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There are too many required fields; it takes too long to load; no one will use this information; it’s just busywork – the classic list of what can seem like an endless list of customer relationship management (CRM) usage excuses. The reality is that no organization is immune to these challenges – it’s very common for users to quickly find reasons not to embrace the full potential of a CRM. There is a need for Salesforce strategies to increase adoption. When it comes to embracing a CRM, such as Salesforce, how can you get in front of these common excuses to set your team up for success? How to increase user adoption? What are the Salesforce strategies to improve adoption? How to improve Salesforce adoption? Learn 7 key tips to help your organization make Salesforce adoption second nature and how to increase user adoption.
Tip #1: Make Your Salesforce Instance User-Friendly
Striking the right balance between tracking the important data points your business needs and not overcomplicating it with unnecessary information should be a top priority when engaging users and keeping them engaged. Page load times should be quick and not waste your users’ time. This can be accomplished by configuring pages only to show the most relevant fields to users. It’s also important to be proactive with data quality. If your instance is littered with outdated information, it will not help users or encourage usage. Data management and cleansing tools can help enrich missing data points, such as phone numbers or emails, to help alleviate time spent on researching this information.
Tip #2: Make Adoption Start from the Top Down
If leadership doesn’t communicate and embrace the value of Salesforce, then there’s a high probability that your users will not believe in it either. Getting each user to adopt Salesforce involves showing how their organization derives value. Leadership can display this in key areas, such as using Salesforce to review key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards during organizational meetings and engaging with users via Chatter on opportunities.
Tip #3: Make It Known User Feedback is Key
When requirements, policies, or procedures get created in a vacuum, users can feel left out of the discussion. That’s why it’s important to listen to your users and take honest feedback into account. This can happen via periodic surveys, discussions, or forming a committee with a mixture of your user types (power users to naysayers) to gain direct insights to make improvements relative to the needs of your users.
Tip #4: Make Sure Users Know the Strategic Value
Historically, Salesforce was associated mainly with the sales team; that’s not the case anymore. With Salesforce’s Customer 360 approach, you can drive customer success across the organization (Marketing, Customer Service, etc.). In the long run, happier customers help drive sales. Communication is also central to understanding the strategic value and sharing consistent improvements on your Salesforce roadmap.
Tip #5: Make Ongoing Training a Priority
Training is often thought of as a task at the beginning of new hire orientation. This is certainly an integral step in starting on the right foot and setting expectations; however, training should be viewed as ongoing. Like designing your Salesforce instance, don’t overcomplicate training with long, laborious classes. Consider providing training in manageable portions by developing periodic tips via short videos and giving feedback to your users on areas where they are doing well and where they can improve. You can also encourage participation in user groups to gain insights into best practices from their peers.
Tip #6: Make it Routine
Using a CRM can sometimes be an afterthought. How do you change this mindset and have it become a natural part of your users’ day? As previously mentioned, leveraging Chatter is a great way to communicate and engage with your team through status updates and files. Another way to foster routine usage is integrating Salesforce with your email application (MS Outlook or Gmail). Users can easily log emails in real-time and schedule meetings to ensure Salesforce is always kept up to date. Having a Salesforce champion within the organization could play a big role here. A superuser who can be the evangelist and promote Salesforce usage within the organization.
Tip #7: Make it Easy and Efficient
In today’s day and age, just about any business process can be automated. Many time-consuming, repetitive tasks would normally require human intervention to write and send an email, such as notifying a team when an opportunity closes or routing a quote for approval that can be automated within Salesforce based on your particular workflows. Determining what can be automated within Salesforce to make life not only easier for your users can also drive efficiencies within your entire organization.
