Sales Performance: How to Effectively Drive Performance with Digital (1/4)

After transforming customer relationships, the digital revolution provides teams with new drivers of sales performance. Web and smartphone applications strengthen the motivation and engagement of sales teams, even as they face significant disruptions.

Digital technologies offer a tremendous opportunity to reinvent sales engagement and mobilize the collective energy of sales teams. A revolution is underway with new, simpler, and more engaging tools.
In this series of articles, we will explore how digital transformation strengthens the pillars of sales engagement and improves your sales performance.

Digital to the Rescue of Sales Motivation

The 2015 Edenred Ipsos barometer on “Employee Well-being and Motivation in Europe” provides several insights into how digital can come to the aid of motivation. The first concerns the evolution of motivation, country by country. One-third of French employees report a decrease in motivation, one of the highest rates after Poland and Turkey. With 41% of respondents declaring themselves ‘often happy’ at work, France still ranks in the middle of the pack for this indicator, evaluated across 14 countries.

Another aspect of this study: the effect of the digital revolution on well-being at work. Overall, there is great homogeneity, from country to country, in considering this impact positive (40%) or neutral (40%). The majority of employees (73%) claim personal use of digital tools but believe they are insufficiently used in their company. They perceive a real interest in their own career development. They are therefore inclined to use new digital tools that are more powerful and engaging in their professional lives.

Digital technology and its use are becoming indispensable for employee development and motivation. The use of new technologies and tools, better adapted to modern habits, has a real impact on your teams’ motivation.

Sales Performance and Digital: A Powerful Duo

Managing sales performance is essential for achieving objectives. It allows for tracking the achievement of an objective, the implementation of a strategy, or the completion of an activity. Effective management must be in real-time. It allows us to visualize our performance indicators at a given moment, and thus to act accordingly based on these indicators. Real-time impacts the ‘autonomy’ lever of intrinsic motivation, as it allows for quick, independent reactions to a situation.

• Runkeeper : 45 million users
• Duolingo : 110 million users
• Runtastic : 80 million users

These consumer applications all share several common features: real-time performance management, visualization of objectives and progress, notifications, sharing, and mobility. We use these applications daily, and they have proven their value in terms of motivation. So why not apply the same principles in a professional context? Sales management is a real business challenge. As Tom Peters, management specialist and author of business strategy bestsellers, said “what gets measured gets done”.

Excel No Longer Enables Effective Management

Many organizations still manage with Excel. However, the tool restricts the effectiveness of management. Indeed, your sales teams’ results are generally communicated at the end of the month, and they do not have access to their real-time performance. It is therefore easy for them to lose interest in these figures, as no further action can change them.

The past is not actionable. Infrequent updates of these results, transmitted retrospectively, are a real hindrance to your teams’ autonomy. Furthermore, reading Excel spreadsheets that are not individualized requires courage, and it is difficult for teams to grasp their individual performance. Finally, in a digitized society where the phone has become the primary sales tool, one might wonder if Excel, which is not mobile and poorly readable, is truly suited for effective management.

Digital Opens New Opportunities

There are many tools available to help you facilitate and improve your sales management.

If you are still attached to Excel, try Google’s spreadsheet tools, which are online and collaboratively editable. You also have access to an online version of Excel, which is also collaborative. These tools give you more flexibility and will allow you to perform your updates more regularly.

You can also directly step up your game. Data visualization solutions like Toucan Toco are numerous and allow you to have an individualized, engaging, and modern view of your performance. Updates are facilitated and almost automatic thanks to the integration of data from most of the tools you already use. Incenteev offers you comprehensive and modern management for your sales teams. Managers visualize their teams’ real-time performance. Sales representatives, on the other hand, access individual dashboards that will allow them to gain autonomy.

Digital management strongly impacts the ‘progress and autonomy’ levers of intrinsic motivation. Indeed, management becomes engaging, and your sales force will enjoy consulting developments and results at any time. It is very powerful because it allows your teams to gain autonomy, correct course in real-time, or provide you with quick feedback. The use of digital tools will naturally improve the engagement, motivation, and sales performance of your teams.

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