Salesforce 101: a cautionary tale on successfully implementing a CRM
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
Salesforce.com is a CRM database tool that's become the standard for many companies' inside sales teams, and I've seen it used many times when I coach team members during my inside sales training courses. It's powerful, but like most robust tools, it needs to be tweaked for the characteristics of the team using it, based on use cases. Generally, I encourage my clients to either have a dedicated Saleforce.com expert on staff, or utilize a consultant to assist in making the best use of the CRM.
One of my blog correspondents is going nuts over how her company has implemented Salesforce, and she's made a very cogent, if impassioned, statement about how it's not working as well as it should at her company. What triggered her correspondence to me was the ongoing discussion on the blog based on my KPI (Key Performance Indicators) post. She's got a litany of concerns, including some that relate to intra-company politics, but basically what she's dealing with is a sales process that's not working as well as it could. She wants to remain anonymous, which is why I'm telling the story here, and it's not listed as a blog response.
I'm posting it here, because she addresses issues that I've been hearing a lot over the past few months. I'll let her tell it in her own words. If you can relate to her issues, you'll know you're not alone. And if you don't have similar problems, congratulate your CRM expert for doing a great job.
Here's what she has to say:
"Data Quality 101. I've been burned by the company buying a bunch (7000+) of "leads" from somewhere & loading them into Salesforce.
"The alleged quality was questionable. For a 10% sample of my patch I kept statistics on: address, phone, URL, description & contact. Boiled down to taking an AVERAGE of 7 minutes to bring a single Account record up to callable quality. So I'm doing DATA ENTRY, while I'm paid on sales. Would you have any idea if there's a mechanism or accessory for Salesforce that quarantines incoming 'leads' into a pending status before accepting them a valid?
"One of my big, first clues to Salesforce was their introductory training video... where at one point they go out of their way to emphasize the importance of using "good naming standards/conventions" when choosing a opportunity name. So if one time it's called BCBS MA & another time Blue Cross/Blue Shield Massachusetts & another time BlueCross/BlueShield Mass... duh you'll get results all over the place. Guess what? Busy salespeople are NOT typists. They'll make up whatever name makes sense to them at the moment.
"Surfing the Salesforce site last night was not enlightening. ‘Data Quality' seems to be no more complex than de-duplicating. Basic challenge... when the CEO puffs up his chest ‘We're using Salesforce...' which means we're way cool, this essentially slams the door on the question, ‘...yes, but HOW well are we using it?' Another non-unique challenge... the freshly appointed Salesforce administrator took it as personal insult to imply that just perhaps everything in Salesforce wasn't 100% up to snuff. How dare you challenge my manhood! I just do not understand why people get so tied up in their shorts over common stuff like this... admit it, knuckle down & fix it & get on to selling."
Geoff here again. So there you have it, some pretty frustrating words from an inside sales rep trying to motor through a challenging situation. Lots of my readers are management people at startups, just beginning to put together an inside sales team. If you're in this category, put some serious thought into pre-tweaking your CRM to get in inline with your KPIs, and try making a few calls yourself as a use case to ensure that your system is set up to optimize the successful work of your reps. Add this to your Best Management Playbook.