Maximize Channel Partner Success with Robust Onboarding and Certification

Shankar Ganapathy on June 22, 2016

Channel partner onboarding CertificationIn my previous post, I talked about how important our customers believed it was to get their channel partners set up for success quickly. Many felt that ramping up their partner’s reps to sell their product as early as possible was critical to their future success. And some found out the hard way that if it took too long for their channel partners to start closing deals, their reps simply lost interest in their product and it was then virtually impossible to get them back on track.

But those that managed to onboard and certify their channel partners early believed that it solidified their partner’s ability to sell their product with confidence, and in some instances even gave them the edge over other products in their channel partner’s suite.

The channel training continuum

Channel Training Continuum

While the depth and breadth of your onboarding and certification will vary depending on where you sit on the channel training continuum, I’ve identified three areas where our customers focused their efforts.

  1. The welcome kit
  2. Channel partner kickoff
  3. Channel partner onboarding and certification

The welcome kit

Most people I spoke to felt that a welcome kit was the bare basics that were essential to set their channel partners on the right track. Some things that they recommended including were:

  • Stakeholder details: Giving them points of contact when they need to register a lead or have an objection query;
  • Welcome message from your leadership team: Providing high-level information on the product and where your channel partners fit into the overall business strategy; and
  • Process and product information: Giving them access to everything to get them started, from your partner enablement platform to price lists and product information.

Most felt it was best to make the welcome kit available on their partner enablement platform rather than overwhelming reps with bulky hard copies or attachment-laden emails.

Channel partner leadoff

To get their new relationship off to a flying start, most customers held a channel partner meeting in the first couple of days. One customer used the leadoff as an opportunity to relay their vision for the relationship and generate excitement about their products.

While it is possible to conduct the leadoff remotely most felt it was more effective in person. One organization brought in some of their business leaders and key stakeholders to speak to their new sales team in real time. They felt this was not only very impactful but also showed their channel partners how committed they were to their success and the relationship.

Channel partner onboarding

In my discussions, I was interested to learn that not all channel partner onboarding programs were created equal. Some companies had different levels of training depending on what the primary KPIs of the channel partner’s reps were. This in turn also influenced how long the onboarding process took, and ranged anywhere from three to ten days.

For example, one business used a channel partner only to generate leads for them. Their training included:

  • How to frame an elevator pitch
  • Product training
  • How to conduct cold campaigns
  • Examples of email templates and cold calling scripts
  • Their best success stories

Another customer also charged their channel partner with managing opportunities, so their onboarding program also covered:

  • In-depth product capabilities and benefits
  • How to conduct a product demo
  • Handling common objections
  • Case Studies and talking points

Regardless of the depth of the training provided, all of our customers found that their onboarding program was most effective when it included a mix of media such as video, presentations, quizzes and even role plays. For example, one used quizzes to help reinforce product training and role plays to perfect elevator pitches.

One of the customers I spoke to runs a very complex channel partner program, with a tiered approach to their partners’ sales team. Some channel partner’ reps only conducted lead generation, while others were charged with seeing the sales process right through to closing. In line with these different services, their onboarding program had several training paths. This ensured that no one was being trained for anything they didn’t need, thereby cutting down the onboarding time for some reps so they could start selling quicker.

Another organization that I spoke to found that it made sense to tailor their onboarding program so that it fits in with their channel partner’s specific business model. This high touch approach meant that they couldn’t bring on board several channel partners at the same time. But they believed that taking a bespoke approach reaped greater benefits in the long run as their onboarding program made more sense to their channel partner. In some instances, they even removed parts of their onboarding program because they found it had already been covered by another product’s process. This not only cut down the onboarding time for their product but also ensured they weren’t providing reps with the information they’ve already been trained on.

Mindtickle Learning Board

The shorter training sessions, when coupled with other tools also helped improve engagement. All of the companies I spoke to believed that the information in their onboarding was adopted more readily when it was made interesting or had a tangible outcome. Some facilitated peer to peer interaction in the learning process, while others created healthy competition by gamifying outcomes.

While each organization bore the responsibility for putting together their onboarding program, some also involved their channel partner when creating the program. Many found this is to be particularly helpful when the channel partner was responsible for a marketing budget, as it gave them buy-in into the onboarding process.

Channel partner certification

All of our customers felt that certifying their channel partner’s reps was an important step in their partner management process, and translated into a greater share of wallet for their product.

One company commented that as their certification process improved, they were able to scale their business faster as well. This is because the certification process helped them identify what additional coaching or training their channel partner’ reps required, and also enabled them to prioritize their efforts between different channel partners.

Just as the onboarding process had different tiers, those customers with complex channel partner relationships also had different levels of certification for individual reps. For example, one organization used:

  • Level 1 – For partners who are responsible for lead generation
  • Level 2 – For partners who are also responsible for conducting demos
  • Level 3 – For partners who are also responsible for closing the deal

They then rolled up these individual certifications as part of their broader accreditation for each channel partner.

The First 4 Things You Can Do to Help Your Channel Partners Ramp Up Quickly

Shankar Ganapathy on June 8, 2016

Sales Channel partner ramp upI’ve previously talked about how some of our customers decided what was the best channel partner strategy for their business. But once they signed on the dotted line many found that was when the real challenges began. While each had different issues, the overriding theme was how important it was to make sure their channel partners were supported from the get-go. But this wasn’t just about giving them product manuals or case studies. It was about enablement, process, and tools.

There were four things that emerged from these discussions that seemed to particularly help organizations ramp up their channel partners quicker and make them more effective and efficient.

Communication was a key issue that was raised by most. Making sure that channel partners (and their sales reps) know who they can speak to for specific issues was critical to their partner’s success. While those who had an exclusive channel partner strategy had a channel partner manager, those with targeted or global channel partners also had numerous people within their organization that spoke to their channel partners regularly. This coulNew Call-to-actiond include sales engineers, partner marketing communications, and sales training managers.

While the channel partner manager received leads, product marketing might help with product training, and the sales engineer provides tactical support in how to deal with specific objections. In order to avoid confusion, and also make sure issues could be dealt with quickly, most companies found it important to have a primary point of contact, usually the channel partner manager. This role is responsible for ensuring the success of their partners, so they would pull in different departments to help support a partner if necessary.

2. Provide well-defined objectives

Providing your channel partner with objectives that suit your business model is critical. For example, one of our customers created different levels of objectives for their channel partners that matched their internal strategy and then used certification levels to help their partners understand their role within the broader business.

For example, a Level 1 certification provided enough context and information to enable a seller to perform lead generation, while someone with Level 2 certification was qualified to also do customer demos, and a Level 3 certified seller was accountable for opportunity management. All the partners could see a defined progression and knew that they had to succeed at one level before progressing further.

Another customer took a different approach to help their channel partners understand how they fit into their broader business objectives. They sell tea through franchisees and found that their channel partners were more effective at selling after they had communicated their brand positioning. This is because their franchisees then understood what made their product unique, and they could then articulate this to customers, thereby validating their premium price positioning. This also provided context that they could then use to underpin their own objectives, defining for their reps what they needed to sell and how they needed to do it.

3. Give them well-oiled processes

While the customers I spoke to knew that their channel partners needed processes to enable them to sell, many underestimated just how much detail they really required. For example, one high-growth tech company found their channel partner kept asking questions about what collateral they should use when talking to customers and how they could provide specific feedback.

This experience made them realize how important it was to have well-defined processes for their channel partners. For example, their partners needed to understand not only each stage of their sales process but also what kind of questions they should be asking prospects in each stage. One customer used the

CHAMP framework

(Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization) to help their channel partners qualify a prospect. They then used the

MEDDIC framework (

Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion) to help them get through the discovery process. By sharing the process and their questioning frameworks, they found their channel partners were more effective.

As part of sharing the process, many also found it helpful to share the specific collaterals that they used at different stages of the sales process. For some, this was quite a detailed process as they broke down the information so that their channel partners understood which collaterals helped counter a specific competitor objection for example.

Finally, all had implemented a simple and quick feedback loop. This allowed channel partners to share information from prospects that could then inform the company’s sales collaterals and decisions.

4. Provide the right software to support the success

While having a well-defined process is certainly important, it’s also critical that partner reps are supported with the right tools. The people I spoke to had several different areas where they found technology really helped their partners manage deals and also made it simpler for them to manage their partners. These included:

    1. Partner relationship management: These tools are used to register deals, make market development fund requests, conduct joint business planning and determine loyalty/reward programs, and report on the pipeline and indirect sales;
    2. Partner onboarding, certification, and ongoing learning: This helps provide training, certify sellers and automate their accreditation programs. Many of our customers use Mindtickle to help them do this; and
    3. Sharing sales collaterals: Providing channel partner reps with access to relevant collaterals like sales decks, demo information, competitive battle cards and success stories. This kind of functionality tends to be included in most partner relationship management tools and can be facilitated using Mindtickle.

With these four elements in place, the next stage for many was to put together a robust onboarding and certification program for their channel partners. I’ll take you through how they achieve this next.

How to Conduct Half Year Reviews For Your Sales Team

Shankar Ganapathy on June 3, 2016

How to Conduct Half Yearly Reviews For Your Sales TeamIt’s nearly time for the bi-annual performance review performance again. As I pulled out data and started to fill out forms for each of my sales reps, I started to think about how much benefit this process provides to them and whether there’s a way to actually make the mid-year performance review process more relevant from a sales perspective.
Turning to LinkedIn, I came across some interesting conversations on the way different managers approach reviews for their sales staff. The consensus seems to be that while a biannual review process may suit some business teams, it just isn’t adequate for sales managers. As David Collins Oliver observes, “The key is that if your sales manager is effective, they should be shadowing each salesperson periodically, doing quick one on ones, actively communicating with their team to truly understand the effectiveness of each salesperson. Thus, the one on ones should not be a major ordeal, unless of course the salesperson has not been performinng.
Edmund Chien agrees that more regular reviews are necessary for sales managers, “We conduct weekly mini-reviews. It’s much better to make small adjustments than going the wrong way for 6 or 12 months.”
In fact Brian Geery went as far as to say that you could almost do away with the biannual review process altogether:
“If your sales manager(s) are providing regular coaching and if you have monthly sales activity goals and annual sales quotas, there is no need for a mid-year review.”
However, others did offer some good thoughts on how to use the mid-year check-in to gather feedback and plan development opportunities. I really like this idea put forward by Craig Preston, “I think a great tool for mutual benefit is the 2-way review (allowing staff to also provide a review for management). This helps managers as well, and really aligns expectations of both salespeople and their managers.”
What appeared clear from my research is that coaching and reviews go hand in hand, and they should be part of the day-to-day management of a sales rep.

So How Often Should You Review Your Sales Reps?

There really are no hard and fast rules about how often you should review your sales reps, but it’s closely aligned to the level of coaching that they require. So it really depends on what stage of maturity they’re at as a sales rep. For example, your new hires will require a much higher touch than seasoned professionals who are operating at full productivity. There are four stages of development that we’ve identified that indicate the level of both coaching and periodic reviews. There are four stages of development that we’ve identified that indicate the level of both coaching and periodic reviews.
How to Conduct Half Year Reviews For Your Sales Team
Micromanagement – When you’re just getting your newbie up and running they need more tactical coaching and micro-management. For these reps, you’re probably speaking to them every day, reviewing their numbers and seeing how they’re doing;
Activity – For new reps who are moving up their cycle of growth or your C Players, their performance may look predictable but it’s still not quite up to par.  Their coaching needs are more activity based, focusing on specific skill gaps but they will still need you to watch over their performance closely. At this stage, you’re probably reviewing their performance a few times a week.
Pipeline – For consistent performers, your solid B Players, they’re ready to be more independent. Coaching should focus on helping them manage their pipeline. As they progress into this stage, they may only need you to review their performance once a week.
Results – The final stage of development is for those who are clear challengers, achieving results and performing at full productivity. These are your A Players and they’re independent performers. While you may not need to review them every week, it’s still important to check in regularly and work on areas of strategic coaching for fine-tuning and to keep them engaged.
While you prepare to tick the box for the mid-year review process, the reality is that this shouldn’t be the first time you talk to your reps about their quota or their development. Conducting regular reviews and structured coaching to plug gaps and develop each rep based on their individual needs will ensure there are no surprises at the end of the year. While HR may not allow you to do away with the mid-year performance review altogether, you can use this time to create a solid plan for developing your sales staff and a checkpoint to ensure that structured development and coaching plans are on track.
While HR may not allow you to do away with the mid-year performance review altogether, you can use this time to create a solid plan for developing your sales staff and a checkpoint to ensure that structured development and coaching plans are on track.


What Channel Partner Strategy is Right for Your Business?

Shankar Ganapathy on May 14, 2016

Channel Partner strategy_01Recently, I found myself having similar conversations about how to manage channel partners with several customers from very different industries. The customers were in retail, technology, and hospitality respectively, but they each had similarities in the way they dealt with these partner relationships. The differences in their channel partner strategies were not due to their industries but rather were influenced by the stage of their business was at, or very specific market factors.

Despite their differences, there was one overriding principle to how they approached their channel partnerships; it’s a strategic investment for their business. While their reasoning may differ, this didn’t detract from the importance of these relationships to their sales efforts and bottom line. For example, FMCG producer Dabur Asia explained how channel partners were a critical player linking their retailers and customers. At the other spectrum, enterprise cloud platform producer Nutanix utilizes these arrangements to help them unlock doors in new geographies quickly.

Common threads also appeared in terms of their sales model and their enablement strategy, so much so, that I identified three broad channel partner strategies. Before I launch into these, it’s helpful to outline what I mean when talking about channel partnerships.

A channel partner specializes in various aspects of the sales process and undertakes this as a service on behalf of a business. Nutanix uses channel partners to help them scale quickly by undertaking just lead generation in some geographies, while they use their own sales engineer to conduct demos. But in new locations where they have no sales team, the channel partners help them expand with minimal investment, by managing their entire sales process right through to closing. They also have premium partners who are able to unlock doors which they cannot directly.

Based on these recent customer discussions the three channel partner strategies I’ve identified are: Exclusive, Targeted and Global.

1. Exclusive channel partnership strategy

Best for when you have a point solution.

A friend of mine has a software startup that sells email encryption software to large enterprises. As large companies tend to purchase their product as part of a broader email security solution, their only go-to-market strategy is to use channel partners who have expert knowledge. They bundle several point offerings as part of an overall solution for the larger business problem. Businesses in this position prefer aligning themselves with channel partners who are SMEs in their field, who they can provide with exclusive access to their solution.

The key challenges in an exclusive channel partnership are to engage your channel partner reps. Increase your topline revenue with an effective sales onboarding program As each one is an SME in their area, they already know and understand the benefits that you offer, but keeping them highly motivated to sell your solution as part of their bundled package is critical. This is why most point solutions I’ve seen have a dedicated channel manager, who works closely with their partners to make sure they stay engaged.

An effective partner enablement strategy includes a strong onboarding program that focuses in on helping them sell your solution.

As they’re an exclusive channel partner, there’s plenty of scope for you to tailor the program to take into account their business model and even integrate any other training they may have already undertaken. This will ensure your solution makes sense within their overall contingent and adds value to their sales goals. As your channel partner reps are already SMEs the onboarding program doesn’t need to be long or intensive. Providing them with enough information to enable them to have some early wins, will help get them on their way quickly.

2. Targeted channel partnership strategy

Best for when you’re just starting to test the waters with channel partners. Most companies I’ve seen already have a very successful sales track record and are leveraging channel partners to help them grow rapidly. It’s not about signing up everyone who could sell their solution, but rather about building strategic partnerships that will take them where they want to go.

One of our customers sells tea in India, and are leveraging a franchise model to grow their business exponentially. These franchises are essentially channel partners, who open shop fronts to sell their specialty teas.

To maintain their growth trajectory, they’ve found that they need to ensure the franchise reps can represent their business in the same way their in-house sales reps do.

Aligning their channel partners with their business values, customer service philosophy and product messaging is key to their success. Similarly, another customer in the tech industry is building on its $100m revenue base, as it prepares for an IPO in a couple of years. It’s facing the same issues, as its channel partner reps also need to be able to sing the same song as their in-house sales reps to be successful.

This is a high touch strategy, bringing on board only a few channel partners at a time. With only a few channel partners on board, ensuring their success early is critical to maximizing revenue.

The key challenges are being able to not only get your channel partner reps up to speed quickly but also ensure that they understand how to sell your solution effectively. Investing in and providing support to your channel partners early on can make all the difference to their success.

An effective partner enablement strategy includes not only onboarding your channel partner reps quickly, but also certifying them so that you have comfort in knowing they can sell your product or service effectively.

Our high-growth customers that have executed this strategy have actually made sure that their channel partner (or franchise) reps have actually passed their certification before they can go out and sell. While it may take a couple of months to get each new channel partner up to scratch, by putting in place a robust certification program they have found that the additional effort was worthwhile in the long-run.

3. Global channel partnership strategy

Best for businesses that are looking to expand across more than one geography, or even globally in a short time frame.

Depending on your business structure, you may have several different levels to your channel partnerships, some tackling only part of the sales process, while others may sell right through to close. For example, Nutanix, expanded globally in just 24 months by bringing on board channel partners in different countries. In some countries, their channel partners are the sole sales representatives for their product, responsible for the entire sales process. In other locations, they leverage channel partners to supply leads, while their own sales and account engineers conduct demos and close their deals.

The key challenge in this strategy is to keep your channel partner reps engaged with your solution, and up to date with any new information about your product or service. This may cover everything from marketing offers to success stories or even changes in your competitive environment.

An effective partner enablement strategy often has a tiered approach, as different channel partners may have different responsibilities. Nutanix has several tiers to its enablement strategy, as the onboarding and certification required for a channel partner who is charged with closing a deal are different to one who only handles lead generation. The former includes training on demos and objection handling, which would just be superfluous for the latter.

They’ve found it’s critical that their channel partner’s reps are ready to sell at all times. Just like their own in-house sales reps, they need the latest information to do their job effectively. From success stories to competitive insights, keeping them up to date not only builds on their knowledge base, and helps keep them engaged with their solution, ensuring it stays top of mind.

Regardless of which strategy you employ, your end game is to ensure that your channel partners achieve success. So once you have the right partners on board, enabling them to sell your solution is, of course, a priority. Next, I’ll take you through the four things I’ve discovered that can help your channel partners sell more.

How to Improve the Impact of Your Sales Kickoff

Shankar Ganapathy on April 26, 2016

Improve_Impact_sales_KickoffWhen it comes to planning your sales kickoff, the first step is setting your objectives for the event. Do you want to celebrate a great year or challenge your sales team to think differently? Are you reps in need of some motivation after a challenging year, or is training your main focus at the moment? Tom Snyder, Co-founder and Managing Partner of VorsightBP suggests, “Before you begin to plan the meeting what do you want people to be thinking, to know, to be looking at. How will you define, when that meeting is over, that it was successful?”
You want to make the most of having all your salespeople together, so your goals should really define every aspect of the event, from the theme to the agenda. We know it’s easy to stay, but it is possible to do. We’re here to show you how, based on four main objectives: Celebration, Motivation, Education, and Innovation.

1. Celebration

Objective

A celebratory sales kickoff is when you want to reward your team. As Tom Snyder, Co-founder and Managing Partner of VorsightBP puts it, “At a celebration kickoff you want people to feel appreciated. We had a great year. We’ve done a great job. We’re on top of our game. Let’s be proud of ourselves.”

Theme

Steve W Martin, Author of ‘Heavy Hitter’, says “When morale is high, you can be more creative and take bigger risks with the theme you choose.” Themes that allow the team to let loose, like a Night at the Oscars can enhance the mood and make everyone relax and have a little fun.

Speakers / Sessions

When choosing the type of sessions that you would have at a celebration kickoff, Snyder suggests, “Entertainment is the key component. So if you’re going to pick out a speaker or a group to come in make sure it’s about having a fun. If you’re going to do exercises make those about fun.”
“Take advantage of your team’s success by using it to create educational content that the whole team can use moving forward,” suggests Mohit Garg, Co-founder, and CRO of Mindtickle. “Video your award winners explaining what they did to achieve their success, and then share these best practices and success stories with the rest of the team after the event, using your online content library.”

Outcomes

When the celebration is your objective, Snyder suggests that “The outcomes are recognition and appreciation. It’s a transition, how do you transfer that celebration to the coming year.” Keeping this in mind, you can then build your sessions around these outcomes.

2. Motivation

Objective
New Call-to-action

You’ve had a challenging year, perhaps a new competitor has stepped on your turf and your salespeople are feeling a bit flat. Motivation is what they need from their sales kickoff, as Snyder puts it, “You need to do something different”.

Theme

To motivate your team, your theme needs to reflect concepts that are inspirational or instill a desire to pick themselves up and get back out to battle. Snyder suggests themes that focus on heroics are great for inspiring people. Other ideas could be around building the competitive spirit of your team, Steve W Martin suggests something like. “Survivor! Outwit, Outlast, Outplay!” to get the juices flowing again.

Speakers / Sessions

If you have a heroic theme, Snyder suggests, “The keynote speakers are like the personal hero, the sports hero, the military hero. The personal assignments and themes must also reflect this theme.” If your theme is more specific you can build your thematic sessions around that objective suggests Steve W Martin with this example, “One company wanted to focus their sales team on closing bigger deals. They selected a theme centered around baseball and used the tagline, “Swing for the Fences!” Throughout the meeting, they showed movie clips of the greatest home run hitters of all time. At their awards dinner, the vice president of sales presented inscribed baseball bats to the top sales performers.”

Outcomes

The outcome should tie into your theme, in Steve W Martin’s example above, “meeting attendees were given different colored company baseball hats and jerseys that designated which group they were part of for team-building exercises.” It’s also alright if your objective is a challenging one, in some instances in order to motivate Snyder even suggests that you may be looking for an outcome of nervousness.

3. Education

Objective

Perhaps you’ve just had a major product launch that your reps are struggling to sell, or you are scaling your team and have a lot of new hires, training them on specific sales skills (beyond the initial onboarding program) may be your primary sales kickoff objective. Snyder also notes, “You often see the rumors around, like we’re going to split up territories, these meetings are about dispensing with those rumors and announcing the new.”

Theme

The theme you choose will really be dependent on the type of training or skill development that you’re focusing on in this kickoff. For example, if your focus is on relationship building then perhaps your theme could be something like ‘Profit in Relationships’ or ‘Relationship Driven Results’. Alternatively, if your focus is on using data to improve performance, then you could use a theme that reflects like “Measure Yourself to Be the Best”.

Speakers / Sessions

To encourage and remove any unnecessary apprehension, Snyder suggests having a keynote session that, “talks about resolving the unknown. The speaker is often from the company, like the CEO or CFO. Someone who can come in and tell the truth.” This then opens the way for your reps to focus on the training without fear.
For the actual training sessions, “Make it as practical and as interactive as possible. Role play elevator pitches in front of each other, create a leaderboard and even crowdsource the best ones to be recorded and made available in their content library after the kickoff.” suggests Garg. If productivity is a big issue, Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing Inc suggests, “A best practices presentation on work efficiency (time management, email management, workflow optimization), coupled with reinforcement in the ensuing weeks and months.”

Outcomes

Learning and moving forward are the key outcomes of this type of kickoff. To ensure the new practices are adopted, Garg suggests “Continue to reinforce the concepts and ideas that were introduced at the kickoff in the weeks and months afterward. This may be by way of sound bites from the event, or quick quizzes that let you check how much information has been retained, or that requires some further work.” Steve W Martin also suggests providing something tangible to take away, like a book on advanced sales strategies.

4. Innovation

Objective

In the current business environment, nothing is constant. This makes innovation an important objective for many sales kickoffs. This doesn’t mean that your sales team has to be prepared to disrupt your industry, but as Snyder puts it, the objective is to tell your salespeople “We want you to approach the job differently. We want you to turn on your imagination and be creative. We have to think differently, we have to create a world for ourselves.”

Theme

Picking a theme that really matches the kind of innovation that you’re looking for. As Steve W Martin notes, “All sales forces go through periods of high and low morale. In this situation, the theme should be more commonsensical like “Better, Stronger, Faster,” which provides a platform that meeting presenters can use to talk about changes and upcoming improvements.” Other themes that he suggests include “Disrupt to Win” or “From Challengers to Champions”.

Speakers / Sessions

When choosing sessions, Snyder emphasizes the importance of providing data on why innovation is required, “Speakers are often industry speakers who’ve done research and can provide that data.” He also highlights the need to think differently, “We want to make sure we do teamwork and assignments in these kick-offs so people get the opportunity to work with the people they don’t really see. We get a lot of cross-pollination and creativity.”
“A powerful way to demonstrate innovative thinking is by crowdsourcing ideas and using video to for storytelling and success stories. Get your reps to show their peers how they thought out of the box and the impact it had on their prospects and customers. It’s both inspirational and aspirational,” explains Garg.

Outcomes

The key outcome here is to ensure that the innovative and creative thoughts aren’t left at the kickoff. Garg suggests, “Use sound bites of videos and presentations from the event and push these out over the following weeks and months. You can also use online social tools to encourage your reps to continue to share ideas with the broader team, regardless of their location. Sales managers can also reinforce the new ideas in their regular team meetings.”


How the Best Companies Create an Agile Sales Coaching Model

Shankar Ganapathy on April 19, 2016

There has been a lot of talk about sales coaching recently, and in particular who should be driving it for the most effective results.

There are two schools of thought:

  1. Sales coaching is driven by managers who choose what reps need to be coached on.
  2. Sales enablement is responsible for structured coaching, as a part of an overall sales readiness program.

The former is the proven traditional approach, while the latter is part of a new era of sales coaching. But why has this changed? Haven’t managers been effective in coaching their teams to meet their numbers?

I asked some of our customers, and they explained that, in the past, managers were effective in both tactical and strategic coaching. But that was when product training happened once a year, and product updates occurred only every 6 months (remember V2.3.4 updates?).

Nowadays, product training is a part of day-to-day training and product updates are rolled out every week. In order to ensure that all reps have a consistent message, something drastic had to change.

As business demands change rapidly, the sales training and coaching process also needs to become agiler. There are now more people involved in coaching, with sales leadership, sales enablement, and sales managers all collaborating together to determine and execute the most effective coaching process.

These changes have also led to a new framework for coaching. One that moves away from dealing with specific issues, and instead hones the reps’ skills so that they’re always ready; Ready to convey the right message. Ready to speak to their customers. Ready to sell.

It’s not enough to coach a sales rep to have a conversation with a customer. Customers can find information from many sources, and in all instances, the message from reps must be consistent. So it’s important for reps to be message ready. This forms the foundations for each and every rep to understand your value proposition; something that can be driven by sales enablement and peer-to-peer learning. Only with this solid foundation can managers make a real impact on improving customer readiness. If a manager is left to coach a sales rep who doesn’t understand the message, their time will be less effective and they will struggle to scale their coaching efforts. This is where sales enablement and online tools can be most effective.

In a dynamic environment, your customer persona is constantly evolving, so it’s no longer enough to perfect a standard pitch, your reps need to be able to take into account the customer’s specific pain points and needs. They need to be customer ready. Where managers can make the most impact is in preparing their reps for customer readiness. As drivers of growth, they can utilize their knowledge of the customer to improve reps’ tactical sales.

When you bring customer readiness and message readiness together, you get sales readiness.

#1 Message relevance

With new product updates almost every week, and competitors innovating fast, reps are constantly faced with new use cases and objection handling scenarios. To make sure their message is always relevant, your reps need all of this information to be provided to them in real-time so they can have relevant, value-added conversations with their customers.

For example, one way that I’ve seen this done effectively is by enabling the product marketing team to send out regular updates. As the team that knows exactly what the latest feature is, who it’s relevant for and its benefits, they’re best placed to provide these updates.

#2 The power of collaborative practice

What your reps say to customers, and how they deliver their message, has a significant impact on whether they will close the deal. In old-school coaching models reps were limited to learning from their manager and the immediate team only. But thanks to technology, it’s becoming easier to facilitate collaborative practice using role plays.

For example, the sales mission capability in Mindtickle enables your reps with a safe arena to practice common customer scenarios and receive feedback from managers. They can also learn from their peers. Imagine the impact on your reps’ performance if they learned how to deliver an elevator pitch, how to handle objections, or received competitive pitch coaching, from your top performers across the country and around the globe?

By learning from peers in other teams, and even other sales managers, reps can gain a much broader perspective, and become better sales professionals as well. When done well, I’ve seen as much as 80% of the message learning can be achieved through collaborative practice.
Message Ready

#3 Manager mentorship

Mentoring is one of the best ways for reps to improve sales performance. While every manager has their own style when it comes to coaching and mentoring, when coupled with the processes described above, they will have more capacity to focus on strategic coaching. This will allow them to really hone in on skill development for their reps, helping them to become better sales professionals.

#4 Tactical coaching from manager and peers

There are lots of deal-by-deal tips and tricks that managers and other reps have up their sleeve. When managers have reps who have a solid foundation, they can focus their efforts on tactical coaching. Managers are also privy to the success stories of other reps (and managers). By sharing these across the team, reps can also gain the benefit of this knowledge that plays a pivotal role in ensuring higher win rates.

Bottomline: The coaching process needs to be more agile

Knowing and doing are two very different things, that’s why practice is so important. In order to make the coaching process more agile it needs to include more practice, in the form of role plays, and also leverage technology to enable that practice to be continual. When combined with mentorship and tactical coaching, as part of a well-defined process, you build a sales coaching cadence that will make your company and reps successful.

Mindtickle’s Ryan Pimlott Named Customer Success Hero

Shankar Ganapathy on April 13, 2016

Customer_success_MindtickleWe’re thrilled to announce that Ryan Pimlott from our Customer Success team has been named a Customer Success Hero at the Totango Customer Success Summit 2016. The award acknowledges Pimlott as someone who always goes above and beyond the call of duty to ensure our customers see a positive return on their investment.

“This is a well-deserved award. It validates the many hours that every single member of our team puts in to make our customers successful,” commented Krishna Depura, CEO, and Co-Founder of Mindtickle. “One customer coined the term “viral goodness” when talking about their successful deployment. It’s a core part of our culture, the innate zeal of our team cannot be replicated.”

But when asked about his achievements Pimlott is more bashful, “I actually just care about my customers. I love working with people, and genuinely like to know how their business is performing. Even if something is not working well for them, it gives me the opportunity to work with them to problem solve and find a way to make a difference. It’s not about up-selling an account or achieving my KPIs, but about building a strong relationship. If a customer needs me in the middle of the night, I’m there for them.”

“It’s also about leveraging the all-star team around me. I grew up playing soccer (football), and understand the important role the whole team plays in winning the match. You can’t get a ball through the goals without them. Everyone has a role to play in the final outcome.”

The Customer Success team at Mindtickle works diligently towards creating value for our customers, and ensuring their business is agile enough to respond to changes in a constantly evolving business environment.

Pimlott and the entire Customer Success team have helped hundreds of customers, including ForeScout, AppDynamics, CrowdStrike, and Metromile, create value and achieve success on their own terms.

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14 Best Practices for Making Sales Kickoff a Success

Shankar Ganapathy on March 23, 2016

Your sales kickoff is one of your most important initiatives, with the potential to motivate your reps to achieve phenomenal success this year. How do you inspire, educate, motivate and celebrate your sales team in a way that helps them not only achieve but exceed their revenue targets for the year? Some of the most successful minds in the business share their secrets to a successful sales kickoff.

Mindtickle Sales Kickoff Kit Download

1. Align sales kickoff content with company goals

To achieve your revenue targets, your sales team needs to align with the overall goals of your organization. A great way to do this according to Cara Hogan of Insight Squared is by the Executive level talking about business strategy, “This kind of open and transparent discussion of company strategy helps the sales team see the bigger picture so they understand that they’re working toward a larger goal.”

Going further, Joe Wilburn, Director of Sales for Brooks Group says, “People need a purpose (other than just commission), so each and every member of your team should know exactly how their work positively contributes to the company’s mission. Aligning individual efforts with your organization’s purpose will keep everyone motivated to hit their own goals throughout the year—doing their part to add to the success of the team. Lay out the strategy and exactly how each player will be expected to contribute so your salespeople can clearly see where the company is going and their role within it.”

2. Choose a theme for your event

Choosing a theme will help set the tone and agenda for your sales kickoff. Tom Snyder, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of VorsightBP says, “Too often we see sales kickoffs without a theme or with a theme that is lackluster. If success [to you]  is about motivation then you want a theme that you will recognize as motivating.”

3. Set the agenda carefully

After the theme, comes an agenda that must meet your objectives. But as David Freeman, VP Corporate Sales of Nutanix points out, what you put into the agenda is just as important as what you leave out.

“We have a lot of execs who want to talk about their area. We have to limit the airtime for people who just want to get up there. We have to focus on what the participants need for this session in a face-to-face session. We may give them another opportunity to address the team, but we’re not giving people airtime just because they ask for it. We also don’t do topics that can be covered by webinars anymore. If it’s just updated on product releases or informative one-way sessions, we’ll schedule webinars or other sessions.”

Mohit Garg, Co-Founder and CRO of Mindtickle suggest, “Before you settle on an agenda, talk to your reps and crowdsource ideas, obtain feedback, and help direct the sessions. Their suggestions, as well as some quick quizzes, may help you highlight knowledge gaps that you can focus on, rather than guessing what the reps need.”

It’s also important to ensure that the agenda remains flexible. Freeman comments, “It can’t be one size fits all. Let people choose their own adventure. It’s important to let people figure out what they need at this point in their career, based on their role, their tenure, and their specialization. Allow them to develop the skills they need.”

4. Set pre-work for the sales kickoff

Your sales kickoff is an integral part of your annual sales calendar, so it’s only reasonable to expect your reps to prepare for the big event. As Art Sobczak, Author of “Smart Calling” notes “Just like a comedian has a warm-up act, so too should you, in order for the sales pros to be excited and prepped when they arrive. Assign pre-work, have speakers do videos or webinars “teasing” the material, or even short sessions on the content to be covered.”

5. Create an atmosphere of healthy competition

As part of the pre-work, you can get the reps motivated with a little healthy competition. Mohit Garg suggests, “Have your reps do a pitch competition or complete bite-sized quizzes at the end of every day, and host a leaderboard so each rep can see how they compare against their peers. The competition can continue throughout the kickoff and culminate in an award at the recognition night. Gamified techniques like leaderboards are a great way to create a bit of healthy competition and get everyone excited, before, during, and even after the event.”

6. Provide time for interaction and cross-pollination

Whether it’s a casual dinner or more formal roundtables, providing time for people from different business units to interact and share ideas will be invaluable as the year progresses. David Freeman suggests, “Create opportunities for interaction between execs and reps, reps and reps, engineers and reps. We’ve forced this into our kickoffs sessions that force these. Panels with execs with Q&A, roundtables with salespeople, breakouts with engineers and reps. And time at the bar is just as important as the time in the session. Need to give people time to unwind, have fun, share war stories.”

7. Share success stories

One of the best ways for salespeople to learn how to close a deal is by hearing success stories straight from the horse’s mouth. Steve W. Martin, Author of the “Heavy Hitter” series makes some suggestions on how to present these to the team, “I would recommend that you have your top salespeople be interviewed in a talk show program format by a moderator who has an extensive sales background. I have found these types of panels are the most effective way to relay both the tangible and intangible aspects of winning to the rest of the team.” Mohit Garg adds, “I recommend recording these interviews and making them accessible in an online content library so reps can refer back to them whenever they need to.”

8. Include a variety of sessions

There’s nothing worse than sitting in one PowerPoint presentation after another. To keep people engaged Steve W. Martin suggests, “Break the session into chunks of time no longer than sixty minutes. Also, break up heavy technical chunks with lighter topics, completely different subject matter, or audience participation activities. This way, the attendees will remain mentally fresh and have higher retention.”

9. Don’t forget your customers

When planning the agenda, it’s important to ensure that your customer’s voice is heard. Joshua Meeks, Revenue Growth Consultant suggests conducting customer research, “Conduct at least 5 win and 5 loss interviews. During the interviews ask the customer about the process they went through to come to their decision. Why did they choose to do nothing, go with the competition or select us? What was their opinion of us? It is important to ensure the content covered and the skills developed are in sync with buyer needs.”

Steve W. Martin also suggests using customer interviews to understand the decision-making process of your customers, “it provides a true snapshot of the competition’s strengths and weaknesses according to the person who matters most—the prospective customer.”

10. Celebrate and recognize your top players

“Recognition is critical,” David Freeman says. “Make sure you’re recognizing the top people. One because they deserve recognition and need to be acknowledged, but also it’s great for everyone who’s new or not so successful to see the celebration of those people and give them something to shoot for in the coming year.”

“If you’re giving awards for specific achievements make sure you capture on video a clip of the rep talking about how they achieved their accomplishment. This can be used later as sound-bites or in the online content library,” recommend Mohit Garg.

11. Reinforce concepts

Lori Richardson of Score More Sales suggests reinforcing some of the key concepts during the event, “Games like Jeopardy are great because they can reinforce ideas for the upcoming year while also being fun and they get everyone involved.”

But once the kickoff ends, the hard work really begins. The team at Selling Power recommends, “Whenever you send an email, start a meeting, or get the team on a conference call, take a minute to highlight a recent story that illustrates the messaging from your sales kickoff – and make an explicit connection between the two.”

Mohit Garg also suggests leveraging the content from the kickoff, “Weave sound-bites from the kickoff into follow-up sessions to make sure the messages stay with the team and build a cadence for reinforcement that continues throughout the year.”

12. Pay attention to the details

While it may seem more like administration, David Freeman notes, “The location matters – you want people to have fun and socialize. You get more out of people engaged that way and more motivated when out in the field. Put in extra attention to make sure people are happy with the food. It might seem small but it can increase morale significantly.”

13. Request and act on feedback

We’re all used to filling out forms at the end of a sales kickoff, but there’s more to gain by checking the pulse of the event while it’s still going on. Mohit Garg suggests, “Take a quick poll at the end of each session to find out what’s resonating and get some real-time feedback that you can act on immediately. It’s energizing when people can see that they’re being listened to and taken seriously.”

14. Evaluate the event

Once it’s all done and dusted, it’s important to make sure the kickoff achieved your objectives. Joshua Meeks recommends, “To ensure proper adoption of content and sales skills, survey the sales force. Ascertain if knowledge gaps have been closed and skill sets improve. The best time to survey the field is one month after sales kickoff. If sales reps aren’t using the new content and skills after a month, they never will.”

Mohit Garg also suggests, “You can track who is engaged with the content long after the event by using technology. If materials are accessible online, some platforms allow you to track who has accessed it and how frequently. This is a good indicator of engagement and can indicate adoption of the materials.”

From Bootstrapping to Acceleration: How Startups can Scale Sales

Shankar Ganapathy on March 9, 2016

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

Stage 1 – Inception

Sales People:

0

Customers:

0 to 10

Product Stage:

Idea or prototype

Challenges:

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

Mark Birch, Investor & Entrepreneur

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

passion for the product

.

Stage 2 – Testing

Sales People:

1 (most likely a founder)

Customers:

2 to 5

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

discover symptoms in your sales process

(or product)  and identify where the issues lie.


Stage 3 – Sales Acceleration


sales enablementSales People:

2 to 3 (with perhaps one sales manager)

Customers:

30 to 200 (depending on the type of product)

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway

.

Stage 4 – Revenue Explosion or Scaling

Sales People:

10 to 100

Customers:

As many as possible

Product Stage:

Refining

Challenges:

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

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

Professor Mohanbir Sawhney

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

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

build trust in customers

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

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

Shankar Ganapathy on March 6, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Having this clarity is a win/win for everyone.

2. Mapping the buyer experience

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

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

3. Incorporating buyer personas into sales training

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

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

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

4. Keep it fresh

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

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

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