Things to consider before adding a new hire to the CRM

Hiring a new team member can be a challenge, and once you’ve found that great new hire you need to focus on training to help them become a productive member of the team! Adding a new hire to the CRM is essential to sharing data and keeping everything in one place, but that new user will also need some CRM training to make sure they understand how to use it. We recommend a few steps before your newest hire starts to ensure they know all of the best practices for successful CRM use.

What kinds of actions will your new hire need to take in the CRM?    

Before your new employee starts, take some time to think about what the primary functions of the new hire will be. Will they need to do a lot of scheduling? Will they be sending out a lot of emails or email blasts? Will they be making cold calls or working on projects?

Once you’ve identified some of the primary functions of the new hire, make a list of how those relate to the CRM. As you do this, consider how those functions might affect the permissions they’ll need to have as a user. These are a few areas to consider before starting the new hire in LACRM:

• Data Entry -- If the new hire will be generating leads, they’ll need to know how to import contacts or manually enter new records. If those records should be assigned to other users for follow up, they’ll also need to know how to assign records and will need access to your existing users’ contacts.
• Follow ups and Appointments -- If the new hire will be scheduling appointments or follow ups, they’ll need to know how to create events and tasks in the CRM, and how to link those to contacts. If they should be assigning tasks or events to other users, they’ll also need to know how to assign a task or event to another user, and will need access to your existing users’ contacts and calendar.
• Notes and Email Logging -- If the new hire will be calling clients or sending out emails, they’ll need to know how to enter notes and log emails. If they’ll be speaking with clients that already exist in your CRM, they’ll also need access to existing users’ contacts.
• Pipelines -- If the new hire will be involved in the processes that you work with (like sales, projects, recruiting, etc.), they'll need to know how to use your pipeline. The pipeline structure will be visible to them, but the new hire will need to know what each status means to you and if you have multiple pipelines which one they should be using in different contexts.
• Integrations -- If the new hire will frequently access the CRM from a phone, they may need access to our integrations with Google calendar, Outlook calendar, or Google contacts. If they'll need to send out mass emails to large groups of contacts, they may need access to our Mailchimp integration.

Who does your new hire need to communicate with?

Next, you'll want to think about which users' data your new hire will need, and whether they need edit or view access to their contacts, calendar, or both. You'll also need to think about who needs access to your new hire's data, such as a manager or fellow team members working on the same project. These help tutorials will show you different data-sharing setups in the CRM:

• Sharing contacts with your team
• Sharing tasks and events with your team

When you add your new hire to the CRM, you'll be able to specify whose data they can access, and which existing users get to see the new hire's information. You won't need to go back and edit existing users' in order to update their permissions.

What CRM rules does your new hire need to know?

You should also consider any company policies on how things are handled in the CRM. For example, what qualifies a lead as high priority? Should a lead always have a follow up task assigned? Should every single email be logged to the CRM, or only certain emails? It can be helpful to write a list of company policies for easy access later on, and you can give the list to the new employee for easy access as they get started too!

If you’re not sure how the new employee’s duties relate to LACRM, let us know! We’re happy to set up a call to discuss how your newest employee might use LACRM to make sure that all of your data is in one place and your business is as efficient as possible.

Once you’ve determined what the new hire will need to be doing in the CRM, it’s time to add them to the CRM! We have a tutorial on adding and onboarding a new hire here that you can follow to help get the new hire all set up.

Still have questions? Less Annoying CRM comes with free phone and email support - even if you're not a paying customer! Use our contact page to get a hold of us, and we'll be happy to help however we can.

This post was originally published 01/16/17, but was updated on 7/18/2022.