What single CRM change will give you the biggest bang for your buck? There's no one answer. But there is one commonality: Less is more.

Consider the situation when one global high-technology manufacturer automated its quote-to-order process. Previously, the company's salespeople generated quotes using a CRM system, and had to reenter the information into an order system to close a deal. This process was complex, time-consuming, and error-prone. Automation, by contrast, saves money by eliminating mistakes in the order process; reduces rote data entry chores, buying salespeople more time to sell; and helps the company fulfill orders more quickly, making for happier customers and faster invoicing.

The success prompted the client to investigate contact management, account management, pipelines, and all of the other classic SFA functionality. Our response was simple: Don't go there, at least not now. In particular, avoid pestering salespeople with other possibilities, because you might scare them away. Instead, create a killer quoting system that links to the ordering system. Sell salespeople on it, and leave them begging for more.

When it comes to creating a successful CRM project—whether it's automating the quote-to-order process, creating greater visibility into the sales pipeline, refining your partner relationship management practices, or meeting any other business requirement—less is more. In other words, identify your top CRM-related business goal, define the related functionality, and then deliver it. Save the "nice to have" wish list for later.

CRM Success Starts With Less  

This simplicity mantra may seem counterintuitive, especially if you're a VP of sales or marketing who's just received budgetary approval for a new CRM project.

But the primary requirement for project success is to not shoot for the moon. Instead, aim for a series of smaller but still potent successes. Doing that will require taking a "less is more" approach to these five facets of CRM:

• Functionality: Don't try to build every last feature into your initial CRM project rollout. Instead, create a business case for the project, identify the functionality with the greatest potential payback, and then pursue it. Save the rest for later.
• Expectations: Tie expectations to functionality. That means delivering projects in phases, with each phase tied to achieving specific business capabilities. Start with a pilot, rolled out to a small number of users, to prove the project's value. Then deliver additional functionality in subsequent project stages, but never stop selling (and proving) the project's benefits.
• Sponsorship: Everyone knows that executive sponsorship makes or breaks a CRM project. But the ideal is one well-placed executive sponsor. A committee, or even two sponsors—such as the VPs of marketing and sales—may be too much. That's because each sponsor will have different objectives. If there's one thing that doesn't work well with CRM, it's compromising.
• User Interface (UI) Design: The less information in the UI, the more time people spend using the system. Counterintuitive? Yes, but also true. (As is the inverse: the more data on display, the less people will use it.) So keep the UI simple, and give salespeople rapid access to the information they need. Otherwise, they won't bother using CRM.
• Data: Having a lower quantity of high-quality data is more important than having vast quantities of lower-quality data. Because for sales, marketing and service personnel to use the CRM system, they must trust it.

Don't Bother Salespeople

If the above best practices have one thing in common, it's this: Deliver or grab the essentials, then let people do their job. In fact, this may be the principle benefit of the "less is more" approach to CRM: freeing salespeople to sell, marketers to market, and so on. Along the way, it also gives you greater project predictability and cost control, because you're delivering functionality in small, well-defined phases. With each stage tied to achieving specific business results, you're also proving the project's value with each new phase. But most of all, taking it one step at a time ensures that users will adopt the CRM enhancements you're building.

Cultivating a "less is more" CRM mindset, however, requires constantly setting expectations, continually asking "Are we doing too much?" and always enticing users to adopt the new system. Apparent simplicity, then, may not always be simple. Even so, it remains the fastest way to deliver successful CRM projects.

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About the Author: Adam Honig is President and CEO of Innoveer Solutions. Contact Adam at ahonig@innoveer.com or read his blog, CRM Insights.