe that sales force effectiveness is a science. We now know the factors that separate successful sales functions from less successful sales functions. When you introduce those factors, largely a set of sales process disciplines, teams on the whole produce better results. These elements, such as segmentation, account planning, pipeline management, and reporting of metrics are the science of selling.

On the other hand, I believe that sales people can follow the steps of this science, but their innate skills are huge difference makers. The ability to build rapport, the possession of the right patience and temperament to continue in the face of rejection, a sense of timing, and the confidence to ask for the sale are personal characteristics that are truly artful. I believe sales folks come from a different gene pool than the rest of us mortals. These things are hard to teach to an individual without the sales gene. However, sales force effectiveness components are highly teachable, can be practiced, and, when the correct compliance to the process is followed, becomes the science of sales put on top of the art.

Photography is 80% art and 20% science perhaps. It is truly difficult to take a quality, artistic photo with just the mechanics – the basic art needs to be there. You have suffered through being forced to view horrid pictures from your friends and family. You know what I am talking about. Selling, in reverse, is 20% art and 80% science. The science can compensate pretty well for the individual without that strong innate ability, but a little bit of art goes a long way.

And when you mix the two together, the science of selling becomes true performance art.

What I find as a greater challenge to effectiveness is a CRM definition popular with a number of prolific and well respected business authors. You may think I am crazy, but the customer-centric definitions are the ones that I think cause the most problems. These definitions espouse the need to advance the organization, through the use of CRM, to the ultimate end state of placing the customer in the middle of everything that is done. At this point you may believe I have flipped my wig. Of course CRM should drive toward customer centrism. Not.

Most of the companies I have worked with harbor some form of centrism. It is a part of the business culture. I have seen marketing centrism, sales centrism, patient centrism, engineering centrism and even creativity centrism. I have always considered these centrisms as just a given – something that may require some compensation to achieve balance, but not necessarily something to battle. Yours may be a customer-centric culture by its design. However, declaring that all CRM programs should place the customer at the center of the picture is limiting. It is a flawed academic concept. It is a pendulum swinging counter attack to the product-centric approach (which is also limiting). But, it swings the pendulum too far and causes just as much imbalance. Customer centrism is not practical and it will sub-optimize your business strategy. Here’s why.

Building a strong CRM program relies on building a strong CRM strategy - the foundation of which should be laid upon the business outcomes targeted for success. Each organization needs to define their targeted outcomes to fit their business strategy at the time. Depending on market factors and the developmental stage of the organization, the outcomes should be some combination of growth, efficiency and customer experience. There may be periods where growth has to be the focus and there may be periods where efficiency takes over. There may be periods where the focus must drive toward better customer experience. Seldom should all three be equally focused and seldom can you aford a total neglect of two in favor of one.

The problem with customer-centrism at the center of CRM is that it expects that customer experience is the dominant outcome and this is its downfall. There may be times when growth is king and there may be times when efficiency is king. Our CRM programs must enable the organization to achieve the defined strategy for the business, which may change every few years as things in the market change. Customer-centrism limits that flexibility.

I will disclose that I have not necessarily been a fan of the whole centrism thing. It smacks of political or religious ideology. Let’s just accept that ideology thwarts flexibility and not get into a big discussion about the merits of having strong ideological convictions. However, I will also disclose that I have recently considered a moderation of my own view of the benefit of centrism. There is a centrism, when it comes to CRM, which I now believe does have some merit. This would be an engagement-centric CRM approach.

Let’s start with a definition of the term engagement. I offer that an engagement is any interaction that your customer has with your organization. These touch points serve as the core reason for your organizational being and they include:
- Reading an e-mail that has been sent from anywhere in your organization
- Searching for a white paper on your web site
- Yelling at a customer service representative
- Participating in a focus group
- Filling out a feedback card
- Watching their mobile phone being repaired at one of your franchise outlets
- Paying a bill
- Standing in line

Customer engagements are not limited to a sales visit or a call into a customer service 800 line. Additionally, the engagement involves more than just the customer. Also involved in an engagement are potentially:
- Someone from your company
- A representative from one of your partners
- The product or service
- The task needing to be performed
- The medium utilized for conducting or enabling the engagement
- The outcome of the engagement, which ultimately leads to:
* Buying more or less from you
* Costing your more or less
* The customer becoming happier or unhappier with your organization

Engagement-centric CRM cares about all of the above, not just the customer. Focusing most on the customer – customer-centric CRM – is too narrow of a focus. It leaves out too many critical elements of the complete engagement. To be successful with CRM requires that you attend to all the engagement elements. Engagement-centric CRM will drive a focus on each element, and therefore, increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. If you leave an element out of your focus, such as the engagement medium, you may not be uncovering that one medium is costing precious resources while not delivering the same results for a type of engagement versus another less-costly medium. Success demands that you keep a watch on the whole package.

If your culture is one that is customer-centric, that is great – you should not go out and change it because customer-centrism is bad. Rather, you should as a rule not conclude that driving your business to become customer-centric is the best way to be successful. But, if you want to center on something, if you have a need to hone into the bulls-eye, focus on the engagement.

Gee, maybe we should call it Customer Engagement Management.

Yes, it is March Madness time – when college hoops go crazy starting with the frenzy of conference tournaments to get into the dance up to the pinnacle of NCAA sports, the Final Four. Back in the 1980’s there was a particularly popular team (U. of Houston) with a set of impossibly tall forwards who were peculiarly fond of dunking the ball as a means of racking up two pointers. Their specialized fraternity of verticality contributed maximally to the madness of the tournament. Those were good times.

There is something about slamming the ball through the hoop that gets folks fired up. A team can be in a listless impenetrable lull, but one steal and fast break that leads to an artful but violent slam dunk will fire up both the team and crowd, potentially changing the momentum of the game into a checkmark in the W column. My personal preference is the alley-oop – where an assist and a score happen in one arc of the ball. That is just pure unadulterated enjoyment.

So, when it comes to B Ball, I am truly good with a slam-in. But, when it comes to CRM, the slam-in is an egregious affront to everything I have learned that produces positive outcomes. Let me explain.

As everyone knows, the hot topic today in CRM is all about the cloud and at the center of that storm is CRM platform-as-a-service – the use of a CRM application that you rent, as opposed to buy. This new approach to the software ownership has changed some of the economics, both in reality and perception. The reality is that it is possible to have world-class CRM technology on the cheap. If you use the technology straight out of the box you can rent some pretty good software for not a lot of investment, particularly up-front investment. This reality has significantly changed some of the dynamics of the sales process – much of the messaging is around getting a lot for a little. This in turn has attracted a lot of folks who are interested in the little part.

This is where the slam-in comes in. Those who are selling cloud oriented CRM technology are focused heavily on the affordability angle and they are promising a lot for a little. Now, this is where the perception part enters. If you believe that you can get your company up and running on rented CRM software without any other investment, such as preparing the organization for the changes involved in automating processes , then your perception of the economics are skewed. SaaS sales reps are out there right now promising companies all the benefits of CRM automation with literally the flick of a switch. They are selling slam-ins. You too can enjoy all the benefits, and all you need to do is install it.

Unfortunately it does not work that way.

Virtually all of our experience with this approach – a rapid implementation of the technology with no focus on preparing the organization for its utilization – results in the same outcome: the adoption of the technology is marginal at best and totally abandoned at worst. I guess you do get what you pay for.

Now, I recognize there can be logical reasons for justifying the slam-in. I have heard some reasons that were hard to argue with. The results are still the same. The software does not provide the necessary business benefit. Which leads us to the proverbial fork in the conversation – we can talk about what you should do if you are contemplating a slam-in. Or, we can talk about what you can do if you were lured into the snare of the slam-in and now are unhappy with the results.

The first discussion is short. Don’t do it.

The second discussion is a bit longer. When I encounter a slam-in I attempt to do a number of things. First, I try not to be judgmental. Second, I like to understand what is working in the eyes of the user and what is not. Then, I like to find ways to preserve what is working while I look to find ways to improve what is not. Some of the typical improvement areas include:
- provide more training
- make process adjustments
- fix the reports
- clean up the data
- build a plan to add enhancements and potentially some data integration

These are pretty standard activities that would have likely been identified if the company had spent a bit more time with CRM preparedness. The difference is that the slam-in costs less initially, costs more in the long run, and does a marvelous job at convincing everyone that CRM software is bad because of the poor results.

So, don’t be lured by the faux allure of the low-cost SaaS implementation. It is merely an illusion of economic misperception. The person selling you on the idea will be gone when you learn the truth, by the way. It is easy for them to make the case when they have no accountability for the result. They are not rewarded on whether it works for you, just a commission on the contract value of your rental agreement. Less is more – they are making their money on volume, so they are happy to sell you a lowest cost approach.

Getting positive results from any CRM technology, whether you rent or buy, requires some effort and investment. The quick, low-cost slam-in will not deliver positive results (well, the odds are dramatically against you). Get your slamming fix at the NCAA or NIT tournaments, not within your CRM program.

And that all thinking has left me reflecting on that obscure sport of Curling in particular. This one does not get the attention of the downhill or figure skating, but I suspect it is growing in cult popularity. In fact, NBC had a page on their website dedicated just to the screaming associated with the sport. You may think I am reaching here, but I think there are things we can learn from Curling that apply to the effective management of CRM programs.

The first connection is strategy. If you slide on a luge you have one objective – go fast. If you push a big stone toward a bull’s-eye painted beneath a slightly course sheet of ice, your game plan just involve much more. You have to think about your blockers and you have to think about your scorers, plus you have to anticipate the other team’s moves. CRM also requires strategy. In fact it is one of the big three predictors of program success – CRM programs with a solid, well thought out strategy have a better chance of achieving objectives. I have encountered some programs that have attempted a luge strategy – get it done as quickly as possible – poor outcomes invariably.

Perhaps more importantly, a champion curler will make modifications on strategy execution based on how the match develops. Should you knock out an opponent’s stone with your next stone or wait? Should you hit hard or stay conservative? How much curl should you attempt to avoid a blocker? The execution constantly changes based on the current configuration of stones. When you make your second slalom run the consideration of execution is simple – go faster.

Adapting the CRM program plan is also a requirement for effective results. Things change. Funding can shrink. Events can be rescheduled. Sponsorship can wane. A champion program manager also has to adjust the execution of the plan to adapt to the changes in the environment. Just like the unexpected ricochet causes an unplanned blockage in the ice, CRM programs are constantly encountering obstacles to execute around. Changes to the plan also require discussion, which is so critical to Curling that a time out is permitted so the team can reach consensus before the next stone.

If you had the chance to watch much of this growing ice sport, you might have also noticed that the curlers wear some unique footwear. One shoe is designed to slide and the other shoe is designed to grip. They are quite ingenious. I think CRM requires something similar to achieve sure-footed fleetness on such a difficult surface. A CRM program manager has to wear two different kinds of shoes, figuratively, to be successful. On one foot is needed a tread that has a good grip on the business. On the other foot a sole that can maneuver deftly through technology is essential. Navigating both at virtually the same time is critical for success.

There is one significant difference that I should mention about how CRM is not like this frozen sport. Every good program manager has a team that is doing what is needed to advance the metaphorical stone across the ice. The rigorously swept broom heats the ice for speed when needed. Sweeping at an angle to the trajectory bends the path and creates the curl. The sport cannot be played effectively without the team performing these key tasks – in this the analogy continues. However, in the sport of Curling it is expected to scream instructions maniacally at one’s team mates as the stone approaches the bull’s-eye. Communication is essential within the CRM program, yes. But I am certain that the screaming is where the analogy pretty much ends.

Stay tuned for the next entry, which will examine the similarities between the rapidly growing sport of Beer Pong and effective lead generation.

Now, I have to disclose that I have been doing work sessions like this for a quarter century and I can smell when a question of this variety is really a set up. These questions are usually a front for the individual to declare what she or he believes is all important, and he or she is most likely testing whether I agree (which typically also means they are testing whether I am as smart as they are). For this particular individual, the capability that we have titled Opportunity Management was in fact his favorite. For him everything revolved around the ability to manage deals through the pipeline successfully – the mark of a master sales person.

I probably should pause to mention that the five sales capabilities being referenced include:
- Sales Force Leadership
- Territory Management
- Relationship Management
- Opportunity Management
- Sales Force Measurement
Over the years I have noticed somewhat of a pattern with the companies I have engaged. Some like to focus on account planning (a Territory Management best practice); some like to focus on forecasting (a Sales Force Measurement best practice); some like to focus on coaching (a Sales Force Leadership best practice); and some organizations informally put their effort into call planning (a Relationship Management best practice). The individual from my workshop believed it was all about the pipeline, a normal focus for those who have a centrism toward Opportunity Management. It now seems normal in my experience that sales functions naturally gravitate toward a centrism of one capability or another.

OK, so you are being patient with me but you are asking yourself, why could this possibly matter? And my response is that this centrism thing is both good and bad, and anything that is good and bad simultaneously matters to people who write blogs.

Centrism toward something like an emphasis on the sales pipeline is good because it causes focus. Everybody on the sales team knows what is important – moving deals toward the close. It makes measurement easy and it makes learning the process easy – everybody knows what to do. Focus truly drives results. But there is a downside in this situation. Focus on one of only five capabilities can also mean that four important categories of sales effectiveness are being under attended – and this is a bad thing. If everything is about the deal that means you may not have much focus on accounts that don’t have a deal going, but should. If you were focusing on account planning (a Territory Management capability) you might also be attending to accounts that should have deals being worked but don’t. This more balanced focus will drive new business better than a focus on existing deals alone, which ultimately translates into even more revenue. Being balanced with a focus on all the capabilities is what drives bigger success versus a narrow focus.

This is a lot like skiing at a large resort that offers multiple peaks and bowls but you choose to only ski the runs serviced by one chair lift (even though there are 19 others to choose from). The variety of the terrain and the experience of the different mountain views are a part of the experience (and the $90 lift ticket). Why limit yourself to just one small portion of the experience? The answer is simple – it is because you like the runs from that chair. That is your preferred focus, but you limit what you get from the mountain. And most importantly, you are likely missing out on something else that you would truly enjoy – maybe even more.

The analogy is not perfect, but to be successful with your sales function you do need to truly attend to all five of the sales force capabilities. You cannot run your team just on the forecast. Without coaching you will get nowhere. You cannot build a great territory plan but ignore actions needed during the actual sales visit. Setting goals without measuring your progress toward them is pretty much meaningless. Each of the five capability areas needs your love and attention.

Just in case you were wondering what my answer was to the gentlemen from the workshop, I am willing to share it. Once he disclosed that his preferred capability was Opportunity Management I wholly agreed that this was a great one to choose. It is quite possible given their sales culture that a focus on the pipeline was a great focus for them to drive results. He beamed with pride that his was the right answer. But then he sulked when I went on to state that if they were nigligent in the other four capabilities (they were actually weak in three of the four) that this was putting them at risk, which we went on to identify with specific examples provided by his peers. We did eventually build a great plan to help them achieve more balance and with that more success.

Good luck with your balancing act!