Cloud CRM Software Forum

CRM Software Adoption Starts when Your People Realize There's No Alternative

Back when I was a cub reporter, the newspaper I worked for had a proprietary, newspaper-industry hardware/software system called Coyote. It was this clunky green-screen thing, but it was really mandatory equipment: if you wanted to turn your words into copy that was actually printed in the paper, you typed it into this antique (it seemed ancient even in 1991), pushed the button, and hoped it went where it was supposed to go. It was better than a typewriter, I suppose but not by much – and we had no alternatives.

Because of that last fact, adoption was never an issue. As horrendous as it was (and it could be horrendous in uniquely frustrating ways), it was better than the alternatives.

Now, look at CRM and the people in your organization. Are there better alternatives to CRM for their individual tasks? Those of us thinking about CRM as a whole-business discipline enabled by technology would say nothing works to collect, disseminate and rationalize data about customers better than CRM. However, adoption's still pretty spotty in some places, especially in sales. CRM experts warn us of change management and some sales reps are still clinging to old ways of doing things that may still work for them. Switching to a system that shares data and makes the sales rep part of a team is clearly a preferable thing for the entire organization, but for the individual sales rep that leap into the unknown means risking what works right now. In other words, he has an alternative. At least, he thinks so.

In a webinar I hosted on another site with sales expert Ken Thoreson,l Ken said something very wise: the first customers your CRM system will engage are your own people. You need to sell them before they can use CRM to sell anyone else. In other words, as the CRM champion, you need to change perceptions so that, to your sales reps especially, there is no alternative to CRM.

Adoption depends on your ability to articulate the benefits to the people who use the system. It's easy to describe the organization-wide benefits CRM can bring, but it's harder to boil them down to the benefits CRM bestows on each person in the organization. But you need to do it – and you need to make those benefits so clear that people stop seeing any alternative to using it.

Once your people are using the system, those benefits should start to make themselves clear. For those who don't see it right away, find ways to celebrate CRM successes and share them with everyone in the organization.

Of course, you could simply order everyone to use the CRM system at the threat of job loss. That's not the best approach; what you really want are eager users, not people doing the bare minimum to satisfy their managers. That just keeps the old ways of working as alternatives, at least in the minds of your employees.

Once you sell your staff, you're on your way. Leaving them with no alternative to using CRM – neither perceived or actual– and making it clear how CRM will help them are basic steps toward CRM adoption. If you're investing in CRM and counting on it to give your company a sales boost, you have no alternative to taking a customer-centric approach to adoption - with your employees as your first customers.