Address Customer-Facing Processes Head On!

Some customers fear CRM customization.  They’ve heard horror stories about colleagues from other firms who have invested thousands of dollars in building a custom CRM system, only to have it fail.  No one engaged because the system was cumbersome or irrelevant.  The money was completely wasted.  The ROI was negative, and reputations were lost.

Most good CRM systems today come with an out-of-the-box, plain vanilla default sales process.  It is the lowest common denominator for all business sales processes.  It may involve only four sales stages:

• Qualify
• Develop
• Propose
• Close

That’s not a bad place to start, but I advocate never starting with the technology.  Start with YOUR process instead, and make sure it is designed to meet YOUR business objectives.  Your process may need to be tweaked or may require a major overhaul, but start there.  Make sure it helps drive some measure of efficiency and growth.  Get help, if necessary, to optimize and document your process well, so that it is clear and well communicated.  Then it can inform your CRM implementation.

I recently read an article that talked about why CRMs fail.

There were three main points:

1. Lack of Focus
2. Lack of Commitment
3. Approaching CRM as a Technology (Only) Solution

An excerpt from this last point: “Among other things, successful CRM implementations involve the improvement or possibly the re-engineering of customer facing (sales, marketing, customer support and more) business processes which are then integrated with the enterprise software in order to make them efficient, consistent and timely.”

So stop!  Don’t implement that CRM until you’ve defined your customer-facing processes.  The time you and your team invest in thoughtful process planning and design will be time well-spent. And if you are already a CRM user, it is never too late to re-evaluate and improve your processes.  Your teams and, more importantly, your customers will thank you for it!

About the Author
Melanie R. Varin is Chief Operating Officer and consultant for TopLine Results Corporation.  Melanie specializes in business process consulting for organizations cross many industries.  With more than 30 years of business expertise, Melanie focuses on providing clients with winning strategies for improving their sales, marketing and overall business processes from assessment to implementation.