To Use, or Not to Use Sales Enhancing Technology:  That is the Question

While firms continue to spend billions of dollars in sales stack technologies to improve rep decision-making and productivity, very few dollars hit their mark.  According to the Garner Group and Accenture’s Sales Performance Optimization Study, as much as 85% of all deployed sales tools failed to improve sales performance.  Today sale leaders and reps are inundated with a variety of technologies to make sales leaders and reps smarter.  Yet according to a recent study by CSO Insights, we continue to see sales quota attainment decline for the fifth straight year.   Why isn’t sales technology improving rep performance and making reps more successful?

The answer to the question is probably not as difficult as you think.  First, lets exam why adopting sales technology tools often fail to make sales leaders and reps more effective and quota killers. 

  1. Adopting sales technology without allocating the resources and support is a recipe for failure. Lessons learned from sales training failures have not crossed over to adopting new sales technology.   Failing to allocate a significant amount of resources and support for launching new sales technologies will likely end in adoption failure.
  2. Reps must see technology as helping them intentionally improve. The reason most rep stops using new sales tool is because it fails to help them save time or get better.    The best sales tools are those that augment the salesperson’s skills.  Reps must see technology as a means to an end:  that they are able to sell more and win more business in less time.  Reps, who see technology as a barrier, rather than an enhancer to success, will simply stop using it.
  3. Most innovative sales technologies have more features than can be adequately absorbed in a limited amount of time. Technology has the ability to overwhelm and therefore be under utilized if not rolled out effectively.  Our research shows that sales leaders and reps cannot absorb and implement new sales tools in their entirety.  Organizations that use a fire hose approach to technology adoption, experience greater failures in adoption.

Over the years we have seen many successful implementations of a sales technology that actually improves sales leaders and rep performance.   Let’s examine how sales organizations implement sales technology tools that successfully improve sales performance.  

  1. Bill Gates said, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.  The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”  It is important for any sales organization to first spend time mapping out your sales process before you even adopt technologies to improve leader and rep performance.   Technology is often a magnifier of success or a magnifier of your inefficiencies.   Organizations that see sales as a process versus an outcome are better equipped to enjoy the fruits of sales enhancing technologies.
  2. Before adopting any technology, first make sure your organization or technology partner is willing to provide the resources and support for training leaders and reps how to use the technology. It is not enough to educate leaders and reps about the technology; the only sustainable goal is to create engaged users.  To create engaged users, sales organizations must (1) determine what technology features are absolutely necessary for sales leaders and what key features are critical for rep success and (2) make sure sales leaders and reps find the technology relevant in helping them intentionally improve.  Research by Jelinek et al, in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice highlight that sales leaders and reps are more likely to embrace new technology when the technology is meaningful and relevant.  
  3. Sales leaders must lead off using the technology in order for reps to see the importance of such tools. When reps see their leaders embrace and use new technology, they are more likely to use it.   Researchers Mathieu et al. in the Journal of Applied Psychology have shown that rep behavior often mirrors leader behavior; Technology adoption is in the hands of leader adoption, pure and simple.

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