If your organization is struggling with customer relationship management (CRM) implementation, adoption, or utilization, and ROI seems a distant reality—and odds are, all of the above—you are certainly not alone.

In fact, a recent Gartner analysis finds that despite a $225 billion investment in CRM over the past 10 years, companies have only seen customer satisfaction increase 3-5%.  And I would argue that the CSAT increase is probably not even related to CRM, but rather from an increased focus on process improvement and better frontline rep training.

The statistic is amazing, but as any service, sales, or marketing VP will tell you, not unsurprising.  Yet considering the multi-year, multi-million dollar commitment required to implement and optimize CRM, coordinate across multiple business units, and upskill staff and drive utilization, it’s worth a look at what best-in-class companies do to leverage CRM.

There are many root causes as to why companies struggle to truly leverage CRM—poor data quality, poor frontline staff usage of the tool key among them.  One of the biggest causes, however, is that attaining deep customer intelligence requires good people with good connections to truly bring the information to life.  Even the best, most detailed database entries do not approximate strong internal relationships where service and support staff can collaborate with each other and brainstorm service and sales opportunities, elaborating data points and offering additional perspective.

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Within the last five years, many companies have begun cross-selling, up-selling, or lead generation (aka, ‘service-to-sales’) campaigns within their traditionally service-only environments.  And when companies establish such programs, they often do so without the luxury of experience to help them design a program that is proven to work for their environments specifically.  As a result, many operate under the assumption that a service-to-sales program will be successful if it emulates many of the characteristics that make traditional sales environments successful.  Specifically, executives often choose to emphasize the “sales culture” and monetary incentives that work for their counterparts in the Sales world.

This approach couldn’t be more wrong. Read More »

This is a guest post by Matt Kiel of the Sales Executive Council, our sister program for sales professionals.

Don’t get me wrong: I love working with heads of Sales. But every now and then, something crosses my desk that reminds me of how much we can still learn from other functional executives.

And what could be more cross-functional than 2011 budgeting and planning? If you’re one of the many sales leaders reviewing recent budget projections and saying, “You want me to do what with what?!” then I’d encourage you to read on for a bit of good news from an unlikely source.

As it turns out, our sister research program that supports CFOs is strongly advocating that companies shift more resources to activities directly tied to sales growth in the near term.

Now, before you dismiss that idea as too farfetched for your penny-pinching CFO to get behind, consider these key findings that will help you speak their language: Read More »

It’s a focus for every company: How to prevent customer churn?

Following the philosophy that customers are easier to retain than they are to convert, over the past decade, companies have created escalation “saves” desks manned by staff empowered to do almost anything (read: offer discounts, refunds, or other financial incentives) to retain a customer once the customer says the magic words, “I’m leaving your company.”

The only catch is the cost to run these “saves” operations.  Not to mention the looming question whether such moves actually drive long-term, quality relationships with customers (or merely set precedent for customers to argue for major discounts year after year).

So how to save customers without having to offer sweet monetary incentives?  Certainly many companies have built comprehensive, predictive models to identify potential customer churn.  Such models of course can be helpful, but these models are resource intensive, and many organizations fall short in how they execute on the intelligence—they’re often too late.

In fact, it’s not just about modeling customer proclivity for disloyalty but proactively reaching out to customers before they actually become disloyal.

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Recent discussions I’ve had with members about selling in the contact center often  prompt me to remember conversations I have with my 5-year old daughter.  She has a knack for trying to slip in a request for a cookie into conversations that have nothing to do with food.

 “Daddy, I had a great day at school so… can I have a cookie?”, or “Daddy, it’s a beautiful day outside so… can I have a cookie?”

And while I applaud her perseverance, I’m not going to give her a cookie just because it’s nice outside – no matter how many times she asks me.  Unfortunately, this example parallels what I’ve heard members articulate as their typical approach to selling. Read More »

While some of my colleagues may be focused on the NCAA Tourney this time of year, I’m enjoying another annual (US$700 million) phenomenon…Girl Scout cookies!  

I’ve encountered two separate troops recently at my grocery store, and the difference in sales approaches was remarkable.  The first troop was standard, consisting of Scouts timidly trying to approach busy people (who were, in turn, avoiding eye contact and looking guilty).  The second troop, however, clearly had their game faces on.  Not only were they confident in their approach (even offering handshakes to shoppers), but they were actually offering free cookie samples!  Talk about getting people interested in your product!

In watching that exuberant second troop, I had to wonder if they had some extra motivation…something was making them work harder.  Kudos to that troop leader for knowing her sales force well enough to find an effective incentive.  After all, it’s not just ANY incentive that makes someone work harder, it’s the RIGHT incentive.  Read More »