Tips for Making CRM a Lasting Strategy

All lasting change in CRM strategies starts and ends with changing how people work. Here are some tips for making sure the initial change to a CRM strategy continues to deliver results over time:

1. Create incentives to get people using sales force automation and CRM systems.
2. Define clear goals that are easily tracked and viewed by sales, call center and service representatives to minimize the level of confusion over roles and results.
3. Foster competition by making individual and group performance visible inside the company. This is a great motivator for call centers to get their quality levels up for example, and works great for motivating an outbound sales force.
4. Make sure the VPs and C-level executives are using these tools too. This is a big part of getting customer-facing strategies to "stick" within a company - get the top level managers working with the tools as often as possible so these senior level executives know the strengths, weaknesses, but most importantly - the data inside the system and what's going on with accounts.
5. Realize the just re-vamping processes is not enough, layering technology in is a competitive weapon. There are thousands of companies that work to resolve process breakdowns in their customer-facing strategies, yet very few are really going after the competitive weapon of streamlining their sales force automation, call center, service, order capture, and order management applications. You can be one of those companies - make the commitment to make these strategies a competitive weapon.
6. Publish wins based on these strategies widely throughout the company. Tie back exceptional individual performance and achievement to these systems to get lasting change. What you want to do is grow a "champion" for these systems internally and make sure the change is lasting based on the contributions and resulting rewards.

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