CRM System Optimization and User Adoption

Southworth Products is a manufacturing and engineering company headquartered in Falmouth Maine. They have led the material handling industry for decades through strong sales connections with distributors and large individually contracted projects. For as large as the client-base is, the management of customer relationships was primarily only in the view of outside sales representatives.

While the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software had been working for the commercial sales group, it was only being used as a rolodex. New initiatives for reporting and metric tracking under a new CEO required more data and a different approach to the relationship between the inside sales representatives and the outside sales representatives. I had recently transferred from the Information Systems department to the Sales department in part to help organize the sales group’s reporting approaches.

Taking on the role of CRM manager was one of the first tasks I took on. After spending some time exploring the application while using it as an inside sales representative, it was clear that we were leaving valuable tools on the table. I developed a relationship with the vendor and learned about the forecasting, notetaking, activity logging, and automation tools that were accessible to us. We developed backend processes which eliminated manual reporting that outside sales representatives were putting together for the management team regularly. Our communication about ongoing projects and deadlines were streamlined.

All of this took place over the course of several months. I took the lead in training the inside sales representatives, who primarily used the program daily. With their support, I trained the outside sales representatives who were located across the country. This was accomplished through scheduled Microsoft Teams meetings and online “office hours” where I was committed to be available to answer questions for anyone who wanted help using the newfound tools.

By the time that CRM tool had met its end at Southworth – we moved to Salesforce about 2 years later – the commercial sales group developed a greater appreciation of the use of data. Many of the outside sales representatives were resistant. They didn’t trust releasing some of the control of information to a database. However, with some handholding and education, the team realized that they could respond to inquiries faster, be proactive with customer relationships more effectively, and address management questions more precisely because of the steps we took to optimize our CRM system.