THE REPEAT TEST Create Strategies to Improve Work Performance
Every professional has those moments when they can’t seem to focus. No one means to waste time at their job, but it’s often a struggle to climb that hill when you have nomotivation to do so. To get your work done, you need to come up with strategies that prevent you fromwasting precious time in your workday. The repeat test is a great tool to see where you waste time in a day. Using a spreadsheet, make a column of numbers representing the hours of the day that you are awake. Your columnmay start at 6 a.m. and go as late as 11 p.m. After you have created the rst column, create a second column that is considerably wider
tomake themselves more productive by thinking consciously about how they spend their time. Each executive was able to dramatically increase their productivity by cutting desk work by an average of 6 hours a week andmeeting time by an average of 2 hours a week. One executive, Lotta Laitinen, a manager at If, evaluated her time and chose to abandonmeetings and administrative tasks in order to spendmore time supporting her team. It led to a 5 percent increase in sales by her unit over a three-week period!
Exploring the six pillars of CRM adoption, we’ve spoken about process, strategy, and routine. This month, we’ll be taking a look at the fourth pillar: results. This step is crucial for making sure the leadership team of your organization is aligned prior to implementation throughout the entire company. During this process, it’s important to hammer down exactly what you want to achieve, and how you plan to go about achieving it. Organizations that implement CRM less successfully usually think of results in terms of application use. If people put information in the software, they consider it a success. These companies, who we call “trackers,” don’t get the most out of CRM because they fail to relate raw numbers to the impact they have on processes. Exceptional companies, which we call “developers,” focus instead on generating results that actually improve operations. As an example, one goal we often hear companies talk about is increasing customer satisfaction. A noble goal, but not a well-de ned one. CRM o ers than the rst. At the top of every hour, stop for 1 minute and consider how you spent the last hour. Jot down your notes in the second column next to the appropriate hour. Youmight write, “Department meeting accomplished very little. Twenty people in one room is toomany.” Using this test is a great way to improve your own performance. If you noted that an hour was wasted, you have speci c notes as to why. Use your notes tomake changes in your routine so that you can create strategies that allow you to be productive. The technique of evaluating productivity and committing to change is not new, but it has yet to gain popularity. In 2013, Harvard Business Review researchers asked 15 business executives
Try the Repeat Test for a few days to see how it feels for you. At the very least, you will gain immediate insight into the ways that you use your time. If you keep at it, the test will give you a valuable record of how you spent your week, month, or year. THE 6 PILLARS OF CRM ADOPTION
Part 4: Results
the speci city to segment markets and processes, meaning you can select a group of customers or a step in the sales process you hope to better. As you hone the results you want from CRM adoption, you should also re ect back on your initial purpose for acquiring CRM software in the rst place. The more closely these goals align, the more relevant your results will be. Before you begin rolling out CRM, now is the time to ask two questions. What is this going to achieve? Howwill you know it’s working? Asking these questions lays bare just howmuch results and purpose go hand in hand. Holding a meeting with the entire leadership teamof your organization is a great way tomake sure everyone is on the same page. Without consensus from the top down, you can never expect a full buy-in from your sta . It’s obvious that you begin CRM implementation with the hope of getting results. These results, though, have to be speci c to your company, and they have to relate to your goals. Without that synergy, successful adoption will be an uphill battle.
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