In today’s world sales professionals, whether in a service role, support role or direct sales, are having to change the way they “sell”. Effective sales professionals instinctively want to be on top and enabling sales with the right tools helps them to focus on what is important in their sales process, whatever methodology they follow. In order to be data driven, you have to not just have the data, you have to enable the users to easy digest and get to the data- Enters CRM and CRM tools. Furthermore, the users have to feel successful in their use of the tools. In other words, adoption is critical to the success or failure of CRM and for sales professionals, the less they have to “use” CRM, the higher the adoption! Seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it?

1. Driving Salesforce Adoption
from the Inbox

2. Introduction
In today’s world sales professionals, whether in a service role, support role or
direct sales, are having to change the way they “sell”. Effective sales professionals
instinctively want to be on top and enabling sales with the right tools helps them to
focus on what is important in their sales process, whatever methodology they follow.
In order to be data driven, you have to not just have the data, you have to enable the
users to easy digest and get to the data- enters CRM and CRM tools. Furthermore,
the users have to feel successful in their use of the tools. In other words, adoption is
critical to the success or failure of CRM and for sales professionals, the less they have
to “use” CRM, the higher the adoption!
Seems counter-intuitive doesn’t it?

3. Let’s explore a real life scenario of a successful CRM
implementation and best practices for CRM adoption
Allied Building Products is a building materials distributor in the residential and
commercial building industry with locations nationwide. Today Allied operates over
200 locations, maintains a fleet of over 2,785 vehicles and employs over 3,100 people.
Allied supports a sales organization of 80 sales professionals today.
Unlike many organizations migrating from a legacy CRM
to more modern technology, Allied was just entering the
world of CRM. Adoption was a major measurement of
success or failure and it was a new way of doing things
for Allied, which has been in business since 1950.

4. Allied - A Culture of
Transformation
Allied is a part of a larger entity, Oldcastle Materials which
employs over 80,000 worldwide. It’s Oldcastle philosophy that
each division operations as its own business unit.
This culture of transformation enables Allied to make decisions
that are best for the localized needs of the organization. There
are standard things that a large entity has to standardized like
financials, but if you get back to the grassroots of your users
and their day to day needs, the magic really happens at the
local level. “Having executive sponsorship to this is key. Let the
end user be the end user and slowly adapt them to necessary
changes.”- Vinnie DiSalvo, Manager of Employee Development
The grassroots approach just works! Within six months since the
initial search for CRM, we plan to be at 80% adoption.
According to this report, “if a company hasn’t aligned or adapted
its sales or service goals and processes to directly correlate with
the software implementation, unclear or inconsistent software
utilization can then disincent use of the system and result in a
negative spiral of unrealized benefits, instead of an incentive to
use the new system as intended.”

5. A 3-Step Grassroots
Approach for Allied
1. Get back to the grassroots approach of
keeping the end user in mind- it’s not a new
concept- more a reminder that it works!
2. Knowledge Acquisition vs Knowledge
Application – there is a difference between
acquiring knowledge and applying
knowledge. While both are important, when
it comes to adoption of technology the
application of that technology to the end
user’s day to day life is critical to success.
3. Start at point A, instead of point Z. Instead of
visualizing the end result as a starting point,
start by understanding the impact to the day
to day process.
Be User
Centric
Know Your
Users
Process
Knowledge
Acquisition
vs
Knowledge
Application

6. Two Sales Cultures
Culture 1: The Culture of Doubt - In this top down culture sales
leaders are looking to push technology on to their users- there
is seemingly a level of doubt that the day to day administrative
tasks will get completed and they are probably right! They often
seek technology to do the job for their users.
Culture 2: The User Culture - Investing the time in developing
and understanding the daily activities as a foundation for how
you look for and pursue an implementation of CRM. In this
culture it is more of a “down-top” approach, where the leaders
are seeking input and buy-in from the end users first!
The User Culture results in the end-user feeling like they have
more ownership of the process of finding the right solution to
meet the needs of the sales organization. This approach is not
easy, in fact because it requires a larger sample of end users
in the process, it often takes considerable time. The end result
however is more positive as adoption is higher.
According to Salesforce.com “CRM systems are too often
conceived and implemented with little or no consideration
given to how sales reps will use them, much less how they
could be configured to deliver the kind of value that would
encourage reps to use them.”
Source: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/05/want-to-boost-crm-adoption-boost-sales-rep-buy-in.html

7. A Key Philosophy
“If you have the right
people in the right jobs,
then you can trust them to
do their jobs effectively.”
Vinnie DiSalvo
Manager of Employee Development
Allied Building Products

8. Curate a CRM Team for the Long Haul
The CRM team sits in the middle of the sales team and the customer and it’s a critical
role. Sales management and leadership often sit on one side as stakeholders and the
sales reps and the service reps sit on the other. The CRM team has to sit in the middle
to put together a solution and business process that is going to work for both sides.
Leadership
Sponsor
User
Champions
Sales/Service
Mngt
IT
Finance

9. The Right CRM Tools Led to Increased Adoption
Allied has set achievable goals to be at 80% adoption of Salesforce by the end
of 2016! The previous goal before implementing the right CRM tools was 40-60%
adoption. So having Zynbit allowed Allied to set the bar high and raise the adoption
rate 20%!
For Salesforce users there is no shortage of tools to fit specific needs. The
Salesforce AppExchange is made up of business apps that help to extend the use of
CRM and therefore raise adoption! Its no wonder the Salesforce AppExchange just
hit 4 million installs!
In Allied’s End User first approach, they discovered that there was a looming need to
keep adoption at the forefront on their CRM implementation and that need was being
able to interact with the CRM directly from the users email inbox. Having to exit
the email application where users lived day in and day out to update CRM records
was not productive for their users. Enters ZynBit! ZynBit provides the ability for
users to easily interact with Salesforce directly from their inbox. Furthermore, users
are presented with helpful insight about their customers and how customers are
engaging with email correspondence.
From
40%
Adoption
To
80%
Adoption

10. CRM From Your Inbox
Simplify Your Work
Your CRM becomes invisible. Be able to do
all your work where you live with CRM from
your inbox.
Customer Intelligence
Work smarter with ZynBit connected to your
website, email and CRM. Grow revenue when
you get actionable customer intelligence.
Web Visitor Tracking
Engage your customers like a boss when you
know where and when they have been on your
website. Your prospects will be more receptive
to timely and relevant follow ups.
  
Synchronize Customer Data
Forget data entry! With all your calendar
meetings, tasks and emails synchronized
you’ll have more time to enage
with customers.
Be Productive
Instead of time consuming reporting, data
massaging, and data entry, spend more
of your time converting leads, closing
opportunities, and satisfying customers.
Raise Your Customer IQ
Your customer data is complete and accurate,
you’re measuring what matters, you truly
understand your customers, and your teams
are performing with precision.
  
The Benefits of Using ZynBit

11. Conclusion:
Every organization is unique and will have their unique needs. It’s important that
organizations find the right applications that help to extend their CRM to support the
end users in their day to day activities. While the culture of doubt is not ideal, for many
organizations the feeling is mutual that many sales professionals will place low priority
on updating their CRM. There are many apps available to CRM users that enable them
to be more productive, Zynbit happens to be one of those solutions, helping sales
professionals work within their email inbox to create CRM records (tasks, events,
activities, contacts, etc.), update records, and seamlessly sync data bi-directionally
between CRM and Email applications. Having these productivity apps in place allows
the end-user to see CRM has a tool to help them in their sales process versus a data
repository only viable to sales management, executives and others in the organization.
About ZynBit
ZynBit.com Inc. is a Research Triangle-based company that designs and builds the
smartest tools to collect and organize all your customer interactions in one place.
By seamlessly integrating your most valuable customer communication systems –
email, website, and CRM. ZynBit makes it easy to attract, acquire, and retain more
customers. We believe all of your customer facing applications should be automatically
integrated. For more information about ZynBit, visit http://www.zynbit.com.