Successful adoption of a new CRM: put all the odds in your favour

To ensure your project is successful and not one of the 30% + of implementations that fail, the teams at Markentive, experts in CRM and Sales enablement, share their best practices.

What's the best way to maximise your CRM project's chances of success? By involving staff from the beginning of the process, proving the benefits the tool will bring to their daily work and supporting them in the first few weeks it is in use.

The benefits of implementing a CRM are well documented: $8.71 ROI for every dollar invested in the software implementation, improved productivity and simplified performance tracking. In short, CRM is a real plus for you and your teams!

Strategic thinking: a key stage in a successful CRM project

To maximise the likelihood of successful adoption, your sales teams will need time to prepare for this change. How? By understanding why you want to turn things upside down. So, our first piece of advice is to include them from the beginning of the project and during the strategic thinking involved in choosing your CRM tool. There are two ways to do this: understanding the difficulties that users face and including them at the beginning of the project. 

1. Audit your current processes and understand your user pain points 

To facilitate adoption of this tool, your employees must understand its value to the organisation, and see the benefits to them personally. 

It is important, therefore, to go beyond the purely technical aspects during the audit. The specific characteristics of your business, the way your various teams are organised, and your current processes are all points you should take into account in your preliminary analysis. 

However, you are not just looking to take what exists and reproduce it using a different tool. The true starting point for a successful CRM implementation will be understanding the day-to-day difficulties and tasks that are too time-consuming for your staff so that you can provide new solutions. What better way to do this than to talk to the staff themselves? Perhaps even spend a day with them to see where improvements can be made. Including them right from the start of the process will allow them to prepare for the change while seeing the positive side! 

2. Involve users in the development of the CRM strategy, so you hear and can respond to their objections 

Once the audit is complete, the strategic thinking phase around the project can begin. Finally! This framing is the key to successful implementation and adoption. 

Indeed, it is at this point that you will define your primary use cases, your data processing and your teams' automation requirements. This is why this construction cannot be done without a reliable representative of your teams. 

Your teams are in daily contact with your customers and will be able to tell you which processes they want to keep at all costs and which ones need to be optimised. You may not be able to meet all their demands in your new technical environment, but you can at least get close.

Moreover, having one of your employees participate in the framing will allow you to make them the spokesperson for your teams, listen to objections and fears, and reassure the whole team as quickly as possible.  The team will understand that you are including them in this new stage of the company's life. They are, therefore, more likely to welcome all these changes. 

Implementing and launching CRM: promoting adoption at all levels 

Once the reflection phase is over and the functional specifications have been written, it is time to implement your tool! Never lose sight of the fact that these changes must be beneficial to your teams, so continue to inform and include them in the process!

1. Choose an internal ambassador

To facilitate communication between the project team and the teams on the ground, we regularly advise choosing an internal ambassador. This person - from the sales or marketing team - will be the contact person for anything to do with CRM. 

They will be wearing two hats. On the one hand, they will be the spokesperson for the project team, disseminating the latest information and progress to your staff. On the other, they will be identified as the person to whom your teams can go directly if they have questions or concerns about the project. 

To maximise the positive effect, the ambassador should have professional standing but not have a strong hierarchical link with the rest of the users. A senior salesperson, for example, will be able to support the teams through the adoption process without that feeling like a constraint.

2. Make the launch of the new CRM a key moment in the life of the company

Is everything almost ready? The launch is planned for the near future! While your teams are eager to see the result, they will undoubtedly be anxious about all the changes.  Why not take the opportunity to make it a pivotal moment in your company's life? At an off-site event or a meeting followed by a cocktail party. Your teams should welcome these changes much more readily. 

This event will show them that this change is not only for the leadership, but also for them. And above all, it is intended to make their daily lives easier. 

This shared experience may seem superficial to you, but it will help your employees to see themselves as part of the future and to understand that they are also the guarantors of the success of this group project!

3. Create a fantastic Sales Playbook. 

Now that your teams are interested and motivated, it is essential to give them everything they need to be part of this success. There is nothing better than a Sales Playbook to achieve this! 

This document will be your internal bible, your ultimate guide to using your CRM. The purpose of this playbook is twofold: 

  • to provide an overview of the system, its possibilities and configuration;
  • to respond to everyone's day-to-day problems. 

Any doubts about the meaning of a label? Sales Playbook! 

The arrival of a new SDR in your team? Sales Playbook! 

Don't forget that this document must be inspiring! Whatever format you choose, we advise you to make it pleasant to read. How? Using your in-house graphic design, internal jargon and a light tone. That way, people will accept and read it. One more step towards the success of your new CRM implementation!

The first weeks of use: a crucial period

Once you have launched your CRM and trained your teams, the last and perhaps most crucial step awaits you. This is the daily use of CRM! This will require regular monitoring, spread over several weeks and consisting of several components.

 1. Create a ritual around the CRM 

As mentioned earlier, we believe that it is always important to give your teams a voice. To facilitate skills development and encourage staff to speak out, it can be interesting to create a ritual, a time dedicated to adoption. 

One hour a week, your teams can get together with your ambassador and ask all their questions, help each other, and better understand the subtleties of such a system. 

With a meaningful name like "HubSpot Fridays" or "CRM office hours", you create a recurring event that your teams will enjoy and want to participate in. They can use these sessions to learn more about this new tool and how to get the most out of it. 

2. Give teams access to adoption data 

To monitor the level of adoption, it is often a good idea to track several metrics, including: 

  • The quality of data filling;
  • How often each person logs on;
  • The number of activities recorded in the CRM per person;
  • Forecast accuracy VS actual performance.

However, if this monitoring is only for the benefit of the leadership, it will have very little impact on the end-users. To motivate your teams, you can provide them with a dashboard, personalised or collective, depending on the indicators they have control over. 

This way, they will be able to check on progress themselves and will be more motivated to see all these indicators turning green! 

By giving them the keys to the system, their sense of responsibility for the success of the implementation will be greater and will push them to be as involved as possible.

3. Create a system for collecting feedback to allow for the possibility of improving the processes put in place

However, even having audited and then included their needs in the design, there may be some gaps in the system, or it may not be suitable for all the tasks the team undertakes. 

So it is important to give your end-users a voice. Whether it is through an online questionnaire, a suggestion box or a dedicated email address... Everyone should have the opportunity to give feedback and suggest improvements. 

These different suggestions can be reviewed and discussed during your weekly CRM time. Once the team has approved these changes, they can be implemented and added to the Sales Playbook. 

Beyond the continuous improvement of the process, this feedback collection gives your employees a voice, proving to them that they are listened to and that this CRM change is positive for them. 

Things to remember

So how do you put the odds in your favour when adopting a new CRM? 

  1. 1. Include your teams in the whole process, from the design of the new implementation to the day-to-day use;

  2. 2. Prove to them that this change contributes to their well-being by simplifying or automating their everyday tasks;

  3. 3. Give them the opportunity to be part of the change by monitoring performance and usage and agreeing to changes they propose;

  4. 4. Support them during the first weeks and months to keep them motivated and interested in the new system.

This proven method, tried and tested by the Markentive teams, will maximise your chances of success, ensuring a significant ROI in terms of productivity, revenue, and in-house satisfaction too! 

Any questions about implementation in your company? Let's get together and talk them through!

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