The short answer
A good Salesforce user adoption plan is short. It names one goal, one owner, a handful of numbers to watch, and what happens in the first 90 days. Most plans fail not because they're missing steps, but because everyday users still find Salesforce hard to get answers from.
Copy the template below and fill in the blanks for your team.
Before you start
Write down three things on one page:
- The goal: what should people do in Salesforce that they don't do today? For example, "log every donor call" or "update deal stages weekly."
- The owner: one person who checks progress every week. Usually the Salesforce admin or a team lead.
- Your starting numbers: how many people log in each week, how many records get updated, and how many questions land on the admin's desk.
Days 1 to 30: make the first week easy
- Ask each team the five questions they need answered most often, and make sure Salesforce answers them: a list view, a dashboard, or a saved answer.
- Clean up the records people will see first. Duplicates and missing details make people stop trusting Salesforce fast. The data cleanup checklist is a good place to start.
- Hide what people don't need: extra fields, tabs, and apps they'll never use.
- Give everyone one place to ask for help, and answer quickly.
Days 31 to 60: build the habit
- Replace one spreadsheet with Salesforce. Pick the one people open most, and retire it on purpose.
- Use Salesforce in meetings. If the weekly pipeline or program review runs from a dashboard, people keep their records up to date.
- Recognize the people who use it well, and ask them what helped.
- Look at your numbers. Who hasn't logged in? Ask them what's in the way, not why they haven't.
Days 61 to 90: remove what's still in the way
- Go back to the questions people still send the admin. Each one is a sign that something is hard to find.
- Fix the top two or three, through simpler views, a short how-to, or a tool that lets people ask Salesforce questions in plain English.
- Share the before and after numbers with leadership, and set the goal for the next 90 days.
Numbers worth tracking
You don't need a big dashboard. Track these monthly:
- Weekly active users: how many people log in each week. Login History in Setup shows this.
- Records created or updated per person.
- How complete key records are: for example, contacts with an email address.
- Questions sent to the admin each week. This should go down.
- Spreadsheets still in use alongside Salesforce. This should go down too.
Why adoption plans stall
Most plans focus on training and announcements. Those help for a week. What keeps people in Salesforce is being able to get an answer quickly without knowing which report to run. Read more in why Salesforce user adoption is so difficult, or see seven ways to improve Salesforce adoption without another training session.
Where Hank fits
Hank lets your team ask Salesforce questions in plain English, like "which donors haven't given this year?" or "which deals close this month?", and get a straight answer from your own Salesforce. That takes care of a lot of the "where do I find this?" questions that stall adoption. Setup takes about 15 minutes. Meet Hank on the home page and ask him anything, or see how he supports Salesforce user adoption.