Why is CRM So Damn Hard?

On April 18th, Jake Horn, a Partner at Trustantial who spearheads the CRM Practice of the business, provided a detailed synopsis on why Customer Relationship Management software is challenging for many business owners and users. CRM Implementations can be complex, and there are multiple examples of poor results; many reasons CRM is tough to master is because of people solutions, process solutions, or technology solutions. Each one of these are common reasons for an implementation to go unsuccessfully, but no one ever tells you about the not-so-common reasons why CRM is so hard.

Below are Jake Horn’s ‘Not So Well-Known Reasons CRM is Hard’ based on his 20+ years working with CRM Software. Make sure to ask yourself these questions to see if they apply to you and your organization:

?          Are your vendors accountable? – Currently, the way software is sold is broken. In the drive for increasing revenue, the software and services vendors employ salespeople who are long gone once the contract is signed. Will anyone in sales conversations actually be accountable for a successful outcome?

?          Starters or backups? – Many service providers hold training “boot-camps” for implementation resources and have a limited group of A-team people

?          Are you willing to mandate usage? – Setting the rule of “If it’s not in CRM, it didn’t happen” is the ideal situation. Executives must plan for how they will respond when this policy is tested. They will ALWAYS be tested, usually by a high-performer.

?          Is inside sales the answer? – In many of the most successful CRM implementations, one of the common themes is an adequately staffed inside sales team that are stewards of the system.

?          Why do you expect salespeople to give you the whip that you will use to beat them? – There is no faster way to ensure that salespeople stop using a CRM system than to start using the information against them.

?          They don’t call it “Prospect Relationship Management” or “Sales Relationship Management” for a reason – CRM systems were designed to be repositories for customer-oriented information.  

If any of these questions above sound familiar to you, you are not alone. Like a doctor appointment, we can’t diagnose you until we chat with you briefly about what is going on with your business as a whole with a fact-finding conversation. If you’d like to schedule a free consultation with Jake Horn, email him directly at [email protected].