Once you’ve purchased sales and marketing technology, you expect to see the results that automation and customization promised you during the tech demo. You may have even done a great job as leaders of marketing, sales, or technology teams in articulating the WIIFM for your end users. It’s possible that they see the value and are even completely bought in to the ROI that is promised from the system, and that they are vocal supporters of the technology. However, without constant pressure and reinforcement of the importance of the technology to the business, your users may never cross over the adoption bridge.
Let’s consider the second step in our proprietary ADOPT system for user acceptance of technology: DEMONSTRATE.
As a leader, either by title or by personality, you need to show the team that you’re in this, too – and so is the rest of your management team and other allies who either use the system or depend on the data from it (such as marketing, finance, or operations). If you’re a proponent of the system in name and theory, but are still sending emails, creating Excel spreadsheets, or requesting Power Point presentations to display data and activity, you’re not in Demonstrate mode.
How can you lead by example? Keep in mind “monkey see, monkey do” and look for continued ways to exploit the features of your tech system in your daily business process. Use the technology during your sales review 1:1s and in team pipeline reviews; you can create custom reports and dashboards that either show high-level overviews or really go deep on leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities. You can create leaderboards that show actual and average team accomplishments to drive some friendly competition. Quarter-to-date reports that go upward to the executive management team and board of directors also have interest to your functional experts: make these visible to everyone, or even put them on their home screen. Demonstrate the ways you use the technology frequently – no less than daily – and in different ways, keeping in mind that adults may be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners, so approaches should take learning styles into consideration.
If you’re a tech admin, share these ideas with your users management team, so that they know how and why their pervasive demonstration of the importance of the system is most important to the end users. If you’re a leader, consider varying ways to use your system so that you can get the data you need out of it in real time. Model the behavior that you want to see, and you’ll start to get the benefits out of your amazing and efficient technology.
Tune in next time for more details on how to Orient your users to your system continually. Looking for a rapid overview of our entire proprietary ADOPT system to sales tech user acceptance and change management? Here you go! Looking for a more detailed overview of how to implement the ADOPT system in your company? Check this out.
Keep up the persistent focus on tech adoption and innovation!
P.S. TL/DR for all of the auditory learners: Here’s a webinar from Salesforce and Shannon.
