One of my biggest weaknesses is that I’m a terrible judge of people. Take Patty, for example.
Patty works at a large hospital system in central Pennsylvania (and although I’m changing her name she’s real). She is the administrator for a group of 30 hospital “consultants” who are tasked with visiting doctors and healthcare firms in a 500-mile radius to make them aware of the systems’ many offerings, from rehabilitative services to therapy and preventative care. When I first met Patty she was introduced to me as the person responsible for the new CRM system we were implementing for them. And I was concerned. Patty didn’t look the part to me. She was older (in her late 50’s at the time). She didn’t seem very technical-savvy. She talked slow and she moved slow. She didn’t seem very motivated at the time. She seemed like she was waiting on retirement, rather than getting to implement a CRM system for 30 people.
Which concerned me. Because Patty’s job was absolutely critical for the success of this implementation. Why?
Her job, as the CRM Administrator, meant that she would be ultimately responsible for the integrity of the data in the system. If information was missing, out of date, or wrong, it would be her responsibility to fix the problem and implement the right procedures to ensure that it didn’t happen again. As the CRM Administrator, Patty would have to know the system inside and out. She would have to be familiar with customizing reports, doing ad-hoc queries on the go, creating workflows, and sending mass emails when needed. She would be the go-to person for any questions or problems. She would train new employees on how the system would be used. She would maintain a custom manual specifically tailored to the group’s processes. She would be responsible for making sure that everyone was using the system the right way and consistently. Because a CRM system is only effective if people are using it. And her job was to help people use it.
And I was worried. To me, Patty just didn’t seem to have the right stuff for the job. As we started the implementation, I gave it a less than 50% chance of success. And of course, as usual, I was wrong. Patty took the ball that we threw at her… and ran with it.
She not only embraced the system, but she spent the hours needed to learn it as well as we knew it. But more importantly, she exercised the authority given to her by her boss to get others to use it, too. She made it a point to ensure that each user had the appropriate training and support. She worked with us to setup the right kind of access on smartphones, tablets, and laptops that fit the workflow of the group’s employees. She trained herself online. She dug into the details of setting up forms, creating custom reports, and configuring workflows. She made mistakes and she fixed them. She did research when she didn’t know the answers. She was relentless in asking us for help. And when it came to her group, she took no prisoners: she wiped noses, changed diapers, and smacked people in the head (all figuratively of course) when they didn’t follow the rules. She set up alerts in the system to notify her when certain fields were changed or hadn’t been changed in a long time. The buck stopped with Patty. She owned the CRM system. She loved the CRM system. And I couldn’t have been more surprised… or wrong.
So what happened? Success. Patty’s boss smartly gave her full authority to do what she needed to do to make it work. And so she did—with a combination of empathy and tough love. Six months into it, her group was using the system to track activities, send and receive emails, manage opportunities, quickly access their information wherever they were and, most importantly, maintain a database with accurate and complete information that was not only relied upon by the group’s managers in daily and weekly reports but also by the hospital’s marketing team who used that data to communicate services and offerings to the physician community in the area. Patty was in on it all. It was her system. And it succeeded because of her.
Insightly is easy to use and easy to set up, but no matter how easy it is to use, a CRM system needs a Patty to succeed. Without a central CRM Administrator, you’re looking at nothing but a messy rolodex, if best. My company has implemented hundreds of CRM systems over the past decade and the one similar trait of each success implementation is that they had a Patty. This is not a technical person. And it’s not your IT staff. It’s a person who likes technology, isn’t afraid to learn, and has no problem kicking the group into gear so that they’re doing what they need to do—all with the authorization of management, of course. Make sure you’ve got a Patty in place before you move forward with your implementation. And if you ask me to recommend someone, make sure to do the exact opposite. You won’t be sorry.
Find your internal champion and take a look at Insightly’s plans and features to see if it’s the right CRM for you. You can sign up for a limited free account or try the 14-day trial for all functions.
About the Author: Gene Marks is a small business owner, technology expert, author and columnist. He writes regularly for leading US media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. He has authored five books on business management and appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNBC. Gene runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com
