How to get Sales people excited about their CRM.

Discover why getting your sales team excited about CRM is crucial for success. Learn how continuous improvements and active engagement drive CRM effectiveness, and explore strategies to overcome the challenges of large-scale CRM transformations.

Understanding the Sales person's Perspective

Sales people thrive on customer relationships, which are their superpower. By asking them to use a CRM, you’re essentially asking them to share vital customer knowledge—making them feel replaceable. This can be a hard sell, especially since salespeople want to focus on closing deals, not data entry.

Salespeople are driven by human interactions, not by tedious documentation. They prefer spending time in conversations with clients rather than inputting information into a CRM system. Therefore, a successful CRM system must simplify their admin tasks, save them time, and provide a competitive advantage in their sales efforts.

crm conflict - two people not communicating great

The Conflict of Divided Needs in CRM

A CRM system must balance the competing needs of sales teams and leadership. Leadership wants detailed insights and KPIs to guide decision-making, while salespeople want to minimize time spent on data entry and focus on selling. It's crucial for CRM product owners to prioritize sales people’s needs since they drive revenue.

In larger organizations, there may also be conflicting needs between departments. It's important to understand these dynamics to ensure the CRM system is not only functional but also well-integrated with other business applications.

Finding the Right Balance for CRM Success

Before starting a CRM project, interview your sales and leadership teams to identify their unique needs and work processes. Gather insights on how they report, what tools they use, and what would make their jobs easier. Plan for their input as subject matter experts throughout the implementation.

If your CRM system is already live, set up a dedicated process for user feedback—separate from bug reporting. Establish strong IT governance and product ownership to evaluate and implement beneficial new features.

Key Questions for Sales and Leadership Teams

For Sales Teams:

When do you do your documentation and data entry?
What devices do you use, and is internet access available at client locations?
How much time do you spend on data entry and looking for documents?
What are your most critical reporting needs?

For Leadership:

How do you track team performance and reporting frequency?
How do you support struggling team members?
What metrics are most valuable to you for measuring success?

KEEP IN MIND:
Getting to the truth	If you want to get honest answers, hire a consultant or have someone from an unrelated department do these interviews. People need to feel safe and not fear any repercussions due to their answers. Interviews need to be confidential and insights anonymised.
Respect time	Keep it short and efficient. Respect the time they take to participate in interviews or write feedback. This is time they loose with customers, working on their sales bonus or supporting their team.
Set expectations carefully	Be careful how to phrase your questions and set expectations. Only promise what you can deliver, to not demotivate feedback in the future. Don't promise to solve all their problems at once!

How to get them excited

With interviews and/or feedback loops you will understand what motivates and drives your sales people. Use that to motivate them! You will also understand their greatest pain points and how the system can support them in their jobs. Focus on these benefits when communicating changes and feature improvements.

A good change manager understands that the communication focus should be on the benefits of the individual (sales) person, not on the company's benefits.

System and governance set up

Ensure that the system you build is tackling their largest pain points
Focus on user friendliness and sales support, not only management KPI's
Keep processes as simple as possible and automate where you can

Ownership & Influence

They should feel ownership for their CRM. It is there to support them, to be improved by them and not a burden laid on them by management.
Have a feedback and improvement system in place that is different from bug reporting. Ensure that your sales team knows about it, as well as the process behind it. Give them incentives or rewards to actively participate in feedback and improvement efforts.
Communicate why certain things are not possible or take longer to implement. Show them you are listening and trying to work on their problems.
Work with them to find acceptable work arounds instead of ignoring impossible requests.
Introduce a voting system for feature improvements.

Communicating benefits

Communication is everything!
Focus on their benefits - they don't care how it is great for the overall company if they think it means more work for them.
Ensure that you speak their language and not use too much tech talk
Don't only list features but talk about how these features make their job easier.
Show their time savings. (Example: They have to do more data entry which will take them 2 minutes on their phone but with that, they are saving 3 hours of reporting effort each Friday.)
CRM system benefits can be:
- less reporting (!!!)
- simplified data entry and documentation
- less time spent on searching for relevant emails, documents, contact info (!!!)
- less onboarding support
- guided selling process
- easier handovers when sick or on vacation
- automated processes
- automated reminders
- happier customers
- insights into marketing efforts and communication
- faster approval processes
- pricing and discount guidelines
- qualified leads (!!!)
- better customer insights and analytics
- learning opportunities based on success documentation

Rewards

Learn what drives your sales people and use that to reward the behaviour you seek. They are highly bonus driven and/or competitive? Make it a competition with a monetary reward.
Include the behaviour you seek in their performance KPI's - highest data entry, most feedback given, etc.
Have a release party for everyone to enjoy and get excited about the new system features.

Leadership

The big shift from push to pull. Ensure the adherence to the new practices on all manager levels. They need to understand that instead of a getting information pushed to them by sales, they need to pull it out of the system. (If a manager is still calling sales instead of looking it up in the system, why should sales spend time documenting it?)
Management and leadership need to set an example and be on board.
Ensure that entered information is not directly used agains them or even passed on to another sales colleague.

Conclusion: Ensuring CRM Success

A CRM system is only as strong as its users, and salespeople are at the heart of its success. By focusing on their needs, offering clear communication, and providing continuous feedback and improvement mechanisms, you can create a CRM system that empowers your sales team and drives long-term growth for your business.