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5 Areas to Pay Close Attention to During Your First 90 Days with Salesforce

Dec 01, 2021 Six Consulting

The first 90 days can bring a lot of change when adding Salesforce into your operations.

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The early days for a company starting to use Salesforce can be both exciting and overwhelming. You're anxious to see the kind of value from the CRM that so many others have realized. At the same time, you're well aware that implementing Salesforce and getting off on the right foot with the solution are key to winning in the short and long term.

The first 90 days can bring a lot of change when adding Salesforce into your operations. So it's critical to zero in on a few areas that ensure the platform is being used and used well. Each of these will pay dividends as you grow and expand your Salesforce implementation and its usage within your organization.

First 90 Days with Salesforce: 5 Key Areas to Watch and Manage

Data Quality

Data quality is a crucial concern for any Salesforce implementation. That's why getting it right at the start, and setting good data hygiene habits with users from the beginning, is essential.

Having a map is always the most efficient way to get somewhere, and that map for your data in Salesforce is your data management plan. A data management plan will keep data quality high and provide a means for monitoring your data quality.

A good data management plan should include many definitions, including:

 

 

  • Naming: What naming conventions will you use? How will you enter company names, customer names, and the like?
  • Formatting: How are dates, currency, and so forth represented in your solution?
  • Workflow: What are the processes for your workflows like creating records, reviewing them, updating, and even archiving them.
  • Quality: Define a system for measuring and scoring records on completeness, age, accuracy, consistency, etc.
  • Roles and ownership: Who owns what records? Who has the final say on changes, and who is notified?
  • Security and permissions: Data privacy is important. Are you meeting regulatory, legal, contractual, and internal requirements?
  • Monitoring: What is your process for reviewing and ensuring data quality? How often will data elements be reviewed, and who will do it?

Salesforce does a lot to help you maintain your data hygiene. For instance, the platform will give a warning should a duplicate record be entered. There are also various tools you can leverage that will help with data cleansing and validation. Taking the time to define your data management plan and then policing its use early on will get everyone into good habits and keep your records clean and usable going forward.

Salesforce User Adoption and Dependency

The success of your CRM program will depend heavily on usage. According to Forrester, 38% of people surveyed who had been part of a CRM technology project stated that problems with project success were "the result of people issues such as slow user adoption, inadequate attention paid to change management and training, and difficulties in aligning the organizational culture with new ways of working."

There are many reasons why users may not jump on the Salesforce bandwagon as soon as their accounts are created. Some users may have championed a different solution, and some may feel that using a CRM like Salesforce isn't important. Still, others may be afraid to use the platform or may be overwhelmed by it.

Salesforce increases win rates by more than 37% and sales productivity by more than 26%. Even with that knowledge, some users may resist. Change is hard for some team members, but if your users don't log in, you can't realize the advantages Salesforce can offer.

Education and training can overcome some, but not all, of these challenges. If you use Salesforce for reporting and reviews, users will have a solid motivation to adopt the CRM. If a sales team member's opportunities and closed sales aren't in Salesforce, they can't be credited during sales operation reviews. Reports are also a better way to see who is using the system than login rates - one person may log in weekly to update everything, whereas another may do updates 2 or 3 times a day.

If you still have users who drag their feet, it's worth your time to consider what is preventing adoption. Users who are willing to use the platform but aren't doing so likely need more training or hand-holding. Those who are able but unwilling to try will need more direct intervention to use the CRM. This may require tying incentives, or layering disincentives, on to their use of Salesforce. In either case, user adoption for this group becomes more about management and less about technology.

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“... the result of people issues such as slow user adoption, inadequate attention paid to change management and training, and difficulties in aligning the organizational culture with new ways of working."”

  • Forrester Research
Research conducted by Frederick Reichheld found that

a 5% bump in customer retention can increase profits from 25 - 95%.

Salesforce increases win rates by more than 37%

and sales productivity by more than 26%.

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