One Year Later…

It is the one year anniversary of the blog and what a year it has been. While there are differing opinions on how long it will take the economy to recover, what is certain is that businesses will remain lean for a long time to come. Many companies have continued to show profits even with reduced revenues because of the cost cutting they have done. It has shown they can do more with less.

In addition, our financial system is going through the painful process of deleveraging itself from years of excess. And like banks, we also need to deleverage ourselves where we can. We are online and connected to work, friends, family, and news 24 hours a day. We need to find places in our lives where we can simplify things.

The analogy I have used about shaving a Yak to explain why projects like CRM projects fail continues to be true (see October 6, 2008 post). We need to always remember not to over complicate things. Start off small and slowly add-on features as you need them. Don’t anticipate everything you need upfront. Look at today and ask yourself what is really needed to help our reps get back 10% of their time. What kind of tool today do they need in order to help them meet their quota? What kind of tool can we expect them to want to use?

Try to visualize what the feeling would be if you were standing in front of a Yak with a razor trying to figure out how to shave him. If you look at your CRM project and feel overwhelmed you need to reevaluate your strategy.

And remember, deleveraging is not just for our banks.

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity