Focus on Sales Managers

Walter Roger invites VMware’s Mike Clayville to talk about CRM adoption on “The Price of Business” with Kevin Price

[Kevin Price]: Welcome back to the price of business. I am your host Kevin Price. And guess what? I am talking about you and your business. And we’re talking with Mr. Walter Rogers, and I think my producer is getting cued in as we speak. Hello Rusty…there we go. Yes sir. Walter Rogers, how are you sir?

[Walter Rogers]: I am doing great. How are you Kevin?

[KP]: Great, and my understanding is that you got a special guest for us today. Why don’t you introduce him?

[WR]: Yeah, absolutely. Mike Clayville is on the line with us. He’s truly one of the sharpest minds in sales. Mike and I have had the good fortune of working together for 15 years and currently runs Vmware’s North American Salesforce and has been doing so for I guess about 6 months now at VMware.

[KP]: Very Good

[Mike Clayville] Hello, Kevin. It’s nice to be here

[KP]: Good to have you on our program. By the way, Walter Rogers is the CEO and president of Baker Communications. I did want to mention that as well. Very, very good to have both of you on our program. Let’t talk real quickly first of all…What was your focus for us today here Walter?

[WR]: We’re really going to narrow in on how important it is for sales managers to get on board the CRM adoption and the role that the sales managers have to play when you truly do want to get a CRM rolled out.

[KP]: Very good. Okay, very good. I would assume that Mike’s going to help play a big role in that. Tell us a little bit about your firm, sir.

[MC]: Sure. I’m with a company called VMware. We are a software company that provides software for a segment of the market called virtualization. It’s one of the fastest growing segments in the business IT market today.

[KP]: Very good. And I assume you’re experience, Mike, is in the sales management role.

[MC]: That is exactly right. So, I’ve been in sales management for coming up on 20 years now and I’ve seen a number of different CRM implimentations through that time and recognize how critical, in fact it’s fundamental that the sales management get on board with the CRM if it’s going to be successful.

[KP]: Excellent. Walter, why don’t you go ahead and pose a couple of questions of your own for our guest to get this conversatin going.

[WR]: Yeah. Well so, Mike…I’d just love for him to share a little bit with our audience in terms of what he has seen, you know, work when sales management gets on board and how it can actually impact the deployment of a CRM and maybe point out a couple of examples where it didn’t work so well.

[MC]: Yeah, so I’ll tell you this. Here’s the important thing that people sometimes underestimate the value of the first line sales managers, second line sales managers in adopting these methodologies like CRM in the company. A lot of times they’re an overlooked audience. Everybody’s focused on the reps, but you know what? Those sales managers are what I call the field generals, right? They’re the ones out there at the cold place, fighting the good fight along with their reps. And CRM is really a way to create a process around the battle plan. Now imagine if you will, a field general not following his battle plan. Are the reps going to follow the battle plan if the sales manager’s not going to follow the battle plan? And you know, if you’re not following the battle plan, it’s unlikely you’re going to win the war. And that’s the way you’ve got to think about it. So, fundamental to the success of CRM is getting that sales management on board and participating in that development of the battle plan, the implementation of the CRM, and even the execution of that battle plan, the daily usage of the CRM. The CRM provides that path from where they are to success with that battle. And if the sales management’s not using that, the reps aren’t going to use it. And I’ve seen that over and over again. Coming back to the basic, the very basic most important thing in any software implementation is adoption. So that adoption you’ve wasted the money, you’ve wasted the time. Adoption starts from reinforcement and that reinforcement comes from the field general. Without that reinforcement the reps simply won’t adopt the technology like you need.

[KP]: Very interesting. And so let’s talk a little bit about exactly what you see, because you seem to have a very diynamic view of the CRM. What should be the company’s expectations when it comes to that?

[MC]: Well, you know CRM’s going to provide a number of different vectors for you inside your company. It’s going to create top line revenue growth. It’s going to create customer satisfaction. It’s going to create bottom line profit growth. And that…It gets back to those fundamental pieces. The things that the shareholders care about, that’s what CRM can deliver. It delivers that through creating long customer relationships, deeper customer relationships, and more consistent customer relationships, right? The more you can hold onto a customer, the longer that lifetime value of that customer is going to be. The deeper relationship you have with that customer, the more you’re going to be able to sell that customer over time. All of that creates a high profit customer right? A lot of company’s get caught in this model where they end up with a series of customers that really don’t, that aren’t very profitable for them. And then the series of customers that are more profitable for them. Then they go through this process of hiring poor performing customers. It’s kind of a funny concept. But what you want to do with CRM is create a world where all of your customers are profitable customers for you. If you’re doing the right thing for those customers, it can create enough value for those customer, then they’ll be profitable for you. CRM is one of those tools that you can leverage to drive that customer value and can create that profitable customer.

[WR]: And if I could just add on to what Mike just said. You know, some customers require more effort than others. Some customers are more profitable than others and so you apply more resources. And one of the things that a CRM that allows you to do is get a really good understanding and triangulate on what, you know, how much resource you need to put on each customer and deploy the most appropriate, the most effective, lowest cost resource to move that customer through whatever buying cycle they’re in.

[KP]: Yeah, no question about it. We are talking about CRM, Customer Relations Management. You know, it’s really imperative. One of the things I like, talking to you about it Walter, is that we don’t make it into just some kind of "yawn…IT" type of thing. This is a very vibrant, very dynamic, very central part of a successful business. True?

[WR]: Absolutely. It becomes a balance beam that everybody walks on to execute a strategy. The challenge has been that in a lot of cases these deployed incorrectly, with the wrong mindset, with the wrong expectations, and as Mike said, you know the field managers are completely ignored in the process. Unfortunately, the perception that a lot of sales and field managers have is that it’s really a sales accounting system and it’s only purpose is to provide reporting up to management and that’s it…versus a sales enablement system that actually allows you to streamline the speed at which you can communicate with the customers and the way in which they want to be communicated with.

[KP]: Okay.

[MC]: And the value delivered to that customer as a result of that, right?

[WR]: Yes, absolutely.

[KP]: Yeah, and again, I’m always, I’m big on translating for the layperson out there, the common person out there. The truth of the matter is, the dynamic is that a CRM system should be able to tell you exactly where your status is in relationship to each of your clients--what your clients need, when they need it, the kinds of follow up they need. It should really be a comprehensive system, true?

[WR]: Yes, absolutely. When the system doesn’t deliver those kinds of results for you, either the system wasn’t set up correctly, maybe it’s the wrong system, or maybe the adoption just isn’t there for that system. In fact, you know, Mike, without getting into any details or without [Inaudible 8:21] I know Mike’s company is shifting from one CRM to another. Mike, maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the challenges that the older CRM was giving you guys in terms of why some of these changes are occurring.

[MC]: Yeah, so you know, what you expect to get out of a CRM system is, like I said before, really top line revenue growth. That top line revenue growth comes from being able to create a series of processes in a system that enables the behavior in your reps that create incremental revenue, right? That’s what you want. In the end, what you’re trying to do, is you’re trying to create systematic behavior inside your sales community that creates the right result with the customer. And CRM can guide you down that path or CRM can be just a scorecard system to track your revenue king of looking backwards right? So, what traditionally has happened is that there’s a lot of adoption of the CRM system as an accounting tool, but if you don’t get the adoption at the rep level as a behavior guidance tool, it simply won’t get that top line revenue growth. If you think about sales down to its fundamentals, it starts with what behavior do you need from your sales force in the field and how can you create a series of tools and processes that enable them to effectively deliver on that behavior. That’s really where CRM comes, gets to in the end, when its delivering the value that it needs. Now, its all about creating a series of tools and processes that create that result and it is not a static system, it’s a dynamic system because the needs of the market, the needs of the customers are constantly changing. Your CRM has to be able to migrate with those changing needs to enable you to put inside of that, the new processes that therefore create those new behaviors to satisfy those new customer and market requirements.

[KP]: Alright, very good. Hey, I do want to mention real quickly how people can reach Walter Rogers at Baker Communications. The website is BakerCommunications.com and the phone number is 713-627-7700. I encourage you to find out more about the subject of CRM. Also, Mike, what is your website?

[MC]: So, we’re at www.vmware.com 

[KP]: Thank you very much, to both of you gentlemen. You are listening to "The Price of Business." We’re focusing on non-profit organizations as we approach Christmas and we have another one here on our show coming up next, right here on CNN650.