5 Must-Do’s If You Want Your Sales Team to Master Salesforce
Does Salesforce feel like a puzzle that just doesn't fit together? Being able to master Salesforce is a journey that takes time and commitment from the sales entire team. We often hear that sales teams find themselves confused about this CRM, treating Salesforce as a glorified contact management tool, and only logging in sporadically.
The common sentiment is that Salesforce feels like an insurmountable mountain, with its intricate features and functions that seem impossible to master. Even worse, is when sales teams view Salesforce as strictly a management tool, designed solely to help sales leaders micro-manage their teams’ every step.
Salesforce is a powerhouse of capabilities, offering solutions for various departments across diverse organizations. It can help companies streamline sales processes, imports prospect data, enhances customer interactions, fosters internal communication through Chatter, enables teamwork, manages vast data repositories, generates contracts, and much more through its array of integrated apps. But how do you get there, specifically when your team is skeptical to begin with?
Well, here are 5 must do's as you embark on your journey to master Salesforce.
1. Recognize that moving to Salesforce means Change - and change requires a Change Management Model.
If you want your sales team to truly embrace Salesforce, then you need to plan many steps ahead. So many organizations want to launch right into a training program after - sometimes even before - the system is fully functional. And that’s just the wrong approach.
Training is bound to be ineffective if the sales team aren’t prepared emotionally to embrace the change. And that requires that leadership address two very critical areas before anyone opens up their training manual.
First, the team must be made aware of the reason for the change. You need to ensure that you’ve addressed the following questions:
- Why are we making this change?
- Why are we making this change now?
- What happens if we don’t make this change?
- What will this change mean to me (the sales person)?
Without addressing these critical questions right up front, with clear and transparent answers, your team will remain skeptical, no matter how good the training.
The second step, after building awareness, is to create desire. This is even harder than the first step, as now you need to get your teams excited about using Salesforce. You need to show them the “What’s In It For Me” and you better be prepared to demonstrate how this is going to either save them time, make life easier, or make them more money. And better yet, show them how it will lead to all three.
Without proper awareness and desire established, you will be simply throwing your training dollars, and in fact a significant portion of your Salesforce license fees, out the window.
2. Start with Reports - your KPIs are what drives everything else.
What reports do your execs look at every day? Where is the forecast generated? What do sales leaders read to know that their sales teams are on track. This is where we start.
It doesn’t matter what format you’re getting reports in today - Excel, other systems, hand scribbled notes - that’s not important. What is critical is understanding the KPIs that your organization’s leaders use to gauge the health of the business, and the status of the sales pipeline. It’s these metrics that we then need to ensure you can capture in Salesforce - trust us - you can! But we need to make sure that Salesforce is set up to enable capture of this data and that Salesforce is doing as much of the heavy lifting as possible, with minimal and simple inputs expected from the sales team. (see point #3 below)
Once we know WHAT you want to measure, then the job of creating training documents on what the team needs to do in Salesforce is basically laid out for us. Then we can deliver training based on what your teams already know - and in fact show them that by using Salesforce effectively, they’ll save a ton of time not needing to worry about any of the reporting elements that they currently have to do.
3. Marry Your Sales Process to Salesforce - Let automation lead the way.
The key to navigating Salesforce's complexity is understanding its fundamental purpose: automating business processes. Your organization likely has a sales process, whether it's intricate or straightforward. Salesforce won't create or map these steps for you; it merely automates them.
The challenge arises when you factor in Salesforce's multitude of moving parts and add-ons that must align with your processes. Before implementing Salesforce, map out the workflows for each user impacted. Failing to do so could result in costly errors and create a need for system reconfigurations or retraining efforts.
When selecting an implementation partner, make sure you hire one that understands sales process, and what exactly sales people go through. Time and time again, we’ve seen Salesforce implementation projects led by IT departments. Sorry, but while these folks certainly understand programming and system development, many of them have never spent a day in the field in front of customers with sales targets and deadlines to hit.
We can’t stress this enough - you MUST HAVE at least one representative from sales leadership and the sales team on the planning sessions.
4. Gradual Mastery - Take baby steps.
While the allure of Salesforce's bells and whistles may be enticing, consider implementing it in phases. Start with the basics, master them, and then progress.
A common initial step is providing basic training to your primary users. For sales representatives, offer a half-day workshop on Salesforce fundamentals, covering terminology, system navigation, deal management, pipeline management and activity management. Implementation also requires a skills audit, as not everyone will adapt at the same pace.
Using a Certification program like ProSell helps leaders to identify who is mastering Salesforce and who needs more help. As we like to say - it’s perfectly OK for new users of Salesforce to struggle a bit out of the gate. What’s not OK is to not have a plan in place to identify these users (trust us - they rarely put their hands up and tell us that they’re struggling!) and provide them with the additional support that they need.
Going slow allows you to assess adoption rates, skill levels, and uncover software nuances. This measured approach prepares you for the next phase of implementation.
5. Train Continuously - Stay current and informed.
As we like to say - training never ends! If you think a 4 hour session is enough to get your users rocking and rolling with Salesforce and completely competent at implementing a radically new digital system into their day to day duties, well, you’re in for a shock.
Initial training is essential, but having an ongoing plan to reinforce learning, accommodate new hires, and address software updates is also crucial. Salesforce receives frequent updates in addition to major seasonal releases. Neglecting support for the system can deter new hires and lead to errors. Ensure that new employee training includes CRM components, and keep current users informed about changes as they occur. Proactive communication and training help maintain high user adoption rates and prevent last-minute navigation hassles during crucial prospect meetings.
As a Salesforce Training company, our primary focus is customized corporate training programs.
If you have a team of sales, marketing, customer service, business analysts, administrators or developers that need to learn how to use Salesforce properly, contact us to further discuss your training needs and how we can help.
In Conclusion
While Salesforce may initially appear as a challenge, using these guidelines can help to transform it into a powerful tool that enhances your sales team's efficiency and productivity.
The mountain of complete digital transformation may seem insurmountable at first, but if you take the time to follow these key Must-Do’s, you’ll be one step closer to the top.
