Yes. As a matter of fact, an entire sales force can be too organized.
This is the danger of elaborate CRM systems. Too be sure, they are great tools, but since they are capable of keeping track of everything, there’s a terrible temptation to do just that.
Salespeople need to guard against creating data monsters. The more information you store, the more time you are forced to spend–
1. Entering data.
2. Reviewing data.
3. Updating data.
When you’re caught up in the thrill of designing a new system, it’s easy to underestimate the time necessary to perform these three (seemingly) simple tasks. But over-engineer your system, and you’ll be buried in data before you know it, whether your platform is a state-of-the-art CRM package or a library of three-ring binders.
When designing an organizational system, start by tracking only the information you absolutely, positively need. Track it in the simplest possible way. For instance, CRM software allows you to define your sales process as a series of stages. You could define your sales process as 2 stages, 10 stages, 30 stages. Don’t go overboard–just because you can track something doesn’t mean you should.
Start simple. You can always make your system more complex. However, making a system less complex seems to go against our habitual grain. That’s why we have so many data monsters lurking in corporate corridors.
Word Sell … Scrambled Toast
About the only comment I can think of (since I don’t want to leave this post out in the cold, you know) is this: I think you’ve described “analysis paralysis” beautifully! A lot of times we’re fooled into thinking we need more data. But in reality, we need more results!
Robert, it is easy to fall into the bottomless pit of data collection. You can be too careful! Thanks again for commenting on these lonely posts.
Brad,
If I could add #4 to your list, I’d add “deleting data,” because once we realize we’ve created a data monster, the only way to correct the problem is by deleting unnecessary data–and this, in itself, is very time-consuming.
I’m experiencing this problem with e-mail. It’s too easy to archive e-mails we believe we might want or need later–especially potentially important business communications. Archiving gets these messages out of our inboxes but can turn our archives into an absolute horror story, making us afraid to even check to see how many messages we’ve got “saved for a rainy day”! (In fact, even my inbox is a horror story, right now! Uggghhh!)
The job of keeping on top of our data becomes so much bigger than it needs to be once we’ve saved everything (instead of getting rid of the unnecessary stuff to begin with), because we’re then required to wade through and sort massive amounts of data to decide what to keep and what not to–a huge undertaking and one that, at this stage, becomes far too easy to put off for later, making the problem even worse!
Great post topic! More of us need to be reminded about the data monster!
Jeanne
Jeanne, by all means, you can add #4, #5, and #6! You bring up a huge issue that didn’t cross my mind at all. (Maybe you should post on it?) How does one manage email, anyway? I have subfolders growing out of the subfolders of my subfolders. And I’m a fairly diligent deleter!
Brad,
I did post on it back in October, and I seem to be no farther ahead now in taming the e-mail monster than I was back then–except that now I have my burgeoning collection of e-mails neatly categorized and labeled! Just too busy to deal with the issue lately. But I do know that I’ll have to do something about it soon!
Jeanne