The CRM Buy-In Challenge

More than 80 percent of salespeople view the technology that was “imposed” on them in the past year as a failure. Why is this? Sales technology implementations fail for a combination of reasons. If salespeople believe that they have not been sufficiently consulted or involved, if they cannot see a direct day-to-day benefit to them personally and if they feel their concerns have not been addressed, then they will boycott the new tools or revert to using the old tools and ways. Developing the approach, tactics, new processes and skills that will drive the exploitation of whatever technologies are chosen is the hard work.

In its third attempt, Honeywell Aerospace wisely created a team-selling sales process, in most cases with one lead individual charged with managing a team of sales reps and service engineers, creating a single point of contact for the customer. That was key. The division went from being product-centric in organizational design to becoming customer-centric, organizing itself around the customer, not business units. After this fundamental organizational change took place and new business processes were defined, then the CRM software could enable the new customer-centric business model. The software itself is the enabler, not the primary source of the benefit.

Return on investment from CRM is created in part from the extensive process and change management associated with CRM programs. Software applications?whether Siebel or any other?account for 20 percent to 28 percent of the CRM investment and are correspondingly small contributors to the overall CRM benefit. In fact, we believe 80 percent of the benefit of a CRM program comes from new business processes; only 20 percent of the benefits are derived from technology.