There is an inherent phenomenon in human beings: resistance to change. And CRM is no exception. Despite change management programs, gamification, continuous training… User adoption remains an issue that organizations are struggling to solve. The carrot and stick approach has also reached its limits.
The CRM, just by mentioning its name, arouses enthusiasm, hope, fear and mistrust. One thing is certain. Nobody is indifferent to CRM.
In fact, in some organizations, especially those that have not completed their digital transformation, CRM is sometimes considered by its users as a restrictive, time-consuming tool that is difficult to master and far from being a priority in their mission sheet. Sales people prefer prospecting, sales and more generally all customer relationship oriented actions that generate revenue.
On the other hand, for sales managers, CRM is the tool par excellence for steering sales strategy. How can you change this paradigm and ensure that CRM serves the interests of all employees?
Here are 4 tips to make your CRM a flawless sales machine (non exhaustive list)
1. Make regular diagnoses of your data
Prevention is better than cure. Are you familiar with the principles of Chinese medicine? It aims at preventing diseases, improving the patient’s health or delaying the evolution of a disease.
Do not wait to be sick to be treated…
Don’t wait for adoption problems to find remedies. Do regular check-ups of your CRM data to identify friction points.
Ask yourself the following questions: How confident are you in your CRM data? Is your CRM ready for the goals you have set? Do you think your CRM is sufficiently complete to help you achieve them? On which data levers should you rely to improve?
To help you answer, EverReady launches its 1st 100% business oriented CRM diagnostic (available for Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Hubspot and Pipedrive)! It allows you to have a global view of all your CRM data (accounts, contacts and opportunities) on your perimeter in order to orient your data strategy accordingly.
👉 Ask for your CRM diagnostic (immediate access in a few clicks). The 1st one is free
2. Automate everything that can be automated
Let’s start with some hard numbers…
- According to Salesforce, less than 20% of business activities are captured in CRM.
- According to an Introhive study, a salesperson spends an average of 5.5 hours a week filling in the CRM.
Under these conditions, it’s hard to blame them for not entering all of their sales activities (meetings, calls, emails), their contacts and their meeting reports.
The very nature of a salesperson is to prospect, exchange, converse and close.
… The good news
All this information is already digitized and available in the daily tools: phone, mailbox, calendar… What if the best solution to have a complete and up-to-date CRM was to not ask sales representatives to enter the data anymore?
EverReady automatically creates contacts and records customer interactions, allowing sales teams to save a lot of time on a daily basis. As an example, for our client Education First, this represents an average of 2 hours per week / user.
3. Benchmark your processes against market best practices
To meet the requirements and wishes of your organization, you implement custom workflows and integrate specific bricks into your CRM. Unfortunately, adoption is inversely proportional to the effort you put into development.
Think business
The most technically accomplished features are not necessarily the ones that will win over users.
Think usage
Create work groups with sales people to adapt to their way of working. Betting the opposite is a waste of time. They will be the first sponsors of the new features. Adopt a test & learn approach.
Another solution is to get in touch with a consulting firm. Data, process and business performance issues are evolving very fast. The view of a consultant should allow you to make the best decisions.
4. Take inspiration from B2C
Break the codes and change the paradigm. Use the B2C recipes and apply them to your CRM to make its use unavoidable by its users.
Think AI
Change the perception of marketing within your teams. From a reporting tool, it must become an intelligent assistant able to help the sales person in his daily tasks: fill in the CRM, prepare his meetings, facilitate his reports, suggest best practices, create customized to-do lists… The CRM ecosystems are getting richer every day and many smartechs are now available to create value and answer specific problems.
Think mobile
Stick to professional and everyday uses. Ergonomics is an essential part that you will have to take into account to get the support of all employees. Here are some good figures to remember:
- More than 80 percent of Internet users use mobile devices to surf the Web.
- Up to 70 percent of web traffic comes from mobile devices.
- 83% of mobile users expect a seamless experience every time they visit a website with any mobile device.