When it comes to new sales enablement technology, one of the biggest barriers to success is getting buy-in from your sales reps. Adoption of new policies and practices can be a struggle—especially if the reps feel as if that technology is only being implemented to “keep tabs” on them or to critique how they’re currently doing their jobs. However, with a few easy tips, you can help ensure you get all the benefits of sales enablement coaching technology by securing that much-needed sales rep adoption.

How to Foster Sales Rep Adoption of New Sales Enablement Coaching Technology

Why Does Sales Enablement Coaching Technology Matter?

Some companies think along these lines: If adoption of this new technology is going to be a battle with our sales team, why bother?

This is a big mistake! Successfully implementing this technology into your coaching arsenal has been shown to increase win rate by up to 28 percent. With those kinds of potential returns, it’s absolutely worth your time to figure out how to implement this technology and to get sales rep buy-in—in order to ensure you fully capitalize on that new technology.

1. Create a Solution for Your Sales Reps

When successfully implemented in the onboarding process, this coaching technology can arm your sales reps with the necessary skills to sell more efficiently and more effectively. However, many reps new to this system (and used to doing things a different way) could be reluctant to engage with the technology.

If you’re looking for your reps to use the technology in a specific way, provide concrete examples and solutions for your request. If you demonstrate the kind of behavior you’re after, your reps are all the more likely to have success interacting with the new technology in the desired manner.

2. When Onboarding New Sales Reps, Introduce Them to the Coaching Technology

When you have new reps, it’s critical to get their buy-in by training them through the new system. Because they don’t have any preconceived notions from former training material, you’re fare more likely to get up-front buy-in from them. Remember, though, you must demonstrate the system’s benefits, including how and where to quickly and easily access information.

New reps are often eager to prove their worth and have success right away, so make sure you make it clear this new tool can get them up to speed quickly.

3. Highlight the Benefits of the System for Reps

The best way to encourage adoption is to prove the system has real, concrete value for your reps. Make it clear not only what the benefits are but how those benefits can help your reps sell more, faster.

In particular, emphasize how easy the system is to use. The less time your reps spend searching for information, the more time they have to actually sell, so convincing them the system won’t talk a lot of time to navigate will be a big step toward adoption.

4. Demonstrate How This System Integrates with Buyer Personas and the Buyer’s Journey

A crucial part of the sales enablement process is mapping your content to your specific buyer personas and having content for each of those personas at every stage of the sales cycle.

This is an easy way to prove the value of the system. If reps can find relevant content (either training material for them or actual content for the prospects) in a timely manner, this system can save them hours of sifting through documents to find what they need. By covering every stage of the buyer’s journey, it also assists them throughout the sales cycle—not just in one isolated instance.

As sales reps are keenly aware, one of the biggest problems with content is that there’s often simply too much of it, and this system can help them easily and quickly access exactly what they need.

5. Incorporate Video into the Sales Enablement Coaching Technology

Video is simply a more engaging form of content than plain text, and it promotes better retention as well. You should, therefore, be leveraging it within your system.

Not only should there be video to help quickly and easily guide your sales reps, but you should be ensuring that video content is simple to find and quick to use. For example, mark or tag longer videos so sales reps can easily jump to the exact section that’s relative to them—rather than sitting and scrolling through the whole video.

6. Ensure the Coaching Technology Is Scalable and Modular

Sales is a dynamic industry, and for your technology to be successful with your reps, it must be as flexible as they require. That is, they must be able to adopt it and use it the way they want. For greater buy-in, this system shouldn’t be a totally built system that everyone interacts with in the same way. To some degree, each rep should be able to tailor the system to his or her particular sales-related needs.

7. Make the Technology Mobile Compatible

Tied to scalability and modularity is the need for the system to be mobile compatible. Reps must be able to access this system anywhere, anytime. Via an app, reps should be able to log in and interact with the system however is going to benefit them (accessing a particular piece of content for a prospect, watching a video about how to deal with a certain persona, and so on).

8. Help Sales Reps Become Thought Leaders within the Industry

Today’s sales reps are asked to fulfill so many roles and provide so many services, and one way to help your reps stand apart from the crowd is through an innovative technology-based coaching system.

The information and insight gained through the system will help establish them as thought leaders within the industry, giving them immediate credibility, trust, and clout with their prospects.

9. Get Your Sales Reps Using the Technology!

Perhaps the easiest way to get adoption is to simply get your reps using it. Once they start engaging with the platform, they’ll realize how it gets even faster and easier the more they familiarize themselves with the layout, and most importantly, they’ll see firsthand how it can truly reduce wasted time during the workday.

Integrating technology into your sales enablement efforts is a great way to get more organized, more productive, and more effective, and with these tactics and approaches to implantation, you can help ensure you actually get buy-in and adoption from all your sales reps.

Incorporating video into your sale enablement strategy can benefit your company on two major fronts: one, facilitating onboarding and ongoing training of sales reps and, two, providing valuable, relevant, engaging content for your reps to give to prospects and clients. Video can help you significantly improve both these areas, making your reps more efficient and effective and ultimately improving your bottom line.

Sales Enablement Video Strategy – Top 10 Ways Video Can Help You Train Your Reps, Prospect Better, and Serve Your Customers

1. Video for Onboarding and Ongoing Training of Sales Reps

When people think of the traditional sales training model, they often imagine a trainer coming to a place of business and conducting an in-person session with the sales reps. However, this model is rapidly becoming out of date. Instead, businesses are opting to do their onboarding and training through video content. Here are five important reasons why.

2. On-Demand Video Training Is More Convenient

Conducting training through videos allows reps to fit their training modules into their busy daily schedules. Rather than having to commit to one time and one place, which can be disruptive to their interactions with prospects and clients, video training lets them view and learn whenever and wherever is convenient. The most important thing sales reps do in a day is sell, and training shouldn’t impede their ability to do that.

3. Video Training Is Cheaper Than Traditional Training

The cost of trying to coordinate everyone’s schedule and get them in the same room at the same time to undergo sales training can be quite high. There are travel expenses and the cost of the actual trainer to consider, but that’s not even mentioning the cost of taking your reps out of the field for a day in order to undergo this training.

Video training is faster, allows your reps to get back to selling, and eliminates much of the overhead associated with trainings.

4. Video Promotes Better Retention

Retention is a big issue with in-person training. The training occurs, the trainer leaves, and the reps are then expected to remember everything that was said in that one training session. That’s simply not how people learn effectively.

Training through video means the content is always there for the rep to go back and reference, thereby enhancing retention through multiple views. This is particularly helpful for getting brand-new sales reps up to speed.

People also tend to retain information through visual mediums better than through the written or spoken word, so videos are effective from that perspective as well.

5. A Sales Enablement Training Video Catalog Is Easy to Use

By cataloging and organizing your training videos, sales reps are able to access them quickly and easily—no matter where they are. As long as reps have mobile devices or laptops and an Internet connection, they can receive the insight and training they require before taking their next sales calls. This leads directly to increased productivity in two ways:

By making training content accessible with just a few clicks, reps don’t have to waste a lot of time digging and searching for the exact training video they want.

By mapping training content to every persona at every point in the sales cycle, no matter who reps are targeting, they can find relevant, insightful training content that will inform and better their call.

Reps need to be ready to interact with prospects at the drop of a hat. That’s just the nature of sales. If they can quickly and easily find the training content they need, they’ll be ready within minutes to make a call to that persona in that stage of the buyer’s journey, and they’ll be armed with the information they need to make that call productive.

6. Increase Sales Rep Productivity by Producing Micro Video Content

These training videos can’t be overly long. Trying to wade through too much content (text or video based) will discourage your reps from interacting with that training material. Make sure the videos are quick and to the point, or, in a longer video, embed helpful markers that allow the rep to jump to the part of the video that’s relevant. Remember, the markers need to be clearly labeled and titled so reps can get to the content they need as quickly as possible.

7. Video for Better Prospecting and Client Interactions

A large part of sales enablement is figuring out how to interact with your prospects and clients more effectively because, when that happens, you see better conversion and better profits. Video can help you get that increased productivity, and the following are five ways how.

8. Offer More Engaging Content and Communication

Video content is simply more engaging for your prospects and clients than plain-text e-mail, and video increases your odds of someone actually engaging with that content. For maximum effect, make sure the video is relevant, insightful, educational, and to the point. Sale reps and prospects alike are simply less likely to interact with overly long video content.

9. Enjoy Better Prospecting with Video

With video, you can easily track and analyze who is watching and how they are engaging with that visual content. This means you have unique insight into what personas you’re dealing with, what stage they are in the buyer’s journey, and what their problems, issues, and barriers to success might be. When reps know those things, they can come to sales calls armed and prepared with relevant, insightful information for those prospects.

When a rep can answer a prospect’s specific question—rather than just providing generic information—that greatly increases the value a prospect sees in that rep, and that increases the chances of the rep closing the deal.

10. Video Can Increase a Rep’s Credibility and Trust

A video doesn’t need to be a huge production to prove effective. Even talking head videos where reps introduce themselves and explain how they can specifically address the concerns, issues, and questions of their prospects can lead to increased credibility and trust.

11. Become an Influencer and Thought Leader through Video

In a market saturated with content, companies are always looking for ways to distinguish themselves, and video is one way to set yourself apart. By positioning the rep as a knowledgeable thought leader within the industry, video enhances the value a prospect sees in that rep—all of which leads to the increased likelihood of closed deals.

12. Video Provides Value to Existing Clientele

Video isn’t just for prospects or the prospecting stage. It can be highly valuable to existing customers as well. Your customers have already chosen to work with you once, so many of those initial barriers to making a sale are eliminated. If you have new product offering or other opportunities to upsell clients, use video to convey that. Just as with prospects, it increases your perceived trustworthiness, credibility, and value, and it makes that sale more likely.

No matter where your prospects currently fall within the sales cycle—even if they are existing customers—video can play a crucial role in enhancing the productivity of your sales team. It can also work internally to make training cheaper, more efficient, and more effective. However you incorporate video into your sales enablement strategy, though, it’s going to help set you apart and increase your chances at success.