Undoubtedly, when you are creating a KPI sales model to guide your sales activity, it all starts with the integrity of the data. On the other hand, most sales reps view inputting information into Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) software as mundane and are reluctant to do it. Since the integrity of your sales forecasts greatly hinge on the ability of your sales reps to record each sales activity into Salesforce, you must establish an effective user adoption strategy. Without Salesforce adoption then what’s the point of even having a CRM?

If you fail to implement an effective user adoption strategy, you only receive a small portion of the data you need or your forecasts and projections will be based on faulty data and fail to truly guide your sales activity. Considering the imperial importance of your sales reps inputting each sales activity into Salesforce, you can create friendly competition to increase user adoption.

Increase the Integrity of Salesforce Data with Competition

By playing on the competitive nature of sales professionals, you can create a competition or game for weekly points with Salesforce as your scoreboard. The game simply works by awarding sales reps for each activity entered into Salesforce.

How are Points Calculated?

My dad gave me great advice a few years back by telling me that “activity=money”. For a sales person to be successful he has to do the right activity.  Therefore, not only should sales people be held accountable to revenue goals but they should also be held accountable to daily and weekly activities. The best way to track this is within Salesforce. For each activity a sales person performs, he has to record it in Salesforce. If it’s not in Salesforce, then it doesn’t exist. As a result they are forced to use Salesforce all day, every day. But they need to reach a minimum number of points each day and each week. For example, at Galvin Tech our minimum is 110 weekly points and 22 daily points. Points get reviewed each morning and then at the Monday Morning sales meeting. In order to obtain points each completed sales activity entered into Salesforce has a value. For example, Calls = 1 point, Scheduled Meeting = 5 points, and a Signed Contract = 15 points. We have about 10-12 different tasks a sales person can accomplish to obtain points.

Setting the Benchmark

After a winner has been crowned at week’s end, it’s important to create a minimum weekly benchmark point total. This benchmark represents the minimum amount of points each sales representative should attain each week. Failing to meet this benchmark means the rep isn’t working effectively and not performing the minimum sales activities, which could warrant some corrective action.

Post-Game Report

As a result of the game, you will create an user adoption strategy the sales reps will embrace, understand, and actually enjoy. In addition, you will increase the integrity of your data resulting in the creation of a sales model that truly guides your sales activity.

Additional Ways to Guide User Adoption

In addition to the point system, you can also implement the following reports to effectively measure and guide user adoption. By doing so, you will be better able to determine the quality of the data in Salesforce with the following reports.

New Opportunity Report

Sales managers are always interested in the number of new opportunities entered into the sales pipeline. However, sales professionals commonly fail to enter new opportunities until they are deep down the sales funnel, which presents a true forecasting problem. With a weekly or monthly new opportunity report, sales managers will be able to effectively monitor the flow and make accurate sales predictions.

Scheduled Closing Appointments Report

By running the scheduled closing appointments report, your sales managers will stay on top of the opportunities set to close during the week and ensure sales reps are updating the close date of their sales opportunity. In either case, managers will have access to better data and be able to make accurate sales projections and forecasts with this report.

Past Due Opportunities Report

In the best case scenario, this report will show no results, which is excellent. On the other hand, when this report returns a significant amount of results, you could be facing one of two following problems.

1. Your sales team is overwhelmed by the number of opportunities,
2. Or your sales team simply isn’t updating each sales activity for each opportunity

While the failure to update each new sales activity is the usual culprit, creating a report of past due opportunities will allow sales managers to review each individual result. Then, the sales manager can coach the sales rep in the importance of keeping the sales data current or take other corrective actions.

New Contacts and Accounts Report

Since sales people must effectively prospect and gain new prospects to create new opportunities, they must be held accountable for this sales activity. By running a new contacts and new accounts report, sales managers can ensure their sales people are effectively prospecting for new business. This report will prevent the sales pipeline from being empty.

Activity Report

Instead of simply assuming your sales reps are completing the necessary sales activities to generate revenue, you can create a report to do so. By tracking common sales activities such as, emails, presentations, phone calls, meetings, and demos, sales managers will be able to hold reps more accountable. In addition, when sales reps fails to meet their revenue numbers, the report will easily pinpoint the issue by the lack of sales activities in Salesforce.

Most importantly, implementing the point system will ensure your reports are accurate and KPI sales models are actually guiding your sales activity.

Also published on Medium.