{"id":2401,"date":"2022-08-07T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T20:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2023-10-27T15:34:25","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T15:34:25","slug":"the-six-guiding-principles-to-maximise-crm-adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/eu\/blog\/the-six-guiding-principles-to-maximise-crm-adoption\/","title":{"rendered":"The 6 Guiding Principles to Maximise CRM Adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CRM<\/a> adoption can sometimes be an uphill process, as you try to convince your team and upper management to break with their existing habits and embrace the efficiencies they can achieve through automation and a singular overview of your sales process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Salesforce World Tour<\/a> Live event, Kam Sangha, success director at Salesforce, partnered with Michael Williams, CRM Director at Vitality, to deliver a talk on the best ways of promoting the adoption of Salesforce within your company, as well as ensuring that you optimise the value from doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The talk was structured through a framework of six guiding principles, with Michael explaining how these were applied in Vitality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Prepare for change management<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Secure and demonstrate leadership buy-in<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Know your end users<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Commit to simplicity<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Deliver value and be meaningful<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Train, learn and repeat<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    1. Prepare for change management<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Before considering how you\u2019ll utilise your CRM, ask yourself: do you have leadership buy-in? Who are your end users? How are you working towards delivering a meaningful experience to them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Strategy and vision are the foundation of your approach to management. However, the way you communicate your messaging to end users, such as your leaders, will be critical to the project\u2019s future success. Understanding who you\u2019ll need to lean on, as well as identifying those in your organisation you consider to be your do-ers and early adopters, will also be integral to maintaining sustained interest in the tools and ensuring adoption spreads further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It will help if you tailor the strategy for communicating to these end users, taking in their needs and experience of using the product. Perhaps they\u2019re more results or process-driven, and highlighting these would be the best way to leverage their attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Introducing a Salesforce Design Authority will also get senior leaders and decision-makers to identify the core requirements of the solution; and ensure that any new capabilities being created are fit for purpose. You should also encourage users to present ideas they\u2019re interested in building to encourage constant iteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This all may seem daunting, so the recommendation is to start simple with an outline and flow. This creates the opportunity for your team to challenge and understand the reasoning for the structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Reflecting on Vitality\u2019s approach to change management, it\u2019s not solely about lobbying but engaging those passionate about the possibilities of the solution. Dashboards were a significant asset, especially those that measure adoption: these allowed Vitality to move past just monitoring logins and understand what users are doing on the platform – maximising the value they could gain. Vitality also employs someone whose job it is to focus on how Salesforce is used and to work on improving the team\u2019s user experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2. Secure and demonstrate leadership buy-in<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    With the blueprint for change management prepared, it’s crucial to keep leadership engaged in the implementation process. Prioritise a top-down approach, making decision-makers your first consideration, as that adoption message will be broadcast furthest by the company’s execs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What methods can you use to keep people engaged? Dashboards allow for instant visual representation of data and are a great way of getting execs directly involved with the product – and ready to deliver messages to end users. However, these are often underused, with people preferring to use sales emails that are far less effective in communicating the value of the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Slack<\/a> can also be employed for sharing news of deals won, end-of-quarter successes and customer stories. Doing so publicly, rather than just through email, is a big win and a great way to show that leadership is bought into the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For Vitality, the critical lesson is that communication should be regular and concise. Transparency is crucial to leadership buy-in: document project wins and be honest about what didn\u2019t go right, as this opens up a conversation about how to iterate the solution. Vitality\u2019s communication cadence extends to weekly communications being sent to the immediate senior team and on a bi-weekly basis to the entire organisation – the lesson being to actively demonstrate the value the platform provides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    3. Knowing your end users<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Awareness of your end users is crucial. You need to keep them top of mind throughout the adoption process – and cultivate super- and power-users, as they are the ones that will give you qualitative feedback and valuable input into what you should be doing differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Vitality\u2019s approach involved creating Salesforce communities based around specific business areas – not just senior executives but their leadership teams as well – which get together monthly. The goal of these communities is to get ideation started in the meetings, building greater possibilities for the platform\u2019s use. When a feature request is brought up in the meeting, it’s essential to get to the reasoning behind why. People should be able to question why things are being designed a certain way and consider the logic of doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s also important to understand what people are using – and how they are using it. It is often the case that people find workarounds for tasks that aren’t addressed in the overall design – but if these work satisfactorily, then there is no need to replace them. Or, it may be that the process being asked for could be completely automated – but nobody had considered doing so up until that point. Also, instead of developing a bespoke solution straightaway, see if a pre-existing solution is available – this will save you valuable time down the line and allow you to prioritise the creation of solutions unique to your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One approach to keep in mind is ensuring you can quickly change and adapt the solution based on feedback. Go for rapid iteration rather than a waterfall approach from the outset. Utilise surveys and walkthroughs to get feedback and explore the reasoning and how teams could simplify the logic. Your company’s survey cadence should be quarterly or at least twice a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Survey questions can be very straightforward, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n