At Cairies, we spend a lot of time helping small businesses implement Salesforce, where they previously had no CRM capabilities, and spreadsheets were used to operate business processes. We love the speed at which small businesses can make changes. Often, we get them up and running with Salesforce in around five days. Here’s our Salesforce implementation playbook to help them make a successful transition.
1. Define the Project Scope, Plan and Budget
Firstly, set the scope of what Salesforce can do for your company and when. This is key to a successful implementation and adoption. Keep things simple initially – if you’re looking to replace your pipeline spreadsheet, then make that the scope of phase one.
Deliver small changes in a phased approach, but plan and budget for each phase. Realise that you will need to continually invest in Salesforce (or any CRM system) for it to grow with your organisation.
2. Choose the Right Edition
When you first start to investigate Salesforce, making sense of the various products and their numerous editions can be a bit overwhelming. One of the mistakes we often see is companies who have signed up for more or less functionality than they require.
Ensure you get an independent perspective on what products and editions would be a good fit for your business and when you might need to consider moving editions as your company’s use of Salesforce grows.
3. Give Sales Teams the Tools to do their Job
Sales teams need a CRM system to make their lives easier. So make integrating email and Salesforce a priority. If you don’t have Office 365 or Gmail, consider switching to them as part of your Salesforce implementation. Look at Salesforce Inbox and invest in mobile devices if you have sales teams who aren’t office-based. Don’t give sales teams any excuses for not using Salesforce.
4. Understand your Sales Process
What do you sell? What sales process do the sales teams identify with? Take their input, incorporate measurable milestones and then set Salesforce up to give accurate insights into your sales pipeline.
Having large parts of your pipeline sitting at the same stage month on month isn’t giving much insight, so make sure your sales process gives you the information you would normally spend time chasing the sales team for.
5. Implement a “What next?” Methodology
Make sure every potential sale has a “next action” logged against it as a task. Ensuring prospective deals progress and also embeds the use of task management in Salesforce. Incorporate ‘Opportunities with no Follow Up’ as metrics in your dashboards. Schedule weekly reports to the sales teams to highlight these opportunities. Incorporate today’s tasks and overdue tasks into a salesperson’s Salesforce homepage.
6. Be Clear on how you will Measure Sales through Salesforce
Define the KPIs you want Salesforce to measure at the beginning of the project to help determine the scope of the implementation. It also lets users know what’s expected of them and how they will be measured.
7. Make Salesforce the Source of Truth
Have Salesforce as your only source of sales data (within the current scope) and don’t accept data from other sources. Kill off the spreadsheets you previously used when you go live with Salesforce.
8. Don’t let Data Ruin Salesforce
Salesforce is only as good as the data it contains. Don’t pollute it with old legacy data that is inaccurate and incomplete. Define your data sources, clean them, validate them and only use them if they add value. And remember, it’s ok to start with no data in Salesforce at all in some circumstances – some of our most successful implementations have taken this approach, with sales teams adding pipeline data as part of their Salesforce training.
9. Build Processes on Salesforce
Make Salesforce the only place where specific business processes exist. It drives usage of the system and aids adoption. A great place to start is building processes around the products you sell. This leads to quotes, product lifecycle, stock, project management and collaboration.
10. Establish Salesforce as the go-to place for Senior Management
Senior directors of the company actively using Salesforce is one of the best ways to improve the adoption of the system amongst your sales teams. Don’t view it as just a tool for sales to use – ensure the leadership team use Salesforce to get the data they require, providing input into sales and processes when needed and actively collaborating with others through the system.
This is our Salesforce Implementation Playbook, which we use for any implementation.
Download our free Salesforce Implementation Playbook Infographic.
If you would like help to set up Salesforce or are looking for assistance to make changes, please get in touch.
