I was listening to a pod cast by Dave Mattson CEO of Sandler Sales Training about best practices in sales and implementing CRMs. Seeing that I am a Salesforce CRM Consultant the topic piqued my interest. Dave spoke about a converstation he had with a CEO about whether he should implement a CRM first or do Sandler Sales Training & implement a sales process first. There were many pros and cons going either way. The CEO decided to do the Salesforce CRM first. Not the answer he was hoping for, but Dave pivoted.

Dave agreed then said now that it is over he asked the CEO if he could take off his sales hat and put on his consultant hat. The CEO said Ok. Dave said I love CRMs and Salesforce in particular. What sales process is the CRM going to track? Each sales person will be working out of their own bag of tricks, there will be as many processes as you have sales people. What is the CRM going to measure? you will find that the Sales team will not want to do the data entry because the won’t feel that they are getting anything out of it. They will rebel and the CRM implementation will fail.

If you do a Sales Process and Training First then implement the CRM it will match your process. The CRM will be tailored to that process and will measure that process. Having a sales process will allow you to know were things are going right and going wrong, that allows your to make changes early on. Everyone will be on the same page tracking measurable results. We can track their behaviors which is the only thing we have control of in the CRM.

Well being a Salesforce CRM consultant naturally I favored CRM after listening to Dave he is right. Process always comes before implementing the Software any software. Its like giving your teenager a Ferrari to learn to drive, it won’t turn out well. Get the driving process well in hand before getting the sports car.

After you have your sales process nailed down we may want to talk, feel free to contact me at phil@salesforcemaven.com