How to Improve User Adoption Rates Among the Salesforce
CRM's plunging success rates have received much notice over the past 18 months. As a result, companies are becoming more diligent with determining how to receive the rewards of CRM (reduced cost and improved revenues) while ensuring that they do not become one of the statistics of a failed CRM project.
The key user community that can contribute to the failure of a CRM solution lies with the salesforce. While CRM solutions promise the VP of sales that the solution will dramatically improve revenues and decrease costs by making the salesforce more effective (improve revenues) and by making the salesforce more efficient (decrease costs), little is actually done to address this in most CRM implementations. Typically, CRM solutions for the salesforce become management forecasting tools with minimal value to the actual sales representative.
Two recent studies support this premise:
- According to CRM Magazine (May 2003), Forrester Research asked executives where they ran into trouble most often during CRM implementations. Adoption was listed as the No. 1 issue (22.5 percent) over defining strategy, setting objectives, defining new processes, implementation, etc.
- Last year Gartner inadvertently caused a panic in the market when it estimated that through 2006 more than 50 percent of CRM implementations would be deemed failures. What it was actually referring to was SFA projects, which often encounter fierce user resistance. (Source: Go Direct).
In phase one of a typical CRM implementation, the implementation team typically focuses on providing management with insight into the sales forecast and sales pipeline. It's possible that the current sales methodology would be mirrored into the solution, as well. This is needed for management to know where in the pipeline or forecast an actual opportunity lies. The bottom line is that little is done to create an environment where the sales representative gets real, actionable value out of the CRM solution. This creates an environment where the sales representative uses the solution only to meet management's requirements for a timely forecast, and the goal of leveraging the solution to enable sales to become more efficient and effective is never met.
You can improve the chances that your CRM solution will be embraced by the salesforce by following these simple, possibly obvious, yet rarely followed steps:
- Include key sales representatives in the requirements process. It's important that you learn about the selling process from the sales representative's point of view, not just sales management's point of view. In addition, this will give your team an opportunity to begin to gather support from the user base. Nothing is more powerful during user training than to have a few well-respected field representatives speak up about how they affected the solution.
- Have key members of the implementation team "ride along" with the sales representatives. Don't just interview them by asking them what they would want in a system. Follow them around for two days and observe the different tools they use to get their job done. Note the areas where simple improvements in process and/or tools could yield productivity improvements and effectiveness.
- Conduct a conference room pilot with the key sales representatives.
Have the key sales
representatives spend time actually using the solution at different times during implementation.
-Consider having them use the contact, company, opportunity, and lead screens that come out of the box from the CRM vendor. Can they quickly create a company, a contact, and update an opportunity? Can they quickly find information in the solution such as a company, a contact, finding an opportunity that was lost to a particular competitor, etc? What do they like about the screens, what would they change to improve usability? This is your first opportunity to learn what challenges you may have with user adoption.
-After taking the sales representatives' feedback, make the appropriate adjustments. Set expectations - you may not be able to address all issues, but make sure you address enough to show improvements over the first sales representative feedback sessions.
-Prior to a general rollout, get final feedback from your test audience. This is a great opportunity to get them to commit that they will endorse the solution to their peers.
- Implement small improvements to business processes that can dramatically
improve the sales representatives' productivity. According to the
Fennemore Group, 46 percent of a sales representative's time is spent not
selling (34 percent administrative time, 32 percent traveling/waiting). The
following requirements that you should consider are simple, yet easy to leverage.
They will result in the salesforce wanting to use the solution:
-Input a contact in one place. Enable the creation of a contact once and then sync to the mail system, PDA, etc. Nothing is more frustrating (and can lead to user-adoption issues) for a sales representative than to have to create a contact in the CRM solution, in their email system, and on their phone, PDA, etc. Same for calendaring.
-Integrate commonly used tools into the CRM solution.
-Correspondence. Letters, emails to prospects. Imagine a sales rep returning to the office, highlighting the business problems the prospect is trying to solve, and having the embedded sales methodology recommend which follow-up letter to send, with the appropriate marketing messages - all automatically generated.
- Proposal tools. Again, based on where the prospect is in the sales cycle and the business issues being addressed, have the proposal tool pull the appropriate information from the CRM solution and automatically fill in the appropriate information in the proposal tool.
- Configuration and pricing tools. Today any CRM implementation should consider building (or integrating) these tools into the solution. Configuration and/or pricing tools typically live in the financial solution, are a third-party solution, or are home-grown. Integrating them into the CRM solution should be given high priority. Imagine the productivity improvements if a sales representative can automatically create a pricing proposal, use the workflow of the CRM solution to obtain (and have tracked) any special management approvals, and have a complete historical view into pricing proposals for this prospect.
- Use workflow to enable business process. Another way to encourage the adoption of the sales solution is to actually embed business process into the solution and then use the solution as the sole means of obtaining approvals (not email). Consider the following two examples:
- Routing of approvals, assignment of tasks. It is common for a company to implement a CRM solution but to still use other applications, such as email, to route issues and document deal-specific approvals. This does not encourage a sales representative to keep all notes, issues, deal requirements, etc. current in the CRM solution. Not only does the company lose valuable information about the specific deal, but also information that could be used to analyze opportunities in general to then coach other sales representatives. Use the CRM solution's workflow engine to route all required approvals (such as pricing approvals, assignment of resources). This not only encourages use but requires that all users of the solution use it on a daily basis so they can keep current on any required approvals, etc. It also keeps all information about an opportunity where it belongs - in the CRM solution.
- Use information in the CRM solution to drive required reports. When discussing reporting, management's No. 1 requirement of a sales representative is a timely, accurate forecast. Using the CRM solution to track and update opportunities drives the forecast and, in most implementations, reduces the sales representative's time to create a forecast to almost nothing, as most solutions automate the forecast process. As long as the sales representatives update their opportunities in a timely manner, their piece of forecasting is complete. During implementation, consider other types of reports that are required of the sales representative, such as a strategic account plan, an account briefing document, or a win/loss analysis report. If during the sales process the sales representative is updating the CRM solution with all the appropriate information, these reports can be automatically generated with no additional effort. It is very common in companies to require a sales representative to create a "briefing document" when senior management visits an account during the sales process. The sales representative typically is given a form to fill out that is not integrated with the CRM solution. This is a big disconnect in most CRM implementations. Management tells the sales representative that all information about an opportunity should be documented in the solution, yet the sales representative is asked by management to create separate documents, in effect doubling the sales representative's efforts. In many implementations, this disconnect creates an environment where sales representatives come to believe that management never looks at the more strategic information about the account, so the sales representative does not spend the time putting information into the solution. And most sales representatives don't understand why the senior executive cannot just "look it up." To further ensure adoption by the sales community, consider having the CRM solution automatically create the type of document discussed above (typically a word document). If the information is in the CRM solution, senior management can then look at the information in real time or push one button and have the briefing document created in real time so they can print it and take it with them. - Look for one large strategic improvement that should be focused on
sales effectiveness. When meeting with the sales organization to understand
their requirements, look for one improvement focused solely on how the solution
could assist in driving more revenue. Again the examples below are predicated
upon the sales representatives using the solution to its fullest - and this
means documenting the entire opportunity, account plan/strategy, etc. in the
solution. o
Improve close rates and drive more revenue:
-Lead management by moving qualified leads through the solution faster. Determine if the right leads get to the right sales representative in a timely fashion. Can a better qualification process be implemented using the CRM solution's automated scripting facility? Could qualification information be captured via the Web when a prospect requests information? Could the CRM solution make product recommendations that will enable both the prospect and the sales representative to better qualify the opportunity?
-Pursue the right opportunities by working the right opportunities because the salesforce has access to win/loss information, competitive information, etc. If all information about opportunities was input into the CRM solution, sales representatives could then use the solution to "coach" them through the sales process. For example, a new sales representative could use the solution to learn what industries are successfully being sold into, what products and product mixes are typically sold to that industry, where in the sales cycle opportunities are typically lost, or who the sales experts are in a particular industry. For the CRM solution to become a coach, information must be put into the solution, and the appropriate analytical reports must be implemented. Once sales representatives see that they are able to use the solution to give them valuable knowledge and insight on their opportunities, they will become more willing to spend the time inputting information about their opportunities.
-Improve win rates by selling more competitively. Sales representatives want to know where they have competed against this competitor before. What was done by another sales representative to overcome an objection? What did another sales representative do to set up roadblocks for a particular competitor? All this information should be documented in the CRM solution and can provide valuable information that will make the salesforce more competitive and will improve their win rates.
-Leverage knowledge by leveraging every customer contact. Use all the information about a customer that is maintained in your CRM solution to turn every contact into a sales opportunity. º Use the solution to determine up-sell opportunities for your existing customers by creating marketing campaigns based upon customer demographics, etc.
-In addition, use the CRM solution to let your customer service organization know that you have an opportunity forecasted to close by automatically flagging the customer when the customer interacts with the call center. You can then be assured that all contacts with this customer are treated as a high priority.
-Improve margins:-By selling value. Many sales representatives have to discount their products and services when the prospect does not see the value in their solution over the competition. Using the CRM solution to mine knowledge about other opportunities, finding similar customers and learning about the value they derive from your solution, etc., can help sales representatives create compelling value propositions that assist with improving margins.
-By configuring products and/or services correctly the first time. Many CRM solutions have core product-configuration functionality. This functionality assists the sales representative in configuring the appropriate products and services into a complete solution. Configuring the product correctly the first time ensures that the solution is correctly priced, that all product dependencies are configured correctly, and so on. This means that your company will not have to "fix" any product issues and replace at your cost the appropriate product.
