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20 FEDA News & Views 800-328-4493 WWW.SERVICEIDEAS.COM Brew It Brew to your taste with one of our many brewing options. Create the perfect cup for your enjoyment. Tea Control Coffee Filter Brick Press CRM continued as well as send automatic thank-you emails after a visit, and schedule reminders to follow up with customers. "It's a great tool to have as a sales manager," says Chesworth. "Everything is at my fingertips and I no longer need to request reports or updates. It's also made it easier to see correlations between activity (amount of cold calls, scheduled appoint- ments, quotes, etc.) and sales. For example, we can now pre- dict that to get x amount of sales, you need to have activity levels of y, and if it drops under that level, then sales will likely drop." Count on Resistance And then there's KaTom's sales team's impression. To be sure, there was pushback in the beginning, as is the case with most people in sales, says Dancer. The "win" that con- vinced the group there was value in change—greater visibility throughout the sales cycle, coupled with more access to cus- tomer data. Purchases, deliveries, returns—all interactions with customers are documented companywide, providing KaTom's sales force with an opportunity to get a head start on pre-call planning and follow-up visits. "I really saw a big improvement in buy-in once we started to integrate CRM throughout the company," says Chesworth. "The sales team has really enjoyed seeing if there is any other activ- ity with one of their customers—activity they wouldn't have known about before CRM. That's really when they started to see a lot of the advantages it can bring to them and ultimately their customers." But getting there is the hard part, says Dancer, who advises distributors to expect resistance from sales and then be pre- pared to push forward with a plan to help them succeed. "The goal at launch is to avoid failure and get to the next phase," he says. "Salespeople should be included in the planning phase so they can have their say, and involved in the implementation to make them part of the solution. Several wholesaler-distributors I spoke with found at least one successful salesperson who was willing to give CRM a try and act as a credible champion for encouraging other salespeople. The key is to think about your salespeople as individuals and design communications, policies, training and coaching to fit their experiences and motivations." "It's an Elephant" Patricia Bible is full of colorful phrases. Comparing every- thing that goes into a successful CRM strategy to a 5-ton pachy- derm is one of her best. "It's truly an elephant," she says, "and you have to chew it up carefully before you take the next bite." Aside from starting with one area of focus—effectively managing outside sales (and budgeting $25,000 to get up and running)—Bible sites "communication and more communica- tion" as a key driver in moving the project forward. "We were very careful on the front end to scope out processes with employee input," she says. The ecommerce team participated in a number of planning meetings, and reps from each depart- ment were included in mapping sessions to ensure wish lists jived with reality. "As we were mapping," says Bible, "our warehouse manager would say, 'that's not going to work when it gets to my portion of the building. You need to rethink this particular piece.' This kind of communication really saved us from falling into some deep dark pits." To encourage buy-in, KaTom also provided mandatory one- on-one training sessions for department heads, along with other staffers who would be affected by the change. "We wanted to make sure that not only were they prepared but understood the why of the big change, in terms of functional- ity and the overall vision and strategy of the company," says Bible. Credit KaTom for also talking up anticipated wins, while tempering expectations with plenty of frank discussions about the drudgery caked throughout the process. Dancer calls this the reality of CRM, a change agent he believes is worthy of the effort but inherently riddled with trap doors. A few of his suggestions for avoiding them include having an iron-clad strategy—already in place—to drive sales and profits; training, training and more training, prior to launch and well beyond; and keeping the focus on making the sales team effective. "CRM success requires salespeople to use it," says Dancer. "They have to enter data about calls, sales results, etc. If they view it as busy work, or worse, management second-guessing their decisions, they won't use CRM and it won't be very effec- tive for the company." For more information about KaTom, visit www.katom.com.