Is There a Wrong Time to Implement CRM?

Distribution sales teams often ask us, “when is the best time to implement CRM?” That implies that there is a wrong time to implement CRM; however, is there ever a wrong time to grow sales in your company?

Behind that question are a couple of mis-perceptions about CRM. First, some distribution executives are worried that implementing a CRM system represents a large capital expenditure. Second, some executives have heard industry horror stories about CRM implementations and are worried that the implementation will put too much strain on their team’s time. So when the business is down, they don’t want to invest in a CRM system and when business is booming they feel they are too busy and don’t have the time to implement a CRM system.

The truth is that when business is down that is exactly the time you need to do something different to empower your team to grow sales and take the time to retool your sales practices. And when business is up, you need a tool to help support your growth so that the wheels don’t come off the bus.

One of the things that makes SMP different than other CRM systems is that we’ve addressed both of those issues with our hosted model so that you can quickly and easily implement CRM in good times or bad, and get your sales team focused on closing more deals right away. There is not a large capital expenditure involved because the investment is a monthly subscription and there is no IT infrastructure or hardware investment needed to get going. And because SMP is designed for distributors in an easy-to-implement software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, your team can hit the ground running right away.