If you’ve rolled out any tool at an organization, you know how important it is to have the support of your leaders.
What is your best advice for getting stakeholder buy-in?
Share it with us in the comments below!
What’s your best piece of advice for getting stakeholder buy-in?
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I think the the best piece of advice I can give - as many have already been outlined above - is pragmatism. For tech admins, the benefits of something like Gong are abundantly clear - but for those not necessarily in this world, most of the time it can be seen as just another cost on an annual budget. What I've always tried to do is KISS - keep it simple, stupid - and presenting my stakeholders with the most concise cost/benefit analysis and how it affects their team or department specifically. Numbers (ROI, productivity increase estimations, etc) go a long way, as well.
The best advice for getting stakeholder buy-in is to have a demo meeting with frontline managers. Gong is a very powerful tool, and I am very excited about introducing its functionalities to my team. There is a lot of valuable insight that Gong provides, but it usually would take a lot of time to provide that information. It saves time, so we would be able to focus on things that require more attention. The goal is to get the frontline managers on board and show them how much Gong can be valuable to our team.
- Solve real problems. Understand the pains of each of the stakeholder and show how Gong can address those.
- Use data. For a new Gong implementation, data from how other orgs have been successful is great. Once it's up and running, using your own data is key. Highlight successes of the top performing reps, or show what behaviours lead to more closed-won deals.
- Reinforcement from leadership. Our CEO and CRO have both spoken to our commercial team on the importance of tools such as Gong to level up performance and make us competitive with leading organisations.
New to Gong, but best advice for getting Stakeholder buy-in for new tools/tech is:
Start with what’s in it for them!
- Why this new tool is vital to their business
- How it aligns with and supports reaching their overall business goals and objectives
- What is at stake if they don’t get on board!
Then, ask them what’s in the way and why they *wouldn’t* want to adopt the new tool, and answer those concerns. :)
When rolling out any tool, ensuring you have data available to share with stakeholders will be important. Anytime a stakeholder needs to make a decision, a data driven decision will be important vs just how you feel this new product will help the business. Work with the vendor if you don’t have specific data points or understanding on how that would work.
Provide a current state and future state assessment. What will this product do for the company?
Showing how any current systems are not providing data and how a new system will be able to provide actionable insights will be important.
Stakeholder buy-in for any tool is crucial to the success of the implementation and adoption. I highly recommend that you do some of the following:
1. Identify the stakeholders -Once you identify make sure to include people from this group as champions or influencers for other stakeholders. Have them involved in discovery, demos, implementation discussions, etc.
2. Understand their needs or what they would like the tool to accomplish -Make sure to have a diverse group to ensure you are understanding needs across different roles, different departments, etc.
3. Highlight the benefits they will receive directly or indirectly
4. Address any concerns related to rolling out a new tool -make sure this is done before you begin implementing to ensure a smoother implementation and adoption.
5. Provide training and support -- this is probably the most important because even if you get buy-in from the stakeholder they will not actually adopt the tool fully unless they understand how to use it.
Lastly, make sure that you gather evidence of the ROI benefits from stakeholders and use all of this information to create a compelling presentation, so your team can effectively demonstrate the value of the sales tool to both the stakeholders and the executive team. It’s crucial to emphasize how the tool alights with the company’s goals and objectives, and how it can positively impact key metrics and outcomes for the stakeholders.
I’ve found the best way to get stakeholder support is creating a regular cadence and channel to share updates and best practices. My stakeholders know they can expect certain monthly Gong reporting from me, as well as a monthly announcement to them and their reps. This communication is consistent and gets them excited about Gong, gives them a platform to ask questions, and exposes them to the ideas of others in how they use Gong to their advantage.
We will have a ‘demo roadshow’ where each week an account executive will select a recording they want to share and review with the team. We’ll all review the recording before our next team meeting and talk about the suggestions we noted on the recording inside of the platform. Our reps have found it helpful to get advice from not only managers but also seasoned sales reps on their demos
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