The Sales Boss

CHAPTER 16 Make Sales Technology Work for You

I’ve never met a salesperson who loved doing the administrative tasks of entering data or providing reports to management. However, you and the rest of the management team need to see the activity of the individuals on the sales team so you can forecast, predict inventory, and for an entire host of other reasons. When it comes to the sales team fully adopting sales technology, you will struggle unless you get it right from the beginning.

Think about the technology from the start as a way to increase the team’s effectiveness and simplify the many tasks that they have to accomplish. Your mindset and belief must be that this is for them and not for you or the rest of the management team. Yes, the management team needs the data, but don’t just build the system to be easy for you. Make it easy for the sales team.

First, make sure the team knows that it is important to use the system, and that it is not optional. Automate reminders to them when critical data are missing. For instance, if they haven’t logged into the system for some days or if their forecasts run behind, the system can be set to ping them with reminders. When the automated system pings them, it is viewed as a reminder. When a person reminds them, it can be seen as nagging.

You will also need to have some increasing penalties in place for not using the system. I have seen companies include penalties such as reducing eligible commissions by a point or excluding a repeat ...