What’s the right strategy for making CRM and Sales Pipeline Management work for your small business? If that’s a question challenging you take heart. You are not alone. Implementing enterprise software is always difficult and most people find CRM and Sales Pipeline Management the most challenging. That’s why there are so many horror stories about failed projects. But they needn’t. There’s a simple and logical strategy they can adopt to make sure of the results they want, without the problems they worry about.

In an ideal world software would exactly mirror the way we work. It would just slot in. There would be no confusion, or frustration, or exasperation. No cursing and tearing out of hair. But software can’t be like that. We’re all smart intelligent people knowing how to make the best of what we have. We can bob and weave and move and shake. But software can’t. It’s dumb. It’s simply a set of instructions to tell the cpu what to do. If the guy who wrote it didn’t accommodate our intelligence, and how could he?, the software will always disappoint.

As business owners, or even sales professionals, our challenge is using whichever software we can get our hands on to do a job for us. CRM and Sales Pipeline Management, in that regard, is no different to all the other software we use. We just need to find ways to work with it.

For more years than we care to remember, we’ve been doing precisely that, for ourselves, and for other people. So we have a load of mistakes in our locker. The good news is those mistakes help us help you to avoid similar road blocks. Here’s our strategy for moving from Email and document files and spreadsheets and Sticky Notes to one view of your opportunities and how to make the most of them.

Forget everything you’ve ever been told about software.

Unfortunately our understanding of business process and software comes from the bad old days when implementation had to be a big bang process. Everything had to move from one system to the other overnight. Problems had to be sorted before the move, because they couldn’t get fixed later. That’s not true anymore. Start small and grow your database as you decide how to fit your business.

Start With Your Prospect List

For the moment leave your contacts in your email. There’s no short term payback to the investment in transitioning all your contact data over. The payback comes from improved visibility of your sales pipeline and planning and scheduling your strategy for winning. Start with your list of prospects, next to close is first, and plan and schedule some actions. Publish your actions to your calendar and schedule an agenda email for first thing each morning.

Get Paranoid About Reviews

Reviewing what was supposed to happen, and progress toward your goal, is the fundamental management activity. This way you’ll learn where your strategy and process need improving. You’ll also spot deals slipping out of control, and get the chance to bring them back on track. Reviews are the very essence of Sales Team Performance Management.

Capture Everything

It’s always easier to discard irrelevant information than decide how to use it. But that information contains pure gold – without the context as yet. Capture everything. Build up your database. You never know when a competitive advantage will come from something in the past. Your CRM Address Book will grow into a gold mine of information.

You can avoid the CRM mistake everybody makes and here I’ll explain how you can do it. Ok, maybe the “everybody” is an exaggeration . Obviously I don’t know everybody who’s tried to implement CRM, so let me clarify by saying this is the mistake made by everybody I do know has tried – and that’s quite a few.

People implementing CRM start off thinking its about customers, and more precisely customer data. The enlightened might even think its about process, and process and data related to customers. And the software world has taught them implementing software needs to be all or nothing. They have to get all their customer data, and all their processes into the database before they can get value from it. And that starts with the Address Book. And then the processes, and then the sales guys, and then the sales pipeline.

This is an awesomely big challenge, and one doomed to fail. Nobody keeps all their customer data in the shape required by CRM. Very few have figured out their customer (and sales) management processes. Meanwhile they all know flexibility is fundamental to their success. Every customer needs something different. Every sale needs a different process. Every sales guy has her own style.

Implementing a ground up CRM is like herding chickens. Ultimately there isn’t enough time to figure all this stuff out, let alone collate and input the data. “Nice idea, but we have a business to run and what we have now sort of works. Forget CRM. Let’s focus on winning those deals”.

And anyway, our business is changing all the time. What keeps us in business is our adaptability – the ways we can change what we do, on the fly, to make it work for customers. Why spend all that sales and customer service time on a system which isn’t going to work next month, let alone next year?

And so our CRM efforts sort of fade away. “Nice idea but doesn’t work in the real world. What about that deal closing tomorrow? And what about that customer bitching about our service on Twitter? Let’s get on with business, and worry about the nice to haves tomorrow”.

If you’re stuck on this problem. If I’ve captured your attention. If you want to know how to make this stuff work?

Read on, because here is the answer to your problem.

The secret to any successful software implementation is maximum value derived for minimum effort invested. Its the same old positive feedback loop we see influencing every other type of behaviour. The more we get out the more we’re likely to put in.

CRM is about improving your business! And the way you improve your business isn’t about data, or process (yet at least). It’s about that deal which is closing tomorrow. And then the one after that, followed by the one after that.

Improving your business is about winning more of the available opportunities whilst simultaneously minimising cost of sale, and especially lost deals, and that’s why you want CRM, right?

Successful CRM is about deals – sales pipeline, cash generation, customer service. To assure your team’s commitment to the CRM begin simply, with just the details of the deals in the pipeline, and grow the customer data with each new deal. Focus on sales opportunities, not data. Get planning those sales campaigns, not integrating Address Books. Get Plan Act Review, not activity reporting. Get sharing and collaboration, not privacy and competition.

At every step you’ll be building value greater than the cost of achieving it.

I’m not sure about other CRM apps but with Front Office Box getting started with a simple sales pipeline takes just a few minutes. Check out our Jump Start Your Sales Pipeline video to see how easy it is then watch the other videos to see how capable the whole package is.

Image by Scarygami via Flickr

So it turns out Front Office Box CRM and Sales Pipeline Management works great on my new Android phone..

For the last 3 weeks I’ve gradually been getting used to the Android phone. After 4 years with an iPhone this is more difficult than I expected

I’ve been really impressed by the hardware which knocks spots off the iPhones I’ve had before (to be fair that doesn’t include the iPhone 4 so the comment doesn’t apply to the latest model from Apple).

And I finally got my entertainment sorted out – more on that elsewhere.

And all the Google synching across multiple accounts works a dream.

Blogging directly from the Nexus S is a pleasure with Posterous and Evernote keeps my archives straight with the Mac.

I’m writing this with the mobile Google Docs which works infinitely better than it did on the 3G. That’s probably got something to do with the Android browser, which is stunningly good.

Which brings me to our own software Front Office Box.

it used to sort of be OK on the iPhone but to be honest too small and slow to use properly.

Thats not the case with the bigger and better screen on the Nexus S. Still smaller than I’d like for my business management app, but perfectly usable.

Its the Android browser which really makes the difference. I can have a super fast view of my business permanently open in a window without impacting all the other stuff the phone does for me

Now I’m starting to understand the argument about local versus cloud based apps. iPhone is really good at the local apps. So is Android. But Android is really good working with cloud based apps as well.

This makes me a happy bunny.

I can now have my entire business records in my pocket with 24X7 access anywhere there’s a phone connection. And my software will do a better job for more people, without me spending money developing it

This is all because of Google’s determination to make the web work for everybody.

I can’t wait to get my hands on that Motorola Zoom.

Have you heard of the Easy CRM conspiracy? It must be true. I read it on the Internet. Everywhere we look it’s there – Easy CRM. It must be true.

Of course it’s all bollocks. I mean the Easy bit is all bollocks. That’s why its a conspiracy.

There’s somebody keeps posting on Twitter – Easy to Set Up CRM – Secure online contacts, calendar, tasks, docs. She just has to be an affiliate to keep punting the same stuff. Or maybe she’s a concubine – to the marketing department. Either way she doesn’t have the faintest idea what she’s talking about.

To be fair, this isn’t the only one. There are lots of people pushing the same story on the Internet. Maybe they’re all concubines of the same marketing department? Maybe they’re all part of the same conspiracy, aiming to handicap your business with software which won’t do a job for you.

The clue’s in the words – easy to set up, contacts, calendar, tasks. That’s what they all say. It must be right, right?

Wrong.

Before you get fooled into disillusion and wasted time let me explain.

If what you want is contacts, calendar, tasks, with integrated email look no further than Gmail. It does all those things. It’s on your phone, for mobile. It’s free and it works.

Gmail is great, but it isn’t CRM.

CRM is about Customer Relationship Management. Lets break that down.

Customer

It’s about knowing all the dimensions of your customer – multiple people, in companies (for B2B) with multiple addresses, phone numbers, Twitter accounts, their networks. A proper CRM system keeps all those records in Rubiks Cube of related data. No matter which way you turn it, all of the bits are still there, connected.

Relationship

Is not just about the company and the people. Its about everything you know about them, including what’s supposed to happen, when and who’s supposed to do it. It’s about plans, actions, schedules, assignments, completed and outstanding

Management

Is about management – doing stuff that’s good for both the customer and your business. That takes a management process – plan, act, review. Not just lists of tasks. And a management process needs a system for recording information, and easily finding it when you need it.

Proper CRM is one single database, with interelated data – organisations,people, information, plans, schedules, actions, documents, correspondence – and some smart tools, for filing, finding, reminding.

Proper CRM isn’t Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, all in separate files with the integration held in your head.

Unfortunately the conspiracy isn’t always labeled as CRM. Sometimes it masquerades under different labels.

One of these made me laugh out loud today.

These guys do come out with never ending stream of nonsense but Turn Your Inbox into a Robust Reminder System sets a new standard for promotion of meaningless tripe.

This bright idea is really cool. When you receive an email you don’t want to handle right now, you can forward it to a reminder service which will send it back to you later.

It takes the biscuit for daft ideas from people trying to base a business on band aiding their own incompetence, promoted by somebody who wouldn’t know productivity if it bit him in the ass. Haven’t they heard the easy crm conspiracy? Calendar and Tasks does this in a heartbeat, and allows some type of planning, albeit sub-optimal.

Then again it might be another part of the same conspiracy – attracting a lot of traffic, which I guess is the main point isn’t it.

Typical CRM software doesn’t work, for customer management or customer service. We’ve written extensively on how Business Process Reengineering and CRM projects have disenfranchised customers. At times its felt like yelling at the sea, but now there’s a new dimension to our thoughts about management best practice built into systems.

Gartner agrees with us, or at least one consultant does.

Michael Maoz writes You failed at Customer Service, so now try Social Processes explaining how all the investment in BPR and CRM over the last 10 years has failed to move the needle on the customer satisfaction dial.

Over the past ten years the level of customer satisfaction has edged up only slightly – for most industries in the vicinity of 3-5 percent. Considering that over US $ 75 billion was spent on CRM-related business applications in that time period, and triple that sum on process improvement, and hundreds of books written, you might expect better.

A terrible version of Taylorism has gripped the service industry and customer service organizations, particularly in the United States. Frederick Taylor was the man who first applied science to the analysis of business workflows back in the 1880’s. It is this dissection of every item of work into a measurable unit that is, in large part, accountable for the abysmal service delivered in many industries. The relentless focus on efficiencies wrings out any natural inclination of the customer service rep to display their natural drive, passion, and desire to commit to the customer. It also leads to managers who build processes with as little “fluff” as possible. “Fluff” includes wasting time talking to or listening to the customer, noting their issues, or taking the initiative to think outside of the box.

Happy Days. This is exactly the argument we put forward just a couple of weeks ago in CRM Isn’t About Customers and builds on on number of CRM related posts over time, including CRM Systems Fail to Deliver – More Evidence. In a slightly broader context of customer service we addressed the failures with our own ideas on how to do this job properly in The Difference Between Contact Management and CRM and Integrated Operations Management.

In any size of business, but especially in the small business owners and managers need to enable their sales and customer service people to do a better job for clients, not constrain what they do with bean counter controls.

Customer Service isn’t a sequential process like accounting and should never be shoe horned into the same type of box.

The term CRM, the strategy of customer relationship management and the software system to support it, all leapt into business thinking at the start of the 21st. century. It was a misnomer then, and has been ever since.

But it has been a very effective way of persuading big corporations to buy more software. By the beginning of 2000 the business world had bought it’s way out of the Millenium Bug problem. Corporations had re-engineered their processes and organisations. They’d spent vast sums on software, and even more on consultants. It was time to get some ROI.

But corporations shutting down their spending didn’t suit those external consultants. They needed a new idea to keep the client’s spending money. And that idea was Customer Relationship Management.

Having re-engineered the customer out of client’s thinking with process redesign, they needed a way to stop him feeling the pain of poor service. The answer the consultants came up with was CRM – a software system which recorded customer details so service agents could sound as if they knew something about him.

And then they outsourced the whole thing. Instead of service reps they could talk to, customers now had call centres they couldn’t. In India most of them. That was their CRM. It was about reducing service levels to customers, and associated costs.

Around the same time, other consultants were punting Sales Force Automation – a new way of monitoring and controlling what those pesky sales guys were doing. SFA was about prospects, and forecasts and activity rates, and reports bean counters could use to disenfranchise sales organisations. It wasn’t about making sales teams more effective. SFA was about bean counters taking over businesses, like lunatics controlling the asylum.

Along came some software businesses. They dumbed down the CRM and SFA concepts into cheap software and marketed the hell out it. For a while the new low cost CRM software seemed to be the answer to every business’ prayers, combining control over sales with excellent customer service. Who wouldn’t want that? At this point CRM became a very effective way to sell small companies software, but didn’t do anything for their customer relationship management.

It turned out nobody wanted it, because the software was crap – doing the wrong things for the wrong customers, the wrong way. Even the new CRM wasn’t about customer relationship management. It was about advertising, and selling software.

The people who really needed it built their own systems, with spreadsheets. And that’s pretty much where we are today.

Related articles

• SAP’s Strategy For The CRM Battle (forbes.com)
• CRM software sales on the rise as recession eases (v3.co.uk)
• SugarCRM woos developers, thinks social (v3.co.uk)

Why doesn’t CRM work? Or more precisely why don’t businesses wholeheartedly adopt CRM as a tool for managing front office activities.

This question has vexed me for longer than I care to think, and that’s pretty much as long as we’ve been offering Front Office Box. Its an undeniable fact. You can take a horse to water, but not make it drink. We can get people to register, but not persuade them to adopt. This isn’t a software issue. Ours is really rather good, and certainly no worse than any other. Better than most. I’m sure everybody else has the same problem.

Over the last couple of days a realisation has dawned on me. Now I’ve figured it out. (Having said that, the same is true of my golf swing, but those ideas never lasted.) Lets see if you agree with my latest revelation?

The problem with CRM is it’s Rain on my Parade.

Being a hardworking aspirational sort of guy I’m always focused on the upside. We really can’t be in sales if we’re not, can we?

CRM, anybody’s, makes me cast in stone the deals I’m going to do. It makes me plan what’s supposed to happen and when. It records conversations, and notes, and plans which confront me every time I login. CRM tells me when my customer isn’t going along. That’s when I decide to walk away, shutting the deal down and looking for the next one.

The upsides are plenty. The process saves me time wasted on deals which aren’t going to happen. It helps me plan and deliver more deals I can win. It records history which all adds to my social capital. My address book becomes a gold mine of business information about who, where, what and when.

But mostly CRM tells me I’ve been wrong, and I have to start again. And that isn’t fun, for anybody.

As sales guys, and business owners, we have a natural aversion to facing facts. We’re always hoping for the upside. That’s what keeps us going.

Here’s the paradox. The very tool we need to help us focus efforts on what’s going to work also tells us what isn’t, and that’s counter cultural. So we don’t use it. We pretend until something more interesting comes along.

That’s a pragmatic answer to the undeniable conclusion.

Any role is sales or revenue generation is a triumph of hope over expectation. That’s why people who’ll accept the responsibility are worth their weight in gold.

And CRM forces expectation over hope. As a sales manager I totally approve of that. As a sales guy I think I prefer hope, and quiet, unseen retreat from my position when that hope turns into disappointment. The last thing I want is reminding of all the times I was wrong, because emotionally I need to think I’m right.

How about you? Does this explanation make sense? What stops you from making the most of CRM?

Using Outlook and a spreadsheet for CRM is like swimming with a rock on your back. The future is bleak, unless you’re doing it for the wrong reasons in the wrong way, in which case you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

Then again if you’re the sort of guy who enjoys making life difficult with nothing working the way it should I guess you and Microsoft deserve each other and you’re in the wrong place now.

If, on the other hand, you want a new way of managing sales, service and internal projects you’ve come to the right place. This blog is all about cutting out the garbage and focusing on what makes a difference – helping you get more done on time with as little effort and confusion as possible.

You’ll understand success isn’t about being clever with spreadsheets. It isn’t about manipulating software to do something that was never intended for. Success is about adding value, and the way you add value is create more with less effort. And that takes planning – figuring out how to something better, scheduling and executing actions, then reviewing results and finding an even better way of doing it.

And the reason using Outlook and spreadsheets for CRM is like swimming with a rock on your back is the Plan, Act, Review function isn’t there, in the dimensions you need it.

OK I’ll accept you can make an effort with notes and email folders and memory, but that approach adds complexity and overhead when you really need to reduce those handicaps. They are the rocks on your back, making staying afloat and moving forward much more difficult than need be.

You can easily fix the problem, once you’ve understood it. Try planning whatever you want to achieve in Milestones (not Actions). Each Milestone is a review point. Is this thing going where you want it to, when you want it to.

Then decide on Actions which will reach those Milestones, and Schedule them, assigning each to a Person. If they don’t happen as planned change the Person, or the Milestone, or the Plan. Each Action is a review point.

Be prepared to can the deal or project. If it isn’t going to happen, recognising the reality early helps you focus on other stuff which will, rather than waste time on stuff that won’t.

The biggest single problem for any small business guy, or sales professional, is knowing when to stop throwing good money after bad. And that’s the problem you can solve with a strong, maybe unpalatable, dose of realism and Plan, Act, Review.

Now all you need is some software to help manage the process and information while your brain gets on with the new ideas.

Simple CRM is an oxymoron – a contradiction in terms in the same phrase. Anybody needing Simple CRM should be protected from the snake oil being promoted by the morons pitching it. They don’t have what it takes to make the concept work.

CRM is a business process, not an instant answer to disappointing sales performance. CRM without a clear picture of just how the business works to deliver maximum results with minimum effort is like self dating – sub-optimal and not really scratching the itch.

A clear picture of how the business can work, supported by a software tool which keeps all the ducks in a line isn’t something anybody can figure out SIMPLY. It takes time, and focus and continuous improvement.

So beware of the merchants pitching Simple CRM. They’re just making life simple for themselves, and more complex for you in the process. Just like the rest of the world they’re trying to get their hands in your pocket while you’re looking somewhere else.

Every business is different- no two are the same – and their interpretation of the CRM concept is unique.

Businesses don’t need Simple CRM.

They need Capable CRM – software which can work the way their business does.

Ultimately the software doesn’t run the business – it just makes life a little easier because all the customer and plan information is in the right place, at the right time, when the guys making stuff happen for customers need it.

Unfortunately there’s no way of making this simple for you. The software has nothing to do with that. It can just make it harder, or easier, for you to organise your business processes your way.

Quite how your CRM supports your business is down to you. Whether the software is CAPABLE of going where you need it to go is Down to Us.

And for those people who don’t understand the challenge of organising customer and process information to minimise the cost and complexity of doing business we suggest you find another career. Because this one isn’t going to work out the way you want.

Google Wave Matures, or does it?

Has Google Wave come of age as a business tool? Does it have a role in Customer Service and CRM applications. Will it be a natural component in any company IT architecture? We’ve been trying it out again to find out the answers to these questions.

Google has just announced the general availability of Wave accounts. You can get one here and it’s also announced Wave can now be installed as part of the Google Apps suite.

So now everybody can enjoy the new technology – even Apps accounts who are typically at the back of the queue when it comes to Google innovations. But will it be any good in Customer Service and CRM type jobs

Since last September Google Wave has been in a controlled roll out with Google using the same invitations method which was so successful with Gmail. We received our first invitation in October and dived in full of anticipation.

The lengthy build up, over more than 6 months before release, created a lot of excitement about Wave. It promised to be a combination of Email, Instant Messenger, Docs and Content Sharing for workgroups and even publishing. Fashionistas clamoured for invitations. Wave was going to change the way we work, totally.

Our First Attempts

We set up a number of accounts, for different businesses, and invited colleagues to join in some real time collaboration. Despite being Microsoft Office brainwashed they joined in, but not for long. Wave was a disaster when it came to busy people finding ways to lighten their load. They couldn’t figure out how to use the editor, the gadgets didn’t work, and worse – we had to email participants telling them to check their waves for updates. They didn’t want to use it, under any circumstances. I guess that isn’t going to change anytime soon.

A couple of months ago Google introduced email notifications solving one of these problems, but by this time all the people we new with Wave accounts had given up on it. We (I) could only Wave to Myself.

Customer Service and CRM

We’d had all sorts of ideas on how we could use Wave as a business app – some CRM aspects, on-line, real time Customer Service and publishing to name a few in our Front Office Box business. In fact we still do, so today we had another go – with an on-line training tutorial. The big advantages being

• Public Access
• Multi Media – combinations of text, images and video
• Interactive use for conversations

How did we get on?

As usual with Google software the answer was a OK-ish.

The text editor is still clunky. We used an html gadget to add a YouTube video which works well – once we’d found the gadget and figured out a clumsy UI. We opened it to the public with the easypublic@appspot.com address. But we couldn’t figure out how to tell people where to find it.

We’ve just solved that problem.

Search on Wave “with:public title:Front Office Box Getting Started” and you’ll find the pilot Wave.

I’m sure we will be able to use it for Customer Service and CRM type conversations. But will we ever get anybody to look at it? That’s an entirely different question.

I’ll probably just have to keep Waving with myself.