4 Steps IT Must Take With Their Sales Teams

Face it: IT and sales folks are very different. They're not natural allies. The deep recession should have been just the crisis to get the two groups working together. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.

IT organizations have been internally focused during the past three years, working on virtualization, data center security, and other projects that make IT more productive and cost-efficient. IT groups didn't embrace cloud computing and mobility until those two megatrends smacked them in the head. Let's be clear: IT didn't lead the cloud movement; lines of business did, often routing around the IT organizations to get jobs done faster. Same story with mobile--IT said "no, no, no" to Apple and Android smartphones and tablets until company employees finally said they'd been using the devices for many months and weren't going back.

But sales teams haven't exactly been using technology to reinvent themselves. Just 35% of the 203 IT executives who responded to our InformationWeek 2012 Global CIO Survey say they have a major CRM implementation in place, though 38% plan one for this year or next. Here and there, companies are doing projects like sentiment analytics (to analyze what customers are saying about their products and brands on Facebook, blogs, and other mass media), but these tend to be isolated efforts led by a few data-minded marketers and aren't scaled out for everyday sales pros. And don't forget about all those e-commerce teams--orphaned groups rarely integrated with the rest of the sales team despite the business they're driving.

The reality is that technology has become--or must become--critical to the sales process, and IT needs to grease the skids. Customers are researching and buying in entirely new ways, using in-person, Web, and social channels. The combination of mobile and cloud-based technology has created an opportunity to really change the information salespeople have in their hands and the kinds of decisions they can make. But before IT does any of that, it needs to change its mindset.

In short, IT needs a sales quota. We're not talking about database admins making cold calls or security teams sweeping LinkedIn groups for prospects. Instead, your organization should assign a target sales goal as part of its overall IT objectives, focusing your team on increasing revenue hand in hand with the sales organization.

How that quota works will depend on your relationship with the sales team. You might focus on increasing online sales. Or concentrate on expanding CRM reporting in ways that improve the rate at which sales prospects are converted to customers. Once you focus on these metrics, you'll start hearing from the sales folks about all the obstacles keeping them from selling even more, and then you can start clearing those barriers out of their way.

No question, a sales quota is a big leap for IT. So before you announce one, consider these four steps to prepare your team for the demands ahead.

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Step 1 Admit it, IT just doesn't get sales

It's tough to admit you don't really get the sales process, but IT teams just don't have a ton of sales experience to build upon. Only 12% of the 6,381 IT managers who responded to our 2012 InformationWeek Salary Survey have held sales or marketing positions. And IT's relationship with marketing is weaker than most: 27% of the respondents to our Global CIO Survey describe the result they get working with marketing as poor to neutral, worse than their relationship with any other discipline (see chart, below).

If you've never carried a bag, it's hard to understand the personal frustration and hardening of the soul that occur over years of chasing accounts. Understanding your company's sales process is essential if you're going to be of any help, in part because you'll uncover the many undocumented steps and tasks involved in the sales cycle.

Start off by doing some field work: Shadow a salesperson on customer calls, work trade shows, even help write proposals and respond to RFPs. IT often makes these sorts of sales-related tasks low priority: Just 18% of the IT execs who responded to our Global CIO Survey say "meeting with external customers" is one of the top three areas where they spend their time. But if you don't think getting involved with sales is part of your IT job, you need to rethink your role.

Case in point is Bob Grawien. The CIO of school products manufacturer School Specialty recently worked the booth at the company's national sales conference, talking to the company's field sale reps about everything from the economy and school budgets to CRM and e-commerce strategies. It wasn't a symbolic gesture. Grawien was there for the entire five-day show, getting direct feedback from sales reps, suppliers, and customers.

"It's an invaluable data point," Grawien says. The bad economy has brutalized the education sector, but School Specialty has found pockets of growth, leveraging its e-commerce and growing online curriculum products. "We need to be in lockstep with the sales force, understanding what's working and what's hindering their progress," he says. "This type of interaction not only gives me on-the-street feedback, but it also helps me assess what role the larger sales force can play with all our technology expansion plans."

One area you'll really want to get a grip on is the sales-conversion model. That is, to bag a sale, how many prospects does the sales team generally need, how many touch points, and how long does that process take? At many companies, this model is instinctively understood, but IT can help bring some rigor to it. Are we going to reach our sales goal mainly by reaching more prospects or closing a higher percentage of deals? This analysis can become a huge piece of work, especially for companies that sell to multiple customer sets.

Sales-conversion models are typically done for one type of product and usually aren't created outside the sales organization. Getting involved with this effort will not only give you insight into the amount of work that goes into the sales relationship, but it also will help you identify where sales tools are lacking. To close more sales, does the sales team need better tablet-based tools that will let them present sales materials more effectively? You don't want to leap to the first tech solution that comes to mind. Take time to intimately understand the sales process and the frustrations your sales team is dealing with.

Step 2 Assess how buyer behaviors have changed

Mobile and Web technologies have created new tools and platforms for more effective selling, but that's not all they've done: They've changed the very nature of the sales relationship with customers across all industries.

Pew Internet Research finds that online activity has grown steadily across all age brackets and activities; more than 85% of adults are now online regularly. We know this, but we haven't re-evaluated our legacy sales processes to reflect the fact that people have integrated the Web into their daily lives.

For companies that sell to consumers, the Web is no longer a discrete sales channel: 75% of consumers now do product research online, while 65% actually purchase online, Forrester Research says. So consumer companies must completely integrate their online and offline programs.

Steve Schlecht, CEO of online and catalog retailer Duluth Trading Company, calls this "omni-channel" retailing. This retail megatrend is every bit as important as the emergence of discounters like Wal-Mart in the 1960s and big-box category killers like Circuit City and Staples in the 1970s and '80s. "This is total disruption in the way purchases are made," Schlecht said at the recent Fusion CEO-CIO conference in Madison, Wis.

Business-to-business and service companies need a similar level of online-offline sales integration. B2B companies often assume that the complexity of their products means buyers still require an in-person sales force. But that's not always true.

My research and product design firm, Yeoman Technology, worked with a medical device manufacturer that custom-built every one of its systems based on the design of the hospital or testing facility it was selling to. The company was convinced it didn't need to provide extensive details about its products online. "That's just not how it works," the president said. "We're a complex product, and people don't just Google it."

But the company's IT team showed the president stats on search terms that proved prospects were Googling for insight. The tech team also discovered that competitors were providing ample details, specs, and pricing online. Even worse, there was information online from other sources about the company's products and pricing--wrong information. That's the reality today: Put the information online, or you'll be disqualified before you even realize it.

Discovering what people are doing online and how it relates back to the sales process requires crossing a lot of traditional lines between sales, support, marketing, operations, and product management. The old way of doing things won't work.

Brady, a midsize maker of precision electrical components, labels, and other specialized products, recently gave its CIO, Bentley Curran, an additional role: VP of digital business. Curran's job is now to identify every customer touch point and make sure Brady has the right platforms--online, offline, and mobile--for sales and customer support. And yes, this job comes with a quota to increase Brady's already sizable online sales.

This type of role is perfect for IT, since it requires linking people, data, and processes across a company's organizational units.

Step 3 | Audit the tools you have

So once you have an understanding of the sales process and what has changed externally, you need to assess what works and what doesn't. Although it can be painful to hear what your salespeople have to say, this step isn't particularly difficult. Just ask.

"Most sales reps aren't shy about opening up once they know you'll listen," says School Specialty's Grawien, who had plenty of talkers surrounding him at the national conference where he manned the sales booth. "The key point is you not only find out what they don't like, but you also get a true sense of what technologies and platforms they have the skill set to master."

You must assess how well your company is doing at tracking communication and customer patterns. Can a rep easily access all pre- and post-sales activity related to a customer? That means emails, orders, quotes, website visits, and the like. Likewise, can the internal service and support staff see the sales team's input, especially emails and proposals?

We're talking about a true customer-centric dashboard that puts all of the customer's information in one easy-to-use format. You'll have to leverage enterprise search more than you already do to access emails and documents, but that's not as hard as you might think. Pulling in website activity is a bit trickier, but the data is there if you can prove the value.

If you have a CRM system, odds are it's underutilized. You'll want to tie sales rep activities to what's going on online. All sales force automation software allows this in ways that give reps far more than just a prospect's contact details. If a training event, catalog mailing, or email campaign that could touch a customer is happening, it should be right there for reps to see and reference. If there's a spike in activity around a product or problem on the website, reps should know so they can prepare for questions that come up in live discussions. Most companies never even try to address these links, but they're critical to sales success.

Step 4 | Make improvements fast

Steps 1 through 3 will lead to dozens of tweaks, covering everything from email and CRM to service and reporting. Get right to work on that list.

But first take this pledge: Add no new tools or resources until we better leverage the ones we have. The first step shouldn't be upgraded CRM apps, new business analytics software, or yet another dashboard. IT should be able to immediately impact sales by tweaking existing tools.

When was the last time you sat with your salespeople and went step by step through how they use the CRM system? Chances are, there are fields they no longer use and steps they click past every time they use the system. If that functionality doesn't stand to serve your salespeople, get it out of their way.

In communicating with clients and colleagues, do reps stay within the CRM app, or are they switching back and forth to email? (Hint: Everyone still lives on email.) Is there a way for you to integrate the two? Steps like slimming down CRM and integrating email can make a quick impact, win friends in sales, and prove that IT can move fast and deliver results.

When IT integrates itself into the sales process in the right way, an interesting form of respect evolves. Neither IT nor sales quite understands the other's job, nor are they interested in swapping roles. But once they decide to team up, both groups will see advantages and start working together in new ways.

If sales is struggling, IT must be one of the first places it turns for help--but IT also has to be ready to share the blame if sales quotas aren't met. And if the company blows past those goals, make sure IT shares the glory, because we all know that the sales team throws the best celebratory parties.

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Michael Healey is president of Yeoman Technology, an Internet research and product design firm. He still makes cold calls for practice and fun. Read more by him at informationweek.com/mikehealey. Write to us at [email protected].

InformationWeek: Oct. 11, 2010 Issue

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