How to Sell in a Crisis: 3 Ways a Digital Adoption Platform Drives Sales Through Anything

During a crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, organizations need to prioritize how to allocate a very delicate budget. Despite differences between different companies, in terms of how lay-offs, furloughs, and other budget freezes were made, everyone pretty much agreed on one thing: the sales organization needed to continue as usual, and do so with fewer resources.

This has compelled business leaders across all verticals to ensure that their sales teams know how to sell in a crisis. We’d like to assert that there are many factors involved in a successful sales process, but one essential ingredient that simply cannot be overlooked, especially when the crisis involves remote work, is having an excellent Digital Adoption Platform to drive high performance and productivity across all sales platforms.

Be able to hire and retain only the very best salespeople

A highly talented person with drive and great people skills should be able to shine at sales, regardless of the software tools that they need to use. Reps are at the whim of the training that their company provides, their years of experience working with certain software, and their overall digital dexterity that often is determined by something arbitrary like age or being raised wealthy. These factors shouldn’t deter someone with a passion for selling, from being a salesperson.

With a DAP, the digital skills involved in selling no longer get to be the deciding factor in how qualified someone is as a salesperson. It levels the playing field and allows teams to truly have the best people possible to fill the roles based on character and talent. 

How? Training and onboarding don’t determine who’s ahead.

Training and onboarding becomes a non-issue

Training for a new salesperson in an enterprise company is usually is a very slow and intensive process. Employees use an average of 14 platforms every single day, and the software training involved to be able to use all of the different tools efficiently is becoming impossible for any human being. Simply put, the digital gap between the human user and the technology is too wide to bridge without a digital solution.

Changing business environments also often means new processes, new employees, or reskilling. In fact, while 85% of sales organizations don’t expect to reduce their headcounts through the current crisis,  instead 14% of companies anticipate increasing headcounts within their sales organizations.

Adapting how you introduce new tools and processes to employees, or how you onboard new employees remotely by providing contextual and user-specific help and assistance directly in-app, means more flexibility and quicker ramp up time. Fast forward through the “just training not working” period and get teams up and running quickly and easily.

Take location out of the equation with visibility

No matter where your salespeople are working, they need to be able to drive revenue efficiently. They need easy access to the tools they need to build pipelines and scale businesses. With a Digital Adoption Platform, automated processes and data validation rules ensure sales reps can focus on their conversations, relationships, and careful selling tactics, without having to worry about navigating through the many software tools that they use. Mistakes by reps across complex systems and cross-application processes are likely to be made, and these mistakes can put precious deals in jeopardy. 

If you’re in an office or dispersed around the globe, a DAP gives you the power to keep reps engaged and productive, with self-service support and automation. It also gives you the power to maintain full visibility of usage and processes.

To make faster and better decisions, leaders have a concise analytics dashboard to understand software usage. They can see if employees are leveraging the tools they need to get their job done – but also that they are doing so effectively. This also allows for streamlining software spend by uncovering unused software licenses, duplicate systems, or underachieving platforms. You don’t have to worry that location is limiting your visibility into progress on all levels. 

The sales organization is essential to continue driving revenue through a crisis. A Digital Adoption Platform ensures that sales teams are empowered, engaged, equipped, and prepared for anything, no matter where they are.