CRMs are essential to maintaining ongoing relationships with each one of your customers and clients. But many companies and its users have a love-hate relationship with their CRM. Forrester reported that 49% of CRM projects fail due to poor user adoption. Many small to medium businesses (SMBs) face these challenges due to a lack of budget or internal CRM expertise. However, companies that are able to find the right CRM and adoption strategy can leap ahead of the competition and realize all the benefits that a CRM is meant to provide.

Overcoming the Hurdle of User Adoption

Despite the significant benefits of working with a CRM, many SMBs struggle with user adoption. Getting the team onboard and integrating the CRM into your workflow can be challenging for a variety of reasons. These include lack of training, poor data collection or existing data quality, and difficulty integrating the CRM with other software. As CRM pros, we can offer a few tips to overcome the hurdles of CRM adoption. Here are some tips for overcoming the hurdle of user adoption:

Customization

First, an advanced CRM platform won't work well out of the box. Because every business and customer base is unique, there is no one-size-fits-all CRM solution. You need a CRM that can be customized and the expertise to properly customize your CRM to your workflow. Just as you couldn't download a generic Excel Template on your Sales Reporting and expect it to fit work perfectly, you cannot just start using a CRM and expect it to fit perfectly as well.

A CRM is intended to handle your business' Lead Generation, Sales Processes, Account Management, Sales Forecasting, Reporting, Marketing, and many more. As you know these areas can be significantly different for every business, so naturally your CRM will need to be customized to suit your unique process.

Involve Users in the Process

One of the biggest reasons that CRM integration falls through is that employees who will be working most closely with the system feel that it was implemented without their input. This is particularly acute in small and medium businesses, where teams often work together to find and enact solutions. To avoid this problem, businesses should involve their most involved teams in selecting and implementing a CRM system. This can involve seeking feedback on what features are most important and providing training and support to ensure that your company's CRM users are comfortable with the system selected.

Integrations

Few people are truly happy with data entry. It is a tedious aspect of many jobs, especially if your team is entering data into multiple systems. Using more than one system, you are not just wasting time and energy, you are also losing the value of having a single source of truth. This will impact your ability as a company to maintain a trustworthy core of data for analysis and reporting. A powerful CRM solution like Dynamics 365 is designed to become your dedicated centralized business platform. You can bring everything you do into this system and integrate it with your existing platforms.

Provide Ongoing Support

CRM implementation is not a 'set it and forget it' kind of system. The amount of features and benefits of a advanced CRM platform are substantial, it is meant to evolve with your business. As your employees begin to commit and buy-in to your CRM, they will discover new ways to use it that will drive greater efficiency and results. The goal is to become agile with your CRM platform, continuously fixing pain points, improving data, automating, and integrating with your existing platforms. As a business, you should constantly look for ways to improve your processes, sales, account management strategy, and overall customer experience. Your CRM is the core piece of technology that should be driving this improvement.

The Importance of Adoption for SMBs

Proper adoption of a CRM is essential for SMB success. If you are not able to overcome this hurdle not only will you be missing out on the vast benefits of a CRM, you can end up frustrating employees, missing out on sales opportunities, and hurting customer relationships.

Fractional CRM Services: The Best Solution for SMBs

To overcome the hurdle of poor adoption, SMBs can benefit from a fractional CRM service. This service provides ongoing access to a team of CRM experts who can help SMBs select, implement, and manage a CRM system on a flat fee. The fractional CRM service is designed for SMBs that don't have the resources to build and maintain a comprehensive CRM system in-house. By outsourcing CRM management to a team of experts, SMBs can focus on their core business activities and leave the technical details to the professionals.

At Amplify Solutions, we understand the unique needs of SMBs and are committed to providing affordable and effective CRM solutions. If you're interested in learning more about our fractional CRM services, visit our website and explore what we have to offer.

Build Your CRM the Right Way

CRM adoption is crucial for SMBs that want to improve customer relationships, boost sales, and streamline processes. However, poor adoption can be a significant hurdle for many SMBs. With the right tools and access to experts who already deeply understand the system you are planning to integrate, you can ensure that your CRM integration reaches its full potential to empower your team and build a stronger connection with your customers.