How to Motivate and Prepare Your Team for CRM and Other Tech Integrations

An important part of the battle of not only acceptance but an understanding of the technology that you are using involves motivating and preparing your team for the integration. You need to outline:

• Where you want to go
• The importance of how you want to get there (technology integration)
• The tools necessary to be successful

If you’re looking at it from a big-picture perspective, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when looking at these massive platforms and all the great features that they offer. The good thing is that when you get so involved in the CRM, the right way, you can see all the things you’re missing and the areas that might need a little more attention.

We’re not necessarily talking about the software here, but what the customer does, what the salesperson does, and how dealers and managers know (or don’t know) whether something happened.

And a beautiful thing will happen when you embrace the process of integrating CRMs and other technology. When you do it right and you do it well, your people will follow. The leadership team needs to first understand and know how the CRM should work and all that you can do to make it work for your dealership.

Then, they can pass that knowledge, that learning culture mindset, onto the salespeople. And when the CRM becomes part of your culture and everyone buys in, there’s accountability. People are happier, they feel more involved and more valued, and no one feels like they’re just being monitored and micro-managed when it comes to their customer interactions and data collection for the CRM.

Speaking of which, you aren’t going to motivate anyone by just watching what people do and then expecting them to be held accountable without any coaching or support. You must work with each team member to develop a better process in the dealership that includes visibility and accountability, but also allows the dealership to work as a team to incorporate the CRM as part of the standard process.

Otherwise, it’s always going to be an “us versus them” situation between leaders and team members within the dealership. Of course, the upside of this is incredible—when your people embrace the culture of learning and the features of your CRM, you can generate thousands upon thousands of leads that are getting the attention they want in the way they want it. Then, you can market to these new leads and customers, increase retention, grow sales, make your dealership more efficient and so much more. When you’re aware of the process and how the CRM is involved in that, you have a much better chance at succeeding with this.

Preparing for the Future

Once you get to the point where you have the CRM figured out and it’s not being used as a “punishment tool”, if you will, there will be a shift. You have reached the place where everyone knows that the technology is good for them. Once you get there, the shift is rapid. Some of it is easy and some of it is challenging, but it’s all designed to help you identify where issues are or whether there are process deficits in your dealership that need to be addressed.

And when you have that understanding with your staff that sometimes things are difficult, you’ll be able to work together to come up with the solution. Your sales team is now part of the solution, instead of being told “this is the solution, here’s what you do.”

It just becomes the way you do business, and if that’s how it happens, you’re in good shape.

Yes, there are growing pains. Some parts of the process will be chaotic and uncertain. And you will no doubt have those veterans that will be resistant. Once you get through the rough parts, you’ll come out on the other side with a better understanding and vision related to your CRM and what it can do for your dealership.

You’ll get to this breakthrough when the team (not just the leadership, but the entire team) realizes that this new technology is something that supports what everybody does versus something that is used just to “tell on them” or monitor their work.

Using technology to get there is very powerful because you can do so much more with so much less and do it so much more efficiently.

It’s difficult because people are entrenched in the day-to-day and then someone is like, “Hey have you seen this new technology that we have?” It’s frustrating because there’s so much to learn to gain the most benefits that are useful. But once you get through it, you’re always glad you did because the process is better which means that the business is better.

As the industry continues to see growth in the technology arena, the learning curves will continue but with each one will come an opportunity for your dealership to deliver a better experience for the customer, the sales team, and the store as a whole.