Sales POP - Purveyors of Propserity
CRM Has Failed in the Past. Where Must It Be in the Future?
Blog / All About CRM / Feb 23, 2016 / Posted by Nikolaus Kimla / 4197

CRM Has Failed in the Past. Where Must It Be in the Future?

In this series, we’ve covered why CRM has failed in the past, what is really needed for a CRM today, what we at Pipeliner are doing about it, and just how Pipeliner empowers salespeople.

Now, where should CRM be as we move out into the future? And how should CRM relate to the ongoing digital revolution?

Avoiding Extinction

Today if a business is to survive, it must embrace technology. Many companies have disappeared simply because they didn’t embrace it—and they really had no chance.

Businesses and society seem to be undergoing one of the most fundamental transformations in history. What is happing might better be understood as an Old World dying because a New World is being born. There will hardly be any bridges back to the old state of affairs. Perhaps the most practical premise to navigate by is that whatever can change will change.

Fredmund Malik

Relation to CRM

So what does this mean for a CRM solution? First, it means kind of a reverse look—in order to be embraced by those seeking technology, CRM must in turn deal directly with the business pains that need to be addressed.

There are 3 main parts to a CRM today, and any CRM that is to survive must contain all 3:

  1. It must be easily scalable
  2. Integration of data into it must be easy
  3. It should replace multiple tools

Cutting Down the Multiple

Focusing in on #3 there above, there is an issue that is becoming ever more problematic when it comes to the sheer volume of solutions out there. There are many thousands of applications a company can avail itself of. Companies attempt to play it smart hunt out the “best of breed” for such applications—but in so doing they find the financial outlay to be considerable. Then when a company purchases them, or subscribes to the SaaS, it becomes even more expensive because these solutions require regular updates.

In my opinion the industry is headed for considerable risk because of this. A company can buy yet another app to address just about any problem, which means mounting costs. On the other hand, vendors cannot make such solutions too cheap, else they themselves won’t survive.

The risk factor is that some of the applications aren’t bad—but if left to stand alone they couldn’t survive. They themselves depend on other applications because they are too specialized. If you have too many specialized apps in a company, not only is it a financial problem but one of complexity.

I believe that in the next 2 years companies will be advised to cut down on the volume and complexity of such applications. CRM solutions such as ours are stepping in to pick up the slack.

The 6 Deadly Sins of CRM

Additionally, as we move into the future, any CRM solution to survive must avoid these 6 deadly sins.

#1: Don’t be a “Big Brother”

George Orwell’s famous novel 1984 gave us the term “Big Brother.” In the story, and as it’s used today, the term means having someone constantly watching and monitoring you in order to control you. Nobody likes to live like that—including salespeople or other CRM users.

Pipeliner set out to totally avoid the “Big Brother” syndrome right from the start. Pipeliner is completely designed to empower salespeople, not to control them.

The magic of such an approach can be seen in any company that has implemented a CRM such as this: one of the primary CRM issues is solved—that of correct data in CRM. If users are happy, and using the system because it brings them benefit, the data entered is going to be correct. Correct data is fundamental to everything, including all of your reports and forecasts.

So a CRM shouldn’t motivate with control—it should motivate with actually helping.

#2: Don’t make an easy system complex and difficult

A CRM system (such as ours, for example) can be designed to be totally easy to customize and use. But at the same time, when the system is implemented, it can be overloaded with mandatory fields and be made to require twice the data that is really needed.

In addition to being easy to customize and use, a CRM should be intelligently implemented. What data is really needed for users to use it? All customization should be targeted directly to helping users do their jobs better.

#3: “Always access” to CRM

Despite the fact we’re living in the 21st century in a very technical age, there are still many places in the world—even in fully developed countries such as the US—without Internet access. Anyone using CRM, especially salespeople, must have access to the full system with or without Internet access.

A CRM should make it possible to get the job done online or off.

#4: Don’t kill your adoption rate before you’ve even started

Steering clear of these CRM deadly sins, especially #1 and #2 above, you will make CRM something users desire to use and will adopt. A complex, control-oriented application that users will find difficult to take to will mean a low adoption rate—and your CRM project has died before it was ever born.

#5: Don’t make CRM an island

Although it should certainly be central, a CRM should also not be the only tool that a company or even a sales force depends on. CRM is important, and is becoming more and more the heart of an organization (as we’ve noted, the term “CRM” is no longer correct because it does far more than simply “manage customer relationships”). But even so, CRM should not be an island. It should not be isolated, it should be integrated. When you don’t integrate CRM with your other main systems, it becomes a silo—and the age of the silo is long over.

#6: Don’t choose a CRM that is slow to set up

Don’t choose a CRM that has a ramp-up time like many of the traditional ones do—3–4 months or longer, and long training periods for users. In addition to being intuitive and easy to grasp and understand, a great CRM works best when it has context-sensitive help that can be rapidly accessed when a user doesn’t remember an operational point or needs to learn it newly.

When a CRM is slow to implement and hard to learn, the motivation for using it starts dipping into minus territory—and you’re back into Sin #4 once again.

Heading into the future not only means adopting technology, it means adopting the right technology, and ensuring that your CRM solution conforms to the same standards.

What makes Pipeliner CRM the CRM to bring you into the future? Find out!  Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.

About Author

CEO and partner of pipelinersales.com and the uptime ITechnologies, which I founded in 1994 and has since played a significant role in the development of the IT-environment. pipeliner is the most innovative sales CRM management solution on the market. Pipeliner was designed by sales professionals for sales professionals and helps close the gap between the requirements of C-level executives for transparency and the day-to-day operational needs of field and inside sales. I am also the founder and Initiator of the independent economic platform GO-AHEAD!, which orientates itself on the principles of a free marketplace in terms of liberal and social responsibility. Connecting people, the trust of business leadership in terms of values such as freedom, self-responsibility, and entrepreneurial spirit, and strengthening their awareness in order to create a dynamic boost within the economy triggered through spontaneity, all stand for the initial ideas surrounding GO-AHEAD! I studied in Los Angeles and Vienna and received my Masters's Degree in 1994. I am married and have 3 children My Specialties are in: Sales Management, Sales CRM Software, CRM Cloud Solutions, SAAS, Business Strategy, Software Development, "Pipeline Management", Social responsibility, outbound sales, b2b sales, inside sales, sales strategy, lead generation, sales process, entrepreneurship, coaching, mentoring, speaker, opportunity management, lead management, Austrian School of Economics

Author's Publications on Amazon

This is a practical manual covering the vital subject of Sales Management. I firmly believe that sales are the most important profession for dealing with today’s turbulent world and Econo my, for salespeople create wealth and produce peace. But salespeople need a competent, stable leader—and…
Buy on Amazon
Inside this eBook, you’ll discover a series of chapters dedicated to some of the most important areas facing sales today. From the sales process definition to measurement, lead generation, and proven sales techniques, this comprehensive eBook will provide you with the information you need to…
Buy on Amazon
A common term in sales today is EQ, which stands for “emotional I.Q.” It means the skill a salesperson has in reading emotions and utilizing them in sales. It means empathy and a number of other abilities. The short version is, it’s an I.Q. when…
Buy on Amazon
People are smart to question the future of automation, for it has become part of everything we do. With the quantity of applications and technology around us, we yet still crave more. We become convinced of its power when our package is delivered from Amazon…
Buy on Amazon
Sales management isn’t a simple subject by any means. But at the same time, it does have some basic and somewhat simple fundamentals—and that is what we are bringing to you with this book. First come pain points of sales management, and how to overcome…
Buy on Amazon
Today the Internet has transformed a seller's market into a buyer's market and author Nikolaus Kimla states that the role of sales has never been more crucial. It is now time to give salespeople the role they factually can play: entrepreneurs within the enterprise. They…
Buy on Amazon
This is our public declaration of the intentions behind Pipeliner, and our objectives and motives for the product and for our company. Behind the development of that CRM application and, in fact, behind everything we do, we have a real cause. The story begins with…
Buy on Amazon
For the future, there must be a perfect balance of humans and technology. You have to have the perfect technology, andthen the perfect human being in application, performance and presentation. Today and into the future, it’s a 50-50 balance. In the past it was perhaps…
Buy on Amazon
The salespreneur is based on the concept of the entrepreneur. Before we can explain the salespreneur, you have to have some understanding of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur plays a crucial role in any economic system. The entrepreneur seeks out information that can be utilized for…
Buy on Amazon
A seasoned captain would never leave port without a competent navigator. In a similar way, a sales manager might be a total ace at "commanding the ship" – at inspiring and coaching sales reps, pointing out and getting agreement on making quotas, and keeping everyone's…
Buy on Amazon
..
..
.
Sales Process Automation
.
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For information on cookies and how you can disable them, visit our privacy and cookie policy.