In the past two weeks, I came across two perspectives on CRM that I’ve been thinking about a great deal. Do either of these scenarios sound familiar?
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My father-in-law is a highly regarded, long time sales professional and master of his craft. He has “retired” now, but one of his favorite hobbies is leading productive, high-end sales training courses. During one of our recent talks he told me, “When I talk to the sales executives of any major company and the conversation turns to CRM, boy, no one is ever happy. In fact, they usually hate it.”
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A prospective client of mine is a sharp, energetic IT director. Last week he gave me a walkthrough of a CRM On Demand instance he configured himself. As he walked me through a wide range of very colorful dashboards, charts and graphs, I was impressed with his skills in business intelligence and reporting. There was just one problem, “No matter what I do to this system, adoption is still a major issue. Why won’t they use it?”
Maybe it’s just me, but in my experience, these two scenarios – ironically from two people who have never met each other before – embody two sides of a coin. Sales people (even sales managers) are rarely satisfied with their CRM system. IT people are frequently frustrated that no one uses the systems they deliver. The result is reduced adoption and low morale.
