The adoption of new technology and new ways of working can never be taken for granted. People don’t like change and can throw up many legitimate, and some less legitimate, objections.
Objections such as ‘Everything is working fine at the moment, why change?’, ‘This new tech isn’t actually going to help us.’, ‘This is management coming up with a new initiative and has nothing to do with me.’ With a large sales team dealing with pushback from them was one of the main obstacles that Citrix faced.
Citrix is a digital workspace platform enabling over 100 million global users to stay securely connected to their 400,000 organisations and gives IT the tools to oversee and secure those connections.
The challenge
POP ran an initial workshop for the sales team to offer their insights and requirements. The result was a tool that met their needs – and one that they were happy to endorse and promote to their colleagues to encourage take up.
Cybersecurity in the digital workspace is a complex and crowded marketplace. Citrix was struggling to help customers grasp the complexities, challenges and risks of the connected world which was slowing down their sales cycle and customer acquisition.
POP was the ideal solution for them, the POP Experiences Platform allows for complex solutions to be simply and visually presented as stories that the customer can explore, whilst delivering detailed information as and when they need it.
As a company marketing a complex solution to B2B customers, Citrix needed to implement a solution to help sales reps have more consultative conversations with customers to help them make sense of the complex cyber landscape they operate in.
Their previous difficulties in doing this had impacted the attitude and motivation of the sales force; why would this new platform and approach be any better, why should we use it?
Without sales and marketing buy-in, changes will flounder and the desired results simply won’t be delivered.
This reluctance had to be overcome if POP was to help Citrix deliver to its potential.
The solution
The way we tackled this challenge is a fundamental part of our development and deployment process. We always start with our unique Customer Success Blueprint®; a collaborative discovery and scoping process that explores, identifies, and prioritises key objectives of the business, sales team and customers.
It helps to establish a unified vision and consensus amongst all the stakeholders involved and buy-in from the sales team. It also sets out a blueprint for the long-term development and strategic success of the sales tool.
Setting clear goals
Setting clear goals for the sales experience and articulating what success will look like was the first step, and this was done at a senior level within the organisation.
This is a process we actively assist with, we know what the POP Experiences Platform is capable of delivering which can help us to push the customer to be more ambitious with their goals.
Building consensus
With goals established, it was time to involve the teams who will ultimately use the experience. POPcomms was established by sales and marketing professionals who fully understand the challenges on the front line.
Getting the views and opinions of the sales and marketing teams early on is crucial to building consensus amongst teams as to what is needed and it helps ensure adoption later in the rollout phase.
We wanted to know:
- What worked?
- What did their customers respond to?
- What kind of sales collateral delivered a positive response and what didn’t?
- What would they like to see in their new sales tool?
- What would save them time and make their life easier?
POP is all about supporting rep and customer conversations, telling the story of how Citrix can improve the efficiency and security of their customer’s business.
It was also important to understand:
- What admin tasks took them away from valuable customer-facing time?
- How were customer conversations monitored and analysed?
- How was this fed back to marketing to help fine tune content?
- Was this information tracked in their CRM?
- Did the results inform future sales strategies?
We conducted an anonymous survey to help get this information. Being anonymous is important as people are able to be far more honest about what works and what doesn’t.
Workshop
The survey results were then fed back in a workshop to Citrix, and directly informed the type of content needed to reinforce the sales message, design and user journey of their experience. The output from the workshop was the blueprint for the final experience. With the agreed blueprint in place we adopted our agile approach to deliver the experience.
An agile approach
An agile approach allows for regular check-ins, so that the sales team involvement doesn’t end there. Their involvement is especially crucial in the prototyping and testing stage and by ensuring that they continued to be actively involved, they became stakeholders and chief advocates of their new sales tool. They saw their input, knowledge and experience reflected in its capabilities.
Training
The final stage was training. We made sure that all users of the experience were confident of its value and as a direct result, confident in their ability to use it in front of customers whether face-to-face or as a remote sales tool.
The results
By involving key staff right from the outset, a sense of ownership was created. POP wasn’t just ‘a’ tool; it became ‘our’ tool. Sales buy-in began right there, with the result that by the time the platform was deployed adoption was all but guaranteed.
The commercial results were equally impressive:
The next step
Digital sales enablement is a key strategy in the B2B environment, and the POP platform is unique in its range of capabilities. Equally unique is our commitment to making sure that you get the greatest value from your investment.
Our understanding of the challenges in B2B sales means that our approach is holistic, it’s not just about technology.
You benefit from a process designed to involve and enthuse your sales and marketing teams from the start to ensure their adoption of new sales technologies.
If you’d like to know more about how our unique offering can revolutionise your sales get in touch for a no-obligation consultation.
