Digital Wallboards vs Whiteboards

lf you’ve worked in a sales team, then you will have crossed paths with the sales whiteboard. If you’re reading this at work there’s probably one in the room right now, lurking against the back wall like that unkempt guy in the club who hasn’t realised the lights have come on and its time to go home.

CRMs have usurped the Filofax. LinkedIn and Google have rendered the yellow pages redundant. The internet and free exchange of information has driven the snake oil salesman out of town. Analogue has evolved into digital.

All of this progress, and yet the best we can do to publicly acknowledge our success is a whiteboard? We believe we can do better than that, and we know that digital wallboard technology is the way we do it.

If you’re unfamiliar, the concept is simple: you take a TV or computer monitor, put it in the place previously occupied by your whiteboard, and use one of many the digital wallboard platforms available to connect it to your CRM. It will pull data from your CRM in real-time, and display it in a variety of colourful, engaging formats.

But why bother? What difference could it possibly make? Surely it's just a gimmicky expense? The truth is, choosing the right tech matters, and the way you display data is not trivial - it's integral to how successful your business could be.

Live analytics, visualisation and gamification increases motivation and empowers managers to lead their teams and drive efforts to where it's needed.

Greater motivation and better leadership leads to greater productivity, and creates a positive, high energy culture with greater staff retention. The end result? Greater turnover, and a better bottom line. It's that simple.

What's more, digital wallboards are now an expectation amongst younger sales recruits.

Here are five comparisons that should convince you that it’s time to take the old whiteboard out back and put it down. The digital wallboard revolution is here.

1. Amount and Variety of Data

Whiteboard

What do you have on your whiteboard? Number of sales? Revenue generated? That’s most likely it. Yet you have a CRM sitting right there with reams of information, most likely rarely accessed or used.

How are your employees supposed to establish trends in their work when they’re boiled down to a single number? How can your sales managers generate actionable insight into their teams? To quote the famous 1960’s TV show ‘The Prisoner’ – “I am not a number! I am a human being!”

Digital Wallboard

Choose whatever metrics you want, throw them up there. You probably have your sales leaders sitting at the top of the board for deals closed each month, but who is making the most phone calls? Who has set the most meetings?

A sales manager we know once said sales always comes down to he ‘who has the skill and the will’. If you can see someone is generating a high amount of activity, but not closing their deals, then they have the will but are lacking the skill. This is good news, because skill can be taught. You can now identify who needs help, and potentially create yourself a whole new batch of top sales performers.

2. Data in Real Time

Whiteboard

The first time a sales rep gets to put a sale up on the white board, it is a big moment - they'll practically run up to the white board – pen in hand – ready to show off their closed deal. The 100th time they’ve closed a deal - not so much.

A lot of the time people outright forget and have to be prompted. Yet we have the technology to generate real-time updates to whatever metrics you like. Why wait for your sales team to fill it in, or accidentally put the wrong numbers up?

Digital Wallboard

Instant updates = instant gratification. If I make a phone call, and instantly see my phone call bar move up one step closer to my target for the day, you can be assured I’m going to pick that phone straight back up and make another one. Waiting for data to update is so 2005. We should display our actions loud and proud and, most importantly, instantly.

The benefit for your staff is they get an instant pat on the back and a pleasant little dopamine boost for a job well done. The good news for your sales managers is they can instantly see who is slacking, and give them a swift kick up the butt (metaphorically, of course – let’s try not to break any laws).

3. Insight for Business Owners

Whiteboard

Speaking of managers, what does the whiteboard really tell you? You can see at a glance how many deals have been closed, and how much money those deals have generated. Sure, this is useful for a general overview, but what kind of actionable insight does that give you into your team? Who are your strongest performers? Who are your weakest? Are they performing as a unit? What does it really tell you? Not a whole lot is the answer.

Digital Wallboard

Stop managing, start leading. At a glance, figure out who is struggling and give them some help. Discover who is excelling in areas beyond just ‘deals closed’ and give them acknowledgement they wouldn’t normally receive. Use your wallboard to display your daily best performers in multiple different aspects and give everyone a chance to shine.

4. Performance: Visualising the Journey

Whiteboard

Your white board displays sales made. That’s it. No context, no bigger picture. It’s like walking in to a movie 20 minutes before the end. Sure, you get to see the resolution, but honestly, what’s the point without knowing the full story?

Digital Wallboard

Show them the journey they need to take. Hopefully you know your sales funnel pretty well. Share that knowledge with your team. If 100 phone calls generates 10 meetings, which leads to one sale, throw all of that up.

Let each individual see how what they’re putting into the funnel is affecting what’s coming out of the bottom. Allow them insight into the bigger picture of the business. How have their actions impacted the larger goals of your organisation? Give them ownership, and they will sell harder.

5. Performance: Driving Desired Behaviour

Whiteboard

Sales, sales, sales. That’s all a whiteboard ever really displays. Now you’re probably wondering why that’s an issue, being part of a sales team and all. It’s an issue because you’re not doing anything to encourage the behaviour that leads to the sales happening.

You’re putting all your emphasis on the end result, and really no thought into the steps that get you there. This is not how you want a modern sales team to be operating. It’s the journey, not the destination that matters. If you walk the right path, you’ll always make it to where you need to be.

Digital Wallboard

Encourage the behaviour you want to see. Need a higher volume of phone calls? Offer up a special prize to whoever is displaying the most calls on the wallboard at the end of the day. Need more emails to be sent? Throw everyone’s email stats up on the board, and watch the people who are now very publicly in last place suddenly kick it up a gear. Choose the behaviour you want to see, and find a way to drive it forward. When you can display whatever information you like, it’s really not difficult.

I think it's clear as to which side of the debate we fall down on. It's time to move forward from the 1950s and accept that whiteboards are dead. Long live digital wallboard displays!

As technology creeps into every aspect of our lives, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that holding onto some of the "old ways" is best. But the reality is that companies need to keep up with the times and invest in the right tech if they want to attract, retain and get the most out of the best talent that the workforce has to offer. 

And no one really wants to work with a whiteboard in this day and age - any more than they want to work with dial-up internet and a fax machine. 

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