Without rehashing the entire history of Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management, it's interesting to note that the CRM movement seems to be going back to a closer association with its roots. Indeed, SFA is appearing in industry literature and company marketing materials more lately.

Remember those black vinyl business card files that were filled with clear pages of pockets that held business cards three high and two across? They seemed to proliferate overnight and finally made it possible to organize one's most frequently called contacts. Still, it was not unusual to find a stack of business cards an inch or more thick with a rubber band around them in the drawer of a rep's desk.

Contact management came first and has been the most enduring part of the effort to introduce technology to sales. Often referred to as an "electronic Rolodex," contact management became every sales rep's best friend. That nifty Palm or other PDA that now has all your contacts, calendar, and memos, was made possible by contact management.
Depending how long you've been goofing with this stuff, you may remember Sidekick, which had a word processor (based on WordStar) and contact database. DOS-based ACT! and Telemagic came on the scene and suddenly you didn't have to be a programmer to get names in one file to populate a form letter or fax cover sheet. All you needed was a contact manager.
Calendars became automated and allowed a person to schedule appointments, to do's, calls, etc.-even be reminded when they were due. Again, all the contact info was provided and organized like magic. SFA was launched.

SFA PAVES THE WAY TO CRM

The knock on ACT! was that it didn't share information easily, so GoldMine came along, based on a workgroup paradigm. Then came the Windows versions of these programs, and things really took off. Companies were born, prospered, and went public (or didn't) before they withered and faded with new entries into the space. More features were added as quickly as developers could think them up. Every vendor had at least a major release and a "dot release" each year.
Sales and Marketing have always had a kind of tug-of-war relationship. Technology didn't solve this but did allow it to be played out in new and exciting ways. Leads could be "pushed" to sales reps and later to "the channel"-be it direct or indirect. Brochures, price lists, and other product and company collateral could be placed in a Marketing Encyclopedia or information center. Sales and Marketing trying to leverage technology was termed the second or third-depending on who was counting-generation of SFA.

At the other end of the pipeline, technology was being applied to customer help desks, call centers, service, and support. Keeping track of customers, maintaining service level agreements, and generally trying to fulfill whatever had been agreed to in the sales contract became its own market for technology applications.

Someone got the bright idea of hooking up the front of the pipe (Sales & Marketing) with the back end of the pipe (Service & Support), and CRM was born. If Al Gore invented the Internet, Tom Siebel invented CRM. If any one person had more to do with the growth, proliferation and mainstreaming of CRM than Siebel, I don't know who that would be. He created a marketing machine and developed the muscle to power it.

Though it had been building on the foundation outlined above for a decade, suddenly CRM was happening. Big Five consulting firms and Little Thousands of others had CRM practices. Money and energy were pouring into the industry. Along came the Internet/dot.com bubble and you could just double down on the bets-and double down again.

Then, as must always happen, the bubble burst, gravity reasserted itself, and the party was over.

CRM USAGE-LESS IS MORE

There are two reasons for recounting (my version of) the history of CRM. First, because this is a primer, and that suggests some basic building blocks of information. Second, because the seed that was the genesis for all that followed is still struggling to break through, blossom, and contribute-Sales.

Basic Truth #1: For all the hype and resource that's been lavished on CRM, ninety percent of implementations are basically doing contact management. This isn't a scientific fact and there certainly are shining examples where companies have gone on to do far more, but the average implementation is doing far less.

Basic Truth #2: While developers, consultants, and system integrators, industry analysts and investment bankers were hyping the latest, greatest NEW! thing that CRM could do, end users had one simple mantra: Don't give us more features, just make the features we use easier.
The analogy that comes to mind is a high jumper unable to clear 5 feet 8 inches, so the bar is moved up to see if he can clear 6 feet even. Let's see, end users are using less than 15% of the functionality in the applications they've bought, so let's add a bunch more features!

Basic Truth #3: Sales have gotten far tougher, buyers are spending only on musts (not "nice to have's" or even wants), and the level of effort to go from contact to contract is four or five times as great as it was a year ago.

Like gravity, common sense is reasserting itself once more. With the dot-bomb implosion, the September 11th atrocity, and a struggling economy, the things that matter are generating revenues to the top line (sales) and hanging on to some percentage of these at the bottom line (profits).

Like those vinyl business card holders that were immediately helpful in organizing contacts, there are terrific technologies that are simple, powerful, and essential to doing more with less, faster.

Figure out what you're doing that's working and what's not working. This is the stuff of process, and the things that are working are recipes you want to replicate. With these in mind, look for appropriate-and basic-tools that will support this replication effort or remove barriers to it.

FOCUS ON PROBLEM, PROCESS, AND METRICS

Patrick Bultema, long-time CRM industry expert and now CEO at FrontRange Solutions, says there are three reasons CRM has not fulfilled its potential: 1) companies underestimate the work involved with cultural change; 2) lack of process; and 3) lack of analytics. All three are important to your success.

First, identify a problem to solve. In today's business environment companies are not spending money on "nice to have's." Your project must eliminate a genuine pain (i.e., critical and costly business issue) or it won't see the light of day once the money people review it.

Even when the pain is real, there will still be resistance to change. Implementation always takes longer than folks expect, and as a result, people will begin to resist: "Tell me again, why are we doing this?" Identify supporters and detractors early and have a plan to deal with each of them. Know the full cost of not addressing this issue, be clear on what the better future (with the pain solved) will look like, and outline the first steps to get you going.

Second, an axiom first stated during the quality movement is: Don't give me a program, give me a process. Too many SFA/CRM programs are launched with kickoff meetings, high hopes, and bold statements about "how good things are going to be when implementation is completed."
Enthusiasm is great, but you must focus on process. How are things being done today; how effective is the particular process you're focusing upon; how is it being changed?

Third, measure and report what you find. A process is better than a program, but process improvement is what you're after. The fancy name is "analytics" but the simple name is "measures," as in, what gets measured gets managed. And the only way you can tell if you solved the original pain and what further improvement is possible, is if you have a consistent set of measures.

Ending Sales and Marketing's tug-of-war and getting Service and Support to automatically accept what's sent to them are bigger cultural problems than you want or have time/budget to solve right now. Get tactical. Nail a process and measure your execution of it. Then figure out how to improve it and continue to measure your performance (that's how you know it's improving).

Whether you call it SFA, CRM, fourth, fifth or simply next generation, what matters most is clear focus, sound tactics, and great execution. In addressing these items now, you may also find you're much closer to "full blown CRM" implementation later.

Barry Trailer has consulted with companies with complex B2B sales for the past twenty years. He spent nearly nine years with Miller-Heiman, consulted throughout the 90's in sales process, and with his partners started a software company that was acquired by FrontRange Solutions (formerly GoldMine Software Corporation). With FrontRange he served as VP of North American Sales, VP of Corporate Initiatives, and President of the GoldMine Division. He is now founder and president of Sales Mastery, Inc., independent sales consulting firm based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. For more information please visit www.salesmastery.com.
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