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Oprius is an interesting player in the CRM space because it goes against the current “conventional wisdom”. At a time when everybody is trying to establish as wide a footprint as they can possibly muster, Oprius focuses exclusively on Contact Management functionality, which is at the heart of the sales process.
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The extremely well publicized challenge of getting sales people to use spunky new, very expensive, Sales Force “Automation” system is regarded as the Achilles heel of CRM strategies. It is very well documented experience of many corporations that tried and failed, and many CRM implementation practitioners who were responsible for adoption management of these strategies. Indeed the best SFA system from adoption perspective would only have one screen with a large button with a dollar sign on it. It would completely automate sales process from a salesperson point of view - just push the button and collect commission check.
I know this would sound pretty ridiculous to Sales Management, however their idea of Sales Force Automation does not appear too valuable to sales people either. To start with, the name SFA sounds as inspiring to sales professional as Global Warming sounds terrifying to folks who live in the cold climes. Let’s face it - the Sales Management Automation is often much more accurate name for many implementations.
The practice of “sticks and carrots”, if well thought through and consistently implemented, had some positive results. However the best results will be obtained from the holistic and balanced approach to adoption management by understanding value proposition for both corporate AND sales perspectives. The important, and probably most critical, part is to understand that these perspectives are not well aligned and often are viewed as conflicting.
1. Attempts to “sell” SFA to sales people without meaningful to them value proposition will backfire. There is nothing more repulsive to a real pro than a “pretender” trying to fool them;
2. Attempts to “mandate” the use will fail at the best, or will destroy company’s best asset at the worst. The worst performers will become the best users of the system, and the best performers will leave the company;
3. Keep your eyes on the ball. That means that well planned SFA can improve performance of many capable, but under performing, sales people by helping them be more consistent. It cannot make them “stars”. Don’t promise that. It will not make star performers any better. Don’t promise that. They will not believe it even if you do. SFA will not help people who should not be selling. Don’t promise that;
4. Do not try to “pay for use”. Sales people will find the way to be paid without using it. Find specific ways to pay for desired change in behavior. If you think I just contradicted myself, you don’t keep your eyes on the ball - the purpose of SFA investment is NOT for salesperson to be logged in often. If the purpose of investment was to improve accuracy of forecast - find a way to compensate for accuracy of the forecast and/or decrease commission rate for “bluebirds” and “sandbaggers”.
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Painful memories of this issue were awaken again by Chris Bucholtz in his blog and I put some of this content as a comment to the post.
The Enterprise software adoption management of salespeople is probably the most difficult challenge for corporate management:
1. they have no inherent respect for a process, because to be successful they learned to go around processes and focus on a goal and a goals of CRM implementations are not often communicated in specific terms which relate to their goals;
2. they are often recruited as “entrepreneurs” and treated as “self-employed”, but then told to use a system which is designed to be a management tool to “control” them.
3. they are told that the system is to “help” them to be more efficient, but expect them to spend hours doing data entry.
There are many variations of these valid reasons, but the most critical one is - they can get away with ignoring the CRM system like no other business community. There is a limited upside for using it, the most active users who don’t make their numbers are still fired, and no downside, the best sales performers who ignore management orders to use CRM, are still the stars.
That is the challenge that made me come up with an idea of holistic design methodology, in other words - the system needs to be initially architect with adoption management in mind. IMO the only way to achieve return on CRM investment is to design and implement it in a such a way that all CRM communities WANT to use it and I would double bold it for sales community. I wrote about the strategic options to address this issue in this blog before, so now I will try address some tactical ones:
I had very good adoption experience when it was possible to add (mash) external information about Customers and Contacts automatically fed from on-line subscription services. That could be huge value added for salespeople, who otherwise would need to spend hours researching or fly blind without CRM system.
One of the largest adoption challenges is around data entry requirements, so finding the ways to lighten the load by automation and other technology tools is very important. But that is it’s own subject for discussion and
In the large organizations, cross departmental visibility made available to salespeople, allows them to adjust their pipeline activities to reflect for changes in a Customer credit standing or outstanding support issues. Sales teams need to be exposed to these opportunities to manage their time more effectively, but once they are - adoption improves dramatically.
There are too many more tactical solutions to describe here, but the important thought is to think about them before design and implementation started.
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