How to get a guaranteed launch of CRM in a company?

We have collected only 5 recommendations, but each of them is handy, not an empty phrase. And they all work!

So, the first lifehack!

“Sales bonuses should only be counted in CRM”!

It’s simple: if you did not lead the client through the process in CRM, you don’t receive any bonuses. No roundabout maneuvers, additional bonus calculations in Excel, 1C, or elsewhere. You should not allow concluding a deal at the final stage with half-filled data and receiving bonuses with it.

Only a full path from a lead to a closed deal in CRM must lead to the accrual of bonuses!

It works, just trust me.

Another very cool trick (we tried it on ourselves and now introduce it to our clients) is sending a message about the accrued bonus to the sales manager in Telegram or even to the common chat of the sales department. It’s very stimulating.

Lifehack #2

The second mandatory attribute of CRM implementation is purely organizational: 

There must be an owner / master / lord / boss / ruler (underline the necessary) of the CRM system on the customer’s side!!!

The will of the owner, CEO, or sales manager, a cool CRM system, or a good contractor are not enough if the “CRM chief” is not selected on the client’s side. Why is this person so necessary?

• First, to stimulate the contractor. Even a good contractor must be kept in good shape, but there are also those who must be managed directly and regularly!

• Secondly, this person must thoroughly understand CRM as a user and obtain at least basic experience of configuration, have CRM knowledge, and be the first line of support for CRM users within the company.

• Thirdly, he must become a CRM administrator. To monitor the correctness and completeness of data entry, make minor modifications to the system, collect requirements for CRM from users, broadcast them in the form of a patent ToR to contractors, and, in general, take care of the system in every possible way).

And the main thing is that he must fall in love with CRM. If the CRM owner is a respected person in the company, he becomes a CRM “evangelist” and spreads love for the system among employees. And this is really vital.

Readers of this text who have experience implementing CRM, please share stories, who had or has such a CRM master? And who didn’t? How much did this affect the implementation success?

Lifehack #3

Display all KPIs on the dashboard and the dashboard on the screen in the sales department!

There is an excellent book by Sean Covey, “The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals“, and one of the disciplines is “Use dashboards”, although in the book in Russian it is translated as “use information boards”, but it is an outmoded definition. It seems to me that the word dashboard, at least in the business environment, is already quite understandable for everyone.

Why do you need a dashboard?

Because the team plays with full dedication when there is a score! And they need to know the score, i.e., to have it before their eyes. Covey gives an example: “… watch a group of teenagers playing basketball and see how the game changes when they start scoring.”

Do you want your sales team to play with the score? Display it on the screen in the sales department. Of course, the data must be transmitted from the CRM system!

Lifehack #4

Introduce rewards or penalties for maintaining CRM at the initial implementation stage!

Opponents of penalties will now be outraged, and those who prefer authoritarian management will say, “encourage for doing CRM? But this is one of their daily duties”.

But I am not fantasizing, I claim that it works (I will soon describe a case with rewards of one of our clients and my case with penalties).

I will just give a recommendation when it is better to use rewards and when penalties.

• If your company has operated for many years, and all these years your sales department has worked in anything other than CRM, then rewards are better. Just because your sales managers initially did not have a duty to “maintain a CRM system”.

• If you have a young business and immediately put CRM in your sales department, first of all, you are handsome/pretty (underline the necessary), and secondly, you can already introduce penalties. In this case, your sales managers have the basic obligation to maintain CRM!

Lifehack #5

The CEO and sales manager should actively use CRM!

In our life, children follow the example of their parents. In business, employees follow the example of leaders. Less than children, but enough to teach employees to use CRM by your example.

If you, as CEO, ordered a CRM system and transferred it to the sales department, saying, “work with it, and send the reports to me in Viber as usual”, the process will be more complicated, don’t you agree?.

Of course, CEOs do not conduct transactions with clients like sales managers, but CRM is also:

• control
• reporting
• history of communications.

CEOs, get the information you need only from CRM, and it will immediately become relevant!

It is simple on paper and, for some reason, complicated in life.

Execution is everything for us!