To develop a new habit, psychologists say that you need to make it easy on yourself. Incorporate it into your daily schedule, so that it becomes a regular practice. Some of the barriers to success—such as finding the time to do the new habit—are removed. But what about changing the daily practices of an entire organization? This type of cultural transformation is not an easy task—but it’s exactly what Jason Georgi, Director of the Value Management Office, and his team at Zscaler did. Below, Jason shares the keys to Zscaler’s success in transforming a price-focused sales force to a value-focused culture. Step One: Recognize what doesn’t workFirst, when sales professionals are constantly introduced to new capabilities aimed at improving the outcome of deals, each capability means there’s yet one more place for the sales pro to learn. Rarely is there any integration between a company’s CRM and sales enablement capabilities. This forces the sales pro to swivel chair among several platforms, spending more time on consuming administrative work and less time on securing new business.
Second, the company has a hard time tracking adoption, utilization, and efficacy of the application. When the company cannot easily tie the enablement capability directly to impacted revenue of the deal, discounting, and sales cycle, the value of the capability is lost. When I was tasked with standing up a Value Management Office (VMO) for Zscaler, the first thing I thought was “Great! Now we can shift customer discussions from price to value!” My immediate next thought was that with a growing worldwide sales organization like Zscaler’s, another capability is not going to scale. To combat the two problems, we needed a single source for all sales. At Zscaler, this is Salesforce.com.
Step Two: Fully integrate value capabilities in a single sales resource
By orchestrating people, process, and platform, the value selling capabilities are integrated across the sales force. With our value selling program integrated with Salesforce.com, we minimize disruption to the sales force while keeping things contained within a single browser tab. We were able to plug the Value Management Office into Salesforce.com within a week.
Step Three: Identify the benefits of full integration
About the Author
Jason Georgi
Jason is Director of the Value Management Office (VMO) at Zscaler. As a technology executive and strategist, Jason has over 21 years of experience innovating, driving change, and leading global organizations. His broad range of experience includes leading global initiatives at one of the largest companies in the world, GE, and at Zscaler, a cyber security startup. He is a cloud security evangelist and frequently leads thought leadership discussions at CIO/CISO events.