This post off the Tom Peters site caught my attention (Blue + ? = Green).

Everyday as technology unleashes more possibilities on us mortals, I wonder whether it is all for the good!

On page 246 of sales automation done right I wrote:

“An unexpected consequence of this newfound freedom for the traveling salesperson is that it has a very positive impact on the CRM and SFA initiative. Good CRM practices depend on capturing customer information and providing fast, efficient and customized service in return. If a salesperson comes out of a client meeting and heads into Starbucks for coffee, they can use this chance to log details while it is fresh in their mind. They can also research issues raised at the meeting in their company’s archives, and perhaps get back to the customer with answers via an immediate e-mail. Customers are always impressed by this level of immediate attention.”

I still stick to that, but what if the salesman visits the Starbuck’s washroom and decides to use their new bluetooth enabled phone to call head office. I was taught in my early days in sales that “washrooms have ears; the competition could be in there with you.” Best not to do it, time is not that short. I agree with the posting on the Tom Peters site.

Newton’s third law says that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Even though I did physics for over nine years of my life, I’m very rusty on that stuff. But when I started putting together the material for sales automation done right I realized that even though he didn’t know it at the time, Newton was onto something important concerning the sales cycle.

Over ten years ago I was trying to answer the question “what are the dynamics of the sales cycle—what variables change as the sales opportunity progresses through the period of time we call the sales cycle.” This was important to get to grips with because we were trying to find a way for a computer to understand those dynamics with some helpful information from the salesperson. To cut a long story short, and not to take away the punch from future postings, we developed a model that said that the sales cycle can be divided into three phases, and each phase was distinctly different, requiring special skills from the salesperson.

After we came up with this idea, I revisited Neil Rackham’s books on selling and his research on how people buy stuff, from jet planes, to computers, to houses – in fact, to anything. He found that the buying process almost always followed a three stage (phase) model. We had concluded that selling followed a three phase approach too. That’s where Newton comes in – selling is a reaction to the action of buying.

Now, I figure that if I had started off with Rackham’s ideas, coupled with a knowledge of the Third Law, I could have written SADR in half the time.

I subscibe to the “inside 1to1” newsletter from the the Peppers and Rogers Group. As everyone knows, Peppers and Rogers were the early proponents of the CRM philosophy, and have published some very successful books on this topic. An article in this morning’s edition was titled Customer Acquisition Makes a Comeback. The opening sentence is “After a solid 18 months of obsession with customer retention, the customer strategy pendulum may be swinging toward customer acquisition.”

Retention of the customer means the process of developing a loyal customer base, and making sure that they stay happy and provide more business. Acquisition means that the enterprise puts its efforts into finding new customers.

I was surprised that big business has actually been homing in on one of these strategies at the expense of the other. I thought that you had to do both. Fortunately as I read on, one of the analysts comments supported my feelings—“you need a balanced attack of both existing customer development and involvement in your brand coupled with smart strategies to acquire new customers.”

It struck me that for most businesses, Retention is more about CRM, and Acquisition about SFA. The marketing and sales departments will be involved in both initiatives – but the goals are distinctly different.