Starting small when deploying new sales technology (and more sales transformation tips)

Deploying and onboarding new technologies to your sales team is no easy task, but we see creative change management solutions from our customers every day.

From helping our customers onboard Outreach, we’ve learned first-hand secrets to managing change when deploying new technology. Here are a few of the change management techniques that our most successful customers are using to adapt to new technology and set their sales teams up for success.

Have a Defined Plan

Good change management is strategic. It has a plan, and it has specific goals. Our top customers have a clear idea of what they want to get out of using Outreach, and they know what they want their company to look like after full implementation.

By sharing this vision with us from the beginning, we can customize our support to help them reach that goal faster and easier.

When dealing with any new tech, it’s important to know what you want, and then share that with the provider of the product. They can then help you develop a defined plan, with clear milestones, and smaller objectives to lead you towards your ultimate goal.

Use All Available Resources

Customers that use all available resources have higher rates of success when implementing new technologies. Resources include professionals such as account executives (AEs), customer success managers (CSMs), and client engagement managers (CEMs), as well as training materials and tools.

Talk to your AE, CSM, or CEM to find out what training materials, advice, and help they can offer to help your roll-out and create a unique onboarding plan for your company.

There are also informal resources you can take advantage of. McKinsey suggests creating infrastructure for sharing and learning, including gamification and online forums. We’ve seen some of our customers record high-performing sales reps when they’re using our platform and then distributing the recordings as training tools. If you start your roll-out with a small team, that’s a great opportunity to record training materials for the larger roll-out.

Start Small

Implementing a new platform, or any new tech across an entire company is a monumental undertaking. Because of this, many of our customers choose to implement Outreach incrementally with a small, agile team of early-adopters that lead the change, like Industry Dive did.

Another customer, a multinational data visualization company, even created a special badge for their “Outreach Champions.” This became a badge of honor that sped up adoption of the new platform as sales reps worked hard to gain the badge.

“The Outreach Champion became a pretty coveted position, so now we have these little badges and stuff that people put on their desks... Being an Outreach Champion is a big deal and something people aspire to.”

Customers have had equal success rolling out the platform to all their salespeople at once, or starting small with select groups first. Which approach is the best depends on the size, goals, structure, and culture of the sales team (or teams) and the overall organization.

Deploying new software for your sales team can be rough, but it doesn't need to be. The customer success stories and verified best practices in the eBook can help to smooth out the transition and help your team sell easier.