One of the biggest challenges companies face in profiting from data is getting buy-in from skeptical employees, because culture is as critical as the data itself. As a recent Harvard Business Review blog put it: “A data insight without a subsequent action is like a key without someone to turn it: worthless.”

The authors – Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin – provide four categories of employees and their respective potential in embracing the decisions that result from a data-driven culture.

The authors’ bottom line was that managers need to recognize that a culture shift – from acting without data to acting with data – is required. What’s more, recognizing the motivations behind employees’ actions is critical to understanding which “will use insights from data to open new doors for the business, and which will continue to rely on intuition.”

An additional concern in shifting toward a data-driven culture in distribution is that historically, sales representatives have been self-driven. Many of these reps tend to be independent in nature and thrive in this environment that is both competitive and autonomous.

The principles of data-driven decision making are not always the easiest concepts to embrace. This is especially the case because these ideas are coming from management rather than from the sales reps. This not only changes the culture from acting without data to acting with data, but also changes the sales setting from self-directed to management-directed, which can be an unexpected power struggle.

A company-wide change is enormous to overcome without the support of a company’s sales reps. For a change to take hold, everyone must agree that it is a change worth making. Next month we will dive into a few ways to make this change easier on both management and sales representatives.