The reason I’ve dedicated the last nine posts on Sales Force Automation is that it’s a key bridge between marketing and sales.  Having a well organized and smooth running SFA or CRM process helps both marketing and sales, and improves the communications between the disciplines.  But nowhere in these posts have I mentioned “The Data”. 

People have asked me, “What about the data?  Don’t I need to assure accurate or quality data in the system?”

If you are responsible for the oversight, administration or operations of a SFA or CRM, repeat after me: “It’s not about the data.”  Repeat, “It’s not about the data.”  Your data will never be perfect.  It will always be out of date.  When your boss asks, you will never be able to run a query on, “All the left handed prospects with birthdays between 1980 and 1990,” because you know you only have those prospect’s children’s names in your data base, and not the prospect’s actual birthdays.  Too many people obsess about the quality of their data as the first thing to fix.  This is like worrying about the quality of the html code for your website.

Of course the data is important.  This doesn’t mean you don’t clean, de-dup and add data.  But your data doesn’t mean anything unless the system is easy to use, or your people are trained or you have a consistent sales process.  When you address some of the issues outlined in the last nine posts, you will find that your data quality will miraculously improve.  Sales people will start using the system and entering critical information.  For example, you will find that you don’t need to de-dup because users are following your rules for account name generation.  Reports will become more accurate as management sees the value and begins to require compliance of your lone rangers who resist its use. In the end, it’s not about the data, it’s about the overall process for using and managing your data.

The problem is that management often wants perfection immediately.  When faced with managment questions, your response should be, “What are you trying to accomplish with this information?  What are your goals?”  There is always a way to get information that can answer the immediate question. But your job is to get them to focus on the bigger picture.  Guide your management through the diagnostic questions and use their energy or frustration to help build the overall process.

Final Postscript for senior management:  If you are saying your data is crap, you may not be helping and may actually be hurting your chances at establishing a process that can help you sell more stuff.  Crappy data is a symptom.  You don’t need to treat the symptom, your need to treat the causes.

Who owns the system?  Oversight, Ownership, Administration and Change Management

This could easily be the first question.  It’s essential to know the differences between the above. If different players don’t know their roles or responsibilities, then nothing gets accomplished.  In many organizations, failure becomes a matter of not clearly assigning roles.

As senior management, your job is oversight.  You are the customer for the system.  Management should get paid to think of the consequences of problems, decide priorities and then get others to solve those problems.  It is not your job to solve the problem itself.

In many organizations, ownership for the SFA system is often vague or shared.  It can be owned by IT, (which is the wrong place for it), or by sales (sales has other battles to fight), or by operations, most often sales operations reporting up to sales.  When ownership is unclear, nothing gets done.  But we need to know:

a.  Who owns what?
b.  Do they know it?
c.   Have they accepted it?
d.  Do they have the skills?
e.   Can they do it?

Ownership means that person is responsible for the success of the system.  Success is defined by the metrics you put in place.  It doesn’t mean this person does all the dirty work, but rather they lead a team, assign tasks, measure results and report progress and needs to management.

Administration is the technical support trained in the SFA and having database expertise.  Training and support of this person is essential.

Lastly, having reached a point where your SFA is running and you’ve reached your primary goals, it’s essential to put in place a Change Management System for continued improvements (See Diagnostic Question #6).

When you take a systemic approach to diagnosing and improving your SFA or CRM system, you will find the improvements have a multiplying effect on each other.  Following this diagnostic process will allow you to focus on the business and not the system.

Good luck and thanks to all those who have helped me through this process.  If you’ve stuck with me through this series, here is a quick chart to help guide you.

My first experience with Sales Force Automation was when a VP of Sales asked me to make it work for his people.  As with most important challenges, he indicated I had very little time to make this one happen.  I knew this demand would be an obstacle to diagnosing the real problem so I decided to buy myself some time.  I went to his top three sales people and asked, “If you could change just one thing about the SFA system, what would it be?”  Then I changed those three things.  It didn’t matter that they might not have been the correct things to change.  But a question I’ve learned when it comes to systems is….

Is the system easy enough to use?

You can have a great sales process that’s modeled accurately with usage policies, training and compliance, but if the system is hard to use, then it isn’t going to be used.  Ask yourself:

1. Is the SFA system easy to use?
2. What is it not doing that it needs to?
3. What three things could you change about the system that would make your sales people happy?
4. Is it providing value to the users as well as management?

Following the success of the first three changes, I put in a change management process (that was easy to use and embedded in the SFA) that resulted in over 200 suggestions from sales and 150 changes within the first six months.   They started to like the taste of blueberries. 

Are your people trained in using your SFA system?

One major reason for lack of usage is lack of training, though training has to be applied at the right times.  Training is best when an employee first joins the company, not when some other issue has prevented the acceptance of the SFA  and become an excuse for why it isn’t being used according to your company policy.

1. Is there a training program?
2. Is it thorough (documented, on-line, classroom, time allowed for it) or an after-thought?
3. Is each discipline trained on the process and the SFA?  Note: Training is different for different disciplines.
4. Is there adequate support in place for employees to follow up on their training?

There are lots of aspects to effective training, and it’s often worthwhile to involve a professional trainer in SFA implementation.  Training for sales effectiveness is a lot like training for sports; there is a certain muscle memory that comes into play.  So training can’t be just an event, it has to be a sustained process.