Hamlin’s Wizard Oil cures rheumatism, diphtheria, sprains, corns, cramps, lame backs, and diarrhea. Sounds like some amazing stuff! No doubt the linear descendant of this patent medicine now claims to, “Create a world class, global, multilingual, CRM system, with integrated reporting and full quoting ability, using only point and click administration and requiring less than a day to setup”.
Let me see a show of hands. How many of you have felt a tingle of amazement and interest when you hear pitches from salespeople as they explain how version 9.3 is completely different from 8.5 (8.5 being the version that almost destroyed your company) and how the new features change the game? Be honest. That’s what I thought—pretty much all of us have.
Guess what? I’m here today to tell you, “STOP IT.” Put your big boy or big girl pants on and grow up. There are no free lunches, no miracle cures for corns, cholera, and cooties, and there are no simple solutions to complex problems. Get over it. The sooner you let go of the false hope, the sooner you can move into the realm of real progress.
Don’t worry; all isn’t as gloomy as you may think that I am implying. There are great products and services out there. Salesforce is tremendous. Google offers free and low cost products that have rocked the world. The difference between reality and marketing exists in expectation.
Don’t be fooled by demos, ads, or conferences. Every solution to a challenge is work, and lots of it. Set your expectations and those of your management and users correctly. Leave the miracles to Our Lady of Lourdes and concentrate on value, hard work, and progress. Be skeptical, diligent, and demanding in any technology transaction, but particularly with CRM systems; your career may depend on it.
I would like to emphasize the part about setting proper expectations and concentrating on value, hard work, and progress. We love working with Salesforce but we know it's not a miracle drug. It is faster and easier to implement than many systems we've worked with, but it is also extremely complex and requires experts to tackle difficult problems. Software aside, the biggest challenge with any project is always change management and helping the users actually use it.
ReplyDeleteGarry
"Software aside, the biggest challenge with any project is always change management and helping the users actually use it."
ReplyDeleteThat nails it! Thanks for the comment, Garry.
Paul
Couldn't have put it more succinctly myself!
ReplyDelete