How do you
facilitate the
implementation
of a CRM
in your team?

01 Be transparent

The worst thing to do is surprise your team by suddenly imposing a new work tool. By being transparent from the start, your employees will better understand the reasons why you are implementing a CRM and will be able to anticipate the arrival of the new tool.

To lay the groundwork:

• Get your team involved in the search and acquisition process.
• Clearly communicate your intentions and goals from the get-go (and then stick to them).
• If possible, demonstrate concretely how the CRM will improve the daily lives of your teams.

By being transparent, your employees will understand more quickly how the CRM will facilitate their work, help to improve their individual performances and contribute to the overall success of the business. Also, by maintaining an open dialogue with the members of your team, you will be able to better understand their expectations and choose a tool adapted to their needs.

02 Your secret weapon: training and support

Full adoption of the CRM depends on an extremely important step: training. With any new software, you have to provide for a period of adaptation and learning before being really comfortable with it. If this period ends up being too long or too difficult for your CRM, your employees will gradually abandon the software and return to their old work methods.

We have to say it: Merely leaving the user manual in the hands of your employees is not an effective training method. If you are unable to train your employees yourself, you should use the services of professional trainers. In addition to encouraging adoption of the tool, proper training will allow your employees to benefit from the advanced functions of the software, which will have a direct impact on their productivity.

03 Provide leadership

Good managers lead by example. Do you want your team to fully adopt the new CRM? Use it as well. Your employees will be far more inclined to review their work methods if they see that you are also making an effort. Also, especially at the beginning, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty by helping your employees with data entry.

As a leader, it's also your role to demonstrate that each employee's work contributes to the success of the entire team. A good way to achieve this is to become familiar with the CRM reporting options, which generate dashboards and reports from data entered in the software. These options are useful for you, but they are also important tools for the members of your team.

Each person who works with the data should feel involved. Get your employees to understand that, the more accurate the data, the more useful the reports. Accurate data helps you to make better decisions as a leader and makes everyone's job easier.

Lastly, be open-minded and actively encourage feedback. Take the time to meet your employees in order to gather their comments on the CRM and, during meetings, don't hesitate to bring up the topic in order to encourage constructive discussions.

04 A little material incentive can't hurt

You can't buy motivation, but let's be frank: everyone likes gifts. Therefore, organizing friendly competitions between your employees may be a good way to facilitate the implementation of the CRM by making it fun.

Your employees may be discouraged by the thought of having to enter data. To encourage them, you could organize a contest and reward the employee who, during the first few weeks:

• Records the most accurate lead tracking actions.
• Enters the highest number of new leads.
• Stands out in the progress of his/her leads.
• Enters the most amount of information on his/her customer profiles.

After a certain period, incentives will no longer be necessary: the adaption period will be over, most of the data entry will be completed and the intrinsic benefits of the CRM will be obvious to everyone.

05 Find your pioneers and turn them into ambassadors

When you start talking CRM, some of your team members will be more enthusiastic than others. Find these people and turn them into ambassadors. Get them closely involved in the process, offer them the opportunity to participate in advanced training sessions, ask them to give presentations on the CRM to other employees, etc.

When implementing the CRM, your ambassadors will be the first ones to adopt the new tool and they will contribute to accelerate its adoption in the rest of the company. They will be the focal point for other users and, by expounding on the best practices they will have a positive influence on everyone's work habits.

Your ambassadors will also be able to provide you with other users' comments and concerns. In addition to allowing you to evaluate the results of the implementation, this feedback will help you determine if there are adjustments to make.

06 Organize your data

You probably noticed that data figures prominently in this article. That's no coincidence. The quality and integrity of your data are THE key factor to successfully implementing your CRM. If your employees cannot trust the information that they find in the CRM, they will simply not use it.

Before implementation
Before implementing the CRM and importing your current database into it, clean up your database and make sure that the content is as accurate as possible.

During and after implementation
Make users of the CRM aware of the importance of having reliable data. Make sure you teach them the best data entry practices. If you subsequently notice sloppiness, you may want to make a few reminders. When the data is reliable, everyone wins.