The Fuzzy Front End of CRM

Call me crazy, but I believe customers truly want me (us) to bring innovative ideas to the table. The obstacle we face is that these same customers have been conditioned to believe that I can just pull innovations out of my bag; as though our industry has standardized highly predictable innovative outcomes as a technology. Have you heard of the fuzzy front end of innovation? It’s fuzzy because the methods for tightly targeting product and service opportunities are non-existent — at least in the broader CRM world. The framework exists, but no one seems to care.

A twitter follower reminded me (this post has been a draft for 2 years) of an article I wrote awhile back that I think shows some of the symptoms of having a fuzzy & customer controlled front end to CRM.

For a good period of time, I was dealing with the symptoms, and I made a great living at it. After 15 years of CRM, however, I believe customers are beginning to expect more from their consultants — a lot more. The age of the CRM …