Why (almost) all sales enablement software will not work

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OK. Big claim I know.

Firstly, by sales enablement software I am referring to any software that claims to drive sales revenue by providing insights. Any that claim they will provide you with actionable intelligence on which opportunities to pursue. Which will be more profitable. Which are not worth your time and effort and which maybe you should pass on.

I also include almost all of the current crop of ‘AI’ tools in this basket.

Now I am not being critical of the software developers. I am sure these tools all are well designed and the science behind their claims is sound. But they are doomed to fail.

Whenever someone refers me to yet another piece of software to compare with Sentia, our product, I instantly have an ‘evaluation’ method to determine if it is a threat to us.

I ask myself these three questions.

Question 1 :

Does the AI, sales enablement tool, the software, the add on, the point solution .. whatever it is, rely on data from pipeline, forecast, opportunities however it wants to describe these?

In other words, does it base all of its’ decisions, actions, insights on the

value,

stage, and

close date

of pieces of business that a salesperson wants to win?

Question 2:

Does it rely on this ‘pipeline’ or ‘opportunity’ data being accurate and kept up to date 100% of the time.

Remember these tools that claim AI or machine learning or other esoteric technologies look at a complete dataset of all of a user’s oppprtunities to make their decisions.

If any of the opportunities are not accurate. If any of the details are out of date; even for a few of them only, then the conclusions, insights and actions must by definition be flawed.

Question 3:

Does the software, AI, tool or product do anything to resolve the challenge that almost 70% of sales people do not use their CRM effectively.

22% of all reported problems to successful CRM implementation were people-related or linked to user adoption (Forrester Research).

49% of CRM projects fail (Forester Research)

83% of senior executives explained that their biggest challenge was getting their staff to use the software (Really Simple Systems).

Less than 37% of sales reps actually use their company’s CRM system (CSO Insights).

and so on.

So, why (almost) all sales enablement software doesnt work

Sales professionals in the main, do not effectively use their company’s CRM.

Those that do do not rigorously maintain the accuracy of their pipeline data – close dates, stage and value.

Many sales reps as a strategy will either be conservative and under value opportunities or perhaps under pressure from management they will exaggerate opportunities. Either way has the same effect – to screw up even the best software

Unless the product, like Sentia, resolves the user adoption and user accuracy issues they simply cannot work effectively. Even partially poor data will destroy their effectiveness.

The moment that a tool offers up an insight on an opportunity that that sales professional knows is crazy they completely lose confidence in the product and will ignore it forever more.