I just had a chance to read “The 2009 Sales Automation Report: Best-in-Class Strategies for Increasing Returns on SFA Investments” by the Aberdeen Group. It is a good report that provides some good research and hard numbers to help companies understand what they need to do get the ROI they planned for from their sales force automation (SFA) investments. I recommend this report to anybody who has an under performing SFA system or is thinking about implementing some type of SFA system for their sales team. I would like to highlight here a few sections that made an impression on me.
Aberdeen uses a maturity model to distinguish Best-in-Class performers from Industry Average and Laggard organizations. Best-in-Class are the top 20%, Industry Average are the middle 50%, and Laggards are the bottom 30%. The gap between Best-in-Class and Average organizations is staggering. Consider these numbers:
- Average percent of reps achieving quota: Best-in-Class = 79%; Average = 59%
- Improved revenue year-over-year: Best-in-Class = 63% and averaged 9% increase, Average = only 35% and averaged a mere 1% increase.
- Convert more than 25% of leads in pipeline: Best-in-Class = 80%; Average = 43%
What a tremendous performance gap. This economy appears to be separating the men from the boys.
Early in the report the Aberdeen Group identifies the Top Strategic Actions taken by Best-in-Class organizations versus All Others. I found this part of the survey interesting not because the percentages and statistics were so unexpected but because of the story they told when looked at together. Let me explain.
Here are the top strategic actions for Best-in-Class companies in descending order
- Customize SFA/CRM to match business processes (47%)
- Unify customer service, sales, marketing information onto a single platform (42%)
- Unify fragmented customer/prospect data (36%)
- Reduce the amount of time sales reps spend searching for relevant info (31%)
Now here is the stack ranking of strategic actions for All Others:
- Unify customer service, sales, marketing information onto a single platform (50%)
- Customize SFA/CRM to match business processes (40%)
- Reduce the amount of time sales reps spend searching for relevant info (36%)
- Unify fragmented customer/prospect data (31%)
The picture I see painted by this data is that Best-in-Class companies are focused on a sales automation implementation as enabling a set of business processes and prioritize that in their implementation. Because they are focused on the business process they comparatively de-emphasize the issue of saving time for the sales rep opting instead to emphasize adding value to what the sales rep is doing. In contrast, All Others are more focused on data and not emphasizing the business processes enough. Instead of engaging and adding value to the sales reps they work to appease sales reps and gain compliance with a relative emphasis on saving time.
One of the lessons learned, and re-learned by those who get involved in SFA implementation is that aligning to a company’s unique business processes is critical to success. This is a message that Best-in-Class companies have heard. Given the tremendous performance gap of Best-in-Class companies, can those who are not Best-in-Class afford to not listen to this wisdom?
Filed under: CRM - Customer Relationship Management | Tagged: CRM, CRM Strategy, CRM Success, Sales Force Automation, SFA | Leave a comment »