The Secret to Creating High-Impact Tools

Sales organizations often find themselves inundated with rep requests for new sales tools. That said, despite the time and effort Sales Ops spends designing and perfecting new tools, sales force adoption often remains low, with many of the sales tools requested by reps rarely used in the field. What’s more, the high volume of tool requests often leads to high-impact tools slipping through the cracks or Sales Ops expending scarce organizational resources on creating low-value and low-impact tools.

Faced with this problem, Schneider Electric, a global energy management company, took to designing a comprehensive scorecard that helps Sales Ops direct resources to the tools with the highest potential for impact. Schneider broke down its sales tool evaluation process into two separate scorecards—one to analyze impact, and the other to assess resource commitment and feasibility.

The scorecards were evaluated in several impact areas that assessed tool “fit” against organizational priorities. For example, to assess strategic business impact, the urgency of the tool and whether or not it would provide a competitive advantage was evaluated to arrive at a decision.

On the other hand, the feasibility scorecard determined what resources would be needed to develop the tool.  This scorecard evaluated corporate demand, the level of resource investment, and the difficulty of project implementation. Current resource needs were balanced with future demands to ensure that ongoing tool maintenance costs were incorporated in the evaluation.

The combination of these scorecards allowed Schneider Electric to create tools with both the highest potential value to reps and the fewest execution barriers. The score produced by both the ‘impact’ and ‘feasibility’ scorecards was evaluated separately, to ensure the tool satisfied both criteria, allowing Schneider Electric to have a more advanced grading system that looked beyond rep productivity as the sole criteria for approval. The scoring scale also adjusted to reflect changes in corporate strategy and priorities, allowing different tool advantages to be prioritized at different times.

How does your company prioritize tools and drive tool adoption in the sales force?

SEC Members, review Schneider Electric’s best practice on allocating resources against highest-impact tools. To learn more about sales tools, visit the topic center, review the full study, and listen to the webinar replay on The Truth About Sales Tools.