Focusing on Management Goals is Pointless when Launching CRM

Imagine this:

You’re the owner or manager of a small business. You’re facing mounting competitive pressures and shrinking margins. Differentiation has become harder and harder because your competitors are one click away on the Internet.

You need to create consistent, high-quality experiences to keep prospects and customers coming back for more.

Good news: you’re in luck!

CRM promises success

Customer Relationship Management, CRM, software was built for exactly this need. Set up your CRM properly and your team will be more responsive, pro-active, and collaborative.

This helps drive positive customer and prospect outcomes, increase revenue per sales rep, and bump up your bottom line.

And CRM vendors make it easy to sign up. Give them your credit card and let the good times roll.

Hold up—not so fast!

CRM success is never guaranteed. The harsh reality is that most CRM projects are doomed to failure.

Depending on which research firm you choose to follow, CRM implementations fail anywhere from 40 – 70% of the time. That should give you pause before diving in to CRM.

CRM failure can be costly

What does “failure” mean?

It means burning money on implementing software (or a “web application,” if you prefer) that falls into disuse six to eighteen months after implementation.

It means going back to using email and spreadsheets and accounting software to track sales sub-optimally.

It means eliminating any chance at a decent understanding of how your business is doing, what your pipeline looks like, how to improve, and other key indicators that you need in today’s ultra-competitive market.

It means leaving you exposed to missed opportunities.

It means stranding you and your team back where you started.

In many ways, the biggest cost of a failed CRM rollout is the lost time—the six to eighteen months that you will never get back.

Time your competition used to build and advance. Time you could have used to accelerate your business…if only you had properly adopted CRM.

Why CRM implementations fail

I’ve helped hundreds of small businesses successfully adopt CRM over the last twenty years, and I’ve learned a few tricks to CRM success the hard way.

One of the most fundamental of these is a simple philosophy that we preach: managers buy, but salespeople use.

Yes, it’s a bit simplistic. Of course, managers will be using CRM as well as salespeople. In fact, they had better be using CRM if you want your implementation to be successful.

But if your focus is fixed on reaching management goals—typically these are things like better visibility and tracking, greater efficiency and effectiveness, higher customer retention, and the like—you will spin your wheels and get nowhere very quickly.

As much as we all like to think everyone in the company is in it for the greater good of the group, it just isn’t so. Telling your team they have to use CRM to meet your management goals is a recipe for failure.

They will rebel outright or quietly against the new system.

The keys to CRM success

But all is not lost.

Management goals will naturally be reached as a byproduct of good management. Good management involves a ton of different strategies and tactics.

In the context of successful CRM implementations, good management means you need to focus on making life easier for your people on the front lines.

These days, salespeople and customer service representatives are being asked to do more and more than ever before. They juggle more prospects and accounts, learn new sales skills for the Internet-era, provide better follow-ups and touchpoints, and much, much more.

Your focus with CRM should be to make life easier for your team.

It’s a simple concept and you will find it extremely powerful.

Focus on that, and suddenly, the CRM isn’t an enemy for your team to struggle with. It’s not a tool for Big Brother to watch over their shoulders.

CRM becomes a friend that makes their lives better.

It’s there to help serve prospects and customers. It’s there to help manage follow ups. It’s there to remind your team of the hundreds of things they need to do to be successful salespeople and customer service reps.

And this isn’t merely touchy-feely stuff. The bottom line is a well-implemented CRM puts more commission in your salespeople’s pockets.

When CRM is done right, it acts like an invisible personal assistant that helps your team deliver that consistent, high-quality experience that keeps prospects and customers coming back for more.

And if you can do that, you will meet your management goals as a natural result of good CRM usage.