A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is often considered as a strategy to improve and grow in a number of areas. There are certain good purposes behind the selection of CRM in any business. These include more centralized activities, saving time and money, streamline process and increase productivity.

But these purposes often go in vain due to lack of acceptance to CRM by the people. People don’t like change. Once they have been doing something in one way, it gets incredibly difficult for them to accept a better way of doing that same thing. Even if it is apparent that the new way is better, they still like to cling to “their” way of doing things.

Many researchers show that majority of the CRM projects fail. There are many reasons behind this failure. Yet in the majority of cases it abbreviates people to rejection of CRM.

CRM and Salespeople are in love-hate relationship- as CRM loves Salespeople while Salespeople hate CRM.

One of the most common reason behind the failure of CRM projects in organizations is a lack of adoption of CRM by their sales team. According to a research, the companies using CRM observed higher customer retention rates, better achievement of goals and better achievement of goals of individual sales representatives.

But, many sales people initially do not understand the importance of CRM and is benefits that can bring about the change in their performance. They tend to dislike CRM as they have to change their routines and start working with a new system. Sales people are on a belief that their job is to work with the people and not with the software. So they refrain from inputting data and records are not properly updated. Here are the most common reasons why sales people oppose CRM implementation.

Paperwork is Simpler

Being Salespeople, you believe that working with spreadsheets and paper is simpler and you tend to stick to that only. You believe that it is rather simpler to find out the prospect’s name, contact number, address and email in a printed out list. But you also know that the whole process ids too time-consuming and you have to remember all the task and conversations and promises made. You also need to remember your follow ups.

You can note down all you like, but you cannot remember every detail. To win a customer is very critical in today's competitive market. It just takes a phone call to win a customer, so neither you afford to waste hours on one prospect nor company afford to lose business. Today, the way of communicating is not just limited to a phone call and meeting, but emails and attachments, SMS, and social media are also important aspects of communication. So now the paperwork is not that effective. You need to store each and every detail. CRM is a single platform where you can store each and every details and conversation and access the required data anytime.

Entering Data is Time Consuming

Speed is a critical requirement for sales. Maintenance of customer information and records is a tedious job and time consuming a seem to be a hindrance. Instead of calling and selling, you have to dedicate some time to enter the information about what you have done and other details of the customer in CRM.

But in real-time it is not at all horrible, sales people can spend most of their time in the field and other administrative tasks such as updating details in CRM does not take much of the time. It is only their disbelief which creates a hindrance for them to accept CRM.

CRM database stores all the information, activities, contacts and templates at a single place from where you can access any data anytime and anywhere which saves a lot of your time remembering past conversations. Nothing is lost or forgotten.

CRM is too Complicated

One of the most common panics is that CRM is highly complicated and it requires a degree in IT to use it. Yet, most of the CRM systems including cloud-based CRM systems have been evolved with simpler functionality. Today CRM is user-friendly and contributing to making your work easier not complicated. You need to invest a little time learning the CRM but as you will get used to it, its advanced functionality will ease a lot of your tasks.

Ownership on Leads

Leads are very important for the sales people and they can be very protective for their leads. Diluting their client base and insights seems to be a great threat. But being protective for leads is not going to help anyway if the leads are prone to poor experience. Using CRM sales people can learn to analyze the leads which will, in turn, benefit the sales figures.

CRM won't take away your leads- but, help you turn leads into customers more effectively. Once this fact is understood, sales people would be eager for CRM implementation.

I am Not Getting Paid For This

Salespeople are undoubtedly focused on sales and commission. They are just motivated by the commissions. They don't consider entering information in a database to e a part of the sales process. If they don't find the process generating commission, they probably don't find the value in the process. For them, time spent working with the CRM system is time wasted which they could have contributed in making more value.

Proper training will demonstrate you benefits of CRM in lead generation, nurturing and sales. Sales people will understand that time spent working with CRM is time spent improving all the sales channels. Leads with better experience turn into customers. A good training will help salespeople find value in adopting the system.

Learning CRM is no more difficult than a smartphone. Without proper training, these excuses will be used to oppose CRM implementation. A properly planned and well executed CRM training alleviate their threats and help get everyone together with the new implementation.