Distribution Leaders Share Real-World CRM Implementation Lessons

When evaluating CRM, the technology itself is rarely the hardest part. The real challenge is changing how sales teams work, building processes that support adoption, and creating a system people will actually use. That was the central theme of a recent episode of ASA’s Embracing the Future podcast, where ASA Director of Innovation and Technology Nils Swensen spoke with Charlie Parham, CEO of Pepco Sales, and Scott Stockham, CRO at Repfabric, about the operational realities of CRM implementation inside distribution organizations. Members can listen to the full podcast here.

The discussion moved well beyond software features and focused instead on what actually determines whether CRM initiatives succeed or fail: sales adoption, leadership alignment, data quality, process design and organizational discipline.

Parham said the initial driver behind CRM implementation was straightforward. As manufacturers demanded more sophisticated reporting and greater visibility into sales activity, manual spreadsheets and disconnected reporting processes became increasingly unsustainable.

“As a manufacturer's rep, our key product is sales and sales activities,” Parham explained. “A CRM allows us to report on those sales activities at scale.”

Rather than constantly gathering updates manually, Pepco Sales viewed CRM as a way to automate reporting, improve transparency with manufacturers and increase sales efficiency across the organization.

“A salesperson, or any worker, can really only do so much without automating parts of their job and their tasks,” Parham said. “A CRM allows us to automate parts of the sales task, which makes our salespeople more productive, more efficient, and ultimately sell more product.”

Stockham said those goals mirror what he sees across much of the distribution channel. In many organizations, CRM adoption is fundamentally about enabling growth without simply adding more headcount. “At the end of the day, it’s about sales efficiency.”

But once implementation begins, many companies quickly discover that technology is only one piece of the equation. “The big challenge is just getting people to use it,” Parham said.

That challenge becomes particularly pronounced in successful sales organizations, where top-performing salespeople already have established workflows and habits that have worked for years. Asking those individuals to change how they operate naturally creates resistance.

Parham stressed that adoption improves dramatically when leadership clearly communicates the “what’s in it for me” value proposition to the sales team. CRM cannot feel like a surveillance tool or administrative burden. Instead, salespeople need to see how it helps them close more business, streamline work and better manage customer relationships.

“If you start early asking yourself what those benefits are, and put yourself in the shoes of a salesperson,” Parham said, “then they can help craft that message and make that engagement better.”

Both guests emphasized that leadership behavior also heavily influences adoption. Managers and executives cannot simply mandate CRM usage while avoiding the platform themselves.

“You as the business owner or the sales manager have to use the system yourself,” Stockham said, recalling his own experience implementing Salesforce during his time at American Standard.

At the same time, Parham noted that companies must remain willing to enforce accountability when adoption stalls.

“When I talked earlier about making CRM part of comp, I’m serious about that,” Parham said.

Over time, he explained, CRM usage simply becomes part of company culture and an expected part of the role for new hires entering the organization.

Another major theme throughout the conversation was the importance of flexibility. Both Parham and Stockham repeatedly warned against overengineering systems in pursuit of “perfect” data collection.

“A bad CRM is one that’s stuck in concrete and doesn’t change,” Parham said. “A good CRM is one that’s changing all the time based on the needs of the business.”

That adaptability often depends on listening carefully to frontline users who experience friction in the system every day. Required fields, workflow bottlenecks and cumbersome data entry requirements may seem minor, but they can quickly erode adoption if leadership ignores them.

“It’s the ticky-tacky, in-the-trenches stuff that makes a big difference in adoption,” Parham said.

Stockham agreed, particularly when manufacturers or managers attempt to require excessive amounts of sales-call data. “The fewer fields you require, the more likely it is the salesperson will fill in the things you actually do need,” he said.

The discussion also highlighted an issue many distributors underestimate before beginning implementation: organizational readiness.

According to Stockham, companies often assume purchasing CRM software alone will solve operational problems, without fully understanding their own sales processes first.

“You can’t necessarily automate something that doesn’t exist,” Stockham said.

That preparation includes cleaning customer data, eliminating duplicate records, identifying core workflows and determining what information the organization actually needs from the system.

“Before you even start shopping for a new CRM, you can start working on this data cleanup,” Parham said. “Understanding your wants, your needs, your processes, and cleaning your data, all of that to do before you start a CRM process, is going to make that journey a lot more fulfilling.”

Over time, both guests argued, the value of CRM expands far beyond sales-call tracking.

At Pepco Sales, CRM eventually became connected to sales operations, quoting, project management and broader organizational workflows. The system also allowed the company to shift certain lower-value administrative tasks away from salespeople so they could focus more heavily on customer relationships and revenue-generating activities.

“We have a CRM that’s enabled us to spin up a sales operations department that helps automate some of the tasks that a salesperson used to have to do all on their own,” Parham said.

Ultimately, both guests framed CRM implementation not as a one-time technology project, but as an ongoing operational evolution.

“The best time to start a CRM is five years ago,” Parham said. “And the second-best time to start is now.”