Seven steps for successful rollouts of sales technology

My inspiration for this post: This week’s Sales 2.0 conference, my presentation this week at the Marketo Summit on the Automated Sales Organization, and just an overall affection for the incredible transformation technology is driving in sales.   There are amazing things happening right now in the Sales 2.0 space — Sales leaders are accepting technology as part of their keys to success and looking to spend more.  Step one in the tranformation is complete:  Agree that technology can help. Step Two is implementation and roll-out.  As we have learned from CRM, the hard part is getting sales people to use new tools aka adoption.   Sales people are inherently efficient people.  They develop patterns and habits over time that they rely on.  When you introduce something that takes them out of the pattern, they will push back.sales 2.0, sales , crm    There is a process for successfully rolling out Sales 2.0/Sales technology.  I have chronicled here in this post.  

There are four keys to success:
1.  Show them how to use it -  Start with a simple, easy to understand process and show them how to do it.
2.  Use peer pressure to get buy-in.  Build an internal success story and roll from there.  WIIFM (What’s-in-it-for-me) is critical for
sales adoption)
3.  Keep them “in-app”.  What this means: If they have to click through tabs or applications, they won’t like it and you shouldn’t either.
4.  Have a dedicated role or organization that is responsible for choosing, implementing, training, and optimizing tools and applications. (Preferably sales operations)

Here are my steps for rollout success:

1. Start with a small group — Here is guaranteed failure: “Ok guys, we bought this thing. It’s awesome. Go use it!” Instead, create a small team of people to get the mistakes out of the way and figure out what type of process works for your sales team.  Sales guys will find one hiccup and walk away.  Isolate this problem in the small team instead of with everyone.
2. Literally, sit in their cubes  — I hate to do this to you but you have to watch them use it.  It’s the only way to help them.  Remember, you have to fit into the current sales process — the organizational process and the individual rep process.  This exercise is not just for the sales rep but for you as well.  When you rollout, you will want to make your step-by-step training process as relevant to how your organization’s sales reps work as possible.
3. Check in frequently  — Keep them moving.  I have so many free trials I tried once and forgot about I can’t even count.
4. Get them hooked — If it works, they will keep using it.  Get the core group hooked and keep going.
5. Get others jealous  — Once you get the small group successful, you now have a success story.  Remember, WIIFM is the key.  WIIFM from their peers is the ultimate selling point for skeptical sales reps.
6. Then, roll-out  — Now start rolling it out.  Use the learnings from your small group to create a relevant training process for the team.  Have people from your small group talk about why they like it, what they have seen, and how they use it.
7. Measure and optimize — You can always get better…as more team members use the technology, figure out what’s working or not working and keep training the team on it.

by Craig Rosenberg
http://www.funnelholic.com/