2017 | Mindtickle

In Conversation with Mark Tefakis of Fuze

Shrimithran R on December 11, 2017

This post is based on a webinar where Mark Tefakis, VP of Global Enablement at Fuze, shares the key pillars of successful sales enablement and how to show its ROI to your leadership.
Fuze is an award-winning “cloud-based unified communication platform that addresses complexities around the modern workforce with the ability to work in a way that drives efficiency and effectiveness for the growth and profitability metrics companies need,” explains Mark. “Founded in 2006, we’re headquartered in Boston and have offices throughout Europe, into Australia, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.”

The evolution and need for sales enablement

“Sales Enablement centered around training and development initially and expanded into how you fully enable the sales organization,” Mark continued. “A lot of CSOs are being challenged with having a constant pulse on the business, to be able to report on where they are today, where they’re going tomorrow, and knowing the lead and lag indicators so they can be responsive to the demands of the business. The discipline of sales enablement is a foundational set of processes and standards that help the CSO address that pressure and scrutiny. This foundation includes time to ramp (TTR) [onboarding], ongoing enablement [to increase productivity], and [preventing] unplanned churn.”

The five pillars of sales enablement

Mark developed the concept of the five pillars of sales enablement through his experience in sales and sales leadership. They are:

Organizational alignment: “Before you get started you have to understand the dynamics around the organizational alignment. Do you have governance and some process in place where everybody understands the vision, strategies, initiatives, scorecards, and metrics that you’re putting in place to drive the success of the program? That’s critically important,” explained Mark.
Role-based certification: Most sales organizations have several different roles that vary by company and industry. Role-based certification involves identifying the competency model tied to the skills and knowledge associated with each role. As you look through the motion of each role, what is the thing reps need to know, say, show, and do as they manage the day-in-a-life of performing against the expectations of the role? Next, turn it into a curriculum and how you want to train, develop, and evaluate the performance of these roles. There are three levels that comprise this certification model:
1. Lecture and test the retention of knowledge;
2. Exercise and application, transitioning from understanding a concept into applying and exercising the skill tied to that concept prior to going out into the field; and
3. Managers evaluateperformance in the field and coach.
Enablement on demand: “Leverage technology to streamline how effectively you execute against the things that are defined in the role-based competency model. There’s no need for heavy dependency on instructor-led training or virtual training when there are technology and applications that allow you to better drive efficiency and effectiveness, plus scale better for the organization within a proper cost model,” explains Mark. “Leverage technology as part of this foundational layer and put the power in the palm of the hand of the individual. Do this within cloud-based applications, with integration into CRM, where you can tie learning and sales supporting assets to a specific sales scenario, prescribing assets and learning based on that scenario. Also building in some gamification to drive contest around how people learn is really compelling. I would encourage you to think about enablement on demand,” he continues.
Predictive analytics: “It’s one thing to look at reports and reference a dashboard of things that happened in the past. It’s another to look through the windshield, at the road ahead, and predictively be able to tell where your business is going. If you establish the right lead and lag metrics, supporting technology can show when individuals in your sales organization are heading for disaster. You can then start to prescribe specific learning to get them over that hurdle so they can start to perform much better,” suggests Mark.
Sales advisory boards (a.k.a. voice of the customer): “If you don’t establish champions and have a feedback loop from the sales organization, you will battle some apprehensive people while you’re pushing programs out. This is a mechanism for you to be able to gather insight and feedback in a structured fashion. Sales can contribute to the design and development of your initiatives through localized champions who can support and help drive adoption,” he explains.

“With the five pillars of successful sales enablement,” Mark explained, “we’re leveraging really interesting technology to help do this so you can scale with the demands of the business. You’re not asking the CFO for a ton of bodies, you’re actually leveraging the power of technology, and better equipping and enabling the field based on the power in the palm of your hand, which ties back to the center pillar of enabling on demand.”

How sales enablement works at Fuze

“First and foremost is sales methodology. Whether you do it internally or you leverage an external partner, you have to start there because that is the foundation that drives the rest of the bubbles to the right,” Mark continued.
“Once you have that in place, you then start to think in terms of how to establish a best practice approach to outreach and engagement to the marketplace. We use Mindtickle for our learning management system and recently launched it to our global sales organization. We use Savo for our content management system and a combination of both Mindtickle and Savo to help us with ‘voice of the customer’ and engagement with the field. This gives us the pulse of what’s going on,” explains Mark.
“All of these equate to very effective sales productivity based on the pillars and the underlying enablement technology that you can put in place.”

5 Proven Ways to Increase Adoption of Your Sales Enablement Initiatives

Ryan Pimlott on November 30, 2017

Sales enablement initiatives are only as effective as the people who utilize them. According to CSO Insights, 94.3% of sales enablement initiatives are focused on salespeople and account managers, and 63.1% are also focused on sales managers. But no matter how brilliant your enablement initiative is, if you build it they may not come – this isn’t a fun trip to Vegas. Sales managers and reps have a trillion things to do each day, getting them to use a new tool or change their process requires a lot more persuasion than simply telling them it will benefit them.

While humans have a natural bias against change, for salespeople this is exacerbated. A survey of over 2,000 reps found that 62% of perceived seller burden can be attributed to overly complex internal processes and procedures that reps are asked to follow. So it’s no surprise that reps and managers may be reluctant to embrace the idea of adding yet another new tool or process to the mix.

While sales enablement exists to improve “seller experience” your initiative has to earn its stripes before your sellers see it that way. Best practice sales enablement leaders understand that their sellers are their customers, and a good seller experience is crucial to engagement and in turn adoption. While many focus on managing upwards – for recognition, funding, and reward – managing your customers is imperative to long-term success.

Here are five proven ways to ensure your sellers have the best experience with your new sales enablement initiative, so it has the best chance of succeeding.

1. Have a launch campaign

If your reps and managers don’t know that the new tool or process exists, they can’t use it. In a large company, this can be a real problem. Sending an email won’t be sufficient, just think how carefully you read every broadcast message that hits your inbox in a week. To succeed you need to launch your initiative, so it’s news rather than noise.

Reps will also need to know how the new initiative fits in and if it requires training, this needs to be provided in a way that ensures your reps are comfortable doing the new process or using the new tool in front of a customer. If they know how to use something, they’re more likely to try it rather than just putting it into the too-hard-basket and avoiding it.

2. Lead by example

Informing your sales team and training them is great, but your launch will be more impactful if you lead by example. One of our customers, Mulesoft, did just that when launching their new corporate messaging. The initiative was launched at their weekly town hall meeting by their CEO who completed a role play mission on Mindtickle in front of the entire company. He not only showed everyone what the messaging should sound like but also how to use their sales readiness tools, role modeling the behavior for the entire organization. Once he completed the mission he then encouraged everyone in the company, not just the sales team, to complete the mission.

3. Give them proof

If your sellers see no value in your sales enablement initiatives, they will be destined to fail. It’s one thing to tell someone that they will benefit from a new process or tool, but it’s another to back that up with hard data. After all, salespeople are focused on closing deals, they don’t value something immediately unless they can see the connection to achieving their end goal.

Mendix found the value in this when executing their Sales Champions Program. They showed sales managers the impact the new initiatives had on conversion rates. It is difficult, even for the most dedicated naysayer, to deny cold hard facts.
Depending on what you’re measuring, it may be difficult or even too early to have hard data. There are other types of proof that you can use that are just as impactful. Get one of your sales reps to video their success story and share that with the broader team, or interview a customer so they can hear how the change has made a difference to them. These are both powerful ways to demonstrate value and provide real proof of success. You can learn more about Mindtickle customer success by visiting our customers page.

4. Create a new normal with gamification

Over 90% of VP of Sales report that their gamification initiatives are successful, with 70% reporting an increase in sales performance from between 11% and 50%. Gamification, whether it’s through leaderboards, badges or other techniques that generate healthy competition among your sales reps, increases engagement and if they’re engaged they’ll adopt your new initiative. Adoption is the only way to ensure your initiative sticks.

You know you’ll have truly achieved adoption when your new tools or process become second nature – they’re the new normal. The new normal is the sign of success – your reps and managers do this day in day out without friction or complaint because it works!

5. Get feedback

To increase engagement your reps and managers need to know that they are being heard. Seek feedback on your initiative soon after implementation and again later once it’s been used by your team for a few weeks. This will help identify any issues and give you the opportunity to iron out any teething problems. By heeding their feedback and letting them know it’s being addressed it will also increase the chance of adoption and engagement. Otherwise, it may negatively impact the seller experience and the success of your initiative.

Some companies do this by pushing out surveys to their reps. This can be used to obtain feedback on a range of initiatives such as your sales kickoff. It’s also a handy way to inform what topics your reps want to see at your events.
No matter how great your sales enablement initiative is, the proof of its success is in the execution. For any implementation to succeed the users need to be on board and adopt the change. So don’t just focus your efforts up the line, spend time looking at your seller’s experience. This will also augur well for any future initiatives that you implement.

[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.

[Podcast] Choosing the Right Sales Methodology for Your Business – Episode 24

Shrimithran R on November 25, 2017

In this 14 minute podcast Dan explains:

How to choose the sales methodology that’s right for your business
What you need to execute a repeatable sales process that everyone can benefit from
The most common mistakes businesses make when implementing sales training

“Understanding what your customer is looking to solve and what’s the fastest way to get them to solve that problem is key,” states Dan Smith, Growth Specialist at Winning by Design. And he would know, Dan helps customers understand how to design and implement an effective sales process.

“I’ve seen change a lot in the last ten years around selling. People are struggling to sell effectively using old-school sales tactics. Companies that are successful are the ones that are adopting the selling style that their customers actually want to buy from,” he continues.

For most businesses, the challenge is identifying the right selling style and adapting it to their customers.

“There are a lot of good methodologies out there, and the trick to figuring out the right one for your business is really understanding what your sales cycles and process looks like today. The most popular one in Silicon Valley is The Challenger Sale, it’s focused on the provocative selling methodology. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a more transactional sales methodology,” Dan explains.

Once you identify the right sales methodology it’s then important to implement it effectively. This involves reps understanding their customer and addressing their needs. “When you understand the buyer or an influencer very early on in the sales cycle, you can talk to them in a way that drives the endpoint home as quickly as possible,” comments Dan.

Let’s Catch Up at Dreamforce!

Shankar Ganapathy on November 4, 2017

It’s hard to believe that another Dreamforce is already upon us. While the memories of rocking out to U2 are still fresh, we’re raring and ready to blaze a new trail this year. As veterans, we know Dreamforce is exhilarating but equally exhausting. Between booth dating, session racing, and, of course, cocktailing, all you want to do is put your feet up and have some time out.

We’re here to save you

We’ve lined up some fabulous havens where you can take a load off, and we’d love you to drop by. So, as you enjoy some delicious drinks and bites, let us show you what “great” looks like when it comes to building a world-class sales enablement program.
Most enablement technology drives efficiency but it takes a lot more than efficiency to win consistently today. We’re about making sure your sales team are as confident and capable as they can possibly be when it counts. We’ve got a range of options to suit whatever takes your fancy, and we guarantee that you’ll leave feeling physically and mentally refreshed. Here’s where you can find us:

Eat, Sit, Drink: The Future of Sales Lounge

These couches sure look inviting, don’t they? They’re waiting for you on the ground floor of the Marriott Marquis. It’s a fabulous spot and you can register to attend here. While it would be nice to know you’re coming, you’ll still be welcome if you come by without registering.

Sales Enablement Soiree

This is the hottest ticket in town. Specifically for sales enablement leaders, thought leaders will be sharing insights and best practices and great solutions will be featured.
This exciting event also offers the opportunity to network with your peers and meet us, of course. The Soiree will be held on 8 November at the Four Seasons. It’s advisable to register to attend here, but you can always take your chances and drop by.

Speed date with us

Our dance card is open so come and meet us at either Booth 240 or 1734. If you’re after a chat, a demo, and a complimentary pair of VR glasses, then we’re a sure thing!

Happy Hour

Join us for cocktails and let your hair down at one of San Francisco’s renowned Latin fusion restaurants. We’ll be there for happy hour on November 7th, along with other sales leaders, for a chat and cheeky salsa if you’re daring. Register here.
We look forward to seeing you at Dreamforce’17!

Conversation with Jonathan Hinz and Daniel Kuperman

Shrimithran R on October 31, 2017

This post is based on a webinar where Jonathan Hinz, Director of Product Marketing at Seismic and Daniel Kuperman, Director of Product Marketing at Mindtickle, discuss maximizing the impact of sales enablement with content and learning. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
Today’s buyers are more informed before they meet with sales reps. They expect reps to be prepared to help them make an educated decision. Unfortunately, modern sellers are stretched so thin by day-to-day demands that they’re often challenged to find the time to really understand their buyers. “This is the gap of knowledge and preparation for sales,” Daniel explained, “There are several aspects to this gap:

How prepared the salesperson is to have a conversation with the buyer;
What they can offer during that conversation in terms of solutions and insights; and
How much they know about your pain, your challenges, and your industry to educate you to move towards the ideal scenario.”

Things have changed for Marketing

Marketing needs to change to ensure it can feed the right leads to sales in this new world order. “At the marketing level, we’ve had this conversation one too many times. We’ve been using marketing automation platforms to broadcast our messages to find and advance leads until they’re good marketing-qualified leads to hand off to sales,” Jonathan said.
“Sales works these leads until they’re won or lost,” Jonathan continued. “Where are the key learnings? How do we win? What content was used? How was training effective? What element went into that salesperson being able to close that deal? How did marketing know what content worked? How did they enhance those leads to get to the point where there was a signature on a piece of paper? These metrics all need to be captured for marketing to optimize the flow and drive better-qualified leads.”

What is the solution?

Sales also need to be equipped to meet these changes.
According to Daniel, “There are three things you need to do to meet these challenges:

Prepare sellers to have the value-added conversations buyers expect from them. This is not just about sales training, but really making sure reps have the knowledge, skills, and behaviors they need to perform in the field;
Ensure sellers have the right information at the right stage of the sales cycle. In today’s environment, reps need very specific training and content at different stages in the sales cycle. This ensures they can adapt to the various situations and demands of their buyers; and
Create a culture of continuous learning so sellers are always prepared to engage with buyers. This is the best way for sales reps to become familiar with new features and product updates quickly without taking them out of their selling environment.”

There are some constraints that must be addressed for this to happen. According to Daniel, these include:

Creating a culture of continuous learning without impacting selling time;
Understanding that one solution won’t necessarily meet every organization’s needs;
Being able to demonstrate the value of your sales enablement initiatives; and
Reviewing existing systems to determine if they are inefficient or and need to be updated.

How you really fix these issues?

Sales Enablement plays an important role in addressing these issues.
“The essence of Sales Enablement is really about setting up the framework so Sales can be successful,” according to Jonathan. “Plus, you need to have the right training in place to provide context at the same time. This includes new product launches, new competitive messaging, new decks, new content – sales needs all these different things to quickly absorb this information so they can have better customer conversations.
When that’s done right, sales reps are easily able to access the right assets. They know how to use them, the results are awesome, and they can accelerate deals. They also have a better deal impact and their teams become more efficient.”

The organizational benefits multiply

It isn’t just the sales reps that benefit from these enablement initiatives. There are flow-on effects throughout the organization. “From a business perspective, what we see across companies that we work with, is a stage of effects,” explains Jonathan.
“First, there is increased efficiency across the business thanks to improved sales and marketing alignment. People can find content as it’s all in one place. Sales teams can pull assets and know how to use them because the right training is in place. This results in improved content ROI and increased seller productivity,” he continues.
“All this together creates a higher focus on commercial outcomes for the business. New and organic revenue growth is driven by these more productive and effective teams.”
“This improves morale amongst the sales team, particularly because sales reps realize their organization is taking them into consideration,” adds in Daniel. “This also results in significantly reduced attrition rates. If you want to grow your sales organization, improving morale, and how your sales reps are perceived internally is extremely important. It’s a great outcome that will positively impact your bottom line.”

The future state of sales enablement with Mindtickle and Seismic

“Mindtickle and Seismic integrate with your CRM system so sales reps have access to them every minute of every day,” Jonathan explains. “They give them the tools and the resources they need to have great customer conversations. By providing them access to the platforms they already use, sales reps do not need to go to offsite training that takes up their valuable sales time.
With this combined solution, you’re able to lock content until knowledge certification has been completed. This means sales reps have to take the training before they can access some content. It’s an awesome capability that can magnify your ability to train and educate your entire sales team.
The solution also has the capability to combine content and training on a landing page that sales can see on a daily basis. The reality is that only a small volume of content in the library is actually used. 80% to 90% of content is generally unused for a good reason -it’s not the stuff that closes deals. It’s the 10% to 20% that does. This is what sales see on their landing page.
If they’re looking for something on a more occasional basis, that’s what Search is for – the every so often use. The training content can be extracted from Mindtickle and put it into the Seismic platform. It’s an incredible capability that really enhances the content and gives it context, “ explains Jonathan.

Customers see ROI and results

Companies that use Seismic and Mindtickle achieve the following results:

Organizations need to become agiler to succeed

Sales Enablement is charged with leading the way organizations to address new business challenges so they can accelerate their sales now and into the future.
“Enablement leaders need to create a culture of continuous learning so their organizations can become agile and adapt well to changes happening in the marketplace,” Daniel advises. “This can be achieved by looking at the technology available today. Mindtickle and Seismic offer one possibility by working together.”
“Regardless of the technology platform that you choose, my recommendation is to make sure that it is aligned with the vision for Sales Enablement at your organization,” he continues. “Make sure that the platform, or combination of platforms, that you choose is actually going to help you move the needle now and as you grow. Don’t just look at the problems you need to solve today, but also think about whether the solution can grow with your organization. A good sales enablement platform should help you tackle all of your issues, provide strategic insights and facilitate the change management that is required from sales enablement today at organizations of any size.”

Best Practices for Dealing with Sales Enablement Software Vendors

Ryan Pimlott on October 26, 2017

Purchasing sales enablement software isn’t as simple as deciding what features you want and ticking them off a list. That’s because sales enablement as an industry is at a nascent stage which makes it difficult to know exactly what your business will need today, tomorrow, and into the future.
Sales leaders are also still defining what they need and want from sales enablement. The objectives, success factors and KPIs for sales enablement are still being defined and may continue to evolve. That’s where the right vendor can empower a business to shape its sales enablement strategy in a way that meets its long-term objectives.
Having worked in both Customer Success and Sales, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for a customer to make the right decision, and how that decision can impact their business either positively or negatively. Many businesses tend to start with training and select their software based on the features they need. But enabling a sales force is rarely just about training – it may require a wide range of activities including content, structured coaching, process improvement, and internal communication. It often also requires reporting to sales management that helps identify gaps and opportunities.
The challenge for any sales enablement function is identifying and solving the bigger issues that are impacting their reps. If your sales enablement function is relatively new, you may still be identifying issues and prioritizing them, or trying to anticipate what your business needs in the medium to long-term future. This can be even more confusing if you’re having to deal with salespeople who are focused on selling you software rather than helping you solve your problem.

Start with your end-goal

Tools are an enabler but they’re not the end-game. Before purchasing software it’s important to identify what you want to achieve. Perhaps identify your top sales enablement initiatives for the next one to three years and align these with the objectives of your sales leadership team. These initiatives will depend on your specific business needs. Some examples include revamping your sales onboarding, instigating a manager-led coaching program or ensuring your reps can articulate your value proposition consistently.
Each of your initiatives should be based on the outcomes that you and your business want to achieve. Questions that may be helpful to ask here include:

What do your leaders want to achieve?
What do our frontline reps want and need?
What do our sales managers want and need?

If you’re speaking with a software vendor at this stage they should be able to help you define each of these questions and unravel your issues and help you find a way to solve them. At this point, it’s best not to focus on product features, but rather look at how you can elevate your sales game.

Focus on a partnership

Of course, the features that your sales readiness platform has are important, but a solution needs to have the flexibility and capability to meet your needs now and in the future. This is where it’s important for you to look at the product roadmap and see what’s coming in the future and understand how that may help your organization.
Ask the vendor how they develop their product roadmap and determine its direction. Some take onboard feedback from customers, while others may develop their strategy based on the whims and fancies of a handful of product geeks.

Value transparency and honesty

Software vendors shouldn’t just be there to sell you their platform. What’s most important is that you find the right solution for your business. There’s no point trying to force fit a solution, it will only end up costing you more in the long-run. That’s why I’ve actually referred some prospects to other solutions when I know that we don’t have the solution to their problems. It doesn’t help our customers to end up with a platform that doesn’t address their needs.
That’s where transparency and honesty are important. Every sales enablement platform has its strengths and weaknesses. The key is for you to find the platform that best meets your needs now and in the future. Sales reps play a valuable role in the process of deciding which sales enablement platform is right for your business. A good vendor salesperson will help you solve the problems you’re facing so that your sales can be elevated.

Building a Business Case for Sales Readiness – Step 2: Define the Problem and Calculate its Value

Shankar Ganapathy on October 24, 2017

In my last post, we discussed how to go about identifying the issue or symptom that your business is experiencing. The next step in building a business case for sales readiness is to define the exact problems your business is experiencing.
The only way to start honing in on the problem is to identify the metrics that you need to measure for each issue. This will also help you measure your baseline, and in the future, demonstrate the benefit of your readiness initiatives.
Some examples of translating issues into specific metrics include:
With your broad metrics identified you can then design your end goals. For example, if your metric is to improve onboarding ramp-up time, your goal may be to improve how long it takes for your new hires to reach quota. To determine the metrics your business needs to focus on partnering with Sales Ops. This will ensure that you’re both in agreement on what your goals are and work towards reaching the same desired state.
It’s also important to ensure your programs are tightly aligned with the objectives of your sales leadership. While it’s easy to focus in on training, this may only solve part of your problem. Sales reps need to be enabled with a range of things – knowledge, skills, coaching, reinforcement, content, and process – not just training. That’s why it’s important to have access to as many analytics and data points as you can. Research has found that organizations that use sales analytics increase team quota attainment 4x faster than non-users. Sales Ops is often the starting point here, as they use sales analytics to improve forecasting, find ways to ensure that revenue becomes more predictable and identify opportunities to improve sales effectiveness.

Identify all the stakeholders

Sales Ops, as the expert in data and impact correlation, is an important stakeholder for Sales Enablement but they’re not the only one. 36% of businesses don’t make a concerted effort to foster collaboration between sales enablement and other parts of the company.
For your sales readiness initiatives to succeed, Sales Enablement must be the hub that connects the sales team to the different departments that can influence their performance or will be affected by it. For example, if an initiative will save money then involve Finance – they may even be your champion or decision maker further down the track.
Other key players include Marketing who understands messaging and Product who is crucial for any product training and updates on features. And of course, the leadership team who are enablers when it comes to achieving alignment across the company. If you can demonstrate the success of your initiatives you will be well-positioned to ask the leadership team to help you – whether it’s involving other teams or driving adoption amongst your sales organization.
While reps are usually the focus of enablement initiatives, frontline managers also need to be enabled. Win rates can increase by 9% and revenue attainment can increase by up to 18% if you invest in your frontline sales managers. For example, providing them with structured coaching frameworks can increase quota attainment by 10%.

Calculate the real value of your initiatives

Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and key problems, prioritize them so you can identify which to focus on first. Best-in-class businesses select just a few initiatives to implement successfully before moving onto the next.
The best way to prioritize your initiatives is by the value each will add to the business.
This isn’t easy to do, especially when you don’t have access to perfect data, but it’s an essential part of the process. Benchmark your business against external research, ask stakeholders what benefit they expect to see and speak to Sales Ops to deter
mine the best way to measure your initiative
For example, to measure the effectiveness of your reps demos start with their current conversion rate – perhaps demo to opportunity is 20%. If certifying your reps increases the conversion rate to 25%, then extrapolate from there. If each demo potentially earns $20,000 and each rep does 50 demos a month then: $20,000 * 50 * 5% = $50,000
That’s $50,000 more revenue each rep can earn a month or $600,000 a year. That’s $6 million a year if you have 100 reps. Now, that’s a compelling argument. This table shows some metrics alongside external data points that may help you calculate the value of your initiatives.
While not all of these metrics will be appropriate for your sales readiness initiatives, they provide you with a starting point to define your problem and back it up.

Building a Business Case for Sales Readiness: Step 1 – Identify Your Pain Points

Shankar Ganapathy on October 17, 2017

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

― Albert Einstein

According to the Bridge Group, sales productivity is the biggest challenge for 65% of B2B organizations. But stating the obvious isn’t a good enough reason to convince your sales leaders and the C-Suite to invest in sales readiness.

But if you told them that the number of reps attaining quota is dropping – from 63% to 53% over the last 5 years – and they could turn this around with specific readiness initiatives, like structured coaching then they may take notice.

Over the next three posts, we’ll outline how to put together a business case for sales readiness that will have your leaders asking where to sign up.

The first step in putting together your business case is identifying what problems sales readiness will solve for your business. To determine what needs to be solved you first need to determine what your pain points are.

Pain points aren’t always obvious so cast your net wide

Pain points are not always easy to identify and they may be different depending on who you ask. That’s why it’s important to gather as much information and as many data points as you can from relevant people internally.

To gain champions internally your business case needs to be aligned with the priorities of the business. So work with Sales Ops to understand where most of your leads drop-off. Enabling your team with competitive insights could be the solution to a $20 million problem, or certifying your reps to do demos could improve your top line by $10 million. By collaborating with Sales Ops you can determine which couple of initiatives present the biggest opportunities and park any that are secondary. By partnering with Ops when presenting to leadership, you also strengthen your positioning.

Sales leaders are not the only people that should be interviewed though. Speak to your end-users and then analyze their responses to see if there are any overarching trends. While you won’t be able to resolve each of their individual tactical problems, if all your reps seem to be struggling at the same point in the sales cycle or with their demos, for example, then you can see where your biggest problems lie.

But it’s not just important to talk to the top 20%, the middle 60% and bottom 20% should also be included, cast your net wide to determine the true issues. For example, if all your reps are complaining about their win rates, then you have a place to start, but if it’s only one group of reps then it may be a reflection of your onboarding program, or something else.

To really identify what’s actually causing some of your problems will require some deeper digging. For example, CSO insights found that aligning the sales process with the customer journey can have a marked impact on win rates, as much as 15%. But before jumping to the conclusion that this will solve your problems, speak to your reps and determine if misalignment with the customer journey is actually part of the problem. Even if it is, there are several ways that this root cause can be addressed – from content for each stage of the buyer’s journey to training, coaching and tools. To determine which combination of these is right for your business and will give you the biggest bang for the buck you need to dig deeper. In this process, you need to connect the dots between what the problem looks like and what is really causing it.

It’s good to be creative when looking for information about pain points and perhaps look beyond your own people. For example, some companies conduct buy cycle reviews to identify issues in their win rates. This involved new sales reps interviewing clients of deals that were recently won, lost, or ended as no decisions to find out what went right and what went wrong. The information is invaluable and may highlight some customer issues that your reps or sales leaders aren’t aware of.

It’s also important to work with sales ops to identify the top areas for improvement. They have access to the data and are most familiar with analyzing the information and your CRM. A common problem for many companies is the amount of non-selling times their reps are doing. Sales Ops may already have data available on this, so partner with them to find a solution.

For example, research has shown that the average rep needs to update over 300 CRM records per week.

If each record takes just two minutes to update that’s 600 minutes, or 10 hours, a week. If you and Ops can find a way to halve that task, that would give each of your reps an extra hour a day to sell.

So speak to them to see if they’ve identified any issues. Perhaps they’ve noticed gaps in your CRM data or have identified some parts of the pipeline that are lagging behind benchmark indicators.

Armed with all this information you’ll be ready to start really getting into the root cause of your issues. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to define your problems and calculate the value you can add by fixing them

[Podcast] Glen Lally on the Future of Sales Enablement for Large Organizations: Episode 23

Shrimithran R on October 15, 2017

In this 14 minute

podcast Glen will outline:

How to achieve cross-functional alignment for your sales enablement initiatives
What to look for when evaluating sales enablement technology
How bot technology will transform sales enablement in the future

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

Soundcloud

Stitcher

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or find it

here

Sales enablement means different things to different people. Some think of it as training and knowledge while others view it as being about developing sales capabilities or improving the overall effectiveness of their deals.

“My northern star when it comes to sales enablement is how do I enable people to transform an organization, to transform faster and better than they did before,”

states Glen Lally, Global Vice President of Enablement and Innovation for SAP.

“SAP is a large organization with 90,000 people, so we have multiple lines of business and each line of business has their own enablement function. It’s important to work cross-functionally with sales operations, with marketing, with the sales organization and put the field at the center of what you do. Understand what’s working and what’s not for them, and be that cross-functional partner that can bring all of these different pieces together to be successful,”

explains Glen.

“Netflix summed it up well by saying you need to be tightly aligned and loosely coupled.”

This, coupled with a growing sales stack, are some of the biggest challenges facing sales enablement leaders in large organizations when trying to enable their sales teams effectively.

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