It was interest meeting sales leader of a two decade old furniture manufacturing company that serves primarily office and industrial segment. In the course of the discussion what he mentioned brought old demons back and it seemed world has not moved. The company has rolled in SFDC with all earnest but was finding poor adoption by front line staff, data management was a challenge and resistance to change at mid-senior levels. Reports usage was far and few and sales operations patchy. What transcribed was they had seen SFDC as IT tool and not used this to recast their sales operations. Even after roll out of SFDC, company management had not aligned their marketing and sales. From our experience this is not a one off case. Many CRM roll outs do not seem to have met the expected outcomes.
In our experience CRM tools like SFDC yield significant impact when companies create the right environment, define expectations and encourage ownership to adhere and improve outcomes. People involvement is the key to outcome. Training, incentivizing adoption by gamification and other principles is important to drive adoption. Resistance to change can be addressed only through education and enablement of sales teams. Sale roles whether acquisition or account mining have their own nuances and challenges. Sales review templates is a major bone of contention. Address their fears and apprehensions, educate them how transparency is critical for sales and their organization. Direct, partner or inside sales team require customized sales training for functional improvement, but also broad based training to appreciate cross-functional integration. Invest in training to lock out legacy issues including why move beyond call list and Excel sheets. Let the sales resources realize SFDC will help not micromanage them. Let them discover the value of managing out-of-date sales funnel data.
Ensuring sales leaders at all levels demand compliance with set standard is important to drive adoption and breadth of use of SFDC. Consistency and rigour in SFDC can be brought in by bringing on board a sales administration during SFDC roll out. Creating a dedicated sale operations centre is must. SOC will ensure all forms of waste is eliminated; all states and faults are visible and equip the company to correct quickly. Adopting suitable process whether SPIN, or SPENCO others that suit the organization brings standardization benefits. A salesforce administrator ensures sales processes are not disjointed and workflows are all over the organization. Salesforce administrator also plays a key role in expansion and scaling up of SFDC roll out.
Sales teams must also be trained to use different marketing assets at each stage of sales process so that right assets are deployed at right stage. This is important for many solution based organization as the predominant approach is to use demos even when qualification is not done. Sales teams must use assets including blogs, SEO, Media placement to create brand awareness at qualification stage. Need analysis stage may need case studies, white papers and explainer videos to convey experience and expertise. Negotiations stage may need ROI or TCO templates, presales led demonstrations and product walkthroughs, product testimonials to address credibility, references and case scenarios. Thought leadership, product manuals, user tools may be required at closure stage. Marketing must work hand in hand with sales to create content that can create opportunities for sales team and help them closure better. Marketing team must consistently use feedback from sales team to create content that they actually use and create content around sales pipelines. While papers, frameworks, blogs, Infographics, videos all have their own value, cost and time to create. Sometimes, a goliath of an asset is what is required and hence marketing TAT’s become crucial. Similarly, sales resources must give inputs on user behaviour, competitive programs and what is working and what is not from door opening to closure.
ROI of the SFDC increases if it is kept simple. Take care of people (including organization parameters like structure, who owns what), technology, processes and add a dose of common sense, that all is what you need to ensure your SFDC roll out rocks.
Dr TR Madan Mohan and Bhavana S Kashyap