Change is difficult to stomach for many people. They are comfortable with their current process and carry the perspective that if it’s not broken, why fix it? That, however, misses the point. There may be nothing broken with your current process. But that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect and there’s no room for improvement.
In today’s fast-paced, super competitive business landscape, companies must keep an eye on constant improvement to remain competitive. Otherwise, they will be left in the dust of those that embrace emerging trends and best practices.
Here are 12 CRM adoption best practices that will increase usage and, through that, improve the results of your efforts and drive faster, more sustainable revenue growth.
12 CRM Adoption Best Practices
- 1.
- Have a clear plan and share it with your organization as to ‘Why CRM!”
- 2.
- Be sure to get input from all business units! Focus on what is most important and not so much on the bells and whistles. Make it easy for your users to adopt something new.
- 3.
- Dedicate a full-time CRM Administrator (if possible/depending on firm size) who can become your internal champion and help ‘sell’ the value of the platform to your various stakeholders.
- 4.
- Build and renew a CRM Committee/working group.
- 5.
- Create a company marketing campaign/explain the journey to your staff to 'sell the CRM story’.
- 6.
- Craft and follow a training plan. Ongoing training both delivered by your team and ours, including using our tools like Salentica University and our Knowledge Base. Create an internal source of ‘Tips & Tricks’ and plan for both ‘on boarding training’ and periodic ‘refresher training’.
- 7.
- Tracking future enhancements in an organized manner. A few of our clients use the CRM to track requests from staff for feature changes.
- 8.
- Cultivate wide-spread adoption – plan to have all areas of the organization to use the platform – operations, client admins, management, etc. leverage the carrot and the stick.
- 9.
- At both the Senior Leadership and the CRM Admin levels – continue to engage with Salentica to request guidance/assistance on optimizing the features and functionality of this ever-changing platform. Leverage analytics and be prepared to change processes. Some clients ‘brand’ their CRM – have fun with the CRM and challenge your team to a name the CRM competition!
- 10.
- Education: Attend industry events/conferences for continual learning including the workshops provided by Salentica.
- 11.
- Measure your results – observe and monitor once the solution is ‘live’ and be prepare to make changes to adapt to ‘real life’ use.
- 12.
- Make it fun and reward your champions and best adopters. People like to be recognized for their contributions.
Implementing an effective CRM adoption program is not easy and it takes time and resources. Knowing and accepting this upfront, will help you prepare for the journey and on-going work required to make sure your teams are utilizing this investment.
By following some of the tried and true best practices above, you will be on your way and taking action to protect their CRM investments.