For the past few weeks or months, you’ve been choosing the perfect CRM for your team. You’ve done great. The system seems to fulfill all your expectations. It is easy-to-use, intelligent tool which can be adjusted to your team’s needs, but you are the only one who appreciates the new solution.
Why your team (to put it mildly) is not enthusiastic about the new system which you had chosen? How to overcome excuses and convince everybody that CRM is what they need to raise their productivity and boost your sales? In this article, we present the most common excuses and ways to overcome them.
1. I have no idea how using CRM will help me to do better
Ask all your team members what is the biggest obstacle in their everyday work. Overcome the reluctance by comparing their biggest problems with specific features of the system. This way you will exactly know what your team members need and will be able to talk with them individually about particular benefits of using the system. Hoverer, you have to remember that you need to get to know the CRM system well before you will start to talk with your people. You won’t overcome reluctance by saying “I don’t know if it works that way”.
What’s more, you should schedule meeting with your team. Talking very clearly and very honestly about the system can help both sides – users’ comments are very valuable. Thanks to this conversation you can determinate if the system is really working. On the other hand, establish specific day on which your team needs to share the feedback of the new system. It will motivate your people to start testing the new solution. If the system is really good it will help to break the ice.
2. I am used to write down tasks in my calendar
One of the most used tactic to defend ourselves from innovation is hiding behind the “habit wall”: “Every morning I start my work from reviewing tasks written down in my calendar. It is my HABIT!”.
People have habits to save their energy for acting and thinking outside the box. Everybody have habits, but not everybody is aware of them. People who defend habits actually act instinctively – they defend their energy as a priceless treasure. Despite the fact that reluctance for change is natural it is also the biggest obstacle for innovation. How to convince others that they need changes? Think of the advantages from the innovation.
Change your desk calendar for reminders and online calendar built in the system to save time. Automatically set up reminders to follow up your clients and gain access to your tasks from any device which is connected to the Internet. What’s more, start your everyday work with CRM system. On the dashboard, you will see not only the newest emails but also to-do’s.
Those advantages should convince even most reluctant team members. Yet, you can still hear the dissenting opinions: “I don’t want to share my tasks with others”. Don’t worry, we are also prepared for that, just say: “Oh that is just fine, you decide what others can see”.
3. I don’t want to waste my time for completing database
Salespeople are usually very active people who don’t like administrative part of the work eg completing databases. On the other hand, to develop company and relations with clients you need to have good databases. Is there any chance for a win-win situation?
Yes, there is. Choose system which completes information automatically. This way your sales team saves time and energy which can be transferred for closing more deals and you can sleep at night knowing that the company is not missing any important information.
Information gathered automatically have one more really important advantage – this data is free of mistakes and fully objective. Nobody has to spend their time to explain how the communication with the client goes as all emails are visible in the system. This time can be spent on developing the communication skills.
4. This system seems to be too complicated – I don’t have time to learn how to use it
Do you remember what I wrote in the first point? Talking very clearly and very honestly about obstacles in everyday work helps to identify real needs. If you had chosen the system which is tailored to your team’s needs and doesn’t have 3000 extra functions which are actually useless there shouldn’t be any problem – employees who participated in the training should be able to learn how to use the system in less than a few days.
A few days in a cooperation with the long-time perspective seems to be the blink of an eye. What’s more, people who know how to use innovative systems (even not the most popular ones) can add it to CV as their competitive advantage on the labour market.
Additionally, you can finish the training for learning the system with test form system – person who knows it best gets the valuable price like for example voucher for holidays. Implementing gamification into learning process will motivate your team and help them learn faster.
5. I don’t want to share information about my clients with others
Building strong business relations requires a lot of time and energy. Collected information about individual preferences, not always linked with offered products, are usually key to success. There is nothing odd that not everybody who worked hard on gathering all information is willing to share their secrets with others.
While implementing the new solution make sure everybody is aware what others can see and how users can protect their privacy. Read 6. Point to know how you can explain them the system data protection based on the popular social media platform.
6. I don’t like the idea that you will see all my moves, I would prefer to show you the results
You can call it “The Big Brother Effect”, “Eye of Sauron” or “Orwellian World”. No matter how it is called, nobody likes to feel observed – you also. As you can put yourself in your team’s shoes you can easily refer to those objections.
Start with an honest presentation of your abilities. Show your team what you can see and what is completely private. Teach your people how they can manage their privacy and how to choose which information they will share with others. While talking about privacy in the CRM system refer to social platforms like Facebook. If they are Facebook users they will understand that some of the information like photos or posts they can share with their friends or make it public, but their Messenger correspondence is private.
But what about automatic reports? Show your team the charts. Let them know that you only see the overview if how many phone calls they made, meetings had and emails sent. Explain to them why you need to see that and how it actually helps them overcome different obstacles.
7. You pay me for selling not for taking care of databases
Most of the salespeople are motivated by commissions. You can call me materialistic, but let’s be honest – how many people whose the biggest passion is selling have you met in your life? Well, seems like you need to talk with your team about money, right? Tell them that the CRM will help them boost sales so that they will earn more.
You can also refer to the 3. point from this article. Remind them of all advantages from using CRM system and tasks automation. Explain to them that this system is meant to save time not waste it.
After all, they still need to write down somewhere all they know about clients to build strong business relations with them.
To sum up, the most important is to present the new system with a fair explanation of how it will help your team in everyday work and what they can gain by using it. In addition, think of something good like a voucher to a restaurant or extra free days to motivate people to start learning how the system works. This will help to break the first resistance.
