You need more than technology to solve your sales problems

If you’re like me, you’re bombarded with advertisements for sales enablement technologies that claim they’ll increase your revenue, improve profits, make your life easier, and probably butter your toast as well.

I’ve made some of those claims myself (though I haven’t yet heard of anyone spreading butter with Membrain–let me know if you figure out a way).

But the reality is that technology, even our technology, won’t solve sales problems alone.

Proof? For the past ten years, sales technologies have proliferated, yet sales effectiveness has declined or remained steady. Patching new and exciting technology over old problems isn’t working.

Why technology alone doesn’t fix problems

The root cause of poor ROI on sales technology investment is lack of alignment with strategy and process. This may look like:

• Buying technology to solve a problem without clearly understanding the root of the problem
• Buying technology because it seems cool ("it has AI!")
• Buying technology that doesn’t integrate with the salesperson’s daily workflow
• Buying technology that seems right but requires a lot of customization
• Buying technology that increases complexity rather than reducing it
• Expecting intelligent technology to make sense of chaotic data

The solution is both simple and complex. For a technology investment to be successful, it must be accompanied by these four things:

1. Solid strategy and process (focused on your buyer)
2. Aligned on-the-job training and coaching
3. The ability to flexibly execute and reinforce the above
4. The ability to deliver analytics that support optimized strategy and process iteration

Why sales experts can be the secret sauce in generating ROI on your technology

A competent sales expert can help your organization focus on developing a customer-focused strategy and process that consistently delivers wins, and also connect you with training and coaching for your managers and salespeople that is aligned with your strategy and process.

A great sales expert will also connect you with the sales technology that makes it easy and intuitive to execute and reinforce your strategy, process, and training, and that enables better and more proactive coaching.

Without the right technology, a common problem with sales training and coaching is that it doesn’t stick. Salespeople get fired up and enthusiastic and their performance may improve for a while, but over time their behaviors rubber band back to bad habits, and their performance dips again.

Technologies like Membrain allow you to insert your strategically aligned process into the salesperson’s daily workflow, reinforcing the process, and providing access to training and coaching resources exactly when they need it.

This reduces the rubber band effect and helps salespeople make your strategy and process their daily routine.

The same technologies can deliver valuable data and analytics that enable you to fine-tune your process and continually optimize it to produce better and better results.

A sales expert who can deliver all four elements successfully will provide your organization with value far in excess of your investment in them, and will help prevent over-investment in technologies that don’t improve outcomes (beware of the sunk cost syndrom!)

They can also help you optimize performance over time by monitoring your analytics and improving your training and coaching to align with updates in strategy and process.

At Membrain, we rely on partners who are expert sales consultants to ensure that companies using our technology establish a solid, customer-focused strategy and process, align it with training and coaching, and use our tool to reinforce the skills and behaviors that dramatically improve performance. Check our Membrain Methodology Editions for examples of partners who have integrated their frameworks into Membrain to provide you with a more turnkey solution.

Membrain won’t fix your sales problems alone, but we believe there is no technology better positioned to align with your strategy, process, training, and coaching to deliver dramatic performance improvement. Contact me to schedule a demo and see why we believe Membrain is the best sales enablement tool available to sales consultants and sales organizations alike.