When Launching Sales Enablement Tools, Create a Change Management Strategy

Deepti Sundareshan on May 24, 2018

We’ve talked about best practices for successful implementation, how to increase the adoption of initiatives, and how to manage change when launching sales enablement tools.

But before you begin your sales enablement implementation process, you must understand how creating a change management strategy can ensure you receive the desired outcomes.

Mindtickle Sales Enablement Benchmark Report

What is a change management strategy?

Change is necessary for companies to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. Unfortunately, people tend to resist change and wish to continue doing what they’ve been doing. Change management helps guide an organization through the transitional process as quickly and easily as possible. Change management strategy is a framework to support changes. It isn’t about the alterations themselves.

Why you need a strategy before your implementation

When preparing to change any processes in your organization it is important to create a unified strategy. Having a strategy ensures that everyone is on the same page before you start to make a change. You’ll confirm that everyone impacted by the upcoming transition understands the need for it. Plus they’ll know what to expect and will help you collect any needed input. When this all happens ahead of time, it brings people closer together and makes them feel more comfortable. This leads to increased compliance and adoption throughout the entire journey to your new desired state.

Creating your strategy

Preparing a strategy is about gathering information that allows you to make educated decisions when you create your actual implementation plans. Your strategy helps ensure changes are consistent and successfully applied to your entire organization. It’s about being aware of key factors ahead of your actual planning and implementation. There are three main steps to creating your change management strategy. They include:

  1.    Situational awareness
  2.    Supporting team structure
  3.    Change management strategy analysis

Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.

Situational awareness

This step involves gaining a better understanding of the actual change, who will be affected, and how your organization may have previously worked through similar changes, if applicable. Specifically, you need to look at change characteristics, organizational attributes, and groups that will be involved.
Change characteristics

  • Gain an understanding of the change that you’ll be introducing. Answer the following questions to uncover the characteristics of your planned change: What is involved in the change? How many people will it affect? Who will be impacted? Will they all be affected in the same way or differently? What is being changed – processes, systems, job roles, etc? Over what period of time will the change occur?
  • Organizational attributes: This is about understanding the history and culture of your organization as a means to better understand the people and groups being impacted. Remember that various groups will be affected in different ways. Considerations here include: How do employees and managers perceive the need for this change?  Has your organization ever managed similar changes? If so, how was it done? Does the organization have a shared vision of the final outcome? How much change is already taking place prior to the upcoming implementation?
  • Groups that will be involved: This final step in situational awareness entails developing a picture of who will be most involved in the change and how they will be impacted. You want an understanding of how different groups will be affected in their own unique way. This will enable specific and customized plans to accommodate each group during the actual change management process.

Supporting team structure

It’s important to identify a team and sponsor to support your change management strategy. Without this, it will be quite difficult to implement your plans when the time comes. Let’s take a look at both of these.

  • Team structure: The change management team structure establishes who will be managing the change. It explains how the project team and the change management team will work together. It also specifies the team members and their responsibilities.
  • Sponsor coalition: The sponsor coalition specifies which sales executives, operations, managers, and top performers should be onboard and actively involved in driving the change. It also designates the primary sponsor who authorizes and champions the specific change. The sponsor must be actively and openly engaged throughout the change project. All members of this coalition are responsible for building support and communicating with their particular audience within your organization concerning the change.

Change management strategy analysis

To ensure your change management strategy is effective, it’s important to consider what could cause your implementation to fail. Doing so allows you to proactively determine how to address these stumbling blocks so they don’t cause any delays in reaching your desired outcomes. Below are the three steps you need to take in this part of strategy creation.

  • Project risk assessment: The more dramatic and extensive the change, the higher the risk. You also have a greater chance of difficulties if your organization tends to have a history of resisting change. As you develop your strategy, the change management team should document all potential risk factors.
  • Anticipated resistance: Think carefully about where you might anticipate push-back on the upcoming change. Are there particular divisions, groups, positions, or individuals that are most likely to resist the new implementation? Making note of these can prevent them, or help prepare you to address them when they arise.
  • Developing special tactics: Once you’ve identified your potential risks and resistances, you should determine how you will deal with each when and if they arise. Have these strategies prepared to facilitate smoother progress throughout your implementation? Of course, it is impossible to anticipate every issue in advance, so you’ll want to revisit this step periodically during your launch process.

After you create your strategy you’ll be ready to devise your change management plans. Be sure to stay focused on the information you uncovered while developing your strategy. It will greatly impact the success of your implementation. Without taking the time to create your change management strategy, you risk disorganization, a lack of compliance, or incomplete change. This will only lead to greatly reduced results. Now it’s time for you to create a change management strategy to prepare for your upcoming sales readiness implementation to ensure the best possible outcomes.

Why a Sales Onboarding Program Design for Sales Engineers is Important

Deepti Sundareshan on May 14, 2018

Strategic sales onboarding, regardless of team size or role, should be a non-negotiable priority for any company.

Research by the Aberdeen Group backs this up: a recent study found that when onboarded effectively, 71% of employees exceeded expectations, versus a reported 8% by companies without an onboarding strategy. And while it’s a given that every team member needs to learn the same foundations about the company and its culture, different roles require specialized learning.

What’s a sales onboarding program just for sales engineers?

Due to the particular focus on cross-disciplinary skills, the specialized role of the technical sales engineer is a perfect example of the impact effective onboarding can have. Sales engineers bridge the gap between the sales reps and the product: since sales engineers bring deep technical knowledge to the sales process, they need in-depth immersion and training on the product.

This means that basic product training or an overview of APIs, integrations, and use cases are not enough: sales engineers need to know and understand their product like the back of their hands. However, some capabilities that sales engineers need are similar to sales reps: they need to understand their customers and all the ways the product helps them relieve business pain points.

So, what should a sales engineers onboarding include?

Sales engineers need to understand the intricacies of how your product works and be able to apply specific use cases and solutions. They then must be able to explain these to a customer in a way that actually sells your product. To help them become proficient in each of these as quickly as possible, your onboarding should include:

  • Time with your product – The role of sales engineers is to know your product inside out. And, they don’t just need to know the features, they must understand how people use the product and be able to demonstrate it. They need to be able to test and put into practice what they’ve learned.
  • Detail on your product roadmap – Sales engineers need to understand what the product roadmap looks and how it affects your industry and competitive positioning. This will help them tailor discussions and solutions for customers. During the onboarding process, ask engineering and product development to get involved so they can give your engineers a holistic view of how the product works today and the future product roadmap.
  • Certify they can demo – The first time a customer meets an engineer will often be at the product demo. Before the demo, engineers need to understand the customer, their pain points, and needs so they can tailor the demo accordingly. Getting the demo right can make or break the deal. As part of their onboarding let sales engineers see other use cases (recorded or live) and get them to practice different scenarios. They should also be certified in how to complete a tailored demo before meeting a customer. This process ideally will include receiving plenty of feedback from both their peers and managers so they can keep improving and refine their technique.
  • Practice objection handling – Considered an expert, technical sales engineers often face the most challenging objections. They not only need to know what to say but also how to say it in a way that keeps the sale in play. This is a learned skill as it can be easy to get caught up in technical details that the customer doesn’t necessarily need to know. Using role plays and scenario-based training, technical sales engineers can make sure they have mastered handling objections.
  • Understanding competitor products – To explain to a customer why your product is superior to a competitor’s your sales engineers need to understand exactly what your competitor’s products do and don’t do; not just listed features. Depending on how complex your product is, your sales engineer’s onboarding should include a detailed explanation of your key product differentiators as compared to your competitors. For more complex products, give them access to your competitor’s products and let them spend some time seeing how they work.
  • Customer-based Solutions – To give customers real solutions to their problems, engineers need to understand your product in the context of how it works in a business environment. By spending time with your customer success team they can see these use cases in action and perhaps also gather feedback from customers so that they can learn what works and what doesn’t.
  • Relationship building with sales reps – Sales engineers need to build relationships with sales reps so that they bring them into their deals and promote overall sales effectiveness. It’s important to help sales engineers build these relationships and you get the ball rolling by onboarding them together where their coursework overlaps. Enabling engineers to shadow sales onboarding and vice versa, sharing technical sales engineer onboarding with the reps – including the checkpoints and certifications they must complete – will help build their relationships.

Leveraging onboarding course for two different sales roles

When developing your onboarding program you can create a range of courses that cover different roles, and then assign those that are relevant based on job role or even location. For example, your course on buyer personas could be assigned to both sales reps and engineers, but your product training modules for each role may be different.

The need for two sets of skills combined into one company representative, as important as a technical sales engineer, means you can leverage the sales enablement courses for:

  • General corporate onboarding – policies, culture, and organizational strategy
  • Buyer and user personas
  • Product positioning and messaging
  • Industry trends

While it may be tempting to put your engineers through the same onboarding program as your sales reps, it’s important to remember that this may impact their ability to ramp up quickly and start helping your reps sell. Investing in onboarding your sales engineers is one of the best ways to make sure your new hires – reps and engineers – achieve their quota quicker.

Managing Change when Implementing Sales Readiness Tools: a Four-Step Approach

Dhruba Bhattacharya on March 19, 2018

Any form of change is challenging for organizations to manage, but sales teams are particularly sensitive to change. They don’t want anything to take them out of the field or negatively affect their results even for one day. This can make introducing new sales readiness tools particularly difficult.

Mendix, a platform-as-a-service company that helps organizations make web and mobile applications, knew this was an issue but their onboarding and ongoing sales training program needed to change. They were growing rapidly, hiring 15 new sales hires a quarter in a team to a base team of only 68. At the same time, the company was tasked with improving their time to sale, the number of opportunities they generated and their win rate. They wanted to reduce the time and expense of face-to-face training so they chose to implement Mindtickle, a sales readiness platform.

To ensure the new tool didn’t distract their salespeople and actually helped them to sell better sooner, they implemented a four-step approach to address the change.

1. Top-performers engaged with the tool first

Mindtickle was only rolled out to top-performing reps and engaged managers first. These people had all been identified as high performers across a range of metrics. They were called Mendix’s Champions and held up as role models in the organization.

The Champions completed missions on Mindtickle – they practiced their selling skills on the platform and were measured on how they learned and what they had learned. The results were very positive, and they were shown to the entire sales team at their next sales kickoff. By showing top performers visibly embracing change and improving their performance as well, other reps were eager to get onboard.

It was at this kickoff that the leaders of Mendix outlined what they expected of their sales organization in the coming year and explained how Mindtickle would help them achieve that. The sales readiness platform was positioned as critical to the company’s success.

2. Roll it out to the rest of the sales force

With the value of the platform clear and the sales’ objectives linked to Mindtickle, the tool was rolled out to the rest of their sales force. To help in this process Mendix’s Champions were given the responsibility of supporting members of the sales team on their missions. The champions would look at the video role plays in their missions, give them feedback and grade them. These grades were put on a leaderboard to create some healthy competition amongst the team.

This approach worked well, particularly with the younger reps who were keen to learn and improve their selling skills. Seasoned reps were reluctant to try the new tool.

3. Get CEO endorsement and incentive

As they rolled out the tool, the CEO publicly endorsed the platform. This was targeted specifically at bringing the reluctant reps onboard. At the same time, the CEO also introduced a new compensation model where reps could earn a quarterly bonus if they scored well on their missions in Mindtickle. This additional sweetener started to encourage more reps to use the platform.

4. Leaders publicly acknowledge those who have changed

The final step was for the leaders of the sales organization to start publicly acknowledging the people who had embraced the change. This began with the first salespeople to complete their missions being recognized and their scores shared. This process of communication continued every week, where the highest performers in each region were held up as role models. This helped inspire all the other sales reps to adopt and use the platform.

Within a month of rolling out Mindtickle people from each level of the sales organization were using the platform. Two months later 87% of their reps had done a mission on Mindtickle, with seven missions per seller on average. To check on how salespeople were really feeling, Mendix also collected feedback and found that even some of their strongest skeptics were seeing real value in the process. They were learning how to improve their own roles and improve how they communicate.

To keep the momentum going, the company started releasing reports every quarter to the sales organization. These reports disclosed who used the platform most and showed how it was improving sales performance. Some of the successes include:

  • New business development reps were consistently meeting quota after just three months – this had previously taken six months.
  • Their prospecting success rates doubled
  • Top performers had reduced the amount of time it took them to qualify and progress opportunities from 30 days to just seven days
  • The entire sales team was performing at 105% of its targets

Mindtickle is now an integral part of the culture of the sales organization at Mendix. It’s part of their day-to-day work, incentives, and reporting.

Why Companies are Transitioning from Traditional Training to Enablement and Readiness

Deepti Sundareshan on March 15, 2018

More and more companies are transitioning from traditional training methods like classroom training and webinars. They’re recognizing the need for a change and transitioning from traditional training to sales enablement and readiness instead. According to CSO Insights, 59.2% of surveyed companies currently have a sales enablement program. Another 8.5% plan to start one this year.  Let’s take a look at what’s causing this trend.

Why make the change now?

Companies are recognizing they need a change. Here are some symptoms they’re experiencing. These are clear signs that what they’re doing isn’t working anymore.

Quota attainment continually decreasing: It’s been shown that the percentage of sales reps hitting their quotas have decreased year after year since 2012 and is now 53%. You can improve sales performance to meet ever-increasing targets with sales enablement and readiness.

Sales’ declining ability to close Marketing-provided leads: An inability to continually hone sales skills with classroom training and webinars is an issue many companies fact. Sales enablement, when implemented properly, addresses this issue.

Uncertain of what exactly is working and what needs to change: Sales enablement facilitates identification of weaknesses and strengths.  Plus, it makes it easier to implement corrections and adjustments needed to continuously fine-tune the sales process so it keeps pace with ongoing market changes.

Sales rep ramp times are too long: Today’s sales reps average 2 years on the job before changing companies. With an average ramp time of 6 months to full productivity, reps are only effective for three-quarters of the time they are in any given position. The hiring and training process is too costly for team members to be inefficient for such a long time. Sales enablement initiatives shorten ramp time. Not only that, the ongoing learning and growth associated with sales enablement increases rep retention because it fulfills the desire of today’s’ employees for continual improvement.

Sales processes didn’t match reality: Reps are being trained one way and then having to make their own adjustments to make it work on the job. Enablement and readiness ensure that training and practice are properly aligned or corrected as needed.

Reps are only spending a fraction of their time selling: It’s been documented that sales reps are actually only spending 37% of their time on revenue-generating activities. Enablement corrects this issue by increasing their selling time and making them more effective as well.

Competitors are winning:  Competitors who have implemented enablement and readiness are closing more business, due to increased efficiency and effectiveness. It hurts companies who haven’t jumped on the enablement/readiness bandwagon yet. Companies are feeling the pain, by losing market share. They know they need to make a change before it’s too late.

Why are sales enablement and readiness better?

It’s been known for some time that training isn’t productive by itself. Without ongoing coaching and reinforcement, 90% of information shared in a traditional classroom or webinar training is forgotten within a month’s time. There are many reasons that sales enablement and readiness are more favorable. Here are some of the more popular ones:

  • More cost-effective: Besides being ineffective, traditional training is costly, involving expenses such as room rental, transportation, trainers, and lost opportunity. Plus it’s time-consuming and reduces staff efficiency by cutting into valuable rep selling time. Sales enablement and readiness keeps costs under control by keeping reps on the job and productive while eliminating many of the additional costs.
  • Proactive: Current sales enablement practices allow companies to push sales learning or updates, instead of creating something and hoping it will be used/consumed. This creates a state of perpetual readiness for successful rep interactions of any type with prospects and customers.
  • Tailor-made learning paths: Transitioning from classroom and webinar training allows for personalized training. It means that not everyone needs to go through the same training, in the same order, and at the same pace. Reps are able to take quizzes to determine their individual training needs and priorities. This determines their specific learning path.
  • Internally sourced: It used to be that companies would hire external experts to train their salesforce. Enablement/readiness allows for the sharing of best practices through of an internally-sourced library. It can be approved by the enablement/operations and accessible/searchable by all, in bite-sized modules. This library may include examples, demonstrations, and explanations of how to do or accomplish certain goals or skills.
  • Bite-sized/spaced learning: Small, frequent learning sessions minimize the impact on busy schedules and provide repetition that reinforces learning. They’re easy to consume and easy to apply on the job. In fact, research by Hermann Ebbinghaus proves that this is the most effective way to learn and retain information, change behaviors, and develop new skills.
  • Available on-demand: Since sales enablement content is available anywhere and anytime, consistent participation is easy to fit into even the busiest schedule. This eliminates the negative impacts of taking reps off the job for training.
  • Facilitates practice and feedback: Enablement makes it possible for reps to practice new skills in a safe environment by recording themselves on the go. It removes the need to be in an office or to schedule meetings, to know what to strengthen and adjust, while learning new methods or information. Feedback, built into the process, reinforces correct behaviors and prevents the development of bad habits or incorrect information.
  • Allows measurement: Enablement and readiness simplify the documentation and measurement of progress through role-plays, quizzes and other methods. So often, companies don’t measure traditional training results or they are unmeasurable. The new way of learning makes it easy.

I’m sure that it’s clear now why companies are transitioning from traditional training methods to more impactful enablement and readiness. Which methods sound better to you? If you need more information about this topic, read this article about readiness or this article about sales training and enablement.

[Podcast] Bridging the Gap Between Sales Operations and Enablement – Episode 25

Shrimithran R on November 28, 2017


In this 21 minute podcast Aarti explains:

  • What sales enablement needs to know about collaborating with sales operation
  • How sales enablement and ops can drive change within the sales organization together
  • How sales enablement differs between large and smaller companies

Collaboration between sales enablement and sales operations is crucial for effective enablement, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Aarti Kumar, VP of Sales Operations at BrightEdge, has some helpful advice for sales enablement professionals who want to build collaboration with sales ops and get a seat at the table.
“Be proactive and make sure that you’re in the loop. This is critical, because if you want to know where the ball is going, then you should be there. Also be engaged and understand what works for the sales team and what doesn’t work. If you can be that bridge or have that knowledge, you can be the bridge to communicate between two departments.”
With over seven years experience at Symantec, and now at BrightEdge, Aarti has seen how much value a collaborative relationship between sales ops and sales enablement can generate, but it’s not something that happens overnight.
“From a strategic aspect, being in tune with what the company and the business are trying to drive is critical for sales enablement. They have to work with sales operations to understand what the company is solving for and how sales operations are playing a role there. It needs to be an ongoing dialogue, it’s not a one and done process,” she explains.
“Sales enablement and ops need to speak, on a weekly basis, on a monthly and a quarterly basis. It’s best to have a seat at that table, so you know what’s coming down the pipeline and you can plan for it accordingly,” continues Aarti.
To ensure the relationship runs smoothly, maintaining a constructive feedback loop is key.
“Every time decisions were made or projects moved forward the sales enablement team was kept informed. We would tell them the what and they would tell us the how, in terms of getting information to sales. On the flip side, we also got a lot of feedback from them, because, they’re closest to the sales team. That feedback was super effective and it helped shape some of the decisions from the sales operations side,” explains Aarti.

In Conversation with Christopher Fulmer

Shrimithran R on September 25, 2017

Conversation-Christopher-Fulmer_sales_enablement_symantecThis post is based on a webinar where Christopher Fulmer, formerly of Blue Coat and now Director of Global Sales Enablement and Product Evaluations at Symantec, explained the importance of data-driven sales enablement to maximize sales effectiveness. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
“Our team in enablement is held responsible for making sure the sales teams have what they need to be successful. It’s their responsibility, and their manager’s responsibility, to make sure they’re continually taking those steps to stay educated. Sales enablement is not just training. My team partners with key teams within our company such as product management, engineering, product marketing, sales leadership, operations, finance, and HR to drive forward the end goal of making us all successful. I’ve found a lot of success when we form those strategic partnerships. When sales win, we win. That’s where we find our success.”
Initially Blue Coat, before being acquired by Symantec, introduced Mindtickle to their sales team. “We took a sales kickoff, which could have been perceived as a challenging time to roll out the technology, and chose that as the time to roll out Mindtickle. This environment, where sales were coming together, helped us roll out Mindtickle as it was an essential tool at that sales kickoff. Because Mindtickle has the flexibility to create separate audiences, it allowed us to push out personal agendas, quick references, surveys, and feedback,” he explained.
“When we left that sales kickoff, every sales rep had been on Mindtickle, was using the tool, knew how to navigate it, and was comfortable with it. When they got back in their sales roles, and I needed to get product information out, I knew that I was pushing it to a team that could quickly absorb it,” he continued.

Blue Coat continued to leverage Mindtickle as their sales team grew

“We found ourselves growing at a hyper rate,” Christopher explained. “We were a fast-moving company in a constantly changing environment. We were leveraging Mindtickle for two main things during that time – our incoming new hires and our existing salesforce.”
“In the cybersecurity area, your entire industry can take a left turn overnight. With just one outbreak or vulnerability, things can dramatically change. How quickly you get information to your sales team and they understand, absorb and go forward with that information can be a driving force as to whether you have a successful outcome. That’s one of the areas that we found success with Mindtickle,” he continued.
According to Christopher, sales onboarding was another way Blue Coat successfully leveraged Mindtickle. “We were onboarding 25 to 35 new sales reps per month, at a minimum, and there were months where we were just wearing out our team running onboarding sessions every week or two. We were able to use Mindtickle to experience faster ramp-up times with our incoming sales reps,” he explained.

Sales enablement was crucial when Symantec acquired Blue Coat

“An acquisition is a great opportunity for sales enablement to be engaged. During Symantec’s acquisition of BlueCoat, our main challenge was how to enable two separate sales teams concurrently. We also had a couple of back-office systems like SFDC. We were able to work with them by working with the Mindtickle team,” Fulmer explained.
“We had a big desire to communicate to the field, and everybody within the company had something they wanted to communicate to them – our integration team, our executive leadership team, and the sales teams. Mindtickle gave us the ability to push out corporate communications, a corporate pitch, and executive communications to the teams very quickly. Through the technology, we were able to target specific teams and simplify messaging. It was a huge benefit to us as we went through that acquisition.”

Symantec now uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams

Fulmar identified four ways that Symantec still uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams:
1. Onboarding
“An Olympic rowing team is all in sync. Everyone’s got their hand on an oar and they’re driving that boat forward as fast as they can. That’s like a highly effective sales team in action. Everyone with a single focus, driving the boat forward, in sync, working together. A new hire, until that person is ramped up and effective, is in a big pool float dragging behind the boat. They’re not helping, they’re slowing things down. My job is to get that person out of the water, in the boat, put an oar in their hand, and get them working with the team,” explains Fulmar.
Mindtickle is used by Symantec for their onboarding program as Fulmar explains, “I can use it for pre-work to level the playing field so when they do arrive at an onsite training everyone is on the same page. I really need that time, onsite, to be high value, high return. Technology allows us to do that. The ability to track the pre-work and verify that they’ve done it with quizzes and certifications adds the ability to see where there may be gaps or where you need to spend a bit more time with an individual before, so they’re on the right page when they come in. The strengths of the analytics give us the ability to do that.”
“Having them jump on that technology as part of the onboarding process sets the new hires up for success as they continue in their life as a sale team member. I teach them, from day one, how to use that tool and where to find value in it. They’re much more likely to use it when they get in the field than if I wait and expose them to that tool after they’ve been at their onboarding session as a new hire,” Fulmar continues.
2. Quick updates
“This is a big area where we leverage Mindtickle. When I say quick updates, I want to be realistic on what quick is. If it’s something that’s going to take an hour or multiples hours to read and absorb, that’s not my target for a quick update. I use it for something that they can quickly access and absorb. A product update, something around a product release, executive communications, or sales communications are things that I push out in that quick format,” Fulmar explains.
3. Coaching
“The landscape has changed in the sales enablement world over the years,” according to Christopher. “For example, when we used to work on a corporate pitch, we wanted to “certify” the sales reps on it. So we would come up with a plan where someone from my team and someone from the sales management team would get in a room together. We would then ask the sales rep to take time away from the field and come and give that corporate pitch to us so we could certify them. As you can imagine, it was very costly and took time.”
“Now we use Mindtickle. If I want to know whether everyone knows how to articulate our corporate message I can give them an example of me giving that corporate message and then ask each of them, using Mindtickle, to record themselves. They then send that to me on Mindtickle and I can give them feedback and send it back to them. If there needs to be a correction, I can do the correction and send it back to them. They can then redo it and send it back to me.”
“Basically, I can certify that they understand that message without ever having to get on a flight or asking them to take time out of the field. Coaching with Mindtickle is an area that we’re just scratching the surface on now and have found success with,” outlines Fulmar.
4. Surveys and feedback
“I use this when we do a meeting, such as a sales kickoff, to get feedback on the speakers and identify any hot topics the team may want to hear before the meeting.  We then push information out to the reps afterward and understand whether that information has been absorbed, they understand it, and if we need to spend more time on it,” explains Fulmar.

Data-driven sales enablement is crucial to maximizing sales effectiveness

“Data is what allows you to show that something you’re doing is working. Without the data, it’s your opinion. I want to be able to show management with something that can be measured and show a result,” according to Fulmar.
“Just a quick example, NFL players go in on day one of offseason and do measurements like strength, speed, agility. They have a measurable starting point. Then towards the end of the offseason training program, they go back and remeasure. They can show where there has been growth and where they didn’t get the growth they expected. Until they have those measurable results, a general manager can say we had a great offseason. Unless you have measurable results, how do you back that up? That’s why I feel like data-driven sales enablement is important for maximizing the sales effectiveness,” he explains.
“Whether we’re running a report on our entire sales force or our managers are running a detailed manager dashboard, Mindtickle gives us the analytics to maximize our sales effectiveness.” Fulmar identified three areas in particular:

  1. It gives the ability to take data and continually learn and refine how they enable their sales team;
  2. It highlights what the sales team is using—what content are they taking advantage of and what are they not; and
  3. If they’re not using content it allows sales enablement to question why. Perhaps the format didn’t work well or the information wasn’t right.

“If I’m looking at the numbers, I can see that kind of information and make adjustments to move forward. I can also show value to our leadership team. If I can show that people within our top 20% of sales are also those people that are our top users on Mindtickle, then I can show a direct correlation that our top people are taking advantage of the technology. Being able to show that kind of value to our senior leadership team, to our board, that’s priceless!”

In Conversation with Jordy Brazier

Shrimithran R on August 6, 2017

 

Conversation-With-Jordy-Brazier_500x500This post is based on a podcast with Jordy Brazier, VP of Sales Operations for Qubole. You can listen to the entire podcast

here

.

Qubole is the largest cloud and diagnostic big data service, providing businesses with a self-service data platform to help them make data-driven decisions. Their vision is to create an autonomous data platform that is capable of optimizing its performance so data teams can focus on the more strategic and value-added work. Jordy Brazier is responsible for their Sales Operations and enablement, an area he is passionate about.

As a business, Qubole sells primarily to IT decision makers in data-driven enterprise companies. Their customers understand the value of big data and want to leverage it in a more cost-efficient way to improve their performance.  In an industry that’s rapidly evolving, sales enablement is key to driving competitive advantage.

“For us, sales enablement is about how we can use content and develop training that increases sales productivity. By sales productivity, we mean the productivity of our reps. Do we look at things like how can we increase their deal size? How can we increase how fast they onboard? We use several programs to execute this, onboarding boot camps, QBR’s, kickoffs and ongoing training as well,”

outlines Brazier.

For each sales enablement initiative, Brazier focuses in on a core metric.

“For example, the primary metric for the onboarding program is time to first deal. We now have a 90-day onboarding program, and we measure how we’re improving by looking at everyone who goes through that program. Are they faster to close? Do they get to their first deal quicker? If we look at other parts of the sales cycle we’re going to use different metrics, but it’s very important to measure a specific metric that’s most directly related to what you’re trying to achieve,”

he explains.

As the company has been scaling rapidly, onboarding has been an area of focus for sales enablement.

“Our sales onboarding is a 90-day program. Once a field rep starts they attend boot camp within the first 30 days,”

Brazier explains.

While Qubole would previously send Wiki and other information to new hires they had no way of knowing who had looked at it before boot camp. But using Mindtickle now gives them the ability to make this process interactive. New hires go through role play certification and now management can measure who’s actually confident and absorbed the information.

“

Everyone is on the same page when we start. It’s not just a 30-minute class and then a test. The questions follow the learning. It’s not a testing platform it’s a learning platform. So we know exactly what they already know and we can take it from there.”

This has allowed Qubole to refocus its boot camp.

“The boot camp is now more of a tool versus being a class. They’ve already trained in the app or in a bite-sized way with quizzes, so when they come to boot camp they’ve already reviewed all the training. And when we put them in front of our executives at boot camp the reps can actually ask much more meaningful questions,”

he continues.

“After getting feedback and looking at the metrics, we’ve focused the boot camp to be all about understanding the value of the company, why is the company’s solution the best. To achieve this we do simulations throughout the boot camp. Reps have to present twice during the boot camp, at the beginning and at the end of the week. They pitch to the rest of the class and get feedback from management, the class, and an existing rep,”

Brazier explains.

It may be intense but it gives Qubole’s new reps the confidence to pitch the product. And they need it because once boot camp is over there is a real customer waiting for them. Working with marketing and the management team, new reps attend a field marketing event within 30 to 45 days of starting, just after boot camp.

“They can pitch live, face to face with good prospects and start to build a pipeline. That really moved the needle for us and shortened the time to the first deal,”

he says. “

We then do a 60 day check in to see if they need help with anything and again at 90 days.”

Qubole also runs several other initiatives including a kickoff twice a year.

“At the kickoff, we look at overall positioning and messaging. We’re in a fast moving market so at each kickoff we revamp the company deck for the entire team,”

he explains.

Before the kickoff, new materials and presentations are made available to reps on Mindtickle. The reps record their pitches and these are reviewed at the kickoff as a learning experience.

The best ones are presented to everyone at the kickoff, leveraging the competitive spirit of their salespeople.

Ongoing learning is also important to Qubole.

“Every week we release a new course or update on what products we have or how to compete on specific products. In Mindtickle we can see who is learning and who needs improvement. We actually give a $100 gift card to the top learner each week. It’s helpful to drive adoption and it makes it fun. It’s one way that we make sure that we are prepared, are true trusted advisors to our customers and are able to deliver true value. That’s super important and that’s why we take enablement very seriously. We really invest in those programs and technology that makes our team the best and puts the firepower behind it,”

explains Brazier.

Interestingly, Qubole also found a correlation between learning scores and the performance of their reps. Their consistently low performers were also struggling to pass the tests on Mindtickle. It was a good indicator that something was just not working.

“It’s all about raising the average. The top-performing reps will probably still be the top performing reps even without training, but if you can bring the majority of middle reps up then you can make a significant difference in the overall productivity,”

he says.

Qubole has certainly gone through a considerable learning curve while implementing its enablement initiatives and Brazier is happy to share his top three tips.

“First, if you don’t have a learning platform, bring one in ASAP. I think that really moved the needle for us. Also, narrow the focus of your boot camp. Don’t incorporate everything under the sun, just focus on the value. And understand that you will only be successful if there is very strong cross-functional collaboration. You need to get the best out of product management and the best out of marketing, so include them early on. Asking them for their inputs and get their buy-in.”

This approach has certainly worked for Qubole, who continues to go from strength to strength.

[Podcast] How Qubole Leverages Sales Readiness Technology to Deliver True Value to its Customers (Episode 21)

Shankar Ganapathy on July 24, 2017


In this 20 minute podcast, Brazier outlines:

  • How Qubole uses sales enablement drive productivity per sales rep
  • Why technology is crucial to accelerate sales readiness and bring true value to your business
  • How to leverage sales kickoffs to ensure your reps’ positioning cutting edge
  • His best advice to anyone creating sales enablement initiatives

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here.
Jordy Brazier is Vice President of Sales Operations for Qubole and has been in Sales Operations for over 10 years. Qubole is the largest cloud and diagnostic big data service, providing businesses with a self-service data platform to help them make data driven decisions.
Selling to IT decision makers, they operate in a tough market, releasing new product updates regularly to stay ahead of the curve. This means their sales reps also need to make sure they have a cutting edge positioning.
“Every week we release a new course or an updated version of a course about what products we have? And, how to compete with specific products,” explains Brazier.  “To drive adoption and see who is going through those trainings is, Mindtickle lets us see who are the learners and who needs improvement. It’s great to have this ability. We want to make sure that we have the best prepared reps when we go into the field. So they can be true trusted advisors to our customers and are able to deliver true value. That’s super important and that’s why we take enablement very seriously and really invest in those programs, into technologies that make them the best and put fire power behind them.”
Qubole has also raised the effectiveness of their reps through its comprehensive onboarding program and certifications.
“It’s had a great impact for us as well. We use best practices to take control of the consumer process, bring true value and accelerating productivity,” Brazier continues.

In Conversation with Procore on Sales Enablement

Abhinav Guru on March 21, 2017

 

This post is based on a webinar on the secret to building a sales enablement powerhouse. You can listen to the entire webinar here.

Procore is the world’s most widely used construction project management software. It helps contractors keep track of their projects throughout the entire lifecycle of a project, from bidding to closeout, and helps them reduce errors and cost overruns. Procore was featured on Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2016 and reached unicorn status on Dec 2016. With such high growth, the size of the company inevitably increased, and they now have over 700 employees in 7 offices across the United States.

Three challenges triggered Procore’s need for sales enablement

Procore’s sales team was growing rapidly and they were having difficulty gauging the performance of their sales team, so they implemented a structured sales enablement program. Alex Jaffe, Sales Enablement Manager for Procore, played a critical role in executing this strategy. The key challenges they addressed by implementing a well-structured sales enablement program included:

  1. Keeping their salespeople up-to-date on a constantly evolving product, industry, and competitive information.
  2. Aligning their core messaging and sales process in a period of hyper-growth. This included hiring new reps and ramping them up quickly.
  3. Managing and delivering sales collateral in a way that ensured a consistent customer experience

They focused on three key areas of excellence

“Our approach to sales enablement is in three different areas of excellence. They are selling skills, a definite approach to product and industry is being a powerful leader in that perspective, and then working efficiently with our technology and maximizing the results. So, we focus really in depth on creating the knowledge, process, and skills to make it simple and digestible,” explained Jaffe.

The strategy was deployed using a two-prong approach

Sales enablement at Procore was structured into two distinct categories:

  1. Segment based
  2.  Functional based

All roles within the categories functioned as a conduit between sales and the different departments involved in each initiative.

The distinction based on functions and initiatives helped Procore handle their overall sales enablement program with ease.

“If you have one person focusing on sales enablement then you are not going to be able to to boil the ocean and focus on all the areas. What you guys can do is use productivity measures and understanding of what you can maximize and then do the prioritization based on that. So, at Procore what we have done is split these into two distinct buckets, which we think are two different mindsets. Different people are responsible for each of these initiatives,” explains Jaffe.

Procore’s sales enablement framework

Procore facilitated a structured, streamlined and outcome-oriented onboarding process to ensure their reps were set up for success. The first 90 days was the initial onboarding phase, and from then on it was about continual improvement, called ongoing enablement.

“We start with a simple framework that works pretty well for us. It’s very important to see sales readiness in the two distinct views. First, the onboarding, which we view as 0-90 days, and then the ongoing enablement which is 90 plus days,” explains Jaffe.

Setting expectations is key to your onboarding program

With the framework in place, Jaffe then suggests setting goals and targets based on your onboarding program. “The first thing that you guys need to start on from an onboarding perspective is understanding the approach you want to do. Ultimately the one thing that you need to address is at what stage of onboarding you are, and what are the outcomes that you want to drive. So, if you are running let’s say, an onboarding program that’s five days long on the next Monday, what does the sales reps need on that day to be successful and working on their own. Maybe it’s about understanding the pitch, understanding the customer stories and understanding how to demo and that’s all that it is. Driving those outcomes and then taking the 30-60-90 days approach and asking what outcomes do I need my teams to have in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and then proceed to ongoing enablement.”

There are three important objectives to an ongoing plan

According to Jaffe ongoing enablement is as important as the initial onboarding phase.  He recommends that it’s tailor-made for each of your ramped up reps. Procore leverages Mindtickle for its ongoing enablement to achieve these three objectives:

  1. Constant reinforcement of knowledge and skills
  2. Regular updates of knowledge and processes
  3. Periodic re-calibration of processes and skills

Aligning your objectives helps to measure the impact of your program

Before you think about measuring the impact of your program, Jaffe suggests ensuring that it ’s well aligned with your overall objective.

“I think aligning your objectives with your global sales objectives as well as your company’s’ is critically important when you are measuring the impact of sales enablement. Sales enablement is not in a bubble creating its own objectives, it’s going to be completely dependent on what are we trying to drive at a company level and a global sales team level,” explains Jaffe.

At the end of the day, outcomes matter

Jaffe shared insights on how the impact of this program was measured and shared their impressive outcomes. “The most important thing with measuring the impact is identifying leading vs. lagging indicators. Leading indicators are going to be what you can coach and train your reps through. Lagging indicators are how you are going to measure that success. Lagging indicators are going to be the results closed, dollars won improvement in sales and things like that. Leading indicators would be an adoption of your program, how comfortable your reps are with the program.”

Procore has achieved impressive results with their sales enablement strategy, the figures speak for themselves:

  • >90% adoption of content and sales enablement technology
  • Sales reps rate the overall program at 4.8/5 according to their internal NPS survey
  • 99% of their sales reps recommend the program

Through a well-structured sales enablement program, Procore has been able to keep pace with their globally expanding sales team. With Mindtickle they have found the right balance between strategy, data, and technology to achieve an impressive outcome.

What is Sales Enablement?

Shrimithran R on March 13, 2017

Sales_Enablement_Two_sides_1Are you building a new sales enablement strategy to grow revenue? Before you get started it’s worth taking a deeper look at exactly what sales enablement is.

Forrester defines sales enablement as:

“

A strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.”

Topo

also does a great job at explaining the different facets of sales enablement:

“

Sales enablement is the process of providing the sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help salespeople sell more effectively.

”

So what does this mean for you?

Mindtickle POV: Sales Enablement = Sales Readiness + Sales Asset Management

There are two parts to sales enablement. The first one is foundational, like preparing your salespeople to have meaningful customer conversations. We call this “Sales Readiness” – the space that Mindtickle operates in.

Sales readiness delivers on three things:

  1. Ensuring customer-facing staff have the requisite knowledge of your products or services;
  2. Giving reps the skills to clearly articulate your unique value proposition; and
  3. Providing on-the-field coaching for contextual triggers like deal motion and skill development.

The goal of sales readiness is to ensure your reps are on message and always up-to-speed on your unique value proposition. For new hires, it is about accelerating their ramp up.

Ultimately, you are preparing your reps to have smarter sales conversations. Sales readiness initiatives are internally focused, not customer facing, so the content you produce would be consumed only by your sales team.

The second part, “Sales Asset Management”, is about ensuring your salespeople have the right conten

t in the context of where they are in the sales process fora specific deal

. The key objectives of sales asset management are:

  1. Improving customer engagement;
  2. Faster content delivery; and
  3. Simplifying content creation and management.

With so much customer-facing content being produced by marketing and sales enablement, it’s no surprise that your sales reps struggle to find the most relevant content for their prospects when they need it most. Companies like Showpad, Seismic and KnowledgeTree excel in this space.

So in a nutshell, sales asset management is about equipping your reps with the right content for their customer conversations, while sales readiness is about improving their performance by ensuring your reps have the knowledge, skills, and processes they need.

As a sales enablement leader, it’s important to communicate with your sales leadership to define and align the initiatives that will help your reps close more deals. These priorities may change from time to time. One month you may be focused on improving your SDR’s messaging and conversion rates, while in the next you could be focused on producing fresh content for a new product release.

Your sales enablement strategy will be based on the needs, challenges, and obstacles that your sales team are facing. Given how fast things change in the digital age this means your initiatives may change often, but the end-game always remains the same; to enable your sales reps so they can close more deals.

Get free access to the best sales-readiness content.

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