Motivating End User Adoption to Avoid Failure

As a Salesforce Partner, we are often approached by new customers who want to get more value from their Salesforce CRM licenses. One of the things we consistently hear from these organisations is, “We’ve spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on our implementation and only a handful of us actually use it! As well as getting more value out of our Salesforce CRM, can you also help us increase user adoption?”

It is imperative that your organisation gets user adoption right and motivates your end users. If it isn’t in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist! If it doesn’t exist you might as well kiss that money good-bye because your CRM implementation is likely to fail.

SalesFix is committed to harnessing optimum performance for our clients and the Salesforce Community which is evident by the leadership we’ve provided for over five years to the Salesforce Brisbane User Group. SalesFix is taking this commitment a step further by developing training courses for Salesforce end users.

Why do we believe training will help motivate end users?

#Tip 1 – A clear training path for all users provides them with the understanding of what Salesforce is capable of and a vision of how it will help in their roles.

#Tip 2 – End-user training sets clear expectations for users. How do they navigate around the system? What’s all this new lingo that the system uses – Accounts and Contacts? Many users have always used customers and organisations.

#Tip 3 – What’s in it for them? Providing end user training helps motivate your users. Educating your users on how to create reports and dashboards that is relevant to their position excites them. Everyone in your organisation should have their own dashboard so that they can monitor key performance metrics throughout the month. Giving users a clear insight into the data helps them perform better and changes their perspective on the importance of entering information.

#Tip 4 – Provide hands-on training with real-life scenarios and data. There is nothing worse than watching someone whiz through a demonstration on how to use an application. Half the time you have no idea what keystrokes or buttons they are hitting. A user needs time to process the information and ask questions that are relevant to their role.

#Tip 5 – Once basic hands-on training has been delivered to all Salesforce users within your organisation, measure their usage and how each member is using the system.

#Tip 6 – Use the usage information to provide more training internally. For example, you might like to share how specific users or departments start using the system and then share the successes throughout the organisation.

#Tip 7 – Don’t use the wall of shame with the measurement data you gather. It’s a learning process for everyone and it’s your organisation’s job to harness the power of Salesforce and find ways to motivate your team to success.

#Tip 8 – If you are lucky enough to have an administrator, share some tips and tricks each week with the users within your organisation. If you don’t, maybe an individual from each department can share tips and tricks internally. Or better still, join a Salesforce User Group in your location.

#Tip 9 – Once basic hands-on training is delivered to all Salesforce users you can start to think of ways to deliver training for specific departments and the role they play within your organisation so that the training is more relevant. For example, your HR team may require different training than your Sales team, Marketing team and Customer Service, team. Successful training is ongoing and often highly targeted training adds incredible value to an organisation.

#Tip 10 – Get training from a specialist team that has Salesforce training experience, implementation experience and has a vast range of Salesforce certifications: such as Salesforce Administration, Advanced Administration, Sales Cloud, Services Cloud, Apps, Force.com Developer, and Pardot Consultant certifications.

To summarise, if your organisation is committed to fundamental process improvement and developing a clear line of sight into your data to enhance efficiency and profitability, then use Salesforce CRM and, very importantly, give your users the training and support they require to be successful. SalesFix can help you with this training, whether it’s training for the end user or customised in-house training for specific teams, roles and/or departments.