Creating the Perfect Storm Part VI: An Environment of Results

So far we’ve learned about the relationships that are affected by a new technology, how to choose a technology that minimizes the negative effects, and how to maximize returns on the information gathered using that new technology. Then we learned how perceptions affect a sales team and how to mediate negative backlash by building relational currency, and how to use that to overcome resistance within a sales team and among customers.

For the sixth and final part of our series, we are going to go over what exactly encourages learning of sales technology in order to generate the results you need to take your business to the next level. Our final chapter leads us to a empirical study done among the employees of a major retail bank in Nigeria undergoing such a change. Conducted by Dr. Vincent Onyemah of Babson University and Dr. Scott Swain of Northeastern, the study monitored a bank with over 2 million customers in a major city. Their findings revealed some interesting dynamics about what really spurred change.

Following the social learning model of Albert Bandura, Onyemah and Swain paid careful attention to relationships of different people in the sales organization and the effect they had on sales performance. Perceptions were monitored by questionnaire, which were standardized and compared to actual sales.

Of particular importance were the perceived competence of the sales manager with the technology, the perceived competence of coworkers, and the perceived competence of competitors. The perceived competence of the manager proved to be one of the strongest correlations to salesperson performance, as it acted as a mediating factor in the perceived savvy of coworkers and the perceived monitoring of usage. Both of these in turn moderated the use of technology, which was the single most decisive factor in salesman performance.

The key takeaways from this are that the leadership of a sales manager is one of the key ingredients to successful technology learning in a sales organization. Acceptance and enthusiasm towards the new technology will have a trickle down effect through coworkers and direct relationships, leading to improved adoption of the product.

Interestingly enough, perceived technical savvy of competitors had a large NEGATIVE effect on the performance of salespeople. This reflects the importance of staying up to date with technology, not only will it prevent negative effects by a competitor to your sales force, it may very well make their sales force less effective.