If you want to be successful with CRM, it needs to become part of your company’s culture and standard operating procedure, which begins by identifying who's going to drive the CRM bus and then getting the rest of the company on board, according to Brian Gardner of SalesProcess360, and author of ROI from CRM.

"Companies should leverage the early adopters in their business, in their company,” Gardner says in Increase ROI from Existing Technology. "Make the other people in the company see the success that an early adopter is having with a system like this."

Gardner will dive deeper into this concept when he presents ROI from CRM: 3 Critical Focus Areas for Long-Term Success, the third installment in his quarterly webcast series, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 1 p.m. EST. The event is sponsored by Tour de Force.

Gardner will discuss why maximizing the value you get from CRM is really not about the technology package you choose and how a sales-driven approach and focus will uncover and convert more opportunities to grow your top and bottom lines.

Achieving this first requires buy-in from the company. While the sales department is responsible for driving the CRM bus, the rest of the company must hop aboard. That includes operations, IT and marketing – which gets to ride shotgun, by the way. If you're only focusing on how sales can use CRM, you're missing out on significant value, Gardner says.

To learn more about cranking up your CRM bus and getting the entire company on board before starting this journey, sign up today for the MDM Webcast, ROI from CRM: 3 Critical Focus Areas for Long-Term Success.

You can also read more from Gardner in his book, ROI from CRM, and MDM article Increase ROI from Existing Technology, which outlines the importance of putting the right processes in place to optimize current systems.