Why Your Sales Team Isn´t Using Your CRM
Using a modern Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is a must for any business that wants to take customer satisfaction and revenue to the next level. A CRM can skyrocket sales and build solid long-term customer relationships.
Understanding and overcoming employee disapprobation is key to changing mind sets and improving the sales team´s user adoption. CRM projects don´t typically fail because of technology challenges, but due to an organization’s culture.
Improving CRM adoption is a big task to ensure business acceleration. There are many user adoption techniques. Here are three that might help improve your user adoption rate among your sales team.
Salespeople don´t know how to use it
All new tools (no matter how simple or easy to use) will require education and involve a learning curve. CRM systems are no different and require sufficient training and user knowledge. Often, CRM systems are viewed as a roadblock or a tool for management by the sales team. When in fact, it is a vechicle to help them sell faster and more efficiently.
What you can change:
Enable your sales team to master their skills through user-related training. Make sure you ask your sales team about a typical day and relate the training to something they can understand. Help them by doing some simple organization of their territory and provide pre-set views. Show them how the CRM tool will allow them to do their jobs better, and you’ll have a CRM convert on your hands.
The CRM is not aligned with your sales process
Many CRMs include functions and features with pre-designed sales processes. Salespeople might find that their deals don’t fall into the categories available in the CRM. Rather than update a deal, they’ll leave it as-is while continuing dialog that might ultimately push the deal into a much more advanced stage, which makes it even harder to measure your sales performance.
What you can change:
Ensure your CRM platform can be customized to fit your company’s sales process instead of trying to change your business to match the out-of-the-box software. It makes sense to include your salespeople in the definition of pipeline stages. This increases the likelihood that pipeline stages are defined with criteria your team finds appropriate.
Stored data isn’t helpful
Data relevance is key when using a CRM system. Bad data can be for a variety of reasons, and a lack of trust in the integrity of CRM will result in salespeople not using the system. If a CRM can´t provide the relevant information they need, they will likely go somewhere else to get those insights.
What you can change:
Make sure the data is cleaned regularly through audits with measurable outcomes. Use data deduplication tools and implement data standardization features to limit variations on data input. To put your business on the right track to generate revenue, you need to enhance data quality to give your sales team relevant insights when and where they need them the most.
All of this comes down to one thing: communication. To skyrocket your CRM success, start the conversation early and have it often. Never be afraid to ask questions as it will help you getting the most out of your CRM.