By : Jennifer Karpus-Romain | June 8, 2020 | 4 min read

Are You Struggling to Get Your CRM Right?

get your CRM right

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps make businesses more efficient. It’s the perfect tool for organizing and centralizing your sales data. It breaks down silos and helps you create transparency throughout your company. Within a CRM system, you can log call notes and sync emails, notes and events. And you can even forecast your clients’ needs.

However, all of these benefits are only possible if your team is actually using the system. Too often, users get fatigued when they implement new software because they’re resistant about learning another new way to do the same thing they already do.

The truth is that more than 65 percent of CRM projects fail due to low user adoption. But it doesn’t have to be this way. To get your team onboard, you can execute tools and techniques as you implement your system.

Are you struggling with CRM? You don’t have to battle software.

Here are 5 suggestions that will help you succeed with CRM:

  1. Talk to your users throughout every stage of your CRM project.

Even though speaking to your users may seem like a simple task, it’s frequently overlooked.

Whether you’re implementing a new system or have a more seasoned one, talking to the team who’s using it will go a long way. Then they’ll be likelier to want to work with it because they’ll feel like it’s actually helping them do their jobs.

So when you’re assessing whether your CRM is meeting your needs, ask your team about it. Here are some questions to start with:

-What do you like and dislike about the current CRM system?
-What do you wish CRM could do for you (e.g., automating or creating a workflow)?
-What would you improve about the user experience (e.g., making a button or module easier to locate)?

  1. Give incentives.

If you’re struggling to get users to engage with the system, you may need to kick it up a notch. Besides getting buy-ins from your team by asking them for their feedback, you can also gamify your system.

For instance,  Splash is a gamification engine sits on top of SugarCRM software, and it easily integrates with the platform.

By choosing a gamification engine that works well on your software, you can set up challenges that will persuade your team to sign in and do the work.

If this tactic sounds overwhelming to you, you can start simple. Create a challenge. For example, what’s the amount of sales in a quarter that’s recorded in your CRM? On average, how many notes do your customer service agents put into the system?

Then give the user who wins these challenges real-world rewards. The best way to choose rewards that engage your team members is to ask them which ones would motivate them. Do they want gift cards at coffee shops?  Extra PTO time? Trips? Merchandise? Or do they just want to be recognized? Based on their answers, you can figure out how to work these rewards into your CRM.

  1. Keep training.

Too often, executives are only excited about implementing CRM at the very beginning of the process. They have a training session or two, then expect everything to be good to go. But that’s not necessarily true.

Oftentimes, users go through this preliminary training and think everything makes sense. But when they go to input data, they may forget a step and get frustrated with the process. If there’s no ongoing training, chances are they’ll go back to the old way, or find some type of workaround that will create more issues down the line.

But ongoing training and easy-to-access resources will give your users the best chances for success.

  1. Use the system to its full potential.

Even if your CRM is working perfectly, is your team using it to its full potential? To make sure they do, you’ll need to tweak it and improve the UX after they implement it.

By making minor operational changes and adapting old workflows that accommodate the new system, you could see substantial boosts to your ROI.

Not sure whether you could be doing more? Reach out to your partners, or do research about the ways other companies are utilizing CRM.

  1. Partner with a CRM implementation expert.

Some companies choose to buy software and handle the implementation themselves. But since it’s challenging to get CRM right, you could easily get caught in the weeds. Then you won’t know what the next step is, or you’ll get so overwhelmed that you throw in the towel.

Here’s the best route to success: Partner with a CRM implementation firm that anticipates your needs, understands your use cases and can guide you through the process.

If you’re struggling with CRM, we’re here to help.

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