Sales tech won’t work without a digital culture

Dis­rup­tive sales enable­ment tech­nolo­gies are fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing the sales fun­nel. Putting the con­sumer at the cen­tre of the sales process is the clear advan­tage offered by these inno­v­a­tive tools, but smart tech­nolo­gies don’t exist in a vac­u­um and will often require an enter­prise to embrace a dig­i­tal­ly-led cul­ture to suc­ceed.

Tech­nol­o­gy is not a cure-all in and of itself, rather it’s an adjunct that enhances and sup­ports your pre-exist­ing struc­ture

“For sales tech to work, it cer­tain­ly needs the right cul­ture. Sales lead­er­ship will need to cre­ate buy-in and adop­tion from the senior lev­el on down,” says Nick Kane, man­ag­ing part­ner at Janek Per­for­mance Group, a provider of sales per­for­mance solu­tions. “Part of cre­at­ing the right cul­ture means inte­grat­ing the tech­nol­o­gy into your for­mal sales and onboard­ing process­es, as well as ensur­ing man­agers are ful­ly pre­pared to sup­port the adop­tion.”

Digital culture must be enabled by team leaders

The capa­bil­i­ties of lead­ing sales tech prod­ucts are vast and enable users to remove fric­tion from the over­all cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, result­ing in enhanced con­ver­sion rates. Analy­sis backed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) can enable an increas­ing­ly accu­rate under­stand­ing of what con­tent a con­sumer would be most open to receiv­ing and can help iden­ti­fy gaps in the over­all sales fun­nel.

While C. Lee Smith, chief exec­u­tive of sales enable­ment firm Sales­Fu­el, ful­ly agrees about the impor­tance of a dig­i­tal cul­ture, he also believes that account­abil­i­ty goes beyond the cor­po­rate lead­er­ship.

“Front-line man­agers can­not abdi­cate this respon­si­bil­i­ty if the C‑suite has not clear­ly defined the company’s mis­sion, val­ues and accept­able behav­iours. While many com­pa­nies are chas­ing a ‘com­pa­ny cul­ture’, each team has its own ‘micro cul­ture’ that is defined by what the team leader says, thinks, does, allows and dis­al­lows,” says Mr Smith.

No single sales tech tool is a cure-all

In such a com­pet­i­tive sales envi­ron­ment, even a rel­a­tive­ly small edge over a com­peti­tor can mean the dif­fer­ence between gain­ing a new client or los­ing out to a more for­ward-think­ing rival. The grow­ing num­ber of avenues through which con­sumers can be reached, whether on a social media plat­form or direct email, is mak­ing the task of pro­vid­ing the right con­tent at the right time an even more chal­leng­ing under­tak­ing.

The attrac­tion of mod­ern sales tech in this sit­u­a­tion is clear. Accord­ing to a report from For­rester Con­sult­ing, firms that adopt an inter­ac­tive sales enable­ment plat­form were shown to speed up deal clo­sure by up to 43 per cent and increase com­pa­ny growth by as much as 60 per cent.

Each com­pa­ny will have their own unique mix of sales tech that is best suit­ed to their sales struc­ture, wider sales approach and aims. But it is no longer enough for a busi­ness to imple­ment a sin­gle prod­uct in the sales tech field and hope it just enables them to meet all their prospects’ needs bet­ter.

“Remem­ber, tech­nol­o­gy is not a cure-all in and of itself, rather it’s an adjunct that enhances and sup­ports your pre-exist­ing struc­ture. So it’s nec­es­sary to deter­mine when and where in the sales process you’ll be using it,” says Mr Kane.

How to create a tech-savvy digital culture

Tran­si­tion­ing to an all-encom­pass­ing dig­i­tal cul­ture will not be an overnight process and can take a con­sid­er­able time and resources to achieve. Mem­bers of the C‑suite should make it clear to their staff that when it comes to suc­cess in this area, risky propo­si­tions shouldn’t be seen as a no-go area, as exper­i­men­ta­tion often leads to inno­va­tion and if no new con­cepts are test­ed, it’s unlike­ly new best prac­tices will be dis­cov­ered.

There are con­crete steps that busi­ness lead­ers can take to max­imise the effec­tive­ness of their tech stack and become a busi­ness with a dig­i­tal cul­ture at its core. Any attempt to improve the tech should be done in part­ner­ship with a range of sales staff to ensure the right bal­ance is achieved.

“A key aspect in max­imis­ing effec­tive­ness is to set key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs) relat­ed to the tech­nol­o­gy you adopt and track those met­rics on a cycle that’s rel­e­vant to your sales veloc­i­ty, for exam­ple once a week, month or quar­ter. Select­ing the right KPIs will allow you to see how the tech­nol­o­gy is being used and what impact it’s hav­ing on your organ­i­sa­tion. It can also high­light which reps need fur­ther coach­ing and rein­force­ment on spe­cif­ic por­tions of your tech stack,” says Mr Kane.

Sales tech adoption must be combined with training

Hav­ing the most appro­pri­ate tech­nolo­gies in the tech stack, how­ev­er, is only half the jour­ney, with all staff need­ing to be trained in these tools. Lead­ers must also clear­ly com­mu­ni­cate why the com­po­nents of the tech stack are in place, how they should be used and the ulti­mate goal.

If this com­mu­ni­ca­tion is done in a com­pre­hen­sive way, then the adop­tion rate of these tech­nolo­gies will not only be very high, but both expe­ri­enced staff and new hires will be able to get to grips quick­ly with the way of doing busi­ness, and poten­tial delays in adop­tion can be avoid­ed.

“The same is true of the ini­tial adop­tion; cre­ate buy-in and accel­er­ate adop­tion by not only train­ing on the tech, but rein­forc­ing the train­ing with coach­ing and strate­gies such as gam­i­fi­ca­tion as need­ed,” says Mr Kane.

In a data-dri­ven world, advanced sales tech can pro­vide a true point of dis­tinc­tion even in crowd­ed indus­tries, as long as mem­bers of the C‑suite are able to estab­lish a dig­i­tal cul­ture that holds inno­va­tion, trans­par­ent and col­lab­o­ra­tion at its core.

Digital culture must be enabled by team leaders

No single sales tech tool is a cure-all

How to create a tech-savvy digital culture

Sales tech adoption must be combined with training