How This Product Manager Transformed CRM Adoption with a Unique Success Story Workshop

Sure, so I'm I'm, I'm, I'm just processing the, um, innovation side because, you know, coming from construction, building materials, I'm gonna have to, if it's OK, I'm gonna have to kind of be a little flexible with innovation. Is that,

OK, um, so, When In 2019, we were also doing um a Salesforce integration. So, when I came, came into the company, uh, the, the CRM they were jumping around CRMs, uh, they, that we tried copper, I think it was HubSpot when I first came in. And I did a lot of research on it, and, you know, I don't wanna say that it were, you know, I was a Salesforce, uh, fanboy or anything, but it just, it, it had The, the pros and cons of Salesforce is you can do everything and that's also the con with Salesforce, but either way, we chose. Um, and I wanted to make sure that we were, we were implementing. Systems within the Salesforce customization that would automatically report some of the things I, I think that, that you're asking, you know, that's how the, the question to me that I was trying to solve was, how can I get them to adopt the CRM while also creating a positive feedback loop for them to stay on task and push customer journeys forward. Um, but at the same time, I got automation reporting on what they were doing on that, right? So I guess that's the point of a CRM, but, um, So, what I did was we had a sales seminar. Um, I had everybody come prepared with 3 success stories. The 3 biggest success stories, um, in the past, and it didn't even have to be success in a particular sale or dollar amount. It could be a success in getting a product specified. It could be a success with a particular customer relationship. Um, and I, again, I, I, I whiteboarded it and I got up, and I Um, and I had them just talk through it. Talk through, you know, tell me that, that wind story. And as they talked through it, I tried to pull out key activities in that story that led to an aha moment, or, uh, you know, a light bulb moment in that, in that success. So, what we did is we came up with a list of, uh, it was, it was about 20 activities. And then I started to tally as people kept telling their stories, things such as, I jumped on a plane the next day, or I, I spent 2 days in the field with their technician, or I, I, I did an engineer meeting with them. OK. So, it was things such as that. Um, you know, in our industry, those were some of the, the innovative things to, you know, kind of be out there teaching. And not a lot of companies did that. Um, the engineer side of things, you know, show positioning ourselves as technical leaders. And so what I did was, then I got their buy-in that these were the key activities that we needed to focus on, right? You know, based on your stories, these are the takeaways that I see as key activities. Now, let's rank them. So, what we did was we did a, a, a 1, 10, and 30 point ranking. Um, on these. And, you know, things such as an email, a phone call, or, you know, things like that. Um, obviously, those are one point activities, and then I took those key ones and put point values 30. Part of our Salesforce integration that we did was we When, when you input a a company, uh, you could choose what product line that they're gonna go into. And then based on that product line, it would then populate a progression, a customer progression of tasks based on what we identified in that sales meeting. And obviously, you know, going from tasks such as 1 to the 30 point, you know. What I did with it, and this is, um, you know, I got some, some pushback from the team a little bit on how analytical, you know, I, I was taking this. But what I started to do was, I was tracking the, and this is one of the things I referred to in my resume, where I was looking at, like, the 1st and 2nd derivatives of, of effort, for instance. So, What I, the point that I made to them was, We all do effort every day, but we need to make sure that we're progressing highest value activities. Um, maybe, uh, you know, say that's an analogy of staying innovative with the customer. So, what I would actually do is track not only how much effort they were doing, but how fast that rate of effort was changing. So, they may have a week that's an office week that's very heavily email, phone call centric, and they're inputting this activity. Well, I'm going to see that, that, the rate of change of that effort is maybe 0, but either way, we're not making any progress. So, that would, uh, I would say that's probably the biggest way that I try to standardize the Salesforce. To make sure that the guys were, had an exponential trajectory of effort based on the value points of our key activities. And, um, and Uh, it, it, it did play itself out, where the people that had the highest sales did more of the The joint engineer calls with their customers. They did more of the 2+ day field trainings with the customers. They did a lot more of those higher value activities. So, I was able to graph that against their sales and use that as You know, um, information and sales meetings.

Um, I, I would say my, my leadership style, um, I, I refer to it as A, a, a collaborative individual ownership. Um, and I, I very deliberately try to, like that example with the sales seminar where I had them identify these activities from their stories. You know, I, I, I always wanted to be a collaborative process, but they take individual ownership because they, they were the ones that told me, right? This was from their story. This wasn't me just giving them top-down, this is what you should be doing. So, one of the ways that That I try to kind of stay ahead of pushback from the team is in that collaborative process, where we, we come up with it together, but once we, once we agree on it, now we have to deliver. Um, and if they don't deliver, then I can always go back to that collaborative process and say, you, you know, the, these were your words. You know, you, you gave me this feedback, um, as far as what customers need and what those key activities are. So, I, I think the, the pushback that I, that I referred to there was probably more along the lines of the, the data input than the way I was analyzing it. You know, just a lot of guys in, in the construction industry in general are, um, I, I would say, I guess it's a broad stroke there, but They're a little bit less likely to get down at the end, sit down at the end of their day in their hotel room and input data, you know, and,

Exactly, exactly. So that, that's probably where I got more of the pushback. And then I did get a little pushback when they just, you know, a couple of guys that were underperforming just didn't like what the data said, right? I mean, when I had a graphically laid out now that Hey, you're not doing the high value efforts, and here's the chart that shows your, your weekly and monthly and quarterly efforts, and the, you know, the, the, the like the accountability, perhaps. But again, in answer to your question, my, my management style, I like to make sure that in the beginning, when you set up a system or a reporting system that is collaborative, and then OK.