When most B2B brands and wholesalers begin the process of evaluating sales solutions, they rightly consider the application’s features, cost, customizability, scalability, and how quickly it can be implemented. These are obviously important factors to consider, but according to a study by Forrester Research, 49% of CRM initiatives still fail. Why is that?
Let’s look at 3 ways to ensure your mobile CRM solutions implementation will be a success.
1. Encourage user adoption
The single most influential element for maximizing a CRM’s return on investment (‘ROI’) is high adoption of the CRM by your sales reps.
When used efficiently, mobile CRM solutions significantly
improve productivity, profits, and sales. While this will be good news for you
and your staff - they need to be told about the benefits. Before going full
steam ahead, communicate with those who will be using it and get them involved
in the process.
A good way to involve your sales reps is to
form a user panel that measures progress, makes assessments and prioritizes
recommendations such as design improvements, or what features should be
adopted. This will help them recognize this is their project and doesn’t just
belong to management or IT and is being forced upon them.
Another important point is to plan carefully to
facilitate changes in management behaviors as well as sales staff. The tone for
change is set from the top of an organization so they need to set the example.
2. Train your sales reps
User training is a critical success factor in adoption and utilization and this also needs to be addressed very early in the process. The good news is that according to a study by Nucleus Research, every dollar spent on CRM implementation returns as much as $8.71 in sales revenue. But raining staff after implementation can significantly decrease ROI as productivity would be unfocused.
During the training process, focus on
demonstrating how CRM can help with everything from taking an order to customer
relationship nurturing. Instead of going through the functions of CRM step by
step, give real-life examples to gauge more interest and make training more
worthwhile.
3. Get your data ready
Seeing as mobile CRM solutions are databases,
it’s vital the data is represented accurately. The first thing your users will see
is their data and if it is incorrect, you may have already lost their attention
in the features and functionality, because they are focused on how and why
their data is wrong. It must be accurate and complete, and cleaning it up must
be considered a key stage in the project.
Consider how to make the CRM more functional
and useful to sales reps. Automatically transforming a set of numbers into a
pie chart of bar graph can bring more value to sales reps.
Don’t forget data integration with your
existing ERP or accounting software. Implementing CRM software in isolation won’t
being any new benefits and only cause more problems. Any chosen CRM solution
must have the ability to integrate seamlessly.
To sum up
Every CRM project will bring an element of risk, but by noting the above points it’s possible to implement strategies to manage the risks and create plans to mitigate and respond to those threatening your project objectives.
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