I was having lunch with a friend the other day and he told me about a recent horror experience he had within his own organization. His organization just completed a fairly large internal CRM project and was rolling out an application. During a training session with a core group of users, one of the users attempted to move from one screen to another without saving and lost some data. Mortified that her action was a bug in the system, she lashed out at the training staff and soon infected the entire classroom with a negative perception of the application. The training staff was eventually able to regain control of the session and finish it out; however, they all now know that an enormous user adoption hurdle lies ahead of them.

I wanted to bring up this story to illustrate a critical point that we often think about in our CRM implementations. Know your influencers!! It’s easy to fall into a trap where you assume management support equals end user support. This may be true in smaller organizations or organizations that have a very hierarchical organizational structure and culture. However, many organizations are operating in more flat and distributed models. This often means that the loud voice of a peer can be just as influential as that of an Executive Director. Getting insight into who the influencers are and getting buy in from them early on in the process can help to avoid situations such as the one above.