I had to call out the cable technician this week because my internet, which has been progressively running slower and slower, reached a point where I couldn’t stand it anymore. He did a wonderful job and did some rewiring inside the house, explaining there was an old splitter that was picking up and sending noise through the lines and messing with the cable signal. After he was finished my internet was just flying compared to what I was used to! He explained that if it ever slows down like that again to call them sooner rather than later and that too often their customers have signal issues and just accept the slower speeds without question, because they don’t know they can have better service. They believe inferior is acceptable.
I think we may adopt inferior as acceptable quite often in our day to day lives because we believe it is easier to accept what we have than spend time trying to figure out what is needed to make it better. I personally catch myself doing it all the time. My husband and I were looking for a new laptop and I found myself looking for one that didn’t have Windows 8 on it because I didn’t want to learn something new. Really? Shame on me! The question we really need to ask ourselves is what do we gain by learning something new? What knowledge will we posses we didn’t previously? How will that knowledge impact our future decisions? How much time will it save us in the future?
CRM software can do a lot of amazing things, but one that people praise over and over after implementation is the visibility into the sales pipeline. Prior to implementing CRM companies often use post sale reports (from their accounting or ERP packages) to make decisions. Post sale reports only show you the customers and orders you won. That’s only half the picture, right? How can you make an educated decision with half the picture? To rectify this problem companies often attempt to capture sales pipeline activity through excel spreadsheets, managed and updated by the sales people. These weekly or monthly “spreadsheet meetings” are dreaded by all and often sales management does not leave that meeting any more informed than they were before they started it.
But….if you have never known any different and if you have become complacent with this inferior sales information collection process how would you know that it is entirely unacceptable? How bad does it have to be before you finally say “Enough!” (and in my case, call the cable guy?)
Visibility into your sales pipeline will provide you with a level of information, that once you have experienced you will not be able to live without! (Think Ipad or Kindle.) You hear the hype and think that everyone is exaggerating the benefits. Then you get one and refuse to leave the room, any room, without yours on or near your person. CRM, when used effectively is just like that. You will wonder why you waited! You would never dream of being without it again, and it will become as necessary to you as your Iphone or personal computer.
CRM is here to stay. Make the leap to better information so you can consistently make the very best, informed decisions. Don’t settle for inferior.
