July 6, 2011
It was a blustery late-fall day in the Heartland of America when I first met Bing, a mid-level manager for a $2 Billion company in 2003. I remember Bing, but not because he was incredibly brilliant, charming, or extraordinary. Rather, as I led a full-day salesforce training for Bing and his eight or so direct-reports, I vividly recall him cracking jokes in front of his team about the whole notion of CRM, and why HIS team had better things to do than to use it.
Thanks a lot Bing. It's hard enough to keep a room full of sales people focused on eight hours of TECHNOLOGY TRAINING without their boss chiming in about what a waste of time it is.
I proceeded to train the team about all-things salesforce, peppering the training with my own form of salesforce.com evangelism - how if they only give it 20 minutes a day, they'll get hours back in their work week, and how it can tee up your day, week, and month, if only you fed it concise, accurate information. I might as well have served them Kool-Aid, I was laying it on so thick. But, Bing didn't buy it. I traveled on to my next city and my next training session.
A few weeks later, I peered into some User Adoption Dashboards we had built to monitor usage across the company. Of course, there's more to tracking user adoption than simply monitoring log in information, but it's a starting point. I drilled into Bing's log in history. Guess what? Yep, Bing hadn't logged in since the day of training. There was even a direct correlation to Bing's lack-of-logins and his team's. Of the other eight individuals in the training room that day, only one had bothered to log in on time since the training.
That’s when it clicked.
Technology Adoption Lesson #1. A lot of time, money, and effort is focused on preparing and teaching end-users on a CRM roll out. After all, if they don't use it, you don't have a system. Similarly, you hear and read a lot of Executive Sponsorship being the trigger-point to whether a CRM will succeed or fail. I agree, it's absolutely important. But I contend the MOST IMPORTANT user-group of a CRM initiative is mid-level management. If they buy into its value, if they get the metrics they need, if they understand it, well...the rest will follow.
Technology Adoption Lesson #2. These managers need to not only participate in the training, but align ideologically with the session’s focus and overall purpose of the CRM initiative. Otherwise, it becomes a babysitting exercise. Try to get a one-on-one or phone conversation with the manager prior to the training to reiterate the training’s strategic value.
Technology Adoption Lesson #3. Momentum is everything. Would things have been different if we had followed up with Bing and his team post-training? Probably. In addition to a Q&A session, follow up on the team’s progress in the days and weeks following. Start a chatter group to address both these points.
Bing may have driven me nuts eight years ago, but I’m thankful for the lessons. They may call for a little more involvement leading into and following a training, but it’s my goal to never get “Binged” on another CRM project again.
