CRM Evangelism: How to Spur Complete Adoption?

Transparency: Make sure your CRM is easily accessible and visible to those want access to this tool – plebian to king. Allow any easy on-ramp to get access and ensure that you have custom training accessible in the CRM that illustrates use cases and information on how to use the application as it pertains to your business process. Ensure a feedback mechanism exists inside the application to allow users to seek help and provide suggestions for improvement. Ensure that you have a process to display recommendations and the actions you are taking to preserve their interests in continuously using the CRM to increase their productivity. Something about knowing you address their complaints makes the biggest foes your best friends on the application.

Simplicity: Walk don’t run. When many groups have competing interests – prioritize their interests and start simple. Show them the most pivotal pains and how the CRM will resolve the pain. Focus simple uses in the application – validate them with the most inexperienced and most experienced users to ensure the effort you are taking with the CRM is simple, fool-proof and swift.

Relevancy: Provide dashboards or welcome data that is directly relevant to their job and the things they are measured on. For an Outside Sales rep it’s their pipeline against others, for an inside sales rep it’s perhaps lead conversion, for a marketing manager it’s perhaps acquisition, for a CSR it’s perhaps case load. While a holistic picture is great to see for all users, something in their face about uniquely them really captures their continuous attention and propels CRM adoption.

Structured Cross-checks to your business activities & business pain: Talk about your business outside of CRM acumen on a periodic basis. Write down the 3 activities each group spends the most time on and how painful it is. THEN, revisit the application and see what you can do with your CRM to alleviate the pain. Don’t invest in enhancements that will clutter that effort or divest your time and effort addressing pain first!

Flexibility & Collaboration: Change to tool to what’s happening in your market. If it’s a surge of price wars, create a simple infrastructure to collect that data. If it’s a demand and supply issue on materials, track the providers that can help you. Make sure you collaborate with not only Sales but the fringe parties to make sure the “pass” to them of data originating in your CRM gets efficiently transferred to them.

CRM FAILURE. Now this is something worth examining.

Like a traffic accident. And the curious rubber-necker stopping traffic to get a glimpse. Isn’t it human to be drawn to the failures of others? We can identify with it. We can draw from lessons learned. And were more receptive to hearing the humility of personal experience versus the preaching of how-to’s.

Understanding this behavior has its use for implementing change. Reverse psychology. Devil’s advocate. The optimistic cynic. Whatever you call it – proactively addressing fears, uncertainties, risks, and reasons CRM fail communicates empathy and understanding at the very least with your user communities. You understand the challenges of their job. What’s the old adage? Seek to understand before being understood.

In CRM, the accidents and horror stories are plentiful. And over the years, the speed at which one can make mistakes have accelerated. SaaS, Cloud Computing, and On-Demand CRM have accelerated the ‘time-to-benefit’ AND ‘the-time-to-get-burned’.

I have witnessed three (3) sure-fire ways of failing to achieve CRM adoption. Enjoy the wreckage and hope this never happens to you.

Mistake #1: Ignore the Unique Culture of Sales
“Automating sales is like Herding Cats”

A sales operations director of an enterprise software company once told me that their sales force did not understand process. Odd I thought that a sales organization successful at selling enterprise solutions could succeed despite lacking this important skill. After further discussion, it became clear. The director misunderstood choice with lack of knowledge. After all, we reward sales with being able to expertly circumnavigate process. Assess the shortest distance to cash. And prioritize activities that lead directly to revenue. Understand this and you’ll have the keys to their hearts.

And how do we measure adoption for sales? Is it time spent in CRM or the number of logins? Don’t we expect our salespeople to be visiting with customers instead of tooling around software? Or is it completing customer data profiles? Kind of an expensive data collector, don’t you think?

Measuring sales adoption can be tricky. Most sales executives want less time in CRM and more time selling. A more meaningful adoption metric may be: forecasting accuracy, efficient use of resources or conversion of administrative time to selling time.

Mistake #2: Create resentment early in your CRM planning
“If it came from anyone else other than me, it must be bad. “

I often see CRM hatched in one department and exported to others. The gravity of a CRM strategy is centered on a 360 degree view of the customer-- bridging department silos of people and data. Failing to incorporate other stakeholders into the design is an excellent way to create resentment and perceptions that CRM was built for someone else. The trick lies in selecting delegates that will add value during the design effort, a topic for later discussion.

Mistake #3: Motivate your employees to input data outside of CRM
“Pay your employees to use another system and they surely will”

A Director of IT once complained to me that the no-one in sales was using their CRM. The VP of Sales was pressuring IT to solve the problem of grossly inaccurate forecast reports. Despite attempts to mandate compliance, they still found that the transactions were not updated even after they received purchase order commitments.

In CRM (or any system), if you can’t understand the outcome from data input – is it worth doing? In the above mentioned case, opportunities were only updated by sales to manipulate a forecast reports. While another system was used to fulfill sales orders and pay commission to its salesperson. Can you see the irony? And surprising how often this happens.

You can find additional information on this subject in my research whitepaper titled “10 Drivers of CRM Failure (and ROI)” to help you protect your CRM investment at http://www.focus.com/ugr/research/sales/10-drivers-crm-failure-and-roi/

Enjoy.

Hi Trevor, in http://www.bitools.com.br/english/suc_sales_anatools.htm I´ve documented an important success case where analytics was key to increase CRMs adoption rate in Latin America. In my opinion, CRM adoption is a question of tangible value, benefits minus costs, delivering. Users of any level have to find worth the cost of input and keeping information updated in the system.

First, I do not believe there should ever be an expectation of 100% complete user adoption. User adoption should be measured by the level of use based on the functional area, data quality based on the functional area, and an individual user's evolution of use.
In order to spur high levels of adoption, it is critical for successful adoption to focus on the following areas:
1- Requirements gathering and feedback going into CRM, and if already in CRM, revisiting and "re-launching" with this approach;
2- Implementing and communicating about business processes that make sense and those processes being built into the tool;
3- Holding ongoing training based on function and user evolution; and
4- An open feedback loop that drives future enhancements, business process redesign, and future training sessions.

Note that CRM changes so frequently that the resistance to change is at higher risk than tools that stay stagnant.

Here are two experiences I have had that support my argument about the topics that spur adoption:

A. As a business user, I have adopted Outlook to do my emails, setup meetings, and help me track my tasks. In the beginning, I taught myself how to use this. I found that using this tool made me more productive and I did not feel a need to use something else. other tools had not been provided by companies and clients I have worked for. Most companies use Outlook as their first tool for business email. After 15 years using Outlook, I have taught myself and learned from others how they use Outlook.

B. As a business user, I have used multiple CRM tools over the years. Most have not reflected business process and I had to think of that myself. As a sales rep, the way I sold depended on who I sold to and what I was selling, so those processes changed, typically were not clearly defined, and the tools changed as I changed companies. When I was involved in requirements and was able to provide actionable feedback on the tools, I used them more and felt the tools were more valuable when this did not happen. Training was limited and typically a one-time event. Only because of being an early adopter of software was I able to get better over time and because I was bought into the idea the tools made me better at my job.

In conclusion, change management is the hardest obstacle to overcome. Companies need to focus on the long-term evolution of CRM and adopt CRM as a business critical business component they way ERP has been adopted. Without this adoption at the top, spurring adoption will be difficult.

Great question and excellent ideas shared in response! Well done all!

A few key objectives to ensure CRM adoption by the sales team and significant and measurable ROI for the business:

1) Leadership - it must be made clear why the business is implementing CRM and that its not an option

2) Buy in - give the sales team an opportunity to share their opinions and desires before making a selection

3) Tailoring - the CRM should be able to aid and support the business work flows that work for your team. Don't be fooled into trying to teach your team to do things just so the CRM works the way you want.

4) "What's in it for me?" - be sure you know the answer to that question from the point of view of everyone in your organization that will be involved with the CRM. Be sure you've communicated it to them, they understand and they're steeled for fighting through any challenges that arise.

5) Accountability - its one of the biggest reasons you're doing this right. So, hold them accountable for using the CRM. This should include the vendor!

It all starts with beginning with the end in mind. In order to achieve adoption you must detail what "adoption" means. Quantify it. You'd be amazed at how that definition will differ from group to group/company to company. Clearly define what "adoption" means.

Next, build an Adoption Board from the outset comprised of people from every group using the application. For example: sales, operations, accounting, marketing, leadership, IT. Give that group the power to make key decisions on both functionality and process.

Part of what this adoption board will do is divide the roll-out into sections with clear deliverables, timelines and measurable results. These results should include two pieces: (1) completed functionality and (2) measured user acceptance. ONLY after achieving both parts should a new phase be kicked off.

Each milestone should be celebrated. You hold your team(s) to high standards during the process. When you reach a summit, pause, celebrate and use the opportunity to clearly define (again) the next path. What was supposed to be phase 3 9 months ago may not be phase 3 today.

Provide a place for ALL to give unfiltered feedback. Build this feedback into the process from the outset and commit to transparency. Commit to rapid response to either educate or change things that the field finds fault with.

What you see here isn't radical...it's basic leadership with a pinch of process mixed in. In fact I loathe the term "change management." The best, most flexible companies don't manage change (reactive) they lead change (proactive). To lead change effectively you need the right tools, processes and people in place first. Nail that down and then jump in neck deep and lead.

Typically we are approached by a director or a manager who wants a "wizzy" automated system which gives them great reports. This is great but takes no account of the end user of the system which is why a high % of CRM installations fail or are hated by the end user.
After gathering initial requirements from the project instigators we typically then spend some time talking to the end users in the various divisions running them through the requested spec and asking them what THEY want from the system and how it can make their life easier.

We have found that this end user consultation phase is usually enough to get all area's of the company excited about the upcoming solution and before we even start installation we have managed all users expectations and already got a list of no go area's when it comes to interface/workflow/process. So far it seems to be working for us as every install we've done has been met with nothing but praise from both management and end user.

Let the user drive the technology not the technology drive the user as is the case in many other more well known CRM's and CRM providers.

Make sure they all know how to use CRM, and then set a simple rule.

If the facts are not documented in CRM, don't talk to me. My bible is CRM. The facts in CRM are the facts. After a few weeks of that, I got 100% adoption.

Jeff Ogden, President
Find New Customers
http://www.findnewcustomers.net