Yak CRM

It is not exactly hedging but adjusting your revenue based on past rep performance is a way to ensure you are not over or under stating your revenue targets too much. How this works is simple. You assign each rep a weight factor based on how they have forecasted in the past. Do they have a tendency to overstate and under deliver or understate and over deliver? Each rep likes to handle how they report their deals differently. So for example, a rep that usually is under their revenue forecast by 10% you would assign a factor of 90%. If a rep consistently is over their forecasted revenue you can assign 105% factor.

When running forecast reports you will want to see two columns for revenue. One is the stated forecast on the opportunity and the other column will show the adjusted based on the factor of the rep. To get the adjusted revenue numbers just multiply the revenue of the deal by the rep factor. This is easily done automatically for you when creating or updating your opportunity. It should be carried as an additional field on the opportunity for easy reporting. For companies that use sales forecasts for any type of capacity planning this will help get it much closer.

Remember the past is a window to the future. Always try to leverage the past to better predict your future business.

Rep Factor is part of their profile

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How it shows on the opportunity

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How it shows on forecast reports

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Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

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

When tracking an opportunity in CRM most systems allow you to track not only the sales cycle step but what your feeling is on closing the deal. This is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked. When looking at deals in a forecast, rating them by Gut is at least as important if not more as where you are in the sales step. Many times you can be early on in the sales cycle and the rep can get a good sense of the likelihood of winning the deal. Also if this is an existing customer with add-on business, you can have a large spread between sales step and gut.

Tracking Gut along with the sales cycle provides the team a really clear picture of the opportunity. It allows you to better balance resources and ensures you have the right strategies in place.

Forecast Report with Gut factor

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

One of the best things about using a good CRM solution is the ability to easily keep your team as well as management informed about what is going on with your customers.  It ensures that everyone is on the same page even though they were not part of a meeting or away working with other customers.  It ensures consistent messaging which is one of the top objectives for most companies. 

CRM should automatically inform your team or anyone else you want about customer interactions.  You should be able to simply fill out a call report or opportunity update and the system will automatically notify your team.  The email that everyone gets should allow for a brief note you can add and a link to where the information you updated is stored.  No one should have to deal with searching their inbox for customer information that was forwarded to them.  It should all be stored in one central location, associated with a customer, and a link to it.

Some solutions take it one step further by allowing discussion threads.  This allows people to easily participate remotely and foster a more collaborative environment. 

If your CRM solution does not have a notify function that integrates with your email system, it is worth having IT put it in.  It is not hard to do but will require some small workflow coding and integration with the companies name and address book. 

It does require a little Shaving of the Yak but well worth the effort.

Below are examples on how to integrate notifications and the email people would receive.

Sample Call Report with notification

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Sample email to a customer with notification

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Sample email a person gets with link to record

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Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

This past weekend I experience what I am afraid is becoming more of the norm. I have gone to this same bagel store for many years. I would get a toasted bagel with whitefish salad. I loved it because the salad had large pieces of whitefish perfectly blended with herbs and just the right amount of mayonnaise.

I guess due to a drop in business they changed the preparation of the salad. Now when you order it you get this pile of pureed slop on the bagel. Gone are the chunks of fresh whitefish. Gone is the right mix of mayonnaise and herbs. They are trying to take the same amount of fish and create a lot more salad from it. They added a lot more mayonnaise and put everything in a blender. But they thought giving more would make up for the near soup they put on the bagel.

It seems a lot of companies think that people would rather have more of a bad thing than less of a great thing. Is this true? I know I will never go back for that sandwich. I believe most people would be fine (or not even notice) a little less salad per serving. Getting so much more of something fair diminishes the quality and value we expect from American business. But worse than that for companies is that it erodes their customer loyalty. I will no longer go to the store and when the economy turns around again and they can go back to making the sandwich the way they always did, I will have found an alternative.

Customers understand the difficulties vendors are under. I don’t believe getting a few ounces less for the same price while this crisis’s is in place would be an issue. Organizations need to be very careful not to alienate their best customer base by implementing changes to save money. There are many ways to get to the numbers you need.

CRM is great for not only understanding your customers buying habits and key issues but a great way to communicate with them easily. Let your customers know beforehand the cost cutting changes you are putting in place that might affect them. Some might choose another alternative in the short run but will value your integrity and caring for them. As soon as you can provide the same level of service again they will be back. Mass mailings are an easy way to get the message out to individuals. They will be happy to know you are doing your part to stay in business and maintain profitability. They need you around.

Tags: crm

With the passing of Walter Cronkite I got to thinking about what it means to be “the most trusted man in America”. How is it possible that one man delivering the news can capture the attention of everyone in America and much of the world?

Before Walter Cronkite the news was sort of homogenized. Bundled up into little easily-absorbed bites. All the news stations were doing the same thing. Walter Cronkite changed all that for CBS. He delivered the news with vigor, compassion and a sense of purpose. He knew the American people could deal more effectively with the actual facts rather than some watered down variations. And he was able to connect with the millions of viewers one soul at a time.

Walter Cronkite’s success came down to 4 things: credibility, sincerity, loyalty and approachability. His quest for the facts, his caring about getting the job done right, his devotion to family and America, and his clear opinions and delivery is what made him the most trusted man in America.

As business people, if we follow Water Cronkite’s example our customers will always want to do business with us. If we know the facts, present clear ideas, prove our case and show them we care, we have done our job and customers and prospects will appreciate it. They might not always agree with our counsel but they know they can trust us.

George Clooney said he hates America without Walter Cronkite. We all know he does not mean that but the world has lost one of its best parts. We should all strive to carry a little Walter in everything we do and slowly we will make our world a better place.

Tags: CRM Basics

While dashboards are good to have, sales reps really just need a couple of basic views or reports to do their job well. My Pipeline and Opportunity Forecasts are the two most important ones. You should have a couple of different views of each one such as monthly, quarterly and yearly time frames and open vs. closed as well as opportunity and product forecasts.

CRM solutions will come with prepackaged reports which you should be able to modify for your needs. Reps and managers will have different ones of course. Managers should have the aggregate of their reps.

You also want to create simple negligent reports such as when my last contact and deal was with a customer. You should have the overall business you have done with them. This will help better gauge how much time you should be spending on the relationship. It shows if you are spending too much time on too little business.

So while dashboards are all the rage you can be just as effective without them with your standard, no-frill reports.

Examples:

My Pipeline – Sorted by probability of closing. You can also have a view by stage in the sales cycle

My Forecast – Sorted by months and probability of closing. You can also add quarterly if that is how you manage your deals.

Negligent Report – Sorted by revenue generated in a given timeframe and last actual contact (hopefully captured in an activity report you save)

Tags: CRM Basics

One of the greatest tools for sales reps of the 21st century so far is web conferencing. Products like GoToMeeting, Webex, and Sametime dramatically changed how sales rep work. These products allow reps to avoid costly plane and overnight trips to show a prospect or customer their products and services. It has become the single most important technology in qualifying customers at a fraction of the cost it did before. While video conferencing has been around for a while it was too costly and complicated for sales reps that need speed, simplicity, and flexibility.

Any CRM solution you want to use should have direct integration with a web conferencing tool. The ones I have used like Relavis CRM and SalesForce.com have integrated these solutions directly into their activity management component. When scheduling a meeting within CRM you are able to hit a button on the form that will automatically create the web meeting, place all the connection and phone information into the invitation and mailed to the attendees. It is a great time saver for reps as well as allows you to track these meetings back to a specific lead, opportunity or contact. Web conference solutions keep track of number of attendees, length of time and you can record the entire meeting for play back later.

While I am sure many reps are now taking advantage of this technology with either corporate or individual accounts you should be tying it into your CRM solution so you get to create and track it in one place. It is an amazing time saver especially if you need to go back to review the history of the account. Or if a team member or manager missed the meeting and wants to review what happened.

Prospects and customer find web meetings far less intrusive on their time. It can be done totally at their convenience and at their desk.

Web conferencing should not totally eliminate visiting with your customers and prospects. Remember 90% of closing business is showing up. But it is a great tool for qualify and delivering information quickly and cost effectively.

Example of Web Conferencing Integration When Creating a Meeting in CRM

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Tags: crm productivity

Purchasing consulting services is key to a successful implementation. I am not talking multimillion dollar Accenture engagements (amazingly there are still those still going on) but a reasonable amount to help jump start the project. You should expect to budget about $0.5-$2 of services for every dollar of product. This will vary whether you have chosen an on-premise or hosted solution.

For end-users the key services you should not skip on are configuration and training. You will get your biggest return here. You do not want to spend time drilling through manuals trying to figure out what all the different parameters are and how they interact. Having someone with you to ask the right questions about your business and take you through the configuration process will save you a lot of time and money. And do I need to say anything about the importance of training other than don’t make it the first thing to cut when your budget is low. Getting users up and running and feeling confident with the solution is cornerstone for success, Cut somewhere else.

If you are using an on-premise solution then IT would need to know how to maintain and support the system. While a class is great, IT folks are very good at drilling into manuals to find what they need. Also software support is kind of universal. The backing up, archiving, security, etc… are consistent items they deal with on all the software they support? The technical manuals are usually all they need. For hosted solutions very little will be needed from your IT staff.

A programmer will probably need to get involved if you are integrating other backend system data to CRM. Depending on what the goal is it might be cheaper and certainly much faster to contract that service out. If you see this as an ongoing requirement then sending a programmer to class will be worth it.

When budgets are tight, carefully evaluate what will give you the most for your dollars but also what the true cost will be if you did it yourself. The extra hours people spend trying to figure it themselves might offset any savings you think you are getting.

Tags: Add new tag, Consulting, CRM Basics

I thought the topic was worth talking about again as I continue to find lead handling one of the biggest challenges companies face.

Companies spend a lot of money generating leads, the life blood of their organization, but allow the lead process to break down as soon as they are entered into a system (even worse if there is no system to collect them). They complain that their leads fall into a black hole. So just having a place to collect them does not solve the black hole problem.

Lead capture should be as automated as possible. Only buy a CRM solution that gives you the capability to capture and route leads into a database. There should be a plug in for website capture as well as the ability to manually enter them. Most CRM systems provide a utility so you can input leads or lists as well. It should also allow you to easily track activities against them and convert them to an opportunity.

Now that you have them in one place you need to ensure you are tracking things like source (where did it come from, i.e. web, tradeshow, campaign, etc…), status (suspect, prospect, hot lead, etc…), and rep (who is initially responsible for it). Of cause you need the usual fields such as contact info and what products they are interested in. By carrying this information you can always see what has transpired with the lead. Even if leads are sent to channel partners this information is even more critical so you have a complete record and can question your partners about it. You want a system that has seamless integration with your email platform and a workflow process that automatically notifies the appropriate rep via email of a new lead. This really helps timely responses back to any lead inquiry.

Another must have is the ability to see lead to opportunity statistics. You want to easily analyze the effectiveness of various lead sources with statistics on closed opportunities resulting from leads. This is the only way you can really see if your marketing dollars are being spent wisely. My guess is most companies would be very surprised on what is really working. Solutions like Relavis CRM provide both real time analysis as well as reports you can run.

Some other nice to have features are:

• Lead Categorization and Search
• Duplication of lead handling
• Automatic Lead Routing
• Lead Scripting
• Lead Conversion
• Lead History
• Rep Generated Email Prospecting

Example of a lead form

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics