If Your Company Is So Unique, Why Is Your Sales Force Automation Software Still "One Size Fits All?"

By Mark Friedman
Cerius Consulting Group

We often work with companies who tell us their company is very unique and in many cases they are. We can identify unique sales propositions, unique service delivery, unique products, etc. Their market is unique and their sales processes are unique. And yet, the company is attempting to employ their Sales Force Automation (SFA)/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution literally right "out-of-the box." And they wonder why their sales reps aren't using it as aggressively as they would have expected and they are not realizing the ROI they anticipated when they purchased the software. Even software developed for a specific industry, while doing a better job of incorporating some of this customization, does not adequately address a company's unique requirements.

What's wrong with this picture?

There are several good reasons to customize your company's SFA/CRM solution:

1. If the company is to take advantage of the uniqueness of their offerings or process, they need to collect information and manage their software in a way that will allow them to take advantage of this position. Out of the box SFA software is set up to cover many generic situations and does NOT address the unique nature of a company's data collection or business process requirements.

For instance, we work with clients that now collect information in their Account Profile on some pretty non-standard areas:

• Aerial Photography Resolution requirements
• Method of fueling vehicles in the company's fleet
• The percentage of agents who use their transaction coordinator
• The type of environmental testing accomplished by Project Managers
• The type of EMI Filters used; film or electrolytic
• # of linear feet of media used per month

The better a company can identify the characteristics of a customer or prospect, the better job they can do in a couple of key business processes. And yet, no general SFA/CRM package I have reviewed has ever had set up one of these as a standard, out-of-the box field of information. There are several compelling reasons to collect this unique information.

• The Marketing department can segment their customer and prospect data bases more effectively and deliver customized messages to each group. This has a direct, positive impact on increased sales results and sales productivity.

• Find more companies who fit their profile and market aggressively to them. This will increases response to the company's sales and marketing programs and drives sales and profits.

• By identifying these unique characteristics, the company's Marketing department can qualify suspects and inquiries more effectively for the sales group.

Often, generic data base companies, such as Dun & Bradstreet and InfoUSA do not collect this information and in many cases, neither do specialized data bases. This information is best collected by surveying existing customers or during the sales qualification process as marketing/sales talks to their prospects. In either case, it is critical that companies create a field of data in their SFA for this information and enter it in a consistent manner.

2. In our surveys of companys' Sales Lead Management practices, one problem many companies identified was their dissatisfaction with their SFA software usage. A common complaint is that the sales organization hasn't used the software the way they were trained to use it. In essence, the adoption rate is far less than management expected. One of the driving forces behind this problem is that the software is not customized to the way they do business.

This customization takes several forms: the information that is collected, the sales process used and the reporting requirements.

Information that is collected

As we discussed previously, this information needs to be collected in order to segment the customer and prospect data and to allow for better qualifying of the sales inquiries received by the company. The other part of the customization that is important is the use of commonly understood terms within the company and industry. If a sales rep sees the information in terms they intuitively understand and knows how to work with, they will have a more positive experience with the software and they will use it more aggressively.

Sales Process

Every company we have worked with has a slightly (and in some cases, very) different approach to how they sell to their market, yet this difference is seldom incorporated into their SFA software. SFA drop down menus for collecting sales status information is extremely generic and does not reflect these differences. This serious disconnect causes confusion for the sales reps and contributes to non-adoption of the software.

One of the important advantages of using SFA products is that it helps companies migrate away from using Excel for their sales pipeline/forecasting tool. In order to make these systems work, a company must insist that the account status information being collected from sales be identical to the sales stages the company uses to manage their sales process AND are the steps being used to create the sales reporting. This way, sales can use one tool (SFA) to generate their sale reports AND it is easier and faster to use for the sales rep.

Reporting

A company must take the time to define the reports they need to manage their sales and marketing process. These reports must then be created in the SFA tool and the company must make it easy and intuitive for the sales rep to use. The absolute minimum amount of information to create these reports must be insisted upon; everything else is a bonus if they can collect it. Making the reporting process too cumbersome for the sales rep is an absolute prescription for non-adoption and ultimately will cause the program to be a failure.

Conclusion

Current mainstream SFA tools, such as ACT, Goldmine and Salesforce.com represent excellent foundations for most companies. They are, however, very generic in their approach so they can be attractive to the most number of companies in the marketplace. Many companies have purchased these types of products, but not realized the sales increases and overall ROI they had anticipated, however. One of the reasons is that they have not taken the time to customize them to reflect the company's unique information, process and reporting requirements

Customizing a company's SFA software is an excellent way to make sure the information collected during the marketing and sales process contributes to the company's success. It leads to faster and better adoption rates by the people who are expected to provide the majority of the information, the sales rep. Ultimately, it helps contribute to the success of the company's SFA initiative.
 

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