New Englanders – city folks mainly – often buy groceries at the first forecast of snow, clearing out store shelves hours before the first snowflake falls. However, New England weather is unpredictable, and sometimes the snow never arrives, leaving refrigerators full of food that goes to waste.

Some companies are just as overeager about their customer relationship management (CRM) investments, hoping that their next software purchase will be the one to transform their sales and marketing initiatives. CRM technology is more expensive than snowstorm staples with prices ranging from thousands to millions of dollars for enterprise-wide systems. And this rate of spending on CRM technology will continue – the Aberdeen Group predicts annual gains of almost 20 percent, to $27.8 billion by 2007.

Implementing CRM can be as unpredictable as the weather. Deciding which solution to buy and integrate is the first challenge. Perhaps the most unpredictable factor is whether the solution will be adopted once in place. Indeed, companies are finding that adoption rates remain dismal, hovering at less than 50 percent.

You can't throw away this kind of investment like spoiled groceries, so finding ways to improve adoption rates is critical to ensuring the technology is used correctly, and that it achieves the intended results – increased sales and customer satisfaction.

Let's assume you've covered the basics: you've established measurable CRM business goals, received senior executive support, involved end users, phased in functionality and established measurement systems. Doesn't sound familiar? Stop. You've got bigger problems.

If you have covered the CRM system development basics, the key to successful adoption is to give users incentives to use the system by providing them with valuable information and tools not available elsewhere.

The implementation of salesforce automation (SFA) systems provides an example of this philosophy. SFA tools track customer interaction, analyze sales forecasts and may automate business tasks such as inventory control and order processing. They are used primarily by two groups: sales management, who wish to monitor the overall performance of the sales team; and individual sales reps in the salesforce, who wish to sell more, make more money and still spend time with their kids, friends and significant others.

Sales management loves SFA systems. After all, it allows them to monitor sales force activity and the all important "sales funnel." New opportunities go in the top of the funnel, are qualified, and new business pops out the bottom. The orders flowing out of the funnel and the time it takes to close a sale are key measures of sales productivity.

Using SFA tools, management can quickly figure out which are the hot prospects and when they are expected to close, both on an individual basis and across the entire salesforce. They can understand – in real time – how big the sales pipeline is today and how big it's expected to be in weeks and months to come. They can determine which sales reps are performing – and which aren't even close to meeting their monthly quota.

Unlike sales management, sales reps ask, "What's in it for me?" – because enterprise SFA systems often mean more management accountability and more administrative work – not the reasons salespeople sell. Sales reps often create "underground" systems for managing their leads in Outlook or buy single subscriptions to Salesforce.com, or sometimes use nothing more than a pad and a piece of paper. If possible, the rep will enter the lead into the sanctioned SFA system only when it's likely to close.

SFA systems on the market today are quite similar in terms of features and functionality; what sets them apart is the information that flows through them. The salesforce takes notice of actionable information that drives sales. Including details that the sales rep can't easily find somewhere else – details beyond name, address, phone number and origin – is key to getting the sales rep to use the system because it will help the rep sell more.

What kind of information should be included? Salespeople want answers to four basic questions:

• Who are the decision-makers?
• Does this prospect have a need for my product or service?
• Is there budget for my product or service?
• When will a decision be made?

Every salesperson wants to identify the decision-makers. If I sell telecomm gear, details on how many local area networks, routers and PCs a prospect already owns would be helpful. If it's enterprise software that only big companies can afford, the company's revenue and number of employees come in handy. If it's selling advertising, the rep would likely want to quickly identify the companies in his or her territory that already have advertising budgets in place. If I'm selling 401(k) plan management, I want to know the expiration date of the current plan.

Successful SFA systems will have this type of information – and more. They will be streamlined to give sales reps access to just the information they need to help close the sale. The sales reps will have the tools in place to spend their time on quality prospecting time, instead of aimlessly searching for leads in the phone book or on the Internet. Adoption rates and business success will increase – not because management swings a "big stick," but because the system provides the "carrots" to enable salespeople to be more effective. And those are the groceries that salespeople want. Tom Gaither http://www.imarketinc.com/