Knouen

Why Sales Won't Use the CRM System!

Meetul — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:37:00 GMT

Why Sales Won't Use the CRM System ...

By Richard Boardman

You can have the greatest CRM system in the world, but if you can't get people to use it in a consistent and structured way, it will generate no value. And nowhere does usage seem to be more of an issue than in the sales area.

Before you say, "Of course, our sales team is using it," let me tell you about one of the first system audits I ever undertook. We were given the grand tour of the offices, met some bright system administrators and discussed the latest enhancements to the system. It quickly became apparent, however, that virtually no one was actually using it. In the previous month, only a handful of the 100-strong sales force had even accessed the system. An extreme example, perhaps, but it's a situation I've seen replicated many times over the years.

One of the prime reasons that user adoption is such a big issue is that, I believe, the approach to training is fundamentally flawed. Standard practice seems to be for staff members to receive a day's classroom training and then be left to fend for themselves. Some do, indeed, take to it straightaway, but most don't. The most effective approach to training is a proactive one. Training needs to be targeted as a sequence of initiatives that include both classroom and one-on-one help until each user is verified as active. This sort of program may take several months, but it needs to be sustained until the habit of using the system is deeply ingrained.

What's in it for me?
Another reason that salespeople shy away from CRM systems is that there are often no particularly compelling reasons for them to use them. A lot of systems badly fail the "what's in it for me?" test. They simply don't provide salespeople with sufficient payback for the time they have to invest in updating it. In addition, little attention is given to embedding key sales processes within the system. If the only way to provide a sales forecast, to get a discount authorized, to submit an order, etc., is through the CRM system, then—no surprises—the system is going to get used.

‘Another reason salespeople fail to engage with CRM technology is that they are inherently time poor.’

The management team also has a crucial role to play. One of the fundamental differences between failing and successful CRM systems is that in the successful case executives use the system as a key tool to run the business. This is such a powerful predictor of ultimate success that if as a manager, you limit your involvement in the system to no more than signing off the purchase order then, frankly, I'd save your money. The odds are strongly against your seeing a return on your investment.

Another reason salespeople fail to engage with CRM technology is that they are inherently time poor, and many systems fail to take account of this. It's not unusual, for example, to find remotely based salespeople whose only means of access to the CRM system is when they are in the office. It shouldn't really surprise anyone that when Jane from sales drops by the office for her fortnightly visit, diligently inputting the details of the previous 13 days' worth of interactions she still remembers may not be No. 1 on her priority list.

The setup of the system should balance the need to capture information with the need to minimize the time demands on the salesperson. Several years ago, I visited Nissan's immensely successful factory in Sunderland in the United Kingdom and was struck by the care and attention given to maximizing productivity. Every tool was precision-placed so that a worker on the production line only had a put out a hand to grasp what he or she needed to perform the next task. It's a lesson that many CRM systems might benefit from. I still see systems where the addition of a new contact record takes an age to perform because the input screen is excessively demanding on information and key strokes. The net effect: Staffers are loath to add new information.

One challenge that has plagued many CRM implementations is keeping the system relevant to the business over time. The payback from a CRM system accrues over the life of the system. Many systems start out successfully but fail to adapt to changing circumstances. This is often because CRM is seen as a one-off project, where the investment of funds and energy is front-loaded to the implementation stages and the system is starved of resources thereafter. The pressurized, impatient world of sales takes no prisoners in this respect; if it can't be done within the system, the sales team is likely to get it done outside.

Boiled right down, implementing a CRM system is relatively simple. Define what you want to achieve with the technology; ideally something of significant bottom-line value to attract attention and resources. Determine the business processes required to deliver the anticipated benefits. Choose the appropriate technology. And then focus like mad on the people to ensure they use it.

The problem has often been that the technology part attracts a disproportionate part of our attention. Technology can't, however, do it on its own. As one senior executive who was in the process of re-implementing a failed system ruefully noted to us, "We saw CRM like we saw the email system. It was essentially just a case of 'switch it on and it would work.'" When we start to look at CRM rather more three-dimensionally—people, process and technology—the user adoption issue becomes a lot less intractable. And yes, even sales can be persuaded to use the system.

http://www.customerthink.com/article/why_sales_wont_use_crm_system

BusinessWeek - the top recession proof jobs!

Meetul — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:23:00 GMT

BusinessWeek - the top 2 recession proof jobs "#1. Sales representative/Business Dev.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2008/tc20080717_842379.htm

Webinar - CRM as easy as Voice Mail - Knouen VoiceNotes for Siebel

Meetul — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:45:00 GMT

Sales performance improves greatly with accurate tracking of opportunities. However, themost talented sales professionals aren't always the efficient at administration - actually most of them hate it!

Knouen VoiceNotes provides the simplest means for sales reps to update Siebel. One call on the mobile will deliver a meeting note as an Email for onward distribution or storage in a Siebel, so account team and managers can be kept in sync. No need to spend your personal time in the evening or over the weekend sending trip report or updating Siebel.

Discussion Topics include:
--------------------------------

1. Impact Knouen OfficeSync is having in the Siebel world
2. Power of speech as a data
3. Automatic creation of Siebel activity from speech

Title:		CRM as easy as Voice Mail: Knouen VoiceNotes for Siebel

Date:		Thursday, October 2, 2008

Time:		11:00 AM - 11:30 AM PDT

Registration link -

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/446250788

Engineers don't want to hear from the sales force!

Meetul — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:47:00 GMT

Came accross following blog post. I think Dave make some good points here...it's the classic battle

http://www.omghub.com/salesdevelopmentblog/tabid/5809/bid/6097/default.aspx

CRM market growing at 23% in 2007

Meetul — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:13:00 GMT

Gartner released their CRM report, stating that the CRM market was growing with 23% in 2007.
SAP leads the pack followed by Oracle (Siebel, PeopleSoft) and SalesForce.com.

Report says that (CRM) customers are more and more looking for social networking and related technologies. This will help players that actively develop into this direction (like SalesForce.com and Oracle). Amdocs - No. 4 in the market - might suffer from this trend with a missing CRM 2.0 strategy.

http://www.itworld.com/saas/53453/gartner-crm-market-23-percent-07

The TOP 10 Sales Mistakes

Meetul — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:27:00 GMT

Minor league baseball pitcher John Odom was recently involved in one of the craziest baseball trades of all time. He was traded from the Calgary Vipers to the Laredo Broncos for 10 baseball bats!!! The 26-year-old right-hander said of the trade, “I’m still in shock from this phenomenon, I guess. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s mind-boggling.”

Professional baseball players who continually make mistakes are demoted to teams in the minor leagues. These obscure teams play in small towns across America. In the slang of baseball, the players are called “bush leaguers.” Sales also has its share of bush leaguers, who make the following common mistakes:

1. They talk too much on a sales call and don’t listen to the customer enough.

2. They present the same pitch in the same way to every customer.

3. They don’t know their customer or product well enough to drive account strategy.

4. They assume information they don’t know, thereby taking the wrong action.

5. They fidget with many accounts and don’t focus on the winnable ones.

6. They don’t put themselves in the position of being their own customer.

7. They don’t take the time to continuously analyze their performance.

8. They don’t understand how to marshal their resources or use their manager.

9. They set unrealistic customer expectations or make commitments that their product or company can’t fulfill.

10. They expect to win the deal without a coach (internal champion inside the account) or think they have a coach when they don’t.

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/1082041/29806730

Why I Never Talk Anyone Out of Quitting

Meetul — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:15:00 GMT

Recently there was some interesting news that online shoe retailer Zappos offers new hires $1,000 to quit at the end of their first week on the job. In that same spirit, I think companies would be better served to gracefully accept resignations without trying to talk an employee out of it.

Early in my career as a manager, if a key employee came in to my office to tender a resignation, I would try to talk her out of it. I would try to understand the motivations behind her decision, and combat each point with a counterpoint for staying. Sometimes I was successful, but only in the short run.

Over time I’ve learned two things. First, when an employee resigns I’m at least six months too late in starting to create an environment where the employee can succeed and wants to stay and contribute. Second, talking someone into staying never works in the long run. You’re better off dealing with the pain as quickly as possible.

In the last few years I’ve seldom been surprised by a resignation. I’ve seen it coming early enough to either change the environment or the individual’s workload in ways to stimulate and reinvigorate the employee, or to recognize that the person (and maybe our company) would be better served to move along.

Talking someone out of quitting is a bad idea. By the time they walk into your office and hand you their resignation letter, they’ve already processed the idea thousands of times. They were emotionally checked out long ago. I’m sure some of you will ask “but what about the person who quits or takes another job offer as a means to force a discussion about a raise?” I’ve only seen that tactic used a couple of times in my career and in 100% of those cases , I was better off without those individuals. The outstanding employees I wanted to keep never needed a resignation or a better offer as fuel for such a conversation. I guess what I’m saying is that top employees usually have the full package, including knowing how to manage their own careers without having to resign in order to demonstrate their value.

Finally, as a good manager we need to plan for the occasion when a top employee will move on. Succession planning - ensuring that business continues as usual after someone departs - is part of what defines a manager as a leader.

Knouen OfficeSync Architecture

Shawn Lee — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:34:00 GMT

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook now becomes an integral part of the CRM process. By putting significant pieces of CRM functionality (Activity Creation, Opportunity Management, etc.) into the Outlook interface user productivity is significantly increased.

Knouen OfficeSync supports all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook.

Outlook Add-In

Using a sophisticated add-in allows us to provide a deep integration with Microsoft Outlook. The Knouen OfficeSync Add-In monitors your Outlook items and provides contextual access to CRM information based on the active item. Contextual information displays put necessary information at the fingertips of our users when they need it.

Knouen Client Application

The OfficeSync Client Application is a tray application, similar to an anti-virus application, that monitors both your local information store and your main CRM store and keeps the information in sync. This application runs behind the scenes and updates your information when you connect to the corporate network. In addition to monitoring your information the polling application also displays alerts based on items of interest to proactively notify our users when something important has changed.

OfficeSync Widget User Interfaces

The OfficeSync interface is comprised almost completely of a flexible widget framework. A Widget is a single piece of functionality. We we take this to the next level by putting a communication backbone behind the widgets so they can communicate and coordinate with each other. Having the widgets respond to both external and internal actions add a significant level of sophistication and utility to the OfficeSync widgets.

In addition to the Widgets provided by Knouen, our customers can create and publish their own Widget items. The Knouen API is completely extensible for both partners and customers.

OfficeSync Client API

Under the covers of the Knouen Architecture is our Application Programming Interface layer (API). Our API allows both customers and partners to extend the OfficeSync application to meet additional needs. Need a new widget? No problem, all of our existing widgets are built on top of our public API. Want to add additional functionality to the communication between the Client application and the Server? Easily done. Our communication is pipeline based so you can override a single step or implement a completely custom pipeline to meet your needs.

Local File Store

A local file store is present to hold attachment files. These attachments can be items added by the current user or even files that have been posted by other users. To keep our interface light-weight we do not pull down attachments uploaded by other users unless the user requests the download. Once that occurs they will have their own copy locally they can view at their leisure.

OfficeSync Client Data Store

One of the keys to OfficeSync is the light-weight local data store on the client. This is what gives our users the offline capabilities they demand. After trying several databases we have standardized on Microsoft SQL Compact Edition (CE) as the local client database. This database holds all the user CRM information and makes it available to the other user interfaces.

This local database is one of the keys that sets OfficeSync apart from our competitors. Most of the people who build an Outlook integration make the mistake of putting the information into the Outlook data store, the PST file. However, the PST file was never intended to be a store for anything other than typically outlook items. They are also traditionally unstable and a bit slow. By keeping the information in a local database instead of a PST file we are completely flexible on the information we store and put no additional load on Outlook.

OfficeSync Management Console

The OfficeSync Management Console provides centralized management of the entire application. Everything from User Management to Configuration to Service management can be accomplished through the Management Console.

OfficeSync Web Service

Knouen OfficeSync uses a web service interface to provide a standardized method of communication for all client applications. All client communication occurs through the web service interface, not against the Siebel system. By putting a web service between the clients and the Siebel system the load is buffered and any additional load placed on the Siebel system is kept to a minimum.

OfficeSync Processing Service

Knouen OfficeSync Host Service is a Windows Service that monitors Siebel for information changes. When changes are detected flags are set which notify the OfficeSync client of the change. Using this system allows the load to be shifted from the Siebel system to the OfficeSync system as clients do not request record updates unless a change has actually occurred.

The Host Service is a generic Windows Service that hosts Service "Functions". Functions are isolated units of work that are targeted towards a specific purpose. For example, OfficeSync ships with Functions which monitor the Siebel database for changes as well as Functions which keep a running update of the users visible item list. Using Service Functions allows the OfficeSync service architecture maximum flexibility and scalability

OfficeSync Central File Store

A centralized file store is located in the middle-tier to hold attachment files posted by users. It is from this store that other users can request file downloads to see the original files.

OfficeSync Management Database

The OfficeSync Management Database is the core piece of the middle-tier. All state is kept in the Management database, leaving the web service and windows services completely stateless. This allows the OfficeSync architecture to scale as high as necessary by adding additional web service and windows processing services. It also allows for a simple disaster recovery mechanism. By utilizing database maintenance best practices, regular backups and transaction log outputs, the OfficeSync environment can be restored to full functionality by simply restoring the database and turning the services back on.

Siebel API

All data writes are posted to Siebel through the Siebel COM API interfaces. Knouen choose these interfaces because they allow us to support a maximum number of Siebel versions and they have been around for years so are well tested and stable.

Siebel Database

The Siebel Database acts as the master store for all the information used in the system. This is the ultimate repository and it will win all conflicts and decisions. OfficeSync was designed specifically to prevent any data corruption from occurring in the Siebel system. No deletions of Siebel information are allowed in the OfficeSync interfaces, protecting your information from possible removal. As mentioned, the Siebel database wins all conflicts so data overwrites are not going to occur.

Knouen OfficeSync supports all the major database platforms that Siebel runs on -- SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2.