Gonzalo Vergara by Garza grande (Ardea alba egretta) | CC BY 2.0
Every large company has a Content Management System (CMS) and/or Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). Companies like Salesforce, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft have long been promoting the need for these formerly on-premise and now cloud-based systems. And businesses have bought into the need, rolling out these solutions aggressively.
While members of a company’s management and IT teams often find success in these solutions, there is an important population that is not satisfied—the field sales reps who have to use them every day.
Ask any sales rep what they think of their CRM or CMS, and 90% of the time they will respond with a face that looks like they just did a shot of bottom-shelf tequila. The reason is that many sales reps feel as though these systems are a necessary evil. They do not think these systems make it easier to achieve their personal and professional goals—i.e. make more money by being more efficient.
On the other hand, ask IT what they think of their CRM or CMS, and they will usually respond with something like, “it works great.” However, there is a difference between a system that “works” and a system that is “easy” for the people that actually use it. For IT, a CMS is simply about storing content and making it available to those who need access to it. For sales execs, a CRM is an effective way to manage the productivity of their sales force, as it allows them to track and report on productivity and easily identify gaps.
The Big M
The problem these solutions have in common is that they are heavy on the “M” (Management) and light on the last mile of engagement with end users—i.e. sales reps. Come to think of it, the acronyms would be more accurately written as cMs and crM.
As a result, the advocates of the field—sales reps, field marketing, executives—are looking outside of the M-heavy IT provided solutions for something that can better support their revenue objectives. They want something that the sales reps want to use—rather than something they are forced to use. What these sales reps want is a solution that helps them improve their processes and interactions, makes them more efficient, and in turn leads to more sales.
But they also want to leverage their individuality. This is not an effort in replacing the sales rep with automation. What they want is the ability to better engage the customer in face-to-face meetings. At the same time, customers want to cover their needs and objectives when they are meeting with vendors all at once. They don’t want to have to set up additional meetings with a specialist, or wait until “we get to that on slide 20…”.
An ideal solution for sales reps provides access to the latest information and pushes that information to their laptop, tablet, or smartphone without much work. They want content to be easy to navigate, and they want it to be dynamic, allowing them to engage with a customer in a way that helps them have a better conversation.
Sales reps want to spend less time preparing for meetings. For a 1-hour meeting, reps typically spend 2-3 hours searching their CMS portal for content, asking colleagues for input over email, chatter, Jive, etc. and finally putting their own content into a long slide deck for that meeting. Multiply this by a few meetings a week and they are forced to work at night and on weekends, instead of connecting with family or giving themselves a break so they can be more productive the next day.
Implementing sales transformation coupled with new information enablement solutions benefits everyone in the company’s ecosystem. When sales reps can confidently prepare for a typical meeting in under 1 hour and easily cover anything that comes up along the way, they have more time to spend on selling.
Marketing benefits by being able to push new messages to the field faster and more reliably. They can also enable more dynamic conversations that are not possible with static PowerPoint presentations. Marketing doesn’t need to conduct countless trainings to convince sales reps to download and use their content. Marketing can put content into the hands of sales reps instantly. Assuming the message helps drive sales, the effect is rapid, organic adoption.
The last beneficiary is the customer who can now have a very specific conversation about their challenges, needs and opportunities, instead of the one that the sales rep was prepared to have. The customer can ask questions about new products and services and get intelligent feedback from their sales rep in a way that is educational and engaging.
What has your organization done to decrease the size of the M in your CMS and CRM?
Carson Conant is the CEO and Founder of Mediafly, Inc. Inspired by the efficiencies created by leading Software as a Services companies, Carson led Mediafly to pioneer the mobile generation’s version of SaaS solutions: Mobile Apps as a Service (MAaaS), which is now embraced by some of the world’s most respected companies. When Carson is not traveling to be with customers, prospects, sales teams, and shareholders, he lives in Chicago with his beautiful wife and two rambunctious children.
Comments are closed.