You invest in sales tech to help you sell more, faster. But are you getting the ROI you were looking for?

As technology becomes an increasingly important driver of sales velocity,  sales organizations must uncover and root out digital friction, the silent killer of sales productivity hiding in their tech stack.

What Is Digital Friction and How Does It Impact Sales Productivity?

Digital friction occurs when employees need to exert extra effort to use data or technology to get their work done. 

For example, it takes time each day to switch between different applications, to learn how to pull specific reports, and to figure out the new expense report system after your company just changed vendors. All of this, plus frustration – this is digital friction.

The result? Poor digital adoption of mission-critical technology, which hinders overall sales productivity. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

By resolving digital friction, businesses can improve employee satisfaction while also increasing seller efficiency. 

The Role of User Experience (UX) in Digital Friction

User experience, or UX, is one of the leading factors as to whether employees adopt digital technologies. Smooth and intuitive workflows engage sellers, whereas complex and nonuniform digital experiences foster frustration and cause users to drop out of mission-critical processes.

For example, typically, only 18% of available fields on CRM forms are filled out, according to WalkMe’s State of Digital Adoption 2022-2023 report.

The result? Insufficient and inaccurate data that cause countless hours of backtracking, correcting, and verifying. This leads to unreliable sales forecasting, countless incomplete tasks, unfulfilled ROI potential on software investments, and even poor retention of sellers.

The Hidden Catalyst

When it comes to assessing digital adoption in an organization, there is one often overlooked factor that influences user experience: digital dexterity. 

​​Digital dexterity, or the ability to adapt to technology and data to solve problems, is an important skill for modern sellers. It plays a crucial role in how users experience software, and it is bound to cause a discrepancy in how quickly reps adopt sales tech.

Combine this discrepancy with unintuitive apps, complicated UX, and constantly changing software and – boom – your sellers suffer from a classic case of technology overload.

Enterprises should strive to reduce digital friction by investing in efforts that improve their UX at every stage of the digital selling journey, for every level of user. The most effective way to achieve this is with a comprehensive digital adoption strategy.

Strategies for Mitigating Digital Friction in the Sales Process

Digital adoption bridges the gap between technology and user experience.

By taking a rep-centric approach, enterprises can create more seamless digital journeys that yield the desired business outcomes: 

• Increased seller engagement with sales processes
• Fulfilled ROI potential on sales tech
• Reduced employee frustration
• Boosted sales

Leveraging Technology to Reduce Digital Friction

As enterprises seek ways to increase seller productivity and maximize the ROI of their digital investments, leveraging technology to reduce digital friction becomes increasingly important. As we all know, great tools can help you achieve great outcomes.

With appropriate investments in technology that empower employee engagement via intelligent insights delivered through every step of an enterprise’s online journey, companies can effectively reduce digital friction and maximize efficiency across the enterprise.

WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform offers sales organizations the ability to significantly improve digital adoption rates with smoother digital experiences by providing on-screen guidance, personalized content, and automated workflows. 

By introducing advanced features such as predictive analytics and real-time data insights, WalkMe helps enterprises understand how they can improve their operations and how sellers interact with their software.

Take Action Now to Increase Sales Productivity

Learn how to defeat the silent killer of sales productivity now with WalkMe’s eBook, 5 ways to combat digital friction.