TES: Technology-Enabled Selling

It's just the words: "Technology-Enabled Selling." To salespeople that reads like "Friendly IRS Assistance," and reminds them of the times when they were kids and their big brothers would come up to them, smiling, and say "Hey, want to see a neat trick? Stand here and close your eyes."

Technology-enabled selling, as Computerworld [http://www2.computerworld.com/home/features.nsf/all/980406qs] explains in their good QuickStudy series, is actually a pretty broad industry term that includes a lot, but centers around sales force automation as the largest segment of the market.

Technology-enabled selling includes everything from contact management software used by the sales force to high-end systems that link salespeople to the marketing department, Computerworld explains, including "company telesales center, service departments and customer support representatives."

The theory behind TES is well-explained by the British firm Market Elan, Ltd.: "Automated sales processes have the potential to bring a level of quality and consistency into the selling function that has, to date, been all but impossible to attain. But in order to achieve this, each process needs to be tailored to the specific circumstances and practices (current or proposed) of the sales organization in question, and then monitored and managed like any other business activity."

Techies nod their heads sagely at this, and say yes, it's plain. Sales managers roll their eyes and wonder if the writer ever tried to "monitor and manage" as much as his little sister at a lemonade stand.

The Track Record? Not Good So Far ....

For all its promise, however, the concept of technology-enabled selling hasn't quite turned out the way proponents would like. A big reason for this is that selling isn't inherently quantifiable, it's more of an art than a science.

This might explain why at least half of all expensive sales force automation projects tank quickly. That 50 percent figure is conservative: Ask any CEO running an SFA program if he thought he'd be getting more bottom line out of it than he is, and chances are good he'll say, well, those vendors make so many promises, dang 'em all.

The idea, of course, is good: Automate as many functions of the sales process as can be automated, and this frees the sales rep up for more face-to-face profitable selling time, instead of taking care of routine chores. However, technological systems are not designed by sales people, but by techies, who love any sort of automation for its own sake. The results are predictable in most cases -- technologically top-heavy systems that cost large sums, and work well on whatever planet it is that's populated entirely by techies, but which are ignored by the non-technological sales force and die slow, gruesome deaths.

QuickStudy writer Kim Girard says that many TES systems leave many users less than thrilled when it comes to taking this technology on the road. "Salespeople often don't want to use a notebook on a sales call or learn complicated programs," she quotes Kurt Johnson, an analyst at Meta Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy, as saying. "These tools are enablers that won't replace the human touch," he says. In other words, it's like trying to automate counseling or dating. While some techies think it can be done -- nay, would prefer to have a Dating 3.0 CD to pop in and, boom, you're an instant chick magnet -- in the real world there's a lot that can't be so easily quantified.

Go team!

One place TES does have an inherent advantage is in the new team- based sales approach many companies are selling. Instead of having all the knowledge about a customer residing in one sales rep's head, laptop or notebook, they use shared databases that store information about previous sales calls, support requests, unresolved maintenance issues, pricing and product availability.

"Those systems," Girard says, are good for "letting a salesperson in Massachusetts enter information about an account that will be used by a salesperson in California." Depending on what system you use they're invaluable for keeping everybody on the same page, and customer service informed and in the loop as well. "But team selling isn't for everyone," Rob DeSisto, an analyst at Stamford-based Gartner Group Inc., tells Girard. Simply put, the sales rep realizes that to share all the juicy info about a client isn't always to his advantage. If the TES system demands he do so, why the TES system knows what it can do.

Use It or Lose It

Sam Gallucci, a senior vice president at Technology Solutions Co., maintains that "companies have continued to miss the mark in their quest for successful sales force automation implementations," because they overlook the most critical success factor -- the user.

TES makes the assumption that sales reps are sufficiently sophisticated on computers to be able to use the systems productively. If not, train the suckers. Gallucci says this completely misses the point, and sets up many TES projects for sure failure: "Today's sales departments are made up of users who have been exposed to computers, but who have never had to use them consistently to do their job. This means that traditional methods of defining technology projects and training users are completely inappropriate" for TES.

Gallucci identifies particularly troublesome TES issues companies ignore at their peril:

• Fighting the art versus the science of selling. If this is not properly addressed, it will cause an incorrect perception of why the company is implementing the tool.
• Over-emphasizing TES as either a management tool or a reps' productivity tool, rather than a balance of both. (Incidentally, one major reason given for failures of TES projects is that the sales staff felt "over-managed." If the reps perceive that a system is more for the sales manager's benefit, and that it does a better job helping her track performance and rendering the rep more expendable than it does in generating sales commissions, they won't use it.)
• Asking sales reps to change how they interact with computers. Now they must update information consistently, access information online, and use that information to help them sell and service clients. They must also use automated methods to organize their work in a completely different way than they are used to.
• Designing rigid TES systems that don't recognize reps' and manager's style differences. Instead, the systems tend to be designed around a certain type of sales style, and reps and managers are expected to change their years of training overnight to adapt. In some companies this goes under the euphemism "automating the optimal sales process."

What to Do?

Jim Dickie of TRG, a respected voice in the sales force automation field, has outlined for Andover, Mass.-based DCI [http://www.dci.com] how to get the reps to actually use the TES system a company's shelling out big bucks for. He agrees that technological systems can fail simply because they "often do not plan adequately for the human element. The area that we are often neglecting is people." Not because they want to, but simply because they don't know how to approach the issue. No numerical guides, principles or precedents to go by.

Yet there are firms that find successful ways to implement TES systems. Studying them, Dickie has outlined five principles basic to TES success:

1. Sell Internally First. "The first sale your system should make is an internal sale," Dickie says. He tells of one paper manufacturer trying to drum up end-user support for their TES initiative. They asked a salesman from a parts supplier they did business with to show their sales force how he sold. "The parts supplier firm had rolled out a successful project the year before. When their rep did a day-in-my-life demonstration of their system at the paper manufacturer's annual sales meeting, he got a standing ovation."
2. Transfer Ownership Early. Dickie tells of a semiconductor manufacturer who picked the region that was going to pilot their system. He then made sure those nine salespeople were "involved at each major milestone in the process," from initially identifying the problems they saw in the way they sold to and serviced customers, to meeting with the four top vendors. They reviewed and signed off on the ROI plan for the project and worked closely with I.S. on technical interface issues. By the time they were asked to start testing the system, they had already accepted responsibility for the success of the project.
3. Show Management Commitment. The director of a consulting firm wanted to demonstrate to his sales force that the management team was committed to the success of the TES project. So instead of having the company's training group educate reps on the use of the system, the director had his sales managers attended a "train-the-trainer" class, and then the sales managers conducted the classes for the salespeople. The classes were rated as the most successful training the reps had received in years.
4. Provide Follow-Up TLC. If a low percentage of your salespeople have had previous exposure to PCs, rolling out a TES will require extra preparation. One manufacturing firm in such a situation decided early in the project to budget funds to do one-on-one follow-up training with their salespeople, Dickie says. As the reps initially struggled with "learning how to use computers, let alone complex interactive selling tools," they could have easily gotten frustrated and felt like failures. Instead, the firm had trainers available starting on their first day of in-field usage to help them get through the learning cycle to become proficient with the tools. The end result? All 60 reps successfully using the system within 60 days, a buy-in rate other firms would kill for.
5. Reward Success. Several firms have achieved success by such incentive programs as offering $250 for the best idea sent in each week for how to maximize the use of the system. Dickie cites a sporting goods firm who published a bimonthly newsletter on the project, profiling stories of how the system helped reps more efficiently and effectively deal with customers. "In both cases," he says, "these seemingly little efforts helped people focus on the positive aspects of the changes they were going through."