I’ve been a Sales VP and a President of a company. I’ve also been a sales rep in various levels and industries most of my life. This experience has helped me recognize when duct tape is the tool of choice. What I have learned over the last 5 years since starting Fill the Funnel is there is a lot of duct tape in use. Judging from the books on the business shelf at my local bookstore, duct tape is in high demand.
Your back at work, the holiday stories have all run their course. It is typically a time with lots of NEW in the air – new quotas, new territories, new comp plan, new prospects and new optimism.
There are other companies where SAME OLD is in the air, with duct tape everywhere holding things together as best it can. Judging from the business shelf at the local bookstore, duct tape might be the ultimate tool for business, but I believe other tools hold more promise.
Sales leaders that are dragging their feet on implementing sales web tools and social tools are strangling the productivity of their sales teams. This impact of this hesitation to deploy new tools has been camouflaged over the last few years due to a slow economy. Most indicators point to 2013 being a much improved sales environment, and if true, will expose those who have not invested in the training and deployment of the new generation of web tools. Amplifying this will be that it is not just a light switch process to implement. Process and more significantly, habits will take some time to embrace and integrate. Sales leaders that have been putting these decisions off run significant risk of being exposed in the near term.
Sales people might be in the same situation as their leaders, having brushed off social tools and not invested in sales web tools that can be implemented by themselves, without company involvement. What has already started to become apparent in many sales teams is that those who have educated themselves on the new sales realities and the approaches and tools that leverage these changes are now delivering stronger results than their peers.
It is time to start ripping off the duct tape. It is holding you back and will ultimately be the reason for your demise. If you, an individual sales person are still waiting for your company to provide tools and training, you run the risk of ultimate failure. It is time to take action, to make the decision to Bring Your Own Tools (BYOT) into your sales life. Take charge of your results and learn how sales tools like InsideView, LinkedIn, ToutApp, Mailchimp, Paper.li and many others can and will improve your sales results.
There is a whole lot more to talk about on BYOT and the implications and I am looking forward to share not only my thoughts and ideas on this topic, but the experiences of many others that are already putting these ideas into practice.
Do you have duct tape in your company? Are you ready to start ripping it off?
