Rolling out CRM in practice: the first three weeks
Spend week one on data, not settings. Collect customers and open leads from reps’ spreadsheets, load them through the import wizard and merge duplicates on the spot. A CRM that starts with dirty data loses the team’s trust on day one.
In week two, build the pipeline. Most teams work better with four or five stages than ten; write a clear exit criterion for each, such as “quote sent and receipt confirmed by the customer”. Set conservative default probabilities and correct them after three months of real data.
Week three is about habits: one simple rule — no deal without a future activity — and a short weekly meeting held on the kanban view only. When the sales manager reads reports from the CRM instead of spreadsheets, the team keeps the data current.