Many organizations today are looking to deliver seamless and unified digital sales experiences to customers using Salesforce CRM. This leading CRM solution helps boost team productivity and enables sales professionals to work smarter, make intelligent decisions, and close deals faster. 

Although Salesforce CRM offers several big promises, a lot of times, implementations fail due to various reasons. Read on to uncover the top reasons for failed Salesforce CRM implementations and what strategies or tactics you can embrace to avoid them. 

Top Reasons for Failed Salesforce CRM Implementations + Top Strategies for Success

With customers interacting with businesses via multiple touchpoints, providing seamless and consistent responses is critical to fuel engagement. Implementing a CRM solution like Salesforce is the need of the hour for service organizations. Offering an integrated, real-time view across their sales, service, and marketing teams, Salesforce CRM helps unveil insights in business data, accurately predict outcomes of actions, and recommend next steps. 

But despite providing sales reps with all the capabilities they need to enhance the selling experience, many implementations fail. 

Let’s look at the top reasons for failed Salesforce CRM implementations: 

• Limited investment: Let’s face it: Salesforce CRM (like any other CRM solution) although critical, also tends to burn a hole in the pocket. Despite organizations having the capital to purchase a Salesforce “license”, the truth is, implementation costs do not end at licensing. They entail an array of other costs including costs of assessment, gap analysis, restructuring or re-coding, data migration, implementation partner, training, and ongoing support and maintenance.

If you want your Salesforce implementation to be successful, you need to consider costs across the implementation lifecycle: from planning and implementation to post-implementation support. Having a clear idea of all the costs from the beginning will help you in properly planning for the budget, while also being cognizant of extra costs that might arise along the way.

• Lack of executive support: A CRM solution as complex and massive as Salesforce requires relentless support and sponsorship from the C-suite. This support ensures you have the required budget and planning in place for a successful implementation. It also helps in rectifying implementation issues or overcoming bottlenecks – in time – to avoid overshooting of budgets or the timeline. 

If you’re planning to implement Salesforce CRM, get your C-suite into confidence from day one. Make sure they understand the need for and benefits of the CRM solution. Also, share with them the potential roadmap for implementation as well as possible challenges, so you can fall back for strategic advice and guidance, as and when required. 

• Lack of the right tools: The success of your Salesforce CRM implementation depends greatly on the tools you use. Organizations that do not invest in the right tools often end up with poor implementation outcomes. Tools play a huge role across every phase of implementation: from building a roadmap to planning the project, allocating resources to ensuring data quality. 

When you plan for the implementation, make sure to invest in the right tools at each stage of the implementation journey. The right tools can ensure you overcome issues in time and capitalize on the opportunities presented to you. They can also deliver the insight you need to stay on track, make your processes better, and stick to your implementation deadlines. 

• Focus on technology and people: Any enterprise system entails the implementation of an array of modern technologies. But successful implementation is not just about the technology, but also about the people who will eventually be using the system. If your Salesforce implementation plan focuses only on technology, rather than people, the end result is likely to miss the mark. 

While planning your Salesforce implementation strategy, make sure to include your users from the very beginning. Educate them about the need for the Salesforce CRM and how its many capabilities will help in boosting productivity and overcoming day-to-day challenges. Address apprehensions and concerns in time, and give them a platform to offer suggestions for better adoption. Post-implementation, make sure to offer the required hands-on training, so they can realize maximum benefits from the CRM system. 

• Absence of a competent implementation partner: Regardless of how capable or skilled your IT team might be, relying on in-house resources to carry out an implementation as complex and time-consuming as Salesforce is surely a recipe for disaster. For a successful implementation, you need a team that is highly experienced and is entirely focused on ensuring the deployment is a roaring success. 

Once you decide on getting Salesforce CRM onboard, engage with an expert partner who can help you in meeting your implementation goals and objectives. A partner can not only advise you on implementation challenges and best practices but also help you tailor or customize the solution – to fit the needs of your business. A partner can also help you in making necessary changes to your existing IT processes and systems, so you can achieve maximum ROI (and value) from your Salesforce investment. 

In today’s customer-centric era, CRM is the lifeblood of every organization. A solution like CRM can make sure you have all the information you need about your customers, their needs, and interactions – in a single place – so teams can make the right sales decisions and close deals faster. Being aware of common implementation pitfalls and creating appropriate strategies can ensure your implementation is successful, allowing sales reps to have fast and easy access to customer journeys and deliver connected customer experiences. 

As a Salesforce Partner, Sapours has of the highest caliber to offer Salesforce strategy, consulting, and implementation services. Contact us today and allow our teams to understand the unique requirements of your business and deliver a highly customized and scalable CRM solution that will bring you the best business outcomes.