My first experience with Sales Force Automation was when a VP of Sales asked me to make it work for his people. As with most important challenges, he indicated I had very little time to make this one happen. I knew this demand would be an obstacle to diagnosing the real problem so I decided to buy myself some time. I went to his top three sales people and asked, “If you could change just one thing about the SFA system, what would it be?” Then I changed those three things. It didn’t matter that they might not have been the correct things to change. But a question I’ve learned when it comes to systems is….
Is the system easy enough to use?
You can have a great sales process that’s modeled accurately with usage policies, training and compliance, but if the system is hard to use, then it isn’t going to be used. Ask yourself:
- Is the SFA system easy to use?
- What is it not doing that it needs to?
- What three things could you change about the system that would make your sales people happy?
- Is it providing value to the users as well as management?
Following the success of the first three changes, I put in a change management process (that was easy to use and embedded in the SFA) that resulted in over 200 suggestions from sales and 150 changes within the first six months. They started to like the taste of blueberries.