Salesforce, Software December 8, 2015
There’s one thing that exponentially increases Salesforce ROI, yet 49% of users have trouble doing it. And that is simply adopting the software and using it regularly.
According to a Forrester study in 2012, of all the CRM project problems users reported, 22% had to do with “people” issues. Of these people issues, one of the biggest threats to CRM success was that a whopping 49% of users were slow to adopt the CRM software in question.
When a company spends thousands of dollars on a program like Salesforce – and then no one uses it – the program becomes an expensive burden to higher-ups and sales teams alike.
Yet, when companies are able to onboard their teams successfully and get them using their CRM software, they see results. They are able to track leads better, create helpful reports for their sales teams and their marketing department, and close more sales.
Here’s the problem: Humans hate change.
So, how can you overcome basic human nature and salvage your investment in Salesforce?
You’ll read a lot of articles that tell you things, such as “Demonstrate the value to your sales people,” “provide training,” and “gain buy-in.” Yes, these are all good things to do – but how do you actually do any of that? What do the actual steps of implementation look like?
Here are some details and specific actions you can take, so your team won’t be part of the 49%.
We know you’re anxious to get some practical nuts-and-bolts advice out of this article. So, we’re going to give you our 4 top suggestions of ways you can customize Salesforce and make the program itself as easy as possible for your team to adjust to. Just these 4 things alone can make a huge difference in how easily people adjust to it – but then keep reading past these bullets for even more ideas you can implement to get everyone up and running with Salesforce.
That’s what you can do to customize Salesforce to make it easier to use. Here are some other things you can do upon implementation to win the hearts and minds of your associates!
This is an important step in gaining buy-in from the people who will be using Salesforce the most. While you’re still in the planning stages, identify which group or groups are likely to be the heaviest users of your CRM platform. Beyond your sales and sales development teams, these could be your marketing department, your call center managers, and other teams that work adjacent to the sales people. By getting major players involved early, hopefully they can start talking up the software and the new process to their colleagues. (And having buy-in from colleagues is usually more effective than having things dicated from upon high.) The other advantage is that as the people who will be using the program the most, hopefully they’ll contribute good ideas about how best to implement the software and which features and reports will be critical to them – and that’s a great way to head trouble off at the pass.
By housing all the data in this one spot and making it the go-to program to get the answers they need, sales and marketing teams will not only quickly get into the habit of using it, they’ll be encouraged to use it in order to get the answers they need to do their jobs better.
One of the best success strategies out there for implementing Salesforce or any CRM program is to hire an administrator, someone who knows (or can learn) the program inside and out. Someone who can take pride in becoming the subject matter expert for the software and be a point person for addressing everyone’s issues and questions. It doesn’t matter if you hire someone new or shuffle people around within your current company to fill the role. And it shouldn’t necessarily be an IT person. One of your best super users may be a fabulous pick as administrator. (Just make sure you add the time in their job description and day-to-day duties to fill the role properly.) Having an accessible point-of-contact who can help your employees in real time helps get them up and running quickly, keeps them using the software, and boosts morale.
One thing that can make sales people nervous is the idea that any leads might be taken away from them or not credited properly. It’s really important to emphasize to sales people and everyone using the system that not only will Salesforce generate more leads for everyone but it should make it easier to qualify, track, and close on those leads.
The buzzword these days is “gamification” – the idea that you can increase engagement and participation in any task by using the same design strategies that video game makers use to get people hooked on their games and to keep them playing. Whether you do things like assign point values to daily tasks or run contests to get your sales people competing against each other in their new CRM software, if you make it fun and use rewards to encourage people, your team is more likely to learn the software and use it regularly. Check out this article from Cloud Sherpas for more ideas on how to use the psychology of gaming to help you implement Salesforce.
This one doesn’t sound as warm and friendly as the other methods of encouraging engagement and adoption of Salesforce. However, the reality is that once you commit to Salesforce or any CRM system, you have to commit 100%. No philandering allowed. If even one person doesn’t use the system, it can bring everyone down. The data, reports, and tracking you want to get from Salesforce won’t be accurate if you don’t have everyone using it regularly. Also, if even one person is let off the hook, others will want to follow suit. Everyone has to use it. End of story. No ifs, ands, or buts.
But that’s why you’re going to use all the other tips and tricks in this article to motivate and engage your teams and get them on board with using Salesforce – so that ultimately, you can exponentially increase your Salesforce ROI and make implementation and adoption of Salesforce easier on your team.
These are just a few of the best ideas we’ve seen that are both effective and easy to implement. For a few more ideas, check out this article on CIO.com, “13 Tips to Get Your Business Team to Use Your CRM Software”.
Contact us to talk about how we can help.