Looking at the Tom Peter’s site today I was interested in his musings about business academics who had the potential to win a Nobel Prize. The issue he points to is that there is a Nobel Prize for economics, but not one for business management. He goes on to say:

“Make no mistake: Management is an art . . . not a science. (Frankly, it’s not all that clear to many, even those in the field, that economics is a science)”

I find it interesting as to how broadly the metaphor of “art” versus “science” can be applied to just about any profession. In sales automation done right I specifically use the metaphor as it applies to sales. If you are a natural salesperson it infers that you rely on the “art” of selling, in the same way as if you were a natural politician, or a natural criminal lawyer. The “art” of mastering something mostly depends on talents you were born with—sure, they can be honed and polished with some training (using the science?). Mastering a science however is based on learning an established rule book about a subject, such that you can use this knowledge to spring board into new ideas that add to the rule book. The ability to innovate within the realm of a science probably depends on the natural ability of the individual (art?).

These ideas are used in SADR to illustrate how good salespeople can intuitively rely on different degrees of the art and science of their selling experience. If salespeople understand how their interaction with the customer is generally dominated by art or science, depending on their comfort zone, they can learn to “tune” the balance to achieve the optimum results. This concept is one of the driving theses in OPM sales methodology.

Sales Force Automation, or sales automation, was “in” in 1993, and everyone talked about it. It made sense because most people were automating their sales teams, but they were going about it the wrong way, by bringing together their processes into inadequate Contact Management software. They thought it would fix all of their problems, but the sales opportunities were still getting neglected, along with the strategies, skills and techniques that occurred in the sales cycle.

Just as software developers were coming to grips with these problems, up springs this concept of Customer Relationship Management.

Almost overnight, SFA and CRM got hastily paired together in the growing e-business lexicon, and they came out synonymous. The industry, the experts, even the customers, used them interchangeably, believing them to be one and the same. But they’re wrong.

SFA and CRM are related, dependent and intertwined, but they are not the same thing, and it’s a disservice to the market to suggest they are. It’s time to clear the air.

CRM focuses on building and maintaining good customer relations. On the other hand, SFA centers on providing salespeople with the proper tools to win the all-important sales opportunity. The former takes on a relationship focus, while the latter promotes opportunity focus. While these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, they simply should not be lumped together.

The industry is simply out of touch with this concept. Let’s put the spotlight back on SFA, and concentrate on making it work first. Along the way, we can figure out how it meshes with CRM. And then, we’ll be ready to move on to e-business.