**************************************** We will talk in a few weeks about how important CRM system end user experience is to success of any CRM deployment, but for today, I would like to focus on another topic. ****************************************

You see, if "CRM" is only being implemented as a new contact and appointment manager, then Outlook probably is an appropriate tool. ACT! is world's leading contact manager and there are tens of thousands around world that swear by it. These are both good, solid, workable tools for some remote salespeople.

However, Customer Relationship Management is a much more comprehensive endeavor than simple contact management, or even efforts to automate sales force's daily activities. It requires integration of processes, software applications, and databases.

**************************************** We are now talking about strategically making customer experience better, across organization...

When they interact with their salesperson... When they call finance department... When they need technical support... When they visit your website... and when they are marketed to. ****************************************

Outlook cannot possibly enable such things, or capture information to be analyzed.

When I began to dig a little deeper to understand why Jim had this apprehension and distaste for CRM products, picture became a little clearer. You see, he really let me know that his main problem was not necessarily CRM products themselves, but rather executive team and sales management's perception of system and what is was supposed to do.

Many times, management recognizes need for CRM. Their competition is "Implementing CRM". The press is talking about CRM. They know that they need to change something, increase their sales, while reducing costs. But a lot of times, CRM is reduced to just another contact manager, implemented with three times as much administration for sales team, so that management can see what heck they are doing. Tough sell? You bet. Especially to salespeople who are used to working autonomously, and earning six figures a year.

It is important for executives and senior managers to recognize that CRM is more than just getting information for themselves. This is a very critical requirement, and an essential gain for any implementation. However, we must go back to positioning CRM as an initiative focused around making customer experience better. One of ways to do this is to arm people who are dealing with customer with relevant, timely, easily retrievable information. It is also important to empower them with applications that make it easy for them to enter new information they discover during their interaction. The next step, critical factor we are discussing today is to make that information available to all parties within organization who might be able to take advantage of it - executives, managers, sales reps, marketing, tech support reps, finance, customer service, etc.

CRM truly is a mindset. It is implementation of customer centric business strategies and processes that are intended to make customer feel like they are company's first priority. Implementing these strategies generally require proper technology as an enabler to successfully deploy and implement new systems and processes.

**************************************** If you missed my article about customer centricity last month, take time to review it here "Why Customer Centricity?" ****************************************

My converation with Jim continued, and went something like this:

BRIAN: "I assume you don't do any of order processing, when your prospects sign a purchase agreement for your products and services." JIM: "No, once I receive signed contract, I fax that back to headquarters, and they follow up with fulfillment and billing"

BRIAN: "Are you ever aware of any issues that customer has after order has shipped?" JIM: "Not always. Occasionally, when they are really mad, or are having serious trouble, I'll get a call."

BRIAN: "Have you ever gone to call on an existing customer, and walked into a landmine because they have a nagging issue with your tech support or finance department?" JIM: "Yeah, that definitiely happens. It would be nice to know ahead of time somehow, but unless tech support is really proactive and knows our schedules, they really never notify us, especially because we are in different timezones"

Training to make a good sales person “Training them to be able to sell company product in large volume.” A very wise American philosopher once stated that all a salesman had to do was to continue to try to interest customer and customer would eventually buy, if sales man continued to try to interest customer! Like all great truths, they are ‘obvious’ once stated.

So, what does it take for a sales person to continue to try to interest a customer, no matter what objection customer raises and despite sales person’s own impulse to ‘give up’ after a while? Lets look at elements:

The sales patter: The first of these would be a successful sales patter. Here we are talking about getting a hold of someone or several people who are successful, at selling to customers, in target industry, or a similar industry. Once such person(s) are found, you need to interview them to find out what they DO that made them a success. We are looking for actions they take and things they do, not what they think.

The best person to interview for this information is usually most successful sales person, right there in company, if one exists. Notes should be carefully made of actions they take to get a sale and these notes should be very exactly written up and turned into a patter that can later be drilled on new and old members of sales force.

Advertising and preparation: Next, a series of sale recruitment advertisements need to be created for local newspaper. The receptionist of company needs to be briefed on what to do when calls come in. The adverts need to be big enough to attract attention and have enough mystery in them so that people actually call in to find out what its all about.

The receptionist should understand that all she is doing with calls from advertisements is routing them to person doing this project. She does not answer questions about what company is and what is being offered. She simply arranges for them to come in for an interview at a scheduled time or collects their phone numbers so that they can be called back and scheduled to come in, by someone else.

The interview: When applicants for sales position come in, their interview is very specific and to point. There are certain very specific criteria that are being looked for in a good sales person. The two main one are, (a) can they persist along a given course? (b) Are they are interested in people?

That is an easy statement to make, to be sure. However, to find such people requires very exact interview procedures. The first step is testing. We use a series of 3 tests. One of these provide a detailed look into 10 most important job related traits such as Stability, Goal attainment, Composure, Certainty, Activity level, Aggressiveness, Responsibility level, Correct estimation, Appreciativeness and Communication level.

The other 2 tests measure an applicant’s ability to solve problems and how well they are able to following instructions – a vital test for anyone operating machinery where understanding and following instructions are very important!