The RevOps Show

Episode 95: Adding Friction to Accelerate Sales Performance

Written by Hannah Rose | Jul 10, 2024 7:02:09 PM

Doug and Jess explore how to design sales processes that eliminate negative friction while encouraging strategic action from sales reps.

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Show Notes:

Pre-Show Banter: 

  • “What went wrong” should be the theme of the week.
  • Doug believes that we always have flawless execution and military precision.
  • Doug has been rewatching “The West Wing” and other shows like “Succession” and “Silo.”
  • Doug thought there was a typo in his book, The Revenue Acceleration Framework, but he later realized it was correct. 

Editor’s Note: Doug is currently on a podcast tour promoting his newly released book The Revenue Acceleration Framework. He’s recorded several episodes already. As we wait for episodes to come out, below is one that is out now: 

Sludge, nudges, and traction are the topics today. Doug prompted this topic when he sarcastically mentioned that we worry a lot about not making sales reps do anything because sales reps don’t do anything.

The number one request is also the number one pushback we get, “we can’t do that because we’d be asking users to do too much.” We complain that our salespeople aren’t doing anything and we keep trying to solve it through eliminating friction. 

Our sales and marketing efforts are less and less connected. There’s less active thinking that’s taking place and our solution is to ask them to think less. 

How is “don’t make me think” different than what is being described here? 

Don’t make me think is about the CRM. Don’t make me think about where something goes. Don’t make me think about the technical stuff because then I won’t think about the business process. The issue is not CRM adoption. The issue is business process-related. 

What Doug is seeing is people treating all friction like sludge (sludge being negative friction.) Sludge is friction that brings no value or negative value. Some examples of sludge include: 

  • Logging emails
  • Recording emails (depending on what you’re recording)

Sometimes, we add automation to help, and we end up taking a piece of the rep’s agency away. 

One of the problems in the pursuit of productivity is that we’re lowering our expectations. We’re disrespecting our market.

Sludge is when we have to actively think. When we have to actively think about something with no value, it’s a waste of time and energy. Slowing down requires a pause and response that creates a level of activation and impact. This is where nudges come in. There’s a perception that a good nudge is pushing a bunch of tasks to the sales rep or a bunch of email notifications to remind a rep to follow up. That’s not a good nudge. 

The right type of nudge is system agnostic; automatic logging. Nudging is making something easier to do right than to not do right. 

The definition of a nudge is something that uses subtle interventions to help people make better decisions. When we think of a nudge, more often than not we think of a physical push. It should be a signal. Sometimes pausing to think and make better decisions is a nudge, and that’s where we get traction. 

People need reps to think clearer and more strategically. They need to take higher value, more impactful action. That doesn’t happen by making everything nonexistent. It’s finding where the key places are to slow down. 

Jess’s Takeaways: 

  • Adoption is friction
  • When you’re looking to nudge a rep, it’s supposed to make it easier to do the right thing, so you’re enabling good habits. 
  • The problem when something is automated is that it’s invisible.
  • We want to drive the rep to take a pause so they’re thinking actively about the relationship, the business process, the customer needs, but not necessarily actively thinking about the technology. We want to drive their thinking in the right direction.

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