What You Should Really Seek from Phase 1 of Your CRM Project

by David Lee, President & Founder, Vertical Marketing, Inc.
published October 31, 2007

You may think that your goal in the initial phase of a CRM project is to finally, at long last, gain access to useful management reports, or perhaps, should you be so bold, to increase sales or improve customer service.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but neither of these goals, admirable as they may be, deserves to be your most important objective.Your most critical job in Phase 1 is to sell your troops on the importance of using the new system, and thereby achieve your most important goal: high adoption levels.

How do you gain high adoption levels? The same way you succeed in selling most products and services-via high perceived value, low cost (with cost in this situation typically measured in terms of learning time and usability), and serious motivation and management.

Here is what these attributes mean in the real world of your company:

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About David Lee
Dr. David Lee is president and founder of Vertical Marketing, Inc., a CRM sales and consulting practice incorporated in 1987 with 5 offices world wide. Through VMI he has been involved in more than 1,000 CRM projects ranging in size from single users to thousands of users.
He has experience in all phases of the CRM life cycle including CRM baseline measurement and ROI analysis, sales process design, RFP development, system selection, system design and configuration, custom programming, Data cleaning and import, system integration, training and train-the-trainer, ongoing support, and rescuing faltering CRM projects.
Dr. Lee holds scores of CRM awards and certifications from customers, vendors and training organizations. He is personally certified on 7 CRM systems with separate certifications for specific modules and versions in many cases. He holds additional certifications and awards for countless third party applications. He is a Certified Sales Process Consultant and Certified Trainer.

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