From CRM systems to training materials, sales tools are as unique as the individuals who use them. The journey to get the right sales tools in place starts with identifying the need for new sales tools, sourcing the right sales tools, and carefully deploying these tools.

But is it ideal if all salespeople use all the same tools, all in the same way? It’s a common perception, but that’s not always the case. The fluid and evolving nature of the job requires flexibility regarding the use of sales tools — but only to a certain degree.

The Major Benefit of Consistency and the Reality of Flexibility

It is absolutely necessary to establish an underlying foundation of consistent tools and systems across the entire organization. Without this core, individual team members will never be able to make the best use of the combined knowledge and skill of the wider organization – meaning they are unable to learn and improve on the most basic level.

That said, there will always be variations within that system depending on who is using it, for what purpose, and their stage in the cycle.

Should All Salespeople Use the Same Tools? An Example

Imagine a global business with 20 offices scattered across the globe. It’s neither possible nor desirable to treat their vast and diverse group of salespeople as if they’re one person. When can they use different sales tools? When should they use the same tools? When will flexibility benefit the team, and when will consistent systems and tools help to improve organization-wide performance?

In order to establish continuity, the company needs to have a system in place to share best practices. Their teams in South America, for example, may be phenomenal at business prospecting — but the business can’t exploit their success if the rest of the organization doesn’t know how they do it. The team in Germany may excel at account management, but if they’re not sharing their processes, the organization misses an opportunity to spread their winning tactics across the business.

This same concept can be scaled down to a much smaller business with just a few salespeople. It is always good to have a reliable superstar, for instance, but it’s even better for the rest of the team to have open access to the high achiever’s processes and tools.

Other Instances When Consistency Is Key

One area where there is almost no room for individual variation is in company approach. Any tool designed to help the team understand, deliver, and articulate the company’s story, vision, or strategy must be consistent across the organization. The same can be said for tools that affect KPI and other metrics – inconsistency here can lead to skewed data or the inability to gather the right information.

In general, it is also best practice to use the same training and onboarding tools across the entire company. Uniformity with onboarding tools helps ensure recruits are trained and up to speed quickly and efficiently, and helps ensure they understand the company’s mission, as well as their individual roles. Consistent systems and tools also better prepare new hires for success and make their performance easier to measure.

Flexibility: When Is It Appropriate – And Necessary?

Think about that same company; imagine their London branch. That team should most certainly maintain a single, centralized CRM. However, there can be variables on how it is used. On a day-to-day basis, people with different accountabilities require different tools to support their work:

• The business development team needs tools for prospecting, data gathering, networking, social media, proposal writing, and RFI and RFP processes.

• The account manager requires tools for relationship building, account planning, and mapping out customer organizations.

• Telesales needs tools for contact data capture, appointment setting, call-back patterns, introductory emails, generic emails about the organization, and support materials for specific products.

In short, the underlying system should be uniform and consistent, but different people will use different aspects of it, depending on their roles, responsibilities, ad preferences. It’s vital to equip people with the right tools to succeed in their work, but also to maintain consistency to prevent confusion, inefficiency, and unnecessary costs.

As you’ve seen in this four-part guide, sourcing, implementing, managing, and deploying sales tools is a vital part of the MD role. Sales tools and systems should be consistent across the entire organization, with a little flexibility and common sense. Above all else, the matter of consequence is to create an organization-wide culture of continuous improvement.