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Sex Education’s Relationship To CRM Success

Well, gotta wonder if THAT headline got your attention! No, this is no joke, and yes, without a key element portrayed in the headline there will continue to be perversions (failures) of CRM implementations that still hover around 50%. Bare, oops, I mean bear, with me as I attempt to paint the picture here.

I recently had the privilege of being the guest on a podcast conducted by Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret, in one of his ongoing Town Hall series of meetings regarding IT CRM Failures. It didn’t take long to reveal that CRM failures extend far beyond the IT department and that they are only one of a host of reasons for CRM failures. What did become clear is that just about everyone in all company departments can be indicted for failure occurring, and yes, even the salespeople themselves who can, and often do, have valid reasons to sabotage an intended CRM implementation as well as the CEO and executive group. Among the give-and-take of questions presented to me, one comment I made especially seemed to create an epiphany for the audience, regarding how to mitigate this highly predictable and risky, as well as costly, condition. Like the pleasurable anticipation of sex, I am here attempting to build up what that one paramount theme is before I reveal it.

The funny thing about all of this, and unfortunately it turns out to be a very very expensive “funny thing” to many companies, is that a significant portion of this predictable and unnecessary occurrence lies in common sense, or rather, the lack of it. Further, it is also something that everyone has gone through and understands the full benefit of for the livelihood that each of us has carved out for ourselves to improve our odds of success, however that may be defined by you, and to eliminate or at least significantly reduce the risk of failure. Isn’t that what life’s experiences are to us - a composite and aggregate of lessons learned in order to apply them elsewhere to continue on the march of progress both personally and professionally?

Historically, the “three amigos” of sales, marketing, and customer support represented the entire universe of CRM users. Conflicts aside from what each of them wants and needs, themselves contributing to the high failure rate of CRM implementations, is the additional fact that often none of these has full representation in the selection, design, strategy, and implementation of the very system intended to improve their efforts as it relates to servicing customers better. But I digress here.

Hard as it is (no pun intended) to encapsulate in one sentence the essence of the struggle of life, much less business, less further still specific to CRM failures, it is nonetheless possible to do so conceptionally. It is this - there ain’t no free lunch. Applying this to CRM implementations and adoption expectations, it means that there are no shortcuts, which unfortunately, as I am attempting to lead up to, happen all the time, right before our very eyes but about which we are blind to.

Okay, so getting back to the aforementioned podcast and the primary theme of my argument, let me move toward finally identifying in the most blunt, descriptive, and stark effort possible the reason that CRM adoption rate and success is so low not just within the ranks of the three amigos, but ultimately more destructively to the entire organization itself and is directly attributable to it as well as any outside consultants brought in to “manage” the project and implementation. Yeah, I wasn’t going to forget them either and their own part in this fiasco of continued failure. So, let me first ask of you - do you have kids (no, I’ve not just had an amnesiac moment)? Maybe to even be more provocative here in order to hit you upside the face in order to get your attention, do you have teenage daughters (not that sons are less important, but you’ll better understand the image being built here in a moment)? Well, imagine you do even if you don’t. Having now established this backdrop, and connecting it to the headline of this blog, there remains one last prop to introduce you to so that you’ll get the point in the most profound fashion. The prop is training. That’s right, training…in juxtaposition with education more importantly. Aren’t they essentially the same? Hell no, to be blunt.

It is, of course, assumed that at the point of preparation to embark on the three amigo’s usage of the CRM system that they will be trained on the functional elements of the system, and probably what is also expected to be put into it by them for maximum benefit. Okay, fine in itself, but certainly not complete, and in fact not even close. Here are a few items of downside to thinking that training is sufficient:

• Training is often a one-time event. Against the complexity with which most CRM systems are designed, navigational imperfections and all, this is ludicrous.

• Training does not typically include any strategic element(s) to its importance.

• Training, in the context of a CRM implementation, typically does not include any group outside of the three amigos, yet the entire organization is supposed to derive benefit from it in one fashion or another and at the very least has positive expectations from its use within the company. Worse still, it typically doesn’t include the very highest executives, including the CEO, either. Yet who doesn’t have a set of contacts to manage (and I am not assuming that they would all need to be “managed” the same)? The symbolism of the importance of the CRM system throughout the entire organization as evidenced by these additional users and user groups actually using the CRM system themselves is key to its success but itself requires what I am leading up to and about to reveal.

In comparison, education is an on-going event, constantly reinforced, serving to provide both a holistic and strategic dimension to its subjects importance in order to provide greater knowledge and understanding thereby better equipping all to perform better throughout their careers, thus producing the intended value anticipated and expected. This is what I alluded to initially regarding what we have all gone through in our lives to prepare us to have the jobs that we have, or want. Further, education applies to every employee of the company, which should be shared interdepartmentally, serving to reinforce the commitment, importance, and investment being made to the benefit of each and every employee throughout the entire company whether it be directly or indirectly. How often have you heard of an ongoing series of educational courses occurring not just at the point of CRM system readiness to the three amigos but preceding it from the very beginning at selection and continuing with increasing focus and purpose throughout the design, redesign, testing, and pilot phases as well as post-implementation customized to each and every corporate group and what it will mean to them and how to exploit it, customized to their aspect of it of course? It doesn’t, and it should. It’s as simple as that. Simple often is the most profound, as is the case here. But when it comes to CRM implementations, complex seems to usually win out - “win” being an oxymoron given its 50-50 risk of failure that has long existed.

And so, here is the picture I painted on that podcast on the importance of education which we’ve established doesn’t take place compared to training where it comes to CRM systems thus contributing to its high failure rate and to which I have been - hopefully - building climax toward: which would you rather have for your teenage daughter - sexual education or sexual training? Now can you see the difference between mere CRM training to the three amigos  and corporate-wide CRM ongoing education to produce the desired result that training is intended to provide?

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Streetwise Views. The entry is tagged under You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.