I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with a few customers recently who are currently using popular online or web based CRMs or contact management systems.  You would be amazed at what they WEREN’T told by their sales rep about what they would have to pay for in order to really get things working for their business.

Maybe I’m crazy or naive…

I cut my teeth in business in the energy business.  My list of potential clients that could afford to buy what I was selling was about 20 companies in the entire world.  In that environment, the one thing you can’t afford to lose is the trust of your customers.  I had to go back to them year after year to make my numbers.

So in the hosted, subscription based, online CRM and contact management business, why wouldn’t you see things the same way?  You need your clients to continue their subscription right?  If you hit them with surprise charges after you “hook” them in on the subscription, they’re not going to feel real good about renewing are they?

Wow!  It blows me away.

You can’t argue with success right?  These guys have certainly done well.  Maybe these unpleasant surprises aren’t that big a deal to many customers compared to the value of having a good CRM…

I’ll tell you what though, you can’t tell me that its good business to never mention to prospective clients that when they want to STOP doing business with you, you won’t be able to get all of your crucial client data back in a useful format without spending thousands of dollars.

Well, that’s enough.  We’ve learned enough to know that what small and medium sized businesses are NOT being told by most online, web-based CRM and contact management vendors is significant and costly.

That’s why I’ve decided to write a new article entitled, the “7 Hidden Costs of Online CRM”.  Its going to detail out the unpleasant surprises that many businesses are finding after they sign up.  Its also going to include specific questions to ask the vendors before you buy.

At least this way small and medium sized businesses will be able to go in with their eyes wide open.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release of “7 Hidden Costs of Online CRM” very soon!

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But somehow, they’re tough to write down on a piece of paper.

Your qualification questions.  The questions you ask a prospect so that you understand they’re needs and what solutions you may have that they’ll see value in.

So you’re asking, why do I need to put them in writing?

Well the obvious answers are:

1. So you can select market segments to target.
2. So you can teach others to do it too.
3. So you can create things like web forms that pre-qualify leads for you by asking some of these questions.

But there’s another reason to firm up your grasp on what you need to know about a prospect - so you can be a better sales person!

How do you know who’s hot and who’s not?  Do you just remember?  Do you have notes written down that you can review to devine the quality of each lead?

That’s great but, its not good enough in this brave new world!

Here’s why:

There is a limit to the number of relationships you can manage in your head.  Pat Sullivan, the founder of ACT!, says you can multiply that # by 5 fold if you use a database to do it.  Imagine increasing your pipeline of potential sales by 5 fold!

The most productive activity a sales person undertakes is contacting customers.  In most businesses, you have to call a prospect a few times just to get them on the phone.  Most times you dial the phone, you get voice mail, gate keepers, etc.  If you have to read anecdotal notes before each dial of the phone, you wasting time repeatedly for each prospect.  Putting the key information in quickly visible and understandable form allows you to dial more often and contact more customers.

Having your prospects in a list or database that includes this key information and can be sorted or searched using these criteria allows you to quickly pull up a call list for today or a list of customers to send a certain product announcement to.

The tough part is getting that seat of the pants questioning that you’re so good at into a managable set of database fields.

When you do, you can create a simple call sheet that lists the questions and the most popular answers.  When you’re talking with a prospect, you just circle the answers that apply.  This is a good way to test your first draft of the questions.

Then make them fields in your contact management system.  Create drop down lists for the answers that are most common.

Now, when you’re on the phone, you instantly know which questions you’ve already asked and which still need to be asked.  You can record the answers with a couple of clicks.

More tomorrow on a simple approach to getting the questions on paper.

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If you’re sales team and customer service team are both finely tuned to execute efficiently and effectively, you will beat your competition everytime.  This is virtually guaranteed.  Why?

Because most companies struggle so much with getting there.

Here’s the secret to taking sales and service to levels your competition can’t touch -

Motivate your team to use an information system to organize and share information about prospects and clients. 

Please note - this is not dependant upon the technology your choose as your information system.  Use Outlook and MS-Exchange, build an Access database, use ACT!, subscribe to an online contact management or CRM system or spend big bucks on something with all the bells and whistles…  The #1 reason for failure across all these system is user adoption.

User adoption is where soooo many companies fail.  On the surface, it sounds too easy to mess up.  You’re the boss, you tell them to use it or leave.  In fact, most businesses fall into one of two categories:

1) Established businesses where the problem is taking the risk of changing the habits of successful sales reps.

These companies have sales people that have “been there and done that” and management is often reluctant to “force” a top producing sales rep to change their methods.  The rational being “what they’re doing now is working for them”.  Sales reps with long established habits will resist the change and nit pick minor technical challenges, using them as excuses for not using the system consistently.

In this case, the key element to success is trust.  They’ll never say it but, the inner most fear of the sales rep regarding the new contact management system is that management will be watching what they do.  They’re afraid of measurement and accountability.  Strangely enough, even the hardest working reps on your staff will fall victim to this fear.

2) New businesses or divisions where the problem is that no one really understands the sales process yet. 

No one can identify the “best practice”.  Sure, every rep has their own idea of the best processes, etc. but, there’s little evidence that any of it is right.

In this case, management is sooo busy with sooo many other unknowns that they’re typically trying to hire sales reps that can “hit the ground running” without a lot of oversight.  This leaves the sales process up to the reps.

Regardless of which group your company falls into, the problem is the same.  The inmates are running the asylum!

So, when we talk about trying to motivate the sales team to get on board with your new sales automation system, we’re talking about convincing them to give up control.  That’s never easy.

Steps to take to get your team on-board:

1. Involve the end users in every step of the requirements, selection, design and implementation process. 
2. Be firm.  Do NOT let the discussion be about “if we do this”.  Take charge.  Communicate the compelling reasons that your business needs to make this change.  Make it clear that you are committed to moving forward and resistance is futile.  So, the question for each individual is not whether they’ll have to use it but, whether they want to be involved in designing and selecting the solution before they have to start using it.
3. Identify the bits of information that each person in the team struggles to get their hands on at critical moments.  Product specs, price sheets, latest marketing materials, deal status, a copy of the last proposal, etc.
4. Do some time and motion analysis.  Estimate the amount of time each person spends preparing or searching for this information and more importantly, the amount of time customers spend waiting for solutions while your team coordinate and communicates.
5. Customize the system so that each person can find that crucial bit of information that they’re always searching for instantly.  Usually this is pretty simple.  Put a few custom fields in the database to easily record the stats you need about a customer like # of employees, trucks in their fleet, etc.  Put standard collateral like marketing materials, specs, price sheets and agreements in the system so that anyone can grab them any time.  Be sure that proposals and agreements can be easily archived and retrieved.
6. Now, sell it to them.  Show them how much time is being wasted now.  Show them how much more quickly their customers could get solutions.  Discuss what that means to your company competitively. Ask your team to help you identify the ways in which you’ll know the change has been worth it.  What evidence should you see in 3 months, 6 months or a year that making this change is moving your business to the level you set out for yourselves?  It may make sense to provide some incentives to the team for making these goals a reality.

Good news.  This process does not need to take months or involve outside consultants.  It does not require that you spend big bucks on the technology.  In fact, keeping the requirements and the chosen solution simple is your best bet. 

If you’ve defined realistic objectives and everyone involved knows what is at stake for the business, your biggest risk is that you’ll need to upgrade to a more comprehensive solution in a couple of years because your requirements will grow as you automate more and more of your process.  This is a very good problem to have!

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In fact, when’s the last time you called a Fortune 500 company for service and came away impressed with the service you got?

The big guys have the resources to do whatever they want but, their size makes it difficult in itself. Why?

Because good customer service is mostly about information. When a customer calls, they want information: how to buy, how to use, how to pay, etc. From the customer’s point of view, the measure of good customer service is two fold - how fast can I get what I need and how pleasant is the experience?

The larger the organization, the more layers and departments there are. That makes it tough to keep things simple for the customer.

For a small business, it can seem difficult to provide instant access to information and solutions. That’s because most business owners have the impression that they must spend large sums of money to implement an information system (contact management, CRM, etc.) that empowers sales and service personnel to assist customers quickly.

So, the process is normally one in which some one logs the call and the request, then promises to get back to the client as soon as possible. Then the staffer tracks down someone who has the information and authority to make decisions. Of course, this process is inherently inefficient and leaves the customer waiting.

What if any customer facing employee in your company could look up a comprehensive status for the client on the phone? Everything they’ve ever bought, service issues they’ve had, pending orders, general notes about their application of the product, etc.?

Good news! Its not that hard to achieve. If you have some IT expertise on hand, it can be done with Access or even Microsoft Exchange. Solid CRMs or Contact Management systems can be had for less than $500 per employee per year, when you factor in all the costs of implementation, maintenance, etc.

So, the client calls and the person who answers the call has all the facts they need to help the client on the spot.

The client gets what they want - fast answers without having to talk to several employees while being transferred around, waiting on hold and repeating their story.

So, if $500 per employee seems an affordable cost for beating your biggest competitor at customer service, all you have to do is decide that your company can make the transition from keeping information in their heads to entering it into a contact management database.

That transition doesn’t have to be painful. More to come in my next post on how to motivate employees to get on board with sharing information and how to make it easy to get started while reducing the training costs.

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