The 3 Types of Metrics That Will Drive CRM Adoption Across Your Investment Sales Team

Picture this: it’s Monday morning and your boss is asking to review your activity reports for the last few weeks. You know you’ve made calls and held meetings — some of them have gone really well. But you have little to show for your success because you haven’t been tracking these things in your CRM, your firm’s single source of truth. 

From the sounds of it, your teammates have also fallen behind. 

If this sounds like a familiar occurrence at your own firm, you’re not alone. We know first hand how difficult it can be to get your sales team to not just adopt a CRM, but really embrace it to help meet sales goals. 

Stale data, a CRM that isn’t integrated with the rest of your tech stack, and busy salespeople are all factors that can lead to a sales team’s failure to adopt a CRM. 

But it doesn’t have to be so hard. In fact, at Dakota, we’ve been fundraising since 2006, and with the help of our own CRM, have raised over $40 billion in that time.

But how do you overcome the hurdles and ensure that your team is adopting a CRM? There are a few metrics you can measure. This is such a common question, in fact, that Salesforce released its own list of metrics you can track to drive CRM adoption across your firm. 

In this article, we’ll dive into what those metrics are and how you can measure them to continue to drive CRM adoption across your sales team. By the end of the article, you’ll have a clear understanding of three types of metrics and how to use them to encourage widespread CRM adoption across your firm. 

First, let’s define what it means to “adopt” a CRM.

What is CRM adoption and how do you know if it’s happening? 

 “Adoption” is commonly used when it comes to implementing a CRM, but do you know what it means? Full “adoption” means more than just users logging into the system, and can run the gamut from a handful of users logging in to your team referring to the CRM as its single source of truth. 

The truth is, adoption is often somewhere in the middle. If your team has started using the system, if they’re running reports and executing against sales goals and tracking it in the CRM, chances are you’re off to a good start. 

What does a successful CRM adoption look like?

This depends on the needs of your firm. We recommend setting clear goals and expectations for your sales team, things that are specific, measurable, and timely. You can measure these goals as a team week over week, and determine where changes need to be made and where things are really starting to come together. 

This is where we get into metrics. Salesforce outlines three types of metrics that you can measure to ensure your CRM is getting adopted properly. These metrics include usage, data quality, and business performance, all of which can be tracked over weeks and months to give you a clear picture of what is working. 

Next, we’ll dive into the metrics and what you can learn from each category.

Usage metrics

Usage metrics are the easiest way to see at a glance who among your team is using the platform and who isn’t. These metrics include:

• Users logged in - last 7 days
• Users not logged in - last 7 days 
• Users never logged in
• Accounts created by role owner - last 120 days
• Opportunities created by role owner - last 60 days
• Contacts created by role owner - last 120 days
• Activities completed - last 60 days
• Accounts last modified by owner - last 120 days 
• Neglected opportunities by role - last 60 days

Data quality metrics

Data quality metrics are key to knowing the understanding the quality of the data your team is putting into your CRM. If the data within the CRM is bad, your sales team is not just less likely to use it, but less likely to fix it. These metrics include:

• Opportunities with a close date - last 60 days 
• Stage in which opportunities are entered
• Prospect accounts with missing information - last 60 days 
• Lead rating on converted leads
• Accounts with all key fields populated
• Accounts missing rating field
• Key, non-required fields filled out 

Business performance metrics

The goal of a CRM is to make your firm, and especially your sales and marketing teams, more efficient. Check in on the metrics below to see if it’s working to do just that:

• Pipeline by owner or owner role
• Monthly sales trends
• Activity type by assigned towner 
• Win ratio for current and prior year 
• Open leads by owner role - open not contacted
• Deal type by owners winning
• Deal type by owners losing 

How to use Salesforce to measure internal KPIs

In sales, we all know how critical it is to hit your goals — you don’t have time to waste. At Dakota, we’ve made using our CRM part of our sales DNA. How? By tracking our own goals and progress using Salesforce, as well as using it to create a killer follow-up system for the team. 

At the beginning of every week, we review activity and opportunity reports as a team. This allows everyone to have insight into progress, and ensures that the data within the CRM stays fresh. If you go to review your own KPIs and find things missing or incomplete, you will know that there is an adoption problem on your team. 

How to start encouraging CRM adoption at your firm

While this looks different for everyone, there are some steps you can take early on to encourage your sales team to make using a CRM part of their day to day activities. At Dakota, we’ve found three things to be incredibly helpful:

• Set daily or weekly sales meetings to review activity reports. This is a surefire way to know who is adopting your CRM and who isn’t. 
• Use your CRM as a way of tracking activity and meetings. This will help trigger follow-up actions, and ensure that the sales team is consistently using the system.
• Make using the CRM part of your company training. This way, as new team members join the team, they have the expectation from day one that they’ll be using and updating their CRM. 

And finally, set measurable, timely goals that you can measure within the system! 

If you’re not sure how to ensure that your team is implementing and adopting your CRM, or for more tips on how to keep your CRM up-to-date, we’d love to schedule a free consultation.