Did you know that most customer relationship management (CRM) projects fail after deployment?

On average, it can take between two to three CRM implementation project attempts before it results in something useful for a business. And even then, it may not be wildly successful. That’s not great and begs the question: “Why?”

There are many reasons for this, including:

• Lack of vison for the project
• Success is measured on how well you checked off boxes on a design document. This can mean you’re too focused on the technical elements.
• No process review or optimization, leading to a duplication of work
• Overcomplication of the solution

But the biggest reason why CRM projects fail? User adoption.

According to a study from HubSpot, 50 percent of sales leaders say their CRM is difficult to use. Seventy-six percent of respondents reported that their team doesn’t use the majority of the tools in their CRM.

“If you build it, they will come.”

That’s not the case when it comes to successfully implementing a CRM system, however, it is a common approach by many organizations.

The majority of these projects are driven from a top-down mandate within a business. Decision makers want to be able to access data and make informed decisions. However, if the data within the system isn’t accurate or clean, how does that help your organization make meaningful decisions on adapting to market fluctuations?

Rather than abiding by a top-down mandate, consider the implementation of the system through the very people who will be using it each day. And as a sales representative, what’s going to drive you to use the CRM and input accurate, reliable data? The ability to increase sales.

You can make this tool invaluable to your salespeople by ensuring it makes it easier for them to do their job and hit their targets.

We need to get your users to see value in the tool, see that it makes the sale cycle move quicker, unloads administrative tasks, and puts more wins on the board.

Here are three simple components that will drive increased adoption and boost the likelihood of a successful CRM implementation:

Focus on making things easy for your sales team. The tool should take work off their plate, not be a make-work project. When looking at options for a CRM, aim to select a system that can automate work as much as possible.

For example, perhaps one tool would auto-generate renewal opportunities and assign them to a sales representative a few months before the end of a customer’s contract term.

By having the system identify the renewal opportunity, notify the team member, and provide all the historical contract details, it removes hours of work from the plate of your sales team, readying them to reach out earlier and get the new contract moving.

Many organizations have a habit of working with reports in a spreadsheet instead of using the CRM. Often, this can look like a document of sales funnel data being emailed around and the team inputting updates on their opportunities.

Not only is this approach clunky, but it also doesn’t provide an at-a-glance overview of the health of the sales funnel. An effectively implemented CRM keeps this data where it should be — at your fingertips.

To get your leadership and team on board, you need to shift their mindset and foster a CRM-first culture. Your team needs to live and die by your CRM data.

The development of a CRM-centric environment needs to start well before the implementation itself. It’s vitally important that your senior leadership clearly communicates the expectations of the system, the roles and activities your team will play to make the initiative a success, and — perhaps most importantly — explain the reasons behind the implementation.

• All team members must understand the fundamentals of a CRM-first culture. The following behaviours need to become the norm: When management comes and asks sales about a sales opportunity, the answer is always: “Everything is in the CRM.”
• Management needs to recognize that if it isn’t in the CRM, it doesn’t exist.
• Everyone is willing to contribute contacts and daily activities into the CRM.

This alignment helps to push past the common challenge of change resistance and/or reverting to the familiar. This also frees up your sales team from duplicating the efforts of updating the CRM and management, and ensures the CRM is kept up to date with the most recent data.

With time and practice, using and trusting your CRM data will become second nature throughout the organization.

Surprisingly, training is one of the most overlooked parts of CRM deployment. It wouldn’t be unheard of for an organization to send out an email with a link to the new CRM system and a self-guided document. This kind of rollout sets your team — and the implementation — up to fail.

Training your people on the basic mechanics of the tool is helpful, but it won’t help them understand how it’s going to make their jobs better or demonstrate how processes have changed.

Take the time to build onboarding content that will help your team understand how the tool will be used within your business and identify how it can make their jobs easier.

And this training isn’t a one-time thing. Hold a training course each month for your team during the first six months of implementation. This helps keep the CRM tool top of mind and allows your team to sharpen their existing skills and build new ones.