How your employees will fall in love with a new sales tool!
“We will implement a new sales tool!” – The introduction of a new sales tool is almost as popular as a dentist appointment. So you better not expect a lot of applause from your sales team for this announcement. We’re all creatures of habit. Changing behavior or pattern is hard. The result: New sales tools are unused, and therefore the expected benefits are missing out. But no reason to throw in the towel. With the right strategies, you will help your employees to fall in love with new sales tools!
4 Tips to implememnt a new sales tool:
1. Get your sales team on board!
2. Role model
3. Superuser
4. Incentives
1. Get your sales team on board!
Laurenz Kalthoff, Building Radar sales expert: “Usually the sales manager or managing director decides the introduction of a new sales tool. If the users are not involved in the decision, the fear of change predominates. So it is vital that every user knows about the advantages. For this reason, we are in close contact not only with the decision-makers but above all with the users.”
One of the main challenges is to convince salespeople that the new sales tool comes with benefits. Therefore, it’s important to communicate not only the benefits for the company but also for the individual employee. Convince your sales staff with facts. Find out about statistics that demonstrate the advantages of using the sales tool. Learn about the experience of other customers. So you can easily depict the benefits.
Your sales team will ask questions and also criticize the sales tool. That’s good and shows interest! But do not overburden your sales team with too much information about features. If you try to explain all the features at once, it quickly leads to overload and frustration.
2. Role model
Laurenz Kalthoff, Building Radar expert: “After my experience, salespeople are more motivated to use technical innovations and systems if their supervisors know how to use it. In the long term, the new sales tool will only work if you have the supervisors on your side.”
This statement is also confirmed by a survey of the Institute for Market-Oriented Management in Mannheim. According to this survey, the role model function of the supervisor has a high priority in the introduction of new sales tools. The sales manager and IT managers need to promote the new sales tool and should be able to use it. The staff will try to do the same to the supervisor. Even if they do not think it is a great idea at the beginning, they will at least feel the pressure that they are not doing something that is expected of them.
3. Superuser
Laurenz Kalthoff, Building Radar expert: The success of new sales tools stands and falls with the users. For many employees, the feeling of belonging to a selected group of experts and specialists is already motivating. On the one hand, this promotes the further development of employees and also provides the sales tool a real opportunity to establish itself.”
Set a “superuser” as the central contact. This answers questions of the other users promptly and locally. The answered questions can be collected and sent to all users – so anyone can learn from others’ mistakes and problems. Nominate 5 to 10 “superuser” as the central point of contact. With less than 5 participants, the risk of outages due to illness, leave, or termination is high, and you will end up without meaningful experiences. The “superuser” will receive training and can answer the questions of the others. Nominate the employees who can motivate and influence their co-workers. People who want to work “as always” or are skeptical of technology are not suitable for this position.
4. Incentives
Laurenz Kalthoff, Building Radar expert: “To break the initial reluctance to use a new sales tool, it is worth taking advantage of the competitive spirit of your salesforce. Some of our users are introducing a bonus system with the implementation of the Building Radar platform.”
Experience has shown that the first few months decide about success or failure of a new sales tool. Once users become accustomed to a new system, the usage will become a daily routine. Therefore, incentives are a great way to increase the acceptance of new sales tools. Sales representatives like the competition. Why not take advantage of that? Invent team challenges. Introduce a kind of bonus system. Teams compete against each other. At least once a day, you should announce the current ranking throughout the sales team (if not the entire company).
Building Radar Tip
Even if you would preferably have introduced the new sales tool yesterday, it’s better to start the implementation of a new sales tool controlled. Convince your employees with facts and figures and point out the benefits. Thus, the implementation of the sales tool will succeed without much resistance and soon everyone can benefit from the desired improvements!
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