I just completed the end of another quarter and was running through an analysis of the projects that we successfully acquired and those that went some other direction.  I also thought about the discussions in the board room recently and the reasons people are telling me they "need CRM" or need to change the implementation they already have.

First, let's critique my own efforts...  Nice wins from very strategic customers.  Did those customers buy based on product specifications? No.  Did those customers buy based on a lower price? No.  Did those customers buy because of the promise for lower consulting rates or time to complete the project? No. Well then why in the world did we win?  I will address this at the end of this article.

I am not sure if any of you have ever seen the movie Sliding Doors where you get to see what happens to the same person based on one single event of either boarding/not boarding a train and the results that come out of it.  I am going to attempt to recreate that here with one of the sales processes just completed.

In the first scenario we are going to look at the approach a sales person would take if he looked at this sale driven by an internal CRM sales process assuming a complex technology sale.  Initially, this sales person would need to find the decision makers and establish a budget.  The system would then tell the rep to define the pain points and create documentation and a budget letter explaining the issues and the financial impacts of addressing those issues with a solution (preferably his/hers).

Checking off yet another box when a demonstration has been scheduled the system is telling me the rep that the revenue is projected at 60%.  Continuing on down the yellow brick road leads to a proposal following the demonstration, 80%, almost home.  A few tweaks to the contract and some revisions to the proposal and a little more negotiation and the Opportunity is won (or it may go the other way based on many, many factors).

That in essence is how most CRM technologies are built and being asked to present this type of solution to my customers five years ago was run of the mill and discussed almost every day of the week.  Now let’s walk through the same deal using CRM as a competitive weapon.

The sales person gets the lead and instantly looks up the company which is already in his system.  An Opportunity is established and then the first thing the rep does is to look at all associated contacts and accounts (this includes the prospective companies vendors, competitors and consultants) to see if he or she knows anyone with any more insight into this account.

The sales rep skips past the budget field in the CRM tool and moves on to schedule meetings with two or three people that know something about this account.  The rep is also able to understand what type of projects have been completed for this specific type of company and learn more from his own team members.

After a few meetings and collecting more data the rep asks to meet with senior people to confirm the issues documented to date.  By the time an RFP is created and sent out to various vendors the representative is already in visionary discussions with multiple decision makers in the firm.  Because competitors and strategies for those competitors are tied to the opportunity new intelligence from any other sales team member is readily available.

When presentations and proposals are completed the solution is an afterthought because the “sale” has really become about the people involved in helping the prospective customer reach their goals and not the product stack being proposed.

The CRM system is ultimately updated with all of the same information and if you looked at the same opportunity two years down the road you would not see any difference.  But, in reality, there is a real difference.  In one instance a company is improving performance and execution by using the technology a centralized management tool for all deals and the first company is using CRM in a much more “technical” way according to how the system is configured.

Jumping back to the beginning of the article of why my customers chose me last month…it’s because they want their sales teams to be dynamic and have the flexibility to sell more effectively.  They want a person’s life to be better the day they start using CRM than their lives before CRM.  Lastly, they have systems that leverage people and their knowledge rather than systems that turn their people into data entry experts.

So if you want to know if your CRM is making your people a commodity ask yourself how many deals you won last month because of your process and how many deals you brought it because of your people…that will tell you what type of solution you have implemented.