No doubt, CRMs can power high-performing sales teams. Yet, more than simply implementing a CRM is needed to increase your revenues instantly.
To fully utilize the advantages provided by your CRM, it is essential for your organization to achieve substantial levels of user adoption. Merely scheduling an onboarding event and offering links to supplementary online CRM resources is insufficient.
Instead, a comprehensive employee training and ongoing support strategy for CRM usage should be implemented to encourage user adoption, which would empower the employees.
According to reports, the adoption of CRM systems resulted in significant cost savings averaging $8.7 million, as reported by various sources. In addition, according to 90% of surveyed companies, the increased adoption of CRM tools led to greater productivity among sales representatives and reduced sales cycle time.
What are Some Benefits of Solid CRM Adoption Rates?
Let’s look at some benefits a good CRM user adoption can  bring to your business:
- Cloud-based CRM solutions with automation and big data capabilities can enhance the efficiency of sales teams by automating manual and repetitive tasks.
By achieving a high adoption rate, these CRM tools can free up sales reps’ time to focus on building critical customer relationships, resulting in improved productivity and efficiency.
- Increasing user adoption of new CRM systems can provide an organization with a competitive advantage by incorporating advanced customer-relationship technology features that can differentiate it from competitors.
- Enhanced CRM proficiency and adoption can result in a reduction in the number of technology support questions, allowing sales reps to become self-reliant and knowledgeable CRM users, reducing their reliance on IT teams for support.
Ways to Improve Your CRM User Adoption
CRM adoption requires your IT, HR and sales department to come together and work in collaboration. Here are some proven ways to improve your CRM adoption.
Engage Employees in the CRM Change Process
The success or failure of a new CRM implementation hinges on the daily usage by employees. Therefore, involve individual sales team members and other customer-facing team members as key stakeholders during the research, buying, implementation, and adoption phases.
Seek feedback and identify any resistance to change to understand pain points and areas for improvement that the new CRM can address.
Feedback from end-users is valuable in identifying areas requiring training and support.
Develop a CRM Onboarding and Training Plan
To lessen the impact of the CRM switch and accelerate productivity, create a comprehensive training and onboarding strategy in collaboration with the L&D team.
Leverage internal CRM experts, third-party consultants, and the CRM provider’s customer success team to compile common FAQs and processes for the team’s sales workflows.
Offer a range of training types and formats, such as video tutorials, online courses, in-person seminars, and certificates.
Customize the CRM Experience
Legacy CRMs are comfortable for employees because of their familiarity with the system’s terminology and custom fields.
While not all existing processes should be migrated over, identify what works and bring them over when migrating CRM data. Utilize CRM terminology to mitigate confusion and ensure successful adoption from day one.
Analyze Adoption Rates to Identify Additional Training Opportunities
By analyzing CRM usage data, you can identify how your CRM and its various features are being used or not.
With tools like Whatfix and common corporate LMS platforms, you can monitor which features are not being properly adopted and provide additional training and support resources to help with those more advanced, difficult CRM features.
Implement On-Demand Support to Enhance CRM Usage
It is challenging to train employees to become expert CRM users in a short period of time. Thus, it is wise to invest in on-demand performance support for your sales team.
This type of training allows you to create online self-help content for your team members that provide answers and support in the flow of work.
