Wall to Wall With Salesforce.com

MondayCall Solutions and Salesforce.com hosted a customer event at the Tied House in Mountain View, CA.  The main topic covered included how companies can go wall-to-wall using Salesforce.com.

Using an integrated solution helps companies solve their sales and support operational issues more efficiently and more effectively.  Erick Sturm of CAPS (Computer Air/Power Systems) was the guest speaker extraordinaire.  CAPS was moving from a paper-based sales process to one that was highly automated.  MondayCall and Erick worked together to create a solution that reduced creation of quotes from hours to 20 minutes.  In addition, CAPS can now get up to the minute forecasting data rather than wait for month end spreadsheets to be consolidated.  As part of this solution, CAPS used/created Salesforce.com integrations with with FinancialForce.com and Conga for quoting.  The details are documented in this case study available on the MondayCall Solutions site.

It was a great event and a great chance for customers to interact with MondayCall, Salesforce.com and most importantly each other.

Salesforce for B to C: Person Accounts

Salesforce was born from innovators in the enterprise software space - most notably from Oracle.  The salesforce.com application was heavily geared to helping business-to-business organizations, particularly very large multinational corporations, succeed. While the high end b-to-b market is huge, there are several trends that have blurred the lines between b-to-b and b-to-c to create more market opportunities for CRM vendors:

• The Internet has helped accelerate the disintermediation between providers and purchasers
• A relentless focus on customer relationships and service has become the standard way to do business

In particular with Salesforce, a cloud solution became a very convenient way for smaller organizations of all types to get even the most sophisticated software for a small monthly fee.  Included in this very vibrant industry are many b-to-c companies, the so-called 'mom and pop' stores.  They too have a sales process and customer management process (albeit with consumers) and as well deal with partners that provide supplies and provide channels for distribution and scale.

Person accounts are a great way to help organizations better support managing consumer relationships.  Whether you are an Internet b-to-c or a local store selling to consumers or a broker working with high net worth individuals, person accounts help you manage relationships with individuals who may not be a part of an organization (or account). 

Combined with Salesforce.com's API for integration, Salesforce.com can serve as a valuable platform to support B-to-C internet based businesses.  Start ups in particular can leverage much of the Salesforce.com platform to handle incoming registrations, manage people, handle workflow rules (including email alerts), handle support cases and more.  These features can save valuable development time in markets where time to market is key.

Person accounts do have some limitations.  First of all, person accounts are not available in all editions. As of this writing, person accounts are available in Enterprise, Unlimited and Developer editions.  Other differences include: person accounts can only be merged with other person accounts and person accounts have a different layout than Accounts/Contacts because of the different data that it tracks.  Once person accounts is turned on, you cannot turn it off.   There are a number of other minor differences that you can find out more by looking at the Salesforce.com help or by looking at their published Person Account Cheatsheet.  

Dreamforce 2011

MondayCall Solutions exhibited at Dreamforce 2011 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  It was a big event, one of the largest if not largest technology conferences in the industry.  Marc Benioff was in top form as he evangelized the benefits of cloud computing and how it has helped leading companies cut costs and capture opportunities.  Better yet, Marc deferred to his customers - letting them deliver the message.

The focus of the conference clearly was on social.  Great social tools like Facebook and Twitter have been revolutionizing the consumer market - why not create similar technologies to revolutionize the enterprise.  With improvements to Chatter, the acquisition of Radian6 and the announcement of Data.com, salesforce.com is looking for innovative ways for companies to interact with its customers/partners and for the companies' employees to collaborate better with each other.

Many innovative companies in just about every industry have already taken advantage of these capabilities - looking for ways to continue to engage and impress its target market.

Case Study: Helping Those Who Help Others

MondayCall Solutions recently published a new case study for the Alameda Alliance for Health. The Alliance provides health care coverage to over 125,000 children and adults in Alameda, CA. The Alliance has a team that conducts community outreach and enrolls Medicare/Medi-Cal “dual eligibles” into their Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan for seniors and people with disabilities. One of their challenges is to systematically and scalably find individuals in the community who are qualified dual eligibles.

MondayCall Solutions helped the Alameda Alliance:

• Redesign Salesforce to better map to their processes
• Restructured data to simplify collection and focus on only needed information
• Jumpstart their business development team on correct Salesforce usage
• Provide visibility into metrics that drive their operations

The result:

• Significantly improved tracking of every individual in their process
• Cleaner data that can be used to drive more accurate reporting
• Improved adoption of Salesforce. Improved responsiveness to the community

For more details, please see the new case study. 

We'll be at Dreamforce 2011

Whether you are a customer, potential customer, partner, job seeker or just want to stop by to say 'hello', we look forward to seeing you at Dreamforce 2011.

We're in booth #23 in the exhibitor section.  Make a hard right when you enter the exhibition hall.

If you'd like a discount/coupon code/voucher to Dreamforce 2011, please contact us at sales@mondaycall.com.

Getting Sales People to Adopt Salesforce.com

Sorry, there is no easy answer here. One of the bigger challenges to a successful CRM implementation is getting adoption from the sales team. One of the key advantages of Salesforce is the ability to track sales activities so that you can institute and track scalable sales processes, get better visibility into your pipeline and grow your sales in an organized and predictable way. For many sales people, good use of salesforce.com is a productivity enhancer rather than a time sink.

Is Resistance Futile?
However, many sales people would also disagree -- or more accurately, they understand fully the benefit of instituting CRM but they resist participation, sometimes vehemently. They often cite the following reasons:

• This is just a tool for management to micro-manage
• I'm busy closing deals, not filling out forms
• I get paid the big bucks and data entry is beneath me
• I can't get convenient access as I'm constantly on the road
• Documenting slows me down and doesn't help me get to my number

No matter what management says, no matter how much a sales person knows that it's good for them in the long run -- changing the behavior of people is hard.  And in an aggressive sales organization where making the number means everything, taking time out to do something you aren't directly compensated for is tough.  And why work on something with a  long term benefit if quota isn't reached in the short term?

Salespeople have a reputation for being resistant to this type of change -- particularly change they doesn't impact their bottom line -- immediately.  Nothing really gets around this point.  There has to be an incentive or a consequence to create any change. In other words, there needs to be a carrot and a stick approach.


Motley Crew
The reports from Salesforce are only going to be as good as the data going in, so 100% participation is required. Each sales person has different motivations and styles and so a multi-faceted approach is required to change everyone's behavior. Some sales people are super-organized team players. They get that they will have better visibility into their accounts and increase their ability to juggle a multitude of opportunities. They get that their more organized and methodical approach will result in better relationships with the customer and a higher win rate. They get that this is a tool that helps them "be on top of things" and helps them hit their number.  They also know that with a stronger, better managed sales organization behind it, that everyone, including him or herself will benefit.

Others take a more seat-of-the-pants style to closing deals. They don't see the value and frankly speaking, must be forced into using Salesforce. They need management to run the sales and forecasting meeting directly from Salesforce reports (if it's not in Salesforce it doesn't exist). They need to be embarrassed in front of their peers that they haven't followed up with a lead in several weeks. They need to be low on the leaderboard report because their forecast isn't accurate. They need to be nagged and baby sat and given artificial "incentive" metrics like having a quota for calls/emails each day.  Others need to be tested and certified as part of their MBO.  It's never perfect though.  If you are exceeding your quota, it often becomes your "get out of jail free" card.

Whether a sales person is on either end of the spectrum, an important facet to improving adoption is to lower the cost of "entry".   If it's easy, then resistance will be less. That can mean several things:

• Increase automation as much as possible. This can mean having quick and convenient pull-down and lookup fields, simplified workflows and more. This can mean an integration with several other applications in the workflow to make it as seamless as possible and to remove double entry of the same data.
• More points of accessibility, such as smart-phone and Outlook integration so that the steps required to enter and access data are minimized.  Some organizations give their sales team Ipads - a small investment compared to the data they receive from it.
• Use lots of alerts.  People find it easier to react to an alert than to proactively search for information.
• Accurate reports for each sales person so they know at every point where they stand during their quarter.
• Prototype your solution with a friendly audience.  Work out the kinks on a small subset of influential sales people before rolling it out to the larger team.  Use your prototype team as your evangelists 
• Training and easy-to-follow documentation so that they can get past most issues without needing someone to handhold them.  Making your training customized -- the more generic it is the more the sales people have to interpolate to their specific situation
• Set clear guidelines on what is expected.  Maybe you don't need to track every "called, no answer" detail nor put in every attendee of every meeting.  Consider the value of the information and the cost to put it in.

and much more. Optimizations are a quick way to lower the cost of using salesforce.com prior to rollout. These types of improvements, coupled with the "stick" approach, help most organizations achieve adoption. The road to value is never an easy path.  You need a plan to get there and to maintain it as the organization grows.  The payoff can be great once the process becomes institutionalized.

Change Management Styles

Every organization is its own biosphere, with unique individuals interacting in an environment that has evolved differently over time than even its direct competition. No wonder that procedures and practices are always different from company to company.

In interacting with many companies, we find that even the process of change management varies widely. The process by which information is obtained, decisions are made and implementations are conducted are shaped by the leadership, market forces and the people that are hired. One of the more common questions we see when managers want to effect change is whether it should be done as a large scale initiative or done in incremental steps. When done as a large scale initiative, the project can take a life of it own but can build significant momentum and force. It can be like a juggernaut that easily moves aside any resistance. The up front planning that is required for a large scale project provides a great discipline to work out the issues early. However, large scale initiatives can get crushed by their own weight. Expectations begin to get set very high, sometimes impossibly high and the only result in these cases is disappointment. The longer a project goes, the more chance there is for scope creep. The longer a project goes, the more chance that the requirements by which the project was built on have already changed. Poorly planned large scale initiatives are notorious for missing dates, going over budget and underdelivering.

Incremental approaches are much more iterative, where bite size pieces are defined and implemented. It's a great approach to de-risk a project and supply quick wins early and frequently. However, this approach is not without some risk. Without a clear long term vision, smaller scale projects can meander and can result in wasted effort. In addition, an organization can only absorb so much change on a frequent basis. If the process changes every 2 weeks, it may become difficult for people to do their jobs.

An analogy in the software development world is the waterfall versus agile development methodologies. In waterfall, there is strong upfront planning/definition and logical steps that progress towards a final, often large deliverable. Waterfall tends to work better in environments where requirements don't frequently change and where quality is of paramount concern. In Agile, smaller, mini-projects are defined that embrace an iterative approach to development. Agile works particularly well in environments where the requirements change frequently and technology risk is fairly high.

In the Salesforce.com world, most sales/marketing/support organizations live in a chaotic world where the competitive marketplace changes the landscape almost daily. Iterative approaches tend to work best in order to meet market demands quickly. When we work with a customer, we try our best to understand their business drivers so that a long term vision can be mapped. Having best practices knowledge in many industries help us drive towards a goal for their Salesforce.com implementation that can be used to guide the incremental projects that will get the customer there.

From there, several phases are defined so that there is a path to the goal. Phase I of course is planned in great detail than subsequent phases. It helps us and the customer get quick wins so that we can build momentum for even more success going forward. Having the roadmap handy though helps ensure that we avoid future roadblocks and helps us more effectively plan the subprojects that will have the most valuable impact in the change management process.

And after all, customers are paying for change.

Best Practices On Salesforce.com, From Salesforce.com

This is a quick, useful video that describes some of the high level keys to a successful CRM implementation. 

There are a many more things to consider that can sink an implementation ranging from technical, process and organizational issues.

However, the three things they identify are very important and worth highlighting.  Find out more at http://www.salesforce.com/learn for more best practices.

Go Native

One of MondayCall Solutions design principles is to go native wherever possible.  "Going native" means using native, out-of-the-box configuration whenever and wherever you can.  As long as you can meet the business requirements, the preferred method is to avoid writing custom code.

For those unfamiliar with building and managing systems, there are clearly pro's and con's to each approach.  Going custom often gets you exactly what you want.  After all, you are customizing it to your special needs.  As your business requirements change, you also can continue to customize the system to meet your specific requirements.  Going custom gives you ultimate control. Salesforce.com offers the Force.com platform and API's to give you that control.

Of course this is a double-edged sword.  Customized solutions often take longer to build because you have to build many of the pieces yourself.  In addition, customized solutions often take more overall maintenance effort, because changes to the requirements must necessitate changes in the customized solution.  This can get very expensive as the system becomes more complex.  I remember very distinctly one developer at a company who defended the "spaghetti" code that was written in their environment as "job security."

All is well and good until the requirements necessitate a major overhaul, or if the administrator of the system suddenly decides to take a job somewhere else.  Without a deep investment, custom solutions tend to become more brittle and untouchable over time.

Using native functionality means a faster time to market.  With Salesforce.com's SaaS platform, you will not only be able to maintain the system with greater ease but also be able to take advantage of the constant improvements made to the system.  Not all changes will be welcome but most will.  Salesforce.com after all is improving the platform based on customer feedback to stay competitive.

So wherever possible, go native.  When you can't, and there will be times when you can't, then really evaluate its priority and scope and see if it is a good business decision.  Still, the productivity, accuracy and information visibility you get from a well running sales, marketing and service infrastructure usually trumps the costs.  If you do need to go custom, then keep things as simple as possible, build the things that you need now and if it makes sense, wait for the day that Salesforce.com adds the functionality so you can migrate to a native set up.

A Word About Optimization

It would be nice if we could be experts at everything -- and I mean everything.

At work we use lots of tools to help us be more productive and to help us towards our business goals.  Most of us use cell phones, email, word, excel, intranets, applications like CRM/ERP, scanners, printers, tablets, etc.  And if you're in the growing camp of people who are working remotely, you have even more tools that you need to work with.  Tools are great because they make your life easy -- or at least they are supposed to.  But as anyone knows you end up playing system administrator on more days that you would like.  Knowing how to address technical and product issues is great for the minority of folks who have a knack for technology and the time to learn it but most people just want it to work and don't have the time.

Take your cell phone.  You really don't need to know all the technology behind how the cell phone works -- you just want it to work in the way you want it, when you want it.  Same with Excel.  It's great to know how to use it, but for most applications, you may not need to know how to program it using the API's.  That's not to say that there aren't uses for people who know how to write an iphone application or how to write complex scripts in Excel to process data.  While there are many ways to skin the cat, one could divide people who use tools in several ways.  There are the creators/configurators, the maintainers and the users.

• The users are the end-users who utilize the tool on a day-to-day basis.  They gain benefit by using the system.
• The maintainers are the people who administrators who make sure it is working in the way that the end users want it.  They may make sure it is always running and turn the knobs and dials to address changes to the system to reflect the changes to the environment or the opportunity to be captured
• The creators/configurators are the people who may do the set up and configuration of the tool.  They may also make the major changes to an already running system.  They typically have deeper expertise than a maintainer and understand best practices.  These are the folks you like to have in charge when you need to make a big change.

For consumer products, the first two are the same person.  Sometimes all three. Tools designed for consumers strive to be so simple to use that you don't need help. For tools used in business, particularly ones with a modicum of complexity, the three categories are often held by distinctly different people.  CRM tools like salesforce.com fall into this category.  End users are typically sales, marketing and support personnel.  Maintainers are usually a dedicated sales operations person or an IT engineer.  Creators/configurators may be consultants specializing in these technologies and have had the benefit of seeing many multiple implementations. 

As a business executive, you need to understand what you need.  In massive organizations, you may need to have a creator/configurator in-house just because of scale and volume.  Some organizations, with very simple needs may not need a creator/configurator at all.  Most organizations fall somewhere in between with either a part-time or full-time administrator with targeted assistance from consultants to help with proper set up or optimization of an already existing environment.

It's interesting to see how many companies struggle with the maintainer-only model.  They often hack  up a configuration that gets them going but find over time that the system they created is unscalable, burdensome for new employees and inflexible to handle the changing needs of the organization.  Not only does it cause suboptimal procedures, it also makes it much harder to unwind what was done from a process standpoint.  Not to mention the all important data.  Once organizations reoptimize their environment, there is often a data migration process that must ensue.  Sometimes it can be painful.  Still others never get off the ground, with end-users rebelling because the system just doesn't make sense to them.

Every place there is an addressable pain or opportunity, there is a market.  Consultants offer "Quickstarts" to help people get on the right foot immediately.  They are a great bang for the buck because you start with the right practices and procedures from day one.  "Optimizations" are often "restarts", where things have drifted enough that the system needs to be reconfigured.  Optimizations are common and are also a big bang for the buck.

One customer said it well.  "I don't need to be an expert at salesforce.com, but I do want to reap the benefits of using salesforce.com."  He has his day job which is to leverage his company's core competencies to sell his company's product.  He astutely knows that salesforce.com expertise is not a core competency of his company.  That being said, he's all for gaining the full benefit of using salesforce.com.

WIth Power Comes Great Responsibility

Companies simply have to do more with less these days.  Resources have been cut to the bone and spending approvals on items as small as a few thousand dollars are required all the way up to the CFO.  When a project is evaluated the first question is always, how can we do this more cheaply and with less risk.  Can we do this in-house?  Why don't we use Joe, have him add some more hours during his day to take this on so we don't have to show an additional expense and/or go through a budget approval process.

In some cases this is the wise move.  Cash is hard to come by and getting outside assistance may be a luxury.  However, in most cases you get suboptimal results which in today's economy has become the new norm.  Suboptimal results though scaled out to your salesforce or customer service operation though get magnified and increase costs significantly.  Worse yet, you increase the risk of the whole project being a failure.  And what organization is more important these days than your sales, marketing and customer operations teams?  Lack of usage, improper usage, decreased morale, inefficiencies and mistakes result in lost dollars.  This is not the area to compromise too much on.

I say this because we see lots of companies in need of what we call a "tune up".  They tried to set up salesforce.com in a way they thought was right but in the end caused them problems.  This is the conundrum with powerful, feature-full products -- there are 15 ways to skin a cat with Salesforce.com but probably only a few right ways to do it.  One customer struggled for nearly a whole year before calling in the cavalry.  Think of the wasted time and effort during that lost year and what could have been -- not to mention the added cost of migrating all the old information to the new set up.  "Restarts" can be costly and you can lose credibility.

Still, you have smart people.  They could figure out anything given time, resources and energy.  Do they have that luxury?  And, can you sustain it ongoing as well.  Your core competence should be your business levers that drive your success and salesforce.com administration and set up is probably not one of your desired core competences.

So get off to the right start.  Setting up the right data structures, configuring the tool in the correct way and establishing a simple and scalable process is essential to a painless future (or at least less pain).  More importantly, it'll mean more dollars for you in the medium to long run.