Robert Statsky

So you’ve evolved as a business to get yourself from the dreaded spreadsheet/list of customers and accounts to an actual CRM system?

Congratulations!

How do you go about doing that?

First you need to ask yourself why “now is the time” to do this?

1. Are you missing deadlines?
2. Is information getting lost?
3. Is the spreadsheet never accurate?
4. Are you operating off old or inaccurate data because multiple people are not keeping it up to date?
5. Do you realize you need this to scale as a business?

I know a lot of these questions are ridiculous and repetitive but you need to really understand if taking the effort to get into a CRM, train the team on it, work the process and make sure the process is followed is going to move the needle.

How will this affect the bottom line and how will it make things better?

I’ve found there is a tipping point of customers/accounts for a business that will require you to start using the CRM.

There are a ton of different CRMs that you can use. I’ve used many, and they all have a number of positives and negatives, but it’s not just about getting the data into the CRM its about identifying what data is most important, and how you’re going to use that new shiny tool once you’ve set things up.

Recently I worked at a company using only spreadsheets to manage their customers. They had around 100 accounts, that they knew of, but their billing and renewal proceses were not great so it wasn’t even clear how many active accounts existed.

It was a bit of a handshake industry too, that was niche and as a result there were a lot of “friends and family” accounts too that were using the platform but not paying, or they were on delayed payments or they were delinquent.

Leadership was doing check-ins still.

There were systems, but each team was using a different one.

The scenario I just described could definitely be helped by using a CRM, but it will not solve all the problems because there are larger systemic issues like:

1. Roles and responsibilities
2. Executive buy-in
3. Employee buy-in
4. Poor process
5. Lack of consequences or rewards

There were no incentive structures to change, no processes, and no consequences for those that didn’t follow the process. It was dysfunctional.

I spent time and effort to get the CRM up and running, the metrics tracked and the analytics in place.

I did not have buy-in from leadership or the team though, so it ended up being a big nothing burger that resulted in a team that still used spreadsheets.

Pick a CRM, setup your CRM, but make sure your company is ready for the change otherwise you’re going to spend time and effort make an improvement that is doomed to fail.