How do you get sales people to buy-in and actually use CRM?

Hi Michael:

I think the mistake some companies make is they start asking sales to input things into the CRM system that have no value to the sales people in making a sale. If a sales person is going to input something, it should have value to them.

Be sure there are reports that give the sales team feedback from the information they provided - use the data to help them. Create reports and dashboards for them, and ask them what additional reports would be useful to them.

Be careful of how many fields are "mandatory" and make sure there is a really good reason for having a field designated as a mandatory field. For example, you might find that marketing really wants to know what competitive equipment the customer currently has installed. It may be valuable to know that, but don't make it a mandatory field for sales to fill in.

If sales people see it as something that can help them manage their time and customers better, they'll have more of a tendency to use it. If they feel like they are the vehicles to provide useless data for someone else, you're doomed.

Ultimately the answer as indicated above is the system must benefit the salesperson. The mistake most companies make is they design their system to supply information to management, not to the user. If the user sees no benefit they will not use it. If on the other hand, they see real usefulness for themselves, the system will be adopted. You still have to hold their hands as they learn the system, you still have to encourage, you still have to have buy-in by management. But the sellers will adopt it.

If your system was designed with little or no benefit for the individual seller, company after company has demonstrated you've invested a tremendous amount of money in a losing battle.

Many CRM/SFA systems fail to consider the Salesperson in the design phase. CRM/SFA systems often miss the mark in regard to the Salespersons mission or responsibilities. The design and focus are often times for the benefit of the back office. Sales People rarely see the same problem twice. Sales People rarely see the same day repeat twice. Usually very little attention is placed on the individual in the field and the realities of what it’s like to perform while constantly balancing demands imposed by Sales Managers, Clients and Co-Workers. Less is better with CRM/SFA. Simple is the key. When applied to serial workers automated systems work fine. Serial processors typically don’t perform well as salespeople.

1 - to Joe Charles' remarks, involve sales during the design phase; input on the front-end helps drive ownership/adoption on the tail end (particularly if you listen :) )

2 - do not underestimate the resources and process changes necessary for post-implementation success.

3 - make sure that the CRM eliminates any additional reporting requirements from sales people and front line managers. Nothing is more frustrating than filling out spreadsheets that could have easily been supported by the CRM - if you eliminate the additional paperwork requirement, it's a small but relevant immediate win

4 - Top down executive ownership / front line sales management accountability. If my boss doesn't think it's important, neither will I. Make part of the sales management ongoing MBO based on CRM adoption/accuracy KPI's

5 - WIIFM? If you cannot effectively answer what's in it for the sales rep, re-evaluate what you're doing. The value to the rep must be clear - then that value must be reinforced.

6 - Train, Reinforce and Coach: critical and often overlooked.

7 - create a CRM success project that follows 3-6 months after the CRM implementation project. Most companies drive a big implementation initiative, then move on to something else - and all the stuff that was done incorrectly or left undone become cancerous to ongoing success. Create a new project, with new project owners, with specific objectives to understand what's working / what's not and to react quickly to change / improve things.

Michael

The answer is simple: show them that it works. When people are able to see that their efforts are resulting in success, it is the best motivator to do more of the same.

Don F Perkins

Good answers. I would recommend that you adopt an approach that requires zero data input for a Sales team but provide comprehensive dashboards and intelligence reports to make the sales team effective.
That means you should appoint a CRM administrator for the sales team to do the data input work on behalf of the team. Let the CRM system be designed in such a way as to proactively produce reports and dashboards to the sales team on multiple media formats such as smart phones, smart pads, PCs and notebooks.

This is coming at it from an Admin point of view, but here are my BIG-3...

Executive Sponsorship: You have to get buy-in from the Executive Staff, if the users don't think the bosses care, then they won't care either, and if that happens you are as dead as a bucket of Fried Chicken.

User Support: Hold their hand, answer every question, schedule training sessions, Conf Calls, etc. Sit down with them and find out what their likes, dislikes, wants, pain points are and jump on them ASAP. Try to tailor/automate the system wherever and whenever possible to suit your unique Business Processes.

Data Quality, Data Quality, Data Quality... If you don't maintain Data Quality before you know it you're gonna end up with a pile a garbage, and your users will treat it like it's the Town Dump.

One method I've used is to tell the salespeople that if I can access their pipeline and activity details regularly via the CRM I will not have to meet with them face-to-face as often and most of them think that's a good thing!

The only CRM system for B2B that will last, is the one where all the (sales)people in the organisation are helped with problems in the salesfield. So, complete turn around. Not collecting information from the salespeople but the system is helping everybody in difficult situations with customers. Doing so, everybody wil help the system, because they are helped. This can only be effective if the Chief Sales/Marketing and his staff will deeply think about the difficulties in communication with prospects and customers. Sales is somtimes a lonely job, but CRM systems has to help them with deep advise about communication, emotions during the meetings, and suggestions in ' what to do next'!

There seems to be a consensus: people will use a tool if they find it beneficial.

Gartner Research Director Chris Fletcher said in the July 2010 issue of Customer Relationship Management, p. 18, that] originally, CRM systems were “geared toward high-level managers and CIOs.” The result was these CRM systems didn’t “give salespeople something they wanted to use, something that makes their job more efficient so that they don’t mind spending the extra time imputing data. . . . [so] People were using probably 15 percent of the functionality in 80 percent of the implementations. ”

Eric, I think you summed it up well - at least from my biased perspective. Here's a presentation that I delivered about 10 days ago, containing some of those same points that you're making.

Bottom line: Get the buy-in of sales, long before you install the software:

http://slidesha.re/dfzYN5

CRM Manager, BMW Turkey

The buy-in of sales is important, everybody agrees to that. But please do not forget we are human beings, I guess 90% of us always want to start doing somekind excercise (fitness/sports/jogging), how many of really do it continously? But what if your partner would say "either you start or find a fitter (better) partner" like Airlines do it with overweighing flight attendants, I think this would work perfectly to most of us.

A company cannot wait until every single employee is convinced or wants it do, we are all so differnet, even in a sports team everyone must do what the coach says. The management should of course take into account major concernes, should avoid double entries, shoul motivate them, should support them, but it also has right to expect the use by them.