1st Commandment
THOU SHALT NOT AUTOMATE
FOR THE SAKE OF AUTOMATION.
The companies who are most apt to contact us are either mid-way through their implementation or are in the process of trying to rescue a failing project. Our first question to them is:
“Why are you automating?” The responses vary from:
-
“We thought we had to automate.”
-
“All of our competitors are automating.”
-
“We want to make it easier for management to track the business.”
Not that any of these are bad answers – it’s just that they aren’t the best ones. Automation of any type – sales force or otherwise – must be driven by management to achieve certain business goals. If these goals are not well defined and agreed upon by the decision-makers, then the project is already off to a poor start.
Many companies embark on SFA/CRM projects simply because they wanted to deploy laptops, and it seemed to make sense to put something on them that would somehow help the business grow. But SFA is not about deploying laptops. That is merely one of the benefits of an implementation. If the tools, training and support do not make selling easier, if they do not lower the costs of new customer acquisition or old customer retention and sales proliferation, if they do not show some meaningful level of return on investment, then the project will never achieve its goals.
Lesson One: Have a great reason to automate or don’t do it. If you have gotten along without it and have still been successful (and there are plenty of companies who have), then don’t change a
thing.
Wait until you have concurrence among your management team that there are legitimate business reasons and economical benefits for automating. Make sure to get the “Top Ten” reasons for doing so down on paper, and have everyone involved tweak the document so there is a level of buy-in and consensus. This helps to avoid ego clashes later on.
|
Recommended
Resource
For
distance training and one-on-one trouble-shooting, no tool
performs as well as Glance. Users login and watch you walk them
through their applications one step at a time. Easy to use and
affordable. |
|
