What You Should Really Seek from Phase 1 of Your CRM Project

You may think that your goal in the initial phase of a CRM project is to finally, at long last, gain access to useful management reports, or perhaps, should you be so bold, to increase sales or improve customer service.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but neither of these goals, admirable as they may be, deserves to be your most important objective.Your most critical job in Phase 1 is to sell your troops on the importance of using the new system, and thereby achieve your most important goal: high adoption levels.

How do you gain high adoption levels? The same way you succeed in selling most products and services-via high perceived value, low cost (with cost in this situation typically measured in terms of learning time and usability), and serious motivation and management.

Here is what these attributes mean in the real world of your company:

...