I can actually remember a time when I thought, “I don’t need to know how to use a computer, I’ll just hire people who do.”
Those days are, of course, long gone. Today, I’d be lost without my laptop and cell phone. I even take my laptop on vacation.
There are technologies that are routinely available, and routinely used by salespeople to help them be more effective. Laptop computers, CRM software, Blackberries, IPhones, GPS and webinars — all have the capacity to make a salesperson more productive.
For too many salespeople, the use of these kinds of technologies is still optional. These folks tend to hold one of two views.
First, they have never used this before. They have their established routines. They see no need to change anything. To incorporate these tools, they would have to change their routines and learn something new, and they don’t want to do that. So, they defend the status quo, try to stay under the radar screen, and hope that no one notices their lack of technological expertise.
Or, some look at these technologies as bringing with them a degree of accountability with which they are uncomfortable. They look at a CRM system and realize that their company can now hold them accountable for such things as collecting people’s names and knowing some measurable aspects of their business. And, they realize that if they enter every sales call into the CRM system, their manager will be able to determine where they were at almost any time! That is a level of accountability to which they are unaccustomed, and uncomfortable.
So, they view technology with the wrong perspective. Instead of seeing it as a tool to help them organize, communicate and prioritize, they see it as an accountability device. Instead of a tool to emphasize their strengths, they view it as a mechanism to expose their weaknesses.
But, of course, the best salespeople could care less about accountability. They hold themselves to higher standards than to what most managers would hold them. They can easily defend their choices to their employer, because they spend so much time making those decisions.
The best salespeople view all the technology tools as just that – tools that allow them to be more effective. They embrace the technological tools that the company offers them, and often go beyond with their own personal investments into those things that will make them more effective.
That’s one of the reasons they are the best.
BP-41
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