How to Get Your Sales Team On Board With Your CRM

Written by: Jimmy Newson

Jimmy Newson is the founder and CEO of Moving Forward Small Business, a membership-based digital publishing company on a mission to save a million small businesses from failure by 2050. He presents workshops and training regularly with Start Small Think Big, NY Public Library, SCORE, Digital Marketing World Forum, DC Start-Up Week, and international SaaS companies.

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October 19, 2018

A business that needs to improve its sales needs to strengthen its relationship with its customers. It needs to explore ways in which customers are traced using an effective information and communication system. It needs to develop an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

Man and Woman Doing High Five

CRM addresses the need to have a central information systems of all the businesses’’ leads and customers, tracking the customers and assessing the ability of the sales team.

A business that has a CRM system has a productive relationship with their customers. The customers feel appreciated by the company.

A business that needs to maintain a good customer relationship needs to engage its sales team in a productive CRM system. The reason being the sales team is the first contact a customer has with the business.

A sales team needs to track information about the leads and prospective customers to improve their sales. Therefore, it is imperative that they be on board the company’s CRM.

As a manager, you will need to convince your sales team to adopt a CRM system. Sometimes a team is not willing to embrace the system because of various reasons ranging from software knowledge to ignorance of its importance. The following are some of the steps you can engage to persuade your team to adopt the CRM system.

1. Highlight the Importance of CRM

CRM stores the customer information in its system. It is important to highlight the benefits of this data storage to your team. The data will allow the team members to develop sales reports easily, draw charts and make sales forecasts.

It also saves time for the team in data management and allows them to spend more time marketing and making more sales. Eventually, this improves their portfolio and commissions.

Further, explain how the company or business will benefit from adopting a CRM system that ensures data automation, data organization, and management.

2. Train the Team

Sometimes a team may object to the adoption of a new system because of limited capacity on how to engage and use the system. The raises the need to train the team.

The training should involve highlighting the advantages of the new system versus the older system they have been using, its effectiveness and the benefits it has for the company.

Explore the use of training videos, webinars and online guides. Make sure the tools and guides are easily accessible to the team for future reference.

The sales team can also work together on a hands-on training mode to learn the software instead of a training meeting. This makes the training more engaging and encouraging.

3. Get Team’s Input

Engage the team in identifying and adopting the system. The system gives the team an inner motivation to learn and use the system as they can identify with the adoption process.

Let the team identify the strength of the system, the features and the benefits of using it. They can also highlight what they do not like, or whatever they are not comfortable with the system.

The team can also compare the weaknesses and strengths of the old and the new CRM system.

Encourage the team to adopt the new system by rewarding and recognizing team members who effectively use the system, enter more data, and improve their sales using the new system.

4. Pick the Most Appropriate CRM Software

Choose software that best suits your team’s needs. It should be, and it should be able to solve the team’s customer information needs.

Many CRM service providers provide different CRM software. Some of the CRM software types are integration-based that allow a smooth transition from an older system, and some are complete on their own.

A right CRM allows the team to send emails quickly, add contacts, and offer customer support. It will enable your team to make more sales by providing convenient services in one package.

5. Get the Team’s Feedback

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Once the team has adopted the CRM software and interacted with it, get their feedback on the software. Since the team has the hands-on experience with the software, they are best placed to give the best review on the adopted system.

Does the CRM system meet the team’ goals? Is it easy to use? Does it have a problem? Do they see potential improvement of sales? These are some of the questions you can ask the team to assess the success of the system.

Learn from their opinions and improve the system to serve the team better.