CRMs Are Not Sales Software | Hacker News Reader

CRMs Are Not Sales Software

elasticsales.com

29 pointsSteliE15 comments

This makes it sound like the author hasn't really used Salesforce or other tools, which go way beyond CRM in delivering productivity tools for sales people. There is an entire ecosystem around extending the Salesforce platform to service particular needs that throughout and organization. IMO I think this startup would be better served by establishing credibility in their market space instead of making dubious claims and dogging the market leader.

I actually have and think Salesforce is a great CRM solution. But that's not the point of this piece. The core argument is that CRMs are not sales software and not the right interface for sales reps as core user group. If you look at the UI/UX the closest thing to most CRMs (including Salesforce) is Amazons' AWS backend panel.

Think about that. The interface for engineers to manage servers is almost identical to the interface we give sales people to manage customers :)

We think there's something wrong with that and have tested it already with many sales reps and seen great results.

Just as a bit of background: we are currently running sales campaigns for many venture backed startups in the valley and are very familiar with the space.

Would love to invite you to visit our little "sales lab" in Mountain View and hear your feedback :)

During OracleWorld keynote, after Oracle bought Siebel, Larry said something like: "there are only 2 useful features in a CRM system - forecasting and analytics - and everything else exists simply to collect data for these features." See if you can find the original quote.

Larry is exactly right. I have never come across a company that believes their CRM is going to help them drive sales or has tried to trick their salesforce into using CRM by billing it as "sales software."

In my experience, a CRM is typically fed leads by a marketing automation system or bulk record loading from offline events. All the reps need to do is sort their list of leads by priority, call on them, and flip the status to "meeting" or "closed/won" when they're done. That's nowhere near data entry slavery, IMO.

With a CRM, we want to ask: * How full is our funnel? * Where are our leads coming from? * What's my projected revenue this quarter? * Is anything stuck? * Who isn't working their leads fast enough?

All of these things are hugely valuable and none of them have to do with being a "communication" tool.

You are right. But just answer honestly one question - is this data that sales people provide for their reports really 100% honest?? If you had CRM on top of the communication tool - or even better - CRM reports like pipeline would be in real-time generated based on real life customer interactions - that would be much more valuable right?

That is exactly what we do with Discourse ( https://discoursehq.com ) - there are couple of usecases where this makes a lot of sense:

- real-estate brokers can track pipeline based on real life customer interactions - car sales - financial services sales - telco services sales

We have integrated Discourse with Facebook fan pages so leads generated on fan pages can be immediately converted into prospects - right there on the spot.

We have a growing number of customers and we are looking for more :)

awesome! will do gleb :)

fwiw, I'm not saying you aren't familiar with the space - just that it was the perception I came away with from reading the post in a vacuum without any other context about who you guys are or what you are doing

I'd happily give you feedback, I do sales and use Salesforce daily so anything that can make it better sounds great to me

Appreciate the feedback. Will make some edits to the post :) And I'll ping you to meet up sometime soon!

just show up for our party tonight - http://elasticpivot.eventbrite.com

Agree on the need to make sales tools more usable by sales people. The two biggest issues we've identified with CRM usage are around (1) compliance (e.g., Inputting sales info per company policy) and (2) currency (e.g., keeping the sales information fresh and up to date). The design point for most CRMs is as a corporate reporting tool, in essence a static db of outdated or missing data. The reality is that most CRMs fail to add value to a typical sales rep’s daily effort, and the output (typically exported to Excel) fails to provide the level of insight or information to correctly "money ball" a sales team or manage a pipe. This requires a herculean effort of people and time with layers of sales management and sales ops to provide the rigor and discipline required to forecast a quarter. Net, net -- a hairball. Here's a good read if you are interested in a well thought out understanding of the issue: http://birch.co/post/19234996380/the-failure-of-sales-analyt.... As CEO of Foretuit (www.Foretuit.com), the selling process is ripe with inefficiencies and inherently ineffective. Hence a huge area for disruptive tech. While no one vendor (established or startup) has cracked this code, the opportunity to leverage the $18 billion each year that orgs spend on CRM presents a solid opportunity now and in the future.

It sounds like your gripe is with companies who have created CRMs with additional features and packaged them all together as a do-all be-all 'Sales Software'. That is not the entire CRM market. Not all CRMs are marketed like this.

As a CRM, a CRM is useful as a CRM. CRMs are by no means 'scams' or 'not useful' when youre using them as they are intended.

Here is the first paragraph on the SugarCRM website: "Sugar is an affordable and easy to use customer relationship management (CRM) platform, designed to help your business communicate with prospects, share sales information, close deals and keep customers happy."

See how they 2 of their 4 points are about sharing information and not sales? That is a properly marketed CRM. Can a CRM help you make sales? Absolutely. CRMs can help you get organized so you can stay on top of customers & know where youre at in your sales.

Should this be all your use to drive sales? Absolutely not. Why? Because it's a customer relationship manager and not a do-all be-all sales tool.

We have built Discourse ( https://discoursehq.com ) with exactly that vision - that CRM is not a sales tool and good communication platform for sales teams, customers and partners will be much better. Anyone interested to learn more can see also http://blog.smartupz.com EDIT: this comment may sound like a plug but I'm really excited to see CRM discussion on HN and had to jump in :)

Steli is right - in some cases. However, I have always wondered CRM systems are built with B2C subcribtion products in mind? In most cases it is hard to apply this CRM process to for example B2B distribution of phycsical goods. B2B orders usually require tons of seller/buyer collaboration and configuration. The only way to solve this is to combine CRM with B2B e-commerce platforms where orders can be collaboratively configured. Anybody tried a solution like that?

I find CRMs are better once you have a client. What you are talking about building seems closer to lead management software. While CRM are not themselves communication software, you can easily integrate communication software like skype or leaddesk into salesforce and it's pretty much there. I would still like to see a better solution, as I don't like the salesforce pricing (yearly contracts) and some other things...

love. i want to see your setup steli :) and if you have not already done so. see if you can find a way to add rapportive findings to your tool. being able to see who is emailing you and connect with them in realtime is an incredible sales edge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com