5 Hurdles to Clear on the Way to Sales Transformation Success
Technology can also make it easier to gauge the success of a shifted approach, helping companies determine whether additional adjustments need to be made during a transformation over time. For instance, Blohm mentions that one Xactly client noticed a problem emerging in that too many people were falling below quota at the same time that some were rising much too far above it. This called for a recalibration of the incentive plan, which factored in the goals of the population as a whole. It resulted in more people reaching quota, helped raise morale, and improved the goal-setting process. What’s even more impressive? It didn’t cost anything, he says.
HURDLE 4: GETTING STUCK IN TRADITIONAL METHODS
Since most sales managers were promoted to their positions only after they climbed the ranks to become top performers, they’ll often fall into the trap of adopting the methods their managers used to instruct them. However, change is constant, and many of the techniques and strategies sales professionals learned from their managers are likely to become outdated over time. Thus, leadership should take a more conscious approach, Galvin advised.
This includes making investments in sales management training, as well as technologies that enable individualized, one-on-one coaching. Plenty of coaching technologies are currently available. One of these is Cloud Coach, Galvin mentioned, a project management and productivity suite designed specifically for the sales force.
Similarly, sales enablement solution provider Brainshark’s coaching product enables sales managers to stay up to date on the ways salespeople engage customers with marketing content, allowing them to help reps improve their pitches, boost productivity, and close more deals.
This conscious approach also applies to investing in emerging technologies that enable sales managers to observe the behaviors of their teams and learn from their actions. “What if every salesperson was using a Google Glass or a GoPro, and you could see what they see, hear what they hear, and analyze that? That’s the early days of Big Data in sales,” Galvin suggested, hinting at developments to come.
The cooperation of managers is also a key to getting the most out of the offerings, says Rachel Goldberg, Brainshark’s senior director of product marketing and program management. “A big part of transformation is actually making it happen,” Goldberg says. “It’s all great at a strategic level if a company wants to make shifts with who they’re talking to, or new markets, but really, where the transformation takes place is in the interaction between the managers on the front lines and the reps themselves.”
HURDLE 5: GOING IT ALONE
Galvin urged companies to leverage experienced technology vendors for their expertise and ongoing partnerships. “There’s a whole bunch of folks that can help you in all these categories. You do not need to build things. In the late ’90s, companies were going, ‘Do I build or do I buy?’ There’s no reason to build things when there’s expertise you can leverage to make things better.”
“If an organization is going through a sales strategy transformation, changing the way they’re going to market, changing the products they’re offering, and want to change the way they pay people for selling them, a system like Xactly can absolutely adopt easier than overhauling a mainframe or trying to build a bunch of Excel spreadsheets,” Blohm says.
Fortunately, Blohm also notes that professionals have come a long way since the 1990s and are much more thoughtful in buying and selecting technologies. This, he says, is putting more pressure on vendors to deliver systems that are designed for the likelihood of a future transformation.
When choosing new technologies, an important factor to consider is whether software is designed to accommodate other components the organization might invest in down the line.
However, each company is different, Galvin emphasized. “Only you know what’s right for your business or organization,” he said.
The most important thing is that each company—like any good sports team—continues to outperform its competitors.
Associate Editor Oren Smilansky can be reached at osmilansky@infotoday.com.