April 28, 2023
Strategies for Driving Salesforce User Adoption
Putting in place a brand-new CRM system is one thing, but to genuinely benefit from it, all divisions of your company must adopt the program.
Imagine the scenario: You spend a ton of time and money developing cutting-edge new software that can improve productivity, make your staff’s life simpler, and enhance profitability, but your teams refuse to utilize it. Login frequency is low. There are very few updates to the data. The pipeline is empty of leads and opportunities, which distorts your reporting.
If you do even a quick bit of research on CRM deployment, you’ll probably find one or two terrible statistics regarding how many roll-outs fail. Every company’s worst fear, and if you’re putting a CRM into place yourself, one that undoubtedly makes you break out in a cold sweat. Regrettably, these statistics are very realistic; a large proportion of software initiatives fail at the first hurdle, and many of these expensive failures are attributable to a lack of user engagement. It’s challenging to change. Even when the change promises to have many benefits, it can be difficult to encourage people to change their habits and make an effort to accept the new. This is because people get used to doing things a certain way.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, as the proverb goes. To obtain a return on your investment from your new Salesforce platform, getting your horses to drink is essential. It is never too early (or too late) to establish a user adoption plan, regardless of where you are in the Salesforce installation process.
Here’s how to encourage user adoption throughout the process and give your team the best chance of success with Salesforce on their side:
- Demonstrate support from the leadership
If your leadership doesn’t comprehend and support the change, you can’t expect workers to either. One of the best tactics you can use to embrace Salesforce is to enlist the help of senior-level team members who have influence. Your executive team may set an example by demonstrating their enthusiasm for Salesforce. They will encourage their team members to use Salesforce to its fullest extent as long as they show a personal interest in doing so. Initiating Chatter conversations, sharing analytics-based reports and insights with their team, monitoring Salesforce adoption data on a regular basis, and recognizing active users are all ways that leaders may demonstrate their support.
- Recognize and gain knowledge from your end consumers.
Knowing your end users will help you create a successful Salesforce adoption strategy. With Salesforce, you’re giving them the tools they need to do their jobs more effectively, but in order to achieve so, you must first determine what they need from the CRM to do their tasks successfully. Discuss with your team the difficulties that Salesforce will solve before you start the move. It’s crucial that staff members view Salesforce as a remedy for everyday issues rather than merely a new product they must utilize. Show your sales team how Salesforce automation may minimize a range of data-entry duties if you are aware that they are frequently burdened with non-sales-related labor. Next, ask your employees which parts of the current system they like and don’t like. Gathering this valuable feedback early on helps you develop more personalized Salesforce adoption strategies. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to highlight Salesforce features that appeal to specific individuals and/or departments. For instance, if your sales team loves using LinkedIn to source new prospects, you could prioritize training that demonstrates the LinkedIn integration that pulls connection contact info directly into Salesforce.
- Develop a long-term Salesforce adoption plan.
Salesforce implementations typically take a long time. It would typically take six months to a year to successfully integrate the CRM, depending on the size and distribution of your firm. Avoid the error of leaving your users behind soon after the migration. Adoption of Salesforce takes continual work. Moreover, not every training will be effective right away. Before making changes to your strategy, you might need to sit back and evaluate what is effective and what could be improved. Track and evaluate your efforts to encourage Salesforce adoption by utilizing change management plan templates. With templates, you can map out different training methods, and brainstorming tools that could ease the transition process, and set useful milestones, so you can keep an eye on the overall progress of the migration.
- Set training priorities
Your staff members won’t be able to immediately master all Salesforce features. By dividing the training into manageable chunks, you may avoid overwhelming students with all-encompassing instruction. To begin with, teach all Salesforce users how to manage their individual accounts and use the Salesforce menu. Then, you may order training according to what each team needs to accomplish its daily tasks. For instance, before they can start creating intricate reports, your sales team will need to understand how to add and edit leads. Similar to this, before launching any email marketing initiatives, your marketing staff needs to be familiar with creating audiences. Map out each planned training segment before you begin the implementation process. However, don’t be afraid to add in additional or follow-up training throughout the transformation. No training should be considered complete until your team fully comprehends the subject matter. Getting up to speed in Salesforce takes time. Salesforce in-app guidance is a great way to supplement training as it allows users to learn in the flow of work at their own pace.
- Begin with a Salesforce trial run.
Start with a sample run before implementing the Salesforce conversion to hundreds of employees at once. Choose a group of end users for the exercise, provide them with the adoption and training materials you have prepared, and let them use the CRM before anyone else in your company. Create a mechanism for collecting feedback to assist you pinpoint problem areas and note the most well-liked training approaches. You can detect the flaws in your Salesforce configuration, the holes in your adoption and training processes, and what to anticipate from the software installation rollout by working with a small group.
- Promote participation in the Trailblazer Community
The Salesforce Trailblazer Community has given users of Salesforce a forum to talk about features, ask questions, and exchange advice for more than ten years. By providing employees with a resource they can turn to, supported by millions of knowledgeable Salesforce users, this self-help tool lessens irritation and misunderstanding. You may save time on repetitive training while also utilizing the strength of Salesforce advocates within the community by encouraging your staff to participate in discussions and share ideas with the Trailblazer Community. The portal provides customers with rapid access to webinars, educational white papers, and networking possibilities. As your employees interact with peers and Salesforce experts, they will gain confidence in the value of Salesforce which will motivate them to make use of all of the available features.
- Observe, acknowledge, and repeat
It’s crucial to reward and acknowledge efforts made to completely adopt the CRM during the Salesforce adoption process. Incentives, gifts, and even shout-outs in public forums are all examples of ways to express gratitude. The purpose is to demonstrate to your staff how much you value and are aware of the effort they are making to understand Salesforce. Track user login frequency, Chatter discussion initiation rate, opportunity creation rate, and other metrics using Salesforce dashboards. A virtual scoreboard that highlights your company’s Salesforce rockstars can be shown on the dashboard.
- Get customer feedback
Asking your end customers if they are happy with the Salesforce deployment is the best and most popular technique to find out. Surveys, Salesforce Chatter groups, or even targeted polls might be used for this. Remember that Salesforce adoption takes time, so it’s crucial to check in with your staff frequently. Charge key figures with obtaining feedback in both anonymous and group settings. While some users might feel totally at ease airing their grievances in public, others might want to offer solutions through an anonymous survey. Create options for both preferences. To identify issues, talk with your team and gather end-user input. Involving your end-users will make them feel heard and give you the opportunity to prove that you have their best interests at heart.
- Monitor business performance
Simply because employees are logging in doesn’t guarantee that they are utilizing Salesforce efficiently. You must track the outcomes of your efforts in addition to the actions themselves in order to obtain the highest ROI. Consider going a step further and examining the time spent on calls, the different sorts of calls made, and which calls resulted in a closed contract rather than just counting the number of calls made. You may spot patterns and uncover the behaviors that result in successes and missed chances by digging into the specifics of each user’s action.
- Monitor the accuracy and quality of your Salesforce CRM data.
Salesforce is the powerhouse of your firm because it has accurate, reliable, and full data. The correctness (or lack thereof) of data entered into Salesforce is a helpful sign of how well your users comprehend Salesforce’s capabilities. Consistencies in the quality of the data are a blatant indication that users either do not understand the capability or are not persuaded of its utility. To decide whether more assistance or training is required, use data quality reports and follow-up discussions with your staff.
Summary
These techniques are some of the best for increasing Salesforce user adoption. Never forget that Salesforce’s advantages will only be beneficial to your company if all potential users utilize the CRM system. You can enhance client relationships and gain the traction you want by making the most of Salesforce.
– Written by Meshach Dimka
