5 Things to Know Before Implementing Sales Performance Management Technology - Voiant

Written by Voiant Group | Nov 7, 2022 8:57:38 PM

Big Decisions Require Big Questions Making the decision to embark on purchasing a piece of Sales Performance Management technology to improve your sales capabilities is a large decision, and it is not one to be made without ample preparation. Your decision must be considered carefully because it will affect your sales operations or field force. If you have the right preparation and plan in place this decision can turn out to be one of the best choices you’ve ever made. Your challenges, whether they stem from: a lack of automation, a desire to operate more strategically with compensation plans or territory design, or better sales coaching and guidance through analytics, the company you choose to partner with must be able to address your concern and in a way that will satisfy your critical constituents in the sales organization. These are a few of the important questions to ask yourself when you’re thinking about embarking on a sales transformation, and how to tell if you’ve chosen the right technology and partner to help you navigate the process.

Will the consulting partner provide consultative and advisory services in addition to the technical capabilities in the tool you have selected? Implementations are advisory and process-driven, if not more important, than simply technical mastery. If not, don’t be surprised if the result is a ‘lift and shift’ into your new technology platform.

Have you vetted the references the consulting provider can bring? We check references when hiring new employees, and in the best-case scenario, your chosen partner will act as an extension of your team, so why wouldn’t they be used in this case also? You’ll want to confirm the quality and the depth of change your prospective partner company has provided in the past.

Is the leadership on the project experienced experts that lend subject matter expertise in sales? Have these experts been there before and advised on best practices and would be considered a thought leader in this area, or are they generalist project managers? Burndown project managers play a role in a project, but they aren’t going to be able to advise your team through a total sales transformation.

Will the consultancy craft the software so that it plays within your overall IT ecosystem and plays nicely with the other tools in your ‘stack’? Will they ensure common data definitions and management and building the right capabilities in the right places. The company should be advising you on how to set this new tool up for your systems and how it will work best for you, not how they always do it.

Can the firm articulate the return on investment in real terms that make tangible sense for your organization to justify the investment? Going through a sales transformation is a big change, and you need to know that it will have a real payoff in the end.

New technology platforms are a piece of a larger sales transformation and should be treated as such. If you’re in the process of reviewing software platforms, take a look at Gartner’s reviews of Sales Performance Management platforms. It’s important that the consulting firm you choose is more than ‘staff augmentation’ and can provide the expertise in the sales use cases that you are seeking to bring to your firm.

For more information on how to choose the right technology and partner for you, contact us today.

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