This is a continuation of the post published on March 7, 2008.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

images5. Build “Eco-system” for Adoption Management. Most CRM initiatives are launched to change way of doing business in organization - if they don’t, the economics of such an initiative should be questioned. However concerns about adoption challenges often shift the focus to functions and features from processes and economics.

Instead of clear communication of goals and benefits to employees and to enterprise, and development of a sound, comprehensive change management strategy - the project leadership slips into a risk mitigation mode and anticipation of crisis. The requirements gathering interviews can easily turn into pacifying participants with discussions about laundry lists of functions and promising no changes to the underlying processes and “flexible” systems.

Principal concerns of business community involved with proposed CRM initiative are:

  1. Increased work load expectations;
  2. Negative impact on personal income and earning ability (SFA) caused by sharing Contact and Opportunity information;
  3. Increased accountability for quality of forecast translated into job security,
  4. Negative impact on Customer relationship.

I often focus on SFA adoption challenges while discussing CRM initiatives because these have by far the worst history, and are considered the most difficult to navigate. Most Customer Support, Call Center, Marketing and other CRM related initiatives have much better adoption record because their processes traditionally are more clearly defined and managed for for consistency.

imagesSalespeople, on the other hand, focus on event rather than process and see any attempt to dissect selling process for analysis with great contempt as they regard selling as an art form. While sales professionals do not respond positively to management, they do respond very enthusiastically to leadership and basic economics:

  • Well thought through changes to their compensation structure to influence their behavior will produce very powerful results. Needless to say these changes should influence behavior specific to achievement of financial goals of CRM initiative, not paying for use of system.
  • Consistent publicity for sales community leaders who embraced the change and financially benefited as a result.
  • Steadfast and brutal treatment of any attempt to misuse shared information for “poaching” purposes.
  • Maximize automation of initial data loads and subsequent data capture.