Traditionally, getting salespeople to use new technology is difficult. All too often, sales teams view their pipeline management or CRM systems as an admin burden. To them, this technology gets in the way of them doing their jobs - namely spending time with prospects or customers and selling to them.
It’s common knowledge that solutions implemented with the best intentions in mind - comprehensive functionality, baked-in sales and approval processes, insightful management reporting - will ultimately fail if the sales team doesn’t use it. Advice and guidance on successful user adoption is commonplace, referencing tried and tested techniques: keep the solution simple and easy to use, provide training and ongoing user support, drive messages of the benefits and importance of adherence from the top down, and so on.
You can find thousands of pieces of content supporting these ideas; which isn’t to say they don’t work (in fact, they are a core part of our own implementation methodology and are vital to the successful launch and ongoing success of your Dynamics CRM implementation), but simply ensuring user adoption is just the beginning.
After all, how do you ensure that individuals and the business as a whole are realising the benefits of your CRM system, and that the platform is improving continuously as needs evolve? To truly see the benefits of your CRM, you need your sales team to be advocates. Here are some ways selling Dynamics CRM to your sales team can do just that.
Enable personalisation
We all have different preferred ways of working, learning, collaborating and selling – hence there is no one-size-fits-all technology solution that is going to fit your sales team.
Core functionality available in Dynamics CRM addresses this challenge, offering different experiences to suit a multitude of working methods. This includes role-based configuration that provides the most relevant information and functionality to a user’s job role, as well as offering mobile, outlook or web based access to the CRM system - in order to support better user adoption. However, to take this further and turn adopters in your sales team into advocates, users need further capability to make the system feel tailored to them as an individual.
Personalisation features and techniques in D365 that enable this include:
- Personalised dashboards
With a simple ‘save as’ function, users can configure their own version of key dashboards, while still looking at the same business data. Power BI allows this to be taken even further, by giving users the ability to configure their own performance or ‘to do’ dashboard, where you can drastically improve motivation to access the system and see what has changed.
- Pinning
Users can pin direct links to specific dashboards, lists or even specific accounts in Dynamics CRM, which allows them to get the information they need much more easily.
- Office Integration
Extensive integration with Microsoft tools such as Teams, Outlook, Microsoft To Do and LinkedIn means Dynamics CRM provides seamless access from your sales team’s preferred tools. Users can pin or search from applications such as Outlook or Teams, which allows for more productive working.
By matching your solution to the way your sales team works, you’ll not only ensure user adoption, but promotion of the CRM.
Encourage the use of apps
Technology has progressed beyond the use of multiple applications and systems to a world of apps – since users expect a personalised experience that is simple and tailored to the task at hand. If you want your sales team to ‘like and share’ their experiences of using your internal technology solutions then simple, point-of-use apps is the way to go.
Need to quickly capture meeting notes? There’s an app for that. Need to update your pipeline on the road? There’s an app for that. need to capture follow up actions for the sale support team? You get the idea. By creating separate apps for specific tasks, it makes them easier to navigate, and ensures that sharing and improving them is less complex than when dealing with a full application.
Dynamics CRM itself caters for the ‘app’ model by allowing different apps to be created and published out to users. Taking this even further, Microsoft PowerApps integrated with Dynamics CRM has a rich app creation capability that allows you to create engaging and simple to use apps to engage and enthuse your sales team.
Use competition to drive better user adoption
In the world of sales, there’s nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, and one of the most popular ways to incentivise sales teams is to implement a system of targets and rewards and (in the right circumstances) leaderboards.
Implementing this culture of healthy competition and team spirit could be as simple as using analytics to highlight success and reward achievements, however, the gamification features of Dynamics CRM can elevate this.
In Dynamics CRM, targets and rewards can be turned into game-like scores and bonuses in a user friendly interface that encourages users to get involved and motivates sales teams. When used correctly, this could be the key to ensuring better user adoption in your organisation, and turning your sales teams into advocates of your CRM.
Enable ‘Citizen Developers’
Do you have too many spreadsheets, disparate information and business processes outside of your systems?
You’re not alone. Many organisations do, often as the result of systems not meeting the needs of the business, which leads to frustration and subsequently, workarounds or out-of-system solutions.
The concept of the ‘citizen developer’ is not a new one, defined by Garner as;
“a user who creates new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT”.
In simple terms, this is someone with little to no coding ability who can build applications specific to their needs using IT-approved technology.
In the past, end-user application development has typically been limited to single-user or workgroup solutions built with tools like Microsoft Excel and Access. However, times are changing, and now those working outside or with little knowledge of these systems can implement their ideas through a generation of easy to configure tools in Dynamics CRM. These provide users with the ability to create quick and easy solutions that can be shared across the whole organisation, connect to centralised business data and adhere to access and security rules all at the same time.
The Microsoft Power Platform provides market leading no-code / low-code citizen development capability, which means your sales team can access the tools needed to build and deploy the apps, integrations and processes specific to their needs easily - with minimal security, data or organisational risk involved.
Final thoughts
Microsoft Dynamics CRM has a multitude of impressive functionality that ensures your sales team doesn't just adopt the platform, but become active promoters of it. With its ease of use, personalisation features and the powerful apps and gamification features available, Dynamics CRM is the best solution for sales teams traditionally reluctant to adopt new software.
At Inciper, we implement Dynamics CRM for a wide range of businesses, and can adapt the platform to meet your exact needs, helping you ensure better user adoption and keep your sales team on board.
For more information on how we can help ensure sales success with Dynamics CRM, 
today.
