Salesforce On-site Training: Winning Employee Buy-in

You’ve fully customized the user interface and imported all data, you’ve built custom sales forecasting reports and designed sleek dashboards with usability in mind, you’ve ironed out the kinks and sweat every single detail – all in all you seem to have done a really great job on ensuring that your Salesforce solution is tailored to individual needs of your team members. Nice going! Yet, instead of enjoying increased employee productivity and efficiency you expected your Salesforce implementation would drive, you are left scratching your head and wondering why your employees are abandoning the new technology and getting back to the old legacy system. Congratulations! All your efforts and expectations of a successful Salesforce implementation have come to nothing.

What is this that you overlooked?

Salesforce user adoption is always somewhat of a daunting challenge every, literally every company faces on their Salesforce implementation journey no matter how great their Salesforce solution might be, which is quite explicable. The thing is, getting used to something different means stepping out of your comfort zone, which is nine times out of ten rather troublesome for employees. Change is always uncomfortable for people – old habits die hard. More than that, switching to a new technology is almost always associated with learning a ton of things, as is the case with Salesforce, which also does not leave room for enthusiasm. Almost 65% of end users have a hard time performing at the very least core job functions within the Salesforce org, let alone leverage the system to its fullest. Either because they don’t know beans about how to use the platform and therefore resist change, are reluctant to spend their precious time on learning or have encountered some bottlenecks in the system they are quite obviously unable to unblock on their own – whatever the reason, Salesforce end-user training is something that is intended to make a big difference.

What should a truly good Salesforce user training be all about?

When it comes to implementing Salesforce, it is not uncommon for companies to get so deeply wrapped up in the implementation phase that they simply forget about the post implementation end-user training, which invariably translates into low adoption rates. Oftentimes, they deliberately skip a user adoption strategy being under the illusion that employees will automatically embrace a different way of doing things anyways simply because they are told to. Sounds good, but in a real-case scenario everything is far more complicated than that. Unfortunately, this misconception costs business execs dearly. Let’s take a look at some stats VRP Consulting gathered:

• around 63% of all CRM project issues companies face in the post-implementation period are somehow related to poor Salesforce user adoption,

• 40% of all user adoption issues arise from technical reasons, like missing functionality or a cockpit-like user interface,

• while 60% of these come out of insufficient user training.

What on earth is the point of investing heavily into Salesforce implementation, if your employees aren’t going to harness the power of the Salesforce system? The answer is clear.

This is where a comprehensive Salesforce end-user training should come into play.

Customization is key

Simply telling users that the new technology is better and will bring immense value to their workflow and the entire business process is going to fall flat. So is merely showing a Power-point presentation. What your end-users really need is a hands-on, instructor-led role-based user training session delivered in the context of their day-to-day activities. A truly good end-user training should be entirely customized and attuned to the needs of each of your unique Salesforce roles responsible for certain parts of the solution, which requires developing a customized training plan based on a detailed needs analysis. What’s more, it’s imperative that user guidance be kind of a workshop fully adapted to unique business processes and your specific instance of Salesforce.

A huge No-no to online training. A big Yes to on-site guidance.

To be sure, when it comes to mastering certain skills that are required to perform a specific job, the best way to do it is to learn on-the-job, which can be done solely on-site rather than online. Prior to testing skills within day-in-the-life scenarios and hands-on practice in the context of daily activities, on-site training typically involves giving both verbal and written instructions as well as showing demos tailored to each job role. Expensive as it may be, bringing a certified Salesforce consultant on-site is a sure-fire way to win buy-in from employees no matter how you slice it. First off, it’s the human factor that plays a key role here. That is to say, learning with the instructor within the workplace enables face-to-face interaction, which makes it easier for employees to come to grips with complex Salesforce functionality within the shortest possible time. What’s more, users have an easier time asking questions, not to mention that there is no need to wait for the response, unlike when taking Salesforce online courses.

Secondly, given that the whole process occurs within the normal working environment, on-the-job training creates an unmatched opportunity for employees to learn and perform their actual daily tasks at the same time. That way, learning on the job is meant to save much time and resources as there is no need to stop business processes for learning new skills, unlike with online learning. While online Salesforce classes will come cheaper, yet learning online is not that effective. So, you’d better leave it for self-improvement.

There is just one caveat: it’s critical that you hire a Salesforce Certified Technical Instructor who has deep domain expertise and is well-versed in delivering top-notch on-site training courses across any industry.

Getting the best of both worlds

Given that a fair share of issues related to Salesforce user adoption come from technical gaps, alongside instructing employees end-user training programs open up an unrivaled opportunity to identify those bottlenecks and current painpoints that get in the way of users’ doing their job and therefore hinder Salesforce user adoption. Hands down, this won’t replace a comprehensive audit of your Salesforce instance, yet the instructor will definitely be able to make minor tweaks, modify some configurations or simplify your user interface, which will unfailingly help increase your end-user adoption rates. By the way, our experience shows that nearly 80% of technical issues can be solved during a training session.

VRP Consulting has got you covered

VRP Consulting provides a comprehensive Salesforce end-user training as a service that is:

• delivered at your location,

• customized to the needs of your organization at every level,

• taught by a highly professional Certified Technical Consultant.

If this is exactly what you’re looking for, feel free to email us at engineering@vrpconsulting.com

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About the Author

Aliona Surovtseva

Copywriter, VRP Consulting

At the time of writing, Aliona Surovtseva was a Copywriter at VRP Consulting. As well as an experienced technology writer and technical evangelist, she has worked for many years as an English lecturer.