Why sales won’t use the CRM system – and what to do about it

The evalution centre recently published one of my articles, which can be found at the following location, in a nice PDF format with a smiling photo of yours truely, or you can read the slightly rawer, longer paragraphed, less bullet pointed, unedited version below:


The recent review by Conspectus Magazine revealed only 14% of companies surveyed felt their CRM applications had been very successful; 39% felt there had been some benefits, and 25% saw no benefits. So why the relatively lacklustre returns? I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with the technology. CRM applications have been around since the late eighties and there are plenty of stable, functionally rich, well supported applications to choose from. For many the heart of the issue is the struggle for user adoption. You can have the greatest CRM system in the world but if you can’t get people to use it in a consistent and structured way then it will generate no value. And nowhere does usage seem to be more of an issue than in the sales area. I’ve long lost track of the number of conversations I’ve had with anguished executives bemoaning their non-performing CRM systems that ‘sales just won’t use’.

Before some of you move on because - of course our sales team are using it – I’d like to tell the story of one of the first system audits I ever undertook. The client had engaged us to help identify areas where their system could add more value. We were given the tour of the offices, met a couple of bright system administrators, discussed the money the client had invested in enhancing the system, and how they were now an active reference site for the vendor from whom they had purchased it. Trouble was it quickly became apparent that virtually no-one was actually using it. In the previous month only a handful of a sales-force of nearly a 100 had even accessed the system, and the accumulated data for a system that had been running for a couple of years was negligible. Yes, an extreme example perhaps, but a situation we’ve seen replicated in some form many times over the years.

So why is user adoption such an issue? One reason I believe, is that the approach to training is fundamentally flawed. Standard operating practice seems to be for staff to receive a day’s classroom training and then be left to fend for themselves. Some do indeed take to it straightaway, however most don’t. This practice is frequently exacerbated by a tendency to deliver training in vanilla form, out of context of the individual’s role and related processes. Staff who join after the initial implementation of the system are often even less well catered for, with many organizations seeing a steady dilution of knowledge over time.

The most effective approach to training is a proactive one that doesn’t just rely on a one off training event. Classroom training has its place, though it must be in context to the user’s role and the processes they are expected to perform. Organizations need to look for trouble. The system will tell who is and isn’t using it. This information needs to be used to target a sequence of initiatives, including further classroom training and one on one tuition, until each user is verified as active. This sort of programme may take several months, but needs to be sustained until the habit of using the system is deeply ingrained. Thereafter potential training issues need to be picked up through a regular review process, and resources need to be in place to ensure new employees benefit from the same induction to the system.

Another key reason that salespeople shy away from CRM systems is that there are often no particularly compelling reasons for them to use them. A lot of systems fail the ‘what’s in it for me’ test. They simply don’t provide salespeople with sufficient pay-back for the time they have to invest in updating it. Rather like the marketer researching for a potential new product, the CRM implementer needs to perceive and deliver the features that are going to prompt users to buy in to the system. In essence anything that helps the sales team earn more commission, or makes their lives easier, is likely to be attractive. Anything that doesn’t, isn’t.

A second aspect is that all too often little attention is given to embedding key sales processes within the system. If the only way to provide a sales forecast, to get a discount authorized, to get access to pre-sales resources, to submit an order etc, is through the CRM system, then, no surprises, the system is going to get used. If reporting is all done external to the system and the CRM data isn’t used, and the last time the management team ventured into the application was by accident in 2002, then, make no mistake, the salesperson’s scarce resources are going to be allocated elsewhere.

On this point, the management team has a critical role to play, one of the fundamental differences between failing and successful CRM systems is that in the latter case executives use the system as a key tool to run the business, in the former they don’t. This is such a powerful predictor of ultimate success that if as a manager your involvement in the system is to be no more than signing off the purchase order then, frankly, I’d save your money because the odds are strongly against you seeing a return on your investment.

The third reason salespeople fail to engage with CRM technology is that they are inherently time poor and many systems fail to take account of this. It’s not unusual, for example, to find remotely based salespeople whose only means of access to the CRM system is when they are in the office. It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that when Jane from sales drops by the office for her fortnightly visit, that diligently inputting the details of the previous thirteen days worth of interactions that she still remembers may not be number one on her priority list. The range of remote access options available in the market, including through the web and PDA devices, should make convenient remote access to the system a relatively simple proposition.

The whole set up of the system needs to balance the need to capture information with the need to minimize the time demands on the salesperson. This is the other side to the time to returns equation I mentioned earlier. If we want sales to be active users then the returns need to be higher and the time investment should be kept as low as possible. Several years ago I visited Nissan’s immensely successful factory in Sunderland and was struck by the care and attention given to maximizing productivity. Every tool was precision placed so that a worker on the production line only had a put out a hand to grasp what they needed to perform the next task. It’s a lesson that many CRM systems might benefit from. I still see systems where the addition of a new contact record takes an age to perform because the input screen is excessively demanding on information and key strokes. The net effect - staff are loath to add new information.

One challenge that has plagued many CRM implementations is keeping the system relevant to the business over time. The pay-back from a CRM system will accrue over the life of the system. We live however in an ever changing world. Many systems start out successfully, but fail to adapt to changing circumstances. Sometimes this is because CRM is seen as a one off project where the investment of funds and energy are front-loaded to the implementation stages and the system is starved of resources thereafter. In other cases the resources may be there, but there just isn’t the change management programme in place that facilitates the necessary adaptations. The pressurised, impatient world of sales takes no prisoners in this respect – if it can’t be done within the system the sales-team will likely get it done outside it.

Some aspects of the non-use of the CRM system are more ticklish to address. Salespeople can be sensitive about exposing information for fear it will be misused by other staff. It’s important therefore that care is taken to build trust, and that attention is given to the concerns around sharing data. A key part of this is helping them understand how their data will be used and the benefits that will occur from sharing that information. When salespeople start receiving leads from the marketing campaigns which included their contacts, then fears tend to quickly evaporate.

Boiled right down, implementing a CRM system is relatively simple. Define what you want to achieve with the technology; ideally something of significant bottom line value in order to attract attention and resources. Determine the business processes required to deliver the anticipated benefits. Choose the appropriate technology. And then focus like mad on the people to ensure they use it. The problem has often been that the technology part attracts a disproportionate part of our attention. It may be because we find technology exciting, or perhaps that the millions spent by the vendors on marketing their wares has blinded us to some of the more unglamorous aspects of the implementation process. The nub is that technology can’t do it on its own. As one senior executive who was in the process of re-implementing a failed system ruefully noted to us - ‘We saw CRM like we saw the email system – it was essentially just a case of switch it on and it would work.’ When we start to look at CRM rather more three dimensionally – people, process, and technology – the user adoption issue becomes a lot less intractable. And yes, even sales can be persuaded to use the system.

Honesty or bad segmentation?

As a post script to Friday’s post, if you do royally mess up with your order fulfillment, then perhaps try honesty as a policy, per this email I received from another retailer who had clearly been experiencing problems…


Well, what a terrible start for us in 2007. With many of our staff absent from work through illness or cycling accidents we know our service has been poor.
So we owe you an apology – we apologise for the delays that were experienced by many of you who placed orders over the last ten days. We can however promise you that we are now back to full strength and we have just appointed lots of extra staff in our packing department.
We are raring to go.

Our January Sale has now started. We have some great bargains and the following are the ones we think you’ll like most of all.


Not that I had actually placed an order with them in the last six months, so they were either being remarkably candid about a problem I hadn’t personally experienced, or perhaps their customer database doesn’t allow much segmentation.

I Swore...

I swore when I started this blog, that I would never get into the bad customer experience type posts. Well looks like I broke this resolution on Monday anyway, and this sort of re-iterates the points I made then – and even follows the sporting theme!

Anyway as the story goes, I needed some new running shoes. I went online on Monday to buy them, and the price was pretty attractive, and I tend to get through them pretty quickly so I placed an order for two pairs. Despite the promised 24 hour shipment, they turned up on Thursday. No great problem, because I wasn’t that desperate for them, but expectations are expectations. Anyway, I say they turned up, but actually only one pair turned up, with no obvious indications of the fate of the second. I sent an email to the vendor to enquire as to their status and, twenty fours hours, later I received the following email:


Dear Customer,
Thank you for your recent e-mail, however due to our busy sale period we are currently inundated with enquiries and are unable to guarantee an immediate response to e-mails, if your query is urgent please call our customer service team on [number removed by me to spare blushes]. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Kind Regards
Internet Response Team


I did indeed call the customer service team, who after some umming and ahhing, passed me on to someone, presumably in order processing, who declined my offer of their order reference, wanted my post code which he kept mis-hearing, which doubtless raised both our blood pressures, but we got there in the end. According to the system the shoes were indeed in stock, but no-one could locate them. The search I was informed was continuing, and if I was interested to know the results, I was invited to phone back the following week.

Ignoring the customer experience/satisfaction aspects, I can’t help feeling that it took the internet ‘response’ team marginally less long to put together the email to tell me they couldn’t help me, than it would have taken to actually answer the query. The query of course didn’t go away and several people had to spend time on the phone to resolve the matter, which must have eaten into some already pretty slim margins. And, who knows, perhaps one day the ‘response’ team will get through the back-log and ‘resolve’ the issue all over again.

Email is a pretty major means of communication, (especially if you are doing business on line), it’s therefore a potentially key part of the customer experience, and it’s a low cost means of handling a query. Which begs the question, given that this a far from isolated example, as to how many companies get it so consistently wrong.

Anyway no more bad customer experience stories for while - promise.

Well since you asked...

I had an email through last weekend from a sports drink company asking me to fill out a questionnaire. They were interested to know why, despite having registered an interest, I hadn’t gone on to order their product.

I remember the company well. I was preparing to take part in the Ironman Austria triathlon last year, and was looking to secure an appropriate energy drink for the race (this isn’t actually as easy to do as it might sound as it can be difficult to find products that meet your nutritional requirements over a long endurance event in hot conditions without leaving you rather nauseous). Anyway, the company was new on the scene but was attracting a lot of attention. From a marketing stand point they were doing everything right. They had gained the support from some of the key thought leaders in the sport, and were getting rave reviews in many of the influential forums. This caught my attention and I decided to test the product out. I went to on-line ordering on their web-site, but it wouldn’t let me put in a non-US address, and I had to abandon the order. I then decided to call the company, but they didn’t provide contact details on their web site. I tried the contact email. No response. I tried again. No response. I even found the CEO’s email address, I dropped him a line. No response. I gave up and bought something else.

So why hadn’t I ordered their product? I looked at the available answers on the questionnaire. None seemed to fit my predicament – ‘I really really wanted to but you just wouldn’t take my order’. I sent them a polite explanatory email instead. This time they responded. Twelve months late but they responded.

The moral of the story – there are certain basics (like making is reasonably easy for customers to place orders or communicate) that you just have to get right. I make this obvious point because it doesn’t matter how clever you get with the strategies and technologies you deploy, if the fundamentals don’t back it up, it’s going to be real hard to make them a success.

A dangerous pre-occupation...

Interesting post from Jill Konrath in her Selling to Big Companies blog, highlighting an email follow up by an undisclosed CRM vendor to a white paper down-load.

My take on it - aside from it being a remarkably crude attempt at getting a ‘suspect’ to qualify themselves, and while it’s undoubtedly an extreme example, it is also indicative of a general CRM industry pre-occupation with selling software rather than focusing on solving business issues. A greater concentration on providing genuine revenue enhancing solutions might put a ding in short term software sales, but would do a heck of a lot for the industry over the long term. Don’t however hold your breath.

The weakest link...

One thing that struck me, as I waded through a pile of tender responses just before Christmas, is how uncertain some vendors become when you ask them to give guidance on the recommended administrative overhead for running their systems. The significant majority of respondents just ignored the question. A few offered some vague advice, and a very small minority gave informative answers.

I’m not entirely sure whether this represents another example of the vendors’ lack of knowledge about the real world practicalities of running their technology, or a concern that they might scupper a software sale by being too forthright about the full costs of running their systems. Either way, administration is an important aspect to get right. It’s the weakest link for a lot of implementations.

There are generally two aspects to administering a CRM system. Firstly there’s system administration which is essentially keeping the technology itself running. This is generally pretty light work in respect to most mid-market systems, or non-existent (from the customers perspective at least) if it’s a hosted technology. The second area is user administration, which is about supporting the use of the system. This is a key role regardless of whether the technology is hosted or run ‘on premise’, and includes a host of basic activities such as adding new users, changing security rights, managing pick-lists etc, but some more involved areas such as helping maintain the quality of data in the system, and ensuring that the defined business processes are being followed in a structured and consistent manner.

The user administration overhead is frequently underestimated. This can involve considerable work even within relatively modest systems, particularly if there are many embedded processes. Companies also often underestimate the calibre of staff required to effectively administer these systems. All the great CRM systems that I can think of have great administrators. Few systems survive a bad administrator. With this in mind we will often go to considerable lengths to shadow and support new administration staff to ensure they make it quickly through the learning curve. We will also provide experienced interim administrators if staff unexpectedly leave. High performing CRM systems are sensitive flowers. It does take much in the way of environmental change to kill them off. User administration is such a weak link that I’d speculate that we’ll see a trend for companies to start outsourcing this activity entirely.

Closing the loop...

I read Brian Carroll’s article on lead nurturing before Christmas which recommends a very structured approach to managing and developing leads until they are sales ready. He suggests companies develop a carefully structured campaign programme for each lead as a means to improve close rates and reduce the length of the sales cycle. The article lead me to his book ‘Lead Generation for the Complex Sale’ which became part of my Christmas reading catch up. There’s a lot of good stuff on ‘closed loop marketing’ – i.e. maintaining visibility and control of the lead through the sales cycle. This concept is at the heart of most of the systems we implement, and has generated a lot of value for our clients.