1.They don’t ask for sale. 2.They talk customer out of sale.

You may scoff and think these don’t happen. After all, how can salesperson or business owner NOT ask for sale or talk customer out it? Let’s first address issue of asking for sale.

My experience has taught me that majority of salespeople fail to ask for sale. Instead, they wait for customer to say, “I’ll take it.” However, in many cases, customer doesn’t say this. She may be thinking that machine will enhance her operation and, hopefully, drive more revenue to bottom line. She may see that you offer something your competitors do not. She may also want to act quickly and have equipment delivered and installed in next few days. But she may not tell you that.

This is your responsibility! If you’ve worked through sales process and done everything properly up to that point then you’ve earned right to ask for sale. Remember, prospect expects you to ask for sale. You ask you get. The more you ask, more you get. If you leave prospect’s business without asking for sale you run risk that a more assertive competitor will present their equipment and service, ask for, and get sale! Then your work, effort and energy have been for nothing. I’m not suggesting you will close every sale by asking but I will guarantee that you will generate more business by consistently asking people for their business.

In last few months I have had at least three situations where I’ve been ready to buy a product or service but salesperson failed to ask me. One of these involved membership in a networking group and during meeting I announced I was ready to join if someone wanted to take my money. To my surprise, no one approached and signed me up. It’s little wonder this group is not experiencing growth in its membership.

**************************************** 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"