How to make your CRM successfull

Believe it or not I have been involved with Salesforce for the last 20 years, firstly as a customer, then as an SI partner and for the last 15 years as an ISV. During that time I’ve seen plenty of implementations and a lot of them have been pretty ugly and I don’t want yours to be one of them, so I’ve got a list of 10 recommendations that I would like you to consider to help maximise your investment in Salesforce.

So what does it feel like when it’s not done right? Well firstly very few people will want to use it and therefore user adoption is very low. You’ll probably find that you’re paying a lot of invoices to SI’s who have taken an age to configure your CRM after months of workshops to map out processes. The reports and dashboards that you’ve been promised are built but the information that they report on is completely wrong. Your CIO is knocking on your door asking for budget to hire new specialist Salesforce administrators and developers…. but none of that matters because at the end of the day your still completely in the dark about what the inefficiencies are across the value chain and you feel like an idiot because you don’t know what problems need to be tackled to improve business performance. It’s a horrible place to be and is quite likely to be caused by one of the following:

Mistakes to avoid

1. Over engineering the CRM configuration making it difficult to use.

2. Not using the out-of-the-box features.

3. Not using the CRM data as the single source of truth.

4. Sales teams not incentivised to use the system.

5. Implementing onerous and time consuming change management processes.

6. Sales teams not bought into the long terms benefits of having a CRM and asking WIFM

7. Not starting with a clear business problem to solve.

8. Not considering financial implications to implement and support a CRM.

9. Making too many changes too quickly.

10. Providing inadequate training and support.

So what can we do to avoid these mistakes?

1. Keep the configuration simple.

I’ve seen it so many of my past customers use many custom fields, custom objects, complex workflow rules and validation rules. And all that happens is that it creates utter confusion for people and you just create a system that nobody wants to use and they can’t understand. So I would suggest that it’s in your best interests to start off with a system that is as close to a vanilla system as possible. Get the system in quick, start realising the value and that will probably get you to 80% of what you need following the Pareto principle. I would say that chasing that extra 20% is not a worthwhile use of your time when you’re first getting started as you can iterate over time after the CRM has been bedded in.

2. Use the out-of-the-box features.

The number of times I have seen customers use a custom amount field is staggering. It’s crazy because Salesforce has designed its Opportunity management system to be using these standard fields, so if you’re not using the standard fields then your not using the core functionality of Salesforce and therefore not getting the value out of it that’s going to allow you to properly track deals over time. Use the standard fields, it’s going to help you with reporting and it’s going to help you see how things evolve over time and you’re already paying for it - so use it.

3. Use CRM data as the single source of truth.

If you’re going to have a meeting then use data taken directly from the CRM as inputs into your meeting. When I first met someone from Salesforce, it was an AE who came to my offices to give a demonstration, and the first thing he did was put his laptop down, plug it into a projector and there on the wall was his Salesforce dashboard. All his Opportunities, tasks, events the lot all in one place - it was very clear about what he needed to do - and it convinced us that it was the right product for us. That type of behaviour from the Sales Rep, through to Sales operations and Sales leadership is really important to help drive adoption and therefore data quality. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario because if you’re not using that data and you’re still using an Excel spreadsheet the 1. Why do you need a CRM in the first place and 2. There’s no incentive for people to keep the data in the CRM up to date and accurate. Using data from the CRM really helps to drive data quality improvements.

4. incentivising users to use the system.

Whether it’s just giving someone a pat on the back in a team meeting because they updated their pipeline on time time, or whether you want to go the whole hog and implement a gamification system that will enable your to run competitions rewarding good CRM usage it doesn’t really matter. Whatever works for you it doesn’t really matter, but giving recognition to individuals who are using the CRM in the way that you want them to will only help to improve adoption and therefore data quality - and that’s the name of the game.

5. Have a simple proportionate change process.

Changes are inevitable. Some changes are more risky than others. Changes like a label change are no big deal and will take about 20 seconds to do on the Salesforce system and yet I have seen customers of mine have 6 month long change processes - meaning that if you want a label change and you just missed the change window you would have to wait half a year to get that change - it’s just crazy. Salesforce is designed to facilitate quick changes, so having a sensible approach to changes where the potential impact of each change is evaluated is really important in being able to respond quickly to the needs of the business.

6. Sell the benefits of adoption.

Inevitably using a CRM system is going to carry an overhead to it. Part of the trick of getting people to buy into that is to articulate why they are having to suffer the short term pain in order to get the long term gain. That long term gain can only be realised through having better quality data which is going to lead to better insights and that is going to lead to better decisions which ultimately will go on to improve win rates, cycle times, sales margins, churn, lead generation, campaign effectiveness. They’re going to help you understand where your leads are coming from and what your revenue can be attributed to. There are all sorts of things that will lead to business improvements and those improvements will end up filtering back down to the individual who at the end of the day are going to be selling more effectively and that’s going to impact them personally.

7. Have a clear business problem to solve.

Before you’ve even thought about a CRM system I would hope that you would have considered what is the precise problem that you are trying deal with. Better decision making sure everybody gets that - but of what exactly? Are you struggling lead generation, do you have churn that’s too high, are you struggling to close business through the latter parts of the sales cycle, do you have long sales cycle times which means that your sales reps can only handle a small number of opportunities at a time. Try and define the problem that you are trying to solve, find a way of measuring that, share it with others so that you are all working to a common goal and then keep measuring it to track how it changes over time.

8. Plan the finances

Unfortunately there are all sorts of costs aside from the user license costs. There are also increasingly now consumption costs for AI. Plus implementation costs. There are hidden costs involved in the administration of the system and any development that you might want to do that will probably fall to your IT function to fund. Things like onboarding new users, changing permissions, resetting passwords, removing user access are administrative tasks and development tasks would include configuration changes to add new workflows, objects, writing integrations with external systems or creating custom UI. There are hidden costs associated with training because you are going to have to take your sales teams away from there day jobs from having sales calls and meetings in order to train them on how to use the system.

9. Make changes in a considered way

Whenever you make changes, particularly on things that have a lifecycle to them: things like opportunities, leads and cases there are consequences that you should be aware of. Changing that is effectively going to draw a line in the sand and say that everything we have done before now is no longer comparable to what we are going to do in the future, so effectively you’ve lost your history and are starting from scratch. Therefore it is going to be difficult to measure how things have changed over a long period of time. If you’re constantly changing your processes you’re going to find yourself being in exactly the same position as you were before you had a CRM: of not having the data available to you which is going to enable you to make better decisions about your business.

10. Provide adequate training and support.

Not just during the implementation phase - it’s going to take time, probably months to get all your users onboarded and trained up to a point where you’ve got all the systems in place to make it a smooth running operation. Don’t just think of this as a simple 1 hour’s training exercise and then you go away and leave everyone to it. You will need to expect to make resources available to your sales teams to help them as they start using the system and to support them when they start running into trouble - which they will. Be patient, provide them with the right support and it will all come good in the end.

Conclusion

There we go - 10 things that I would recommend you consider as you implement your Salesforce CRM system. Get these things right and you’ll reap the benefits of clearer insights about what’s happening in your business that will get you on the path to scalable growth.

Contact

If you’d like to discuss your CRM challenges then we’d love to hear from you. Book a call and we’ll see if we can help.