Then the lead rep says “Let me tell you a little about ABC Consulting.  Immediately half of the room reaches in their pocket, purse or portfolio and grabs their smartphone.  It’s Facebook time!

A recent post in the Harvard Business Review contained the following line: “If the first five pages — and the first ten slides — of your collateral or sales pitch deck are about you (and they almost invariably are), you’ve got it wrong.”

It’s not about you…  It’s about them!  The prospective customer is offering up 10-20 hours of executive time to hear you tell them how you can  solve their problem.  They will not return to you or your company until the final negotiations during the due diligence phase.

1. Focus on The Customer
I just can’t emphasize this enough.  Customers don’t care if you are all the Pros from Dover and you walked across the puddle instead of around it when you got off the plane.  The logo on your business card may have opened the door to get this presentation.  It may even help a little at the end of the sales cycle.  But to get there you need to focus solely on the customer and how you are going to solve their most pressing problem.

2. Focus on ROI
I know of more than a few consulting companies that claim to turn away business if the value of their services is not at least three times their engagement fee.  Your ROI could be cost savings, increased sales, meeting compliance issues.

If you don’t have a slide in your deck that has the term ROI followed my an equal sign and a number you are shooting blanks.

3.  Make the Answer Be You
Your presentation should lead from how you propose to solve their problem to why you believe that you are the one who can really get this project done – on time, on budget, with room to spare.

The key phrase is ‘why you believe.”   Your company might not be the only one that could deliver a solution like the one you just presented.  Why should the customer select you?  If you really believe that this is THE one solution to solve their problem that will shine through to your prospect.

Be passionate about solving their problem!  Show you are committed!  Show them that THIS is what you do, not just serve up endless presentations.

I realize that we all can’t have a world class Customer Service department and the best software on the market but there is a lot we can do to improve operations without breaking the bank.

Adopting one or more of the following tips will help improve daily operations.

Log All Calls
Each call should be logged as it is received indicating. This way you can begin tracking the “what, why and when” attributes of your inquiries.

Your CRM system may already have a “Cases” or Customer Service module that you can use. If nothing else you can use a shared Google spreadsheet.  Just start capturing information on who is calling, why they are calling and the resolution.

Build a Customer Portal
Expanding your “Contact Us” page on your web site to double as a “New Case” entry form is an easy way to provide an additional way for customers to contact you.

Many CRM / Customer Service systems already provide this feature along with the capability of adding the new “Case” directly into your system. If not, there may be a service app or customization available for your system.

Create a Knowledge Base
Building a common repository of questions and answers will help spread information throughout your organization as well as help get new team members up to speed quickly. This can also include details on returns or RMAs, warranty questions and maintenance tips.

Making this an online knowledge base will give your customers another way to possibly resolve their issue before calling – many customers prefer solving their own problems online.

Social Media
And don’t forget to monitor social media feeds particularly Twitter.  Create a Google alerts for your company name. Post the many ways that customers can contact you or find their own answers online to your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Warning! Short history lesson ahead: Way back in the dark ages of computing (1980′s) Pat Sullivan created ACT! software and Michael McCafferty concieved TeleMagic. From these two Contact Managers (CM) sprung the next generations of sales force automation (SFA) software followed by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and now the birght and shiny thing on the horizon is Social CRM. My bet is that in the very near future companies like Google, Apple, Zoho and Nimble will make today’s application software look like ancient DOS.

Today sales organizations are looking at completely mobile applications. Sales people want to have everything running on their smartphone, tablet, iPad or BlackBerry. Don’t burden us down with a heavy old laptop, at least give us a shiny new Netbook to carry around all day. Wait, never mind – I will just use my own personal (insert your favorite here) – everything is on the cloud isn’t it?

Do we really need all this technology just to go out and sell our products? Or do we just need the information to do our job? I am the classic early adopter, bleeding edge, technology end user — and I think that we spend way too much time managing technology and not enough time selling.

Suppose I sent you an e-mail each morning detailing your sales activities for the next week along with all the opportunities you had in the pipeline. And let you dictate your call notes directly from your mobile phone? And I would support your sales efforts through more website optimization and drip marketing to your target market. Of course you would have to keep your calendar up-to-date and let me know where you were in the sales process of your prospects, but I would do all the reporting after that and send the reports to you by e-mail.

Throwing hot new technology at the sales function may seem like a great idea but in practice it can be a disaster. The successful implementation of software into an organization to enhance the sales and marketing effort takes careful planning, corporate adoption and support and training for all users of the product.

I have always said that the deployment of a software product to support the sales team is not a destination – it’s a journey. Business changes – you don’t do business now the same way you did two years ago do you? Not if you are still in business today.

The business environment changes constantly – your sales team may grow, you will pick up new product lines and open new offices across the country. The sales software you choose will have to be able accommodate those changes.

So as long as you are going on this journey to sales nirvana, it is a good idea to choose a good trail guide to accompany you on the trip. Do you have someone in your organization who has successfully brought a CRM system into a company? Or perhaps a trusted associate that you can get for a period of time to help guide your organization through the technology minefield.

If not, select a consulting firm that specializes in the deployment and support of CRM software systems. It could be the deciding factor between a so-so implementation and a huge success.

Hunters head out each day in search of the great wooly mammoth of deals armed only with a spear and an expense account. The prey they are tracking: that great one-call close that will make their quota all by itself.

Good hunters are truly the rock stars of sales… and they are well compensated for their efforts.

And then we have the Farmers. Just like in early civilizations, this group of sales reps has learned how to generate new business from their existing garden of customers.

By not having to trek out into the cold, lonely world of airports and hotels they could concentrate on knowing, understanding and meeting the needs of their existing customers.

Maybe not adrenaline pumping selling but it can keep a business running quite nicely.

And then there are the Trappers. These are the stealth sales reps that have learned the likes, dis-likes and habits of their target market.

Knowing how, where and why their prey makes purchases of goods and services they can then place themselves in position to quickly build relationships and capitalize on opportunities.

They are somewhat like a Zen version of Willie Sutton (“I rob banks because that’s where the money is”). Trappers user their customer database or CRM systems to give them the insight to be effective in their efforts.  And you can find them quite often on the golf course!

There should be something like OnStar for CRM implementations! If so this customer would not have spent several very frustrating months behind the wheel rocking their system back and forth trying to get out of that ditch.

This was textbook case on how not to deploy a Customer Information System (aka CRM). I have written before about my NASCAR approach to CRM – this time they missed all the targets and drove their CRM right into the ditch.

If your CRM system were a car you would have a pretty good idea what to do:

• Put the title on dash, leave it there and walk home.
• Call a tow truck to carry it to a garage for repairs
• Sell it for junk and buy another car

Now the really bad part about this story is that the customer lost a lot of time and opportunity during the 6 months that their CRM system was sunning itself in that ditch. They had the title in hand ready to abandon CRM  and go back to their old manual systems.  Luckily someone referred them to me so they will be back up and running fine pretty quickly.

So what did they miss?

• Planning – No business requirements were taken into account
• Customization – No planning = no customization needed
• Training – None, zip, nada

Planning is always the key… if you don’t have your CRM journey mapped out you could end up lost or in one of those implementation ditches like the guy in this picture.

needing (as in urgent, I need it now!) a product or service they will typically to one of two things:

1. Google (sorry Bing, Google is like Kleenex) the product or service

2. Call a friend and ask who they might recommend

And then the fun starts… they begin calling or e-mailing down the list of potentials suppliers of the product or service they need.

And as a general rule, the first responder (it’s their emergency, remember) stands a very high probability of getting the business.

And that’s why I am absolutely blown away when someone tells me that they only check their voice mail or e-mail once or twice a day… or “I’ll check that when I get back to the office”.

We all spend good money and effort on getting high rankings on search engines and otherwise marketing our business to make the phones ring and the e-mails flow.  And if we can’t take action when our prospects reach out to us we have lost twice.  One the business and the second when we expose our lack of responsiveness.

The CRM tools that we use today make it so very easy to schedule meetings, tasks, follow-up calls that you can literally fill up your calendar without realizing it. I have seen many a sales rep or CSR with hundreds of incomplete activities in their CRM system.

The focus on calendars and watches also enforces another practice I would like to see go away in professional firms: hourly billing. There is a great video on ‘killing the timesheet’ over on Ed Kless’ blog.

We all want to see higher productivity, greater customer satisfaction and increased profits this year. This can be achieved by focusing on the value that we deliver to our customers. Adopt value based pricing and focus on shipping the best product or service possible.  Today’s customers expect and deserve our best efforts — and at the price we quoted up front.  They don’t budget for overruns.

The calendar and watch will take care of themselves – we have no control over them.

But we can deliver our best to our customers and partners by focusing on shipping our best!

And typically the online responses are overwhelmingly of two categories:

• The CRM I use
• The CRM system I sell

These are not answers and serve no valid purpose to the person asking the question and serve only to obfuscate the issue.

The correct answer is obviously: Well, what do you want to do?

The follow-up question is: Why?

Business case first, software later!

I prefer to think that I am just getting a good jump on Spring 2011. Anyway, this weekend it was time for  some ‘fall cleaning’ in the back corner of the garage and the computing ‘bone pile’. Just seemed like a good time for it…

So, here is a sample inventory from today’s efforts:

• Compaq Portable
• Osborne Portable
• Plug board from an IBM 407 Accounting Machine
• Apple II w/ 2 5.25 floppy drives
• IBM PC-XT with a whopping 10mb hard drive and a Cobol compiler

5.25 Diskettes for the following:

• Prodigy Service
• AOL Diskette with a full 10 free hours
• Global Navigator (GNN) ( guess I lost the one from Mosiac)
• Compuserve

A box of 8″ Floppies
Many boxes of 5.25″ Diskettes
A box of tapes from IBM 5100 portable computers (the Luggable)

Several Jaz drives that had contracted “the click of death”
Enough old keyboards, mice and cables to stock a local ComputerLand
Several boxes of backup tapes that have not had compatible tape drives for more that a few years
A dozen empty tape cannisters for 2400′ reel-to-reel tapes

I thought I had some old DEC gear but I guess those were sold some years ago.

It’s a shame when your computer equipment is older than your Scotch!

Collaboration
Business collaboration brings a very high return to today’s businesses. The ability to be able to work as a team from virtually anywhere and be able to share everything from documents and spreadsheets to live video is truly a game changer.  Collaborative technology is no longer a competitive advantage, it is a competitive necessity.

From Google Apps and Miicrosoft SharePoint to literally hundreds of smaller applications targeted at specific issues there is no lack of choices when you start looking to connect your team.   Think about applications like Google Wave or the many mind-manager applications.  You do need to fully evaluate each candidate and perform the necessary due diligence – a bad choice can be worse than the status quo.

Cloud
Everybody (well, most everybody) is wanting to move towards cloud computing.  Should you?   Understanding what “cloud computing” really is and how it can benefit your organization is not as easy as it sounds.  There are tremendous advantages and any number of dangers involved in moving your business applications into the cloud.   These are just some of the areas that we can help you understand and work though the decision-making process.

Public clouds, private clouds, SaaS – which is best?  The answer is “it depends.”   It depends on your business, it’s culture and it’s long & short-term goals.  What applications or function will bring the best value and competitive advantage to your and your organization.  What level of disaster recovery and business continuity does your business require?

CRM
The term CRM has really been overused and mis-used over the last several years.  It is not just a software solution for your sales team.  Anywhere you need to record background notes, track activity history and build relationships between people and organizations a CRM application may be the answer for you.

CRM can also be used within the enterprise in a division or departmental level.  Think about how such a tracking system could help marketing, HR, Purchasing or Research departments.  Most applications can be customized or tailored to meet the specific requirements of most business activity.