How I Became a CRM Convert

I remember the day my CRM journey began in earnest, over a decade ago. I was leading a large sales team for a major media company and participating in a senior leadership meeting in New York. A peer and I had been visiting sales offices and one thing was clear: our CRM software was “broken”. Users – primarily Account Executives and Local Sales Managers – complained loudly and often. Too many clicks, too much downtime, inaccurate sales pipeline, account duplications, and on and on. We shared the feedback from the field in the leadership meeting - quite passionately as I recall – expecting our Operations people

to jump in and fix the problem. But in a split second, our boss declared that my peer and I would now serve as CRM Sales Ambassadors for the company, and we were charged with fixing the problem.

That fateful meeting sparked what would become a love/hate relationship between me and CRM. Over the course of the next 10+ years, my exposure and knowledge of CRM solutions would grow, as would my frustrations. As CRM Sales Ambassador, I navigated my way forward leading multiple cross-functional task forces, documenting our sales processes, executing a CRM software upgrade and an eventual swap of the CRM platform serving over 1,000 geographically distributed users. All this while doing my “day job”. Throughout the process, I came to realize and appreciate the value CRM delivered when executed right, including:

• a repository of customer data and the ability for multiple people collaborate on an account,

• the ability to support customer segmentation and drive consistent processes by segment,

• a “single source of truth” on sales activity and KPIs,

• a platform of record for territory management, and

• a transparent portal into the sales pipeline.

This experience laid the groundwork for the moment I truly became a CRM convert while serving as CRO during Covid. Like virtually all media companies, our sales engine ground to a complete halt during the early months of Covid. Every metric we used to evaluate sales activity became defunct. Yet we had this large, geographically distributed sales force of 1,800+ sales and support specialists that we needed to keep intact and engaged for the moment when business began turning around.

That’s when our CRM solution came to the rescue. We simplified our KPIs and began tracking customer engagements; basically, any outreach sales reps would make towards customers to check in and stay engaged. We established a minimum number of customer engagements tracked in our CRM weekly and guaranteed a minimum level of commission payouts to sales reps who met the expectation. As CRO, I was able to show how customer contact actually increased during Covid, providing valuable data to justify the company’s investment in commission subsidies. And when Covid restrictions began lifting later in the year, our sales staff was primarily intact and thoroughly engaged -- ready to start doing business as things began to normalize.

In my current role at Next Media Partners LLC, I talk with many leaders in the media space who believe they’re not extracting sufficient value from their investment in CRM software. It’s a common problem, and one that’s as much about culture as it is about technology. Below are three examples of where culture can impact effective CRM engagement.

• Siloed Departments: In large organizations, different departments often operate in silos, with limited communication and collaboration between them. This fragmentation can lead to inconsistent data entry, disjointed customer interactions, and a lack of a unified strategy for leveraging the CRM system. As a result, the full potential of CRM data in enhancing customer relationships and driving business decisions is not realized.

• Resistance to Change: Employees in large organizations may be resistant to adopting new technologies or processes, including CRM systems. This resistance can stem from a comfort with existing workflows, fear of increased accountability, or a lack of understanding of the CRM’s benefits. If the CRM is not embraced across the organization, its usage may be limited, leading to underutilization and failure to achieve the intended business outcomes.

• Lack of a Customer-Centric Culture: For a CRM system to be effective, the organization needs to have a customer-centric culture where all decisions and actions are driven by a commitment to improving customer relationships. In large organizations, the focus may sometimes shift to internal processes, profitability, or operational efficiency rather than prioritizing customer needs. Without a strong emphasis on the customer, the CRM system may be seen as just another tool rather than a central component of the business strategy, resulting in missed opportunities to leverage its full value. As illustrated above, I was able to turn an extremely challenging situation into an opportunity to make our organization hyper customer-centric during the Covid pandemic shut down.

Improving the value a business extracts from its CRM investment is one area where I’m most confident my partners and me at NMP can help, ideally creating fellow CRM coverts along the way. Simply reach out; we’re happy to share our experience.