Speaker 1: The following program was recorded at the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association's annual conference in San Diego. I'm pleased to welcome Managing Editor of Supply Chain Brain, Bob Bowman.

Speaker 2: Affiliated Resource Group is a company that helps companies to align their business goals with their IT strategy. My guest today is President Mike Moran. Mike, welcome to the program. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. So, let's start by asking, how does a technology company get involved with sales and marketing in the first place?

Speaker 3: Sure. When we started the business, we helped organizations implement their ERP systems, their enterprise resource planning systems. And as we looked at it, the one group, if you will, in a business, the front end of the house, the sales team, the marketing teams, and the customer service, customer support groups, they really weren't a big player in those systems. Those all really focused on back-end financing, ordering, manufacturing, distribution, supply chain. And looking at that, that was an underserved group. And a couple of our clients came to us and said, we really need some help because our sales teams are struggling. We don't have knowledge base of who our accounts are. Sure, we know who the accounts payable is because we go into the ERP system and see that, but we have no clue how to do this. And our sales and marketing teams are arguing. Our sales guys are saying they never get enough leads. And marketing says, we send you leads, but you don't follow up on them. And how can we find some ways to get that taken care of? So it just kind of started as a fluke in the mid-'90s. A friend of mine worked for a company. He was one of their leading sales folks. We implemented their ERP system. They were out. Their CMO bought a Salesforce automation system. And I was at his house. We were having some cocktails. And all of a sudden, he went out and broke out his newspaper, his paper bag, and he started putting his invoices, his customer invoices, in his mail crates that he put in the back of his company car. And I asked him why he was doing it. He said, well, this is the way we've always done it. And then I asked him to get out his computer, and I showed him what this CRM system they bought actually did. And we weren't even involved in the implementation. And he was just shocked. And a couple weeks later, he called me, and he said, hey, how'd you like to get together for some beers, and we'll talk about this again? And I walked into a room at a hotel, and there were 12 of his peers. And they wanted me to do a training scenario and show them how they could get out of having to spend this hour or two every week processing the paper the old way when they had this computer that could fix things. And that's how it started.

Speaker 2: What a great illustration of the lesson that buying a piece of technology solves nothing in and of itself.

Speaker 3: Exactly. It's a perfect example of that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So how about this issue of aligning business goals with IT strategy? Talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: Sure. Many times, companies spend a great amount of time putting together a strategic plan. They focus on all the important things that they need to do in terms of where they go. And the technology group is kind of an afterthought. Well, we can go to Best Buy, or we can go to CDW, or we can go online and buy a bunch of stuff because it's just computers and stuff that we don't understand, so we don't want to deal with it. But if an organization's goal is to say that we're going to improve the customer satisfaction by X number of points, and we have ways to measure that, how are we going to roll that out to the business? How is the customer support team going to be able to do that? Well, are they still going to use spiral notebooks with pens so that all of that information is isolated in an island, or are they going to look at scenarios that say, hey, how can we get this located in one scenario so that everyone in the organization can have access to that information so that if Jane is out today, and that customer that Jane supports calls in, David can help them support them, and the customer doesn't miss a beat. If part of the goal is that we have to trim our expenses and be more efficient in terms of what we're doing, again, how do we get things that normally take three, four, five days to process? How can we help work and use a technology system to make that happen so that then our technology folks go from working on hardware, if you will, and connections to start looking at how do they get more integrated into achieving the goals of the business? That's a lot of what we do in various ways from helping them with strategy to helping them select the solutions that they do to implementing them and then actually being able to support them after the fact.

Speaker 2: In the process, you tear down some of these dreaded corporate silos, don't you?

Speaker 3: Very much so. Very much so. A lot of times, some of what we do isn't even really technology-based. It's almost documenting the business process so we can put it up on a wall and sit in there with members of the customer staff and look at it and say, hey, this is what we understand that you do. They look at it and you see the light bulbs going off and saying, why do we do that? Well, it's the way we've always done it. Let's fix that. It's not technology-based at all, but it's helping them get more efficient in terms of where they go.

Speaker 2: What are some of the issues that your clients are facing today and why have some of them implemented customer relationship management systems?

Speaker 3: Well, I can remember last year, everyone said it's the economy, baby. It's that challenge. I was at a conference and I heard a guy say that and I thought it was corny, but it really comes back to this. Organizations have worked really hard to take costs out of their business, whether it's a manufacturer, supply chain folks that have greatly reduced their inventory because it's money sitting on the shelf and they want to be able to repurpose that money. Whether it's organizations that have allowed staff to leave the organization, not replace them because they're trying to do a whole lot more with less. These guys are all looking at these things and now all of a sudden they're realizing, hey, I've cut back. I've gotten pretty efficient. I've got the organization running as effectively as we can today. But if I'm a publicly traded company, my shareholders expect growth. My shareholders expect a positive return. And you can only cut so much. So we've got to start growing that top line. And we've got all of our competitors out there are looking to grow their business. And unfortunately, in this economy, there aren't hundreds of thousands of new organizations starting up and companies that are growing like crazy that are turning around. Sure, there's a few, but there's much less than there was when the economy was robust. So what are they doing? They're going to poach someone else's customers. They're taking that business away from them. And how are they doing it? Well, because they're more efficient and they're more effective and they know what they're doing, they're able to do that. So what we look at, our clients helping them and why they're choosing a CRM systems are, number one, they want to solidify that existing group of clients. They want to solidify that relationship that they have with them. They want to be able to give them a better experience every time. They want to be more supportive and more helpful. They want to be able to provide the value that their customers are expecting and not have to do it in a way that adds cost to their solution. And then they're also looking at, from a marketing and sales perspective, is if I can help my marketing and sales team be aligned and I can help them go out and be smarter and be faster and be more agile when they go after the business, I'm going to be in a better position to take it away from some of those customers that aren't doing those things in terms of where it goes. And then the third piece of it is, is that we're starting to see an awful lot more organizations start practicing team selling, where in the past you had the proverbial hunter that went out every day and he or she went out and they banged on doors or they banged on the phone and they got that business and they landed it themselves. Where today we're seeing more of a team approach because there are organizations, as you look at verticalizing what you do or you look at a different approach to the market, where they're putting three or four people in three or four disparate locations together working as a sales team and they're saying, hey, we need to have a better way for these folks to communicate and work together.

Speaker 2: Sounds great in theory, but what about those cynics in the organization that say, ah, CRM, just another application? A sales prevention tool.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. It's actually true. It can be a sales prevention tool. You know, just like there's an awful lot of folks out there that look at a glass of water and say that it's half empty. I think the challenge with it is, is that part of it comes to adoption and part of it comes to understanding and part of it really comes to being able to help folks understand what the benefits are. I'll go back to an example very early in my career that I think hit this home and I think this will make sense to you. I worked for a large implement dealer, implement organization, and I had to help the company implement information systems for their dealer organization. I went down to this dealership in Southern Ohio, it was a third generation organization, and the grandfather had spent the money because the company forced him to buy this $25,000 computer system, but it was sitting in a service bay, not being used. He called it, you know, that appliance from hell. He wasn't going to do anything. They made me buy it, but I don't have to use it. Well, I spent some time with the son and the grandson, who, you know, the grandson was in his 30s and they were very frustrated, but he wouldn't let them out. Unfortunately, because I worked for the organization, I knew that this company was having trouble getting their financing for the implements done because they were filling out the forms incorrectly. What I did was I unboxed one of the systems and I set it up, and I talked to the grandfather, and this is an old guy who, you know, probably didn't finish high school. He was in the typical overalls and had the farmer's hat on and, you know, was chewing his tobacco. And we were talking about it, and we talked about what his problems were, and I showed him this finance processing application and how easy it was, and how it was guaranteed that if you hit the right buttons and you did it right, the financing would never be canceled. And he was so excited when it was done that he was actually, at the end of the day, calling some of his friends and customers to come in and get quotes on new products. And this was a guy who was in his 80s, and it was just understanding what the benefit to him and him, him, him personal success was that really drove him to, to that happiness. And I've always used that example in how we looked at CRM systems, and you have to have a win for the sales team. What's the real benefit? So that when they see that a couple of those leads that they entered into that system or those contacts that they updated got involved in a marketing list that turned around that had people come to an event or call them for some information, or when they went out and saw them, these people actually contacted them, the light starts going on to the value of what this is. So.

Speaker 2: Just give me one or two characteristics of a best-in-class CRM implementation.

Speaker 3: Sure. Easy answer is it starts from success on the top. I mean, if the organizational executives are behind the system, it works. If you really understand what your organization is, it helps. And I'll elaborate on both those two points, but I think those are key. The first is, is that, you know, it's one thing for the executive to sign the check. It's another thing for the executive to walk the floor and ask the folks what's going on and understand from the top down and the bottom up, what are the opportunities for value for this? Perfect example is we have one client who was the VP of customer service for his organization. He had 50 reps. Two weeks into the implementation, a number of, he walked the floor and a number of the folks were still using their spiral notebooks and pens. One evening he took them all away. And he said when the people came in looking for him, he said, no, no, no, we have a system. We'll use it. They're not only that our adoption go up, but there was an organization that had a couple of their sales folks left and they were able to use their inside support team to cover those salespeople for the period of time that took to replace them. And one of their customers even commented to him that we've had more communications from your company in the time that our sales reps left than we did for the three years that he called on us. The second example is understanding who you're, what your teams are and what they really need. Some costs, some companies and customers are not computer savvy. They're not computer literate. So it's helping them understand how to use the system, not just that it teach you how to use the product, but teach them how to use their computer system. It's sit down with them and understand how they work and show them how the system will work for them, with them and to their advantage overall as a company. And some of that may include more training than just how to use the system. Part of the system, one of the systems that we use, they're tied into basically Outlook, which is how people use their email. Well, if it's the same look and feel as Outlook, every time I go to my Outlook system, I've got that right there. So that's another one of those things that it's kind of that understanding your team, making it easy for them to use. So it's, I don't have to log on to the new system, which is four or five times where I go.

Speaker 2: So it's those sort of things. Some great advice. Thank you so much, Mike, for sharing your insights with us.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 2: You're welcome. I've been speaking with Mike Moran of Affiliated Resource Group. Thank you very much for watching.