Why a 4-Hour Workshop Won't Fix Salesforce Adoption

Hey everybody, Mark over here at The Salesforce Trainers.

You know, something that’s been bugging me today. I’ve been involved in I don’t know how many Salesforce implementations with sales teams. Sometimes we’re actually doing the implementation ourselves. Often, we’re brought in by the implementation firm because they don’t really have a handle on how to do proper training. So I’ve seen a lot of this.

What happens often is that organizations invest a lot of money, time, and resources into the technical build of Salesforce. The projects usually start with IT folks on the client side speaking to IT folks on the implementation team, and they get to work building out Salesforce. Hours are spent, and I’m not saying you don’t need to spend those hours—you do. Sometimes the sales team is brought in for their ideas and input. Often, believe it or not, they’re not, or their involvement is minimized. But that’s another story for another day.

So they get to the point where they’re about 75% through the build, they have a launch date, and suddenly someone says, “Hey, it’s time to think about training.”

That’s where we come in. They’ll say, “Hey, Mark, we want to train.” We always suggest training the week before go-live, and they’ll ask, “Okay, well, how much time do you need for training? Is this going to be two hours or half a day?” I’ll say, “Well, the actual training, based on the learning objectives, is probably going to be around four hours.” And they’ll say, “Okay, that’s a lot, but let’s get everyone in.”

I say, “Hold on. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

There is a lot more to this. We are asking people to fundamentally change the way they work. And a four-hour workshop, no matter how motivated or how bright your salespeople are, is not even close to the amount of time needed to make a project successful.

We need to employ the **ADKAR change management methodology** to ensure a smooth transition. This takes months.

Organizations that don’t recognize the degree of difficulty involved in getting salespeople to fundamentally change how they work are missing the key point: **process first, platform second, and people throughout.**

Thinking that salespeople are simply going to change the way they work because they went through a four-hour workshop is fundamentally flawed.

So, when you’re building out your Salesforce project plan, always remember that the people side of the equation is just as challenging—if not more challenging, I’d argue—than putting the platform together from a technical standpoint.

So remember, when you’re having Salesforce adoption failure, **do not blame your users. Fix the system.