Driving Salesforce Adoption from the Inbox

Introduction

In today’s world sales professionals, whether in a service role, support role or

direct sales, are having to change the way they “sell”. Effective sales professionals

instinctively want to be on top and enabling sales with the right tools helps them to

focus on what is important in their sales process, whatever methodology they follow.

In order to be data driven, you have to not just have the data, you have to enable the

users to easy digest and get to the data- enters CRM and CRM tools. Furthermore,

the users have to feel successful in their use of the tools. In other words, adoption is

critical to the success or failure of CRM and for sales professionals, the less they have

to “use” CRM, the higher the adoption!

Seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it?

Let’s explore a real life scenario of a successful CRM implementation and best practices for CRM adoption

Allied Building Products is a building materials distributor in the residential and

commercial building industry with locations nationwide. Today Allied operates over

200 locations, maintains a fleet of over 2,785 vehicles and employs over 3,100 people.

Allied supports a sales organization of 80 sales professionals today.

Unlike many organizations migrating from a legacy CRM

to more modern technology, Allied was just entering the

world of CRM. Adoption was a major measurement of

success or failure and it was a new way of doing things

for Allied, which has been in business since 1950.

Allied - A Culture of Transformation

Allied is a part of a larger entity, Oldcastle Materials which

employs over 80,000 worldwide. It’s Oldcastle philosophy that

each division operations as its own business unit.

This culture of transformation enables Allied to make decisions

that are best for the localized needs of the organization. There

are standard things that a large entity has to standardized like

financials, but if you get back to the grassroots of your users

and their day to day needs, the magic really happens at the

local level. “Having executive sponsorship to this is key. Let the

end user be the end user and slowly adapt them to necessary

changes.”- Vinnie DiSalvo, Manager of Employee Development

The grassroots approach just works! Within six months since the

initial search for CRM, we plan to be at 80% adoption.

According to this report, “if a company hasn’t aligned or adapted

its sales or service goals and processes to directly correlate with

the software implementation, unclear or inconsistent software

utilization can then disincent use of the system and result in a

negative spiral of unrealized benefits, instead of an incentive to

use the new system as intended.”

A 3-Step Grassroots Approach for Allied

1. Get back to the grassroots approach of

keeping the end user in mind- it’s not a new

concept- more a reminder that it works!

2. Knowledge Acquisition vs Knowledge

Application – there is a difference between

acquiring knowledge and applying

knowledge. While both are important, when

it comes to adoption of technology the

application of that technology to the end

user’s day to day life is critical to success.

3. Start at point A, instead of point Z. Instead of

visualizing the end result as a starting point,

start by understanding the impact to the day

to day process.

Be User Centric

Know Your Users

Process

Knowledge Acquisition

vsKnowledge Application

Two Sales Cultures

Culture 1: The Culture of Doubt - In this top down culture sales

leaders are looking to push technology on to their users- there

is seemingly a level of doubt that the day to day administrative

tasks will get completed and they are probably right! They often

seek technology to do the job for their users.

Culture 2: The User Culture - Investing the time in developing

and understanding the daily activities as a foundation for how

you look for and pursue an implementation of CRM. In this

culture it is more of a “down-top” approach, where the leaders

are seeking input and buy-in from the end users first!

The User Culture results in the end-user feeling like they have

more ownership of the process of finding the right solution to

meet the needs of the sales organization. This approach is not

easy, in fact because it requires a larger sample of end users

in the process, it often takes considerable time. The end result

however is more positive as adoption is higher.

According to Salesforce.com “CRM systems are too often

conceived and implemented with little or no consideration

given to how sales reps will use them, much less how they

could be configured to deliver the kind of value that would

encourage reps to use them.”

Source: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/05/want-to-boost-crm-adoption-boost-sales-rep-buy-in.html

A Key Philosophy

“If you have the right people in the right jobs, then you can trust them to do their jobs effectively.”

Vinnie DiSalvoManager of Employee Development

Allied Building Products

Curate a CRM Team for the Long Haul

The CRM team sits in the middle of the sales team and the customer and it’s a critical

role. Sales management and leadership often sit on one side as stakeholders and the

sales reps and the service reps sit on the other. The CRM team has to sit in the middle

to put together a solution and business process that is going to work for both sides.

LeadershipSponsor

User Champions

Sales/ServiceMngt

IT

Finance

The Right CRM Tools Led to Increased Adoption

Allied has set achievable goals to be at 80% adoption of Salesforce by the end

of 2016! The previous goal before implementing the right CRM tools was 40-60%

adoption. So having Zynbit allowed Allied to set the bar high and raise the adoption

rate 20%!

For Salesforce users there is no shortage of tools to fit specific needs. The

Salesforce AppExchange is made up of business apps that help to extend the use of

CRM and therefore raise adoption! Its no wonder the Salesforce AppExchange just

hit 4 million installs!

In Allied’s End User first approach, they discovered that there was a looming need to

keep adoption at the forefront on their CRM implementation and that need was being

able to interact with the CRM directly from the users email inbox. Having to exit

the email application where users lived day in and day out to update CRM records

was not productive for their users. Enters ZynBit! ZynBit provides the ability for

users to easily interact with Salesforce directly from their inbox. Furthermore, users

are presented with helpful insight about their customers and how customers are

engaging with email correspondence.

From

40%Adoption

To

80%Adoption

CRM From Your Inbox

Simplify Your Work

Your CRM becomes invisible. Be able to do

all your work where you live with CRM from

your inbox.

Customer Intelligence

Work smarter with ZynBit connected to your

website, email and CRM. Grow revenue when

you get actionable customer intelligence.

Web Visitor Tracking

Engage your customers like a boss when you

know where and when they have been on your

website. Your prospects will be more receptive

to timely and relevant follow ups.

Synchronize Customer Data

Forget data entry! With all your calendar

meetings, tasks and emails synchronized

you’ll have more time to enage

with customers.

Be Productive

Instead of time consuming reporting, data

massaging, and data entry, spend more

of your time converting leads, closing

opportunities, and satisfying customers.

Raise Your Customer IQ

Your customer data is complete and accurate,

you’re measuring what matters, you truly

understand your customers, and your teams

are performing with precision.

The Benefits of Using ZynBit

Conclusion:

Every organization is unique and will have their unique needs. It’s important that

organizations find the right applications that help to extend their CRM to support the

end users in their day to day activities. While the culture of doubt is not ideal, for many

organizations the feeling is mutual that many sales professionals will place low priority

on updating their CRM. There are many apps available to CRM users that enable them

to be more productive, Zynbit happens to be one of those solutions, helping sales

professionals work within their email inbox to create CRM records (tasks, events,

activities, contacts, etc.), update records, and seamlessly sync data bi-directionally

between CRM and Email applications. Having these productivity apps in place allows

the end-user to see CRM has a tool to help them in their sales process versus a data

repository only viable to sales management, executives and others in the organization.

About ZynBitZynBit.com Inc. is a Research Triangle-based company that designs and builds the

smartest tools to collect and organize all your customer interactions in one place.

By seamlessly integrating your most valuable customer communication systems –

email, website, and CRM. ZynBit makes it easy to attract, acquire, and retain more

customers. We believe all of your customer facing applications should be automatically

integrated. For more information about ZynBit, visit http://www.zynbit.com.