CRM and Lay’s Potato Chips:
‘You Can’t Eat Just One’
As automation becomes more pervasive, and customers feel increasingly remote, preconfigured
solutions are a means of bringing you back into their good graces.
A
s part of CSO Insights’ annual sales-
effectiveness research project, we recently
surveyed more than 1,300 companies
worldwide regarding the challenges their sales
teams are facing, why those problems exist and most
importantly, how they are leveraging people, process,
technology and knowledge to address those issues.
Having conducted this study for 13 years in a row,
it is always interesting to see how trends have been
changing over time. The 2007 survey yielded some
especially interesting developments as related to
customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
CRM is becoming a mainstay of sales. Figure 1
shows the percentage of the companies taking part in
the 2007 study that report having implemented a core
CRM system for sales. These include applications from
such companies as Salesforce.com, Oracle, Microsoft,
SAP, Sage Software, etc.
It should be noted that roughly one-third of the
organizations that stated that they had not formally
installed a CRM software system rely upon reps
using computers installed with their own salesforce
automation applications, such as Outlook, Goldmine,
ACT!, etc.
The major capabilities provided by core CRM
systems are contact management, opportunity
management, marketing collateral management, task
management, forecasting and more frequently, we
are seeing some type of lead management included
No
32.7%
Figure 1: Implemented a CRM System for Sales
www.CRMproject.com/15707
as well. Many companies go into these types of Jim Dickie
initiatives expecting that once they get their core CSO Insights
system installed, their CRM journey is done. But our
study findings show that in the majority of the cases,
this is just the beginning of the journey.
Jim Dickie is the managing
What companies see as the result of their initial
partner for CSO Insights, a Boulder,
foray into using technology to support sales is that
Colorado-based benchmarking firm
a core CRM system does address some of the key
that specializes in analyzing how
challenges that sales teams face, but clearly not all
of them. As part of our study, we asked firms who companies are leveraging people,
had completed their CRM system rollout to identify process, technology and knowledge
the specific benefits they were achieving as a result to optimize sales and marketing
of salespeople using these applications. Figure 2 performance. He can be reached via
summarizes their responses. email at jim.dickie@CSOinsights.com.
What we see here is a variety of ways that
these core CRM applications are helping reps sell.
But let’s take a more detailed look at these figures.
Consider first the top three things companies see
resulting from CRM system usage: an improvement
in sales rep/sales manager communications, a
streamlining of the forecasting process and a
reduction of the administrative burden we are
placing on sales. Successfully dealing with these
challenges is always welcomed by sales reps,
but are they really the core issues reps are facing?
The answer is no!
One of the first questions we asked in the 2007
study was “What are the top three business objectives
you have for sales for the coming year?” The No. 1
Yes
67.3%
CRM Transformation 29
 CRM and Lay’s Potato Chips: ‘You Can’t Eat Just One’

• Sales Knowledge
Improved Sales Communications 62.2% Management:
Improved Forecast Accuracy 46.1% Applications such as
Reduced Sales Administrative Burden 42.4% Pragmatech, Involve
Improved Best Practices Sharing 24.8% Technology, MobilePoint,
Increased Revenues 20.7% Savo, Sant, etc., that help
Reduced New Sales Rep Ramp-up Time 20.2% salespeople easily access
Improved Order Processing Accuracy 19.6% the sales support tools
Improved Support of Channels 15.3% they need (data sheets,
Shortened Sell Cycles 14.7% presentations, sales best
Improved Win Rates 13.8% practices, etc.) to help them
Other 7.2% sell more effectively.
Increased Margins 6.1% • Incentive Management:
Programs like Centive
0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% Systems, Exactly, Callidus,
etc., that help sales
Figure 2: Benefits Resulting From CRM Usage managers implement
the sales compensations
40.0%
Again, as part of the programs they have
40.1%
2007 survey, we asked the designed to hopefully direct the behavior of
firms who had implemented their sales teams to sell the right things, the right
30.0% a core CRM system if they way, while also allowing reps to easily track
had installed any additional how much they are getting paid on each deal.
20.0%
22.5% CRM-related applications as
21.1%
well. Figure 3 highlights that We now begin to see that CRM is not “one-stop
17.4%
many of these firms have shopping.” Your core CRM system provides a
10.0% implemented other tools. solid technological foundation for helping to
The study found improve sales rep efficiency and effectiveness,
that there are four major but other add-ons are needed to create a complete
0.0%

Sales Collaboration Lead Management Sales Knowledge
Figure 3: Additional CRM Applications Installed
answer, cited by nearly two-thirds of the
respondents, was, “increase revenues.” Figure
2, however, shows that only one in five firms
is achieving that as a result of their core CRM
system investments.
When we do project reviews, this type
of finding is often a surprise to top sales
executives and their management teams. They
are often under the impression that a company
implements a single system, and that’s that.
They quickly find out, though, that this is rarely
the case. So what do they then do? In more
and more cases, they buy more technology to
augment and enhance the systems they have
already installed.
Incentive Management areas of technology being
implemented by firms over
and above the capabilities
provided via their core CRM
application. These included:
• Sales Collaboration: Most common are
tools such as WebEx, GoToMeeting, Live
Meeting, Convoq, etc., that allow sales and
marketing to more effectively communicate
with customers via webinars, or that support
collaboration between sales teams, or sales
and other functional areas in the company
via Web-based meetings or chat sessions.
• Lead Management: Systems like Eloqua,
Chordiant, SPSS, Unica, Vtrenz, Manticore,
etc., that help sales and marketing teams
implement direct and Web-based marketing
campaigns, and then track and assess the
results of those programs.
suite of capabilities that reps need to address all
the challenges they face. And as our study also
surfaced, the need for additional functionality
is not limited to the list in Figure 3.
Again, when we asked the survey
participants to tell us what, if any, additional
software they were planning to implement
in 2007 over and above their applications
already installed, we got quite a shopping list,
seen here in Figure 4.
Here we find that while three out of 10 firms
reported that they have no plans for additional
enhancements or add-ons to their core CRM
application, seven out of 10 do plan to expand
their CRM platform during the coming year.
And in addition to the capabilities previously
mentioned, we find some new functionality
generating CRM project team interest. Let’s
review some of these capabilities.

30 www.CRMproject.com

CRM/Sales Process Integration
Sales Management Analytics
Lead Generation Management
No Plans for Enhancements / Additions
Forecasting
Data Cleansing
Sales Knowledge Management
Channel Management
Customer Service
Salesforce Collaboration
Incentive Management
0.0% 5.0%
Figure 4: Plans to Expand CRM Platform Over Next Year
• CRM and Sales Process Integration:
In 2006 we published an analysis of how
companies who had implemented both CRM
and Sales Process (formalizing the way reps
sell through the use of a sales methodology
either developed internally or licensed from
firms such as Sales Performance International
[SPI], The Complex Sale, TAS Group,
etc.). The numbers showed that significant
increases in revenue can result from these
initiatives as reps improve their close rates.
Because of this, we are seeing a leap of
interest in integrating sales process and CRM,
and companies like Landslide, ShadeTree
Technologies, White Springs and MobilePoint
are stepping in to fill that market need.
• Sales Management Analytics: Now that reps
are leveraging CRM systems more often in
their daily work flow, a significant amount
of data is being entered into these systems.
Companies are realizing that there is gold to
be mined in those databases. This is sparking a
More information and additional material can be found online at
33.1%
31.7%
29.9%
29.9%
28.5%
25.4%
19.3%
18.1%
16.9%
15.2%
8.1%
10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0%
growing interest in sales management analytic
capabilities. This is a core CRM area in which
vendors are making improvements, but we
are also seeing robust applications emerging
from companies like SPSS, SAS, ShadeTree
Technologies, etc., to meet this market need.
• Data Cleansing: A major problem being
encountered by many CRM project teams is
data management. How do you rationalize the
data used to initially populate CRM systems,
and then how do you continually refresh it
to ensure currency and accuracy so that reps
have confidence in the information they are
using? This is a task being taken on by firms
such as OneSource, Factiva, Hoover’s, etc., as
they provide CRM data management services.
In addition, we are seeing companies like
TrueAdvantage, Before the Call, Generate,
Spoke, etc., also stepping in to help populate
CRM systems with useful information that
can be gathered across the Web on customers,
competitors, changes in the marketplace, etc.
www.CRMproject.com/15707
One now sees why we often tell clients
going down the CRM path that they may
well find the experience similar to eating
Lay’s potato chips. Once you eat one,
you find you want another, and another
and another.
We are seeing the vendor community
respond to this hunger for more function­
ality. One needs to only look at the list
of developer alliance partners that
companies like Salesforce.com, Oracle
and SAP are creating to understand that
literally hundreds of new options for
35.0%
enhancing CRM platforms are or will
soon be available.
But that wealth of options raises a
concern. As the chief marketing officer
of a technology firm recently shared with us: “If
I bought every CRM application that promised
me an ROI, we would be out of business in six
months!” This CMO’s caution is worth noting.
Not every type of application coming
to market will be useful to every sales and
marketing team. And even if they were,
the amount of “new” that we can drop on
our teams at any one time is limited, so we
must be judicious in the choices we make
in terms of adding new capabilities into our
CRM platforms.
That being said, we need to realize that
for the promise of CRM to fully be realized,
companies are going to have to continue to
make new investments in CRM technology for
the foreseeable future. To be competitive, we
are going to have to provide our front-office
teams with the all the tools they need to be more
efficient and more effective. Fortunately the
CRM vendor community understands these needs
and is responding. ■
CRM Transformation 31