5 Tips for Boosting Salesforce User Adoption

CRM applications like Salesforce can help make your businesses more organized and more efficient, but only if they are used correctly. While Salesforce may have the potential to help your business, it can only make a real and lasting impact if all of your employees adopt it. However, a large number of employees are reluctant to adopt new software. A study by the Butler Group found that 50% of software functionality paid for by businesses is not actually used, and another study by Accenture found that only 31% of organizations reported a user adoption of 90%. To get the most out of Salesforce, it’s important to find a way to encourage employees to fully adopt the software, making full use of all of its available functions. Here are five tips for boosting Salesforce user adoption. Engage Employees with Gamification Everyone loves the challenge and excitement of games, so why not bring the attraction of games to Salesforce? Gamification apps like LevelEleven and Bunchball are great for turning challenging or grueling tasks into a fun and engaging learning experience. Gamification will help to motivate employees, while also giving them a feeling of accomplishment that will help push them on to further learning. Allow for Flexibility No two sales reps are the same. They all have their own individual and unique approaches to doing the same job. One of the best ways to encourage user adoption is to allow sales reps to bring their individualized approaches to Salesforce. Certain tasks may need to be completed in a uniform way to ensure cohesion across the organization, but wherever possible you should give your sales reps freedom in using the software. The sense of freedom this carries with it will not only encourage your sales reps to use Salesforce more, it will also encourage them to find the way of using the application that works best for them, ultimately increasing productivity. Simplify Adoption with Guidance Technology Figuring out how to start using new software effectively can be a challenge. Guidance technology such as WalkMe is a great way to help employees become more proficient with Salesforce. This kind of technology removes the difficulties and hassles of learning to use Salesforce, ultimately reducing training time and improving user adoption. Make Salesforce Necessary for Everyday Work Sometimes, even with your best efforts, employees will resist adopting software for as long as possible. By making Salesforce necessary to regular business tasks, you’ll leave sales reps with no choice but to start using the software. More frequent use of Salesforce will also make your employees more familiar and thus more proficient with the software. Never Stop Training Initial training is important for your employees to be able to use Salesforce effectively, but the learning shouldn’t stop there. Encourage employees to learn online by interacting with the Salesforce Community. It’s also important to have employees share their knowledge with each other to encourage collective adoption of Salesforce. Monthly classes with new knowledge or refresher courses on old material are also a great way to keep employees learning and make sure that they remain invested in using Salesforce. Conclusion Salesforce can be a powerful tool to help your business but only with the right amount of user adoption. These tips will help accustom employees to Salesforce and remove many of the difficulties involved in adopting the software. To get the most out of Salesforce, it’s important to make things as easy as possible for employees and encourage them to keep learning new things whenever and wherever they can.