August 21, 2000

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Tips For Making Sales-Force Automation Projects Successful

By Marion Agnew

he key to implementing a successful sales force automation solution sounds familiar to anyone who's introduced a new IT tool. As part of the project:

• Involve users in the selection process. Tommy Stewart, director of sales support at Toshiba America Medical Systems, attributes its 100% adoption rate of the Clarify products to user participation. "There was never a point where they were handed something they didn't have a say in," he says.
• Conduct a needs analysis. Internal support is generated during this process. "If the salespeople can see what the tool could do, then they become enthusiastic," says JoAnn Dickson, SFA consultant at Innovative Business Technology.
• Make sure the tool is valuable to the sales force. SBI needed a consolidated view of its sales pipeline across industries to improve forecasting. "We identified this nontraditional thing, and we've been successful," says Coleman Barney, VP and co-founder of SBI.
• Set up the infrastructure. Stewart assessed his sales force's skills a year before implementing ClearSales. "We gave them training in Windows, whatever they needed," he says. Dickson suggests beefing up support. "Plan on providing a lot more user assistance, especially if the sales force is remote," she says.
• Find internal champions. The key to success for Indigo America's Siebel implementation was wining support of midlevel managers. Enlisting high-level support is fairly easy because CEOs are responsible for the bottom line. "To me, sales is everything," says Nantucket Nectars CEO Tom Scott.
• Force the issue. If nothing else, IT managers can follow Stewart's lead: "We cut off the old system," he says. "Now, every order has to have a Clarify opportunity number--period."

Return to main story, "CRM Tools Offer Sales-Force Solutions."

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