Funny Works for Salesforce Adoption

It’s been one month since I started working at LevelEleven, and here’s what I’ve learned so far: When it comes to Salesforce adoption, funny works. My team launched my Salesforce experience with funny, and it not only led me to adopt the CRM, but changed the way our entire team looks at using Chatter.

It all began on day 2, when I started creating my Chatter profile – putting in my name, title, phone number and that’s about it. Our CTO, Kevin O’Hara, mentioned that I’d need a profile picture. I figured I’d take care of it eventually.

The next day, Kevin decorated my Chatter profile with its first post: “Profile pic! Profile pic!” It was a gentle reminder to get my profile picture posted. Or so I thought. Once again, I figured I would get to that simple task later, and I prioritized some tangible marketing projects over my own personal Salesforce adoption.

In an effort to start using Chatter, I did send out a post to the entire team to inform them of a new story on the LevelEleven blog. It was my way to start testing out the platform. Then, at the end of the day, I turned to a neighbor and asked if she saw that post. “I just want to make sure I sent it correctly,” I said.

Two minutes later, she turned to me and asked: “Is that you?” I walked over to her desk, and this is what I saw:

I still can’t decide which was the best (or, in my case, most mortifying) part:  The fact that she actually thought the picture could be of me, or that some of our remote team members who hadn’t met me yet were thinking: So this is our new director of marketing? I hope she’s good, because she looks crazy.

And just like that, my Chatter adoption skyrocketed. We tweeted the whole fiasco, and I’ve strived to get that much social media traction every day since. Speaking of the days since, we’ve hired two new team members, so I’m no longer the newbie. What’s the first thing you think they did upon joining LevelEleven?