Having Trouble Getting Salespeople To Do ____?

Does every sales executive and manager gets frustrated with salespeople not doing as they’re told? “They don’t use the CRM system”…”they don’t make enough calls”…”they don’t sell to value”…”they don’t understand their compensation plan”…”our training session attendance is poor”…”they don’t forecast”…

Look, you can bang your head against the wall as much as you want to, but trying to force or coerce salespeople into doing things is a very painful and frustrating way to try to drive behavior. AND it doesn’t even work very well today!

Why:
1) People hate to be told what to do, and thus coercion actually creates resistance
How do you feel when someone tells you to do something? Do you want to comply, or do you want to not do it just to show them they can’t tell you what to do?

2) It’s a quick fix, not a solution
Coercion is an attempt to find a shortcut around better user design. Great design is hard and takes time, and with our “urgency addicted” culture, we tend to think “How can we get this done now? How can we roll this out now?” Especially in sales!

3) You’re going to lose the complexity battle
All the sales programs, tools, plans and rules only seem to get more complicated and grow over time. At some point, the complexity crosses an inflection point from “useful” to “hairball”. It’s challenging balancing the value of specificity and more programs with the often-opposing value of simplicity and usability. The best way to fight this battle is to improve the design of the product with regular feedback and help from your users.

If all the programs, tools and rules that you’ve created actually help salespeople sell more and they have been communicated effectively …wouldn’t salespeople be adopting more of them?

From the “Creating Passionate Users” blog:

None of the salespeople I know are lazy, stubborn, or process-averse. In fact, they love intuitive processes and tools that help them sell more. And because salespeople are very busy, with all kinds of demands competing for their attention, they instinctively prioritize their time. Unless the tool or idea given to them is intuitive, they’ll dismiss spending the mental time and energy to figure it out (aren’t most of us the same way?) You need to learn how to earn their attention.

Instead of trying to push mandates or arbitrary programs onto salespeople, just try a different attitude.

Do you try to force your customers to do things? No – you try to design a product or service that 1) they appreciate, and 2) improves their business. You earn their business and attention.

Isn’t that basically the same results you want from salespeople? Appreciation for the opportunity they have with your company, and more results?

What if you tried thinking of salespeople as customers or users, and your tools, sales environment and programs are the “products”? What would happen if you made your sales organization ‘salesperson-centric’? (And since they’re the ones actually working with customers and selling stuff, that can only be a good thing).

If you focused on usability and ‘return on salespersons’ invested time’, how would you redesign your sales environment, organization and tools?

One way to consider where the bar is: whatever you want salespeople to spend time on should be at least as valuable to them as calling a prospect or customer.

What to do about it

I would start by asking the sales organization about how they want to have their voices included in the design of everything! What would they change first?

1) Include salespeople in planning and design of everything
Just as getting customer insight is important early in the product design process, you can save yourself a lot of frustration and get a much better ‘sales product’ by including salespeople early in the design process. You don’t have to mandate feedback or ideas, just ask for volunteers (people don’t necessarily want to contribute, but they do want to choice to be able to contribute). There will be a reasonable number of people who want to actively help, either by offering ideas or in actually driving the process…try letting them.

2) Beta test new programs
Draft your program or rule, and then submit it to groups for feedback. Beta test it. Catch bugs or design issues early, before it’s released to everyone. Yes, this means you’ll need to plan next years’ territories and comp plans BEFORE the end of this year (heavens!)

3) Survey satisfaction
How satisfied are your salespeople with your products and environment? What tools or parts of the environment most need to be changed? You can do this by walking the halls, posing the question in sales meetings, using www.surveymonkey.com…etc.

A fantastic (though inactive) blog to read for more insight:
Creating Passionate Users

Last Note
It takes more work, but involving the sales force in the design of its own products will raise morale and engagement, and improve their sales tools…both of which lead to more results!

P.S. (the real last note)
I struggled with coming up with a title for this post, thanks to Erythean Martin for some ideas!