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Case Study – Tribune
Stephanie King
Business Process Specialist
Tribune Direct Marketing
Northlake, IL
What was your role in the implementation of salesforce.com at your company?
I am the project manager. Actually, a "one person team," but I worked closely with the vice president of sales and two senior sales representatives to rollout the application. Between the assistance from Model Metrics, salesforce.com sponsored events, and on-line help features and tutorials--I had all the information I needed to get things up and running quickly.
What was your company's main objective?
We wanted to utilize a better sales management tool that would allow us to standardize reporting, sales forecasting and prospecting. Salesforce.com also has a dashboard feature that provides access to a variety of real-time data.
What was the biggest challenge you encountered and how did you overcome it?
Utilization from the sales team. It wasn't easy to get everyone to conform to one package, especially when several different systems were being used and some people were set in their ways. I created three programs to motivate the team to accept and use the new application.
The first one is a "train the trainer" session. I set-up one-on-one meetings and asked the application users to teach me how-to perform a variety of functions. It was a way of assessing their abilities and ensuring they followed the company's self-imposed guidelines to keep the data clean.
The second one I call "quick tip." I e-mail users short, informational blurbs about different aspects of the application. It allows me to highlight special functions and features on a regular basis.
The third one is old-fashioned bribery! Every day I hold random contests and award small prizes, such as candy and treats, when certain salesforce.com functions are performed. Because the users don't know in advance which functions will earn rewards, the contests increase their incentive to try new things and keep them motivated. The name of the daily winner also appears in the message and alert area on the system, which generates light-hearted competition among the users.
What advice would you share with others?
To successfully implement a project like this, make sure you have a lot of participation and buy-in from the sales force, especially upper management. All of their questions about the application need to be answered upfront and the system should be customized to meet their needs. It also made all the difference to have expert assistance from Model Metrics to do the heavy lifting and guide us every step of the way.
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