Have you implemented CRM at your company but struggle to realize sales performance management benefits? You’re not alone! In fact, studies over the past year have shown CRM project failure rates that have ranged from 25% to 60% of implementations (Souce: Base CRM).
Today we conclude our CRM mini-series with insights into how to get the most out of your CRM software investment.
Want to see the whole series? If you’re just starting to implement your CRM I suggest starting with #1.
#1 – How to choose the right CRM for a holistic sales stack.
#2 – Tips and insight to get stronger adoption of CRM by the sales team.
Addressing the Challenges of CRM
CRM doesn't solve all problems, but it is the #1 sales stack technology
In our recent article about sales stack investments we found that CRM is the first choice for 100% of sales stack investments, which is great, but anyone familiar with CRM knows that it is NOT a stand-alone solution to your digital sales process endeavors.
But everyone is buying-in, hoping for a one-stop-shop for all problems digital
Unfortunately, the explosive growth of CRM has left many joining the bandwagon of CRM implementation for all the wrong reasons with a gap now existing between the initial trigger for buying CRM and the desired benefits of a CRM system.
(Image Source: Forbes, 2013)
Unsurprisingly, CRM project failure rates are all over the place
This gap may also serve to explain why several different studies have uncovered unacceptably large failure rates among CRM implementation over the last decade.
(Image Source: C5 Insight)
However, some are seeing major CRM success
For those who are succeeding, CRM continues to present attractive ROI and other improvements that make jumping into CRM a no-brainer.
- CRM offers $5.60 average return for every $1 spent;
- Companies have reported as high as 15% improvements to sales function metrics; and
- 87% of companies that are ‘extremely/ satisfied’ with CRM are also increasing CRM budgets (Source: C5 Insight, 2014).
Since high performing sales teams also tend to use 3x more technology than underperforming teams (Source: InsideSalesBox, 2015), many strive to emulate this best practice, prompting CRM implementation with mismatched objectives and unsupported outcomes which seems to be a trend without any signs of stopping.
[RELATED CONTENT] CRM challenges are only one of four major challenges we've outlined for 2016 in Chapter 1 of our Sales Enablement Success series. Cick the link for a FREE download.
Get the Most Out of Your CRM!
Four Solutions to your CRM Challenges
(Unless otherwise stated, all figures for the top 4 are sourced from Forrester, 2012.
While adoption reigns as ‘the problem’ with CRM success, it isn’t the only CRM pitfall to be aware of when designing your digital sales process.
1) Craft a Customer Relationship Management Strategy
18% of companies surveyed found that the problem with their CRM lay within the overall CRM strategy.
The primary strategy issues were:
- 40% - inadequate deployment methodologies;
- 25% - poorly defined business methodologies; and
- 18% - not achieving organizational alignment on objectives.
This is exactly what we’d expect from mismatched CRM implementation objectives and triggers. There is a lot that CRM can do, but also and a lot that it doesn’t.
A solution: understand that CRM is just a functional component of a sales stack, not a magic box for all digital sales challenges. The moment you’re going to get into CRM, realize that you’re taking a step towards reengineering your entire sales process.
Get your team together and start by understanding what this new process actually entails, outline your desired objectives, craft your customer-centric digital sales strategy with a keen focus on multichannel capability, identify your strategy bottlenecks that require technology solutions, implement, analyze, and optimize over time.
2) Rethink your Critical Customer Facing Processes
27% of CRM challenges have to do with business process management.
Here’s the issue breakdown:
- 48% - technical/integration difficulties in supporting company processes;
- 31% - poor business process design; and
- 21% - a need to customize solutions to fit unique organizational requirements.
Once you start to implement CRM, the subsequent opportunities will reveal new challenges. This is why planning a strategy from day 1 is so important (from the previous section).
66% of expected CRM benefits remain unused/unrealized (Source: CloudApps, 2013). A traditional sales approach with CRM tacked on will not suddenly thrust your sales team into perfect digital content management and sales and marketing alignment, though many desire it when implementing.
3) Select the Right Technology
Roughly 33% of CRM problems reported were around technology deficiencies.
Specifically:
- 30% - perceived functional deficiency with the vendor solution;
- 23% - a lack of required skill sets needed to implement the solution;
- 19% - data problems; and
- 19% - system performance shortfalls.
Users who start seeing “technology deficiencies” are NOT experiencing CRM deficiencies, they are experiencing sales stack deficiencies. CRM is supposed to optimize your sales process, but it serves a specific role.
Up to 80% of the potential benefits from CRM use are not taken advantage of. Integration, extension, and collaboration are the major areas where ROI improvements can occur (Source: Base CRM, 2014).
CRM is your jumping off point. That’s why so many things integrate with CRM, that’s why CRM is the first choice for a holistic sales stack, and that’s why adoption falters when you expect sellers to suddenly succeed at their job by simply going back and updating CRM.
4) Put Customer-centric Human Resource Practices in Place
22% of the challenges related to ‘people issues.’ We explored people issues in detail through our last post about mitigating adoption challenges with CRM.
Here’s a quick breakdown of top ‘people issues’:
- 49% - slow user adoption;
- 36% - inadequate attention paid to change management; and
- 15% - difficulties aligning the organizational culture with new ways of working.
Check out our post from last week for more depth about this final challenge.
Do you have CRM in place but the benefits found by some simply don’t add up for you? Don’t panic! You’re just a few key pieces shy of a 21st century digital sales stack. Request a quick demo and let us show you what real sales enablement feels like.
