Salesforce is an awesome tool with many features that help enterprises create new opportunities, nurture leads, improve customer experience and manage data efficiently on a single platform by acting as a single source of 'truth'.

However, Salesforce can turn out to be a very expensive tool, especially if you’re paying but users aren’t using it!

Don’t worry! There are many ways to engage your team to start using Salesforce more and enjoy it. But before we begin, let’s first understand what Salesforce adoption means.

What does Salesforce adoption mean?

Salesforce adoption is all about enabling a user to use the full capabilities of Salesforce CRM by creating strategies around onboarding, training, and continued development. The process of creating a Salesforce adoption strategy is a very tedious, time-consuming, complex process that in adverse cases, leads to the biggest scare for any manager/admin – low ROI.

However, Salesforce offers native integrations with many other applications, making it one of the most preferred enterprise CRMs. Thus, many adoption strategies are available to help your enterprise find ROI.

According to a report by Salesforce, “Implementation of Salesforce increases sales win rate by 26% and sales revenues by 28%.”

However, another report suggests that only 50% of CRM features are used by employees of the enterprise paying for the CRM platform.

This means that the interesting Salesforce return on investment is highly dependent on the enterprise Salesforce user adoption success or failure. Hence, to realize the maximum benefit of Salesforce, your employees must use the CRM to its full potential.

One good thing about creating a Salesforce adoption strategy is that no matter where you are in your Salesforce journey, you can get started right away. Whether you’re considering buying Salesforce, working on implementing it, or even have been using it for years; the adoption process would be fairly similar. If implemented properly, CRMs can provide a return of up to $8.71 for every dollar you invest upon it. But if you want to maximize your ROI, you’ll need a solid Salesforce adoption strategy.

Here are five best ways to make your Salesforce adoption a success.

Listen to your team

Let Salesforce be a solution for your team and not a hindrance. Don’t just throw new software at your team and compel them to use it. Instead, know what your team needs and what they do. Spend considerable time asking questions to understand their pain points and identify opportunities to create efficiencies. Understand what’s stopping your team to use Salesforce and how it can be remedied. These early conversations can make your team feel heard and build trusting relationships, encouraging higher adoption down the road.

Empower the team with training

Ensure your team gets thorough hands-on training for using Salesforce efficiently. Get the best professional developers and operators to teach your personnel how to use the platform. Let the trainers cover all the important features, components, and tools. Encourage group training and live training to help the team understand the real-time implications of the activities they perform on the platform. You can also consider training through scenarios or use cases. Give them a problem and inform them about the key tools to be used in solving the same. Give them a scenario and let them figure out a way to solve it themselves. Also, it is important to collect training feedback to know how well they have learned the software and how prepared the team is for user adoption.

Build healthy competition

Inspire your team through leader boards. Encourage their actual use of the Salesforce platform by posting leader boards. This will show off who is reaching sales goals and offer incentives for greater performance. Employees don’t want to fall behind on public leader boards, so they’ll change their behavior accordingly. Leader boards are a fun way to motivate the team to perform well and win.

Let the leaders lead by example

It is critical for your leaders to understand the value of Salesforce as well as how to use it effectively. Leaders and managers must demonstrate the actual strategic value of Salesforce and demonstrate their own personal investment in the software. That means showing employees how to use the tool on a daily basis through examples, workshops, training, etc.

Celebrate success

Recognize your team for their efforts. Early adopters and champions can be thanked and rewarded with Salesforce-branded swag. Send shout-out emails and share success stories with the organization.

Achieving a higher Salesforce adoption rate is a lengthy process, but it doesn’t have to be very labor-intensive. FusionHawk can supplement your Salesforce initiatives through our digital adoption solutions. Contact our Salesforce team today @ FusionHawk to boost your Salesforce adoption.