This collaboration helps professionals to mine data, build client service teams, and create more compelling sales presentations. But, how do I collaborate? Before you can answer these questions, you need to examine how people work.
How do they work? Most likely, both your professionals and salespeople spend most of their time using office automation/desktop tools such as MS-Outlook, MS-Word, MS-Excel, and MS-PowerPoint. After all, these professionals are in the business of communicating and building documents. Now, management decides that the firm needs to share information and monitor customer and pipeline data and asks sales and client service professionals to jump to another console to input numbers. This approach will not work—
there will be resistance. In a call center environment, you can configure a CRM tool, such as Siebel, so that the call center sales professionals can do all of their work within that system. But, if you work for FTI, an advertising firm, a law firm, or any other professional services firm, you will be hard pressed to get your professionals to jump from Outlook or PowerPoint to another console. They just won’t go there.
So, what is the solution? There is no simple answer; however, there are some guidelines and tips that you can follow. The decision about what technology you need is driven by complexity. Access is the first and most critical layer, and after that comes sharing. Dependent on the size of your sales organization, your sales process, and your go-to-market touchpoints, your technology needs will be different. When your firm is small, collaborating will be relatively easy. You can simply share information via meetings and simple e-mails saying, “Has anybody got . . . ?” or “Does anybody know . . . ?” As your firm grows and you have multiple client access points, you will want to evaluate an Application Service Provider (ASP) hosted solution, such as Microsoft CRM or Salesforce.com. These solutions interface with MS-Outlook, so your sales professionals can continue to work primarily within the e-mail system. However, as your firm grows even bigger, you will want to consider working with an outside consultant to implement a CRM tool. Implementing a complex technology solution often sparks a firmwide culture war—after all, technology changes the way people work and impacts the very nature of the way you conduct business. To navigate this tension and this process, it is helpful to have a customer relationship expert at your side.
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Sales Management
117
As you move across the technology terrain, remember that technology
alone does not equate to an increase in productivity. In a paper published in 2003 titled, “The Measurement of Firm-Specific Organizational Capital,”15
researchers found that investments in organizational capital accounted, on average, for 71 percent of sales growth across the 250 companies they researched. The report found that organizational capital is driven by how information is communicated and coordinated and that technology can enhance this process. For technology to show results, it must be integrated into your firm and its work processes. The company has to value it, and the professionals must be willing to use it.
The decision as to what technology to implement is specific to your firm.
At FTI, we are implementing a CRM tool that will integrate with our accounting system. As long as your system is maintaining your data, is simple to use, and can be accessed and mined to meet your reporting, management, coaching, and prospecting needs, it is sufficient. The various process documents, activity modeling, and pipeline tools discussed in this chapter were developed using Microsoft Excel in conjunction with contact management software. As your firm grows, you will likely find that your technology needs will grow as well. The key point to remember, however, is that you must have a defined sales process before you implement a contact management or CRM
technology solution.
Our philosophy of integrating technology within your organization is similar to the philosophy associated with sales tracking. If your technology is used for tracking time or as a control tool, it won’t work. For a technology implementation to succeed, it must:
• Have value for its users, the sales and client service professionals.
• Be integrated with the firm’s unique sales process.
• Achieve buy-in. Those who are expected to use it must be both willing to use it and be held accountable for using it.
Summary
Right now, you are contemplating something new, a sales organization in a professional services firm, and you might be tempted to go with the more orthodox, traditional approaches in professional services sales. As you read this chapter, perhaps something intrigued you or resonated with you. Now the
“something new” feels possible, and perhaps achievable. But, as with all new challenges, peering over the edge is likely to bring you a feeling of anxiety.
You might be thinking about turning back. For inspiration, I suggest this excerpt from the book True Success, by Tom Morris:16
Have you ever watched bungee jumping? You know people screaming like maniacs, or praying like crazy, leap off high bridges over rivers attached by a long elastic
118
The Front Office: Driving Sales and Growth
cord tied around their ankles. They f ly through the air like acrobatic suicides, and then at the last second before contact with earth or water, are snatched back to security by the cord. Since not everyone lives near a tall bridge over a deep gorge, the bungee jumping companies began bringing large cranes into parking lots to lift adventurous souls on metal platforms high above asphalt for the daring dive.
For $60 or so you can line up and get on the platform. It is very interesting to watch, especially the first timers. You can see on their faces the transition from bold to tentative to terrified. Hoisted up into the air peering over the edge of their little perch, these folks confronted something the likes of which they had never done before. Most froze. But the bungee pros, the operators, were ready. A companion on the platform spoke reassuring words of encouragement, a little pep talk. A guy with a mike blasted, “three, two, one, bungee.”
And on the count most people jumped. But some stood there with jelly legs, shaking and trembling and thinking this might not be such a good idea after all, willing now to offer twice the admission to get back to solid ground the slow, safe way. But their platform coach said, “hey, you can do this, you’ll be fine, it will feel great, just do it.” And the crowd is yelling, “jump, jump, jump.” And the announcer, “three, two, one, bungee,” and with a roar from the crowd below, the novice dives. Some took three countdowns, nonstop pep talks, and lots of cheer-ing. But they all jump.