The world of sales, as we discussed
last week, is adapting to the new breed of customer. Salespeople are
using Web 2.0 tools to communicate with customers and prospects. These
tools offer rapid and easy adoption, and are powerful in forming and
holding groups together around particular themes and interests.
Beyond
these advantages, the tools also are founded on dynamics of user
feedback, review, and approval, which makes for platforms grounded in
metrics of trust and authenticity. These two qualities have long played
a role in sales and indeed all business – in fact salespeople are on
working terms with them both – but rarely before have they become part
of the measurement system upon which an infrastructure depends.
As systems and software evolve to accommodate the new dynamics of the markets, in the “Experience Economy”, CRM 2.0 attempts to carry the flame. Denis Pombriant suggests that CRM alone, purely as a technical construct, is unable to do this.
”...it is not immediately clear whether CRM
per se is the vehicle for authenticity and in fact the over rendering
of reality by sales, service and marketing may automatically disqualify
CRM from taking center stage in the new derby.
“Authenticity is all about walking the walk. Businesses using CRM or at least CRM 1.0 have been very much about talking the talk and it may be left for a new and relatively un-sexy software discipline – GRC - or its off shoots, to deliver the verisimilitude that Pine and Gilmore think is missing.
“If you are unfamiliar with GRC
it stands for governance, risk and compliance and it feels like the
business equivalent of eating your spinach. However, at its nittiest
and grittiest, GRC is about proving that you walk the walk, and having the records and standards that support you. GRC won’t supplant CRM,
it will support and enhance it, I think. It will take another five to
ten years to get it all right and it will fuel many software vendors’
development plans for quite a while.” – Kick it up a notch
Getting it all right is everybody’s
development plan, and only some will succeed. The pressures from the
customers for authenticity are amplified by the salesforce demand for
convenience and efficiency, and all of this comes down to the
development bench.
It’s a good time for agility, which as we’ve mentioned, is everywhere.
