During ZohoDay26, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down and talking CRM with Julie Lloyd from Acme Brick in beautiful Austin, Texas,. Naturally, the topic of the day was Acme Brick’s fascinating journey into the Zoho ecosystem.

As a CRM analyst and consultant, I've seen countless software deployments crash and burn because organizations focus entirely on the technology rather than the people actually using it. That is why talking with Julie was such a breath of fresh air; her focus is entirely on the human element of Acme Brick’s digital transformation. For those who aren't familiar, Acme Brick isn't just any company; they are the largest US-owned manufacturer of brick. They deal in a wide gamut of materials, including manufactured block, stone, tile, and various other wall cladding. It is a sizeable operation with around 1,700 employees spread across 13 states.

This coming April, Acme Brick is celebrating a its 135th birthday. When a company with that much history decides to overhaul its CRM technology, you know there’s a good story behind it. Even more so, if it is a system replacement story, Julie has been with Acme Brick for two years, and what keeps her up at night is CRM training and ensuring user adoption.

TL;DR

If you do not want to read, here’s the full video interview.

For everyone else, read on.

Having said all this, let's dive into why they made the switch and how they are making it work this time.

The Square Peg, Round Hole CRM Disaster

Before migrating to Zoho, Acme Brick used another CRM system. We won't name names here, but in spite of it coming from a highly reputable vendor, it was a very clunky implementation. Julie described it as a "square peg, round hole" situation. While the tool was a powerful one, it simply did not match their specific business needs and therefore suffered from poor user adoption.

Why? Because it was incredibly click-heavy. A sales rep might have to click 27 times just to input some data or view a specific field. That is simply not tenable. You cannot ask busy sales professionals to spend their precious time working a complicated system. They have better things to do than inputting data while not getting much out of it. Ultimately, the goal of a CRM system is transparency and accountability. Management needs to see what quotes are out there so they can adjust manufacturing or stocking speeds accordingly. But you won't get that transparency if the reps refuse to touch the software.

The Three Traits That Make a CRM a Treat

In my experience, systems either enforce behavior or encourage it. As Julie rightly pointed out, nobody likes to be forced, although imo there is something to be said against using a reasonable carrot and stick approach. She outlined three essential traits that turned their CRM rollout from a nightmare into a treat.

Customizability: Acme Brick is not a tech company; their sales are deeply relational and heavily focused on account management rather than a rigid, step-by-step process. The CRM had to adapt to their relationship-building style, not the other way around.

Intuitive Design: They have highly seasoned reps. Some who have been selling brick at Acme for 35 years or more. While some of them are tech-savvy, others are rather paper-based and cautious about adopting new technology. The Zoho interface won them over because, as Julie said, if you can order from Amazon, you can point and click your way through Zoho.

Management Buy-in: This one is an absolute must. From the executive VP all the way down, management has bought into the system. They are leading discussions, sending messages directly within the tool, and are pulling their own reports instead of demanding standalone spreadsheets from their teams.

Tuning Into Radio Station WIIFM (What's In It For Me?)

Many CRM implementations fail because they are designed to exclusively benefit management. When that happens, not only seasoned salespeople immediately tune into their favorite radio station: WIIFM (what's in it for me?).

Julie’s philosophy here is incredibly pragmatic. A CRM shouldn't just be a strict mandate where reps are threatened with, "If it's not in the CRM, you don't get paid". She actually believes reps shouldn't waste their time tracking tiny, insignificant deals that turn into an administrative time suck. Instead, the real value of the CRM is preventing important details from falling through the cracks. It saves reps from spending 20 minutes hunting through a physical notebook for a three-week-old detail. With Zoho, they can send emails directly from the tool, keeping all correspondence cleanly logged under the relevant opportunity, which is a clear time-saver.

A True IT Partnership

When selecting Zoho from a crowded market, cost was certainly a factor, but a major differentiator was the ability to work directly with Zoho's Enterprise Business Solutions (EBS) team. Acme’s IT department had a bad taste in its mouth from their previous CRM, having dealt with three different implementation partners who had no "skin in the game" and left them with a "take it or leave it" implementation.

With Zoho, the team that implemented Acme’s system is the exact same team providing daily support. Julie noted that they are yet to hear the word "no" from Zoho yet; instead, they get invitations to be beta testers, or "guinea pigs". Currently, they are beta-testing the Graph API integration for Microsoft Outlook. They've also successfully integrated Power BI and industry-specific permitting services that handle commercial and residential builds.

Crawl Before You Run

The system is still very young; Acme Brick is only about two or three months in. They are very much in the "crawl" phase of a "crawl, walk, run" strategy. Julie and two IT staff members serve as the system admins. Julie is happily able to make some system changes herself, like updating drop-down menus, without constantly relying on IT. This shortens turnaround times and has a positive impact on user happiness and adoption.

Looking ahead, Acme is evaluating the Zoho Marketing module. The goal is to capture leads directly from their brick.com website and seamlessly import them into the CRM without incurring massive new implementation costs.

The Honeymoon Phase

Like any relationship, vendor-buyer relationships are much like a marriage; you hope they last a long time. Right now, Acme Brick and Zoho are still in the honeymoon phase. I pushed Julie to tell me the system's biggest flaw or what they didn't get from Zoho to give us a real challenge to discuss.

Her answer? She simply hasn't found the weak link yet. While I always hope for a little dramatic friction to analyze, her confidence that Zoho will handle any future bumps in the road smoothly is unwavering and speaks volumes. As I joked at the end of our chat, hallucinations are for LLMs, not for CRM analysts. I'll take her honest, positive experience at face value and do not doubt it, looking at my own experience with Zoho.

Three Learnings for CRM Success

Looking back at my conversation with Julie, there are three universal lessons any organization should apply to their CRM strategy.

User Adoption Trumps Raw Power: It does not matter how robust a system is or how great the reputation of its vendor is, if your sales team refuses to use it. Acme Brick learned the hard way that a "click-heavy" platform built for a prescriptive sales process is a recipe for failure in a relationship-driven business. A tool must be highly customizable and as intuitive as ordering from Amazon to truly stick.

Always Tune Into "WIIFM": A CRM cannot simply be a mandate or a surveillance tool for management. To win over the users, you have to prove it makes their lives easier. Like preventing vital deal details from falling through the cracks and eliminating 20-minute searches for old notebook scribbles.

True Partnership Beats Transactional Implementation: The difference between a mere vendor and a true partner is ongoing accountability. By working with an implementation team that has "skin in the game" and remains on board for daily support, Acme Brick successfully avoided the frustrating "take it or leave it" trap that plagues so many software rollouts.

During ZohoDay2025 I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Udit Pahwa, CIO of Blue Star Ltd. Blue Star is a nearly 80-year-old company, based in India, which is a leader in cooling solutions for both the residential and commercial market. The company offers a variety of cooling products, including deep freezers, air conditioners, and chillers. Solutions are provided through direct sales, channel sales, or a combination of both.

Blue Star went through a series of five CRM proof of concepts, evaluations and implementation attempts with limited success before settling on Zoho CRM. Blue Star certainly has been a “burnt child” at that time.

The main reason for Blue Star deciding for going with Zoho CRM is that Blue Star did not want to go for what Pahwa calls a canned solution. Zoho offered the willingness and ability to co-create a solution that is tailored to Blue Star’s needs. “They're ready to tailor it for us. That was a big advantage” he says.

Before embarking into this sixth implementation, Blue Star performed what Pahwa calls an introspection to find out why there was no adoption but, in fact, resistance. He says that “what we came to know is any CRM for a sales guy is looked upon as moral policing”.

This is not terribly uncommon and can be addressed. Blue Star chose to work with a comprehensive set of three levers to drive adoption.

Here you can watch the full conversation with Udit Pahwa,

The company started with executive sponsorship and a top-down approach in a division that had what Pahwa calls a “visionary leader who was also a technology enthusiast. This leader set a goal to eliminate spreadsheets and to only use a digital platform, which helped drive user adoption of Zoho CRM within that division.” This sent the clear message that the implementation is not yet another implementation that doesn’t matter but that it is important for the company. In addition, this strategy facilitates doing a further roll-out on the back of a successful implementation (or limits the losses in case of a failure).

Second, Blue Star answered the important question “what is in it for me” that the sales reps have. The sales teams’ concerns were mitigated by explaining and later showing how unproductive time would be reduced by the CRM via eliminating spreadsheets and significantly simplifying visit reports. This way, sales reps spend less time with administrative parts and instead can do more of what they really want – spend time in the field with their customers. “So, no more filling out of spreadsheets, no more creation of visit reports, uh all the manual stuff which they used to get into. We said you don't need to do part of it will be done on by the app and part of it you will have to do it on the app, and it will format everything for a review.”

The sales teams seem to have understood and believed this. What also helped was that the new system was no more referred to as a CRM system but as a “sales organizer”. This contributed to positioning the system as a helper instead of a monitoring tool.

“So I think they realized that as we are growing their unproductive workload is going to grow even further and here is a tool which will help me reduce my unproductive time so that I have more time to spend in the market with the customer and I don't have to worry about all the administrative tasks which I need to do in the back end.”

Instead, the system digitalized a good part of the workload. The system minimizes the need for input into a visit report to five or six structured fields, automates the summarization, reporting and analysis, helping both, the sales reps and back-office staff who are relieved of the cumbersome consolidation of reports that came in via Excel spreadsheets. In addition, this enables the system to draft a route plan for the sales reps, facilitating their planning. In Pahwa’s words “that took out a sizable chunk of admin work for the users as well as the supporting staff who were attached to the users”. And this is also where Blue Star sees the way ahead with the sales organizer. Next steps include the evaluation of AI powered speech to text technologies to further reduce efforts. Instead of typing, sales reps will then be able to dictate visit summaries etc. This input then shall be converted to text and then automatically populate the CRM.

Of course, users have to pay a price for this, which is mandatory use of the system. Managers won’t accept reports in the form of spreadsheets anymore and require that all pertinent data is entered into the sales organizer. Basically, the approach is that “if it ain’t in the system, it doesn’t exist”. This again is facilitated by offering all sales reps and managers personalized dashboards that give real-time insight into budget vs. actual sales, also thanks to an integration into the SAP ERP system.

One could say that this is a kind of a carrot and stick approach, however one with a considerably sized carrot and a fairly small, yet effective, stick. Especially since Blue Star plans to make work with the system even easier and more beneficial for the sales reps.

The result? Success. “… this worked well and we had near 100% adoption with that business division so much so that their pipeline of leads I think went up by about 35% and they were able to attract a larger business you know under their fold because for us in the in the commercial air conditioning segment the more leads you have the more chances are for the conversion and growth of business. So that worked well for them.”

This, in turn, caused the other divisions to get on board, or as Pahwa says “When this was a success in one business division it started having a rub-off effect across the organization and as we speak today the entire sales organization is live and 100% adopting the my sales organizer which is the Zoho CRM.”

In summary, Blue Star worked with a smart combination of decisions that turned out to be a winning strategy to achieve the goal of 100% user adoption and to drive business through it.

• With Zoho CRM, Blue Star chose a flexible tool.
• With Zoho, Blue Star found a partner that was willing to co-create a solution with them.
• Blue Star promised and delivered significant value for the sales reps and not only for their managers.
• Blue Star moved away from the term CRM, which was a burnt and positioned the tool as a helper, naming it sales organizer.
• There is executive buy in to the solution with not only sales reps being mandated to use it but also managers and executives wanting to use a system.