It's great to be "The General", but this is only as good as having your troops behind you who are willing, able, and ready to go into battle. Selecting and implementing your Social CRM is no different. All personnel that will be involved in this process need to be invested in and excited about seeing it to its successful conclusion!
Let's start by saying this. The absolute worst way to get buy-ins from your users is to announce that you have invested in a SCRM and that you want everybody to be supportive of your decision. At this time, we are not asking your team for buy-ins on a specific product or solution. What we do want is a buy-in to discussing the concept itself. Which of these two statements is likely to resonate more positively with your team members?
"We would like to talk to you about implementing Social CRM"
"We would like to talk to you about exploring some ways to make our company more effective in finding and servicing our...