The old adage is still true, when you have to invest more energy into something than you get out, you tend to stop doing it. This is especially true with the use of SFA by sales people. As an adjunct to the last diagnostic question on whether the system is easy to use, the number one request from sales people is “let me see my own stuff.” This is important enough to call out as its own diagnostic question. Do your sales people have easy visibility to their own information?
Fortunately, sales dashboards and easy reporting have become features of popular SFAs. However, in my experience many organizations still don’t provide this core capability. It’s important that people experience the benefit of seeing their own pipeline. It helps when the find they don’t have to spend hours putting together Excel spreadsheets to report to management. It helps sales management when they don’t have to spend hours combining sales reports in Excel.
So it’s useful to ask:
- Do reps have their own sales reports?
- Are they trained to run their own queries?
- Do we have the standard reports we need?
- Are they accurate and up to date?
Without a firm reporting foundation, you’re stuck asking, “Can the Bear can see himself?”