CRM for the Common Man
Excerpted with permission from "CRM for the Common Man," authored by Russ Lombardo. Copyright 2007. Published by Peak Sales Consulting, 2003. ISBN 0972826300. For more information about this book and similar titles, please visit Peak Sales Consulting.
Chapter 10: Implementing a CRM Strategy
A CRM strategy is a major undertaking that needs
to be dealt with and planned properly. What will it
take to successfully implement your CRM strategy?
First, you must build a team. The members of this team should
include a representative of every department who will use, or
may use, the system either initially or ultimately. You should
include members from sales, marketing, customer support,
customer service, management, IT, finance, and sometimes
others. A key member of the team should be an external, or
outsourced, individual who is experienced in planning and
implementing CRM solutions. Second, you need to market
the project internally. Give it as much exposure and hype as
possible in order for the entire organization to understand the
project so they accept it as a positive effort that will benefit
the company and its customers.
Make sure your CRM strategy has a business case focus. In
other words, ensure there is a clear understanding that this
project has a direct contribution to the company's bottom line,
there is a return on investment that is definable and understood,
and this is not just a project for technology's sake. One of the
most important aspects of successfully implementing a CRM
solution is to plan for a phased rollout. Sales people are busy
selling. If you give them too much to learn and then ask them
to use it too quickly, they simply won't use it. So you must feed
them small, manageable pieces at a time. The initial rollout
should include some core functionality -- perhaps just basic
contact management and scheduling. The second phase
can introduce additional functionality, such as opportunity
management and forecasting. The next phase could include
integrating email, custom letters, and reporting, and so on. Doing
a CRM project in small phases is infinitely more successful
than attempting to implement the entire project at one time.
Training is critical to the success of your CRM strategy.
It's unadvisable to just throw a sophisticated product at an
individual and expect them to start using it productively and
successfully without some formal training, at the same time
that they're trying to do their regular job. Don't just provide
training either, instead you should allow for the individuals to
be out-of-pocket and non-productive for the brief time that's
required to learn the new system. It is also useful to allow
sufficient time for a learning curve so the user can ramp up
their skills over time. For instance, once they go through
classroom training, they'll still need time to acclimate themselves
to the new system and use it in their day-to-day operations.
Finally, the path to success must include a benchmarking
phase. You'll need to establish milestones to measure against
and audit your results. Without measuring how you're doing,
you'll never know if you have succeeded. Of course, you first
have to know where you want to be, so make sure you establish
that before beginning your implementation. Once again, this
is where your puzzle becomes a necessity. Let's discuss each
of these points in more detail.
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