In a digital sales environment, now’s the time for technical sales leaders to revisit areas of investment.

Today’s digital-first sales environment is forcing businesses of all sizes to re-examine where to invest. As technical sales leaders who may be overseeing a large group of presales, sales engineers, solution architects, system engineers and subject matter experts, it is critical to reframe how you invest in your business. For example, traditional analog business practices that lead with travel and entertainment to build relationships with the technical buyers may no longer be an option. Now is the time for technical sales leaders to take action on how to invest in people, processes and tools. I hope this framework is a good way to start thinking about how you may want to invest in your business moving forward.

Technical Sales Leadership: Mapping Investments to People, Processes, and Tools

Three simple steps to driving investments in your business:

Step 1: People

Build a world-class team and reward your top performers. Losing a top performer can cost your company millions of dollars.

Recruit: Develop incentives for your best employees to refer like-minded talent to your company.

Reward: Deliver economic and recognition rewards to your best and most improved performers.

Retain: Keep your top performers challenged and engaged with your organization.

Step 2: Processes

Business practices that relied on travel and entertainment are no longer top of mind. Make sure your team is ready for a digital-first sales motion and help them automate low-value work so they can focus on high-value tasks.

Analog: Evaluate to see if analog practices such as travel and entertainment are relevant to the opportunity.

Digital: Optimize your technical sales practices to be digital first and analog second.

Automated: Determine what aspects of mundane work can be automated to help focus on high-value tasks.

Step 3: Tools

Avoid trying to cobble together your own tools or retrofitting general-purpose systems. Your team fuels millions of top-line growth every year, so advocate for the right tooling specifically built to support their daily work needs.

In-House: Scrutinize the all-in expense of building internal tools to support your daily needs.

General Systems: Quantify the cost of retrofitting a general-purpose system to support your daily workflow needs.

Purpose-Built: Calculate the speed and cost of purchasing something built for you vs. in-house or generated systems.

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