Why You Are Not Maximizing Your Salesforce ROI
You've invested heavily in Salesforce.
Licenses. Implementation. Configuration. Customization. Training. Administration. Reports and dashboards. Integrations. And probably a considerable amount of time from your sales leaders trying to get salespeople to actually use the thing.
So here's the question:
Is Salesforce actually delivering the return you expected?
For many organizations, the honest answer isn't yes or no.
It's "We're not really sure."
Salesforce may be providing some value. Your managers may be getting better visibility. Your salespeople may be using parts of the system. But when you step back and ask whether the overall investment is producing the business results you expected, the answer can become surprisingly difficult to quantify.
That's because Salesforce ROI isn't determined by the technology alone.
In our experience, there are four areas that have the biggest impact on whether a sales organization actually gets value from Salesforce.
And interestingly, only one of them is primarily about the technology.
1. You Don't Have a Formal Change Management Strategy
A Salesforce implementation is a business change, not simply a technology project.
Yet many organizations put enormous effort into managing the technical side of an implementation and comparatively little effort into managing the people side.
The platform gets configured. Data gets migrated. Reports get built. Training gets scheduled.
Then everyone logs in on Monday morning and is expected to change the way they work.
That's where things can start to fall apart.
A proper change management strategy should address three fundamental questions:
- Are people adopting the new way of working?
- Are they actually using Salesforce consistently?
- Are they becoming more effective as a result?
Adoption doesn't happen because someone attended a training session. It happens when people understand why the change matters, know what they need to do differently, can do it, and receive reinforcement from their managers.
That's why change management needs to be part of the Salesforce strategy from the beginning — not something added after adoption starts to struggle.
You can't create Salesforce ROI without changing the behaviors that Salesforce was intended to support.
2. You're Measuring Outcomes Instead of the Behaviors That Drive Them
Sales organizations naturally focus on outcomes.
Revenue. Bookings. Gross margin. Win rate. Pipeline. Quota attainment.
Those numbers matter. But there's a problem:
Outcomes are lagging indicators.
By the time you discover that a salesperson missed their number, the quarter is already over.
The more useful question is: What was happening inside the sales process that led to that outcome?
That's where leading indicators come in.
Depending on your sales process, those might include:
- New qualified opportunities created
- Opportunities progressing through defined stages
- Next steps established
- Customer meetings completed
- Proposals delivered
- Opportunities sitting too long in a stage
- Opportunities without recent activity
- Pipeline coverage
- Specific activities associated with successful opportunities
Salesforce is exceptionally good at measuring these things — if you've actually defined which behaviors matter.
That's the part many organizations miss.
They build dozens of reports because Salesforce can report on almost anything. But reporting on everything isn't the same as managing what matters.
Your sales managers need to know:
What behaviors lead to good sales outcomes in our organization?
Then Salesforce can help them see whether those behaviors are actually happening.
This is one of the reasons we put so much emphasis on sales process before platform configuration. If you haven't defined how your sales organization is supposed to sell, it's very difficult to determine which leading indicators you should be measuring.
3. Your Sales Managers Aren't Coaching to the System
This one is closely connected to change management, but it's important enough to deserve its own conversation.
Your frontline sales managers are probably the single biggest influence on whether your salespeople actually use Salesforce.
Not your executive team.
Not your Salesforce Admin.
Not your implementation partner.
Your frontline managers.
Think about what happens after Salesforce training.
Your salespeople attend a session. They learn how to create an Opportunity, update a stage, enter activities and run a report.
Then they go back to selling.
A week later, they're busy.
Two weeks later, they've forgotten half of what they learned.
A month later, they're back to their old habits.
That's not necessarily a training failure.
It's a reinforcement failure.
Salesforce needs to become part of the way managers actually manage.
That means using Salesforce during:
- Pipeline reviews
- Forecast meetings
- One-on-ones
- Opportunity coaching
- Performance discussions
- Sales meetings
If a manager consistently asks a salesperson about an Opportunity but never looks at the Opportunity in Salesforce, the message is pretty clear:
Salesforce isn't actually required to sell here.
Conversely, when managers use Salesforce to coach, ask questions, challenge assumptions and make decisions, salespeople have a reason to keep the system current.
That's when Salesforce starts becoming part of the sales management system rather than simply the CRM system.
4. Your Salesforce Platform Isn't Aligned With the Way Your Salespeople Sell
This is the technology problem.
And it's a big one.
We've seen Salesforce environments that have been configured beautifully from a technical perspective but are painful for salespeople to use.
Too many fields.
Too many clicks.
Too many required fields.
Complicated page layouts.
Poorly designed Opportunity stages.
Processes that don't reflect how the organization actually sells.
Reports that managers don't use.
And sometimes years of customization layered on top of years of customization.
The result?
Salespeople work around Salesforce instead of working in Salesforce.
They keep notes somewhere else.
They maintain spreadsheets.
They enter information after the fact.
Or they simply don't enter it at all.
That's not a user problem.
It's often a design problem.
Your Salesforce platform should make it easier for salespeople to sell, manage their opportunities and keep their information current.
It should reflect the sales process rather than force salespeople to work around the system.
That's why we believe Salesforce optimization starts with understanding how the sales organization actually works.
Before changing fields, page layouts or automation, you need to understand what salespeople do, what managers need, and what information the business actually needs to make decisions.
That's the difference between configuring Salesforce and optimizing Salesforce.
The Four Problems Are Connected
Here's the part that's easy to miss.
These aren't four independent problems.
They're connected.
You can have a beautifully configured Salesforce platform, but if nobody adopts it, you won't get the value.
You can have a strong change management program, but if the platform is frustrating to use, adoption will eventually suffer.
You can have great reports, but if you're measuring the wrong things, your managers won't get the insight they need.
And you can train your salespeople extensively, but if their managers don't reinforce the behaviors, much of that training will disappear.
Salesforce ROI is the result of the system working together — not one component working perfectly in isolation.
This Is Why We Talk About Process, Platform and People
This is also why our approach to Salesforce starts with Process, Platform and People.
Process determines how your sales organization should sell, manage opportunities, review pipeline and forecast.
Platform makes that process easier to execute by configuring Salesforce around the way your organization actually works.
People make the change stick through training, management, coaching, reinforcement and accountability.
When those three elements are aligned, Salesforce becomes much more than a database.
It becomes part of your sales operating system.
When they're not aligned, you can spend a lot of money on Salesforce without ever getting the return you expected.
So, What Should You Do If Your Salesforce ROI Is Poor?
Don't start by buying more technology.
And don't start by blaming your salespeople.
Start by figuring out where the disconnect is.
Ask yourself:
Is our sales process clearly defined?
Do our Salesforce stages, fields, reports and dashboards actually reflect how we sell?
Are we measuring the behaviors that drive our sales outcomes?
Or are we simply reporting on what happened after the fact?
Are our sales managers actively using Salesforce to manage and coach?
Or are they asking salespeople for information that's already supposed to be in the system?
Is Salesforce easy for our salespeople to use?
Or have we built a platform that makes selling harder?
And finally:
Do our people understand why Salesforce matters to them?
If the answer to several of these questions is no, you probably don't have a Salesforce problem.
You have an alignment problem.
Salesforce ROI Doesn't Come From Salesforce Alone
The biggest mistake I see organizations make is treating Salesforce ROI as though it were primarily a technology question.
It isn't.
The software is only one part of the equation.
You can spend six or seven figures implementing Salesforce and still struggle to get the return you expected if the sales process isn't defined, the platform isn't aligned, managers aren't coaching to it and the sales team isn't adopting the behaviors.
There's no magic button you can press.
Getting more value from Salesforce requires the organization to change how it sells, manages and uses the system.
That's why we built our approach around Process, Platform and People.
Because when those three things are aligned, Salesforce has a much better chance of delivering what you originally bought it for.
The question isn't whether Salesforce can deliver ROI.
The question is whether you've built the environment that allows it to.
