Five Things to Remember When Using a New Sales Tool

15 May 2018

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Here at x.ai, we make an AI that automatically schedules meetings for you. As you can imagine, we’re popular with salespeople. However, sometimes the early adopters–the first to embrace a new sales technology–need a little help getting the rest of their team on board.

Why? Human beings are creatures of habit, and that maxim is doubly true for salespeople. It can take serious effort to break a deeply-held ritual, no matter how inefficient it may be. Earlier this year, we partnered with Mixmax for a webinar that covered this very topic. We thought it’d be handy to distill some of that wisdom here into an easy-to-follow guide.

Here are our five things to remember when trying to get your team to adopt a new sales technology:

Encourage team-wide onboarding

Obviously, time is a precious resource; you’re likely introducing a new technology for greater efficiency! That said, some of the best tools require patience out the gate, and a short-term investment in training can pay off exponentially down the road.

If you have the option, make a team-wide onboarding session mandatory for any significant new piece of technology. Sure, there may be some grumbling, but not prioritizing proper training can let inefficient usage of a tool fester, which can cause problems later.

Worse, if you treat your technological asset as optional, you’re signalling that your shiny new tech is not a vital investment to your team’s success. If you lose that battle, the struggle for adoption will only get harder.

Empower your most enthusiastic users

If you’re an early adopter bringing a game-changing tool into the fold, you’ll notice you won’t be alone in your enthusiasm.

Typically, a bifurcation occurs when a new technology is introduced to a sales team. You’ll do yourself a lot of favors if you pay attention to who’s embracing the change, and position them to advocate for you. Solicit their involvement in a variety of ways, like having them lead lunch & learns, onboard new team members, or contribute their learnings to company literature.

This is particularly helpful if you’re implementing a new tool across a dispersed workforce. If you can designate an enthusiastic team lead at every office location, the likelihood of your new tool becoming ingrained as ritual rises considerably.

Showcase success

Even if you’ve done steps 1 and 2, you’ll still inevitably encounter some skeptics within your ranks. You can counteract their apprehension by sharing the success stories of yourself and others. This goes beyond pure sale metrics: it’s another opportunity to harness enthusiasm for your benefit.

For example, we hear from a lot of fans that their first exposure to our AI scheduling assistants came from being a guest on a meeting set up by one of them. Usually, they get in touch with us by emailing their friends back asking “how do I get one?”

Tracking emails of leads and clients that are excited about your new technology and sharing them out to your internal team will further isolate skeptics, and serve as a healthy catalyst to the paradigm shift you’re spurring on.

Dissuade half-assing it

Okay, so you’ve even convinced the skeptics to use your new sales tool. That’s a win, but you want to make sure they’re getting the most out of it and not half-assing their buy-in.

It’s extremely beneficial to monitor usage of your new tool in a way that isn’t superficial. That means figuring out what data you can track that showcases real engagement vs. accessorized adoption.

That’s where the Customer Success teams behind the technology can prove helpful. Many SaaS companies, ourselves included, set up custom analytics for enterprise clients, so building the right dashboard can be a collaborative effort that works in concert with the technology itself.

Let the numbers speak

Keep in mind: even if you haven’t completely eradicated skepticism around your new sales technology, time will eventually run its course, and the smart salespeople will evolve to stay afloat.

A more efficient tool is backed by the math to win over a certain timeline. Trust the data behind your technological investment and it will eventually be reflected by the top earners in your sales force.

It’s like building a 100 piece bicycle vs. a 500 piece motorcycle. Those that opt for the easier bike assembly might get a head start, but once that motorcycle engine fires up, the group that chose the latter will pull away fast.

We hope these tips prove helpful to all you early adopters out there. If you’d like to experience the hours the x.ai AI scheduling assistants can save your team, start a free trial.


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