The Sales Cycle: What is it and How to Optimize it for a Better Sales Process

Rahul Mathew on January 11, 2024

Every sales team aspires to close more deals. But leaving sales reps to their own devices isn’t the best way to achieve that goal.

Instead, sales organizations must define a sales cycle. That way, sellers have a simple, repeatable framework they can follow for every deal and sales organizations have a more accurate way to predict revenue.

Read on to explore what a sales cycle is, what the sales cycle stages are, and how you can optimize your sales cycle to drive better outcomes.

What is a sales cycle?

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “What is a sales cycle?” So let’s start things off by aligning on what a sales cycle is. For this blog, we’re specifically focusing on the B2B sales cycle.

A sales cycle is the series of stages the sales team goes through when closing deals. The B2B sales cycle incorporates everything from initial contact to contract signature.

Sales cycle and sales process are two phrases that are used often. However, it’s important to note that these two things aren’t the same.

The sales cycle describes the steps a seller completes to close a deal. The sales process, on the other hand, describes how those steps are completed. Said another way, the sales cycle is the “what” and the sales process is the “how.”

The length of a sales cycle varies widely based on factors including industry, product, and price point – among others. For example, a B2C sales cycle is typically much shorter than a B2B SaaS sales cycle. That’s because B2B deals are often larger and involve more stakeholders.

Sales organizations need to define the sales cycle. But why?

Defining the sales cycle stages helps ensure sellers are following a repeatable framework every time. Sellers can visualize how the process should look – and what steps they need to take when.

Identifying sales cycle stages can also help sales leaders assess the pipeline and understand where deals are getting stuck. These insights can shed light on opportunities to improve sales processes – and sales outcomes.

In addition, a well-defined sales cycle makes it easier for sales leaders to more accurately predict future sales.

What are the different sales cycle stages?

The sales cycle includes several different stages. What are the B2B sales cycle stages?

Sales cycle stages vary from company to company. However, most sales cycles include the following stages.

Lead generation
Prospecting
Initial contact
Nurturing
Qualification + discovery
Demo
Objection handling
Closing

Lead generation

A lead is anyone who has taken an action indicating they’re interested in your company or your solutions. For example, they may have downloaded an eBook, signed up for your newsletter, or requested a demo on your website.

However, not all leads are a good fit for your products and services. Instead, sellers must determine which leads are qualified, which brings us to the next stage.

Prospecting stage

Prospecting is the stage of the sales cycle focused on identifying potential customers who are a good fit for your products or services. Often, organizations develop ideal customer profiles (IRPs) to help sales teams understand which prospects may (or may not) be a good fit. That way, sellers can spend their time on prospects who are most likely to convert.

Initial contact stage

Once you’ve determined that a prospective customer is a good fit, it’s time to make contact with them. Common methods of contacting prospective customers include:

  • Phone calls and messages
  • Emails
  • LinkedIn messages

The goal of the initial contact phase is to successfully connect with the prospect and schedule an appointment with them to explore their key challenges – and how your offerings can help them overcome those challenges.

Nurturing stage

In some cases, a prospect is willing to schedule a meeting and make a purchase quickly. But in the world of B2B sales, that’s usually not the case. Instead, prospects need more time. But that doesn’t mean sellers should simply step away and wait. Instead, they must nurture their prospects.

During the nurturing stage, sales teams must deliver content that proves their value and expertise and keeps prospects engaged. The nurturing stage of the sales cycle is a collaborative effort between sales and marketing. Marketing teams, in collaboration with sales, must develop content that resonates with sellers. This content can then be distributed via automated drip campaigns – or directly from the sales rep.

The goal of the nurturing stage is to keep prospects engaged and interested so they eventually move forward to the next step of the sales cycle.

Qualification and discovery stage

Qualification is the process of determining whether or not the prospect is a good fit. During this stage, you must do your homework to identify a prospect’s challenges so you can assess if your product or service will address these challenges. In addition, you’ll need to gauge a prospect’s interest and timeline.

Reps can uncover this information by doing research, having conversations with prospects, and leveraging revenue intelligence tools.

During the qualification and discovery stage, you’ll also want to make sure you’re working with the right contact at the company who has decision-making power. If not, you can find out how to get in contact with the right contact.

Demo stage

This is the stage of the sales cycle where you pitch your product or service offerings to the customer. This might happen in person or via a video call.

A generic, one-size-fits-all pitch isn’t enough to move a deal forward. Instead, you must take the information you gathered during the earlier stages of the sales cycle to develop a personalized pitch. That pitch must show prospects that you understand their challenges – and know your solution will solve those challenges.

Objection handling stage

In an ideal world, you’d pitch your solution to a customer and they’d immediately make a purchase decision. But in the world of B2B sales, that’s not reality. Prospective customers typically have questions and concerns. These are raised and addressed during the objection-handling stage.

Sales organizations must ensure their sellers have the tools, information, and content necessary to effectively overcome prospects’ objections.

Closing stage

The closing stage is the final phase of the sales cycle. It’s the moment of truth, where you either win a deal or lose it.

It’s important to remember that most prospects aren’t ready to sign on the dotted line after the first meeting. This is especially true in the world of B2B sales. Instead, it typically requires several touchpoints.

How to optimize your sales cycle

As we touched on earlier, sales cycles aren’t “one-size-fits-all.” Instead, the sales cycle at one company may look completely different from the sales cycle at another.

It’s important to ensure your B2B sales cycle is optimized for your business. After all, an optimized sales cycle means your sellers can close deals more effectively and efficiently.

In theory, optimizing the sales cycle sounds simple enough. But in reality, it can be challenging.

However, there are some important steps you can take to optimize your sales cycle.

Determine your average sales cycle length

Sales cycle lengths vary from company to company. It’s important to pinpoint yours.

To calculate your average sales cycle length, divide the total number of days spent for every deal closed by your team by the total number of deals. The result is the average sales cycle for the entire sales team.

Remember: this average sales cycle combines data from all of your sellers. That includes your top sellers who crush quota month after month – as well as the worst sellers who “phone it in” every month.

As such, the average sales cycle length across the whole team may not be an accurate reflection of how long the sales cycle should take.

For that reason, it’s a good idea to also calculate the average sales cycle of your top performers. This number is a more accurate indicator of how long the sales cycle should take. What’s more, it can serve as a challenging, yet achievable goal for your entire sales team to aim for.

Track conversion for every stage of a sales cycle

Sales organizations should measure the percentage of deals that are closing. Most do this already.

However, it’s important to take things a step further.

If you’re not already, be sure to track conversion rates for every step of your sales cycle. In other words, determine the portion of prospects who are advancing to the next stage of the sales cycle – and the portion who are dropping off.

Once you identify where prospects are dropping off, you can determine ways to decrease drop-off and improve outcomes.

For example, you may find that marketing-generated leads rarely advance to prospects. This is an opportunity for marketing and sales to align on what a good-fit lead looks like – and how the organization can more effectively target them via marketing channels.

Or, perhaps there you notice a big drop off at the objection handling stage of the sales cycle. This may indicate reps need more training and coaching on how to handle objections.

Adjust to the needs of your buyers

Each buyer has unique needs and challenges. It’s important to understand those needs and challenges – and adjust your sales cycle to reflect them.

In addition, be sure your sales cycle reflects any industry-specific needs. For example, imagine your company markets its products to banking and financial services professionals. This is a highly regulated industry. Any potential software products must undergo a process to ensure they are secure. This process is unavoidable for sellers and should be reflected in the sales cycle.

Automate or streamline non-selling activities

Sales reps only have so many hours in the day. Unfortunately, a small percentage of that time is actually spent selling. Research from Salesforce found that on average, reps spend a mere 28% of their week selling.

Reps spend only

of their time selling
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When reps don’t have time to focus on selling, it slows down the sales cycle. So, look for opportunities to automate or streamline those tedious (but necessary) tasks that take up a lot of your reps’ time.

For example, your reps may spend a lot of time searching for content to use during the sales cycle. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they may even create their own content. Housing your content in a revenue productivity platform makes it easier and faster for reps to find what they’re looking for.

Then, your reps can focus their time and attention on accelerating deals through the sales cycle.

Streamline onboarding and ongoing training

Every sales leader wants new reps onboarded yesterday. After all, the sooner reps finish their onboarding, the sooner they can focus on moving deals through the sales cycle as efficiently as possible.

Look for opportunities to streamline your onboarding process, without compromising quality. Then, your reps will be ready to hit the ground running faster.

Remember: rep training shouldn’t end at onboarding. Rather, ongoing training is key to ensuring reps understand things like sales cycle, sales methodology, and product offerings.

Analyze your reps’ performance

It’s essential to measure sales reps’ performance on an ongoing basis. Of course, sales metrics and training completion metrics are important. But they don’t tell the whole story.

It’s imperative to ensure each of your reps has the skills and competencies they need to be effective, efficient sellers. If they don’t have what it takes, deals will get lost or stalled – and your sales cycle will be unnecessarily long.

Each sales organization must determine what skills and competencies their customer-facing roles need for success. Increasingly, organizations define these skills and competencies in an ideal rep profile (IRP).

Then, reps should be measured against this “gold standard” on an ongoing basis. That way, sales managers and sales enablement teams can identify weaknesses. Then, they can deliver training, coaching, and tools to boost lagging skills – and improve reps’ abilities to effectively and efficiently close deals.

Centralize sales engagement

The road to a closed deal has many touchpoints. All too often, this road is full of friction.

For example, there may be 20 or more email strings related to a single deal – each with a different list of recipients. It’s easy for key information and content to get lost in the mix.

This is bad news for sellers as inefficiency can slow (or even kill) deals.

Today, some revenue productivity platforms incorporate digital sales rooms. Essentially, these are collaborative portals where all members of the buyer and seller team can communicate, share content, and move deals forward. Digital sales rooms drive efficiency – and decrease the length of the sales cycle. In addition, sellers can see how buyers engage with content and other information, which can help them determine what steps to take next.

Optimize your sales cycle to close more deals and drive revenue growth

Documenting your sales cycle is foundational to growing revenue. When you have a clearly defined sales cycle, your reps have a roadmap for every deal that comes your way. What’s more, a sales cycle makes it easier to predict revenue and identify areas for optimization.

With an optimized sales cycle, your teams can close more deals, faster.

It’s essential to ensure your sellers have what it takes to take on any deal. A revenue productivity platform like Mindtickle ensures sales teams have the content, training, tools, and information they need to successfully navigate every step of the sales cycle – all in one location.

 

Mindtickle in Action

Ready to see how Mindtickle enables sales teams to be ready for any deal at any stage of the sales cycle? 

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Sales Operations (Sales Ops): The Definitive Guide 

Rahul Mathew on December 28, 2023

Sales operations teams were once the unsung heroes of the sales organization. But increasingly, organizations are recognizing the important role these teams play.

A recent Salesforce report found that 82% of sales professionals feel “sales ops plays a critical role in growing the business.” Furthermore, 82% feel sales ops is becoming more strategic.

Salesforce research found that

of reps feel sales ops plays a critical role in growing the business
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Optimized sales operations drive productivity and efficiency across the entire sales team. That means sellers can close more deals – more quickly. Research from McKinsey & Company found that companies with “world-class sales operations functions” see significant gains in terms of sales productivity.

Yet, the role of sales operations is still often misunderstood.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key role of sales operations in driving efficiency and how these teams measure success. We’ll also share best practices for sales operations planning and the important role technology plays in a winning sales ops strategy.

What is sales operations (Sales Ops)?

First things first: what is sales operations?

As the name suggests, optimized sales operations (or sales ops, for short) ensure the sales team can work faster and smarter.

But what exactly does this mean?

It is a term that describes the activities and processes that support the sales organization. Sales operations teams handle the myriad, “behind the scenes” administrative tasks to ensure the sales organization runs smoothly. We’ll take a closer look at some of the specific tasks the sales operations team handles later on.

Why is sales operations (Sales Ops) important?

Sales reps only have so many hours in a day. Yet, they often spend the bulk of their time on tasks that don’t drive revenue. The same Salesforce report cited earlier found that during the average week, sales reps spend a mere 28% of their time on selling activities, such as:

  • In-person meetings with prospective customers
  • Virtual meetings with prospective customer
  • Prospecting

Sales reps spend just

of their time each week selling
0 %

Sales operations frees up these reps from a lot of the non-selling tasks that take up so much of their time. That means sales reps have more time to do what they do best: engage with sellers and close deals.

It also drives efficiency for sales managers. With optimized sales operations, sales managers can focus less time on administrative tasks – and more time coaching their reps to improve individual and team performance.

Optimized sales operations mean sales reps can close more deals – faster. It empowers sales managers to devote more time to ensuring sellers have what it takes to be successful.

What are sales operations responsibilities?

The ultimate goal of the sales operations team is to support the success of the sales team. The team handles the “behind the scenes” work so sales reps effectively and efficiently sell and sales managers can spend their time coaching and improving team performance.

But what exactly does the sales operations team do daily?

Responsibilities look different at every organization. However, some common responsibilities include:

  • Creating sales forecasts
  • Contributing to revenue strategies
  • Developing and continuously evaluating sales rep compensation plans and sales incentives
  • Collaborating with other teams on go-to-market plans
  • Developing pricing structure for products and services
  • Optimizing the sales process and lead generation initiatives
  • Analyzing sales metrics on an ongoing basis

Another key sales operations responsibility is to implement and administer tools and technology that make sellers’ lives easier. Some such technologies might include:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM) platform
  • Sales enablement platform
  • Revenue productivity platform
  • Business intelligence platform
  • Content management system

Sales enablement vs. sales operations

In the world of sales, sales enablement and sales operations are two terms that are used often. Both of these teams are focused on supporting the sales team. In addition, both sales enablement and operations teams typically report up to the head of sales.

However, they’re not the same thing.

Sales enablement teams are focused on ensuring sales reps have what it takes to be successful in the field. First, sales enablement teams work with sales leadership to determine what a great rep looks like. Some sales organizations develop an ideal rep profile (IRP) to define the skills and competencies needed for sales success. Then, sales enablement teams create and deliver onboarding, sales training, sales content, sales coaching, and other programs to ensure each seller can master the skills and competencies they need to close more deals.

On the other hand, sales operations planning is focused on ensuring the right tools and processes are in place to support the sales cycle. That way, sellers can more easily close deals – faster.

Both these teams are focused on improving the productivity of the sales organization. As such, sales operations and sales enablement need to be aligned.

Best practices for building an effective sales operations strategy

A solid strategy helps boost the effectiveness and efficiency of sellers. If you haven’t already, now’s the time to develop a sales operation strategy.

But what exactly does a good strategy look like?

It depends on a number of factors, including size, market, and maturity – among others. A sales operations strategy that works well for one organization may fall flat for another.

That said, there are certain best practices any sales organization can leverage to guide their planning.

Before developing a strategy, it’s important to take a step back to determine the mission of your team. In other words, spell out the reason the sales operations team exists. The mission of the sales ops team should be in alignment with the goals of the sales team as a whole.

Socialize this mission statement throughout the organization to ensure teams understand the role of sales operations.

Without goals, it’s impossible to know whether or not you’ve been successful. Be sure to set goals that are clear, specific, and based on data, rather than hunches. Sales ops goals should be challenging, yet achievable.

The sales ops strategy shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. Instead, it should be a collaborative effort with input from teams including sales leadership, sales enablement, and marketing. After all, each of these teams brings important insight into the sales process.

Once the sales ops strategy has been created, it’s important to maintain alignment with key teams. This ensures priorities are aligned and everyone is working towards the same goals.

Consider scheduling recurring meetings (for example, weekly) with representatives from each team. Representatives can share progress on initiatives and share challenges. This is an important way to ensure the sales ops strategy continues to meet the needs and goals of the sales organization.

As we’ve already covered, sales operations teams need to collaborate with the marketing team when developing the sales ops strategy. These teams must also maintain close alignment to develop an effective funnel structure.

Marketing teams can leverage the data collected by sales ops teams to understand better the quality of the leads generated by their efforts. Then, they can optimize their efforts accordingly.

In addition, tight alignment between marketing and sales ops teams helps maintain the quality of account data and lead management. High-quality data is key to an effective sales ops strategy.

A solid sales ops strategy can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales team. The right technology is an essential component of a sales ops strategy.

Sales ops teams are often charged with building and maintaining a tech stack that increases sales productivity. There are a number of different sales operations tools that may be part of the tech stack.

One key tool is the customer relationship management (CRM) platform. A CRM enables the sales team to more effectively manage their relationships with customers and prospects.

Another key tool is the revenue productivity platform. A revenue productivity platform like Mindtickle empowers revenue organizations to improve team performance with sales training, sales enablement, and call insights.

Other common sales ops technologies include:

  • Business intelligence platform
  • Marketing automation platform
  • Sales intelligence platform
  • Content management system
  • Performance management platform
  • Contract management platform

The right technology is key to sales ops success. However, more tools isn’t always better. The key is to find the right software for the needs and goals of your organization.

In addition, look for opportunities to streamline and consolidate your sales ops tech stack. Often, organizations purchase myriad tools – each of which addresses a single challenge. The result is an unnecessarily bloated tech stack. Research tells us the average B2B sales organization uses 10 tools – and plans to add more than four in the next year.

Instead, look for integrated solutions that address multiple areas. For example, Mindtickle’s revenue productivity solution incorporates training, content management, conversation intelligence, sales analytics and dashboards, and sales forecasting – all into a single, comprehensive platform.

Ongoing measurement is key. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know whether or not the sales operations team is achieving its goals.

Continuous measurement allows sales operations teams to understand where things are going well – and where there are opportunities to improve. Then, sales optimization teams can optimize their strategies and tactics accordingly to improve results.

 

In the next section, we’ll cover some of the key sales operations metrics teams should measure regularly.

What are the key metrics for sales operations to track for success?

It’s important to set clear metrics right from the start. But what should they include?

Of course, sales operations teams should track the performance of the sales team. However, they should also track sales team efficiency. In other words, how efficiently are sellers able to shepherd a deal from initial contact to close?

There’s not a “one-size-fits-all” set of metrics. Instead, these metrics vary from organization to organization. However, there are some common, core sales operations metrics tracked by most organizations. Here are a few.

The percentage of sales reps that hit their quota during a given time period. Sales operations teams can measure quota attainment across the entire sales organization, as well as quota attainment for certain teams, territories, or regions.

The percentage of deals that were won – as well as the portion that were lost – in a given time period.

The dollar value of deals closed, on average

How close a forecast was to what was actually achieved in a given period of time.

How long it takes sales reps to close deals.

How much of a rep’s time is actually spent on revenue-generating activities, as opposed to administrative tasks and meetings.

The number of meetings a seller has set up with prospects in relation to their prospecting activity.

 

It’s important to measure your chosen sales operations metrics on a regular basis. At the very minimum, these metrics should be tracked quarterly. Ideally, these metrics should be tracked more regularly so challenges can be identified early on – and then addressed accordingly.

Typically, sales operations teams own the systems where this key data lives. As such, sales operations can create user-friendly dashboards and reports that can easily be accessed. That way, teams can track performance regularly and adjust their strategies as needed – rather than waiting until the end of the quarter when it’s probably too late.

Improve sales productivity and streamline your tech stack with Mindtickle

The sales operations team plays an essential role in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the sales team. Sales ops ensures sellers have more time to sell – and managers have more time to coach their teams to improve performance.

The right technology is key to sales ops success. But adding more tools doesn’t necessarily lead to greater sales ops success.

It’s important to find the right tools for your sales organization. In addition, look for opportunities to streamline and consolidate your tech stack.

Today, some of the best sales ops teams depend on Mindtickle’s integrated platform to boost sales productivity and drive better outcomes. Mindtickle incorporates key functionality including sales enablement, conversation intelligence, content management, and coaching – all in a single, integrated platform. That means your sales teams have everything they need to be successful in the field – right in one spot.

See Mindtickle in Action

Ready to see how Mindtickle empowers sales ops teams to streamline their tech stack while empowering sales reps with the tools, content, and information they need for success in the field?

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The Ultimate Guide to Revenue Operations

Rahul Mathew on December 27, 2023

Too many organizations struggle with disjointed strategies and siloed departments across their sales, marketing, and customer success teams. 

And those same organizations are all working toward closing deals faster, launching targeted and effective marketing campaigns, and satisfying their customers. 

Revenue operations is often the missing link between go-to-market teams and a key driver of alignment and success. 

According to research from the Boston Consulting Group, companies that invest in revenue operations report a 10-20% increase in seller productivity. 

According to the Boston Consulting Group

Companies that invest in revenue operations report a 10-20% increase in seller productivity.
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Many teams, tasks, and processes are involved in generating revenue — and that’s why every company needs a solid revenue operations strategy.

Also called RevOps, this function unites different parts of a business to ensure that everyone and everything is pushing in the same direction. That direction, naturally, is wherever the revenue is.

Here’s the ultimate guide to RevOps strategies and how to leverage them.

What is revenue operations (RevOps)?

If you want a revenue operations definition, be prepared to find some differing data. Although RevOps is basically a process for driving revenue productivity by uniting marketing, sales and customer service teams, every business does it a little differently.

Fortunately, there’s no single “right” way to build a revenue operations model. It just has to check a few key boxes:

Align go-to-market teams

Improve data visibility

Streamline processes

Grow predictably

If your RevOps implementation does all these things, it can have significant benefits. In fact, with revenue operations and intelligence solutions at their fingertips, surveyed companies achieved:

  • 65% more accurate forecasts.
  • 59% improvement in win/loss rates.
  • 69% higher revenue growth.
  • 53% increase in net-dollar retention.

Need one more reason to consider a RevOps strategy? How about this one: 93% of surveyed companies are either already leveraging a revenue operations model or plan to by 2024.

Companies already leveraging a revenue operations model or plan to by 2024.
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What problems does a RevOps strategy solve?

RevOps implementation isn’t just about revenue enablement. No — this process can go much deeper to create stronger procedures, collaboration and visibility across departments.

Here are just a few problems solved by RevOps strategies:

What happens if your marketing, sales and customer teams never see eye-to-eye? You could miss certain revenue opportunities and make others far harder to reach. RevOps helps unite these teams by clarifying their relationships with one another and empowering them to play their parts more effectively. That doesn’t just boost morale; it also increases agility, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and more.

Disorganized or inefficient sales cycles can cause chaos across teams. With a RevOps strategy, you can streamline individual processes, see how they all fit together and identify their role in creating revenue. With this information, it’s easier to elevate vital tasks and eliminate redundancies, bottlenecks or other frustrations.

Inaccurate revenue intelligence can lead to flawed forecasting — which, in turn, creates misaligned teams, ineffective strategies, and wasted effort. One of the goals of a revenue operations model is to identify these gaps and address them with real-time data informed by multiple teams. That means you’ll have a more accurate view of opportunities and growth — a single source of truth.

When your teams don’t work well together and your approaches are jumbled, customers feel the impact. With the right RevOps best practices, you can streamline internal processes to ensure that every task, solution, and team is supporting the overall buyer experience. That boosts revenue and customer satisfaction.

When you aren’t focused exclusively on your audience, your GTM costs skyrocket as you scramble to decipher what works and what doesn’t. RevOps tools don’t just help you organize your approach — they also ensure you’re looking in all the right places when making decisions and planning GTM strategies.

What are the key metrics for revenue operations?

Like just about everything else in business, RevOps strategies need consistent tracking and analysis. That’s the only way to ensure your efforts are paying off and that you’ve chosen all the proper approaches for your needs.

As you build your own revenue operations definition, keep these key metrics in mind:

  • Customer acquisition cost: This is the cost of acquiring each customer. With this information, you can compare cost vs. revenue and pursue the most lucrative opportunities.
  • Sales cycle length: The more time it takes to close a deal, the longer your sales cycle length. RevOps strategies will generally help you reduce this number.
  • Deal win/loss rate: To find your win/loss ratio, take your wins and divide them by total sales opportunities. This helps you identify where problems may be occurring and what RevOps solution could help.
  • Sales forecasting: This metric goes far beyond any single department to help you see how much potential revenue you’re actually capturing.
  • CLV (customer lifetime value): CLV is a measurement of how much money a customer brings to your business throughout the relationship. You can use CLV to help identify the best sales opportunities and bolster your RevOps implementation.
  • Customer churn: If you have a high churn rate, that means lots of customers are leaving your business. RevOps strategies can help you catch these issues, determine where they’re coming from and put fitting solutions in place.
  • Annual recurring revenue (ARR): ARR is all about measuring the revenue you can count on over time, such as subscriptions or regular billing cycles. It’s helpful to compare this metric with others such as sales forecasting and customer acquisition cost.
  • Sales pipeline conversion rate: Find out how many leads are being converted and what parts of your sales pipeline are most important in this process.

Almost all revenue operations best practices require data from these areas. To make the most of this information, you’ll need RevOps software that can accurately capture data from multiple sources and present it to all relevant stakeholders. (Tip: Automatic data capture is key.)

How does revenue operations work and what are the roles of RevOps team members?

Although every revenue operations responsibility should fall to a specific team member, companies distribute these tasks differently. Various titles include:

RevOps Manager

Chief Revenue Officer

VP of Revenue Operations

Director of Revenue Cycle

Job descriptions for any revenue operations role typically include accountability, collaboration and a solid understanding of the revenue operations model. High-level employees are responsible for connecting processes across departments, interpreting key metrics, driving growth and supporting all the interconnected parts of the larger RevOps team.

The work is data-driven and collaborative, so RevOps leaders generally draw on experience in revenue-focused fields to empathetically respond to sales, marketing and customer success teams simultaneously.

Although the roles and responsibilities differ, the goal is always the same: to help the whole company drive revenue. That means anyone involved in RevOps implementation should have skills such as:

  • Strategic planning
  • Negotiation
  • Communication
  • Data management
  • Process optimization

How is RevOps different from sales operations and marketing operations?

Although part of a revenue operations solution is to bring sales and marketing together, RevOps is greater than — and much different from — the sum of its parts. Here’s a closer look:

Revenue operations vs. sales operations

Sales operations is, unsurprisingly, focused on sales. This is great news for your reps, who benefit from processes dedicated to their needs, challenges and success. However, sales operations is somewhat limited in this regard.

Revenue operations, on the other hand, tells the whole story of the customer journey. Instead of focusing on sales exclusively, RevOps looks at how sales operations connect to other revenue-driving parts of your business.

Revenue operations vs. marketing operations

Although marketing and sales are closely related, marketing operations is built around tasks exclusive to the former. Essentially, this is the marketing team’s chance to be the star of the show, emphasizing processes and interactions other teams may not have to worry about.

RevOps doesn’t replace marketing operations. It just unites this approach with sales operations and other parts of the business to create a more comprehensive view of revenue activity.

Revenue operations vs. customer success operations

Customer success operations is all about answering questions, addressing complaints and delivering top-notch service. Although these processes are highly influenced by marketing and sales, customer success operations is focused specifically on anything the service team is responsible for.

Just like in the other two examples, revenue operations takes these processes and weaves them into other revenue-driven operations. RevOps maintains service and support priorities but puts them in a larger, more comprehensive context to better understand and respond to the customer experience.

Your RevOps strategy

Simply put, RevOps is what happens when you look at all the other operations and see how they fit together, somewhat like assembling a puzzle. It creates something entirely new, but the original pieces are still there and continue to be important.

How Mindtickle helps you get started with revenue operations

RevOps may solve a lot of problems, but it has a lot of moving parts, too — from differing roles and responsibilities to a long list of important metrics. How do you ensure all these things come together to create a single revenue operations strategy?

The key is to use the right RevOps software — and that’s where Mindtickle comes in.

Salesforce - Revenue Intelligence

Although Mindtickle can be called a RevOps platform, it’s a whole lot more than that. Combining revenue intelligence, data capture, sales training, forecasting, and more, this software acts as your hub for anything and everything revenue-related. That means all your processes will happen in one place, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively and data to flow more naturally. You’ll have:

  • Conversation intelligence
  • Sales forecasting
  • Digital Sales Rooms
  • Sales content management
  • Coaching and training

 

Salesforce- Coaching

When every revenue operations responsibility, task, and solution exists under a single umbrella, it’s easier to ensure that customers get a cohesive, connected experience. That’s not just good news for your bottom line — it’ll make for happier customers, too.

Mindtickle in Action

See what Mindtickle can do for your sales enablement and revenue operations.

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This post was originally published in June 2023 and was updated in December 2023. 

What are Sales Goals and How to Set Smart Sales Goals for Your Sales Reps?

Rahul Mathew on December 6, 2023

Setting goals is important in all areas of life – both personally and professionally. The world of sales is no exception.

Sales goals help ensure your entire sales team is aligned. Each sales rep must understand the overall goals of the company – and the part they play in achieving those goals.

As a sales leader, it’s important to set goals that will motivate your sellers and ensure they know what’s expected of them. In theory, this seems easy enough. But in reality, setting effective goals (and then achieving them) can be challenging.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at why sales goals are important to sales teams, how to set effective ones, examples of common sales goals, and steps you can take to track and achieve them.

What are sales goals and why are they important for your sales teams?

According to the dictionary, a goal is “an aim or desired result.”

But what are sales goals?

They are clearly defined objectives set for individual sales reps and sales teams. Sales goals articulate what the sales rep or sales team is expected to achieve within a specific amount of time.

Individual rep vs. group sales goals

Some sales goals are created for a specific sales rep. Others are developed for a subgroup of the sales team. For example, an organization might have goals for reps in specific regions – or with specific titles. Finally, some goals are developed for the sales organization as a whole.

Long-term vs. short term sales goals

Sometimes, sales goals are long-term goals. For example, a sales team might have a goal to increase revenue in their region by 20% during the fiscal year. Other goals are short-term. For example, a sales development team might have a goal to increase cold calls by 50% this month.

What are SMART sales goals?

Setting a goal like “sell as much as possible” isn’t the best approach. Instead, the most successful sales organizations use the SMART methodology to develop goals.

The idea of SMART goals was first introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review. SMART is an acronym that guides individuals and teams in setting more effective goals. SMART goals are:

Generic goals like “close more deals” or “increase revenue” aren’t effective. Instead, goals must be specific, with details about how that goal will be achieved.

If you can’t measure something, there’s no way of knowing whether you were successful. Goals must have specific numbers attached to them.

Stretch goals are a great way to challenge reps. But goals must also be achievable.

Goals must be related to your company’s overall goals and strategy.

Goals must have a specific time attached to them. For example, close 50% more details by the end of Q2 2024.

Why are sales goals important?

Imagine you were going for a hike in the woods but had no idea where you were going and no map to guide you. Chances are, you’d lose your way at some point.

This is similar to what it’s like when sales reps don’t have sales goals.

Without goals, your sales teams don’t know what’s expected of them. They don’t know what they’re working towards – much less how to get there. In such a scenario, sellers are left to their own devices, and your chances of growing revenue are slim to none.

Creating goals is an important way to align your sales team and ensure they understand expectations. Clearly defined sales goals ensure sellers understand the overall objectives of the sales team – as well as the part they pay in achieving those objectives.

Sales goals examples

There’s no magic set of sales goals that will work for every single sales organization. Instead, it’s important to develop sales goals that make sense for your organization.

However, seeing some common, real-life examples of sales goals can be a great way to get the ideas flowing. Here are a few sales goals examples.

Generate more revenue

Reduce sales cycles

Achieve quota

Reduce churn rate

Reduce customer acquistion cost

Improve prospecting

Sales goal example #1: Generating more sales revenue

Increasing sales revenue is a top priority of any sales organization. As such, it makes sense to have a sales goal related to generating sales revenue. Because revenue is quantitative, it’s relatively easy to set a sales goal related to it.

Sales goal example #2: Reducing the sales cycle

A given deal includes several steps – from prospecting to closing the deal. Ideally, a seller would flow through these steps as quickly as possible. After all, the faster a deal goes through the sales cycle, the faster that revenue will hit the bottom line. In addition, when the deal closes, it’ll free up the rep’s time to focus on other opportunities.

  • An example of a sales goal related to reducing the sales cycle might be: Reduce time to close in Q2 by 10% by focusing on good-fit prospects and delivering personalized pitches to prospects that create urgency to act.
  • An example of a goal related to generating sales revenue might be: “Grow monthly recurring revenue by 25% in 2024 by improving cold calling tactics and increasing win rates.”

Sales goal example #3: Achieving quota

The more sales reps meet their sales quota, the more likely you are to reach your revenue growth goals. So it’s not surprising that sales quota achievement is a common sales goal.

  • An example of a sales quota achievement goal is: “80% of sellers in the Northeast region will achieve 80% of their sales quota in Q3.”

Sales goal example #4: Reducing churn rate

It’s more expensive to win a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. As such, sales organizations must aim for a high customer retention rate.

  • A sales goal example related to churn might be: “Reduce customer churn by 25% in the last two quarters of 2024 by improving client success hand-off and adopting a more proactive approach to customer success.”

Sales goal example #5: Reducing customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost – often referred to as CAC – is the amount of money spent to convert a lead to a customer. This cost includes several factors, including:

  • Marketing campaigns
  • Your employees’ time

The longer it takes to convert a lead to a customer, the higher the CAC. As such, it makes sense to create a sales goal related to reducing CAC. An example could be: “Decrease CAC by 10% this quarter.”

Sales goal example #6: Increase cold calls and improve prospecting

Cold calls aren’t anyone’s favorite part of sales. But they’re necessary to meet sales targets.

Many sales organizations set sales goals directly related to cold call quantity. For example, “make 100 cold calls this week.”

When it comes to cold calls, it’s about both quantity and quality. Of course, you want your sellers to be making a lot of calls. But you also want them to be connecting with qualified prospects.

Tips for setting sales goals

Now that you know some common sales goals, it’s time to set your own. But how? There are some tried-and-true steps to take to get started with setting sales goals.

Step 1: Determine the type of sales goal
Step 2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology
Step 3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable
Step 4: Consider incentives
Step 5: Clearly communicate your sales goals
Step 6: Measure success of your sales goals

Step #1: Determine the type of goal

Before developing a goal, you must first determine what type of goal it is. For example, is it a goal for the entire sales team? Or is it a goal for a specific portion of your sales team or even a specific seller?

Next, determine what category of goal it is. For example, is it a sales goal related to revenue? Or perhaps you are aiming to develop a sales goal related to deal size.

Some organizations opt to start with sales goal templates. Sales goal templates can be a great starting point that can be customized to fit the needs of your business.

Remember: any sales goal you create should be aligned with your overall business strategy and objectives.

Step #2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology

Vague goals aren’t effective. As an example, consider a sales goal of “increase sales revenue.” Sure, this goal provides a high-level overview of the objective. However, we don’t know how much the team is aiming to increase revenue – or what the deadline is for doing so.

A better approach is to write SMART goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

Make sure the SMART goals you set check every box on this list.

Step #3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable

You don’t want to set a goal so high that it’s impossible to achieve. That will only frustrate your sellers. What’s more, when these unrealistic sales goals aren’t achieved, it’ll damage morale.

But you also don’t want to set your sales KPIs too low. If your sales targets are too low, your team isn’t achieving its full potential.

Instead, it’s important to ensure your goals are challenging, yet achievable. Stretch goals are great, but they must be realistic, based on past sales data and sales enablement analytics.

Step #4: Consider incentives

Each member of your sales team should have a clear understanding of how they’re compensated based on individual and team performance. But for some sales goals, you may want to incorporate an additional incentive or reward.

Step #5: Clearly communicate your goals

Let’s say you spend time and effort developing individual and team goals. But then you don’t communicate those goals with the teams. If your sales reps don’t know their goals, how can they be expected to achieve them?

Be sure all sales reps know their individual and team goals. It’s also important to provide context for the goals. For example, a sales rep may scoff at a goal related to cold calling. However, if they understand the reason behind this goal (for example, increasing pipeline and closing more deals), they’ll be more motivated to achieve it.

Step #6: Measure progress toward your sales goals

When it comes to goals, ongoing measurement is key. Otherwise, you have no insight into whether you’re on track to achieve those sales goals.

Be sure you can easily track progress on individual and team levels. Of course, sales managers and leaders should have easy access to this information. However, it’s also important that each sales rep has insight into their progress.

Tracking and achieving your sales goals

Now that you’ve set your sales goals, it’s time to work toward achieving them. But how can you improve your chances of achieving your sales targets? Here are a few tips that can help.

Continuously measure progress toward sales goals

Let’s say you set a sales goal to increase each rep’s percentage of closed deals by the end of the quarter. But you don’t measure their progress until the last day of the quarter. If your reps fall short, there’s not much you can do at that point.

Don’t wait until the end of the goal’s specified time period to measure results. Instead, measure progress toward your sales goals on an ongoing basis. That way, you can identify challenges early on and work to correct them. Once you’ve overcome those challenges, you’ll be better equipped to achieve your sales goals.

Provide visibility into progress

Sales leadership should easily be able to access data, sales dashboards, and reports to see how their teams are progressing toward their goals. However, it’s also important to provide sales reps with visibility into progress. Seeing where they’re at in terms of achieving their sales goals can motivate them to work harder to achieve them.

Define what it takes for a sales rep to be successful

At every sales organization, there is a set of skills and competencies necessary for success. It’s important to document those competencies in an ideal rep profile (IRP). Then, measure each rep against that IRP to determine where there are gaps that need to be addressed.

Deliver training and enablement to improve key sales skills

Imagine it’s halfway through the quarter. You have a sales rep that looks like they’re going to miss their sales quota – yet again. But they’re not able to articulate what’s going wrong.

By leveraging conversation intelligence, you notice the rep is faced with a lot of objections on sales calls – and they’re having trouble overcoming those objections. There’s no doubt this is standing in the way of them achieving their sales KPIs.

Sales managers can use these insights to provide additional sales enablement and practice opportunities for this rep. For example, they assign the rep some bite-sized learning content or ask that they complete and submit some role-plays for review. In addition, the sales manager can deliver individualized coaching to help the seller boost their objection-handling skills, which will increase their likelihood of meeting their sales goals.

Recognize success toward sales goals

When your sales reps achieve their sales goals, be sure to recognize their achievement. Of course, bonuses and incentives are a great way to motivate your team. But verbal recognition can be effective, too. Remember: a little recognition can go a long way in motivating your team to continue to aim for success.

Crush your goals with Mindtickle

Setting sales goals is a foundational way to align your sales team and improve sales performance. It’s important to take the time to establish thoughtful, data-driven sales goals – and then ensure every seller has what it takes to achieve those goals.

Today, some of the best sales organizations depend on Mindtickle to crush their sales KPIs.

Salesforce - Revenue Intelligence

Mindtickle equips sales leaders with the data they need to develop and track challenging, yet realistic sales goals. In addition, sales reps can access the training, enablement, and content they need for sales success – all in one revenue intelligence platform. What’s more, Mindtickle incorporates conversational intelligence which enables sales managers to understand what’s happening in the field so they can provide coaching to improve outcomes.

Meet and Beat Your Sales Goals

Ready to see firsthand how Mindtickle can empower your entire sales team to crush its sales goals?

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4 Objectives of Effective Sales Coaching

Rahul Mathew on October 12, 2023

B2B customers only spend 17 percent of their interactions with a salesperson. This means that every second of an interaction counts. Effective sales coaching can empower sales reps with the resources and skills they need to leave a lasting impression.

Amount of time B2B buyers spend with sellers
0%

 

Understanding the objectives of sales coaching and how to avoid the most common pitfalls won’t only strengthen your sales coaches’ influence — it will also improve the end performance of your sales reps..

What is sales coaching?

Sales coaching is the ongoing, one-on-one mentorship of each rep on a sales team. It is a conversation between the rep and a coach, where the rep does most of the talking while the coach listens, observes, and offers feedback.

Coaching is different from onboarding, where new information is presented to many reps at one time. It’s also unique from training, which can happen in many different forms, including virtual training and micro-learning.

Here are a few characteristics of coaching that make it different from training:

While a training event provides a baseline education or a foundation, coaching builds on this foundation with continual sessions. Many successful sales organizations make coaching a weekly practice, and some even establish daily coaching routines.

Unlike a training session that involves the whole sales team, each coaching session is tailored to the needs of an individual rep. The coach knows the rep, as well as their strengths, challenges, and areas needing improvement.

While training is designed to impart new information about products, customers, strategies, competitors, etc., coaching is behavior-based. It corrects a rep’s unfavorable behaviors and habits while reinforcing effective ones. In fact, quota attainment increases by 7% when coaches focus on sales rep behavior.

 

Why does effective sales coaching matter?

Having a strong coaching relationship is important to gain employee trust and work together to develop sales skills. But the secret sauce to coaching is making sure to build a program and approach where reps are coached the right way.

Apart from building an environment where growth is supported, sales coaching can also:

  • Optimize sales training information and skills to be incorporated into day-to-day practices.
  • Show sales reps you care about their personal development and growth in their role.
  • Create personalized KPIs and development plans that are tracked with employees.
  • Share, in a safe environment, valuable feedback for improvement.
  • Teach sales reps to leverage sales enablement tools to track and monitor their skill development progress.

 

The 4 key objectives of sales coaching

Research from our 2022 State of Sales Readiness found that 85% of reps report being coached on closing open deals but only 24% report being coached on long-term skills. The best sales managers make it a priority to deliver a mix of opportunity, skills, and targeted coaching to truly drive results.

Here’s how to build a coaching approach that focuses on developing long-term skills rather than just focusing on short-term deal remediation.

1. Ensure reps refine and improve their sales skills

Most sales reps forget 70% of their sales training, with 87% of sales reps forgetting that 70% within the first month of training. Sales coaching helps with this by reinforcing training concepts and applying them to the unique needs of each rep.

Coaching starts with analytics that pinpoint each rep’s strengths and weaknesses. For new hires, the sales coach might target foundational behaviors and best practices like empathetic listening and objection handling. Over time, the coach’s focus might transition to negotiation skills and effectively presenting value.

As the rep’s career progresses, they’ll flourish into a highly skilled advisor that buyers depend on.

2. Build confidence and encourage skill development

Many sales leaders incorrectly assume that coaching creates discouragement and a lack of confidence. Such leaders often come from organizations that only coach their reps after they’ve lost a deal. In that circumstance, coaching is viewed as a negative, as it is often read as a type of punishment.

Proper coaching, however, is an integral part of every sales rep’s daily or weekly routine. Effective coaches build confidence by praising their reps’ daily wins, along with helping them overcome their weaknesses.

3. Provide consistent practices and expectations across the sales team

It’s common for sales organizations to lack standard best practices for their teams to anchor themselves to. Without a standard set of guidelines and repeatable steps to take, it’s almost impossible to help reps correct their courses of action.

Successful sales organizations use onboarding sessions to teach reps about the organization’s best practices, and they reinforce these standards with coaching. These one-on-one sessions are a great opportunity to identify and correct behavior that doesn’t fit with the organization’s vision or standard process.

4. Increase revenue

Organizations that provide effective sales coaching enjoy 16.7% higher annual revenue growth than those that don’t. That’s why it’s important for sales leaders to resist the temptation to “be the hero” and take the reins of a lagging deal to score the big win. By taking over, sales leaders deprive their teams of the ability to refine their skills and improve.

Sales organizations that establish coaches rather than “heroes” are able to turn every member of their salesforce into competent deal closers. It’s more profitable to have 100 highly skilled closers than a handful of heroes.

The challenges of sales coaching

Most sales leaders understand the importance of coaching but struggle to find the time and support to implement an effective coaching program.

Here are the four most common challenges in sales coaching:

Some sales reps don’t feel they need sales coaching

Many reps want training and coaching because they understand that it boosts their career development. Others, particularly those who consistently hit their sales quota, are hesitant.

Reluctance to sales coaching can be solved by instituting a culture of coaching where everyone — including the coaches themselves — is mentored and coached.

Sales coaches and managers can lead by example by continuing to receive coaching and working to develop their own skills. It’s good practice to strike a balance between formal and informal coaching, as this will let your sales reps know they’re not being graded and evaluated but can use the coaching session as a tool for improvement. It’s especially important early in the sales coaching process — when reps are hesitant — to reinforce a culture of continuous improvement.

Leaders are unsure how to measure success

Many sales leaders want to make a business case for establishing a coaching process at their organization, but they have no idea how to measure success or ROI. Fortunately, the right sales coaching platform provides all the analytics capabilities and metrics needed for this

With the right sales enablement tool, you can set goals for the entire team as well as individual reps.

When you understand an individual rep’s strengths and weaknesses, you can set performance goals and coach toward these. Whether it’s contract value, win rate, time to productivity, or another sales KPI, you can track the individual’s performance on a given metric over time to evaluate the effectiveness of your coaching.

Teams don’t want to put forth the time and resources required

Time and resources are common challenges for organizations looking to expand their sales coaching. It takes time from both the sales rep who is being coached and the leader doing the coaching. It may involve implementing and learning new technology, adjusting schedules, and even changing the department’s culture.

This investment seems daunting, but the long-term value far outweighs the initial investment of time and effort. Organizations that spend time reinforcing skills and use coaching to reach set goals can raise sales rep productivity by 25% in as little as 18 months.

It’s a good idea to include a sales enablement platform that empowers both sales reps and coaches with insights, centralized content, and courses to help save time and track improvement. This shows sales reps insights into their improvement and encourages continuous development.

 

Lack of understanding of what makes a strong sales coaching program

What makes a good sales rep is often different from what makes a good sales coach. Unfortunately, many organizations promote high-performing reps without investing in training and ongoing development for the sales coach in their new role.

To create an effective coaching plan, it’s important to implement coach training in your organization. Have coaches complete their training before they begin coaching salespeople. And use one-on-one mentoring, virtual training, and other tools to ensure your coaches are well-equipped to develop sales skills in other reps.

The above challenges are temporary ones, and they are usually resolved as the coaching system progresses. Once all reps see the career advantages of coaching, and once top leadership understands the competitive benefits, you can encourage the entire department to embrace continuous development.

4 tips for measuring sales coaching effectiveness

Measuring the impact of sales coaching is important to help understand the ROI of time and other resources invested in coaching sales reps.

However, calculating sales coaching impact is a bit more tricky.

But don’t worry — we’ve got four simple tips that’ll help you measure your sales coaching effectiveness.

1. Keep track of sales performance

Forty-seven percent of companies look at the performance of the overall team to gauge the success of sales coaching. This will help you understand how behavioral change and skill development translate to higher win rates and improved performance.

To measure the impact of sales coaching, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the following sales metrics:

  • Sales cycle length
  • Quota attainment
  • Conversion by deal stage
  • Average revenue generation

Keep track of the skills developed through coaching sessions to see the influence they have on quota attainment. This will help you understand where your training has been the most useful and what skills need a little more improvement.

2. Assess sales reps’ skill development

With sales coaching, the goal is to identify weak sales traits and skills and then support sellers to grow their skills and knowledge.

Part of calculating the impact of sales coaching is to see how learned skills pass from theory into practice. You’ll want to ensure sales reps use their new skills in all their interactions and note the impact it has on closing rates.

Keep an eye on the following measurements to calculate the impact sales coaching has on sales reps’ skills:

  • Number of sales skills improved
  • Behavioral changes around selling approaches
  • Amount of new skills learned

 

You can use skill tests and quizzes to measure skill improvement. And sales enablement platforms can help automatically keep track of interactions and score each seller on their skill level.

3. Create anonymous surveys and feedback polls

Employee turnover is expensive, with the average cost of replacing a sales hire being 2.1-2.5 times their salary.

However, sales coaching and training can increase employee engagement by 10% and improve the overall employee experience. In fact, organizations that focus on personalized development increase retention rate by 34% on average.

Keep track of employee engagement through surveys and polls to understand the correlation between sales coaching and employee engagement.

Some good indicators to keep an eye on are:

  • Average employee engagement scores
  • Average employee turnover
  • Average employee satisfaction

Sales coaches are also at the front line to hear sales reps’ concerns and worries. This puts them in a position to proactively improve their employee experience and come up with solutions with the reps being coached.

Not only does this help with sales rep engagement, but it empowers employees to succeed in their roles while improving company profitability.

A sales coaching platform empowers your whole team

To coach effectively, you need a combination of data insights, content resources, and skill assessments. This requires content and course preparation and tracking abilities to measure sales reps’ improvement. This can be challenging if you don’t have a way to store and connect all the skills and sellers’ insights.

However, it doesn’t have to be.

A sales enablement platform like Mindtickle includes robust sales coaching features for your team to build on.

Moreover, Mindtickle offers bespoke competency maps to identify areas for coaching, micro-learning modules, insights to track improvement, and an ideal rep profile to inspire sales reps.

Sales Coaching in Mindtickle

Request a demo to learn how Mindtickle can help you develop and implement effective sales coaching in your own organization.

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This post was originally published in January 2020, updated in December 2022, and again in October 2023. 

4 Sales Productivity Metrics to Monitor Team Performance

Rahul Mathew on October 3, 2023

From selling skills and customer satisfaction to sales and revenue, there are plenty of sales activity metrics to keep you busy. But which are actually accurately measuring sales productivity and effectively monitoring your team’s performance?

Here’s how to measure key sales performance metrics (and how to avoid common mistakes).

What are sales productivity metrics?

Sales productivity metrics are data points you use to track your team’s successes and impact on revenue. Depending on your organization and industry, different metrics like monthly revenue, number of employees, win rates, time-to-first-deal, etc. might be part of the equation.

Types of sales productivity metrics

No matter the sales org or industry, there are two basic kinds of sales productivity metrics: leading and lagging.

Leading indicators, such as customer satisfaction, help predict future performance and sales.

Lagging indicators, such as revenue numbers, help explain what happened in the past.

 

Naturally, you need a good mix of leading and lagging indicators to properly measure sales rep productivity.

Choosing key sales performance metrics

Key sales performance metrics look a little different for each company. You want to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) and revenue outcomes, sure — but you also need data on how your unique processes and workflows are functioning. The trick is to choose metrics that create insight into four things:

What your reps did
How they did it
Why they did it
What were the results

 

With this information, you won’t just be able to monitor performance — you’ll be able to proactively improve it (and see those results reflected in real numbers).

4 essential sales productivity metrics to monitor

Ready to choose the sales productivity metrics you’ll keep an eye on? Don’t forget to include these essential benchmarks on your list:

#1: Average revenue

It makes sense that revenue is the primary measurement for sales productivity.  Average revenue is a particularly helpful metric because it can be broken down in so many ways. Here are just a few examples:

How much money does the average customer bring to your business? What’s the difference between current and new customers in terms of revenue?

How much is your product or service worth? Do you have a bestseller? Are certain offerings lagging while others make incredible revenue?

Which sales reps bring in the most money?

 

#2: Market penetration

If you want to know how great your sales reps are at getting products and services in the right hands, one place to start is market penetration. This metric measures how much of the available market you “own” through your offerings.

But what does that look like on paper? Check out this market penetration formula:

(Number of Customers / Target Market Size) x 100 = Market Penetration Rate

The higher your market penetration, the better your sales reps are doing. They might even have an easier time making sales if your brand’s reputation and offerings are already well-known.

#3: Retention rate

Sales rep productivity metrics aren’t just about the sales themselves. These numbers also reflect vital elements of the customer experience and, in turn, how many future sales can be created by a good initial sale. That’s why customer retention rate is another key metric to track.

Here’s how to determine retention rates:

  1. Choose a time frame.
  2. Find the number of customers at the start of that time frame. (Call this “S.”)
  3. Find the number of customers at the end of that time frame. (Call this “E.”)
  4. Perform this calculation — E – S — to find the number of new customers. (Call this “N.”)
  5. Plug your numbers into this formula: [(E-N)/S] x 100. This is your customer retention rate.

#4: Sales rep habits

Which sales reps are making the most calls? Which are taking the most notes, sending the most emails, and pushing the most products or services per sale?

These habits might not tell a full story on their own — but compare them to sales data and you’re sure to find relevant patterns. For example, maybe a high number of notes correlates to a high number of sales because reps are better able to build real relationships when they keep track of customer information.

Whatever your research uncovers, be sure to track these sales rep productivity metrics regularly to monitor progress, intervene when necessary, and celebrate big wins.

 

How can monitoring sales productivity metrics increase sales performance?

Your first steps are to decide which key sales performance metrics to track, how often to gather data, and what you’ll do with this information. That’s when you’ll start seeing results.

Here’s a simplified look at how it works:

  1. You notice an issue. For example, say your sales productivity is slipping and you have a low average revenue per customer.
  2. You compare other metrics. You need to compare all your data points to see the full story. If n this way, you’ll uncover patterns — for example, maybe sales reps are pushing products or services that don’t make as much money.
  3. You implement targeted solutions. Now that you’ve seen the patterns, you can put effective tools, training, or processes into place. In this case, you might train reps to offer the right products or services at the right times — not just to increase revenue, but to boost retention, too.
  4. You track changes. Keep an eye on the same metrics you tracked before. If you see significant changes, your tactics are working; if not, it’s back to the drawing board.

The basis of this process is simple: Monitoring sales productivity metrics gives you the insight you need to identify gaps and fill them with the best possible solutions. Without this information, you’d be left guessing where your sales reps are struggling, what works and what doesn’t, whether your “fixes” actually fixed anything, and more.

3 mistakes to avoid while tracking sales productivity metrics

Tracking key sales performance metrics isn’t always easy. Here are a few mistakes to avoid (and how to do better):

Tracking the wrong things
Changing your tracking process
Failing to act

 

#1: Tracking the wrong things

Not every metric is equally helpful. It’s up to you to make sure you find the numbers that matter — and the best ways to track them. If you get caught up in the wrong metrics, you could end up with a skewed view of sales rep productivity, revenue, and more.

#2: Changing your tracking processes

Say you have a process for tracking a certain metric, and then you abruptly change course. The numbers gathered before the change aren’t comparable to those gathered after — which means you’ve wasted time and effort. When it comes to tracking key performance metrics, make sure to stay consistent in your processes, schedules, and more.

#3: Failing to act

Key sales performance metrics are just information. If you don’t use that information to make decisions and implement changes based on what you learned, you won’t get value from your data. That’s why it’s important to have a plan of action — because it’s the best way to turn metrics into actionable insights.

Conclusion

Wondering how to measure sales rep productivity when there are so many metrics to consider, numbers to juggle, and mistakes to avoid? The key is to have a good foundation — and that all starts with a single revenue productivity platform. When performance and the processes that track it are in the same place, it’s much easier to create a clear, streamlined story of your sales successes.

Get the most out of every sales rep

Ready to find out how a single solution can help you track and improve sales rep performance? 

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

How 10 of the Best Conversation Intelligence Software Solutions Stack Up

Rahul Mathew on September 12, 2023

When sales teams are looking at conversation intelligence tools, it’s like shopping for the latest tech gadget—you want to make sure it does what you need it to.

But if you pick the wrong one, you’ve just shelled out a ton of money for something that doesn’t do what you need.

Evaluating a conversation intelligence tool is easier when you know what’s out there and the strengths and deficits of each. In this blog post, we’ll give you the rundown on what a conversation tool is, how it works, its benefits, and the top 10 tools on the market right now.

What is conversation intelligence?

Conversation intelligence, also known as Call AI, is technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to review sales conversations and compile data-driven insights for improved sales rep performance.

How does conversation intelligence work?

Conversation intelligence software automatically records, transcribes, and analyzes sales calls, providing direct visibility into what reps are saying and doing on calls every day. It surfaces the insights revenue leaders need to make sure their reps follow best practices, saying the right things in the right moments to increase win rates and close deals more efficiently.

What are the benefits of conversation intelligence?

Here are a few of the benefits the best conversation intelligence software solutions deliver:

Immerse them in the ways your best-performing reps approach discovery and handle objections.

Better understand the specific mix of sales training, coaching, and tools each individual rep needs to succeed.

See which enablement talk tracks, content, and training best practices are being used in the field — and which ones lead to closed-won deals.

Use real-world buyer interactions to personalize coaching to each rep.

Address the challenges that are blocking reps from progressing deals and improve win rates on complex deals.

Build deeper understanding of your ideal customer’s needs and drive go-to-market strategies, sales methodologies, and even product roadmaps.

Compare the best conversation intelligence software solutions

1. Mindtickle

Mindtickle delivers the only single, integrated platform to build and implement an effective sales readiness strategy. Revenue leaders rely on the conversation intelligence functionality in the platform to surface insights that help their teams increase knowledge, internalize ideal sales behaviors, and quickly adapt to change. Mindtickle also offers revenue intelligence technology to provide deal and account health scores after analyzing all of the calls, emails, and meetings that took place. Then it serves reps up with content to send to customers and trainings that will help them win more deals.

Feature highlights

Get everything sales reps and leaders need to be successful, all in one place. Mindtickle’s Call AI is built into a system of record that delivers customer insights, training, onboarding, and content all in one place. It’s one data model and one security model for all.

Automatically transcribe and analyze every sales conversation and unlock valuable insights that let you pinpoint and replicate winning rep behaviors.

Use data from real-world buyer interactions to inform more relevant and effective sales coaching. Drive meaningful behavior change through personalized, adaptive experiences.

Unlock deal and account health scores, including risk analytics, to guide reps on how to win more deals. Suggest relevant content and training based on a rep’s in-field performance.

 

Worth noting: G2’s audience of software users ranked Mindtickle #2 on the “Top 50 Best Enterprise Software Products” and #5 on the “Top 50 Sales Software Products” list for 2022.

Mindtickle’s revenue intelligence product is provided through a deep technical integration with BoostUp.ai.

2. Allego

Allego is an all-in-one, rep-centric platform that ensures sellers have the skills, knowledge, and content they need to optimize team success in a virtual world. Built-in functionality allows teams to analyze sales calls, demos, and meetings, identifying key moments to drive the best future outcomes.

Feature highlights

Transcribe and analyze conversations to help teams find key moments that provide a holistic view of what’s working and what’s not.

Learn how buyers respond to messaging and interact with content at each pipeline stage to accelerate future deals.

See how reps are handling calls and provide just-in-time learning or coaching based on the insights.

3. Chorus.ai

Chorus.ai transcribes and analyzes sales meetings in real time so revenue teams can identify winning behaviors and replicate them across teams, drive adoption of process best practices, and upskill teams at scale.

Feature highlights

Capture and analyze all customer meetings, calls, and emails in one place.

Surface which competitors are coming up in conversations, plus see common themes and questions on the minds of customers and prospects.

Give new reps access to a curated library of best calls with automatic recommendations on coachable moments. Smart Playlists automatically add new calls when they meet predefined criteria.

4. Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform that offers sales execution, conversation intelligence, and opportunity management. Conversations is the AI-based call and meeting analysis product within the platform.

Feature highlights

Create an exact record for every call to understand what was said and who said it.

Help sales managers identify trends, understand where buyers lean in, and prioritize where sellers should best spend their time.

Build custom playlists featuring clips from the best and worst calls to help with coaching, onboarding, and ongoing skill development.

5. Gong

Gong autonomously captures frontline conversations to help revenue teams better understand deals, teams, and markets.

Feature highlights

Gather insights from calls, emails, in-person interactions, and CRM to show revenue leaders which deals are on track to close and which need course correction to continue moving forward.

Hear directly what buyers are saying and understand what a strong sales conversation looks like for your business.

 

Turn data-based guidance into coachable moments and share top-performers’ playbooks across the board to level up the performance of your entire team.

6. Observe.AI

Observe.ai transcribes call center agent conversations and analyzes them to surface insights that improve customer experience, drive revenue growth, boost operational efficiency, and mitigate compliance risk.

Feature highlights

Analyze conversation transcripts and get search results within seconds to help uncover trends and market needs, assess offerings, and expand your lens on your customer experience.

Organize and categorize conversations to better identify, track, and act on the moments that are most meaningful to your customer experience.

Get more comprehensive insights with recommended keyword and phrase variations that dig into the nuances of customer-agent communication.

7. Outreach

Outreach helps revenue organizations automate sales engagement and act on revenue intelligence to improve their efficiency, predictability, and growth.

Feature highlights

Use Natural Language Processing to understand the context of sales conversations. Track key moments in every conversation and prompt reps to self-correct when they’re doing more talking than listening.

Search keywords in transcripts, notes, or content cards to find relevant recordings and moments that give you visibility into your prospects’ pain points and requirements.

Monitor deals from one dashboard that shows the status of all deals and provides access to individual plans.

 

8. Wingman

Wingman is an actionable platform that unlocks insights from every sales interaction. Record calls, review deals, scale coaching, and build a repeatable sales machine.

Feature highlights

Get calls transcribed, analyzed, and organized into a searchable sales call library you can use for coaching, onboarding, and product intelligence.

Receive alerts that help you identify deals that need immediate attention.

Share playlists of winning sales tactics with your entire team to accelerate onboarding, promote peer learning, and improve internal team alignment.

9. Revenue.io

Revenue.io is a RevOps platform for conversation guidance, sales engagement, and live call insights and analytics. The Conversation AI product within the platform automatically surfaces the moments and conversations that are ripe for coaching.

Feature highlights

Get notified when a rep needs guidance or asks for help for easy identification of coaching moments.

Annotate and organize calls into libraries around key themes to simplify finding moments that matter for team onboarding and long-term support.

Correlate sales behavior with opportunities, revenue, and any other sales outcome that matters to the business.

10. Jiminny

Jiminny records, transcribes, and analyzes your sales team’s successes and learnings so your team is empowered to collaborate, coach, and improve revenue effortlessly.

Feature highlights

Get new hires up to speed in a third of the usual onboarding time. Use conversation playlists compiled by your more experienced sales talent to educate reps.

Capture key and shareable moments of calls then send them via email, links or MS Teams and Slack. AI-generated call summaries turn call transcripts into bullet-point lists of key conversation points.

Set up playbooks tailored by team, CRM activity, and conversation. Live Coaching adds real-time chat and scores to live conversations to refine technique on the fly.

Remember: Conversation intelligence is a means to an end

Conversation intelligence tools give revenue leaders the insights needed to help drive the right behaviors in the reps on the front lines of business every day.

With so many options to choose from, it’s important to consider a frictionless way to meaningfully impact rep readiness. The real power of conversation intelligence comes when the technology is plugged into a larger system of record that makes it push-button easy to help reps win more deals. To do that, you need to recommend relevant content, training, templates, and checklists once the insights are surfaced to not only provide value to your reps, but to drive real behavior change in the field.

Sales reps are busy and have a single-minded focus on making quota. Ease of use is key to the adoption of any technology you introduce to their workflow. At the end of the day, the best conversation intelligence software solution for your business is the one that your reps will actually use.

See Conversation Intelligence in Mindtickle

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

The 5 Core Pillars of Sales Enablement in Financial Services

Rahul Mathew on July 31, 2023

In the highly competitive financial services industry, effective sales training is a game-changer.

Sales reps are crucial in promoting and selling financial products and services to a diverse customer base. To achieve success in this field, a well-trained salesforce that can communicate the value and benefits of the products they represent is essential.

Let’s consider some stats.

36%

Percentage of time spent actively selling

8%

Increase in win rates with coaching investments

Companies that don’t prioritize sales enablement see their reps spend just 36% of their time actively selling or even less. The average rep at these organizations spends more than nine hours each week searching for and customizing content alone. Conversely, companies that invest in coaching programs see an 8% increase in win rates.

The revenue and risk reduction impact of implementing best-in-class training is enormous for the average financial services organization.

In this blog post, we’ll outline the unique challenges faced in financial services sales training and provides practical solutions to excel in this critical area.

What we’ll cover:

  • Unique training challenges financial services companies face
  • Top use cases including
    Onboarding and ramping new reps fast
  • Enabling reps on new products & regulatory requirements quickly
  • Scaling role-plays to practice before reps are in the office
    Providing data-driven micro-coaching
  • Improving rep coverage with data-driven insights
  • DOs and DON’Ts of selecting a technology partner

Unique training challenges financial services companies face

In recent years, the financial services industry has been significantly disrupted by the shift from in-person to online and digital training programs. As fewer than 20% of financial services employees look to be in the office more than three days a week, it’s increasingly difficult for employees to keep up with new regulatory changes and technologies.

Some of the top challenges financial services enablement teams face include:

 

Traditional sales managers find it difficult to gain visibility into the daily activities of their account managers and sales representatives in the field. This lack of insight makes it challenging to provide timely feedback, identify coaching opportunities, and assess the effectiveness of sales strategies.

The financial services industry offers a wide range of products, each with its unique features and benefits. Onboarding and ramping up new sales representatives quickly and effectively, ensuring they have a comprehensive understanding of the product portfolio, can be a significant challenge.

he COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced the amount of face-to-face time sales representatives have with prospects and clients. This shift to virtual interactions requires sales training programs to adapt and equip representatives with the skills needed to engage effectively in a digital environment.

The financial services industry is subject to strict regulatory guidelines. Sales representatives must be trained to ensure they adhere to these requirements in their interactions with prospects and clients. With compliance requirements changing regularly, financial services companies must ensure their field team has the most up-to-date versions of collateral.

 

5 pillars to excel in financial services sales training

In this section, we will delve into the key strategies that enable financial services companies to excel in sales training and empower their reps to thrive in this highly competitive industry.

  • Utilize technology-driven training solutions such as e-learning platforms and virtual training sessions to provide comprehensive information on products, services, compliance, and selling techniques.
  • Incorporate interactive modules and quizzes to assess knowledge retention and ensure new reps are well-prepared to engage with buyers and clients.
  • Utilize online training modules, just-in-time content, and virtual workshops to disseminate information on new products and regulatory requirements quickly.
  • Have a centralized and searchable platform for training and enablement, ensuring reps have access to up-to-date information anytime, anywhere.
  • Use AI-reviewed role-play exercises to enhance communication skills and refine product pitches.
  • Allow reps to practice presentations, handle objections, and refine selling techniques remotely, ensuring they gain experience and confidence before engaging in the field.
  • Utilize sales training platforms to access data on reps’ activities, behaviors, and in-field performance.
  • Leverage new technologies like revenue and conversation intelligence to provide targeted, data-driven coaching to reps.
  • Gather data on sales representatives’ activities, call frequency, territory coverage, and buyer engagement levels to make data-driven decisions.
  • Integrate sales training platforms with CRM to analyze the effectiveness of training programs in driving business results.

 

DOs and DON’Ts of selecting a financial services enablement provider

Now let’s dig into the essential dos and don’ts of selecting a sales enablement provider for your financial services organization. Making the right choice when it comes to partnering with a sales training provider can significantly impact the success of your sales team and overall business performance.

DOs

  • Define your requirements and the capabilities and resources you need.
  • Evaluate the provider’s financial services experience through case studies, references, and reviews.
  • Assess the provider’s technology for user-friendliness and integration capabilities.
  • Consider the quality and delivery of training and support.

DON’Ts

  • Choose a provider solely based on price.
  • Overlook the importance of user experience in the training platform.
  • Neglect to evaluate the provider’s ability to customize the platform to your organization’s unique needs.
  • Fail to consider the provider’s customer support and training resources.

What’s next for your org?

Implementing these five pillars will enable your organization to drive revenue productivity and achieve sales training excellence in the financial services industry.

Ready to learn more about how Mindtickle can help your organization? Set up time with our team to learn more about how financial services organizations can stand up sales enablement programs that drive more productivity and revenue.

 

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Set up time with the Mindtickle team to talk through how helps other financials services orgs stand up their enablement programs. 

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Video: Becoming a Great Sales Storyteller

Rahul Mathew on June 29, 2023

 

Episode summary

In this episode, Hannah and Tony delve into the importance of being both a skilled salesperson and a captivating storyteller. They have a conversation with Nick Capozzi, the Head of Storytelling at Demostack, who is an expert in creating compelling video content that enhances sales and strengthens a brand’s narrative.

Nick’s background in sales, starting from his time on cruise ships, gives him a profound understanding of the power of storytelling and the essential elements of exceptional content. He shares intriguing anecdotes about his career journey and reveals some of his well-guarded secrets for using storytelling as an effective sales tool. Additionally, Nick provides valuable insights on crafting a demo that could rival an Oscar-worthy performance. If you’re eager to elevate your brand storytelling, you definitely shouldn’t miss out on this episode.

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

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How Fastmarkets Won Over Sellers with Mindtickle

Rahul Mathew on June 27, 2023

 

Episode summary

In this video, Fastmarkets’ Anusha Purkins, Head of Sales Enablement, talks about how they’re using Mindtickle to roll out its first-ever certified sales enablement program. One of the main goals was to standardize the onboarding process and improve the efficiency of the go-to-market approach. They also aimed to provide sales managers with effective coaching tools to drive sales performance.

Mindtickle’s most valuable products included a digitized competency framework that allows salespeople to self-review and identify areas for development. The platform also incorporates a learning management system (LMS) for building and assigning coaching programs. Another crucial aspect is the call AI feature, which initially faced skepticism from salespeople but eventually proved valuable for self-assessment and immediate application of learnings. The speaker highlights the positive impact of Mindtickle, such as sharing best practices, improving average order value, and aligning messaging with marketing efforts. The implementation of Mindtickle contributed to a significant improvement in the company’s internal EPS score for sales.

Key highlights

  • Fastmarkets built and digitized its competency framework using Mindtickle which means they’re able to identify key development areas that managers can coach on.
  • Rolled out first-ever certified sales enablement program. All sellers now use a consistent sales methodology.
  • Fastmarkets now shares best pratices across teams so they’re able to ramp reps faster and shrink the learning curve for new sellers.
  • Starting to leverage Mindtickle’s Call AI, allowing sellers to self-assess immediately and then apply those learnings and those corrections in those next calls immediately.

Transcription

We’re essentially leveraging my Mindtickle for a number of initiatives. One was to try and standardize our onboarding process to make our go-to-market approach much more efficient. But also give our sales managers the right tools to coach effectively, and really move the needle with their sales reps where we can see value from that.

The most valuable products have been in helping us build our competency framework that’s now been digitized. It allows our salespeople to go online self-review, as long as we as long as we’re the managers as well. And that helps identify key development areas that managers can coach and can focus on.

We’re also starting to leverage, of course, the LMS, in terms of building those programs. It can be prescriptive that way. So once we’ve identified the areas to coach, we can assign the right coaching programs, and make sure that they are interactive, we’re using various modalities to do that. And then the final piece around that is the call AI. So that’s been instrumental in making sure the adoption is there.

I think that’s really important to bring us 360 Make sure that not only we do, do we have clarity on what we’re focused on, but also make sure that we’re moving the needle with our salespeople to make sure they can execute that as well.

[There’s] been a huge impact from Mindtickle. So it was the first time that we’ve rolled out any kind of certified sales enablement program. It ensured that everyone was working to a consistent methodology and process but also we’ve been able to ensure we can measure the progression of individuals within the business.

The other part that has been really important is sharing the best practices across teams. The creation of best practice libraries, adoption of new insights -- particularly for new starters. We've lost that learning curve, or it's definitely slowed over time as a result of remote working. Bringing in resources like Mindtickle allows us to accelerate the ramp-up time for for sale starters.
Anusha Purkins
Head of Sales Enablement

Another big one was the average order value. So we wanted to look at how can we ensure salespeople were achieving maximum value from each and every client interaction, extract the most amount of value in terms of customer renewal contract values, but make sure we weren’t cannibalizing on price. So it’s about doing the right things at the right time with clients. So we saw those two major KPIs.

And then the final one was go-to-market approach. So how do we ensure that when we launch a new product, our salespeople are positioning, the messaging is going out, and it’s aligned with what our marketing teams are sending out to market as well.

So one of the key statistics that I’m probably quite proud of was our internal EPS score for sales. So prior to sales enablement and Mindtickle coming into play, we had a -16 EPS score, it’s now gone to + 22. Some of that can definitely be attributed to salespeople feeling that they’ve been invested in and that there are clear programs around their advancement and their development and their trading needs. And those coaching needs are being met as well.

We’re in the preliminary stages of the adoption of Call AI. It’s an exceptionally powerful tool. So we’re starting to see that there are some advocates. And I think the biggest piece was there was some trepidation by salespeople who saw that it was a little bit of a big brother tool. They were worried about people overseeing their calls, they’re actually starting to see the value in being able to self-assess really quickly and then apply those learnings and those corrections in those next calls immediately as opposed to waiting for a weekly or BI monthly training session where the adoption of those learnings take much longer.

One of your differentiating factors – actually one of the reasons I chose to move forward with Mindtickle – I actually reviewed a number of your LMS counterparts. Two people stood out for me Absolutely. One was my account manager, Tom, whose discovery was so rigorous. I felt reassured that he understood the challenges and also built a business case that reflected that. And then coming into the actual fold of utilizing Jessica has been incredibly responsive. She’s very knowledgeable about her space. She also understands what her customers need, and she has a great balance between probing discovery versus delivering on results. Both of those Mindtickle employees were incredible in the process.

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