Selecting the right CRM for your organization can take hours of research. You want to find the application that will boost sales efficiency, eliminate manual work, and organize your data, among other features. Once you find your CRM, it may feel like a huge relief, but the work should not stop there.
Buying a CRM and telling your team to start using it is like throwing them to the wolves, especially if they have little to no experience using this kind of application. As important as your research is to find the right CRM for your company, so is finding the right way to implement your CRM.
Most CRM applications let you customize fields, layouts, user permissions, automation, etc. These implementation efforts are just as important as your initial research because they will help you get buy-in from your users. If you can show them how the application will make them more efficient from the start, they will be more likely to use the application to it fullest.
An article from Technology Advice details best practices to implementing a CRM application, we highlight some of these below.
1. Define Your Users
Not everyone on your team will use the CRM in the same way. You could have sales, marketing, even support users all within one application accessing the same data but using it in a multitude of ways. Additionally, sales or C-Level managers may only need to use the CRM to ensure reps are meeting goals. It is important to understand how each user will use the tool so you can configure them and train them accordingly.
2. Define User Permissions
Once you understand and define your users, you can determine what types of permissions and access you want to give them in your CRM. For example, do members on your sales team need access into each other’s records or should they be hidden from each other? Do you want your support team to see all the fields available to your sales users or should support only see pertinent contact information? Understanding who needs access to what and defining those permissions will help get your teams up and running smoothly and efficiently.
3. Build Your Business Workflow and Best Practices
To help with the transition of onboarding your users, it is beneficial to provide them with some blueprints on how they should use the application. Do you want leads to be converted after x amount of communications? How should users be logging their calls or meetings? Determine best practices required to achieve desired outcomes and build your business processes around them.
4. Take Full Advantage Advanced Features (Automation)
Most CRM’s come with automation built into them to help eliminate manual efforts and improve user efficiency. You can have fields automatically updated on a record once a certain criterion is met. You can send email notifications to management when a deal has moved in the pipeline. There is a plethora of ways you can use automation to your advantage with your CRM. It is pivotal you define how you want automation to improve your sales efficiencies when implementing your CRM.
5. Get Additional Training
To get the most out of your CRM for each user, you need to teach them how to use it. Set up a training schedule including different materials, like videos, how-to guides, in-person training, etc. Start off with practical, day-to-day processes (like the processes you defined) and then move into some of the more advanced behaviors of the application. Some users may feel overwhelmed if they do not have any experience using an application, so it is best to ease them into the swing of things and get them started off on the right foot. If you put in the investment of training your users early in the process, you will reap the rewards of self-efficient users later.
6. Continue Conversation with Users to Increase Buy-In
Once you have gone through the process of implementing your team with your new CRM, you will certainly feel accomplished, and you should! However, you should not stop investing in your CRM. It is important to maintain a continued conversation with your users as they become more comfortable with the application. They may have an idea to change a business process that saves time or increases adoption from other users. You CRM administrator should always be in touch with their users and keep them up to date with any new features, best practices, etc. CRM success is a marathon, not a sprint.
You wouldn’t buy a car without extensive research to find the perfect one for you. You certainly wouldn’t buy a car with today’s most advance features and never learn how to use them. So why would you not take the time research and plan the implementation your CRM? AMPED offers various implementation plans and training packages to fit your company and help you use the powerful features of the application to the fullest.
AMPED is now offering a free trial! Sign up today and speak to one of our friendly representatives about our implementation plans and how we can set you up for continued success with AMPED.