Salespeople hate CRMs. Ok, maybe hate is too strong, but ask any of them how they feel about CRMs and you will either watch their eyes glaze over or see fury in their response. To them it is a necessary evil. But why? Could it be:

• Perceived busywork - Sales reps have to enter information about their activities, log opportunity information, update customer contacts, and don’t always get any value from it.
• Big brother - CRMs can make sales reps feel as if their every task is being micromanaged.
• Can’t find information - Many sales tracking tools tend to focus on forcing sales teams to adhere to reporting, but few help the individual rep sell more.
• Doesn’t drive new business - Most CRM activities involve what you’re doing, not what you’re doing next. They often don’t provide a way to continue to market to your leads and existing customers.
• Inflexibility - Many CRMs force you to adhere to their conventions and when you want to change it to fit your business, they charge you for it.

So how do you change their minds?

Make Entering Data Easier

Besides prospect, account, and contact data, the most important information is going to be driven by sales activities. That includes customer calls, emails, task status, etc. If it takes a lot of effort for a rep to enter data, it won’t happen. Let’s say they call a customer, but the customer’s not interested right now. Are they going to take the time to record that information, or will they move on to the next prospect? If their performance is based on sales and not data entry, they will almost certainly skip logging that activity, even though you know that that’s still a good prospect at some point. If you give them one place to go and log everything from customer information updates, opportunities, and next steps, you’re going to get better information about activities.

Give Them Valuable Information to Do Their Jobs

The best way for a rep to sell is by understanding the profile of who his customers are and how to strategically go after them. This means having good information about each customer and creating daily tasks that focus on those customers. Whether it’s by ZIP code or last date of purchase, they need to be able to slice and dice their customer data to find the best approach.

Identify Ways They Can Measure Their Own Progress

We’re all a competitive in the business world — especially salespeople. That’s the point of quotas and commissions. When reps see how their doing against their quota, or even against other reps, that’s encouragement to do better.

Enable Them to Re-Market to Their Contacts

Campaigning has traditionally been used as a marketing tool, but in many ways, it’s most valuable as a sales tool. Personalized email campaigns let an individual rep cover a lot of territory but still maintain a certain level of 1-to-1 selling. With a few targeted messages, automated follow-ups when the reader clicks or opens an email, and the ability to customize emails to fit the call to action, sales teams can drive a lot more opportunities more efficiently.

Design and Automate Best Practices

All efficient people have a lazy streak. They want to accomplish as much as they can with as little work as possible. That gives them time to deal with the more complex issues or to try new things, which can advances them even further. For salespeople, the more automated you can make a CRM, the more intelligent it can become and, ultimately, the more productive they can be. Creating data policies is a great way to do that. For example, if a new prospect is introduced and there is data indicating their interest in “Trucks,” a completely differ selling process can start for that prospect.

Salespeople don’t really hate CRMs. They hate that they don’t work like they do. The more a CRM can work in concert with their activities, the more successful your CRM implementation will go. And once you win them over, they won’t be able to live without it.