HOUSTON – SalesNexus releases “Why CRMs Fail and What To Do About It”

SalesNexus today released “Why CRMs Fail and What To Do About It” on its blog, Sell, Sell, Sell!, a expose of how CRM vendors set small businesses up for failure and what small and medium sized businesses can do to ensure CRM success.

“The sad truth is that half of CRM solutions fail to meet management expectations.”, said Craig Klein, SalesNexus CEO and Founder. “We believe that its completely unavoidable. We decided to map out what to watch out for and what to do in order to achieve CRM success”

“Why CRMs Fail and What To Do About It” focuses on how the traditional model of CRM vendor selection, CRM consultants and VARs are setting most small and medium sized businesses up for failure when they implement new CRM systems. The article also provides specific steps to align CRM expectations of all involved parties and select the best fit CRM technology.

“By its nature, CRM touches many roles within a company. Each group has varying expectations. At SalesNexus, we’ve developed a simple and effective method to ensure all CRM users get what they’re after.”, said Klein.

“Why CRMs Fail and What To Do About It” is available here - http://sellsellsell.salesnexus.com/2010/01/15/why-crms-fail-and-what-to-do-about-it/

To know more about SalesNexus online CRM, click here – http://www.salesnexus.com/

Fast, effective response to your customers’ needs is crucial in today’s highly competitive and information based economy. Millions of small and medium sized businesses still rely on very basic customer information solutions for this mission critical function.

This is the fourth and final installment in a series of 4 articles each one focusing on a key reason that basic contact management systems like ACT! and Outlook are keeping your business from reaching the heights of success you’re striving for. To see the complete compilation of 4 reasons ACT! and Outlook are holding your business back and what to do about, visit http://www.salesnexus.com/resources.php

Reason #4 that ACT! or Outlook or whatever technology you’ve tried are not working for you:

There’s virtually no support. So now we’re past whether the system is up and running properly. We’re talking about whether each individual can figure out how to do what they need to do, day in and day out? Who’s going to answer those questions every day? Is there a guru on your staff that can respond immediately to questions from your sales team about how to do this and that in your contact management system? If not, calling ACT! or Microsoft to find out is not something you want your sales team sitting through. So things stall. Business has to go on and the users go back to doing it the old fashioned way.

You need someone that’s in tune with your business, that knows how you work and responds on your time, not their own.

Tip #7 – you’re going to need someone to be your “go to guy”. This could be your in house administrative or IT person. You need to make sure they make a priority of responding to problems and questions from the rest of your staff. Whether it’s a staff member, your contract IT person or a vendor, take the time to bring them up to speed on what workflows are crucial for your people all day every day.

Remember, this does not need to be expensive or extremely time consuming. The toughest thing to do is to decide exactly what your people should do to capture, document and share vital information day in and day out.

If figuring that out is where you’re stuck, I recommend trying to do it with the resources you have at hand. There will be some trial and error. Best to work through that without spending a bunch of money.

Once you understand the steps involved in each employee’s key workflows, you may find that you can make your current technology work. If not, you’ll know exactly what capabilities you need to shop for.

That transition doesn’t have to be painful. Don’t look for the technology to create the process for you. You need to decide what processes will make you most competitive. Then find technology that automates them.

Getting your staff members on board and motivated to share information is the key. Be sure to check out my blog,  Sell, Sell, Sell! for plenty of tips and advice on getting the people part of contact management right.

How to Make the Competition Look Like Chumps Without Spending a Mint  – by Craig Klein

Fast,effective response to your customers’ needs is crucial in today’s highly competitive and information based economy. Millions of small and medium sized businesses still rely on very basic customer information solutions for this mission critical function.

This is the second installment in a series of 4 articles each one focusing on a key reason that basic contact management systems like ACT! and Outlook are keeping your business from reaching the heights of success you’re striving for. In subsequent releases, we’ll focus on 2 additional reasons ACT! and Outlook are holding you back and provide simple and effective tips for breaking these barriers.

Reason #2 that ACT! or Outlook or whatever technology you’ve tried are not working for you:

You’re telling stories, not sharing facts.

When most companies start using a contact management system like ACT! or Outlook, they’re trying to minimize the disruption to the team so they simplify the requirements. Something like “Just keep the contact information up to date and put in a note about the calls and meetings you have.”

That sounds simple and easy. Why wouldn’t anyone play ball when the rules are so accommodating?

Because those same people don’t get anything truly useful back out of a system like that!

Think about it. If you get a call from a customer and they tell you that they spoke with your inside sales person yesterday and got a quote for this and that. If you lookup the customer in your contact management system and see a 3 paragraph note, entered by your inside sales person, describing what the customer asked about and what they were told, you can’t really use that information in real time. You’re not going to put the customer on hold so you can read the inside sales person’s notes. So, at that moment, you’re probably not feeling like this contact management system is the best thing since sliced bread. This doesn’t make you feel like that extra minute or two is worthwhile the next time you have some information to put into the contact management system. You know no one is really going to use it. Its too difficult to digest.

Tip #2 – make it easy to record information quickly, in the form of simple objective facts. Long tomes in the notes are the least valuable way to record information. They’re too hard to digest and use. You want someone else who has never spoken with that particular customer to be able to look at their information and in less than 30 seconds, know essentially everything there is to know about that customer.

You can do this with a little bit of thought and just about any kind of technology.

Tip #3 –figure out what you need to know about your customers before you start worrying about how you’re going to capture and organize it with technology. What you need is a list of simple questions with simple answers that you can ask any customer get short answers.

In every business there are 5 to 10 questions that you have to have answers to before you know if a prospect is “qualified”. Some of them are obvious:

• Am I talking to someone that can make the decision to spend money?

• Does this person have the money available?

• Is their need great enough to justify the expense?

• Which competitor are they using now?

Tip #4 – boil the potential answers down to simple facts. Envision a call sheet that your sales reps might bring with them on paper when meeting with prospects. Each question would be followed by the most common answers so that the rep can simply check off or circle those that apply.

That’s what we’re working toward in your contact management system! This is the only way we’re going to empower quick and easy input of information and rapid access and use of the information.

It only takes one or two experiences in which a sales rep looks up someone they haven’t spoken to recently and sees all this vital information staring them in the face in an easily understandable form. They’re hooked. Now they’re invested in making it work!

And best of all, adding these questions and answers to your contact management system in the form of simple fields with drop down lists is easy. If its not, you’ve spend too much money on your technology!

Tip #5 – start recording proposals, contracts, agreements, etc.in the contact management system so everyone can get to them immediately. This is pretty basic functionality for most systems. In fact, you don’t even need a real contact management system for this. All you need is some $25/month shared drive on the Internet. As above, you’ve just got to make it easy for everyone to do their job and get the information attached to the database.

To know more about SalesNexus online CRM, click here – http://www.salesnexus.com/