Picking a Sales Tool
What is better: an intricate, complex sales tool or one that does 1 or 2 things well?
The answer depends on a multitude of factors such as industry, cost, objectives, etc. However, one of the more important questions to consider is – who is using it?
Imagine you have two calculators:
- The Texas Instruments TINSPIRECXEZTRP – the top of the line scientific calculator with every feature a nerd could want.
- A 10-year-old Casio – Your younger brother’s middle school calculator that is great for the MDAS of PEMDAS.
The back-office analyst at your company would require the advanced scientific calculator, while the Casio would not be nearly sufficient. On the other hand, the sales rep looking to calculate this month’s commission wouldn’t be able to turn on the TINSPIRECXEZTRP.
Apologies for the lame analogy, but the same is true with sales tools. Yes, some sales teams thrive on having elaborate sales processes connecting a CRM with various enablement tools. In many cases, the ROI is there. In other cases, it’s too complex and in addition to acquiring shelf-ware, the team becomes less effective due to the process burden and lack of accurate information.
We have seen that the above is especially true for larger sales teams, that are transactional and facing high turnover rates. Managers don’t have the time or budget to constantly train new users on what they’re selling in addition to the tools they should be using. Likewise, many of these salespeople don’t care, want and in some cases aren’t able to learn any complex tool.
In short, for some sales teams, there is an inverse relationship between complexity and usage.