What Sales Technology Really Works?
Written by Brandon Hull on January 7, 2008. Leave a Comment on this Post.
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Geoffrey James asks “What sales technology really works?” at his Sales Machine blog today.
He asks readers to rank these five forms of technology in terms of their usefulness to sales professionals:
- Customer Relationship Management
- Cellular Telephone
- Electronic Mail
- Web Conferencing
- Instant Messaging
Above you’re looking at the order in which I placed them. See our roundup of online contact managers here, three tips on getting more from your Blackberry here, a really cool tool for tracking emails here, and a challenge to incorporate instant messaging here.
How would you rank these tools?
Ha! Well, let me kick this one off with something that *isn’t* useful for sales professionals - CRM.
If I’m a rep, CRM doesn’t help me sell. It provides reporting and analysis for my management - and causes an awful lot of work for ME.
Unfortunately, many current CRM apps fall right into the “useless busywork” category. So, I’d put that at 5, or 10, or 25 - depending on the lowest available “usefulness” number.
Ouch Jan! That hurts…
Your point of view on CRM is probably very commonly held by sales reps. I see it everyday… Management buys the CRM and they design it to give them what they want - reports and analytics.
The trick is to recognize that Management won’t get any useful reports if reps aren’t using the tool.
Its not hard to find ways for a CRM to help sales reps do their job. Its just usually not a priority in the setup and rollout….
I was taking the perspective of the rep for a second. I’ve been on both ends of the isle - both using a mandated CRM as well as trying to do something meaningful with the data.
The problem is - I think it *is* difficult to find ways of how CRM helps reps sell. Reps ask valid questions. Does it put me in front of more prospects? Does it make me more effective in front of prospects? Does it help me get passed the 6 month performance axe? If there’s no concrete and fairly immediate benefit (quite the opposite, in fact - it’s more administrative work!) - I don’t blame people for not being in love with CRM.
Remember, the average tenure of a sales leader is 18 months, that of a rep much shorter. Can you really blame people for being extremely focused on short term gains and running away from anything and everything that causes more “work”?
There is and there will be a need for CRM - so I really like what Landslide is doing with their CRM+VIP service (basically eliminating all data entry for reps, as well as providing support for other administrative tasks) - EVA does something very similar.
Actually, Sales Machine is written by Geoffrey James not Geoffrey Moore.
Signed,
Geoffrey James
Fixed, Geoffrey. Sorry about that!