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Summary

5th Commandment

MAKE SURE EVERY REQUIRED ACTION
HAS A BENEFIT FOR THE USER.

This commandment harkens back to the old rule of physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you ask sales reps or field personnel to perform a series of new actions, there must be an equal or greater benefit to those actions. Time and time again, we hear from the field that there is no value to the tools being implemented within their companies. They ask WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). 

Before you deploy your first automation tool, you need to make sure that every step you ask a sales rep or manager to follow gives back some immediate benefit to them. Of what use is it to a rep to fill a database full of contacts if it creates more work for him in the long run? It may benefit management to have this information readily at their fingertips, but of what benefit is it to the person entering the data?

Certainly we can see benefits to the field: the ability to share data with peers, the ability to generate weekly reports on the fly, etc. But it must positioned to them – they must be sold on these benefits – in fact, they need to participate in the design of the benefits – to be able to say they had a hand in shaping the rewards.

The same can be said for synchronization. So many companies complain that they cannot get their sales teams to synchronize their data. And if synchronization does not occur, data does not get updated and distributed across the enterprise, thereby destroying the heart of a sales automation project. But if you position this responsibility as enabling automatic sales report generation, thereby saving a rep hours each Friday, the action shines in a new light. If you explain that when they synchronize they send their data to a central repository for back up – just in case their laptop gets stolen or broken, the action no longer seems like drudgery. If you tell them they can get downstream news feeds and leads when they synchronize, this adds value to the action required.

We’re not suggesting that you lie to them about the rewards. You are asking them to work differently, to spend their time differently, in ways that do not look or feel immediately beneficial. But sell to them the innate benefits by showing them concrete examples about how automation is going to free up more time to sell, then you will have willing and eager participants.