Dana VanDen Heuvel: Attaining World-Class Sales Technology

August 23, 2004

Attaining World-Class Sales Technology - Part 1

This is a 3 part article on some of the steps that companies have taken to attain world-class status in the sales technology and support realm. I've either worked at or with a handful of companies how who have all benefitted from an ongoing "Sales Technology Steering Committee" which seeks to bridge the gulf between field sales and sales leadership and IT leadership on the subject of what IT needs to be providing to sales & vice versa.

In any company, there are typically a variety of common corporate barriers that hinder the implementation of the most effective sales technology solutions for the sales team.

Sales technology implementation decisions need to be made with a realistic and holistic view of the realities of the field sales and sales leadership team, while keeping an eye on the requirements of each stakeholder group which could affect the sales team.

Some of the issues that typically befall a corporate-driven sales technology team:

Misconceptions of technology’s role in field sales
Isolation from the great corporate sales needs
Limited knowledge of current and future technology capabilities
Lack of competitive technology awareness and world-class technology awareness

Seeing through these barriers requires the combined effort of Sales and IT to recognize some of the signs, that when combined, can signal a tipping-point and serve as a catalyst for future actions.

Here are some of the common traits exhibited by a company whose sales force is behind the curve on sales technology.

No clear understanding of exactly what technology is supposed to do for the sales organization
Measurements of technology usage are not relevant to sales manager performance or compensation
Forecasting data from sales force automation system is all but ignored in strategic decisions
Fragmented usage of a customer account management system
Inconsistent visibility to key indicators data driving customer profitability and satisfaction which are under their jurisdiction
Little to no leverage of database marketing for profitable account acquisition\
Reliance on enabling technology for daily tasks is at a minimum. Email is one of the only imperatives.
There is little synchronization between what marketing is doing on sales’ behalf, and the enabling technology that could support our collective customer acquisition and retention efforts
No consistent effort is focused on research, development, and benchmarking of world-class sales technology practices

These are the beginning of some of the probems that need to be barriers that will be encounted and the signals that come before change. In the next 2 installments, I'll share more on the mission and objectives of a sales focused technology action team and share the action items and recommended stakeholder groups that need to be involved to ensure success.