Blue Star went through a series of five CRM proof of concepts, evaluations and implementation attempts with limited success before settling on Zoho CRM. Blue Star certainly has been a “burnt child” at that time.
The main reason for Blue Star deciding for going with Zoho CRM is that Blue Star did not want to go for what Pahwa calls a canned solution. Zoho offered the willingness and ability to co-create a solution that is tailored to Blue Star’s needs. “They're ready to tailor it for us. That was a big advantage” he says.
Before embarking into this sixth implementation, Blue Star performed what Pahwa calls an introspection to find out why there was no adoption but, in fact, resistance. He says that “what we came to know is any CRM for a sales guy is looked upon as moral policing”.
This is not terribly uncommon and can be addressed. Blue Star chose to work with a comprehensive set of three levers to drive adoption.
Here you can watch the full conversation with Udit Pahwa,
The company started with executive sponsorship and a top-down approach in a division that had what Pahwa calls a “visionary leader who was also a technology enthusiast. This leader set a goal to eliminate spreadsheets and to only use a digital platform, which helped drive user adoption of Zoho CRM within that division.” This sent the clear message that the implementation is not yet another implementation that doesn’t matter but that it is important for the company. In addition, this strategy facilitates doing a further roll-out on the back of a successful implementation (or limits the losses in case of a failure).
Second, Blue Star answered the important question “what is in it for me” that the sales reps have. The sales teams’ concerns were mitigated by explaining and later showing how unproductive time would be reduced by the CRM via eliminating spreadsheets and significantly simplifying visit reports. This way, sales reps spend less time with administrative parts and instead can do more of what they really want – spend time in the field with their customers. “So, no more filling out of spreadsheets, no more creation of visit reports, uh all the manual stuff which they used to get into. We said you don't need to do part of it will be done on by the app and part of it you will have to do it on the app, and it will format everything for a review.”
The sales teams seem to have understood and believed this. What also helped was that the new system was no more referred to as a CRM system but as a “sales organizer”. This contributed to positioning the system as a helper instead of a monitoring tool.
“So I think they realized that as we are growing their unproductive workload is going to grow even further and here is a tool which will help me reduce my unproductive time so that I have more time to spend in the market with the customer and I don't have to worry about all the administrative tasks which I need to do in the back end.”
Instead, the system digitalized a good part of the workload. The system minimizes the need for input into a visit report to five or six structured fields, automates the summarization, reporting and analysis, helping both, the sales reps and back-office staff who are relieved of the cumbersome consolidation of reports that came in via Excel spreadsheets. In addition, this enables the system to draft a route plan for the sales reps, facilitating their planning. In Pahwa’s words “that took out a sizable chunk of admin work for the users as well as the supporting staff who were attached to the users”. And this is also where Blue Star sees the way ahead with the sales organizer. Next steps include the evaluation of AI powered speech to text technologies to further reduce efforts. Instead of typing, sales reps will then be able to dictate visit summaries etc. This input then shall be converted to text and then automatically populate the CRM.
Of course, users have to pay a price for this, which is mandatory use of the system. Managers won’t accept reports in the form of spreadsheets anymore and require that all pertinent data is entered into the sales organizer. Basically, the approach is that “if it ain’t in the system, it doesn’t exist”. This again is facilitated by offering all sales reps and managers personalized dashboards that give real-time insight into budget vs. actual sales, also thanks to an integration into the SAP ERP system.
One could say that this is a kind of a carrot and stick approach, however one with a considerably sized carrot and a fairly small, yet effective, stick. Especially since Blue Star plans to make work with the system even easier and more beneficial for the sales reps.
The result? Success. “… this worked well and we had near 100% adoption with that business division so much so that their pipeline of leads I think went up by about 35% and they were able to attract a larger business you know under their fold because for us in the in the commercial air conditioning segment the more leads you have the more chances are for the conversion and growth of business. So that worked well for them.”
This, in turn, caused the other divisions to get on board, or as Pahwa says “When this was a success in one business division it started having a rub-off effect across the organization and as we speak today the entire sales organization is live and 100% adopting the my sales organizer which is the Zoho CRM.”
In summary, Blue Star worked with a smart combination of decisions that turned out to be a winning strategy to achieve the goal of 100% user adoption and to drive business through it.
With Zoho CRM, Blue Star chose a flexible tool.
With Zoho, Blue Star found a partner that was willing to co-create a solution with them.
Blue Star promised and delivered significant value for the sales reps and not only for their managers.
Blue Star moved away from the term CRM, which was a burnt and positioned the tool as a helper, naming it sales organizer.
There is executive buy in to the solution with not only sales reps being mandated to use it but also managers and executives wanting to use a system.
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