WIIFM (What’s In It for Me?)
It’s been a while, but here I am, taking my own CRM journey full circle. I wrote my first blog for SugarCRM five years ago and here I am, at it again. My perspective now is more focused, taking cues from front line experience and watching companies work to make sense of the sea change happening in the business world. As an industry, and as a discipline, we have made significant progress. We are not arguing about definitions and are much more focused as a practice (CRM practice, to be clear).
The historical perspective—the one where users of the system considered CRM only a management vehicle to watch, control, and measure their performance— is not yet eradicated. But dare I say this is no longer the majority viewpoint either. Empowering the individual user will always likely be a work in progress, but since I have hung my hat at the front door of SugarCRM, significant progress has been made.
From the individual contributor to the senior executive team, organizations have come to realize what a well-tuned CRM engine can do for their business, especially if we understand the needs of the user. Driving success is about answering the $64,000 question, “What’s in it for me?” The overall success of any CRM initiative can increase simply by answering that simple question. Know what you are asking your teams to do every hour of every day and ask how can you help them to do it better!
So…“What’s in it for me?”
The Sales Perspective: Ask a sales person what they think about CRM systems and the answer might be less than positive. But, whose issue is this, really? In the realm of carrot and stick, too much stick does not get the job done.
When we discuss the part of CRM that is used to drive sales, track leads and opportunities, as well as manage contacts, we often forget to include the discussion about helping the sales team close the deal. Many might argue that ‘closing the deal’ should be a non-event. If value to the business and the end users is clear, then signing a piece of paper is just one step in the process. Actually, by then, it should be the easy part. What we need to focus on is helping everyone to derive the value from the system that each user wants.
The Management Perspective: In answering the question “what’s in it for me?” we can’t forget management, as they too are individuals that are looking to extract personal value from a CRM initiative. The senior management team within all organizations does have the right to track progress, is that so wrong? The VP of Sales does have the right to understand how his or her sales team is using a system and how often reps connect or interact with customers or prospective customers. Finance has to plan the course of business, cash flow and production, staffing and other important business metrics. The marketing and demand teams need to know if their programs are designed correctly. In short, management is not the enemy.
The Customer Perspective: My lessons from the field during the past few years suggest that the cultural changes happening now are much more complex than the technological changes. Spend time actively listening to your customers and reward your sales teams who spend this time engaging and listening as well. Individual users of the system will very quickly see the benefits of a system that brings context to their discussions, and provides efficient means to share customer information. The conversation between the management team and sales teams should focus on the customer, not system tasks and made up numbers.
So, how can you start answering the “what’s in it for me?” question on a company-wide basis during a CRM implementation? A great start is to engage your teams and include them in the entire CRM deployment process and have a fundamental understanding of what they need. Your goal should be to align your organization around the needs of your customers. If your team, especially those on the front lines, believes you are an ally, in the trenches with them, the question “what’s in it for me?” will rarely ever need to be asked.