When ePrize began using Salesforce.com, the most significant change we asked of our sales team was to start logging call reports by using Event records. Writing brief call reports had never been asked of the sales team before, but the leadership team felt was important to manage the business and help salespeople better track client conversations (versus using notebooks, writing emails to themselves, or just trying to remember conversations). We were having a hard time getting some of the sales team members behind this, even though we knew that long term it would help the business, help them sell more, and improve client service.
RESULTS: During that week, Events immediately shot up with over 40 Events logged. It drove many conversations between the reps and their manager about how to summarize client conversations effectively, what should count as an Event, etc. The team then started to see the value to having a central place for keeping their notes, allowing others to see those notes, and defining next steps. For the 4 weeks after the contest was over, Events per week by this group consistently held around 60.
Motivating a New Sales Approach
I was speaking with Koka Sexton, Director of Social Media Strategy at InsideView. InsideView is all about sales intelligence, so getting their reps to use social information to sell better helps them lead by example. Koka ran a sales competition to motivate sales reps to be more active in social media. “We would continually talk with our team about how using social media could help them sell better, particularly using Twitter and LinkedIn,” says Sexton.
“Our sales team understood the benefits in concept, but we were asking them to change their daily habits, which isn’t easy. So we ran a simple sales contest where we tracked social activity by salesperson. When we announced the competition, their social activity spiked immediately. The contest ran for about a month to keep them active. The best part was that when the contest was over, activity held strong. The contest was the nudge the sales people needed to try something new. Then once they did it, they started to appreciate the value, and the behavior continued well after the contest ended.”