Align CRM Processes With Sales Team Processes

By Walter Rogers
President and CEO
Baker Communication

Never forget that sales makers are really only interested in one thing: closing quota and driving revenue. That is how they are measured and that is how they measure themselves (not to mention that it is also how they support their families). Now, add to this the fact that markets are more competitive than ever, customers expect them to be more responsive than ever, and sales managers expect them to be more productive than ever. Add this all up and you have some vague understanding of how much pressure sales reps live under, and how precious to them is every minute of every day.

Because of this unique, pressure cooker existence, sales makers will resist with their last breath any extra drag on their schedule, including anything that requires that they change something about their process that they think is working just fine. They don’t have time to change and they don’t have time to learn something new unless it will clearly and quickly move them toward accomplishing their most important goals. Needless to say, devoting precious time to using a CRM is the last thing on their to do list.

So, one way to reduce the sales rep’s resistance to using CRM is to make sure it is configured to be aligned with their sales process. As we have pointed out before, CRM systems are too often designed to support accounting processes rather than sales processes. People who monitor and analyze raw sales data think very differently and have different needs than sales reps. This becomes evident very quickly when a sales rep sits down to try and make sense of most CRM systems. In almost all cases, sales teams already have a process they are comfortable with that defines how they address territory management, account planning, customer research, order management, pricing and approval systems, and document management. Unless the CRM system has been deployed using great care to assure that it will be aligned with the existing sales process, the CRM roll out will precipitate a massive change in workflow. This will be accompanied by an equally massive protest from sales reps who now find the tools and processes they have relied upon being usurped by a CRM that was not designed with sales reps in mind in the first place. This will make the CRM learning curve for sales reps long and painful, and many will simply avoid the process altogether.

There is a quick fix for this: interview sales reps about their sales process. How do they organize their process now? How do they collect information now? How do they organize and analyze it? How do they prefer to connect with customers? How do they prioritize accounts? How do they organize their day? How do they submit information on pipeline and closed sales? When you can configure the CRM so that it works with the rep’s existing process instead of adding extra (useless and time consuming) steps to their day, they won’t push back so hard.

Sometimes it may not be possible or reasonable to have the CRM mimic the existing sales process for the simple reason that the process itself can be improved. After all, a properly configured CRM can offer a lot of advantages that an existing sales process might not have. However, in such cases it is still important to start with the existing process as a reference point and partner with sales makers as you work on the design, in order to help them understand that wherever changes to the existing process are made, it will allow the reps to work faster and more efficiently than the old system. Once reps see the CRM as a tool instead of a task, you are home free.

Baker Communications was recently recognized as one of the top ten Sales Force Automation training companies in the world. We know what it takes to make CRM and SFA work for your organization. In this series, we are sharing some of those secrets with you. In the meantime, if you would like to know more, visit http://www.bakercommunications.com/sales-training/.

Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.

Re-Print Permission

This article may be reprinted in its entirety if the following conditions are met:

1. The complete tag with the author's name and contact information is included immediately after the article.
2. A copy of the printed article is mailed to the author at 10101 SW Freeway Suite 630. Houston, Texas, 77074, USA within 30 days of publication.
3. The article is presented in a positive light as part of an appropriate business related publication.