From Bootstrapping to Acceleration: How Startups can Scale Sales

Shankar Ganapathy on March 9, 2016

startups_scale_salesAs startups grow and evolve so does their sales team and along with each stage of growth comes different challenges. While each business is different, it is possible to be better prepared and take advantage of the learnings from other businesses, so that you can scale your sales team faster, better and stronger. Here’s an outline of the four key stages of a startup from inception to scaling, and the challenges they face along the way.

Stage 1 – Inception

Sales People:

0

Customers:

0 to 10

Product Stage:

Idea or prototype

Challenges:

Without any salespeople, at this stage, the business is just learning about the size of its opportunity and what its customers (or potential customers) may actually want. This is the customer discovery stage according to

Mark Birch, Investor & Entrepreneur

, with founders focused on building the product and determining if there is any interest in it. Many of the challenges from a sales perspective revolve around finding someone who is interested in your product, and in demonstrating to your potential customer your

passion for the product

.

Stage 2 – Testing

Sales People:

1 (most likely a founder)

Customers:

2 to 5

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

At this stage, you know you’re onto something but you’re still testing whether your solution is valid. While you may have only a few customers, your resources are tight so that’s all the business can manage at this stage, but you still want to get your product out to as many people as possible. So according to Terry Kelman, Director of Sales Enablement & Training at Senstay, “talk to anybody you will talk to you. Sell your product for any price you can get.” This may mean you’re giving your product away for free or make it Open Source to encourage testing.

It’s also critical at this stage to get feedback and open a conversation with your customers where possible. Think of it like market research which can be performed using analytical tools, that help you

discover symptoms in your sales process

(or product)  and identify where the issues lie.


Stage 3 – Sales Acceleration


sales enablementSales People:

2 to 3 (with perhaps one sales manager)

Customers:

30 to 200 (depending on the type of product)

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

With only a few salespeople, but the opportunity has proven, the real challenge according to Birch is, “to build a base of loyal, passionate and successful customers to establish credibility while preparing the startup for full-on growth.” As many customers at this stage are early adopters, they provide a source of low hanging fruit for salespeople.

The sales team is still quite unsophisticated in its approach according to Kelman. Prospecting is akin to a shotgun approach and the focus is on selling features and functions rather than customer value or needs. As resources are scarce at this point in the business’ development, “the types of skills needed during this phase differ from those needed to sell more mature products. Salespeople must be resourceful, able to develop their own sales models and collateral materials as needed,” observe

Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway

.

Stage 4 – Revenue Explosion or Scaling

Sales People:

10 to 100

Customers:

As many as possible

Product Stage:

Refining

Challenges:

The biggest issues for startup sales teams tend to arise at this stage. Perhaps the business has just closed Round B funding and investors want to see rapid growth. All bets have been laid and it’s now time to show the results, so most businesses start to hire. As Kelman points out, “What investors don’t understand is that a big increase in the sales force brings big problems for the sales manager”.

This is where startups need to ramp up what Leslie and Holloway call ‘The Sales Learning Curve’, with “the more a company learns about its product, market, and sales process, the more efficient it becomes at selling, and the higher the sales yield”. Sales managers need to look at how they hire, train and scale. As

Professor Mohanbir Sawhney

of Kellogg School of Management explains, “executives need to embed expertise into the company’s processes and structure to lessen its reliance on a few key people.”

This is where sales training and enablement become a key factor that can make or break a startup. With strong training, agile processes and good collaterals, the business can rapidly bring on board new sales reps,

build trust in customers

and potentially have them selling at a rate that meets investors expectations. Another alternative that Swahney suggests is to “tap partnerships to access capabilities, technology, and customers.”
Regardless of how the startup decides to scale, the needs of their sales team will change considerably. Find out how to prepare your business to scale your dream sales team.

4 Tips To Help You Find The Key Sales Decision-Maker

Shankar Ganapathy on March 6, 2016

Connecting with the sales decision-maker is one of the hardest parts of the B2B journey. On top of that, the buying process has transformed. Mindtickle co-founder Mohit Garg noted, “Nearly one-third of technology purchasing power has moved to executives outside of IT. And in some situations, business line managers now control the decision-making process from beginning to end, with little to no involvement from the CIO and/or IT. It is not enough to fit the IT blueprint. Startup sales teams need to create new entry points and doors into the business functions likely to be the biggest beneficiaries or most active users of their offering.”

Easier said than done, I set about researching the best way to identify key sales decision-makers, and here’s a summary of the best advice and tips I found.

1. Identify the buyer (and anti-buyer) personas

We all know that the starting point for understanding who your customers are is by defining them, and creating buyer personas is one of the best ways to do this. Sam Kusinitz defines a buyer persona as “a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

I found this list of questions to help create buyer personas by Aaron Agius particularly useful. We got our sales and service team, as well as marketing and technology teams, involved so that we could create a complete picture of each buyer persona. Focus groups with potential buyers are also invaluable in this process, so you can hear the answers direct from the horse’s mouth.

One thing that I’ve found important to remember when putting together buyer personas, is to be clear about what part of the buying process each individual participates in. The person who signs the check may not be the one who really chooses the product that will be purchased. Sean McPheat has identified 5 different roles in the purchasing process:

  • The Initiator – the person who decides to start the buying process.
  • The Influencer – the person who tries to convince others they need the product.
  • The Decider – the person who makes the final decision to purchase.
  • The Buyer – the person who is going to write you the check.
  • The User – the person who ends up using your product, whether he had a say in the buying process or not.

These aren’t always five different people. For example, we’ve found that in some instances the sales enablement manager may be the Initiator and Influencer when it comes to purchasing a sales enablement platform like Mindtickle, and while they may make the recommendation of what to buy, it’s their boss that usually gives the final approval.

He argues that you should also speak directly to your anti-buyer persona.

The prospect will never buy from us because we frankly are not the best option for them. But in the process of verbalizing that we’re not the ideal fit for so many prospects we in-turn generate trust with the folks that we are a good fit for.

Having this clarity is a win/win for everyone.

2. Mapping the buyer experience

Once the buyer personas have been created, the next stage is mapping their journey. This is to ensure that you and your content reaches the right audience. Michael King has put together a great example of mapping the buyer journey for Moz. He points out:

Some portions of the user journey is online, some is off. All of these need states that are relevant to the business can be mapped to the consumer decision journey and your funnel for better measurement and optimization, but what’s important is understanding user needs and how to support them at all relevant stages in order to meet the business objectives.

3. Incorporating buyer personas into sales training

Once you’ve created your buyer personas, mapped their experience and have content that helps guide them through their buying process, the next stage is making sure that your sales people understand the buyer personas. As Mohit Garg says:

Your rep should be able to understand and articulate what the different customer personas are, how they differ, and how to recognize them. They should also understand how the product satisfies their needs, and articulate the value proposition clearly, along with its competitive advantage.

This is where marketing and sales come together for the benefit of the customer.

4. Keep it fresh

Just as we change the way we work and how we approach things, so do our customers. So Anna Ritchie of the Content Market Institute suggests that buyer personas are revisited regularly to ensure they’re still relevant. We’ve taken on board one of her ideas at Mindtickle,

Before you start your next content project, try going back to the drawing board with your personas, looking closely at whether each one still accurately reflects your target audience’s current life situation and purchasing needs….start by carefully considering how this persona’s needs have changed, and how you may want to adjust your messaging, content formats, and content delivery strategies, as a result.

Make Hiring Smart Salespeople Your Competitive Advantage

Shankar Ganapathy on March 2, 2016

In order to have a high-performing sales team you need amazing people, but hiring smart salespeople reps isn’t exactly easy. Especially if you’re charged with finding 10, 20, or 100 new reps to scale your high-growth business. In today’s dynamic environment, it’s not enough to just put an ad online or hire a recruiting company and cross your fingers.

As a sales leader, you also need to be involved and engaged in the process to ensure you get the best candidates and close the deal with them quickly; before they’re snapped up by someone else. After all, the average time to hire an SDR or AE can now be as short as 2 weeks, so there’s no time to waste.

So how do you attract top talent in a competitive and dynamic industry?

There are some things you can do when looking for and qualifying for the right candidate. Grace Mason, Head of Sales at Betts Recruiting shared some of her best practices that will help you make hiring your competitive advantage.

Find the right candidate

While partnering with a recruitment agency can help you find some great candidates, it’s also important to be proactive about your recruiting efforts. “Implement an employee referral incentive program. Good people often know good people,” suggests Mason Tweet This. “This can help with retention. If your reps are referring their colleagues and friends to work at your company, they will likely stay at your company longer and also help get that rep up to speed with additional support.”

Another way to potentially find candidates, particularly if you need to hire several reps quickly, is by hosting a “Happy Hour” Tweet This. Mason suggests holding this after hours, bringing your entire team along as well. They can bring along referrals as well, and your recruiting firm can help you fill the room with potential candidates. It’s a good way to see how well each individual fits into the culture of your business and can cut down the number of phone screens you need to do when qualifying candidates.

Qualify candidates

Looking through hundreds of resumes can be overwhelming, but there are some things you can look out for that will help you qualify the candidate. “Look for any red flags on their resume. Overall does their resume make sense? For example, career progression or any job changes,” suggests Mason.

Checking things like tenure at their past companies; have they stayed for a while or been promoted? If their dates don’t line up or they move around a lot, that’s something to be aware of when deciding whether you want to progress to the next stage with a candidate.

“For sales roles specifically, metrics are probably the most important thing you need to look at when reviewing a candidate. So if they’re a sales rep, their resume should read like a baseball card.” Mason suggests looking at things like:

  • What was their quota?
  • What was their attainment of that quota?
  • What was their average deal size?
  • What big logos have they closed?

These are all indicators that will help you determine if the candidate may suit your business requirements.

The interview process

After making it through the initial qualification stage, you will need to interview the candidate. “Throughout the interview process it’s very important to focus on quality control as a hiring manager,” says Mason. So how do you conduct quality control checks?

  • While talking to the candidate, consider whether they will fit into the culture of the organization, and respond to your management style.
  • Challenge them on their numbers and do the math. Does their bonus equate with the quota attainment they’ve listed on their resume and their base salary and OTE?
  • Encourage them to interview you about your company so you can asses their long-term intentions and interest;
  • Find out why they want to leave their current organization, as under-performance is a leading reason why reps churn;
  • Ask them behavioral questions that give you an indication of how they would deal with specific situations, like “How would you approach a short sales cycle differently than a long sales cycle?” or “How do you research prospects before a call or meeting? What information do you look for?”; and
  • Find out what their future plans are by asking about their medium to long-term goals, and how they intend to achieve these.

Throughout the interview, always bring everything back to their resume; challenging the candidate on what they have included there. After all, if you’re recruiting a salesperson they will no doubt be good at selling themselves, so the interview process is about finding out what they have achieved and how they did it.

How to Convert Your Training Presentations Into Awesome Videos

Rahul Rao on February 27, 2016

how to make great videos
You can create interactive videos to engage your learners at a whole new level. In the age of interactive and gamified learning, the one obstacle Learning & Development teams face is the ability to convert the existing text-heavy content into an interactive video. The charge to hire professionals to make great videos is quite high and one does not always have the budget for these video professionals.

What if you could quickly create your own videos, right from your desktop? Surprised? Well, don’t be! Even you can create interactive videos which are short, crisp, to the point, and engage your learners at a whole new level. And guess what? There are many basic tools which are easily available on the internet that allow you to make great videos!

Let’s step through the process of creating a learning video of your existing presentation, with the help of these tools.

The Planning Stage

It is absolutely vital that you plan your conversion process first. This would help you avoid unnecessary “outtakes” and prevent you from pulling your hair out.

To get started, make sure you:

  1. Break down the content into small presentations which cover all the topics. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your learners.
  2. Remember to use animations to strengthen your presentation. These will be very useful to focus your learner’s attention, something that you might have relied on a trainer to do in a classroom setting.
  3. Identify how you can test each topic at the end of the videos and also give them further material to explore. This will ensure that your learners’ interest is kept high even after the lesson has ended
  4. Prepare a script for the voice over that you will record when running the slideshow. You need to have a plan about what to talk about on each slide. It is as good as giving a live presentation in a training session. Make sure the narrative is as interactive as possible. Keeping it casual and having a sense of humor in the script is the way to go.
  5. Keep the video script short and crisp. A learner’s attention span is usually around 3 to 4 minutes, which is why the ideal length of a learning video should not be more than that.

Here is a sample plan for the narrative for a screencast to search for a product on Google.

Make great videos

The Execution Stage

Once you have the topic presentation ready, then starts the fun part! Download a screen recording tool

use camtasia to make great videos

The tool that we recommend (and use internally) is Camtasia. It has extensive features but is also extremely user-friendly. Camtasia even adds a plug into your MS Office PowerPoint, from which you can record your presentations with a single click. In case you do not like Camtasia, there are lots of screen recorders that can be found on the internet which include:

Download any one of the above, which will enable you to record your screen when you are running a presentation.

Record the Video:

To start recording the video, you will have to use the screen recording tool. Prior to recording, make sure you have adjusted the settings according to your requirements. This will save you a lot of headaches if in case something goes wrong!

adjust camtasia recorder to make great videos

Once you are ready with the settings, click the Record button and start the presentation.

Voice During Recording

A very common beginner’s’ mistake during recording videos is that we forget to pay attention to our own energy levels. During a classroom training, the trainers also feed off the energy of the learners, and hence it creates an energetic, interactive experience. But while recording a video, the trainer does not have the energy of the classroom to feed off of. Due to this, even his energy levels drop while recording. This is the surest way to create extremely boring videos.

There are many ways to avoid having low energy during the recording session. Some people have found coffee or energy drinks to be useful, whereas others might resort to standing during the sessions or even jumping up and down in between the recording to maintain their high energy levels.

Important tip: Voice modulation can be the most versatile tool you have while recording a video, to bring emphasis to certain points. Try to use this to your advantage! Even minor fluctuations can be very effective.

Put on the Editor’s Hat:

Now that you have finished recording the video, it’s time to wear the editor’s hat! No movie is recorded in a single shot. You do not want the video to be incomplete or miss its crispness. Let’s add some make-up before it goes live!

  • In Camtasia, once you are done with the recording, the first step is to set the video output resolution. For web purposes, the best practice is to use the dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixels. If you do not select this and choose a setting which is lesser, the video that will be generated will not be ideal for full-screen playback on today’s screens. This means that your text and images might be too small for the learner to read and comprehend.
  • A simple timeline with the recording tool allows you to edit the video. In case you are not happy with the current recording, you can go back and record only those parts and merge it to the current timeline.
  • In the editor, you can very easily trim the video, cut it, increase the voice pitch for certain sections, and even zoom into the video while explaining the important parts. These (and a host of other more powerful features) really put the finishing touches on your video.

The Publishing Stage

Now comes the time to cut, save, and call it a day!

Once you have edited the video, the last step is to save the file in the format most preferred by you. If you any text in your presentations, then the ideal output for the video is the HD option which gives you a high-quality output. However, this does create quite large video files. Hence, if you wish to lower your bandwidth costs, then you could go in for a lesser resolution format. But do make sure that the text in the video is readable for your learners!

Run the video past your teammates or users and collect feedback. Use the feedback when creating the next video!

Congratulations! You just recorded a video with no help from professional video makers. The number of people using this method to record videos is increasing by the day. Though we just focused on making videos through screen recordings, the other popular forms are getting a cam recorder and record the demonstration of you presenting on stage or on a blackboard. Once recorded, you can edit the video with the help of your favorite recording tool.

We certainly hope that you will be creating a lot more videos from your presentations now, and join the brigade of L&D professionals who are using video regularly in their courses.

How do you record your videos? Do you have any tips or tricks that you can share with our community? Do share with us in the comments below!


Onboarding Managers: Look Beyond the New Employee Orientation Checklist

Abhishek Ballabh on February 26, 2016

Onboarding programs should move beyond merely completing a new employee orientation checklist. Today, onboarding managers need to conduct a well-designed, centralized, and cohesive orientation program, well beyond the scope of a new employee orientation checklist.

Let’s look at the six ways to create a great atmoys to sphere where new hires feel that they are a part of something special.

1. Send a welcome kit

Making good first impressions applies not only to blind dates and clients but with new hires as well. Putting together a welcome kit will ensure a new hire feels welcome and valued. The kit should contain:

  • Welcome letter
  • Directions to the office
  • List of restaurants, banks, and entertainment in the area
  • A schedule for Day 1
  • Name and contact details of the assigned mentor

A continuously updated new employee orientation checklist should make this task easy for onboarding managers.

2. Day 1 celebration

A small celebration makes an employee feel welcome. The simple process of having the workspace ready with phone connections, PC/laptop, an email account, and a bag of snacks communicates a great deal – especially on the first day. Involving senior members in team-building activities and lunch with the team will increase the new hire’s comfort level.

3. Mentor program

A mentor or buddy can act as the go-to person for the new hire and guide them through filling out forms and understanding benefits and company policies. The role of the mentor should continue until the end of the new employee orientation program. Companies like Motorola give the mentors access to hiring data, which helps the mentor assist the new hire with the necessary tools and resources required to make him/her productive from the start.

4. Share your organization’s goals

It is essential to share your organization’s goals for the near future and highlight the expectations from the new hire by defining his role in achieving this goal. Establish the fact that the employee and the employer grow together.

5. Focus on the skill set

All Employees, new hires, and laterals alike are constantly, are looking to improve their skill sets. A clear roadmap with training programs scheduled during the coming months that are integrated well with the new hire’s performance management plan will indicate to the new hires that the company will take all efforts to increase their skill set and contributions in an organized manner.

6. Ask for feedback

A new employee orientation program is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process. Feedback plays an important role here. Provide a timeline for new hires indicating when and how their inputs will be taken. Ensure to act on the inputs given and communicate to the new hire that the issue is being addressed or has been solved.

Helping to create a great workplace is very appealing – especially to managers and leaders who are aware of the benefits that come with great workplaces. The Aberdeen Report 2010 survey revealed that the initial experiences of a new employee have a direct impact on an organization’s productivity and profitability. The report also states, “Make a good impression and you can be considered an employer of choice.”

The new employee orientation checklist is definitely a good start and onboarding managers would do well to adopt all or some of the above-mentioned tips to enhance the onboarding experience.

How to Design and Measure Your Online Sales Training

Deepak Diwakar on February 14, 2016

If your business is like most others, your sales team is made up of “B” and “C” level sales reps along with a handful of stellar “A” performers. Your “A” players consistently achieve quota and do so profitably. As a sales enablement manager, you are dealing with different levels of motivation and potential among your sales reps. In order to achieve success in your market, you must help your sales reps cultivate and realize their potential and fast.

Over 73% of ‘C’ Players never make their quota and 68% ultimately leave the company (usually not voluntary). With those almost insurmountable stats, why should Sales Management even bother working with ‘C’ players? Because 15% of them turn out to be your best ‘A’ players. Coaching them is extremely important.

Having the right data at your fingertips enables you to be a nimble manager. When your sales team is a diverse set of individuals with different skill levels it is critical to get the insight needed to provide appropriate coaching to each individual in such a way that is both manageable and focused on getting your sales rep to “A” player levels of productivity as quickly as possible.

Citi: a real-life example

One of the most important sales behaviors is demonstrating to prospects the benefits that your products offer. A key objective for sales training is to increase the number of benefits-focused conversations while decreasing the number of features-focused conversations. According to a Huthwaite study, the Citi sales training team used behavior analysis techniques to assess a range of sales behaviors including this key objective: increasing benefit-focused conversations.

In their evaluation, Citi trainers were able to count the frequency of both features and benefits in sales calls before and after the training event. After observing 46 sales calls prior to the training, the average number of benefits per call before training was 0.9, while there were, on average 4.2 features per call. At the end of the training, sales managers observed the number of features and benefits made by their 46 trained reps. The results were powerful. Benefit conversations had more than doubled, while feature-focused conversations had fallen almost by half. This story provides a convincing argument for the importance of measuring behavioral cues on the fly during sales training in order to accurately measure the impact of your training.

Your online sales training platform should provide sales coaches with this kind of behavioral data critical to evaluating whether the program is profitably delivering reps that meet and exceed necessary performance criteria. On a crowded playing field, competitive advantages like this can make a major difference and deliver significant gains. Imagine what you’d be able to achieve if your “B” players started selling like your “A” players.
Here are some questions to consider to ensure the effectiveness of your online sales training now and in the future:

  • Does your sales training help you predict if the new hire is going to become an “A”, “B” or “C” player?
  • Is your online sales program training your reps on what they need to know to be proficient in their position?
  • Does your sales manager know in advance what are the strengths and weaknesses of new hires?

New sales reps are often overwhelmed with by the sheer volume of product features and the complexity of prospective customer questions. In order to develop consistently high-performing sales reps, your sales training results should be predictable in overcoming these knowledge hurdles. In essence, data from your sales training platform should show you information on how your sales reps are tracking toward productivity.

Having this data on hand in real-time allows you to intervene and adjust your sales training program as needed to coach your team to success. Here’s a quick primer on how to look at data and make decisions from your sales training.

Sales training performance data to measure

  1. Overall sales readiness (eg. performance trajectory)– Your most experienced “A” player sales reps are a good indicator of what success looks like for your business. With this as a measuring stick, you should be able to gauge an individual sales rep’s performance trajectory during sales onboarding enabling you to tell if they are on track to be an “A”, “B” or “C” player.
  2. How knowledgeable is the sales rep? In order to ensure that each rep is up to speed and prepared, you should measure the knowledge or your sales reps regularly which tells you how well he or she is performing on priority information. Once they’re on the platform, managers can make informed, timely actions to ensure sales reps aren’t leaving opportunities on the table. For example, test your field sales rep’s ability to handle objections to evaluate their readiness. If the sales reps are underperforming, coaching support can be delivered contextually. By contrast, if a rep with good knowledge score is not closing, it may be a lead quality issue.
  3. How engaged is the sales rep? How do you predict the level of engagement that leads to A player or B player sales reps? An engagement score indicates whether or not your sales reps are engaged with the training. For instance, a company with a complex product may need more frequent training updates and different kinds of ongoing learning than a company selling a product in a mature market. Sales managers need to ensure that reps stay up-to-date on the latest product features, success stories, and sales communications and intervene when sales reps are disconnected.

In short, there are many variables that contribute to increased sales – better compensation structures, sales training, additional incentives, marketing campaigns, etc… In order to get a clear reading on sales training impact key objectives such as increasing benefit-focused sales conversations, reducing your sales cycle, improving response rates, and reducing the number of touchpoints that your sales rep has with a prospect before a conversion. In the next blog post, we’ll explore how to align sales readiness, rep knowledge, and sales engagement data against core objectives like these. Stay tuned!

Sales Training Practices for a Robust Sales Onboarding Program

Mohit Garg on February 9, 2016

I’ve written previously about how effective onboarding of sales reps can increase the top line of your business, but how exactly should you do it? Given that it can take between 6 to 9 months to get a new sales rep to meet their quota, the benefits of expediting the process are high both in terms of opportunity cost and having to hire fewer reps to meet your targets. I’m often asked to share tips and best practices when implementing sales onboarding training, so I thought it was worth putting my thoughts down.

Broadly, when developing a sales onboarding process, I suggest dividing the program into 5 stages.

Training is the first stage of the sales onboarding process; this post will cover this stage in detail. Future posts will then go through Assess, Coach, Analyze and Reinforce.

sales onboarding frameworkSales training stage

The training stage should take about one month to complete, and cover two key aspects; “What to Sell” and “How to Sell”.

What to sell

There are 4 key pillars of “What to Sell.” These put the customer front and center and should cover foundational knowledge regarding the customer’s industry, business, and needs. It also ensures that your rep understands, and can articulate, the product’s unique value proposition so that they can engage a prospect in meaningful conversation when they’re ready to sell.

By the end of the “What to Sell” section, your rep should be able to understand and articulate what the different customer personas are, how they differ, and how to recognize them. They should also understand how the product satisfies their needs, and articulate the value proposition clearly, along with its competitive advantage.

Through the use of online learning, your sales rep can learn some of the “What to Sell” components during the pre-join period, saving you both time and money. For example, with online learning, you can introduce your new hires to the company culture and corporate vision, as well as a broad introduction to your customers (perhaps add some testimonials), and other publicly available or non-proprietary information. A structured online program prior to their first day will make it easier for them to get up to speed, and get them excited about starting to work with you. After day 1, you can then combine on-demand training, with both live training and online resources, so that your reps can review materials at their convenience.

How to sell

The “How to Sell” component should cover tools and processes that will make your rep more efficient and shorten the sales cycles. This is functional and should be tailored to your business.

For example, consider these questions:

  • How are leads generated within your business?
  • Is there a marketing team that supports them, or will the rep be expected to prospect for themselves?
  • What prospecting best practices are used by your best reps?
  • What is market intelligence available within the business?
  • What questions should they ask a customer when qualifying them?
  • What CRM is used, and how is the information recorded in it?
  • What are each of the components of the sales cycle, from demo to follow-up?

This is all invaluable knowledge, designed to ensure your rep will be ready to get out there and sell, once the onboarding is complete. Success stories, product updates, and best practice sales initiatives, are also important to include here.

Data point: 30% of reps in a typical company are not aware of latest wins and success stories.

sales onboarding

How do you make sales training effective?

Flip It

One method that I’ve found effective when delivering sales training is a flipped classroom.

The structured learning plan can be shared with the reps upfront so that they understand how each topic will be approached. The trainer here is more of a consultative guide, rather than a teacher; this engages reps from the get-go and gives them the opportunity to take the initiative in their own learning. Reps are encouraged to speak to each other, benefit from their peers’ perspective, and get hands-on with the product.

The key to this training model is to ensure that you have defined the required business outcome, provided the pre-work and pre-material, and then develop a structured in-person facilitation format. This will ensure that sales reps come in prepared with their questions, and engage in a democratic learning process.

They can then apply their understanding, reinforce it, and even go beyond by taking on more challenging tasks if they wish to stretch themselves.

Leverage the power of the video format

We have found that 92% of people will watch a full video, compared to only 78% when given a presentation. The impact is much more engaging for the learner, like this video that I use when training our new reps at Mindtickle.

One thing to keep in mind when creating sales training videos, the ideal length is between 3 and 10 minutes. Anything longer is likely to disengage your audience.

Test-to-teach

An important aspect of training is to determine if the reps absorbed the knowledge. While I’ll go through assessment and certification when I cover the “Assess” stage, it’s worth talking about the “test-to-teach” approach I have practiced for the last four years. It’s an integral part of the Train stage.

The test-to-teach approach employs quick quizzes as a way to reinforce the material, as opposed to an examination or assessment objective. Small bite-sized modules and quizzes, not only reinforce specific nuggets of knowledge have been retained, but also get the neurons fired up when combined with explanations and additional (contextual) along with the correct answers. It’s a bit like running a series of small sprints, building fitness in short, sharp bursts, that will help you get through the marathon in the long run.

The tests are small so there’s also a greater chance of the rep completing it, in fact, Mindtickle data shows that 88% of learners complete test-to-teach modules.

Gamification

Gamified techniques are not a new concept in the sales enablement space, but in my opinion, very few teams tap into the full potential of this technique. When implemented right, gamification can enable peer-to-peer feedback, benchmarking against a standard of performance (and a little healthy competition), and positive reinforcement, all have the potential to keep sales reps engaged and learning. Gamification can also be leveraged to provide the new sales reps a sense of aspiration by making the points meaningful in real-life. One of our clients projects the new hire leaderboard on the sales floor provide bragging rights to the new reps against their peers and fosters a sense of healthy competition.

Following these handy tips in your sales onboarding process will help you move the bell curve forward, and result in a higher percentage of new hires achieve their sales quota after the initial ramp-up phase.

Is It Time To Hire a Sales Enablement Manager?

Mohit Garg on February 3, 2016

There are many factors that affect sales target achievement. Unfortunately, many of those are beyond your circle of control such as competitor pricing, state of economy etc. The good news is that predictable sales can be accomplished in any environment by adopting a disciplined approach to sales management.

Most sales organizations do a pretty good job of managing the well-known levers of sales management such as hiring the right talent, actively managing the pipeline and CRM reports, and optimizing OTEs and incentive structures. However, the number of organizations that leverage sales enablement the right way is shockingly low. Mindtickle’s survey of more than 40 tech startups with more than $10M in venture funding revealed that less than 25% of those organizations were even thinking about a systematic approach to sales enablement.

Mindtickle Benchmark Report New Sales Enablement Standard

Is sales enablement a nice-to-have, or do you really need it?

Most of those sales leaders claimed that they were too small and tight-knit to formalize the enablement function and that they were (somehow) managing to achieve quarterly targets. But the fact that they may have been overlooking is that it is just a matter of time before the ad-hoc approach will start limiting the growth of these companies. What are the tell-tale signs that you could be in the same boat?

  • Are you consistently losing deals in the last stage?
  • Is the sales cycle all over the place?
  • Do your new sales reps take 6–9 months to start hitting their quotas?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your sales funnel may need fixing, and it would serve you well to get an expert (aka sales enablement manager) to fix it. That is because most fast-growing sales teams start showing symptoms of a broken process, and it is important to plug these gaps as early as possible.

Here are some common examples of what actually might be going on in the sales process that may lead to the above symptoms:

1. Failure to identify the buyer persona and needs
Simply buying and setting up marketing automation and lead intelligence tools doesn’t help. If there is limited adoption of those tools (as is the case in most fast-growing companies), it is likely that the SDRs are not doing enough digging before and during lead prospecting and qualification. If the sales reps would make it a practice to look up the marketing automation system for what actions did the lead perform on the website, or do some basic research on what kind of type of buyer they are dealing with, they could prioritize their leads and be better prepared to deal with the initial part of the sales process. Unfortunately, most sales reps need some hand-holding and nudging to adopt these practices, and this is one of the low-hanging fruit that data driven sales enablement helps achieve.

2. Lack of readiness to instantly respond to customer needs
Let’s take the example of a common sales situation wherein the prospect raises a query about a product feature, asks for a relevant case study or pops up a question about a competitor’s offering. If the SDRs are not truly “sales ready” i.e. they are not equipped with thorough product knowledge, up-to-date information on features, use cases, and customer stories, they will not only contribute to lengthening the sales process but importantly lose opportunities to communicate the value proposition of their offering. Such instances of sales unpreparedness can result in 30% longer sales cycles.

3. Lack of systematic process and tracking
Every single one of the 40 fast-growing tech companies that we interviewed confessed that they did not have comprehensive tracking of sales onboarding and ongoing training activities. Typically content was stored on the document repository, and they had no clue about what content was being accessed and by whom. In most cases, less than 10% of sales training content was accessed even once by the sales reps. The participation in webinars and classroom sessions was either not tracked at all or recorded manually.

How does sales enablement in your organization stack up?

The following table identifies four stages of sophistication and effectiveness of a sales enablement organization ranging from “Undefined” to “World Class.”
sales maturity v2
Source: demandmetric

What is sales enablement?

According to Aaron Ross, author of the book, Predictable Sales, “Sales Enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force and everyone else who is customer facing with access to the right insight, experts, and information at the right time (specific sales step) in the right format in order to increase revenue. It is often used to describe a variety of tools, processes, and methodologies that are applied to enable a sales force, both direct and indirect. The range of sales enablement can span everything it takes for a salesperson to do their job more effectively.”

What are the KRAs of sales enablement?

The top five priorities of the sales enablement function are:

  • Coordinating with sales leadership to define sales support initiatives
  • Creating written content that educates sales reps and customers, and helps in taking deals forward
  • Keeping sales team prepared for customer conversations
  • Managing the content repository and enabling easy access to them
  • Providing ad-hoc support for sales reps

Do you now think it is the right time for your organization to invest in sales enablement?

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