We don’t have to tell you that your CRM software is a mission-critical solution for your sales team. But just having a CRM isn’t enough: You’ve got to empower your team to use it to its fullest potential. And that needs to include more than just deploying the software, emailing a training manual, and maybe hosting a one-off seminar or class. 

Let’s get real: Initial training for new solutions, especially those as critical as a CRM, can feel like drinking from a firehose. There’s too much information, too little hands-on practical experience, and little to no real-world selling guidance. 

What happens then? You guessed it. Sales teams go right back to their old habits (spreadsheets of personal information, anyone?) or use the CRM only sparingly. And if that’s what’s happening, not only is your investment not going to get the ROI you want, but you run all manner of risks regarding data privacy, information silos, and more. 

What’s Behind the Failure to Adopt

The failure to adopt any software, specifically a CRM, occurs for several reasons.

1. Resistance to Change. One of the biggest proving points of failure is those who continue to do things “because this is the way it’s always been done.” Employees who have had success using their own methods of customer relationship management and tracking are often loath to change their habits. There is no desire to—and even opposition to—learn a new platform when “this has always worked for me.” Resistance to change is inevitable. 
2. Accountability. Similarly, those who have maintained their own methods and strategies may be resistant to the accountability a CRM creates. CRMs can be perceived as “Big Brother,” tracking their every move and bogging them down with busy administrative work that takes away from their time to close deals. Already, Salesforce estimates that sales reps spend two-thirds of their time on administrative tasks not directly tied to the sales process. 
3. Lack of Training. A one-size-fits-all approach to training will garner a failure to adopt. Driving CRM user adoption requires training that is contextual to each employee group’s use of the system. Organizations should also not wait too late into the process to provide training. It is much easier to create a proper process from the outset than to try to retrain bad habits. 

All of the above can also contribute to a loss of confidence in the CRM and ultimately a strong resistance to adoption. 

But all is not lost. Beefing up your training is perhaps one of the biggest ways you can ensure the CRM is not only used, but used correctly, so that it benefits both user and organization.

The Value of CRM Training

Why train? Beyond needing users to know the basics of “click here, then here, then here” to make the CRM work at its most rudimentary function, a deeper dive CRM training will give your users the foundation needed to maximize their productivity and the org’s ROI. 

• Reduce “time to proficiency” for new sellers. Get your new team members on board and productive faster. CRM training easily provides contextual sales process information to new sellers. 
• Drive business outcomes. The more your teams use the CRM features and input data, the better able the business is as a whole to make decisions, improve processes, and drive customer relationships. 
• Accurate and consistent CRM data. Data quality is an ongoing issue for most teams, but the better quality your CRM data—driven, of course, by proper training—the better your organization’s outcomes.
• Drive productivity. A well-trained CRM user is a productive CRM user. The more they know about the system and how it works, the less time they need to spend on data entry, looking for documentation, or asking for help to use the CRM. And the more time they spend on customer relationships and closing deals. 
• Continual adoption. Your CRM isn’t going to stay the same. Whether it’s updates and new features from the platform itself or changes to internal processes that impact how users interact with the CRM, the better trained your teams are on the CRM, the more adaptive they are to updates and changes. 

Building a CRM Training Plan

Your CRM training plan will be, to some extent, as unique as your business. Yet there are still some core steps to consider when building out your training plan to ensure it gives your team everything they need to work confidently in the system. 

1. Identify end-user needs and roles. Not all CRM users are created equal. BDRs have different needs from sales managers. Look at their primary responsibilities, skill levels, tasks, and the CRM features they will use most often. Tailor the training to the specific role.
2. Play in the sandbox. Let your team get their hands in it—without worrying about “breaking” anything! About 70% of knowledge is gained from hands-on experience, so let your teams play in the CRM sandbox where they can work without worrying about accidentally making a business-impacting mistake. 
3. Keep instructions digestible and contextual. Don’t overwhelm your teams with a firehose of information. They won’t retain it. Consider in-app guidance that will walk users through specific processes as they go. 
4. Use real-world examples. Train for the scenarios your users will actually experience while using your CRM, like updating a customer record after a sales call.
5. Try different learning formats. Not everyone learns the same. Offer several options for learning, from video to classroom to reading to hands-on, that speak to how various individuals learn best. 
6. Continually reinforce training. As many as a quarter of your employees will forget what they learned as soon as training is done. Create an ongoing training program that refreshes memories and helps teams learn about new features, along with best practices.
7. Get feedback! Ask your teams what’s working, where they’re still struggling, and what else they want to learn. Ask open- or closed-ended questions in short surveys or meetings to find out where your teams are strong and where they still need some help. 

Better Training, Better Success

Since your sales productivity can be won—or lost—based on the day-to-day experience of using your CRM, it’s critical to ensure that users fully embrace the system and learn how to use it well. With more than 70% of organizations admitting to struggling with their CRMs, most of the issues they face come down to training issues. The more you train your users, the better your success will be. 

This is a core tenet behind why we offer an exclusive CloudExtend track on Celigo University, our proprietary learning center for all things Celigo and CloudExtend. Here you’ll find everything you need to get ramped up on our integration apps—which, by the way, work very well with CRM for user adoption and automation! 

Or maybe you’re still starting out on your CRM journey and struggling to get your team to adopt the new system. Read our FREE ebook, Understanding and Overcoming the Barriers to CRM Adoption, for tips on identifying and understanding how different users react to a change in technology.