Forgive me for sounding like an old, crusty sales guy, but I’m an old, crusty sales guy. I’ve spent almost 20 years in high tech, B2B sales and I have been fortunate to sell or manage the sale of $100m's worth of software and services. The most recent 10 years of my career have been in the cloud CRM industry.

I have worked with hundreds of organizations to deploy these tools. All of them set out to implement CRM in one way, shape, or form to increase sales. Some succeeded, while others have struggled to achieve the results they had hoped for. In that time I’ve seen only one thing truly increase sales—more meaningful engagement between reps and customers. CRM tools do not help organizations sell more. People help organizations sell more.  

'No one ever shot the moose from the lodge'. This is probably one of the best sales maxims ever. It was first shouted in my ear from one of my first and best sales bosses at Oracle. It was the go-go days of the mid-90's. It was Internet 1.0. It was the dawn of the 'Information Age.' For the first time as sales reps, we had instant access to all sorts of information. The sales methodologies of the day were about harnessing these new treasures in ways that promised improved productivity and increased sales like never before.

Of course, why wouldn't we be enamored with these new tools? After all, we were working for one of the companies providing the very technology that ran those sites. So as reps, there we sat in front of our mini-fridge sized desktops, soaking in all that great data. ‘Hey, did you see that new 10k report or that latest news feed?’ Anything to give us the competitive edge needed for that upcoming customer pitch!  

When out of nowhere came my manager bounding down the hall screaming in his full Long Island accentt, 'Geddout frum behine dat daam bawx (damn box) an’ get in frun’a’ya customa!’ As he chased us out the door, he would follow up for good measure, “And ya' can't shoot the moose from the damn lodge ya' know!”

So go out and see our customers we did. And sell we did.

The promises of increased sales productivity through greater access to information and the latest CRM tools have remained relatively similar as it was back in the day. The profound change today is with customers and their increased expectation of a meaningful experience with your organization, and, most importantly, meaningful interactions with your sales rep.

CRM succeeds in organizations that recognize this shift and focus their efforts on promoting meaningful interactions between reps and customer. The primary purpose of the CRM tool in these organizations, then, is to support those interactions.

CRM fails to deliver in organizations that see CRM’s primary purpose as a tool to derive management reporting, to enforce sales process or that view the tool itself as a means for achieving an increase in sales.

It sounds simple, but it is the difference between growing revenue and status quo. It is the difference between an engaged sales rep who exceeds your customers’ expectations and closes the deal—and the alternative of joining the crowded waste heap of failed CRM projects.

Engaged sales people armed with supporting CRM programs and tools sell more, often a lot more.  

In the coming weeks, in this blog, I will discuss how some of our clients and partners are achieving their goals with CRM, often through surprisingly simple tactics that yield big results, such as rep rides, mobile apps, front-line manager engagement, executive alignment, deals desks and more.

For now, though, remember that moose don't come to the lodge.