4 Tips to Accelerate Adoption of Your Sales Enablement App

As you consider new sales enablement apps for 2019, keep in mind that it’s not the type of project you can deploy and hope all goes well. If you want to see the adoption of your apps, and the benefits yielded from the usage of them, you need to ensure your sales team is seeing value.

But how do you drive adoption? Here are 4 tips to help drive adoption for your new sales enablement app.

1. Your new sales enablement app will help solve problems.
Before even purchasing a new tool, make sure it will solve a problem, or ideally many problems your sales reps experience. Source input from the team to get well-rounded feedback. Have the reps prioritize or rate the issues and then align these with the key features and benefits of the tool. By providing a tool that eliminates persistent and time-sucking headaches, it will go along to increasing adoption of the app.

Pro tip: Make sure the tool you choose also helps reps save time. For example, if it takes reps 10 clicks to find content they need to close a deal, find a tool that cuts it down to 2-3 clicks.  

2. The sales enablement app helps them sell.
Fixing a problem goes along way to enabling reps, but to keep them engaged and using the app they also need to see the value of it – the proof that they are selling more efficiently and effectively. For example, having their sales content organized by deal stage so they can track their progress. When they notice that this is making a big impact on accelerating the sales cycle and closing deals faster, reps will be stoked to use the app more.

Pro tip: When using an app that also captures key data about prospects, make sure the data is right at their fingertips in their CRM, so it provides insights to act on immediately, not locked away in an admin dashboard or report.

3. The sales enablement app is always available and easy to use.
Bells and whistles are fun to look at, but complicated to figure out, especially when time is limited as a sales rep. Help reps stay focused on selling by choosing a tool that is easy and intuitive. Better yet, find something that integrates with a system your team is already using. For example, if your CRM is Salesforce, search the AppExchange for native apps. Native apps are built on the Salesforce platform, sync with all of your live data, and are easily  accessed directly within Salesforce.

Also, make sure the app is available on mobile. This is pretty much a given these days but you’d be surprised how many companies still limp along with clunky, inconvenient tools. Please please please – just check and go with the mobile option. Your reps will thank you and the adoption rates will have your manager thanking you.

Pro tip: Find an app with the same interface as your CRM, so reps are immediately familiar with the functionality. This not only saves training time but boosts the users’ confidence in what they are doing on a daily basis. Go for simplicity and reliability over complex and questionable.

4. Tailor the sales enablement app to your existing sales process.
Part of what makes an app easy to use is how well it supports your existing sales process. A tool that can be configured to align with your sales process will make more sense to your sale team when they use it. It also means the app can be adapted to change and grow along with your sales process, so it’s a good long-term solution.

This is another great reason to consider a native application, which would allow your admin to easily make changes needed for your sales team. For example, if your marketing team needs to make sales content available to Regional Business Director’s only,  the Admin could create groups based on role to be used when sharing content. This makes it easier for marketing to share the necessary content and for end users to find the content relevant to them. 

Pro tip:  If you use Salesforce, consider a native app your admin can easily configure to help accelerate roll-outs and reduce total cost of ownership.

Depending on where you are with your sales enablement initiative or journey, remember to choose apps that focus on solving problems for reps, enabling them to sell smarter, faster and are easy to use. With an app that checks all these boxes, not only will you accelerate adoption, but you will also set-up your sales team for success by giving them tools they actually want to use.