Let’s first start with a few reasons your team might not be using the system:
Lack of Management Use – That’s right: they learned it from watching you. At times, we do see various teams making an honest effort to use the CRM tools in the way they are meant to be used. However, over time, the team has begun to notice the management team’s lack of use. The question of, “Why bother?” then comes into play. As an example, a core use of CRM is around sales pipeline management, but what is the point of keeping a CRM updated when sales leadership continues to run around asking reps for pipeline updates via email, scratch sheets, or Excel spreadsheets instead of running reports with the exact same information from the CRM? Over time, they start to realize there is no value to keeping their CRMs updated because management certainly isn’t using it. Why take the time to update a system when you’re only going to be asked to provide the exact same information via Excel or some other method?
Other Departments’ Lack of Use – We’ve previously talked about the benefits of interdepartmental use of a CRM. When a CRM is not at the core of a team’s daily job function, it becomes less important, and as a result, the usage drops. We recommend that all departments integrate capabilities for their job functions inside the CRM… This means Sales, Marketing, Support, and Finance all need to have critical job functions built into the CRM. Without this integrated functionality, your team will be relying on direct interdepartmental communication for simple client information… The end result is having, for example, customer support or finance continuously pinging the sales department for simple client information… information that should already be in a CRM. Over time, teams start to realize there is almost no point to having that information in the CRM because no one is actually using it, and again, what is the point of all that extra time and effort keeping information updated?
Lack of Proper Functionality – Great CRMs that are properly set up can allow sales and any other department to complete their daily tasks effectively and efficiently. However, out-of-the-box CRMs are inherently generic, and they take some time and effort to customize to make them useful for your business. However, increasingly, we find that when organizations deploy their CRM, they are deployed with zero customization. This results in a generic setup of the tool that doesn’t match the functions of the various teams or business which makes the tool difficult to use… On the flipside, we’ve also seen when management has over-engineered their CRM instance, creating an over-complicated beast of a software solution. This typically results in what management may think of as a “work of art” but is really an extremely complex, inefficient, and painful system to use.
Lack of Usage Visibility – This kind of goes in line with some of the above, but it needs to be called out… When you have people putting time and effort into properly managing their CRM worlds, yet it goes completely unnoticed, then why bother?
Lack of Accountability – You have two reps: one has their CRM in tip-top shape and constantly up-to-date, and another one that barely uses it and management never seems to care. What do you think is going to happen over time?
Mentioned here are just a few but critical examples of why we see a lack of CRM usage in small businesses. Again, most are truly aligned around the lack of visibility and usage from the management level down to the various departments within a business, leading to the “why bother?” mentality… However, all is not lost as there are tactics that can easily be deployed in any business to increase overall usage. Here are a few:
Complete Management Usage – It starts from the top down. Management needs to start using CRM immediately and continue to use it without exception. You’ll quickly find that once management begins pulling reports and pipeline updates straight out of their CRMs during meetings, within the first few meetings, everyone’s CRMs will be up-to-date as no one wants to be the one with missing or out-of-date information when reports are being reviewed in front of management or their peers. Furthermore, it is important to continuously use it… CRM usage needs to become a habit, and there is a bit of a routine adjustment to using it regularly. All too often, we see executive leadership get on a “CRM kick” for a month or so, only to have them go back to their Excel spreadsheets shortly after. Again, going back to the points we made above, nothing will demotivate a team more than putting in effort for nothing.
Corporate-wide Usage – CRM is not just for sales anymore as it can be integrated across every department within a small business. Make your CRM a central point of departmental information and the only way team members can complete their daily job functions. Once you have complete business-wide integration, there will be zero reason not to use it at that point.
Make it Seamless – Again, a tool that is painful to use will not be used in any business… Take the time to properly customize your setup. Most CRMs are fairly easy to customize, but if you are uncomfortable with customizing yourself, there are plenty of consultants on the market that can do it for you. It is also important to ensure you are taking in feedback from your end-users and constantly working to refine the system. As mentioned previously, all too often, management believes they “know” what is best for their teams, but in reality, they are so far-removed from the process, they couldn’t be more wrong. A painful-to-use tool will not be used—period.
Increase Visibility – Develop and use the reporting system built into the CRM… Most CRMs have fairly comprehensive reporting capabilities out of the box and, with slight customization, can be a very powerful tool for the business and something to ensure that your team is keeping their CRMs up-to-date. Some businesses go as far to have automated reports sent out at preset times (hourly, daily, or monthly). Regardless of the frequency, it is important to remember “what gets measured, gets done”. Furthermore, we highly suggest using your reporting in meetings as well. Have a sales pipeline meeting? Pull up the pipeline in real-time during the meeting. Again, no sales rep wants to be in a pipeline meeting where their pipeline is either out-of-date or missing information… This can be done for essentially every department.
Tie in Compensation – Fairly simple… Sales, do you want to get your commission? No deal gets paid commission unless it is properly tracked within the CRM… This can be done for other departments as well. Things such as lead counts, collections, customer service calls stats and other metrics can all be tracked and tied together with compensation. Quite honestly, this is one of the easiest ways to getting a team to use a CRM as no one wants to miss out on their commission or bonus. However, let’s not forget that you want to ensure you’ve made the proper steps to making the CRM a useful tool in the first place. Let’s remember the old saying “junk in, junk out”, as you do not want your employees wasting time inputting information into the CRM just for the sake of compensation and nothing else.
CRMs are incredibly powerful tools for any small business. When properly implemented and used across all departments, they can drastically increase the efficiency of any team or organization. Efficiency can lead to increased cost savings and revenue while keeping your organization running like a well-oil machine.