Response to “Principal CRMs”

I just read the April 2018 article “Principal CRMs” with great interest and would like to add to this discussion. Personally, I have been using online CRMs for many years and would like to take exception to the use of the phrase “fill out reports online.”

I would argue that, if used correctly, a CRM makes the job of the Field Agents — of everyone — simpler by eliminating this filling out of reports. Please follow my line of thought. What does a Field Agent do when they leave a customer visit? Typically they review and organize their handwritten meeting notes, write e-mails communicating these meeting notes and schedule the next event in their calendar. Often this information is added to complex e-mail chains containing much needed project/engineering details. But what is the high level project status and how is this communicated? What are the next steps and who will make them? This information is often swallowed up by the meeting notes in those long e-mail chains.

From my experience the Agency Back Office may then call the Field Agent interrupting his day to ask about the current status. For large, important projects — just like expectant fathers outside a delivery room — the Agency Back Office as well as the manufacturer will often interrupt the Field Agent countless times by asking for the status. This drags everyone down.

Using a properly adapted and implemented CRM, however, the Field Agent organizes and enters his notes into his CRM. He schedules the next meeting or event in his CRM. The Field Agent then quickly updates the overall project status, the next step and, very importantly, documents who owns that next step — all in his single CRM tool. When a customer quote is delivered, a copy is placed in the CRM and attached to that particular project for that particular customer. The Agency Back Office can then monitor the projects and ride heard on engineering, quoting, and various departments with the agency as well as within the manufacturer to accomplish that next step and move the project along.

Now, here is the best part. When the manufacturer’s CEO wakes up at 5:00 a.m. in Italy or the Czech Republic, he can grab his cellphone and check the CRM for his global projects. He can see any updated quote values and the automatically updated weighted pipeline revenue. If he chooses to drill down, he can even read the U.S. Field Agent’s meeting notes and project status from the day before. If the manufacturer’s CFO needs detailed financial information, he simply creates a report template within the CRM which is automatically populated with pipeline information and parsed for his various markets and divisions. All of this is accomplished without interrupting the Field Agent’s day or asking him to fill out reports.

Now, the theory and the design of a system are straightforward. What about the implementation? I find this to be the real challenge. Who’s CRM do you use? How do you get everyone — the Agency Back Office, the Field Agents, any independent sub-agents and the various manufacturers — access to the same, live data? How do you handle the challenge of those valuable, older Field Agents who have no interest in learning to use such technology?

These are the the very questions I would enjoy discussing with the MANA readership. I very much want to listen to how others are handling these challenges.

Joseph Kemple, President
Heiko Machine Tools, LLC