After reviewing and short-listing the CRM software for your team, you finally decide which one to implement. You hope to have more information about what the team members are doing and, more importantly, good information about the process. Of course, that will help team accountability and, more importantly, a better customer experience.

But how simple will the implementation process be?

Changing the culture

When sales managers implement CRM, it is different from most other installed programs. The manager faces a change in business culture. Software is not just a new way of doing business; creates a high level of transparency in what people do each day, week, month.

Whatever CRM brand you bring in, it’s new, different, and will affect culture, and sales find it particularly challenging. They live in a fluid world and do not like information and management by nature. When implementing CRM, it is a major change in your world and the resistance can be high. A simple training session will not be enough to change the culture; It is just the beginning.

These are the challenges that sales managers must address as part of the implementation.

1. Sellers

If it weren’t for the salespeople, CRM would be easy. Salespeople like to be selling and in front of customers. They don’t want to bother updating data in their CRM, even if they have a mobile app on their phone.

If you are doing a CRM implementation, you will hear from the passive-aggressive salesperson “oh, do you want me to update CRM instead of selling?” The answer is yes”.

Salespeople need to understand that CRM isn’t just about their customers and their performance. There are others in the company who also depend on the information. Accounting is looking at potential sales for cash flow operations for product supply or people involvement.

Accurate information is the key to running smoothly, and the people who take the first steps toward earning income are the salespeople. Imagine if the accounting suggested to them that they didn’t feel like doing commission calculations today or that they missed some sales; there would be a sales uproar.

Salespeople must meet the same standards as everyone else in the organization.

Sales managers must explain that data is an integral part of running the business and show how other people trust it. When that is accepted, you will get the commitment you need.

2. Activity tracking

The CRM implementation consists of creating a complete customer profile. From targeting fields for marketing to all documentation, emails, notes, and other customer communications. This information can be reviewed at any time, by anyone, and provide good customer service and understand past interactions. Another team member can update information on their customer interactions while maintaining a complete view of the service.

CRM means that salespeople can no longer own all customer communications. Information is shared and even more uncomfortable for sellers, it can be reviewed, measured and decisions made.

The sales manager needs to measure performance with a sales plan. They need to understand the type of activity, the amount of activity, and how the pipe is filling. Without this information, they are playing their role, hoping that everything will work out.

Information is also critical to discovering salespeople’s coaching needs. Is there a barrier that needs to be removed? A greater understanding of a product is required. The shift to view data and trends opens the door to improve sales and management.

3. Goodbye to spreadsheets

When you implement CRM, you need to live for the fewest spreadsheets. The system has its reporting functionality, which can be customized, providing consistent and easy-to-manage reports.

A well-tailored system will provide you with the sales metrics you need to run your sales organization and compare your team as individuals or across regions.

If you need data beyond what is in the CRM, then the question arises ‘Why is that data not in the CRM if it matters?’.

4. Performance pipelines

As a sales manager, your world revolves around the pipeline. How much entries are going to be signed in a particular month / quarter / year? The simple approach to management is to focus on how much you have earned.

The sales manager who excels is the one who manages the velocity of the pipeline. How many offers are up for grabs? How often do they make it to the presentation or closing? Where are the hard spots where sales drop? It’s the information the entire sales department focuses on every day, every week.

This information is the source of coaching and analysis is essential. How sellers enter their information, how many times they make adjustments to the size of the deal, the closing date and all the other parameters of their particular business.

5. Dirty data syndrome

If you implement a CRM, you are most likely sharing information with marketers. When you upload data for the first time or sync it with other systems, you encounter a lot of dirty data: incomplete records, duplications, and different kinds of errors.

Sellers must be responsible for keeping their data clean. The mantra should be no clean data, no commissions. That’s how serious sales managers should take data. Again, it is trusted by others throughout the company, so each person is equally responsible for keeping it clean when using records.

6. Changing the dynamics of the sales meeting

With CRM in place and the sales team engaged, the dynamics of your sales meeting change. No longer does the team need to email you activity notes, provide projections and spreadsheets. All the information is now in the CRM ready to go to the dashboards.

Sales managers can put together great meetings as they have all the information at their fingertips and can quickly dive into something if the need arises. Salespeople are freed from meeting prep, and the sales manager has time to prepare before the meeting at a time that suits them best, rather than waiting for information to arrive.

The biggest challenge for CRM implementation is the sales manager. Without a dedicated approach to implementing and establishing non-negotiable standards of use, software is of no value to users, the manager, or the company.

Implementing CRM is time consuming, but the best performing sales managers are the ones who are following through and firm on their goal of total engagement. Good sales managers have clear metrics and hold their salespeople accountable.

For more information on implementing CRM, see this information.