Understandable but illogical…

I guess my recent posts about CRM vendor’s improving the quality of their RFP responses suggests we put we put huge store in the quality of response we receive. While the quality of response is indicative of the vendor’s interest in the opportunity, the key thing we are interested in is a vendor’s track record with similar projects.

Over the years we’ve worked on a lot of projects with vendors and we get to know their strengths and weaknesses. One thing I would observe is that performance is often inverse to the quality of the sales approach. In general if the salesmanship is slick, the quality of the implementation has turned out to be rather ordinary. Conversely there are companies that we’ve decided to go with despite severe misgivings through the sales cycle, who have proven to be outstanding implementers and people to do business with.

Perhaps this reflects the fact that most CRM vendors aren’t entirely balanced, they are either great at selling, or they are great technically (though there are also a lot that are far from great at either). Inevitably though most CRM purchase decisions are driven by the quality of the sales approach. This is entirely understandable but also entirely illogical given that the salesperson invariably isn’t going to feature much in the client’s life once they’ve cashed the commission cheque. It’s much better to select vendors on the basis of their technical and support organisations because you’ll be relying on them for the life of the system.

So if you accept the observation, then perhaps the secret to a harmonious working relationship with your CRM vendor is to find one who’s technically capable, well respected, and profitable but whose salesmanship leaves a lot to be desired.

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