Acceleral

There is no doubt that technology is a big ticket item when it comes to enabling sales teams. From the early adoption of mobile phones and laptops, to sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) software applications, sales teams are often at the forefront of systems and processes intended to eke every drop of profitability from prospects and customers.

However, because buying such technology represents a significant investment in both time and cash, it is imperative that you plan your purchase to ensure that your expensive tools are both appropriate for the task at hand and most importantly, adopted by the sales team.

This diligence starts with some basic questions, because if you can’t answer the “Why” of your purchase, it is time to go back to the drawing board:

• Can we define the problem we are trying to solve?
• Exactly how will the sales process be more effective with this technology?
• Are our competitors doing this?
• Could we tweak our current sales tools and methods to get the same outcome?

The bottom line of these questions really is, “How much more will we sell after we adopt this technology?”

Sometimes, that can be a very hard question to answer.

Not surprisingly, very few vendors will give you an ironclad guarantee of increased sales if you adopt their technology. Instead, you are likely to get a raft of ROI white papers that demonstrate the Return on Investment their other customers have generated. But as with those fuel consumption stickers on new cars that suggest a frugal driving experience, it’s likely your mileage will vary and not in the ROI direction you might like.

So taking into account that there are no guarantees, here are some steps you can take to reduce the risk that a technology purchase will work for the sales team and not against it.

Create a Selection Team: There are going to be any number of factors at play within your business that will influence what you ultimately buy, but a critical on is engendering ownership of the solution within the business.

Ownership does not just apply to the sales team, but within both your IT and Finance departments as well, because many technology projects fail to get funding or ongoing IT support.

This means that a well chosen selection team will build the common ground and ownership critical to success, and should eliminate the opportunity for personal relationships with any particular vendor to influence the purchase decision:

Write down your Requirements: It should be self evident that you cannot purchase what you can’t describe. But sadly, too many sales projects commence with only a vague notion of the functionality and attributes that are needed.

Writing things down will also help highlight areas of difference – a Sales Manager may see an SFA solution without Blackberry and iPhone support as too limiting, but IT might lack the skills to implement these interfaces and push for a Windows Mobile-only platform.

Shop around: It is generally a buyer’s market in terms of selecting a technology vendor and solution, so you can afford to be very picky:

1. Are you buying from a specialist?
   
   The more you can detail what you want, the easier it will be for you to decide if the vendor can supply it. It will also be easier for the vendor to provide a firm price...and confirm that they can actually provide what you want.
   
   
2. Are you buying ‘off the shelf’?
   
   Custom functionality can get you exactly what you need, but adds complexity and cost and will make upgrades more difficult. Customer functionality also adds to your workload. Do not expect the vendor’s quality control to catch much in the way of bugs for customised functionality.
   
   
3. Does the technology have a future?
   
   This is where having the IT team onside will help, but ideally the solution you purchase is both modular and based on industry standards wherever possible. Also, just because a vendor has been around for a while, that does not mean their technology has a future.
   
   
4. Who else is using it?
   
   If a number of your peers have already selected the solution it’s definitely worth taking a look – at the worst case you’ll gain an insight to how their sales teams operate. But the best case is that you will be buying into industry expertise from a vendor who understands your pain points and can help suggest ways to solve them.

Vendor due diligence: With regards the vendor itself, if your purchase represents a long-term capital investment, I’d recommend delving as deep as possible into the vendor financial statements and any outstanding legal actions. If this information is available on the website, read it. If not, and you have access to a ratings firm like Dunn & Bradstreet, use them to find out more.

Ask for contact details of at least three reference customers who have been installed for more than two years in your industry and call them...or better yet, visit them to see how the technology works in the real world. Also, find some customers you weren’t told about and contact them for an impromptu reference check. Don’t forget to ask these reference accounts about support, the implementation process, upgrade experience and training. You are looking for vendors that understand that introducing new sales technology is more an issue of change management than IT infrastructure.

And if you have any lingering doubts about the vendor, use LinkedIn to find previous employees and call them to ask for an informal viewpoint on how the vendor does business.

Setting the budget: A realistic budget is critical when it comes to buying sales technology. Of course, you will want to push the cost down, and the vendor will want to push the cost up, but that’s negotiation and should not be confused with budgeting.

There are a number of ways to establish the budget, depending on the circumstances:

Time and Motion Savings - Work out what you expect to save and use that to calculate how much money you can spend.

Customer Contract – Where the technology is required to fulfil a customer contract, the amount you can spend can be based on how you calculate project margins.

Competitive Advantage – If the technology gives you a lead over the competition, and you can quantify the extra deals that will flow, this can be used to estimate how much you should spend.

Competitive Catch Up – Playing catch-up is the trickiest budget to set, because it is often based on perceived issues, not firm financial information. If you are catching up, I’d suggest starting with time and motion and factoring in a ‘laggards’ penalty that you can spend to speed up adoption. Remember, time is money, and if you are catching up you are likely to be short on both.

For a software application such as CRM or SFA, purchased in a traditional license fee/implementation/support model (rather than renting the application in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model) you can expect:

-      The application License Fee will be about 35% of the total price.

-      New hardware/database is likely to be 10% of the total price.

-      Implementation services are likely to be 55% of the total price.

Software maintenance and/or ongoing support is typically a separate line item in the range 15% - 20% of the licence fee cost.

Ensure that the vendor formally details all the items discussed and if you decide to delete an item to save cost – such as using an existing computer system or database license – make sure that you both agree, in writing, upfront to the implications and cost reductions.

Conclusion: Buying sales technology should deliver improved efficiency and increased revenue, but there will be problems if you have not prepared properly.

So make sure you have done your homework, and:

1. Create an inclusive selection team and empower them;
2. Have a clearly documented business objective before you engage vendors;
3. Research your vendors carefully;
4. Ask lots of questions of both vendors and reference customers.

The effort you put in to plan and prepare will not only save you time and money as the project progresses, it will greatly reduce the risk that your much vaunted and wonderfully expensive sales technology is embraced by the team...rather than being rejected.