As iPads® and tablets become more prevalent in the sales world, there is a lot of buzz around the many ways in which they could be useful. With more and more sales organizations adopting these technology, one thing is clear – the potential impact these devices can have on a sales rep is immense.

Whether as a state of the art presentation platform, or a tool for accessing the latest sales collateral in the field, iPads and tablets allow for easy access to information as well as increased efficiency.

Given the volume of app options though, it is important to find out which of the thousands are actually worth downloading. Whether it’s cutting long lines at the airport, or pulling together a presentation on the fly, there are a number of great apps that every sales rep should know about.

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As we have recently discussed, there’s a lot of buzz surrounding tablet technology and its role in the sales world. Given the increasing interest in this topic, the Council decided to further explore sales organizations’ early experiences with these new devices.

We recently launched a survey to members about tablet technology use in the sales force, and it revealed some fascinating things. 35% of survey respondents already use tablet technology at their firms, while 40% of survey respondents plan on rolling out tablets at their organizations within the next 12 months.

So why all the hype? Well, tablet technology can have both internal benefits to the sales organization, such as instant access to information and overall mobility, as well as external benefits in customer interactions.

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When it comes to embracing new technology, sales reps often are the last to get on board. Attempts to introduce new technology often fail, as reps go back to their tried and tested ways of selling.

It’s no wonder, then, that reps’ recent interest in using iPads has caught most sales organizations by surprise. In fact, many companies are reporting that reps are proactively purchasing personal iPads to use in the field. Encouraged by the positive feedback from early adopters, a number of companies are in various stages of launching more pilots and arming their broader sales force with iPads, and some are even creating dedicated applications.

But, what makes the iPad such a powerful sales tool and why are reps so drawn to it?

3 Things Reps Love About iPads: Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Despite your best efforts, new tool adoption rates often fail to meet expectations. Whether due to a premature stall, or underwhelming impact, Sales Ops teams often find themselves asking—Why does this keep happening? Do we need to tweak or abandon this tool?

Most companies run tool pilots that focus solely on tool refinement. But W.W. Grainger also wanted to use its pilots to help create a roll-out plan that gets as many reps as possible on board. By segmenting reps into four types of adopters, based on how long it takes them to begin using a new tool, the company creates  pilot plans that determine when and why pool adoption will plateau, and how the tool should be rolled out to the organization.

We spoke with Marty Rossman, Director of Sales Effectivenss at Grainger, about how the company maps out tool adoption and impact prior to wide-scale release, and how they sell the tool in phases to target different stages of adopters.

SEC members, learn more about Grainger’s adoption curve pilot plan, and read excerpts from our conversation with Marty.

A few years ago we shared an interesting member case study on how the monthly rep pipeline – typically used for tactical, deal-level discussions – could be elevated and transformed into a strategic tool for long-term skill development.

After all, a rep’s pipeline data tells you a lot more than how individual deals are progressing. This data also tells you how a rep is spending their time, how they’re prioritizing their opportunities and, most interestingly, where their biggest skill gaps are.

I’d like to propose that a similar result could be achieved if we started aggressively auditing and aggregating customer objections – instances that few of us record, but our reps bump up against every day.

Imagine what would be possible if you had a list of the top ten customer objections your organization faces, and you captured a tally mark in your CRM system every time one of them popped up in a rep conversation.  Some interesting trends might emerge.   Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

These days, closing a deal isn’t as simple as convincing one person to say “yes”—customers are increasingly looking for buy-in from colleagues before making a purchase. And while one executive may have the decision-making power, many companies require several influencers across functions to sign off as well.

The rise of this consensus-based sale is causing a lot of headaches for reps, because they often struggle to modify or tailor their message so that it effectively appeals to each decision maker’s role. This tendency to stay in their comfort zones leads reps to have nearly identical conversations with each customer contact, regardless of the individual’s role or function.

Failure to take into consideration what is going on in a particular contact’s world or what that individual is trying to achieve results in generic conversations that don’t resonate with influencers, leaving them asking “so how does that help me?” and leaving reps without the consensus needed to push a deal through.

So how can you help reps deliver more resonant messages? You help them cheat. Read More »

How many times have you faced organizational expectations to deliver 100% adoption of a new sales tool? To achieve that 100% adoption rate, you spend countless hours tweaking the tool and training reps on its use, but it makes no difference — there is still that group of reps who refuse to adopt it.

In fact, reps can be classified into four adoption “types” based on their adoption behaviors:

1)   Early Adopters—naturally gravitate to a new tool
2)   Majority—wait to observe early tool success before adopting
3)   Laggards—need to see success from a peer closer to their segment before adoption will occur
4)   Naysayers—set in their ways and refuse to adopt a new tool

While you can usually get the first three groups on board, let’s face it…No matter how hard you push, these naysayers simply won’t use the new tool.

That’s why the key to successful tool adoption is not to strive for that elusive 100% in the first place. Instead, your organization should aim for an adoption rate of 80%.

Why 80%? Well, there are diminishing returns beyond an 80% tool adoption rate.  Read More »

A question I’ve been getting from a lot of members lately is simply “how do you measure the value of the Sales Operations function?” 

There is no easy answer to this one. Sales Ops is a function in constant flux, which means measuring the value of it can be a challenging task. After all, there are many different ways Sales Ops can deliver value to the organization.

One of the most common areas in which Sales Ops can demonstrate its value is sales force capacity.  The Ops group typically looks for ways to reduce the amount of time the sales force spends on low-value activities. So, if you calculate the dollar amount of every hour of sales force time and measure the number of hours of capacity you are able to free up, you can then quantify the value Sales Ops has created. 

Be mindful, however, that this is not a sustainable, long-term measurement effort. At some point you will have offloaded and outsourced all of the sales force’s low-value activities and will reach the point of diminishing returns.

The other area in which Sales Ops can deliver measurable value is by understanding the drivers of high performance and standardizing them throughout the organization with tools and processes.  Here, Sales Ops can demonstrate its value by quantifying the difference between high performers and core performers, and then tracking the improvement in performance that occurs as a result of the tools they’ve implemented. 

When using this performance improvement-based approach to measure Sales Ops’ value, be wary of several potential roadblocks.  Many Sales Ops teams fail to demonstrate quantifiable value because they end up building tools that don’t deliver the performance bump they expected.  Why is this? Read More »

Members are always telling me about their struggles with sales tool adoption and I always tell them the same thing – first and foremost, when it comes to ensuring that your tools will be used, you have to build the right infrastructure for tool creation in the first place.

No matter what you’re building, who’s building it, or who’s sponsoring it, you’ve got to adhere to these seven steps if you want reps to consistently take advantage of your suite of tools:

1. Keep Your Eye on the Prize. Make absolute certain the tool is built back from actual outcomes your organization, and more specifically, your sales reps, are seeking to achieve.  More often than not, simply building a tool based on stated needs can lead you to a place where a tool fails to achieve its anticipated impact and falls far short of expected adoption.  

• Check out Toyota’s process for ensuring that tool-building efforts solve the correct problems.

2. Prioritize Tool Requests. Put in place some sort of principled prioritization mechanism that guides tool development.  Too often, we flood the tool marketplace with endless ROI calculators, collateral, etc. without making sure the most important tools land on reps’ desks first.  Without a prioritization strategy in place, it’s usually the squeakiest wheel or the most senior request that automatically gets to cut to the front of the line. 

• Review Schneider Electric’s tool prioritization scorecard as a solution to this challenge.

3. Run to Feedback. When designing a tool, make sure you collect very early input from field-based power users around which problems are worth solving with the tool in the first place. Read More »

I was talking to the global VP of Sales of a member company  the other day, and she said something that made me think of, arguably, the biggest social phenomenon of the 21^st century – the power of social networking , and the role it plays (or could play) in the world of Sales.

The member said, “I love what my twenty-eight-year-old MBA graduates bring to the table, I just can’t stand the way they communicate.”

At the risk of stereotyping, I’d agree that Millenials are generally more informal and bold than the corporate world would like, but they are also more willing to share and listen to each other.

This makes me wonder, in an age when one can have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook and can summarize “War and Peace” in less than 140 characters on Twitter, why wouldn’t sales organizations encourage these informal networks among its sales force for collaboration and sharing of customer insight? 

A study done by The Network Roundtable at the University of Virginia found that networks play a critical role in organizational excellence by feeding organizational innovation, creating sources of competitive advantage, and improving staff engagement and quality of work life. 

So, why not capitalize on these benefits by giving employees an outlet for sharing their knowledge and experience? And, more importantly, why not use this channel to push frontline knowledge to the top? Read More »