When spreadsheets replace crm

Here’s yet another tale of crm sublimation, gleaned at a large photocopier reseller in London this morning.  There are five sales teams in the region, with three managers.  The longest-serving of the managers is called Gary.  He’s a bit of a whizz with spreadsheets by the sound of it.

Frustrated that neither their established in-house developed software, nor the telemarketing-used Maximiser solution, gave him the pipeline reporting he craved, he went ahead and made his own super-sheet in Excel.

He introduced it to his team, and they all began to engage.  It then spread to the other two manager’s salespeople.  Yet after a while, usage slipped away.  In the latter teams, this was as they wanted changes and their managers appeared less interested in systems.

So now the initiative remains back within Gary’s team, and no system is in place that aligns itself to the overall sales objectives of the one big team.