Salesforce.com: Punch List for Sales VPs After Rollout

You were one of the business-side executives who championed a new CRM system for the company. Now you've won the battle. Your company's new CRM system is turned on. What should your initial priorities be as a sales team?

Where will your sales team need to spend the most time? How will you measure success? Where will the quick wins come from? Here are some guidelines for sales VPs for the first few months of Salesforce.com usage. Much of this article applies to any modern CRM system, though we've focused on the specifics of Salesforce.com.

1. Value usage over raw functionality The fanciest features in the world won't make any difference to your business if they're based on garbage data. You want to start the virtuous cycle early: more users leads to more data, leading to better credibility, leading to increased business value, leading to more usage. So make it really easy for sales users to begin using SFDC: provide easy on-ramps rather than trying to ram big changes down the organization's throat.

SFDC's applications are developed using agile methodologies, and I recommend that customers use an incremental approach for system extension and deployment. I recommend on-boarding new user groups every few weeks, and adding complexity only when (1) your system's data is sufficiently complete and credible to support it, and (2) the new feature will provide a meaningful benefit to the users.

2. Show that YOU use and value the system Since your first CRM objective is to make sure that users adopt the system, communicate verbally and through behavior that you will be relying on the system to make management decisions-and that you expect people at every level to do the same. A key success factor for your SFDC implementation will be the way employees perceive how you use the system and value its data. If they sense you don't care about it or don't believe in it, neither will they.

Make SFDC your preferred medium for communication about prospects, opportunities, and customers, so that the system becomes an information kiosk for all things relevant to deals in progress. Make it clear that it's a real pain for you to look outside of SFDC for information about people, accounts, or deals. You'll be using the system to drive the boat. It's how you'll do account reviews, pre-call briefings, and the weekly forecast meeting. Inform reps that you'll give higher priority to requests made via SFDC than those that come through e-mails and voicemails.

E-mails and voicemails are fine for alerting people to change, but all the substantive information should be in the deal "war room" that is provided by SFDC. If users complain, you might buy them a new toy: a new iPhone or Blackberry and Salesforce's Mobile edition, so that they have all the information they need at their fingertips.

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