Believe it or not, account executives don’t love Salesforce. In fact, many of them will do only the bare minimum effort to keep management happy, because that’s all they see it as - a management tool.

Unfortunately, an unused or misused CRM results in stale and inaccurate information that account executives don’t trust. What if you could make Salesforce the selling tool your AEs want to use? In this post, we’ll explore how to improve adoption among your account executives.

Why Salesforce Adoption is Low

Forcing your reps to use Salesforce without their buy-in is a losing battle. You will get the minimum participation required, and misalignment between AEs, BDRs, and sales and marketing leaders. Leads will slip through the cracks, and time and money are wasted. The key is to find the overlap between what sales leaders and sales team members value. 

Why Account Executives Avoid Salesforce

If Salesforce alone were more AE-friendly, sales reps would adopt it. Like any product or service that people use, they are looking for how it benefits them. Here are the most common barriers AEs have to using Salesforce effectively:

  1. Salesforce doesn’t make selling easier, and it’s not easy to prioritize their day.
  2. Salesforce in many organizations has been configured as a reporting tool, not an effective sales tool.
  3. Data entry is time-consuming and cumbersome.

How to Make Salesforce the Ideal Selling Tool for AEs (With Salesvue)

  1. Give AEs a view of everything they need to do for the day on one screen. Build a repeatable, scalable sales process that’s easy to follow and doesn’t require working in multiple applications or spreadsheets. With cadences that automatically create tasks in a single interface, your AEs spend less time figuring out what they should be doing, and more time executing on the game plan. AEs juggle a lot of different responsibilities but with this provides structure, they don’t miss important tasks. They can consistently engage with leads or clients, and they don’t miss any follow-ups.

  2. Encourage the right behaviors. No account executive wants to feel that they are constantly being monitored or that they are being forced to log activities in Salesforce just for management reporting. To them, it’s like someone is breathing down their neck, and that doesn’t encourage the right behaviors. This leads to AEs just putting in the lowest effort to keep management satisfied. Rather, they want to be equipped with the tools that will help them sell effectively, and have the freedom to manage their workload.

    With a Salesforce-native sales engagement software solution like Salesvue, they have the freedom to work within cadences and processes that make it easier to keep track of what they should be doing. Automation also helps them fire off dozens of emails at once, so they can save time for those important phone calls with clients or following up with a hot lead. The byproduct? You now have AEs who are using Salesforce effectively, which naturally will produce better, more accurate reports with insights you can use for coaching and improvement; and better yet, the data will be accurate and trusted by the whole sales team.

  3. Make their life easier. With Salesvue, all of an AEs tasks for the day are available in the same place. But better yet, Salesforce is automatically updated once they complete the task, so there’s no manual entry after the fact.  in Salesforce.

    For example, when an AE has an appointment with a client, they can quickly mark the appointment complete, leave any notes, and let Salesvue automatically remind them when it’s time to follow-up. Or after a follow-up call to a new lead, they can easily take them out of a cadence to create a Salesforce Opportunity and automatically move them to a new cadence. Freeing up time on administrative items helps AEs focus more on what moves the needle.

    With cadences set up and automatic email scoring in Salesvue, it's clear which clients and prospects should get priority and where they are in the buying cycle. The AE doesn’t have to guess what they should be doing each day. They can efficiently complete their prospecting tasks and follow-ups, and then move to the higher-value tasks and rapport building with clients.

When your AEs feel like they are being enabled by sales tools, they will use them extensively and voluntarily. Instead of considering third party tools to integrate, adding more tools, or letting them use spreadsheets, why not get more out of Salesforce since you’ve already invested in it? Implementing Salesvue is a win-win. 

It’s Salesforce-native, so it’s easy to configure, even in as little as 20 minutes, and it’s a familiar interface, so getting AEs up to speed is quick and easy. If AEs are satisfied and working effectively, the value they contribute multiplies exponentially throughout the organization as more of the team is using Salesforce and Salesvue with confidence. One user on G2 went as far to say, “What I like most is not having to work in multiple systems or rely on a sync to get automation benefits. It's made Salesforce more than just a contact database, now I'm using it to drive my day.” Sounds like a no brainer, right?

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