There is a general consensus that today's CRM business system implementations are technically successful, but fail to deliver their expected business value. This is not surprising as the business value is predicated upon a defined change in behavior of the sales force. The real effort to achieve this change does not commence until after the technical implementation of the CRM business system has occurred (i.e., gone live) and all the project technical and project management experts have gone home. This leaves the responsibility for achieving this change adoption solely in the hands of the sales organization. This is a daunting task, one which they were generally neither expecting nor prepared for. Consequently, to realize the business value of their CRM business system implementation, sales executives must engage, prepare their organization, and lead it through the successful change in behavior that will enable this value. The fundamental messages for sales executives in this book are: 1."If you want to achieve the value, then engage!" 2.The hard work starts after your CRM implementation goes live, and the responsibility for adoption success rests solely within your sales organization. 3.If you can't measure the change in the new requisite behavior, you will not achieve the ultimate benefits of your CRM business system. The focus of this book is on assisting sales executives in achieving this essential change adoption. To be successful this change must be defined and implemented within a broader business context to ensure that the necessary supporting events, within a change program, have occurred that can position change for success. This book describes both the required elements of this broader context, and the behavior change adoption effort, within a change program, as seen from the perspective of the sales executive. Tracking this successful change adoption is critical to realizing the envisioned business value. The challenge for sales executives is to have the measurements in place to give them the visibility that the required change efforts are creating the desired impact on adoption of the new business process. Full adoption by all participants in the sales business process enables the specific value that the sales executives identified and further assists them to meet their goals for the CRM business system. Once adoption takes hold, executive management should insist on measuring the overall performance of their sales process on-going to ensure that it is delivering their expected business value. In summary, achieving the adoption of the change imposed by a new CRM business system falls solely on the sales organization. To be successful, sales executives must engage to set the goals, the direction, and create the change environment in which all sales users will adopt the new sales behavior. The sales executives must also insist that the critical change in behavior is tracked and managed as it enables their expected business value. This book describes an approach to do so.
About the Author: Dean Sharratt is a successful management consultant and sales professional focusing on assisting business organizations to improve the effectiveness of their sales function. Out of his experience and research came a focus on better understanding what contributes to successful adoption of change in sales business processes. This led to Dean writing this book. Dean's relevant experience includes: - Past 10 years focused on sales business process implementation/improvement, sales reporting and dashboards, sales methodologies and techniques, CRM selection, Salesforce.com implementation/evolution, and implementing organizational change; - Prior to that many years of significant successful experience in direct sales of large, complex solutions, and in managing an IT services consulting business.