Most executives have taken up the mantra that automated CRM systems are a panacea to solving a company’s service ills. So, why does the sales force hate the CRM solution so bitterly? If you haven’t heard any complaints from your sales force, then you may not be getting honest feedback (or maybe you’re not listening very hard). But you say, “The sales team and customer service both serve the customer – why should sales care about the CRM solution?” The answer is easy. CRM actually impacts the sales team solidly, and you should not only realize its impact but also consider ways to use it to assist your sales team.
The roots of this dissention lie in the cross purposes of service and sales functions. They have different goals and objectives in achieving their primary missions. Service departments exist to provide answers to a customer: to solve his/her problems as expeditiously as possible. Service departments essentially take the drama out of a scenario by providing all the answers to the customer. There is no build up to a decision point.
On the other hand, the sales people rely upon building emotion in the customer to achieve a close. The very drama customer service removes is pivotal to the sales process. People buy on emotion. Yes, there is logic, evaluation, financial analysis, etc. involved. But here is the “but”- the final ultimate decision, the yes, is triggered by emotion. It may just be the emotion of making the right decision, but it is an emotion nevertheless. The study of buying emotions may be covered in another newsletter.
Here’s a typical service vs. sales scenario that illustrates the problem. A customer walks into the service department looking for a part for his 7-year-old Flamasham. The service person looks up the customer/product record based on some identifier in the CRM system. This dumps out the customer history of what s/he bought, when it was purchased, etc. The system notes that customer has not had recent service on the unit and the unit is out of warranty. The CSR (customer service rep) says he would be happy to get the unit repaired or order the part. The customer may get mad upon hearing the out of warranty news, but finally ends up ordering the part at a very high replacement cost. Management has priced the parts high to motivate the customer to trade in his old Flamasham. This is the opening for a sale. But this fact typically escapes customer service folks. He and the customer then have a conversation about exorbitant cost of repairs and that is often where it ends.
Enter the salesman – he would have been delighted to know that M/r/s. Customer, who had been poking around the Flamasham show room just the other day, was in to get his Flamasham repaired. Further, the salesman would have liked have known this information before the repair/part order was initiated. Why? The salesman could have made his presentation – Why repair that old Flamasham when for a few bucks more you can get a new improved Flamasham with a x year warranty, AND have piece of mind for many years to come? Doesn’t that sound good?
So in reality, the salesman is cut out of the loop and the next sale is pushed to some undefined time in the future. He may even do a follow up call to the Customer and invite him down to talk about the new Flamasham that the customer has been drooling over- only to hear, “Well I fixed my old Flamasham so I’m good for another X years.” So how does this make a salesman feel?
A good salesman may recover the sale by saying, “We can give you more for that perfect old Flamasham,” but the customer’s urgency to replace it is really gone. And here is the thing most non-sales people do not understand – a salesman needs to sell, in the same way an athlete needs to exercise. It’s not just the money they hate to lose – they hate to lose an opportunity.
Most CRM systems tend to focus on repairing or servicing the product in the immediate situation, which is ok if the future sales opportunity is not lost. Some may argue that the repair is good thing; in a way, they are right. But what is not a good thing is that the CRM failed to inform the salesperson of an opportunity before it expired.
How do you fix the situation so your sales people accept the CRM system and embrace it? The answer is simple, though perhaps not easy – the system needs to put sales people in touch with the customer. It must allow the sales force to determine the sales potential of an account or individual. Is your CRM system reactive or proactive? Do you “data mine” it for potential sales, or wait for the customer to contact you in a crises situation? Is it passive, just fixing those things that the customer inquires about? Can you smarten up the system so it aids the sales people rather than getting in their way?
Here are some thoughts on where to link into your sales force. When you start mining the data, look for times and events that would cause the customer to return to the market and buy your product. Can you correlate it with other data and make predictions? For instance, auto companies are historically very good at sending detail lists of customers in their to dealers when customers’ warranties are about to expire (they send tons of other data but for this example lets stick with just this item). This list generates leads for the sales people and the corresponding enthusiasm from them, as the system is now working for them. Anything you can do to generate leads, account and customer information from the system for the sales people will get you the sales team’s support. The converse is also true – the more remote, unusable or obtuse the system is, the greater the hostility you will encounter from the sales team.
Another caveat – make the system data easily accessible to the sales force. Many companies keep the data locked in the “service area” or accessible only to the service people. This territorial attitude does the company no good. It is necessary for sales people to have an understanding of the customer’s issues and the successful solutions that satisfied the customer. It is vital to successful sales.
Or perhaps your competitors will provide such data to their sales people and wipe you out in the market? That’s something to think about!
Mr. Vishney has held several senior level positions as Partner in a Consulting firm, CEO, VP Sales and Marketing, Consultant, and CIO. As the founder, chairman, and CEO of the globally recognized software company, AWARD Software Inc., Mr. Vishney was instrumental in offering the leading edge BIOS software in the PC industry, which runs on over 300 million personal computers today. You can contact him at rvishney@vcgconsult.com, or find out more about him, his company, products and services at http://www.vishney.com.
