12 Principles of World-Class CRM

Let’s assume for a second you have 100% adoption of your CRM system.  What does that look like?  How would you define 100% adoption?

Most companies I speak with would be happy with:

a)     Every opportunity currently being pursued has a forecasted value

b)     Recent and frequent updates at various stages of the sales process

c)     Vast intelligence extracted from every customer about every organization

If this is how you define adoption, congratulations, you’ve just built a system to reinforce Relationship Builder behavior.  Perhaps we should change the name of CRM to CRB – Customer Relationship Builders?

Now back to reality.  How many of us have 100% adoption?  Hardly any – and that’s likely because your best reps recognize that your system lacks relevance with how to sell in today’s sales environment.

They understand that your CRM is nothing but a reflection of your management system.  And if you are managing towards the above, then you are telling reps to only spend time on opportunities with a clearly defined set of needs (helping you insert misleading forecasts), find someone who is willing to talk to you frequently (making my manager happy with lots of updates), and get the customer to coach you on how to sell to their organization.  Problem is, this is the exact opposite behavior of how Challengers, the best reps, sell.

So how can we create and manage a system that is relevant, respected, and most important, reinforces the behaviors we know translate to successful customer outcomes?  Follow these 12 principles of a healthy CRM system:

Organizational credibility around tool deployment is a scarce and crucial asset.  Have a plan (and stick to it).
Every CRM “interaction” for a given sales rep must be a net “get”.  All system success relies on high quality and relevant data.  Be mindful that each field within the system and every change forces a new and different interaction.  Standardize the process for requesting to add fields.
Measure system success beyond adoption. Adoption is one indicator of rep value but is misleading.
Make sure sales managers understand and manage towards your definition of system success.
Pilots build world-class adoption plans, not just tools. Stalls in adoption momentum (“plateaus”) occur naturally; if this happens too soon or is unanticipated it will jeopardize future adoption efforts
Pilots must pull from a representative rep and customer base—The output of a principled pilot will predict when and why adoption stalls.  Lacking the information gathered during such a pilot, many adoption curves flatten prematurely and unexpectedly, harming the tool’s reputation.
Launch with the broader majority in mind, but start with the early adopters. Adoption efforts must be segmented or phased.
Pushing too early for adoption to a given segment before successfully winning over the previous segment is a waste of organizational energy
Proximity matters.  Most reps adopt tools because people like them (not stars) have success.
Be mindful of the impact bad data has on the integrity of good data.  At a certain point, the marginal cost of further adoption will exceed its return.  Frequently monitor data quality beyond that point.
Demonstrate the value of using data within the system.  Arrange for support resources (e.g., product experts) to be proactively offered based on entered data.
Required data should move beyond tracking merely sales actions into gauging customer reactions.  Strive to always help reps better understand customer intent to purchase (SEC Members: See The Challenger Sales Process).

SEC Members, for more information on world-class CRM, visit our CRM Topic Center, which includes resources on CRM issues such as data quality and adoption.