CRM initiatives are about creating superior customer experiences. But as many companies have discovered, for a CRM implementation to be successful, it must complement customer-centricity with a healthy dose of user-centricity. Put simply, for a CRM system to deliver benefits to the customer, it has to be used—and to achieve user adoption, it has to demonstrate benefits to the user, not just the company or customer.

Most CRM implementations involve multiple departments, but it's common for sales force automation to be a central driver. In today's challenging economy, this is truer than ever, with many companies' CRM initiatives being driven by a need for improved sales productivity and effectiveness in the face of more competitive markets and fewer sales staff.

Salespeople typically have their own tried-and-true approaches to managing their sales cycles and see little reason to change.

Unfortunately, salespeople are notoriously reluctant to embrace CRM—AMR Research cites sales-user reluctance as one of the top explanations for CRM failures. According to analyst Robert Bois, "SFA software products and deployment strategies need to start with the end user in mind, or else risk poor adoption and ultimate project failure."

Salespeople typically have their own tried-and-true approaches to managing their sales cycles and see little reason to change. They often see CRM as a means of management control, rather than an effort to facilitate the sales process and help them be more successful. For this reason, companies evaluating or implementing CRM systems need to carefully consider exactly how a CRM system will help and benefit their sales users, and how well it can fit with their existing habits and process—enhancing, rather than dictating, how they work.

Helping Salespeople Sell More

What does the sales department want from a CRM system? First, from the sales executives down through each role on the sales team, every user needs to see immediate value from using the system. Whatever their role, they need to see the CRM system as a solution that's built for them. So what does this really mean?

For salespeople, the bottom line is whether the CRM system helps them sell more. There are numerous ways CRM can assist. First, with strong marketing automation and lead management features, CRM systems can be used to generate higher-volume, higher-quality leads, effectively qualify them before they reach the sales force and deliver them while they're hot, improving sales potential and cutting down on time wasted on dead-end leads.

But even more than leads, salespeople want the time to sell—and they have far less than you might imagine. A 2004 study by Proudfoot Consulting found that salespeople spend only 10 percent of their time actively selling, largely because of an alarming amount of time spent on administration and problem-solving. A CRM system can help increase selling time by reducing data entry and automating time-consuming tasks such as opportunity logging, quote and contract generation and activity reporting. Automated sales action plans and workflows can also help accelerate sales cycles while keeping in line with proven sales methodologies.

Many salespeople have honed their knowledge and skills over the years and scoff at the idea that technology can replace their instincts, but even the savviest salesperson can benefit from the right CRM support. M.S. Rau Antiques, a landmark in New Orleans' French Quarter for almost a century, prides itself on its salespeople's deep knowledge of the business, but they found that once their business had reached a certain size, sales acumen wasn't enough: technology support was needed to sell effectively. "Our salespeople really know their stuff, and they really know their customers," says Susan Loustalot, M.S. Rau's Web Consultant. "They used to be able to match customers and items intuitively just on memory. But our inventory and our customer base have grown so rapidly, salespeople wouldn't be able to do this effectively anymore without CRM." The company implemented Pivotal CRM in 2003 and has relied heavily upon it to support rapid growth from 40% to 70% online sales.

Insight for Sales Managers

Salespeople aren't the only ones a CRM system has to win over. For sales managers to embrace CRM, it must provide usable business insight. It must be their window into the sales team, offering a comprehensive view of all sales activities that saves them time chasing down updates. It must also offer clear visibility into the full sales cycle and pipeline, helping pinpoint issues and shortfalls in time to intervene.

For sales managers to embrace CRM, it must provide usable business insight.

Management visibility was a big driver for Texas-based Illes Seasonings & Flavors in their decision to deploy CRM for the sales department. "Managing sales in spreadsheets created silos and prevented sales management from knowing exactly what the sales teams are doing," says IT Director Les Howell. Managing this in their CRM, "managers will be able to see what's going on and track the opportunities better."

Integrate, Adapt and Personalize

Above and beyond specific features, however, there are core attributes that make a CRM system more likely to achieve high sales-user adoption. First, deep integration with the tools sales teams already use, such as Microsoft Office, Outlook and BlackBerry devices, is essential. If a user is forced to take extra steps or toggle between applications or devices to add data to or pull data from the CRM system, odds are they'll stick with their current tools. If it's easy to move seamlessly between programs, accessing and adding information a single time in a single location, sales users will quickly see the benefits and time-savings.

At California-based Evangelical Christian Credit Union, their CRM system's built-in integration with Microsoft Outlook has been among the most popular features with sales users. Users now store all e-mail interactions within the system and send e-mails directly within it, rather than switching between applications. They can also send messages to multiple recipients—for example, to everyone tied to a given company or opportunity. "That's saved time and made a big difference for the sales force," says Judy Dietz, ECCU's Pivotal Application Manager.

Flexibility is also crucial. If a CRM system imposes workflows or procedures that don't fit the way sales users like to work, it will meet strong resistance. The ability to quickly and cost-effectively tailor the system to their needs and a company's unique methodologies is thus indispensable—and also makes the system more adaptable to evolving business demands.

Finally, the ability to personalize is invaluable. Customizing CRM views, dashboards, shortcuts and more—not just to the department or role, but to the individual end user—truly enables the sales user to make the system their own. By empowering them to create their own high-performance hub, companies can ensure each sales user feels the CRM system was not only "built for sales," but built just for them.

Sales user adoption is a challenge, but it's not insurmountable. With careful consideration and thoughtful system selection and deployment, companies can implement a CRM solution that both delights sales users and delivers on the end goal of increased sales.