Best Practices To Increases Salesforce Adoption

There's an old song recorded by the legend Frank Sinatra. The title? “All The Way.” While referring to love, the premise is no less true when talking about any action. “All The Way” means you're all in. wholly committed. Salesforce Adoption requires equal commitment. And Salesforce User Adoption must be uniform, with every member of the team all in on the Salesforce CRM Platform. Anything less than 100% can and will cause unacceptable gaps in information. Any CRM System, in fact, any business software or other methods used by sales teams, should be uniformly adopted.

What does the failure of Salesforce adoption look like?

• Low login rates from the sales team
• Hesitation in moving off spreadsheet data
• Irregular data entry
• Incomplete or inaccurate data entry

Because of the need for uniform adoption among the sales team, Salesforce has hindered productivity, not an asset. See how non-compliance creates havoc for the rest of the team members? If you can't depend on a crucial tool, the system becomes suspect and distrusted.

Why Does Salesforce User Adoption Crucial?

No one can deny the importance of Customer Relationship Management and that Salesforce delivers a superior outcome for its users. But also important is preparing the sales team for the Salesforce adoption process. Just saying, “we've got this great new tool, and you're going to love it.” It is not enough. Salesforce supplies a complete familiarization and introduction to Salesforce, and clients need to use it.

Problems Adopting Salesforce? But what exactly is the impact of less than 100% buy-in by the sales team?

The key to successful Salesforce implementation projects is understanding the importance and the cost of not achieving 100%.

• If you involve users after your product has been delivered, you're missing out on valuable feedback from users during implementation.
• Human tendency is to avoid change, and when it comes to changing systems in your day-to-day operations, it's even harder to welcome change. They need to be carefully and slowly walked into it.
• It doesn't really matter if the tool is a great one, and using it will benefit the entire enterprise. That value will go to waste if there is no universal adoption.

As the team leader, you can check if your team is using Salesforce. How do we measure its use? How do you measure success? Completing assigned activities on schedule? Obtaining a high percentage of closing? However you measure success, this will show if you have an adoption problem.

Another available tool in Salesforce is the Salesforce Survey and Salesforce Chatter to generate polls for the team to use in reflecting their use and happiness with the Salesforce suite. And since the polls are anonymous, you'll see how many responded but not who said what. And the team will know it's anonymous, and their response should be truthful.

10 Best Practices To Boost Salesforce Adoption

Let's face it, despite your best efforts; you may not achieve your goal of 100% adoption. But it's essential to give it your best shot. Here are some tactics you might want to employ.

1. Stakeholder Support

Any Salesforce implementation will impact the end-users' work on a day-to-day basis. So it's essential to exhibit executive acceptance and communication to increase Salesforce user adoption. Using key executives, thought leaders, and senior leadership to communicate the benefits of Salesforce ensures that all team members know the value of Salesforce and can be the engine for widespread adoption by the rest of the team.

2. Pick A Training Approach

The implementation may require a choice in the training method. Picking the “Train the trainer” or “End-user training” approach to move Salesforce user adoption forward.

• Team size: For a larger team size, choosing individuals to spearhead the training for the entire team. For smaller team sizes, the whole team can be trained together. These individuals must be trained and exhibit buy-in to the program.
• Team availability: Even with a small team, 100% availability is not a given. Detailed training takes time, and the entire team is rarely available simultaneously. In this case, one-on-one training might be necessary.
• Team readiness: as with most of today's tech, a certain amount of ability must be present on the part of the end-users. Make sure all of the team can meet the threshold necessary to understand and put into practice the training learned.

It's important to remember that Salesforce offers free training resources to clients.

3. Triggered Motivation

First, ask the question: are the stakeholders motivated to buy into this new system? The odds are that even with extensive prep and training, 100% adoption may not be achieved. Now what? How to overcome this?

• Slowly phase out the legacy system, forcing the team to use Salesforce.
• Use sales processes that need Salesforce to function.
• Make all performance reviews dependent on information from Salesforce reports and dashboards.
• Introduce “gamification” initiatives to enable peer-based adoption
• Keep your new users rewarded for adopting Salesforce

4. Reporting User Adoption

defined feedback measurement and user adoption tracking can measure the effectiveness of adoption encouragement. Knowing this, adjustments can be made, and individuals counseled.

Some of the Important metrics to ensure successful Salesforce user adoption are:

• User login rates
• Record creation rates
• Contact creation rates
• Opportunity creation rates
• Activity completion
• Open and Closed tasks

5. Gamification

Gamification is an effective teaching tactic that can be applied here. It's engaging, draws users into the process, has goals other than just learning and using Salesforce, and should offer rewards. Make adoption a game with prizes.

6. Utilize AppExchange

To increase overall company efficiency and make Salesforce more attractive, engaging, and easier to use, therefore improving Salesforce user adoption rates, consider using 3rd party apps from the AppExchange store.

7. Hire a Salesforce Admin

A certified Salesforce Administrator can help solve many adoption issues. They have complete knowledge of Salesforce and experience addressing reluctant adopters' misgivings.

8. Demand Clean Data

As new data is entered into your Salesforce suite, knowing it is clean and correct is crucial to your team's willingness to participate. If they grow frustrated by mistakes that they made, their motivation will lag. Keep them interested and accurate.

9. Communication Strategy

As mentioned earlier, human nature is to resist change unless a positive outcome is visible. Sometimes there's resistance even then. So having a pre-planned communication strategy is essential. There are several aids to help with the adoption process. Check with your Salesforce Admin.

10. Group Hugs

Any effective organization needs communication within the team. The shared experiences and back-and-forth exchanges among team members are crucial to success. Salesforce is very good at providing the opportunity and the platform for that communication. Please make sure that you plan meetings to achieve maximum attendance.

Your Best Bet for A Seamless Adoption?

Problems Adopting Salesforce? Check out #7 above. A Certified Salesforce Administrator can solve many issues affecting the adoption of Salesforce by your staff. Rely Services offers only the best in Salesforce Administration services. Contact us today.