Implementation, effectiveness and a short tale

My company is developing a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and the Directors are very interested in checking it before implementing it with the whole sales force.



My company is developing a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and the Directors are very interested in checking it before implementing it with the whole sales force.

Very often Companies spend (invest) a lot of money and time in different courses trying to develop their employees and to increase their effectiveness. But course after course the participants, abandon, forget or simply dont discover how important is to implement the topics the teachers shown them into an ACTION PLAN.

Implementation plans must be the most important subject in effectiveness courses ( or even in any course), but dont forget that in this century, competitive advantage is not only the implementation of the plans but the assurance that the plans will be implemented and followed up in the right way.

Years ago some speakers told their audiences that information is power, but now they have changed their message to knowledge is power. So now the important fact is: what you will do with the information. And this should be the most important objective in each course.

A short tale, weeks ago I was involved in a one day course with a pilot group of sales reps. My colleague and I were responsible for preparing, teaching and showing to reps the new tool (CRM).

When we started to prepare the schedule we thought about the hardware and the software, and finally we decided to be more focused on the software (Why?, How?, When?, What for?) instead of how to get the data (hardware).

The good news for us is that we decided not to close this course without a personal and individual action plan or implementation plan.

The difference between this and the other courses we had prepared previously was that we scheduled more time for reps to implement the know how that they should have.

So, trainers / first line sale managers must teach each participant / rep, in a CRM/ any course how to develop and follow up the personal action plan due to it being the best way to increase the personal effectiveness and ROI.