Revenue Enablement: What is it and What Do You Need to Know?

Helen Waite on November 28, 2023

You’ve probably been on a call, email, or meeting lately where “revenue enablement” has come up in conversation and is used more frequently. 

But it’s not just a buzzword or the jargon of the moment. 

Revenue enablement is a crucial concept for revenue-generating teams due to evolving customer expectations and the need for seamless collaboration across different functions.

The reality is that customers want personalized and engaging experiences throughout their buying journey. Revenue enablement recognizes that all customer-facing teams, including sales, marketing, customer success, and support, must work together to deliver exceptional experiences.

By empowering these teams with the same tools and data, revenue enablement ensures cohesive alignment and enables organizations to optimize the entire customer journey. It drives revenue growth, enhances customer satisfaction, promotes collaboration, and boosts operational efficiency, making it a vital concept for revenue-generating teams.

Here’s everything you need to know about revenue enablement. 

What is revenue enablement?

Revenue enablement is the next iteration or V2 of sales enablement. It’s the idea that all revenue-generating teams at an organization — not just sales — are empowered with the same tools and data. That way, the whole company works seamlessly to provide engaging buying and selling experiences. 

    1. Revenue enablement vs. sales enablement: How are they different?

    1. Why should you implement revenue enablement?

    1. How can revenue enablement help your sales team?

    1. What are some examples of revenue enablement tools?

    1. Ready to take the next step?

Revenue enablement vs. sales enablement: How are they different?

Sales enablement and revenue enablement are related concepts, but there are some key differences between them.

Sales enablement refers to the strategies, processes, and technologies that support and empower sales teams to sell more effectively. This includes activities such as providing sales training and coaching, developing sales collateral and tools, and ensuring that sales teams have access to the right information and resources to close deals.

Revenue enablement, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities that go beyond just supporting sales teams. It involves aligning all customer-facing functions of an organization, such as:

    • Marketing

    • Sales

    • Customer Success

    • Support

This includes optimizing the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. Revenue enablement aims to drive revenue growth by maximizing the lifetime value of customers.

In summary, sales enablement is focused on supporting and empowering the sales function specifically, while revenue enablement is focused on aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. (Find out where your revenue enablement IQ stacks up here.) 

Why should you implement revenue enablement?

Today’s business-to-business (B2B) customer expects more from their buying experience. They want relationships, experiences, and understanding, not sales-driven transactions. In fact, Salesforce research indicates that 66% of customers expect companies to respond to their unique needs.

When sales enablement and revenue operations (RevOps) work hand in hand, organizations are poised to:

Increase revenue

By aligning all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, you can help optimize the entire customer journey, resulting in increased revenue generation.

Improve customer experience

You can ensure that customers receive a consistent, high-quality experience throughout their entire journey with an organization, from initial engagement to post-sales support.

Better alignment and collaboration

Promote better alignment and collaboration between different customer-facing functions, such as marketing, sales, customer success, and support, leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness.

Increase customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, you can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value.

Better data and insights

 Get a have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs.

Overall, revenue enablement can help organizations drive revenue growth, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and increase operational efficiency and effectiveness.

How can revenue enablement help your sales team?

Taking this approach can help your sales team by doing the following:

Better aligning with other customer-facing functions

Revenue enablement aligns all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal, ensuring that sales teams work collaboratively with marketing, customer success, and support teams. This alignment ensures a consistent customer experience throughout the entire customer journey, which can help sales teams close deals more effectively.

Improving lead generation and nurturing

 Revenue enablement helps organizations develop a more comprehensive understanding of their target market and buyer personas. This knowledge can help sales teams generate higher-quality leads and nurture them more effectively, resulting in a higher conversion rate.

Enhancing sales enablement

Revenue enablement helps organizations develop more comprehensive sales enablement strategies that go beyond just providing training and collateral to sales teams. It ensures that sales teams have access to the right information and resources at every stage of the customer journey, enabling them to sell more effectively.

Better data and insights

Revenue enablement requires organizations to have a holistic view of the customer journey, which can lead to better data and insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. Sales teams can use this information to tailor their sales approach and messaging, resulting in higher win rates.

Increasing customer lifetime value

By optimizing the customer journey and ensuring a positive customer experience, revenue enablement can help increase customer loyalty and retention, leading to higher customer lifetime value. Sales teams can benefit from this by having a larger pool of loyal customers to upsell and cross-sell to.

Overall, revenue enablement can help sales teams sell more effectively by providing them with the right information, resources, and support to close deals, and by ensuring that they work collaboratively with other customer-facing functions to provide a consistent, high-quality customer experience.

What are some examples of revenue enablement tools?

Revenue enablement tools are software solutions that help businesses increase revenue by improving their sales and marketing processes. Some examples include:

    • CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software: A CRM system helps businesses manage their customer interactions and sales pipelines, enabling them to track leads, forecast revenue, and automate sales workflows.

    • Marketing automation software: Marketing automation software helps businesses automate their marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media management, and lead scoring.

    • Sales enablement software: Sales enablement solutions provides sales teams with the tools and content they need to engage with prospects and close deals, such as sales collateral, training materials, and analytics.

    • Content management software: Sales content management software allows businesses to organize and manage their marketing and sales content, such as product information, marketing collateral, sales decks, competitive battlecards, pricing sheets, and case studies.

    • Sales forecasting software: Sales forecasting software uses data analysis and machine learning algorithms to predict future sales trends, enabling businesses to make more informed decisions about their sales and marketing strategies.

    • Customer analytics software: Customer analytics software provides businesses with insights into their customer behavior and preferences, enabling them to tailor their sales and marketing strategies to better meet customer needs.

Best practices for getting started with revenue enablement

As you’re building up your revenue enablement strategy, here are key things to keep in mind:

  • Establish key business objectives for revenue enablement, such as overall revenue growth and individual seller productivity metrics
  • Decide whether to consolidate technology and data under one revenue productivity platform versus integrating point solution products, or some version of each
  • Determine a cadence for discussing and analyzing revenue enablement initiatives – prioritize and stick to it
  • Hold front-line management, marketing, sales enablement, and ops accountable to overall business goals
  • Create a cadence around org readiness to be discussed alongside forecasting and pipeline reviews

Ready to take the next step?

To pivot toward a revenue enablement-focused approach, organizations should take the following steps:

    1. Align around a common revenue goal: The first step is to align all customer-facing functions around a common revenue goal. This involves setting clear revenue targets and ensuring that all customer-facing teams understand how their activities contribute to those targets.

    1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey: To optimize the customer journey, organizations need to develop a comprehensive understanding of their customers and their buying journey. This includes understanding their pain points, preferences, and needs at each stage of the journey.

    1. Implement a technology stack: Revenue enablement requires a technology stack that supports the entire customer journey, from lead generation and nurturing to post-sales support and renewal. This includes marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer success platforms.

    1. Develop a sales enablement strategy: Revenue enablement goes beyond just sales enablement. However, it’s still essential to develop a sales enablement strategy that ensures that sales teams have the right information, resources, and support to sell effectively.

    1. Measure and optimize performance: To ensure efforts are effective, organizations need to measure performance regularly and optimize their approach based on data and insights. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction.

Implementing revenue enablement is an ongoing process that requires continuous refinement and improvement. By taking these steps, organizations can create a customer-centric revenue growth engine that optimizes the entire customer journey and drives business success.

Ready to learn more about how Mindtickle can make this a reality at your organization?

Revenue Enablement in Mindtickle

Connect with our team so we can learn more about your revenue enablement challenges and discuss how Mindtickle can help. 

Request a Demo

This post was originally published in April 2023 and was updated in November 2023. 

The 8 Essential Features Your Sales Enablement Tool Should Have 

Helen Waite on November 15, 2023

In 2022, only 26% of sales reps reached 90% or more of their quota. That’s not a very successful win rate, considering new sales revenue streams are the bread and butter of an organization. So the question is, how can we empower our sales teams to successfully reach their sales quotas?

Percentage of reps who hit quota in 2022
0%

The simple answer: introduce sales enablement tools.

With sales enablement tools, you can train your sales reps to effectively target new customers, tackle difficult negotiations, close more deals, and increase your company’s bottom line.

Once you’ve read this article, you’ll have learned about:

  • The advantages that the right sales enablement tool can give your company
  • The essential features to look out for in sales enablement tools — and why
  • The top five sales enablement tools
  • Our helpful recommendations

Why are sales enablement tools important for your business?

The most powerful feature of sales enablement tools is their ability to centralize knowledge between the sales and marketing departments.

This has a butterfly effect that increases revenue, boosts quota attainment, and solidifies brand identity across the company.

When sales and marketing departments have centralized access to content, insights, and approaches, it impacts sales revenue due to streamlined processes, provides successful strategies, and shapes sellers with winning behaviors and skills.

With sales enablement tools, your business can:

  • Align sales and marketing teams with clear goals, tasks, and knowledge sharing. This is important, as 50% of teams feel they need additional resources to properly execute enablement tasks.
  • Learn winning attitudes and skills from top-performing sellers, and transform those behaviors into skills for other sellers to learn and replicate.
  • Optimize material for better win rates with content insights.
  • Accelerate the onboarding ramp process for new hires. In turn, this sets up new hires for success, with almost 79% of companies that have effective training meeting 100% of their sales quotas.
  • Keep sellers up to date on new strategies, product launches, and market approaches. In fact, 90% of sellers who hit more than 75% of their quota participate in sales training monthly.
  • Keep track of KPIs and goals. Over 71% of companies that have clear sales KPIs reach 100% of their sales quotas.

The benefits that sales enablement tools bring to your team

Modern sales enablement solutions make all of your sales processes simpler, more measurable, and more actionable.

1. Centralize access to content

Sales enablement tools help reps know what content is available to them and how to use it in their sales interactions.

With half of all customer engagement coming from only 10% of a company’s content, reps need to quickly find relevant sales material to nurture leads, follow up with prospects, and convince important decision-makers of the value of your products.

But Forrester found that “not having the right content” is one of the biggest challenges for sales teams. Sellers reported that finding content and information is a significant productivity obstacle, affecting their daily work.

With a sales enablement tool, your enablement team can tag content to categorize it based on buyer persona, stage in the sales funnel, customer outcome, or the stakeholder it’s most relevant to. This includes:

  • Case studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Sales playbooks
  • Competitor comparisons
  • Microlearning modules
  • Training call recordings

Then your reps can search for key content terms and easily find relevant sales enablement content. This system equips sellers with the knowledge and content they need to progress conversations with prospects, helping them improve their win rates and close more deals.

2. Increase collaboration between sales and marketing

LinkedIn found that 85% of survey respondents believe that better marketing and sales alignment would provide major business growth. Unfortunately, sales and marketing teams often fall into silos with little communication between them.

Sales enablement improves alignment between these teams and gives better visibility into the effectiveness of their processes. Marketers can see how sellers use marketing content in their sales conversations and get measurable data on how different content types impact the sales process.

Additionally, sellers can see what content the marketing team has produced and get updates about new case studies or product sheets that they can use in their nurturing flows.

Both teams can see which messaging, content, and campaigns are working, so they can collaborate to improve overall sales performance.

3. Improve visibility into team performance

Sales enablement gives sellers access to content, resources, and training materials to help them build the skills and knowledge they need.

Sales leaders, can see their reps’ performance data alongside insights into their content usage and training completion.

This helps managers understand how the content, resources, and training provided affect the sales team’s performance.

With access to data on how training content and exercises affect team performance, managers gain insights into providing a data-informed and personalized approach to sales coaching programs for each team member.

8 features you need in your sales enablement tool

Organizations in the market for a sales enablement tool should look for the following key features:

  1. Insights and analytics
  2. Onboarding management
  3. Gamification
  4. Automated workflows
  5. Program management
  6. Content management
  7. Integrations
  8. Governance

1. Insights and analytics to optimize sales efforts

Most organizations spend a great deal of time, money, and resources training their sales teams. But without a way to measure those efforts, it’s hard to understand what’s working and what parts of the training process need improvement.

With sales enablement tools, you get detailed analytics and insights into what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve.

With data and insights from your sales enablement platform, you can make data-driven decisions to improve sales initiatives or develop a specific skill in individual reps.

For example, managers can benchmark a sales rep’s performance in a key area, like closing. After training sessions and 1:1 coaching designed to improve closing skills, the manager tracks the close rate and other closing-related KPIs to see how the rep’s performance changes. Based on those measurable results, the manager can adjust the training program accordingly.

Also, sales enablement tools show how much time and money it costs to train each sales representative. If costs are higher than managers would like them to be, they can take steps to reduce inefficiencies and improve productivity.

2. Onboarding management and accelerating ramp time

Sales enablement tools help onboard new sales hires with the knowledge and training they need to succeed in their roles.

During the sales onboarding process, it can be a challenge to keep reps engaged, track their readiness, and provide them with easy access to forms, manuals, and other onboarding materials.

 

However, using sales enablement tools for onboarding helps teams to:

  • Improve learning and testing through automated training paths that get reps ramped up faster.
  • Ensure better communication by keeping reps constantly updated and thoroughly engaged, leading to higher productivity and fewer turnover costs.
  • Enhance coaching by leveraging the tools and content that empower reps and managers to identify and address any areas — like knowledge and skills — requiring improvement.

3. Gamification to motivate sales reps

It’s not easy to keep sales representatives engaged during sales onboarding and continuous training.

That’s where gamification comes in.

Through gamification, organizations can turn routine tasks into enjoyable activities that motivate and incentivize sales reps to develop their skills.

 

Through gamification, managers encourage friendly competition, break learning into bite-sized segments, offer relevant games and quizzes, and introduce real-life scenarios.

Gamification can also add a social element to onboarding and training and promote open communication among sales representatives.

Gamification can be used by new reps during the onboarding process and by seasoned reps who need to build upon their skills and experience consistently. It can assist with continuous training and the fine-tuning of skills, all in a fun environment.

4. Automated workflows to streamline sales strategies

Collaboration and accountability are common struggles for organizations. Not only do automated workflows make it a breeze to collaborate — but they also hold all the right people accountable.

For example, you can use automated workflows to create a seamless feedback loop between managers and sales reps. Here, audio or video recordings submitted by sales reps are sent automatically to sales managers who can offer qualitative and quantitative feedback. This removes manual reminders and a continual back and forth, streamlining the learning process.

Automated workflows help managers and sales representatives tackle tasks instantly and through a centralized process that tracks progress.

5. Program management to reach strategic goals

Program management helps sales teams reach their targets through strategic initiatives, such as voice of the customer programs or sales onboarding programs.

These initiatives include multiple connected projects, with a project manager overseeing the team members who are focused on different projects.

These projects are bigger than the individual sellers working on their deals. Instead, they involve different teams, such as leadership for strategic direction, marketing for content creation, and IT for technical implementation.

If your sales enablement tool doesn’t have a program management feature, it’s difficult to manage and execute these strategic initiatives, and this can negatively impact your sales enablement efforts.

But with a program management feature, program managers can ease some of the stress they face by creating and structuring programs, adding and managing collaborators, creating and publishing relevant content, and automating communication.

6. Content management and centralized resources

Throughout the sales cycle, sales representatives depend on a variety of content to increase buyer engagement and understanding.

The challenge with all of this content is that it must be well-organized so that it can be easily located and fully utilized.

A content management feature makes it simple for sellers to access sales material quickly. By having a simple and accessible content management system, you empower sellers to utilize the correct content at the right time within the sales journey.

Additionally, enabling multiple people to collaborate in the content authoring process, whether in PowerPoint, PDF, or video, empowers teams to bring shared experiences and best practices into play.

An effective sales enablement tool helps your team track content usage and gives insights into the content with the highest engagement rate and how to properly use and introduce content resources.

7. Integrations to facilitate organizational planning

As sales enablement practices evolve within organizations, new tools are purchased. This can overload users with numerous platforms and multiple logins.

The solution for consolidating disparate tools is to integrate them with a sales enablement tool.

A sales enablement tool that offers integrations helps organizations keep their communication, calendaring, CRM, reporting and business intelligence, content management, and other tools all in one place.

Integrations allow sales representatives to spend less time digging through multiple platforms and more time doing what matters: selling and improving their skills.

8. Governance to organize tasks and data insights

Sales enablement programs have a lot of moving parts. Therefore, you’ll need to operate under complete confidence that your organization is using its resources efficiently and securely at scale.

Platform governance allows you to set up different access levels across multiple user roles and locations.

This helps you simplify coaching workflows and roll-up reports based on organizational hierarchy and define custom roles for those who need special access.

The 5 best sales enablement tools to improve revenue

Tech marketplace and review site G2 lists over 160 tools in the sales enablement category. So, if you’re looking for sales enablement software, you have plenty of options.

We’ve picked out five top-rated tools to help you find the best one for your sales team.

A powerful and comprehensive sales enablement tool

Mindtickle’s platform increases sales rep revenue by 64%. This is because Mindtickle’s strong combination of sales enablement features with advanced insights continuously works to improve seller and content performance.

Mindtickle’s sales readiness platform provides tools and processes to help sellers increase their knowledge, enhance performance, and go into every customer conversation ready to succeed.

One of the biggest challenges of traditional sales enablement is that reps forget their sales training quickly, so they aren’t able to make the best use of the content and resources available to them.

Mindtickle helps reps build and maintain their knowledge and skills through gamification, reinforced training, continuous skill assessments, and coaching exercises.

Our platform combines sales enablement, content management, conversation intelligence, sales training, and manager-led coaching. It provides continuous training, content, and enablement to ensure that sellers remember — and use — the knowledge and skills they’ve learned in their training and coaching sessions to move sales conversations forward.

Sales enablement is an essential part of Mindtickle’s comprehensive sales readiness framework. We make sales enablement best practices an ongoing part of the sales process rather than a siloed additional tool or exercise that sellers only think about a few times a year.

Notable Mindtickle features:

  • Centralizes content management and provides content insights to personalize materials to mimic winning strategic approaches
  • Records phone calls and interactions and, using AI, provides feedback on tone, sales opportunities, and future insights
  • Identifies winning behaviors from sales reps across the company to propose skill development and training
  • Analyzes real-world data to suggest relevant training and role-plays to improve the sales approach
  • Centralizes the sales stack with CRM integrations and APIs
  • Creates an Ideal Rep Persona to track KPIs and training progress
    Includes a mobile app for sellers to always be prepared — even on the go

  • Mindtickle G2 rating: 4.7

To break down marketing and sales silos

HubSpot is best known for its CRM and inbound marketing platform, but it also offers a Sales Hub to help companies already using its marketing tools break down the silos between their sales and marketing departments by getting everyone on the same platform.

HubSpot Sales Hub is primarily an easy-to-use CRM, giving sellers and their managers greater visibility into their deal pipeline and task list.

However, its free plan includes content management to give sellers easy access to sales content. Enterprise customers can use sales management playbooks such as battle cards and call scripts to better enable sellers to close deals.

While the most robust sales enablement features aren’t available to all customers, HubSpot integrates with more than 148 other sales enablement tools, so it may work well in combination with other instruments in your tech stack. Additionally, HubSpot has a vast library of training content and certifications to help sellers master best practices and essential skills.

Notable HubSpot Sales Hub features:

  • Email templates that can be personalized to prepare your team for success
  • Email tracking to keep up to date on lead health and opportunities
  • Document management and content tracking that can be directly sent through email inboxes
  • Automated sales workflows to keep sellers on top of tasks
  • Phone calls logged in your CRM
    Conversation intelligence to find opportunities for improvement in phone calls

  • HubSpot Sales Hub G2 rating: 4.4

For personalized and engaging content materials

Seismic is one of the leading dedicated sales enablement platforms. Its standalone platform provides a centralized hub where sellers can access the content and resources they need to engage with their prospects.

It recommends content and training at the time when they’re most relevant to your sellers. For example, when a prospect moves from a sales-qualified lead to an opportunity, it shows content and resources relevant to that stage of the buyer journey.

As a dedicated sales enablement platform, it’s a better choice for sales enablement teams than a tool that’s a CRM with enablement functionality added on. It has a great reputation and established customer base in the finance industry — particularly for wealth management, asset management, and banking organizations — which makes it a trustworthy option for companies operating in those spaces.

Notable Seismic features:

  • Offers resource personalization with advanced content management
  • Provides learning and onboarding courses to train new hires
    Integrates with almost all platforms
  • Connects and logs prospects through social media, email, and phone

 

  • Seismic G2 rating: 4.7

For sales enablement with strong CRM features

Salesforce is one of the best-known sales tools available. There are split opinions in the sales world: some companies love it, and others find it has a steep learning curve and is difficult to implement for their business.

Like HubSpot, Salesforce is a CRM first, with additional features and functionality built on top. The Salesforce sales enablement tool is a paid add-on for its Sales Cloud product at the cost of an extra $25 per user per month on top of the original subscription.

If your company already uses Salesforce for its CRM, then its sales enablement add-on may be the simplest option for your team. However, it probably isn’t worth switching to Salesforce just for its sales enablement tool.

Notable Salesforce features:

  • Forecasts pipelines with the help of KPI management and logged interactions
  • Manages accounts through logged communication history and internal notes
  • Uses process workflows to automate business processes and save time
  • Mobile app for ease of use outside the office

  • Salesforce G2 rating: 4.3

To understand prospect health and upsell approaches

Showpad is a revenue enablement platform that helps sellers prepare for each sales conversation and gives them the resources to ensure each call or sales interaction makes a positive impact on the customer.

It combines training and coaching functionality with content management, ensuring sellers have access to the content they need. Its platform is split into two parts: Content and Coach.

Each is an essential part of sales enablement, but the two parts of the platform are priced separately. This means companies need to pay twice to benefit from the full sales enablement functionality they can get from other tools.

Notable Showpad features:

  • Tracks content ROI and enforces brand compliance in content creation
  • Lets users identify upsell and cross-selling opportunities as well as in-deal coaching
  • Share information through brand microsite for prospects to share content with their internal stakeholders
  • Gauges and tracks prospect interest to understand next steps

  • Showpad Coach G2 rating: 4.4

The tool you choose needs to support your team’s growth for ongoing success

The best sales enablement tool will be the one that your team will find the easiest to adopt in their everyday tasks and responsibilities.

It’s important to keep in mind your company’s growth as you choose your sales enablement tool. You want to be sure that it’ll continuously grow and adapt to your business needs, market changes, and new product releases.

This support comes with insights and data that continuously update with each interaction and sales training that prepares your sales team for success through engaging and motivating material and courses.

Mindtickle can help support your team with its comprehensive sales enablement platform that provides direction and new skills to your sales team.

Learn more about Mindtickle’s sales enablement tool, or play around with our demo and take a peek into how we continuously help companies reach their revenue and growth goals.

Find the sales enablement tool that works for you

Talk to our team about your challenges and we'll show you how Mindtickle can scale and grow your sales enablement efforts so your team is hitting quota every quarter. 

Get a Demo

Sales enablement tool FAQs

What is sales enablement software?

Sales enablement software provides a centralized place for the training, resources, and data needed to help salespeople sell more effectively.

Sales enablement software:

  • Helps sales reps easily access training materials, product documentation, and other content (no matter where it is stored)
  • Records key sales metrics, so managers can identify opportunities to improve certain skills through coaching
  • Tracks reps’ progress against development goals
  • Improves visibility and alignment between sales and marketing teams
  • Enables micro-learning and virtual training to teach and reinforce key skills

At its core, a sales enablement tool does much more than just support a more efficient and effective sales team. With the proper tool, all types of organizations can boost their sales processes to enhance every step of the sales journey. And, what’s more, the right tool supports sales teams by providing them with the content and information they need to successfully engage with customers the first time and every time.

What are the best sales enablement tools?

The best sales enablement tools that have the most impact on your company are:

  • Mindtickle
  • HubSpot Sales Hub
  • Seismic
  • Salesforce
  • Showpad

For a full list of all the sales enablement tools and features, read our guide.

What are the essential features of a sales enablement tool?

The features that your sales enablement tool should have are:

  • Integrations
  • Content management
  • Program management
  • Automated workflows
  • Gamification
  • Governance
  • Onboarding management
  • Insights and analytics

How much should I spend on sales enablement tools?

Every company’s budget is different, as are their definitions of success. To understand how much you should be spending on sales enablement tools, you need to understand how the ROI of sales enablement can be measured. This will give you a better understanding of the benefits a sales enablement tool will have on your company.

Now with all of this knowledge, you’ll be empowered to make an educated choice on the best sales enablement tool for your team.

Sales Enablement in Action

Connect with our team to learn more about how Mindtickle helps you prove the ROI of your sales enablement efforts. 

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(This was originally published in May 2022, updated in December 2022, and re-published in November 2023.) 

How to Create a Sales Certification Program That Actually Build Sales Competencies

Helen Waite on November 2, 2023

You wouldn’t put a pilot in a cockpit without ensuring they’d passed the simulator first, right?

It’s the same idea behind sales certifications. It’s your way to measure whether a new hire is ready for actual sales — how much knowledge they retained, where the gaps are, and what they’ll be able to utilize when face-to-face with a customer. Sales certification or sales training programs include knowledge-based assessments and simulations to answer all those questions and more. All you have to do is determine which key skills a sales rep must demonstrate to pass.

Here’s what to know about sales rep certification, how it works, and what sales training programs should look like.

Defining sales certification

Sales certification is proof that a rep has completed assessments, exercises, or tests to demonstrate specific knowledge and skills. Certification can begin as early as onboarding, where reps learn what and how to sell and are ready for coaching; however, sales training certification programs can occur at all levels and take different forms depending on your goals.

Of course, there’s more to sales certification than just passing or failing. Sales reps should be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and how these meet customers’ business needs. Essentially, it’s important to set a standard of achievement.

What is a sales certification program?

Sales certification or sales training programs are the systems through which you deliver educational material and experiences. They can include courses, learning modules, role-plays, assessments, and more. Our research found that most sales certifications are completed in January and March.

January and March

Months when most certifications programs are completed

Good sales representative certification programs should provide visibility into every step of the learning process, allowing trainers to track progress, identify gaps in the material, and connect educational outcomes to future sales performance.

Sales training certification programs can be as basic or specific as necessary. You can choose the best training topics based on existing knowledge gaps, common questions during the onboarding process, and any relevant goals.

How to create a sales certification program for your sales reps

When you know what you want to assess, you need to design a sales certification program (or choose a premade option) that achieves your objectives.

Firstly, you need to set up an effective review process. No matter what assessment or sales certification training program you choose, a real person should review most exercises. That’s how you can determine whether the rep has “passed” and achieved their certification. This is also a great opportunity to learn more about your reps’ selling styles, habits and coaching needs — not to mention the effectiveness of your learning material.

Along the way, keep in mind that you’ll need to connect your learning objectives with business and revenue outcomes. That often means collaborating with leadership on multiple levels and going beyond the sales department to get the big picture. On top of that, you’ll need to balance the pacing of your sales training program; self-paced is often best, but you still need to be careful to avoid “information overload” — especially during onboarding.

As learners progress through your program, check in to evaluate engagement, readiness and confidence levels. If you notice your content isn’t “clicking” for new hires or existing reps, consider restructuring your approach so topics more gradually build on one another — and remember to utilize roleplaying to let sales reps cement their new skills and take a break from book learning.

You should also think about what happens after sales training. Once a rep has passed, remember they’ll need to hone their skills through:

  • Feedback sessions
  • Shadowing senior reps
  • Listening in on calls
  • Developing confidence and capability through face-to-face coaching

Noting all of these things is key to creating an effective sales certification program for your reps. When you know where you’re going, it’s much easier to create a path — or in this case, a program — to get you there.

Here are three different training approaches and how to leverage them:

Knowledge assessment

This assessment is focused on sales rep knowledge — what they’ve retained and understood — and how they apply it in the context of customer needs. Tests and quizzes are a common choice but roleplays can be particularly useful.

Knowledge assessments should include a range of materials and test structures to more accurately gauge different aspects of the training. For example, Mindtickle’s sales training software has eight quiz types — from multiple choice to label matching — that can all be performed using our online platform. The platform calculates whether the rep passes this section and is ready for the next level of certification.

Copilot - Assessment

There are two ways to structure these assessments:

Participants don’t have access to any resources, notes or supporting material. This is purely a test of what they’ve retained and how well they adopted key concepts or skills.

Participants have access to the sales enablement or support content they would utilize in a real scenario. This more closely simulates the job environment, where sellers have access to specific resources but have limited time to act.

Simulation missions

These “missions” are a dry run of the sales process and the associated techniques. For example, to test the rep’s ability to articulate your company’s value proposition, you could have them record their sales pitch. This video can be used to:

  • Help the rep get a more objective view of how they performed.
  • Inform trainers and coaches on knowledge gaps or problem areas.
  • Test the rep’s ability to respond to unfamiliar questions, situations, and objections.
Copilot - Mission review

To get even more out of these missions, create a library of sales pitches from all new hires. This library isn’t just a training tool; it’s also a way to gamify your sales training programs by using crowd voting to highlight pitching styles, share ideas, and get the whole sales team engaged.

Dummy leads

Another great exercise to test a sales rep’s understanding is to have them actually run through the sales process using “dummy leads.” This allows you to give out leads depending on what you need to assess; for example, one dummy lead might be a tough sell, making it a great way to test sales reps on their ability to position your value proposition.

Through this assessment process, sales reps can:

  • Identify and track leads.
  • Do background research on leads.
  • Populate the CRM.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of your systems and processes.

Better yet, the dummy lead approach can connect with a simulation mission for an even more in-depth process. This helps leaders, managers, and trainers know whether reps can juggle the right things when working with real leads.

Benefits of a sales certification program

Sales training certification programs aren’t just a great way to hone key skills, improve sales readiness and close more deals. They also have significant benefits for your teams, including:

Passing a training program gives reps the confidence and engagement they need to better connect with their roles.

Training courses provide vital performance information and can help address issues before they arise.

When reps know more about processes and tools, they spend less time asking questions or fixing mistakes.

Case studies

Want to see how four companies revamped their sales certifications and saw real benefits thanks to Mindtickle sales training programs? Here’s a quick look:

Introhive

Improved onboarding and used gamification, roleplays, and microlearning to grow certifications by 100% and shorten sales cycles. Read the full case study here. 

Trimble Viewpoint

Used analytics-driven enablement dashboards to reduce ramp time from 69 days to 52 days. Read the full case study here. 

Integrace Health

everaged manager dashboards and certification programs to win up to 82% sales rep approval ratings and reduce onboarding times from 22 to five days. Read the full case study here. 

MongoDB

Implemented a 30-60-90 day onboarding program to reduce ramp time by 45%. Read the full case study here. 

Plus, check out this case study from Wiley Publishing:

Get sales-ready with the right training programs

The right sales certification program can take your new hires from good to great. This is your chance to start them off on the right foot — not just for their own sake, but for the rest of their team, the company overall, and even the customers they’ll someday serve. Don’t forget that sales training certification programs benefit leaders and coaches with rich insights and valuable data, too.

Scale your sales certifications

Take your sellers' skills to the next level by building out your sales certification program in Mindtickle. 

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This post was originally published in February 2016, updated in April 2023, and again in November 2023. 

 

8 Must-Try Sales Role-Plays That Will Prepare Your Team for Every Selling Situation

Helen Waite on October 31, 2023

Whether you’re taking up a new hobby or developing on-the-job skills in a sales role, it’s true what they say: Practice makes perfect. There’s only so much that a seller can digest through sales onboarding and training content — and in order for a rep to truly hone their skills, they must practice through sales role-plays.

Role-play sales training exercises have long been recognized as a powerful training tool for good reason — because they work. They’re a proven way to boost a seller’s confidence in new material, familiarize themselves with messaging, and learn how to handle objections in a risk-free environment.

The value of sales role-plays

Sales role-play scenarios are an especially valuable coaching technique right now. As many sales forces have shifted to remote work environments, it’s imperative that sales training role-plays become a part of every seller’s routine. Because sales is such a people-oriented profession, many of the skills learned on the job are developed through shadowing, coaching and mentorship.

When reps are on their own, and less likely to develop these skills organically as they’re not working alongside their peers in an office, it’s important to foster this skill set through designated training sessions. After all, role-playing helps sellers practice and prepare for real-world buyer interactions so they know how to handle every selling situation thrown their way.

That being said, role-play is traditionally considered a team sport. So you may be wondering how it can be approached effectively while everyone is working remotely. The key is to use a “smart” role-play tool that comes with AI. A tool like this allows you to use AI to analyze a transcript of your reps’ video recordings or presentation voiceovers, giving you insights (with the help of keyword analysis) into the presenter’s articulation, product knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence, and comprehensiveness of response.

 

Compared to a traditional role-play conducted in person, virtual role-plays give reps the opportunity to take multiple passes at a scenario at their own pace, while also equipping them with concrete feedback that they can put into practice immediately.

Top 8 sales role-play scenarios

If you’re a leader or manager looking for sales role-play ideas that will get your team thinking on their feet and mastering new scenarios, we’ve highlighted our eight tried-and-true favorites.

As you think about the different types of role-play scenarios to practice with your team, it’s a good idea to first identify the key areas where reps typically struggle or face challenges, and equip them with the tools they need to prepare for those scenarios in the field.

Below are the top role-play scenarios — along with some suggestions for how you can effectively execute them in a remote environment.

This is an essential exercise for any sales rep, but particularly BDRs who need support in identifying the buyers’ problems. With a smart role-play tool, you’ll be able to provide contextual, in-video comments on their role-play, so reps know exactly where they can refine their talk track or ask stronger probing questions

A good elevator pitch is everything to a sales rep. Reps can practice their elevator pitches on a call or in the form of a recorded practice, which can then be reviewed and evaluated by their manager and their peers.

This role-play sales training is especially valuable for those transitioning from field sales to inside sales. This type of role-play scenario allows reps to practice sales conversations remotely with other team members or their managers. This might include handling new sales software or adapting their talk track for a virtual meeting — both of which can be evaluated with the right technology in place.

Your reps’ messaging needs to be precise and their product knowledge evident during demos, so it’s always a good idea for reps to role-play a product demo with a more experienced colleague or sales manager. These can be analyzed for keywords, filler words and to gauge reps’ confidence in the material, especially when unexpected questions come their way.

Objection handling role-plays gives reps the chance to practice answering tough questions and combat objections from buyers. This can be done virtually with top-performing sales colleagues and helps give less experienced sellers the chance to hear firsthand the types of objections that a typical prospect would have, then use their training to try to answer their questions or mitigate their concerns.

Great sales reps are skilled negotiators. Develop this skill in your salesforce by creating role-plays simulating buyers asking for a lower price based on competitor pricing or budget. Using AI can be extremely helpful when evaluating negotiation role-plays because it identifies the number of filler words used, tone and confidence, which are typically more difficult to effectively provide feedback on without concrete data.

 

When competitors come up in sales conversations, you want your reps prepared and ready to handle those situations with ease. To do this, sellers can role-play conversations that mimic situations when a buyer mentions a competitor or asks about comparisons. You can also encourage reps to set competitive traps in their product positioning and scan their role-play transcripts to ensure they’re hitting the mark each time.

Buyers love seeing examples of how other customers use and benefit from your product. Customer storytelling role-plays allow reps to practice sharing their best customer use cases and stories. Using a smart role-play tool, you can leave comments at specific points in each recording where you think messaging could be refined or strengthened.

Role-plays coupled with expert coaching: a winning combination

When it comes to effective on-the-job learning, we know traditional training materials aren’t enough, but neither is sales coaching alone — no matter how good it is. To actually drive changes in seller behavior, reps must also have the opportunity to practice their skills in live situations.

By offering reps the opportunity to conduct virtual sales role-plays in a remote work environment, while also being able to provide accurate and timely feedback through some of the AI-powered tools on the market, you’ll be able to set your reps up for success whether they’re near or far.

 

Better role-plays = More productive sellers

Ready to see how Mindtickle can make your role-plays more effective? 

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This post was originally published in June 2021 and updated in October 2023. 

Virtual Sales Training Programs: 10 Skills Every Seller Needs to Master

Helen Waite on October 13, 2023

Some think great sellers are born, but more often than not, they’re made through virtual sales training, teaching, practice, and support.

Considering that most selling is done virtually today, and that buyer journeys are becoming more complex, it’s never been more important for salespeople to refine their skills in order to effectively engage prospects and customers.

What is virtual sales training?

An essential part of virtual sales training is keeping the learner engaged by making training more consumable. Virtual sales training requires a completely different approach than classroom learning because it comes with its own different set of distractions and tactics for being effective. Below you’ll find some of the essential skills and knowledge to incorporate into your virtual sales training program.

Below we outline 10 skills your sales team can develop with help from a virtual sales training platform.

Top skills for virtual selling success

Discovery

To have any hope of making a sale, a seller must be able to find accounts and buyers that fit your target customer base and ask insightful questions in order to provide relevant and meaningful outreach and content.

Uncovering a prospect’s pain points, priorities, objectives, and buying team dynamics during discovery sales calls is crucial for continued engagement as the prospect moves further down the funnel. Have top-performing reps share best practices for discovery with others on the team to help everyone hone this skill.

Time management

In a perfect world, salespeople could devote 100% of their time to sales activities: sending emails, making sales calls, closing deals.

But today’s selling experience is complex, requiring a lot of tasks that are seemingly minor but in fact, largely contribute to a deal’s success. For this reason, reps must be able to juggle it all, prioritizing the highest-value items on their to-do lists and responding to buyer requests in a timely manner.

One-on-one coaching sessions between manager and seller are useful for finding ways the rep can manage their time and maximize productivity.

Technology use

Numerous sales tools have been introduced to automate, streamline, and/or measure sellers’ daily activities. Whether it’s a content management system, conversation intelligence, or a revenue productivity platform, reps must be able to use technology effectively. It’s up to IT, sales, and sales enablement leadership to ensure salespeople are adequately trained on these systems.

 

Relationship building

Regardless of what territory a seller has and the type of prospect they’re working with, developing authentic relationships with buyers is critical.

Executives and other business leaders are flooded with sales calls and emails on a daily basis and won’t give the time of day to a vendor who doesn’t care to hear their feelings and opinions.

Your reps can engage more meaningfully by forming and nurturing connections. The ability to do this can be passed from the top down; if sales leaders and managers are empathetic to their teams, reps will replicate this behavior with their prospects.

Effective communication

Written and verbal communication skills are not just important for interacting with buyers; they’re also required for impactful internal relationships, whether between members of the same team, between manager and rep, or with colleagues from other departments.

To be successful in sales, reps must be assertive while mastering tone and delivery of the information they’re delivering. Encourage reps to practice different messaging formats and techniques, share ideas, and provide feedback with one another.

 

Storytelling

Shaping messaging into a compelling tale is a distinct skill that goes beyond knowing how to communicate effectively. Telling an authentic story to demonstrate how other customers have solved business issues with your solution appeals to emotions and stokes action. As with other important sales competencies, crafting persuasive narratives takes practice, so give salespeople plenty of opportunity to do just that within coaching sessions and team meetings.

Product knowledge

Today’s buyers have high expectations and can see through salespeople who pretend to know what they’re talking about.

Rather than memorizing a minute-long product pitch, having extensive product knowledge allows sellers to share the value of products more creatively and meaningfully. It also enables reps to answer nuanced questions buyers have about features and functionality. Provide plentiful virtual sales training materials surrounding your product suite and walk your sales team through product demos so they know the ins and outs of what they’re selling.

Mindtickle Missions

 

Active listening

It bears repeating: Generic pitches and presentations don’t work with buyers today. Sales reps must demonstrate the value of their solutions differently based on a buyers’ unique use cases. And the only way to do that is by letting them tell you what those use cases are. Sellers must ask about goals, roadblocks, priorities — anything that gets them to the heart of what that buyer needs — and then stop and listen.

Active listening means staying in the present, taking in what the person is saying, and waiting until they’re finished to respond. By doing so, a rep builds further connection with that buyer and begins to position him or herself as a trusted advisor.

Negotiation

Once a proposal has been put together, sales reps must be able to command the subsequent negotiation process. This means not giving in to a prospect’s every demand and instead being assertive and presenting alternative solutions that benefit both parties. Train sellers on how to manage negotiations and give them the opportunity to practice with their peers.

Objection handling

It’s rare a buying team will accept everything a seller tells them without question. Rather than taking their challenges as obstacles, reps should take these as opportunities to get more visibility into how the buyers think. Ensure your salespeople are able to respond to common skepticism and objections with recorded role-plays scored by either AI or managers.

Sales Training in Mindtickle

Help your sales team master these skills and more with effective virtual sales training.

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This post was originally published in October 2022 and updated in October 2023.

Hitting Targets Through Marketing and Sales Alignment with Christopher Lynch

Helen Waite on October 11, 2023

 

Episode summary

In the re-airing of our most downloaded episode of Ready, Set, Sell, we sat down with our very own CMO, Chris Lynch. In this episode, he shared why directness in internal communications is so important and the value of storytelling and messaging skills in marketing.

We kicked things off with Chris talking about how he approaches marketing initiatives with his own team. He discussed the importance of creating compelling digital experiences for prospects and shifting toward an “insight sell” approach.

Like many other marketing teams, those who are successful will be able to balance immediate business demands with long-term projects. In a time when many orgs have teams working almost entirely remotely, Chris said the importance of in-person collaboration can’t be underestimated, especially for creative brainstorming and for team-based roles like BDRs.

The hosts and Chris tackled a subject that many sales and marketing organizations struggle to solve: alignment and successful collaboration between their two teams. Shared accountability for both wins and losses is critical for successful alignment. In simple terms, he shared that – in his view – “Marketing plants ideas while sales brings them to life.”

“Marketing plants ideas while sales brings them to life.”
Christopher Lynch
CMO, Mindtickle

Lastly, Chris shared his outlook on what’s next in B2B marketing: improvements and growth in revenue and sales technologies will lead to more intelligent, data-driven decision-making.

Key takeaways:

  • Honesty and directness are key, especially when dealing with sales teams, to effectively address performance and challenges.
  • Marketers must be effective storytellers. Providing a unique point differentiates successful marketing initiatives from the pack.
  • Marketers and sellers roles can be crystallized down to this: Marketing’s role is to identify the addressable market, create a cohesive strategy, and plant ideas in prospects’ minds, while sales dives deeper into individual nuances to clarify value and insight.

Keep checking back here to see more videos of our podcast.

Listen and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts:

Get the full archive of previous Ready, Set, Sell episodes by clicking below.

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You can get access to our entire library of Ready, Set, Sell episodes featuring sales enablement leaders and practitioners. 

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What Makes a Successful Sales Training Program?

Helen Waite on October 5, 2023

Sales training is just one part of a seller’s roster of responsibilities. According to the 2022 LinkedIn State of Selling Report, sellers spend 17% of their time on training. Unfortunately, that time could be a complete wash if the sales training doesn’t improve the knowledge, skills, and behaviors you know reps need to close deals.

Time sellers spent on sales training activities
0%

 

But when sales training is effective, it becomes one of the most important investments in your sellers and an invaluable use of their time. In this blog post, we’ll define sales training, sales training programs, why they’re important, why one-size-fits-all sales training won’t work, the essentials for a successful sales training program, different types of sales training programs, how sales training technology helps, and how to use Mindtickle for sales training.

What is sales training?

A sales training program teaches sales reps the skills needed for every step of the sales journey—from first contact through the close of a sale. It’s the ongoing process of teaching sales teams how to create deal-closing interactions with buyers. This includes in-person learning, e-learning, micro-learning, gamification, or other training techniques to help sales reps improve performance.

Although sometimes used interchangeably, sales training is not the same as sales enablement or sales coaching.

What is a sales training program and why is it needed?

Organizations need to develop personalized sales training programs for their sales teams so they can achieve and maintain sales excellence across the organization.

Once you’ve mapped out your ideal rep profile and understand the specific selling skills, behaviors, and knowledge your salespeople need to succeed, you can plan out courses and programs that focus on each area.

Start by defining the outcomes for each training program. For example:

Focus on on different product features to help reps run product demos tailored to prospects’ needs

Help reps spot when they’re using filler words so they can reduce the frequency of using them on calls

Focus on on common objections to help reps handle prospects’ objections confidently

 

Why one-size-fits-all training won’t work

If you choose a sales training program with a one-size-fits-all manual, you may be throwing away time and money.

Despite significant investments in sales training programs, the average rate of quota attainment has been declining for years. In fact, according to some research, only 24.3% of salespeople exceeded their quota last year. One-size-fits-all training programs assume there is just one way to sell and therefore fail at the very thing they are teaching.

Reps who exceeded quota last year
0%

 

No two sales reps have the same needs or experience. Similarly, no two businesses are alike—a technology company and a retailer have different needs relevant to the industry and each has a unique sales process.

For example:

  • A retail sale — B2C —might require a shorter, but more personal interaction.
  • Reps selling products in B2B, like technology, require an intricate knowledge of customers, products, trends, and advancement in the industry.

In both examples, the sales rep must deliver a modern sales approach that can compete with information available online, and the complexities of each product require specific understanding. But the approach to these differing sales requires unique knowledge and techniques, meaning training must be suited to the individual rep, business, product, and customer.

While there is some benefit to be gained from any initiative, the results won’t be nearly as effective as those from an individually designed program that incorporates your company’s methodology and provides ongoing training and coaching opportunities.

The essentials for a successful sales training program

What are “the essentials” of choosing a sales training program, and why do they matter? Conventional training programs focus on behavior modification, communication, and negotiation skills. Those things play an important role in sales success, but other strategies can improve results faster and give your sales reps an advantage in the field.

The best sales training program for your company should include these six essential features.

Diverse training formats

Offering a number of different formats for presenting training material means teaching sales reps in the manner that they learn best.

Video provides a forum for role-play and live lectures, as well as narrated slide presentations to keep reps engaged.

Audio recordings work well for delivering training when complete attention is not necessary, like while driving or completing other activities.

Written materials allow reps to review and study resources in a written form with PDF files that can be made available for easy download and/or printing.

Gamification turns lackluster training modules into a fun, competitive learning opportunity. Video games, quizzes, and more can keep reps engaged and eager to continue their training.

 

Customizable platform

While standard training programs can offer the basics, a customizable program allows you to add content specific to your business, including techniques that work well in your market or with your product, and change and grow with your needs.

At the onset of the program, expect a framework driven by your organization’s sales strategy and a practical understanding of your products, services, and process. Intuitive real-time editing means that the program adjusts via sales rep input, evaluating what reps need according to what they have successfully completed, how they learn, and even existing or desired customers. Front-line managers can coach teams and review analytics by utilizing easy-to-use mobile tools.

Real-world scenarios

A successful sales training program uses real-world buying scenarios (and proven solutions) to train the team to handle any common situation. It must offer the flexibility to successfully address every aspect of a business reality. This type of program allows reps to practice real-world scenarios before they actually enter a high-stakes conversation with prospects or customers.

Structured reinforcement

Effective training takes time, repetition, and detailed individuality. A training program that offers customization enables your sales team to achieve milestones while continuing to successfully sell.
Reinforcement is key to helping salespeople retain what they’ve learned. Without systematic, continual learning and reinforcement, sales reps forget 70% of information within one week of training, and 87% within one month.

Tracking and metrics

How do you know if reps are using the program and if it’s working? A good sales training program should include progress tracking for each sales rep as well as analysis through quizzes, tests, and other assessments. This information should be used to generate performance metrics as well as to continually improve the program.

 

Different instructional modalities

Providing learning opportunities that meet your sales team where they are, physically and mentally, is the best way to get their attention and make learning fun and interactive.

Your sales team is always on the go. Training materials should be agile, available via streaming or download to mobile devices for use when the time is right.

Online lectures and virtual conferences provide a forum where everyone can participate without being in the same physical location.

Discussion forums, chat capabilities, and social interactions provide learning in an environment that enhances engagement through connection and discussion.

 

Micro-learning capabilities

Micro-learning offers information as bite-sized, easily accessed, individualized content for sales reps. Usually focused on one topic or problem, it is presented in a variety of ways like quizzes, videos, games, or simulations. Micro-learning uses information about how our long-term memory performs and incorporates the use of repetition over time. Learning that is fun and engaging—presented over time—helps learners avoid information overload and increases retained information. It is quick and easy to complete, and provides the opportunity for tracking, progress, and identifies gaps for future learning.

Gamification

When learning is less tedious and more fun, information is retained better. Reps are more likely to complete training modules if they come in the form of video games, leaderboards, social networking, and gamified quizzes, even when they aren’t assigned. Sales reps are motivated to do the work, becoming more and more skilled in the process. That drives revenue growth.

Different types of sales training programs

General sales skills include relationship-building, questioning, solution-building, negotiation, problem-solving, and proposal writing. Different types of sales training programs focus on different areas. When you choose just one area on which to focus, not all reps on your sales team will benefit.

Here are a few types of sales training.

Teaches information or steps that improve the chance of a positive outcome. Usually a standard format, it creates a common approach and language for sales reps and emphasizes skill development.

Long-form modules with in-depth subject knowledge that teach essential sales skills. Reps learn how to sell with fundamental skills like finding prospects, active listening, asking questions, negotiation, sidestepping objections, giving presentations, follow-up, and other administrative communication skills. These skills have no expiration date and continue to evolve over time, as your reps’ confidence and knowledge grows.

Focuses on the product features and benefits, giving a sales rep a solid foundation regarding what they are selling, so they can focus on the customers’ needs.

Information refreshers that reinforce knowledge from training modules. Small, frequent updates prompt knowledge retention and connect information that reps have already learned for improved results.

 

How sales training technology helps

Enlisting a data-driven sales training program can change the game for your business. Technology-based onboarding alone can propel your success rate forward. A quality, customizable program offers cost-savings, flexibility, logistical simplicity, accessibility, and the chance for self-paced learning and repetition as needed.

Online or off, effective sales training programs should be customizable to adapt to the changing needs of any business. Key metrics provide a barometer for results. Diverse training opportunities coupled with a variety of learning modalities can help you reach your sales rep and improve retention. Micro-learning and bite-sized updates provide refreshers and continual learning.

Choose a training program that uses technology to make learning easier, empowers sales reps, and drives excellence.

Mindtickle for sales training

With a comprehensive suite of sales readiness applications, Mindtickle provides your sales team with a positive learning environment and never-ending learning. Sales reps learn and practice concepts from engaging, accessible delivery platforms that convey knowledge, offer role-play opportunities for eventual success in the field, and improve mastery for customer engagement.

Tracked usage offers accessibility and visibility—a window into progress and performance, that emphasizes knowledge retention through quizzes, gamification, and coaching. Mindtickle’s data-driven approach provides easy mobile access that ties individual performance to revenue growth with metrics that reveal what’s working, what needs adjusting, where gaps exist, and how training is affecting sales outcomes.

See Sales Training in Mindtickle

Build a sales training program that actually helps your reps close more deals. 

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This post was originally published in April 2020, was updated in November 2022, and again in October 2023. 

What is Sales Effectiveness – and How Do You Improve Yours? 

Helen Waite on September 21, 2023

In the world of sales, the phrase “sales effectiveness” is one that’s used often. In fact, many sales leaders are focused on sales effectiveness – and how they can improve theirs.

But what is it?

If you pose this question to a group of sales leaders, you’ll likely get a variety of responses. But generally speaking, sales effectiveness is a measure of how your sales team is performing. No wonder it’s a top focus.

In this guide, we’ll define sales effectiveness, discuss how to measure it, and explore some practical techniques for increasing effectiveness at your organization.

Sales effectiveness definition

Most sales leaders agree that sales effectiveness is important. But without a clear definition, it’s impossible to measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

With that in mind, let’s start by answering the question, “What is sales effectiveness?”

At the most basic level, it refers to how well your sellers turn prospects into buyers. Throughout the typical purchase journey, a seller has multiple interactions with a potential buyer. Effectiveness gauges the seller’s ability to conquer each of these interactions. Of course, their ability to conquer these touchpoints depends on many factors, including the quality of training and coaching – and how (or whether) they put this training and coaching into practice to improve.

Sales effectiveness vs. sales efficiency

Oftentimes, “sales effectiveness” and “sales efficiency” are used interchangeably. While they’re certainly related, they’re not the same thing.

Sales efficiency is about what your team is doing. For example, you might measure how much time your sales team is spending on training.

On the other hand, sales efficiency is how your team is performing. Sales effectiveness considers how much your sales reps are actually getting out of their training – and whether they’re putting that learning into practice in the field.

It’s possible to have a team that’s efficient – but not effective. In other words, your sales reps may complete tasks quickly. However, that doesn’t mean they’re completing the right tasks to move deals forward.

 

How to measure sales effectiveness

There’s an old adage that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. This definitely rings true for sales effectiveness. If you’re not continuously measuring it, it’s impossible to identify areas for improvement.

But many aren’t sure how to measure sales effectiveness.

5 essential sales effectiveness metrics

There’s no single metric for gauging sales effectiveness. Rather, sales organizations must track myriad metrics to get a true picture of it.

The exact measurements vary from organization to organization. However, there are five key metrics for any organization.

Quota attainment measures the percentage of your reps that are achieving quota. This metric is one of the most obvious ways to determine sales effectiveness.

This is the percentage of prospects who ultimately end up purchasing your product or service.

CAC is a measure of how much it costs the company to convert a prospect to a customer. This includes both the cost of sales and marketing, divided by the number of new customers acquired.

This is how quickly prospects progress through the sales cycle. Obviously, the shorter the sales cycle length, the faster money comes in. This is a metric you’ll want to compare to industry benchmarks. If your sales cycle length is significantly longer than industry average, there’s obviously something that needs to improve.

The average amount of money a business makes from closing a deal. A high average deal size can be an indicator that your sellers are effective at building relationships with customers.

 

Using KPIs to assess and improve sales performance

Sales effectiveness measures how your sales team is performing. As such, it’s important to focus on accessing your reps’ performance – and then taking data-based action to improve it.

Let’s take a look at some of the tools and techniques winning sales orgs are using to access and improve sales rep performance.

Sales dashboards and reporting

Improving your reps’ performance requires access to the right data. You can’t help them improve if you don’t know where they’re excelling and where they’re falling flat.

Most organizations have no shortage of data. But often, it lives in myriad locations. It’s important to ensure you have access to sales dashboards and reporting tools that make it easy to not only pull the right data – but also make sense of it so you can take action on it.

Sales call recording analysis

Sure, a sales rep may complete all training and enablement activities. But that doesn’t guarantee success. It’s important to understand whether the rep is actually using their newly acquired selling skills while in the field.

Conversation intelligence software records sales calls – and then analyzes those calls. This gives managers insight into what’s really happening in the field. That way, managers can provide training and coaching to improve the effectiveness of the rep – both on that deal and long term.

Quarterly rep feedback cycles

Ongoing feedback is essential to improving rep performance and boosting sales effectiveness. Managers should perform quarterly reviews for each rep. These reviews are a great opportunity to examine sales performance quarter-over-quarter. In addition, it’s an opportunity to discuss opportunities for improvement.

But remember: feedback should be ongoing. Don’t wait until these quarterly meetings to provide feedback.

Newer reps vs. experienced rep analysis

It’s important to measure overall sales effectiveness. But be sure to measure sales effectiveness on a variety of levels too.

One example is newer reps vs. experienced reps. Experienced reps likely have different strengths and weaknesses than newer ones. Measuring sales effectiveness based on tenure can shed light on opportunities for improvement specific to each group.

Mindtickle Readiness Index

Sales enablement and sales training technology

Each rep has different strengths and weaknesses. Ongoing measurement helps you identify where sellers may need additional support to improve sales effectiveness.

Sales training, sales enablement, and sales coaching are all key to boosting seller performance. The sales effectiveness tools can help you identify the needs of each rep – and then deliver personalized sales training, sales enablement, and sales coaching to increase sales effectiveness.

 

Proven techniques for improving your sales effectiveness strategy

Improving sales effectiveness is a top goal of most sales organizations. But what can you do to boost this key metric?

Here are some foundational techniques to improve your sales effectiveness strategy.

Identify target markets and ideal customer profiles

Sometimes, a deal doesn’t move forward simply because the prospect isn’t the right fit for your products or services. It’s important to develop ideal customer profiles (ICPs), outlining the qualities of companies that are a good fit for your products and services. Be sure your sellers know these ICPs inside and out. Sellers should be spending the bulk of their time with prospects that align with these ICPs.

Provide personalized training and coaching

Sales training and coaching are key to building each seller’s competencies to succeed. But oftentimes, organizations deliver training and coaching that’s one-size-fits-all.

First, organizations must define the skills and competencies that are required to succeed in the field. Then, each rep should be measured against that ideal rep profile (IRP). Finally, personalized training and coaching can be delivered to strengthen those weaker skills – and boost sales effectiveness.

Ideal rep profile competencies

 

Improve sales and marketing collaboration

Typically, marketing teams create plenty of material for reps to use throughout the sales cycle. But often, these materials are created without input from the sales team. Marketing and sales teams must work together to identify what reps need throughout the sales cycle – and what actually helps move deals closer to the finish line. That way, marketing teams can focus on the content that’s proven to work. Sales and sales enablement teams can help ensure sellers know how and when to use these marketing-created materials.

Deliver continuous feedback

Feedback shouldn’t just come during a quarterly review. Instead, managers must make it a priority to deliver feedback on an ongoing basis. That way, their reps understand what they need to work on to improve sales outcomes.

Improving sales effectiveness with Mindtickle

Your sales reps might be efficient at “checking off the boxes.” But that doesn’t mean they are effective in the field. Increasing sales effectiveness must be a top priority for any organization looking to grow revenue.

It’s key to identify the competencies needed for success at your organization. Then, you must measure your reps against this gold standard to understand where additional support is needed.

With Mindtickle, you can shed light on where reps are excelling – and where they’re falling flat. Then, you can leverage the platform to deliver personalized, data-based sales training, coaching, and enablement to boost skills – and increase sales effectiveness.

See for yourself how Mindtickle can help you increase sales effectiveness at your organization. Request a personalized live demo today.

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Video: 3 Tips for Fostering a Coaching Culture

Helen Waite on September 20, 2023

 

Episode summary

In this video, Helen Waite shares some of the key takeaways from our Road to Readiness Roadshow stop in Chicago. This video focuses on fostering a coaching culture in sales orgs and offers some practical tips for how to create one at your own organization.

Key highlights

  • Leadership buy-in: To establish a coaching culture, it’s imperative that senior leaders, from the CRO to managers and reps, actively participate in coaching. Leadership buy-in sets the example for the entire team. Some organizations even tie coaching to sales manager compensation to incentivize regular coaching.
  • Coaching for coaches: Sales managers are often promoted from successful sales reps, but they may lack the necessary coaching skills. Providing coaching for coaches as part of onboarding and ongoing training is essential. Regular training sessions, whether quarterly or during annual kickoffs, help managers continually improve their coaching abilities.
  • Better together mindset: Encouraging collaboration among managers and reps fosters a coaching-friendly environment. When managers work together and reps collaborate, it creates a safe space for conversations, enabling continuous learning. This “better together” mindset ensures that coaching isn’t a competitive activity but rather a collective effort to help the entire team achieve their goals.

Transcription

Our second stop on our Road to Readiness Roadshow in Chicago brought together sales leaders from ChowNow, Couchbase, Cisco, SCI, and more. A lot of the conversation was around a coaching culture in your organization. So here we’ll share three tips for fostering a coaching culture.

The first tip is leadership buy-in.

You’re not going to get your entire team to adopt a coaching culture and coach on a regular basis unless your leaders are doing the same thing. So enablement can’t drive this function alone, you need to make sure that your senior sales leaders, your CRO down to your managers, and your reps are all bought into coaching on a regular basis, so everyone can get better.

We’ve seen success in organizations even building coaching and as part of a sales manager’s compensation, just to encourage and make sure that they’re doing that coaching on a regular basis.

The second tip is coaching your coaches.

We often see that sales managers are typically sales reps who did really well and were promoted. So it doesn’t always mean that they have the skills needed to learn how to coach their reps effectively once they do become a manager.

Make sure that you’re coaching your coaches as part of your onboarding and training for your new managers. And then making sure you’re doing that on a regular basis, whether it’s once a year, providing training to all of your managers on how to coach their reps effectively. It could be on a quarterly basis, or twice a year during your kickoffs, making sure that you’re not only doing a coach the coach as part of your onboarding but also including that on a regular basis for your managers to make sure that they’re always learning from each other, learning how to be better coaches for their reps.

And finally, the third tip is developing a better together mindset.

We heard as part of our sessions, that it’s really important that your managers work together and that your reps work together. And that really fosters a coaching environment where you can have a safe space to have conversations, whether it’s manager to rep, or rep to rep.

Your managers can learn from each other, and so can your reps, and that can help making sure you’re coaching on a regular basis. If they’re all learning from each other, better together. And that coaching can really help the team all hit their numbers together and it’s not kind of pitting team or region against each other. So having that better together mindset helps with that culture.

Create a Sales Coaching Culture

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The 20+ Sales Coaching Metrics You Should Measure for Effective Skill Coaching

Helen Waite on September 13, 2023

The reality is, deal coaching is probably happening pretty regularly at your organization. Managers are meeting with their teams as a whole, and individually to discuss open opportunities in flight, how they are progressing, and how they can help get them to closed-won.

But, the same can’t typically be said for skill coaching across the board. That’s because skill coaching traditionally takes more prep, data, and tracking to be effective. Since it is more of a time commitment for managers, it gets pushed to the back burner, with other pressing tasks taking precedence over it.

With a bit of guidance, you can ensure skill coaching is consistent across your organization and impacting rep performance quarter after quarter.

What is skill coaching?

First, let’s start with a quick overview of what skill coaching is. And how it’s different from deal coaching.

Focuses on the deals in front of a seller, and the open opportunities they have and are actively working. This type of coaching typically takes place between a manager and a rep weekly, discussing the details of each deal, any blockers, the next steps, and the probability of closing.

Focuses on the seller themselves, and more specifically the key skills they need to be successful at their job. Skill coaching sessions typically happen on a monthly or quarterly basis, as it takes time to show improvement.

0 %
Improvement in win rate

Deal coaching and skill coaching are both strategic techniques for guiding sellers on how they can be more effective. Paired together, they can result in an improvement of win rates by 27% or more.

Why do skill coaching metrics matter?

Now that you know the why of skill coaching – what is the point of measuring and tracking performance related to skill coaching?

Metrics matter because they are the driving force behind delivering effective skill coaching.

If you have a team of reps and want to start focusing on delivering skill coaching, without any data, you may just result to picking one skill to coach your team on each month.

For example, you choose discovery and focus on assessing and building this skill for each rep. If one member is already very strong in his or her discovery skills, this could be a waste of time for this person. While another member may have a larger gap in discovery skills and needs more than a month for developing this skill.

Without metrics, you can’t deliver tailored skill coaching that focuses on the individual skill gaps of each of your team members.

20+ coaching metrics for effective skill coaching

In order to start tracking skill coaching metrics, you must first know exactly what skills make up a top performer in your organization. And this varies by role, industry, and product/service offering.

For example, a Sales Development Representative at a tech company may need strong skills in:

  • Active listening
  • Market research
  • Written communication
  • Self-motivation

While a seasoned Account Executive at a manufacturing company needs really strong:

  • Discovery
  • Problem-solving
  • Negotiation
  • Presentation

Now using these competency frameworks, you can start to measure the critical metrics that will drive your skill coaching efforts for each of your customer-facing roles.

Let’s break down the metrics by commonly used skills for go-to-market roles.

Product/service knowledge Product/service program scores
New product/service release update scores
Correct answers on assessments and quizzes
Certification completions
Active listening Conversation intelligence call scores
Talk time % on calls vs attendees
Conversion rate of calls to meetings booked
Written communication # of emails sent
Sentiment score on emails
# of responses to emails vs emails sent
Building rapport Conversion rate of calls to meetings booked
Conversion rate of emails to meetings booked
Presentation Video role-play scores
Conversion by deal stage
Talk time % on calls vs attendees
Filler words used
Sentiment on calls
Questions asked by prospect in calls
Questions asked by presenter
Monologue length
Multi-threading # of contacts engaged per opportunity
# of contacts accepted/attending meetings
# of c-level contacts engaged per opportunity
Objection handling Sentiment on calls
Questions asked by prospect in calls
Questions asked by presenter
Competitor mentions

 

Measuring the impact of your skill coaching

Seeing all of these metrics in one list can be a bit overwhelming. We recommend starting small. Focus on 2-3 top skills for your direct reports and start tracking a handful of metrics for each of these skills to gauge where individuals are excelling or where they may need some focused skill coaching. Then, you can continue tracking these metrics over time to determine the effectiveness of your coaching and add additional metrics to track. All of these skills should be measured against larger KPIs and business goals of your reports, like:

  • Revenue generation
  • Quota attainment
  • Pipeline conversion
  • Average deal size
  • Conversion by deal stage

There are many solutions out there that can help track these metrics, which may result in jumping back and forth between systems to gather all of this data. If you’re interested in a coaching solution that consolidates your sales enablement and ops data for actionable coaching insights, reach out to a Mindtickle expert.

Start Measuring the Impact of Sales Coaching

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This post was originally published in November 2022 and was updated in September 2023. 

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