A growing business relies on access to shared data, often located between multiple business applications and software. Your CRM (customer relationship management) system is one of those applications, which offers a snapshot of valuable data on your dashboard. This snapshot is critical for your business success. The Salesforce CRM system for small to midsize businesses is one of the most widely used CRMs due to its customizable tools that adapt to almost any industry. While it may seem overwhelming to implement at first, there are some simple steps to make your Salesforce launch successful.
1. Hire an Expert
Thinking you’ll save money by installing the system yourself can actually cost you more in time and mistakes in the long run. Salesforce is a complex application that offers many business solutions. You’ll need to configure the system to use only features that work best for your business processes.
A consultant familiar with implementing and launching Salesforce can quickly gather important data about how your business runs, maximizing system capabilities for an efficient and effective launch. They can customize the application based on your team's needs and make a seamless transition by teaching them how to use it.
2. Embrace the Implementation Phase
The implementation phase is a crucial step in rolling out Salesforce. It takes time to deconstruct your team's internal processes and figure out how to track them in Salesforce. In this phase, our goals include:
- Achieving early buy-in from your team that Salesforce can improve the way they work.
- Defining specific goals across teams and departments to determine which data and configuration work best for your industry and unique company.
- Engaging your team members throughout the system design process and relying on their valuable feedback for customizations.
- Setting employee expectations about the need for foundational training for daily tasks that use CRM tools effectively.
The implementation process is challenging because, at this point, you have a system you are not ready to use yet. This is when a lot of resistance comes up. Some people in the team don't believe the system is going to help them. Others think it will create more work. And some team members are excited about it. The resistance decreases as we make progress and they start to see the system coming together.
3. Properly Train Your Team
CRM Growth Strategy consultants ensure your team is set up to use Salesforce correctly once it goes live. More importantly, they will understand the “why” behind using the application in their role and across departments.
Like most applications, you can’t just roll out Salesforce and expect your team members to know what to do with it. Preparing your team to use a powerful tool like Salesforce can be done over the course of three sessions:
- Session one provides a high-level overview of current business processes and how they will be tracked in Salesforce. We will also review custom configurations and how they streamline individual tasks.
- Session two focuses on tools and features that will be used in your day-to-day business. Use data from the implementation phase to create scenarios and realistic training to help your team understand how it fits into their role.
- Session three encourages your team to share feedback on the application and its configuration. Based on this information, we can tweak settings for greater efficiency before going live with the system.
We consider how your team members prefer to learn and offer methods to set them up for success.
4. Utilize Email Plugins
Email plugins allow you to work smarter by syncing data across platforms. Your employees will appreciate how quickly they can save and retrieve customer data to the CRM while receiving reminders about follow-ups.
Many plugins are free and make it easier to engage regularly with prospects, leads, and customers about products and promotions. We guide you on which email plugins to consider.
5. Customize Your Salesforce Apps
I often see clients who have used Salesforce for a while, but they use workarounds to find the records they need in the system instead of customizing it for their organization. This adds unnecessary time to each task.
Salesforce gives you a lot of flexibility, such as configuring the system to create different views for different user profiles. By building Salesforce Apps with custom views of the system, it helps your users stay focused only on relevant records for tasks they do on a regular basis. This streamlines their work.
6. Build Dashboards
Once you have decided what data will drive your management decisions, the Salesforce dashboard will become a valuable resource. You will consult it daily for a snapshot of data points that are most important to you and define progress toward meeting company goals.
You’ll have client information at your fingertips to personalize customer service, understand how long your sales cycle takes, know which promotions are most successful, and more.
CRM Growth Strategy Salesforce consultants walk you through every step of your Salesforce rollout to make sure you don’t waste time on trial and error. We want you to focus on what you do best, growing your thriving business.
Ready to work with a Salesforce consultant?
If you want guidance to get your Salesforce CRM up and running the first time, reach out to CRM Growth Strategy. We specialize in setting up Salesforce for small to midsize businesses, integrating it with other business applications, and training your team on how to use it.
CRM Growth Strategy explains how outsourcing services at any stage of CRM implementation can help to Design a better workflow, Develop customized processes, and Deliver an efficient CRM system that can keep up with your evolving company. Our engineers are certified to work with today’s more robust and complex Salesforce CRM features to help your sales, marketing, and customer service teams work more efficiently together.
If you have questions about how we work, feel free to contact us to learn more. Depending on your situation, we either serve as your outsourced Salesforce Admin or combine our services to support in-house staff.