Publish date:

• 14th April, 2025

It is essential to use Salesforce effectively to get the most out of it. Salesforce can lead to better workflows, improved customer interactions, and data-driven decisions. However, organizations must plan carefully to implement Salesforce successfully, execute strategically, and follow best practices for user adoption.

I will share strategies and best practices for adopting Salesforce in this article. These tips will help organizations maximize Salesforce and ensure a smooth transition for long-term success.

What is Salesforce Adoption?

Salesforce adoption measures how well users use Salesforce in their daily tasks. It shows how effectively the Salesforce admin and development team has set up and customized Salesforce to meet the organization’s needs. There are three key aspects of Salesforce user adoption: onboarding new users, tracking the adoption process, and optimizing user adoption.

Why is Salesforce Adoption So Important?

In today's business world, effectively using Salesforce is essential for the success of companies that have invested in it. Some significant benefits of adopting Salesforce for organizations are:

• Workflows are streamlined and automated.

• Teams and departments collaborate better.

• Processes are standardized, so everyone understands them the same way.

• Decision-making improves because we use actionable data instead of old spreadsheets.

• Customer engagement and relationship management get better.

• Productivity and work efficiency increase.

• The system can grow and adapt to changing business needs.

• Data privacy and security are enhanced.

Using Salesforce effectively can improve your team's work and boost sales performance. When your team adopts Salesforce successfully, it can lead to better workflows and improved reporting.

• Deal win rates by 26%

• Lead conversion by 28%

• Forecast accuracy by 38%

• Sales productivity by 38%

• and revenues by 28%

Many organizations only use about 50% of Salesforce’s features, meaning much potential is untapped. This shows the importance of a good plan for adopting the system.

Typically, Salesforce adoption issues are:

• Not having a phased roll-out plan is overwhelming.

• Poor data quality makes users trust the platform less.

• 40% of users find data entry takes too much time.

• 35% of users want more training.

When implemented well, Salesforce can return up to $8.71 for every dollar spent. This makes using Salesforce effectively a key part of being successful with customer relationship management (CRM).

These benefits won't happen if your users do not use Salesforce properly. If this continues even after you set up a new Salesforce instance, your strategy for getting users to adopt Salesforce has problems.

Why Do Your Users Not Adopt Salesforce?

A recent Salesforce report shows that only 37% of teams entirely use their CRM. Teams that adopt Salesforce without experienced help usually only use about 50% of its features, which means they miss out on many benefits. 

Many Salesforce users do not use their CRM regularly because of different problems related to adoption.

1. Limited Knowledge about Salesforce Adoption

Many organizations struggle with Salesforce because users do not get enough training. Salesforce is a complex platform, and its many functions can confuse users, preventing businesses from making the most of it.

To address this issue, companies should provide training programs focusing on navigating Salesforce and performing specific job functions.

Ongoing training and support are crucial for successful Salesforce adoption. This ensures users stay updated on new features and best practices, which helps maximize the use of Salesforce.

2. Change Avoidance and Conservatism

Overcoming resistance to change and onboarding users is crucial for effective Salesforce adoption. Employees who have never used Salesforce may resist its implementation because it disrupts their routines, requires extra training, and may add more work at first.

It's essential to clearly explain the benefits of adopting Salesforce and how it aligns with the organization's goals.

Effective change management should be a central part of your Salesforce adoption plan, and involving employees at every stage is essential. This includes communicating why you are adopting Salesforce and how it will positively affect everyone in the company, especially the employees.

Involving stakeholders and users in decision-making fosters ownership and engagement, which can enhance your Salesforce adoption strategy. Addressing concerns, highlighting benefits, and showing Salesforce’s value can reduce resistance and encourage adoption.

3. Low Data Quality

Low data quality and poor integration are significant obstacles to getting people to use Salesforce effectively. If data is inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicated, users may lose trust in Salesforce as a reliable source of information. Additionally, if Salesforce does not connect well with your other business systems, such as email campaign tools or customer support platforms, it can lead to disorganized data and inefficient workflows.

Sales reps often skip updating Salesforce records. This happens partly because the user interface can be confusing and tedious. As a result, data can become even more incomplete and inaccurate, worsening the issue of low data quality. Problems with CRM data quality are common in Salesforce adoption and can hurt user productivity and confidence in the platform.

To tackle these issues, your company should prioritize data governance when adopting Salesforce. Setting clear guidelines for data entry, maintenance, and integration is essential.

You should implement data validation and cleaning processes to ensure that Salesforce data is accurate and complete. Additionally, integrating options with other systems can improve data flow and user experience. Your business can boost Salesforce adoption rates by maintaining data quality and ensuring smooth integration.

5. Lack of Customization

Many businesses find that the standard version of Salesforce does not solve all their problems. This can lead to challenges when trying to adopt Salesforce. The default settings may not match an organization’s needs, creating issues.

To overcome this, it’s essential to customize Salesforce. This includes changing the interface, creating personal reports and dashboards, and adding automation features. Customization can boost user satisfaction and help more people adopt the system.

6. Limited Support from Executives

Having strong support from top leaders is essential for successful Salesforce adoption. If executives do not show visible backing, it can undermine all your efforts. Without their support, it's hard to drive change, prioritize Salesforce as a key initiative, and obtain the resources needed for a smooth implementation.

Before starting the Salesforce adoption process, ensure that executives back the initiative. Business leaders should be actively involved in training and implementation. They need to promote Salesforce within the company and highlight its importance. This shows support, helps create a culture of adoption, and encourages employees to embrace Salesforce.

Best Salesforce Adoption Strategies You Should Use

To successfully adopt Salesforce, it’s essential to have a clear strategy and follow best practices. This approach will help your team use Salesforce effectively, which can lead to business growth and better customer experiences.

Creating a Salesforce adoption strategy now will save you time in the future. It will help you tackle common challenges, increase user engagement, and improve your processes. Whether you are new to Salesforce or want to enhance your current approach, these tips will guide you to a successful CRM integration.

1. Gain Support from Stakeholders

If you believe your team will benefit from using Salesforce, getting support from stakeholders and executives is essential. Engage your leadership team and key stakeholders to ensure they accept and back the Salesforce implementation.

When communicating with stakeholders, connect Salesforce adoption to your company's main goals to highlight its value. Employees and stakeholders will appreciate and use Salesforce more if they see how their roles align with broader business objectives.

Present Salesforce as more than just a tool; it is crucial for boosting sales, improving customer service, and streamlining operations. This helps stakeholders understand that adopting Salesforce is key to achieving organizational goals.

Demonstrating how Salesforce can lead to business success will reduce many adoption challenges and improve the rate of Salesforce usage.

2. Understand Your Team

To ensure a smooth and successful Salesforce adoption, Salesforce must fit how your team already works. Understanding your team’s current processes, especially those of the previous CRM system, is essential for customizing Salesforce to improve adoption and productivity.

During the Salesforce implementation, take the time to understand your team. You can conduct surveys or interviews with sales representatives to learn their challenges, such as prioritizing leads, handling administrative tasks, or lacking visibility into the sales pipeline.

This approach will help you effectively use and customize Salesforce features like lead and opportunity management, automated workflows, and personalized dashboards, leading to successful user adoption.

3. Explain Why Salesforce Adoption Is Important

Salesforce adoption is important because it helps the team work better and faster. When you show the team the benefits of using Salesforce, they will be more excited to use it. Teaching them how to use the features is not enough; explaining how Salesforce improves productivity and reporting is also essential. This understanding will help the team adopt Salesforce more quickly and effectively.

4. Include User Training in Your Salesforce Adoption Strategy

To successfully adopt Salesforce, your team needs the knowledge and skills to change and improve existing workflows. Training is crucial for effective Salesforce use in business operations.

First, ensure your team understands the basics of Salesforce navigation and account management. Once they grasp these, you can offer role-specific training tailored to their tasks, like editing contact records or building reports.

Other options are available if you're unsure about training your team yourself. You can use free resources like Salesforce Trailhead to provide accurate and relevant information or hire a Salesforce consultant to teach your team the essentials.

5. Manage Change Resilience

Creating the right communication plan is essential for successful Salesforce adoption because people often resist change.

You must understand what your end-users need and how they work to manage this. This will help you develop messages for product launches, training materials, and follow-ups during Salesforce adoption. Consider making step-by-step guides for the Salesforce user adoption process and placing them in Knowledge articles for easy access and reference.

Even with plenty of information and training, employees may still feel unmotivated to change during Salesforce user adoption.

To encourage Salesforce use, try slowly reducing the use of old systems. Introduce new processes that only work with Salesforce, use performance reviews based on Salesforce data, add gamification for peer-based adoption, and reward new users for using Salesforce. These actions may motivate users to switch and improve Salesforce adoption in their daily tasks.

6. Provide Regular Updates

To ensure that your team fully uses Salesforce, it's essential to provide regular updates and clear communication. Schedule meetings about adopting Salesforce early in the implementation process to address any challenges as they arise. Conduct several trial runs and pilot tests along the way. This approach will save you time and resources and help you avoid fixing problems after the implementation is complete.

7. Set and Control Salesforce Adoption Metrics

Feedback and tracking reports must be created to track Salesforce user adoption effectively. 

This will help you monitor how users adopt the system, identify users who need help, update training materials as required, and plan future communications about updates.

You can also use specific AppExchange apps, such as Salesforce Adoption Dashboards by Salesforce Labs and InsideBoard.

Some of the things you might want to keep an eye on during Salesforce user adoption are:

• User login frequency;

• Number of active users versus total users;

• Accuracy and completeness of data entered;

• Number of tasks and activities logged by users;

• Percentage of users who have completed training programs

• Record creation rates;

• Contact and opportunity creation rates;

• Activity completion and task statuses.

You can track several Salesforce user adoption metrics to understand how well users adopt the system. By monitoring these metrics, you can identify potential problems and areas where users struggle. This will help you enhance user engagement and improve Salesforce adoption rates over time.

8. Make the Interface Easy to Understand

To help your team use Salesforce better, focus on making the user interface more straightforward, especially for the sales team. First, find out how your team uses Salesforce and what they prefer. Your Salesforce admin can make changes to the homepage, such as removing unnecessary items and adding valuable shortcuts. They can also simplify page layouts by highlighting important information, speed up record creation with default values or quick actions, and minimize clicks and navigation through automation. These changes will make it easier for team members to use Salesforce and increase adoption.

9. Keep Data Quality High

Good data is essential for success in Salesforce. Clean and accurate information helps create reliable reports that benefit the business. It’s important to teach users why entering data correctly and entirely from the beginning is essential. Additionally, finding ways to load data easily and using custom fields will help keep data accurate.

10. Use AppExchange

Consider using third-party apps from AppExchange to improve Salesforce user adoption and increase company efficiency. Connecting Salesforce with popular project management, HR, customer service, and other software makes it more useful and customized for your organization’s needs.

11. Consider Hiring a Salesforce Admin

Hiring a Salesforce admin can be a wise choice, especially if your team lacks strong Salesforce skills. A Salesforce admin can significantly help with user adoption. They assist with tasks like installing apps, managing users, creating reports, and handling other Salesforce needs.

Codleo for Your Salesforce Project

To make the most of Salesforce without complicating your business, let our experts solve your Salesforce challenges. The Codleo consulting team can help you adopt Salesforce by customizing reports and dashboards. This way, your team can easily access important data all in one place. We can also conduct a Salesforce audit to ensure you get the best value from your Salesforce adoption.

Codleo Consulting is based in Delhi, India. We are a certified consultancy specializing in Salesforce and app development for AppExchange. As a Salesforce Summit Consulting Partner, our team has over 120 Salesforce certifications. This shows our strong expertise in the entire range of Salesforce products.

Schedule a free call with our CRM consultants if you have questions about Salesforce reports and dashboards or need help with your Salesforce system. Start getting the most out of your Salesforce investment today!