Painless CRM Onboarding Approaches
Understanding the CRM onboarding process is crucial to getting your money's worth from a CRM. While it is true that CRM systems are great at increasing profits, this is only half of the story.
The CRM solution will only help you as much as you let it. If your team isn't fully immersing itself in the CRM, then you're not getting the full benefits.
A great CRM will give you insight into your sales, help you track leads and keep a tab on all contacts. Your team will be able to easily make sales calls, track sales-related tasks and deals.
But first, you have to make sure they understand the CRM and are utilizing it to the fullest. This is where the onboarding process comes in.
Think wisely before settling on a solution
Before you decide which CRM system you’ll use, you must make sure it is right for your business.
It's easy to get swayed by fancy bells and whistles. CRM marketers will put the number of features upfront. It's easy to start fantasizing about how you'll need this feature and that feature.
In truth, a lot of features in those expensive CRMs are only useful to fortune 500 corporations. And even then, only in certain rare scenarios.
To understand the CRM onboarding process you have to understand it’s all about the end user. A “successful onboarding” means that your employees use and love the CRM.
If you get an overly complex and overwhelming CRM, you risk many problems. You could create frustration and procrastination on your staff. They can just put off using the CRM indefinitely.
“It's too complex to learn, too cumbersome to use, I don't have time for it”. This is something you'll often hear if you're overly ambitious in your choice of a CRM.
Don't be surprised if your employees continue tracking things in spreadsheets. All the while your CRM goes unused.
Get your employees excited about the new change
Change is difficult for every human on this planet. Your employees are obviously human and not too fond of change either. This is why you have to know how to “frame” the transition to using a CRM.
Don't think of a CRM implementation as a “fix” to how your team currently does things. You shouldn't offer the CRM as a way of “improving the sales process”.
Avoid saying anything that implies they're currently doing things “wrong”. Even if you want to just say “the current process is sub-optimal and can be better”. They'll still hear “Your sales process sucks people, and so do all of you.”
You have to be careful in how you approach them. If you do it wrong, they might get the message that you think they're currently bad at doing sales. This will cause resistance and resentment in your staff.
You want to approach the change from an entirely different mindset
It's this “cool new tool that will make their lives easier”. You know that with a good CRM they'll achieve so much more with less effort, and you're excited for them.
It helps if you’re enthusiastic about how the CRM can help your sales team. If you truly believe in the solution, it will be much easier to create buy-in for your team as well. When you're in love with a CRM solution, your team is more likely to accept it.
Consider creating a presentation and explaining the new system to the top employees. You want to focus on how it benefits them, and how it makes their jobs easier. If you succeed in getting them excited about the change, onboarding will go much easier.
You might also ask these top employees and managers to walk through the training for the CRM. Then, they can go and help onboarding the rest of the staff. If you do it right, the “onboarding managers” will be happy to do this.
You want to paint a story about how it benefits them if everyone is on board. Help them understand how if everyone uses the CRM, everybody’s job gets easier. That way they’ll be happy to help implement the onboarding process and get others on board.
Take time to understand the CRM
If you choose an intuitive and straightforward CRM, this will be quite easy and enjoyable. For example, if you’re using Centrium, everything will make sense instantly. You almost never have to look up the documentation or wonder where a feature resides.
This is because we built Centrium to help businesses have a quick and easy onboarding process. We focused on putting only the features you need most upfront. And we worked very hard to streamline everything.
However, you might choose some overwhelming CRM with too many features. In that case, try to learn everything you can before implementing it. Don’t ask your team to start using the CRM until you fully understand it yourself.
As I already said above, it is important that you are genuinely enthusiastic about this CRM. Let’s say (for example) that you try the CRM and find the learning curve frustrating. Don’t expect you can reliably convince others to love using it.
You want to understand all the pros and cons of the CRM before you ever pitch it to your team. Your education should begin long before the onboarding process, while you’re still deciding on a solution.
Fortunately, every good CRM offers a free trial. And that includes Centrium. Feel free to give it a try today.
Keep on working on your CRM Onboarding
This is another point that depends on the CRM that you choose. If you go for Centrium, this will just involve telling new employees to check it out. They’ll easily figure it out themselves.
If you choose a more complex CRM however, expect for onboarding to be an ongoing process. The more complex the technology, the more things that can go wrong. Expect that over time there will be additional issues for you to resolve. There will be additional guides for you to write and rules to create.
You will have to schedule extra meetings with your team and make them give suggestions or ask questions about the new system. Also, you will need to review any updated training and documentation on a regular basis. Then, you would have to inform your employees about any of this new information.
If you have a larger group of employees (10 or more) and using an overly complex CRM, consider creating an internal knowledgebase. You can use many free services to create an online working knowledge base. This will prevent employees from constantly coming to you with unnecessary questions.
You can include some tips, shortcuts, and tricks in order to maximize the productivity of the workplace.
Implementing a new CRM system and making it work can be difficult. This is especially true if you choose a CRM that's unnecessarily complex. However, if you have a good understanding of onboarding and the right CRM - all of this can be very easy.
Feel free to give Centrium a try. We are confident that you will love the features, and how they are implemented. This is why we are offering a full free trial. Give it a go today, you might just fall in love at first use.
