Just imagine what happens when you give your luxury car keys to a teenager and expects him to drive it safely and bring home in one piece. That’s hoping against the hope! However, if he got an initial training in understanding the importance of the car and what difference it makes to your life and work, then he could have handled it carefully.
Now, let’s shift this to a different terrain and draw a parallel with CRM implementation. After adopting CRM for you business you will quickly jump into making the best use of it so that you don’t leave a single lead and nurture all of them to the fullest. However, one ever mongering word of caution is that is your team aligned with your goals and they too foresee a humongous benefit from this adoption or not? If they are not ready or suspicious about the new changes in the company, then the onus is on you to introduce them to the technology and train them properly.
You need to put your best foot forward to introduce the CRM and what good it does to your company’s goals so as to curtail any further adoption issues. The following are 5 CRM Boosters that may turn as an elixir for all your endeavors.
- Select your CRM with the team
It’s always a wise move to involve your team in the CRM selection process as everyone can put forward their specific needs. Moreover, we can come to an understanding on what type of CRM we are looking for and do we need to go for a big and sturdy CRM suite or something that integrates many functions in an all-in-one package like Agile CRM.
The extra features add lot of fluff to the CRM suite and as a small business, you may not be in a position to exploit all of them. This increased complexity also increases the price. So, you need map your requirements to the CRM specifications.
My experience says that the right way of CRM adoption is lessening the workload and increasing the productivity of your Sales personnel. So, before implementation they have to get a chance to understand various options and bring out the utilitarian value out of the product.
To make the overall adoption process hassle-free, make your team aware that their valuable feedback goes into buying the perfect CRM.
- Bring out the value
Everyone likes to cut down on their busy schedules. Sales personnel are always at the forefront of helping others and making better deals. So, when you give them more clarity on how a CRM can help them achieve both – by reducing work and not creating additional chores – you team will give you their green signal.
These days Sales is more tilted towards becoming a data-driven function, and a better data collection about your prospects and customers makes your Sales function more productive. So, I recommend Managers to invest time to explain the need for a CRM suite that can aid the Sales team in Sales Enablement and other related activities.
When a prospect ask for data or numbers, Sales professionals can pull out everything with ease because with the right CRM the numbers stay right at your fingertips.
- Use it to make others use it.
Use it to believe it. Use it to make others believe you.
A seamless integration of performance review and compensation into the CRM is a novel thought and if it’s not done, it may be cumbersome. So, man up and get those leadership skills to convince your management to bring everything on a single platform.
Don’t just sermonize about the CRM usage to the team. Give them a display as how you are using it and how is it making a difference to your work. This fades away all the misconceptions of the Sales staff that it’s only they use the CRM and not the top management.
Make the process with very few hurdles and ensure that there is a proper co-ordination with other teams such as the technical team and backend support.
A good beginning for this process is to integrate CRM into the starting point of your present sales pipeline. This in turn helps in qualifying leads and setting goals.
- More training for better results
Don’t worry about training your staff and taking a day away from Sales activities. This is time well-spent as it helps the professionals to make most out of CRM in a long run. An under trained employee can be a deterrent to the Sales flow. So, take it slow and steady for better results.
With good training comes good knowledge of the product and they can put it to an effective use. When in need always look for the support team of the CRM vendor or an expert who can train you better on how to use the software to get more and more customers.
Few tips for you to get the best out of training.
Spin a web of interesting things around regular Sales activities.
Communicate on a regular basis about the usage of the system.
Do quick checks to ensure that your team is using the software properly. .
Gamify sales with leaderboards, email reports and real-time alerts.
- Simplicity is the key
Be optimistic but don’t be over-enthusiastic and expect starry Sales to happen overnight. It’s good to limit the amount of information to be entered by your Sales staff into the new CRM system and you can go for incremental values as they get better with the new technology.
Finally, a CRM without good number of users will turn out to be junk. So, make some good associations among Sales personnel and other stakeholders so they can yield consistent results. To benefit the bottom line, you have to ward off all the angst and apprehensions on CRM adoption and make way to get more success on board.