Successful CRM Adoption

In the last blog, we discussed the challenges involved in a successful CRM adoption, Why Sales CRM cannot deliver (Please refer to my blog at www.greatworks.biz).

The question is “To be or Not be” it’s How to be, how to digitally transform your Salesforce

In this blog, we will discuss how to bring in successful CRM adoption. I have taken the wisdom of some of the best practices and Business Leaders, who had successfully implemented them to the best use in their organization.

Let’s dive in… know the best practices

1. Choose a CRM which fits your Sales Process, they should customize it to your sales process and speak your sales language. It’s advisable to do a pilot and check the fitment, most CRM companies give a free trial or a demo version, Just because a vendor gives a free CRM, we should not waste time that doesn’t fit our requirement.
2. Any new technology adoption needs training and a behavioral change, to bring in that; we need a Champion to drive the initiative. Identify your CRM Champion. If you think Champion is a big word, have a coordinator to get this done, in one of my consulting engagements; I have seen this successful model working successfully.
3. Gamification: Human tendency is avoiding pain and seeks pleasure. Most of us not don’t get into anything NEW because of pain in doing something new, it demands a behavioral change, a pain to learn something new, but how about creating pleasure in doing it,
4. motivating for consistent CRM usage will help, motivating is just one way and we can be creative to gamify the CRM usage, leaders can think creatively about how to bring pleasure in doing CRM updates till the behavior change happens.
5. The last blog we discussed, Garbage in Garbage out, the aim is to get the right data inside the CRM, it’s just not the responsibility of the sales folks, it’s the responsibility of the Business / Sales had to feed in the accurate data, anything beyond the update of contacts and accounts details should be in the control of a Sales or the business owner.
6. Finally, leave no other options; make CRM the only communication point for sales discussions. No excel sheets, no PowerPoint decks, just the CRM for all sales-related communication.

One Final word for the Business and Sales Heads, don’t get too much obsessed about the CRM, don’t get an ego about it, just because it’s your initiative if your sellers are selling or aren’t, focus your attention on helping them in the field we could have a co-ordinator to do the clerical jobs.

Sales CRM is just one enablement for Sales teams, it’s over-promised and Hyper marketed by CRM vendors. Be careful in choosing the correct CRM for your organization.

There are 99 other ways to make the sales team productive, do you want to know the other 99 ways?

….Come, let us chat

Regards

Ramesh. P

Cell:9841052321