If your digital transformation involves the introduction of a new customer acquisition program, you may not consider this program your highest priority. However, every little organizational change you make as a result of digital transformation requires careful planning.
Successful customer acquisition programs can effectively expand your customer base and develop your revenue drivers. While this sounds straightforward, it can be challenging to secure your employees’ engagement and support.
Today, we’re sharing tips on how to get employees excited about a new customer acquisition program, so you can maximize the ROI of your digital transformation project.
6 Tips for Gaining Employee Buy-In
1. Tailor Your Training Program
If your customer acquisition program involves new software, such as a CRM or ERP system, it’s important to train employees in a way that addresses their individual roles and functions.
End user training is a core part of an organizational change management (OCM) strategy. As part of this OCM strategy, you must create custom training plans for each stakeholder group and identify delivery models that will appeal to various learning styles.
Making these programs available to your workers sends a clear message that you want them to succeed. You’re giving them the resources required to not only understand but utilize the tools at their fingertips. This will benefit them, the people they work with, the customers they serve, and your company as a whole.
Change Management Case Study
The client recognized their need for more comprehensive change management, so they asked us to fill in the gaps. We developed a robust communication plan to supplement the vendor’s communication approach.
2. Share the “Why” Behind the Project
Why do you need a customer acquisition program in the first place? Are your sales lagging from the year before? Are you trying to enter a new market?
These are some of the questions your employees might have about the purpose of the program. The better your team is able to answer these questions, the less change resistance you will experience.
Some of the top reasons for introducing a customer acquisition program include:
- Attracting new customers to your business
- Convincing prospective customers to take action
- Providing evidence of business growth and traction to outside parties (e.g., investors, partners, and influencers)
You don’t need to have all the answers just yet. However, you should be prepared to share the specifics of why you decided to implement a new customer acquisition program and why it’s a core part of the company’s digital transformation.
3. Keep Communication Open (and Multi-Faceted)
When you’re on the cusp of a major business change, silence breeds hearsay. If you aren’t talking about the project, then someone else will.
Make clear, consistent communication a major component of your OCM plan. By this, we don’t simply mean scheduling a few all-hands meetings, sharing presentations, and dismissing everyone back to their offices.
While those debriefs are important, your employees may have more in-depth questions that go beyond a public forum. Schedule open-door meeting times when they can sit down with you and share their concerns. Use this time to explain the goals of the digital transformation initiative, emphasizing how it will benefit them as individuals.
4. Deploy Storytelling
Finding it difficult to convey your vision to your team? While Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoints might be exciting to you, there’s a good chance that your employees won’t connect to hard data alone.
This is where storytelling comes in. It might take a while to create a compelling story that will relay the importance of business transformation. However, this isn’t an impossible task.
Find examples of companies that didn’t invest in an acquisition strategy when they needed it and emphasize what the outcome was for their business. Then, share inspiring stories of companies that found new ways to engage customers and explain how that contributed to their success.
5. Encourage Employee Involvement
One reason your employees may seem indifferent to the customer acquisition program is that they don’t feel directly involved in the digital transformation as a whole.
It’s easy for your workers to ignore the project until it feels important enough to care about. By involving employees in project activities, like business process reengineering, you can give employees a voice.
As employees see their suggestions being implemented, they’ll discover that real progress is being made – the finish line isn’t some arbitrary target that they may or may not reach.
6. Ensure Regular Check-Ins
One study found that having a goal without a plan means you’re 10% likely to reach it. Planning gets you 50% of the way there, and holding an in-person accountability meeting brings the odds of completion to 95%.
It’s important to hold regular check-ins and monitor employees’ progress. Ask how their training is going, and what questions they have. Inquire about any pain points they’re experiencing and what skills they want to sharpen.
This focus on accountability is an effective way to increase momentum and energy around the project.
Ensure Digital Transformation Success
Any time you introduce new processes or technology in your organization, you will experience some degree of resistance. By employing these six strategies, you can help employees move past their initial concerns and become a part of the project’s success.
Along the way, our organizational change management consultants can help you develop a strategy for gaining buy-in for every part of your digital transformation. Schedule a free consultation below to share your top concerns around employee engagement.
