Sales process adoption is the factor that influences an organization’s performance.
“Access to solid processes, robust systems and accurate data are necessary for salespeople to effectively do their jobs, not just in terms of forecast management, but also in nearly all the other activities with which they are tasked.” – CSO Insights
Let’s say you’ve found a hole in your sales process. After taking the time to think about the problem, you’ve found the best way to fix it and decided on it.
The biggest problem is figuring out how to use a sales process well. This means telling your salespeople about the problem and helping them understand how and why they need to use this new sales process.
Why does sales process adoption fail?
A number of challenges can impede your adoption process.
Inadequate understanding of the problem
It is important to make sure that your team members and anyone else who will be taking part in a training can understand what is going on.
Why is there a need for the training?
Who is to be trained?
What areas are they to been trained in?
What is the expected outcome of the training?
An in-depth understanding of the training will help to avoid the sales training being an effort in futility.
Inability to choose the right solution
Another constraint to avoid is making the wrong choices about the solution to adopt. Saving money shouldn’t be the only reason to use a solution or tool in optimizing a sales process. Instead, the focus should be on the expected result or return on investment.
Before deciding on a solution, ask and analyze the following:
Does this solution solve the problem we have at hand?
What other solutions can do the same?
Which solution clearly aligns with the expected outcome?
Inadequate finance to support the new sales process
Everyone wants something good, but not everyone can afford it.
There are lots of sales tools on the market that believe more than we could ever imagine. Tool adoption is based on an organization’s financial capability. It is not good for organizations to overspend on their budgets. However, it is vital to focus on the time the new tool or solution will save for the company. A failed sales process will result from selecting the incorrect tools or solution.
Lack of support from management
Sales process adoption needs the support of the management to be effective. Management can assist in emphasizing and enforcing an adoption process.
Poor teamwork
Depending on the company’s structure and size, the use of a sales team can normally exceed that of field salesmen to an IT support team. Providing support beyond the day of the training is important and requires teamwork.
From prospecting to engaging to closing deals involves more than the effort of one salesperson, even when CRM is used, so teamwork and collaboration from all involved will help to enable the effectiveness of the sales process.
Training should be holistic
It’s good to divide the tasks among team members, but if each team member understands what their colleague is doing, it helps in fostering the sales process adoption, communication, and teamwork.
Would you like to see your sales team crushing and exceeding their numbers? Speak to one of our sales consultants today.
Steps in sales process adoption
- Understand the problem you want to solve.
- Source for a trainer or consultant.
- Research for tools and solutions
- Decide on a tool or solution.
- Clearly communicate the need for change.
- Align training with business objectives.
- The actual training
- Assess the success of the sales process.
- Research for the next opportunity.