If you’ve ever tried to get sales, customer success, product, and engineering on the same page—especially in a B2B company—you know it can feel like herding caffeinated cats. Spreadsheets get buried, requests go missing, and everyone swears they’re “working on it.” If that sounds familiar, this guide is for you.
We’ll walk through how to get real value out of Solidroad—not just another tool to “drive alignment,” but something that can actually help different teams talk to each other, prioritize real customer needs, and keep deals moving. You’ll get concrete steps, a few warnings about what not to waste time on, and some honest perspective from people who’ve been burned by bad software before.
Step 1: Get Clear on Why You’re Using Solidroad (and What to Ignore)
Before you click “add user” for the 12th time, pause. Solidroad promises a lot—deal collaboration, handoff management, customer feedback, internal visibility, and more. Here’s the reality: if you try to use every feature at once, you’ll confuse everyone and kill adoption.
What to do: - Identify your main pain points. Is it sales-to-implementation handoffs? Feature requests getting lost? Execs asking for updates at 10pm? - Pick one or two core use cases to start. (Example: “We need a single view of deal progress for sales and onboarding.”) - Ignore the bells and whistles for now. Don’t bother with advanced integrations or fancy reports until you’ve nailed the basics.
Pro tip: Make your first goal embarrassingly simple. If you can solve even one real problem—like fewer dropped balls during onboarding—people will start using it on their own.
Step 2: Set Up Your Teams and Roles—Don’t Overthink It
Solidroad lets you invite users, create teams, and set permissions. This is where a lot of organizations fall into the “let’s map our org chart” trap. Don’t. Keep it lean.
How to do it: - Add just the core people first: sales reps, CSMs, relevant product/ops folks. - Start with broad roles. (You don’t need six different sales permission levels.) - Use teams only if you really need them (e.g., separate onboarding and support).
What to skip: - Spending hours customizing user roles for edge cases. Wait until someone actually needs more/less access.
Reality check: Fancy permission setups look great in demos, but in reality, most people just want to see what’s relevant to them and not get nagged by notifications they don’t care about.
Step 3: Map Out Your Workflow in Plain English
This is where Solidroad can either become your new home base—or just another unused tab. It all depends on whether the workflow matches how your teams actually operate.
How to approach it: - Grab a whiteboard (or a Notion doc) and sketch out your actual process. Not the idealized one—the messy real one. - Example: “Sales closes deal > Implementation sends kickoff email > Customer Success checks in at 30 days.” - List out handoff points and recurring pain points. - Use Solidroad’s pipeline or project views to mirror that process, step-by-step. - Create templates for common tasks or stages, but don’t go overboard. If you have more than five steps to start, you’re probably overcomplicating it.
What works: - Simple, visual workflows everyone understands at a glance. - Automating reminders for handoffs and check-ins.
What doesn’t: - Trying to force your process to fit Solidroad’s defaults. Tweak the tool to match your needs, not the other way around.
Step 4: Connect the Right Tools—But Only the Ones That Matter
Solidroad integrates with CRMs, ticketing systems, and messaging apps. This sounds great, but connecting everything out of FOMO is a fast track to chaos.
How to approach it: - Start with the integration that saves you the most grunt work. For most B2B orgs, that’s usually Salesforce, HubSpot, or Slack. - Only connect other tools (like Jira or Zendesk) if you know teams will use those updates inside Solidroad. - Test integrations with a sandbox or sample data first. Double check permissions—nothing kills trust like the wrong person seeing sensitive deal info.
Avoid: - Turning on every integration “just in case.” Most teams never use more than 2-3.
Pro tip: If you can’t explain to a non-technical teammate why an integration helps, skip it for now.
Step 5: Set Up Simple, Actionable Notifications
Notifications can make or break adoption. Too many, and people tune out. Too few, and stuff gets missed.
How to do it: - Use Solidroad’s built-in notification settings to limit alerts to key events: handoffs, due dates, and direct mentions. - Encourage teams to @mention specific people for questions or blockers instead of spamming channels. - Set up a weekly digest for team leads or execs, so they don’t need to log in daily.
Works well: - Personalized notifications that match people’s roles. - Digest emails for managers who don’t want (or need) every update.
Falls flat: - Default “notify everyone” settings. You’ll annoy folks and they’ll ignore Solidroad altogether.
Step 6: Drive Adoption—Start with Champions, Not Mandates
You can’t force collaboration with a memo. Instead, get a few team leads or respected reps to use Solidroad first. Let them show quick wins.
What to do: - Identify people who already care about fixing cross-team issues. (The ones who always chase down updates or build their own spreadsheets.) - Give them early access, and ask for blunt feedback. Fix what you can, fast. - Have them demo how Solidroad solved a real problem (like faster onboarding or fewer dropped deals) in your next team meeting.
What to avoid: - Big-bang rollouts or “everyone must use this tomorrow” emails. Those never work. - Ignoring feedback about what’s confusing or slow. If people say a workflow sucks, fix it or cut it.
Honest take: Adoption comes from real wins, not training videos. If Solidroad helps even a small group move faster, word spreads.
Step 7: Review, Tweak, and Ruthlessly Cut What’s Not Working
After a month, take a beat. What’s actually better? What’s just noise?
How to review: - Look at the numbers: Are handoff times down? Are fewer deals falling through the cracks? - Ask people what they like, what they hate, and what they ignore. - Remove or simplify confusing workflows, unused custom fields, or pointless notifications.
Skip: - Vanity metrics (e.g., “number of tasks created”). Focus on real outcomes—speed, clarity, fewer mistakes.
Pro tip: It’s fine to drop features you thought you’d need, but don’t. The fewer moving parts, the better.
Some Honest Pros and Cons of Using Solidroad
Where Solidroad shines:
- Transparency: Everyone can see what’s happening with key deals or projects—no more chasing updates in Slack.
- Hand-off management: Sales, onboarding, and CS aren’t working from different playbooks.
- Accountability: Easier to spot who owns what and what’s stuck.
Where it’s just okay:
- Customization: You can tweak workflows, but you can’t turn it into a custom app. Don’t expect miracles.
- Reporting: The basics are solid, but serious BI folks will still export data elsewhere.
Where it can flop:
- If you try to do everything at once: Teams get overwhelmed, stop using it, and you’re back to email chains.
- If you use it as a CRM replacement: It’s not built for that. Keep your CRM for pipeline tracking.
Keep It Simple, Stay Flexible
Solidroad isn’t a magic bullet. But if you keep things simple—focus on one or two real problems, make it easy to use, and cut what’s not working—you’ll get more out of it than most B2B teams ever get from “collaboration platforms.”
Start small. Iterate fast. And remember, no tool will fix broken communication overnight. But you can make things a whole lot less painful for everyone involved.