Five things boss should do for Successful CRM implementation

The success of your CRM Implementation depends on many factors. But, as a Boss, what should you do to make a Successful CRM Implementation.

I have often heard this from the bosses and team leaders, especially in SME segment “My business runs on auto mode, I don’t look after regular day to day things”. This same person then received 30 calls and 45emails per day which are about regular and routine matters.

They feel that they will GIFT CRM to their staff and their staff will implement the CRM, and everything will run smoothly after that. It’s a good Cinderella kind of idea to live in. We all need to stop dreaming. Let’s face the truth.

Implementing CRM is a cultural change and Boss is the most important part of the change.

Unless your company is a very matured organisation with managers and individual profit centres, your business is not in auto mode. Here is a quick test, your business is not in auto mode if you

1. Do meeting your clients.
2. Get calls from your clients regarding support issues and sales Enquiries.
3. Take regular reports from your team in the review meetings.
4. Are responsible for the P and L of your business.

So, if you are doing all or any of above and if you decide to implement CRM in your organisation, then you need to play some very vital and essential role in the implementation process. You need to drive it correctly from the top.

CRM can only alert and hint you with the problems, but if you don’t monitor it you cant manage it

So here are three things bosses should do for a successful CRM implementation.

Practice before you preach.

Your staff might not do what you tell them to do, but they definitely do what you do. So if you don’t use CRM, if you don’t log meetings, you don’t log Calls, you don’t follow up with your meetings and complete your tasks, how can you expect your team to be using CRM to do all these things.

There is one more perspective to this, you are probably the most critical person in your organisation, and the people with whom you talk and meet are also the most important people in your client’s team. If your activities are not logged, do you think CRM will give a complete picture? Definitely, not.

How can CRM give 360 degree view of customer, without activities done by most senior persons in the organisation.

Spend 20 minutes daily on CRM Dashboard

One of the reasons why your team is not using CRM correctly because they know that their boss is never going to look into the CRM. But if you spend 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes towards the end of the day to figure out what your team has done and what has been missed, it can almost guarantee the successful CRM implementation.

Further, if you are looking at CRM on a daily basis, you will get to know delays and misses much before things get worst. Example if sales follow-ups are being missed, or support tickets are overdue, you can understand that before your customer complaints. Knowing problems in advance can help you to resolve them in advance. Please understand that success of CRM implementation largely depends on how much time you, as a boss, spend on the CRM.

One of the signs of successful customer-oriented organisations is that boss gets bad news from inside and not from customers.

Base all your review meetings on CRM reports

You have implemented CRM, and if still your review meetings are done using spreadsheets or printed or verbal statements then there is some drastically wrong. When you don’t feel that CRM data is reliable, how can you employees think that way?

Jack Welch said, “In God we trust, all others, please bring data”. Similarly, if you implement a policy that whatever does not exist in CRM, does not exist in this world. E.g., your sales manager says there is a two million dollar funnel, how can you believe him without seeing proper CRM report. There should be appropriate opportunities and deals, and there should be proper work done on them. If that is absent, then it merely means that the sales manager is bluffing.

If you are still conducting your review meetings on the basis of spreadsheet, your CRM can never be fully successful.

Know the strength and weakness of your organisation

Many times Bosses think that CRM is the panacea for every kind of problem. If there are reporting issues in your organisation how can CRM help? If your sales team is adamant and does not want to report, how can CRM make them report? It’s only a tool, after all.

The best way is to understand the appetite of your organisation for processes and technologies and then deploy them. Only planning a great process in an air-conditioned cabin will not get it implemented. There has to be detailed training, orientation, monitoring and correction process behind that.

Train yourself and your team 

Most of the SME organisations (specifically those engaged in IT business) ignore this. They think they are using Whatsapp and Facebook so they can use any other application. But the big difference between Whatsapp and Facebook and your CRM is that your CRM is the culture of your company, Whatsapp is not.

Your CRM is designed to work according to your business, and your business has to work according to your CRM strategy. Success of your CRM implementation largely depends on the Training of you and your team.

Biggest mistakes many companies do is they Train one person, who is generally the newest person in the team and expect him or her to teach everyone. Just imagine a new intern or trainee who has joined your organisation, can she even speak to your senior salespeople. Will your managers and elder staff even listen to her?

CRM Implementation cannot be successful without regular Training, Monitoring and improvisations.

How can Enjay Help?

We can help you with proper guidance, consultancy, planning and deployment of CRM solutions. Making your CRM implementation successful is our only purpose. We also provide practical CRM Training, which is online as well as on site.