Milaap Meets Mindtickle

Deepti Sundareshan on March 12, 2019

Milaap is India’s largest online crowdfunding platform. Founded in 2010 by a team of young and passionate entrepreneurs, Milaap has pioneered the vision to enable people to directly assist individuals in need.  They have changed the scenario of person to person giving in India and how Indians support a cause.

Over the past eight years, it has emerged as a preferred platform to fund medical emergencies. Online crowdfunding is now becoming accessible to more people across the country, backed by social media and the ease of digital payments. Today, Indians are effectively mobilizing support to face difficult situations through online communities across the world. This crowdfunding approach has applications in almost every domain.

While an increasing number of students are able to explore more opportunities for higher studies, people are more empowered to address local issues with help communities that connect with their cause.

“Over 80 percent of the funds raised on crowdfunding platform Milaap are for medical needs,” says co-founder and President Anoj Viswanathan.
Milaap.org has gone one step ahead and taken the ease of online fundraising a notch higher. They are moving away from conventional, mechanical forms to a more empathetic and conversational approach through chatbots. Based on intensive research, and feedback from their community of users, the platform has pioneered a way to make it easier for people to share their need with others.

With an overwhelming majority of funds raised for medical causes, the platform is now focusing on making quality healthcare affordable, and therefore accessible to more people in the country. The Milaap platform not only helps one share sensitive stories with greater comfort but also makes the process extremely easy for new users, who may be from extremely remote places. With all the required details in place, the verification process is much faster. This new feature is so unique that Milaap is in the process of applying to get a patent.

With the industry growing rapidly and the concept gaining more acceptance, the team at Milaap is striving to take crowdfunding to a broader audience. Especially, those who may be from the most remote areas of the country. This is indeed a big step into the future, where people can share their cause with the world over a simple conversation. As Anoj Viswanathan says, “Quality healthcare is becoming accessible to more people, without financial constraints.”

Milaap collaborates with hospitals and corporations and seeks to widen its network by going into smaller cities and carrying campaigns in local languages. With families being pushed into poverty because of medical expenses, the “tech-for-good” company’s initiative gives patients’ families an avenue to cope with massive medical bills.

About Mindtickle

Mindtickle is a global Sales Readiness platform which helps companies across industries build robust sales teams. Mindtickle’s core focus is on enabling companies to grow revenue and build brand by equipping customer-facing teams to be on message and on task.

At Mindtickle, we are always looking for ways to give back to society in various forms. We support social causes and try to help people during natural disasters and raise funds to help with relief efforts during a crisis.

“We have grown with the help and support of the Society, and every individual who is privileged and fortunate enough should help the less privileged and give back,” says Krishna Depura, Co-Founder and CEO of Mindtickle.

While some of our professionals have started their own dog shelter to rescue dogs, some reach out to orphanages and nursing homes to donate, celebrate, or spend some fun time while making artwork.

Milaap joins hands with Mindtickle

Mindtickle’s founders have always strived to support socially conscious organizations and activities. This support includes donating their technology to help organizations like Milaap train their team members to be ready to render help to those in need.

“When we heard of Milaap we thought what could be a better way to give back to the society while helping the process of connecting individuals to donors! Hence, we are helping Milaap to use our platform to train their team members and keep them posted on how they can enable individuals to avail and raise donations on the go,” said Krishna Depura.

The tool also helps train members to reach out to doctors, and with hospitals they collaborate with, to guide patients or their relatives to reach out to Milaap when in need.

Milaap runs several campaigns to help crowdsource funds for individuals and patients out of which came a campaign named “Feet on Street.” In this campaign, team members are stationed in every super specialty hospital across India to help patients know more about crowdfunding, and educate the hospitals about the help that Milaap provides.

The Mindtickle platform, in such cases, becomes a valuable tool to help them provide the right info and training material to help individuals without losing precious time.  The platform also helps them fast track the fund-raising process by training team members with regular updates and enabling people to create campaigns on the Milaap website to get timely help.

Mindtickle helps Milaap ensure the right distribution of resources required by the representatives, with up-to-date info on the go, efficient training to help the patients at the sensitive time of need and to address their issues with the right guidance.

What Makes for a Great Sales Kick-Off? It’s Not What You Think…

Daniel Kuperman on January 24, 2019

During this time of year, companies are often either conducting their annual sales meetings or preparing for their upcoming sales kick-off. Either way, companies want their sales teams to feel energized, excited, and confident that the year ahead will be their best yet! Whether you have large or small sales teams, whether your sales meetings take one day or are week-long affairs – the stakes are one and the same.

After working on and attending several annual sales meetings ourselves, (commonly called a Sales Kick Off), we were able to identify a few common characteristics that set apart a great sales event from a good one. In fact, in talking with other sales enablement professionals and sales leaders alike, there’s one common key attribute that differentiates the best kick-off events from the average ones – and it’s not what you might think.

Let’s first take a look at the three most common mistakes.

Mistake #1: Focusing too much on training

For many sales leaders, the fact that the entire team is present and engaged for a few days in a common location is an excellent opportunity for some much-needed training. Leaders pack their agendas with new sales techniques, product releases, and competitive updates. Although some “information download” is a productive way of ensuring reps’ awareness of critical information, focusing too much on training and lectures is a sure-fire way to overwhelm the team.

Mistake #2: Executive speaking overload

Getting your company’s top executives onstage so that they have the opportunity to talk to the sales team and give them an update on different departments can be enticing, but while the intention is valid, spending too much time on having executives lecture the sales team can misfire and become yet another talk session. Ask yourself the tough question: how much will reps retain after all the talk?

Mistake #3: Too futuristic and blue-sky talking

Surprisingly, this mistake is far more common than most realize. The CEO/President/Chairman walks onstage and delivers an outstanding, visionary presentation about where the company will be five years from now and how everyone in the room will make tons of money. Sure, there needs to be a right amount of future/vision in a top-exec keynote and tell people that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it needs to connect – tangibly – with specific programs or initiatives mentioned throughout the kick-off.

Here’s what makes a great SKO

The most critical element of your sales event is creating a memorable moment; sometimes called an EPIC moment. Let me explain what that means.

While it may seem obvious to create a memorable moment, it’s easy to get lost during the several planning sessions and scheduling of speakers and activities. Of course, it all depends on what you want your sales kick-off to be like, but thinking about “what do we want our reps to remember and how we want them to feel” can serve as a guiding principle when putting the agenda together.

Think of it this way, if you want to energize the team, how can you do that in a way that will capture their attention and make it memorable? Even for the critical information, you are hoping they will remember after the event, how can you make it so they truly appreciate and can use it in their jobs?

For creating these EPIC moments, the best framework we’ve seen for thinking in those terms comes from the Heath brothers in their excellent book “The Power of Moments.” In this book they describe using several examples their EPIC framework:

Elevation: Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the routine. They make us feel engaged, joyful, surprised, motivated.

Pride: Moments of pride commemorate people’s achievements.

Insight: Moments of insight deliver realizations and transformations.

Connection: Moments of connection bond us together.

We want to highlight that creating these ‘moments’ requires some serious thought processes and honest discussions with everyone involved in the event. It also expects a re-think your SKO to be more than a series of lectures, training or team-building activities. It forces us to identify the essentials of what we want this crucial sales moment to be and how we can make it a milestone to our sales force.

So for your next annual sales meeting or kick-off, we encourage you to start with the EPIC framework (read the book, it’s much better than our brief reference here!) and use it as a lens for how you will plan and execute the event.

Should Virtual Classrooms Replace In-Person Events to Keep Valuable Reps in the Field?

Simona Galant on January 10, 2019

With demand on the rise for measurable sales skills training that keeps reps in the field, companies are turning to virtual classroom experiences as a replacement for in-person events. But should they be? Or do the same flaws of the traditional classroom-only approach get exacerbated in a virtual classroom environment?

The issue? Changes in the modern seller profile are creating challenges as teams move towards being desk-less, digital, and distant.

When thinking about virtual selling, how often do you take time to consider the ways in which your team might be struggling with job-specific training? Truth be told, this is something many companies are starting to realize – and address.

According to research from CVI4 out of 5 salespeople aren’t getting the skills training they need – and while some attribute this to budget limitations, the majority blame time-out-of-field constraints. It also makes sense that oftentimes, managers end up choosing training that isn’t very flexible or individually-specialized. So, how are companies thinking of tackling this?

Virtual training gives your team different kinds of opportunities – ones that with their flexibility and timeliness, can actually increase productivity in the long-run. Take custom scheduling for example: when training activities fit into your sales teams routines without disrupting their flow, learning can actually become much more continuous.

Teams benefit and learn on a daily basis with ongoing reinforcement videos, opportunities to review and compare with peers, and revisit key concepts on demand. Coaching becomes more comprehensive too: reviewers and managers have a renewed flexibility to review and provide more detailed feedback on assignments.

But the most impressive finding from CVI research is the fact that virtual training increases sales reps confidence twice as much as traditional classroom training. This is huge if you add to this the typical cost savings gained with virtual training sessions.

Running a successful virtual training program, however, requires a different approach. It is not enough to upload your traditional training content online and share it with everyone. The truly impactful virtual programs follow a framework consisting of:

  1. Identify knowledge and skills gaps
  2. Plan and deploy  personalized programs
  3. Enable practice and feedback
  4. Leverage guided coaching

To learn more about this framework for virtual training and the details behind what make for successful programs, watch the online recording of where Gopkiran Rao, SVP Strategy at Mindtickle, and Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions, explore a virtual training approach that breaks free of classroom constraints altogether.

Click here to watch now.

Does Your Onboarding and Training Open Newly Hired Sales’ Minds or Crush Their Souls?

Steven Wright on October 31, 2018

Sales Enablement expert Steven Wright provides a metaphor for onboarding by describing two completely different experiences of doing the same thing – boarding a plane.

Calling all cattle

At the airport, ticketing is crowded as usual. There’s no option to pull up a boarding pass on your phone – since this is an international long-haul, the agent needs to see your passport. The queue is about 50 people deep. Thirty minutes later, you finally get to see an agent. He looks askance at your carry-on and “suggests” you check it – for another $40. Boarding pass in hand and frown on face, it’s off to security now. The line there is at least 200 people. Another 45 minutes, and after all the TSA rigmarole, you’re through. At the gate is a teeming mass of people, and an hour until boarding. Maybe a coffee? The line at Starbucks is better than security, but not much. You give up the coffee idea and find a seat. Boarding is finally announced. Can boarding group numbers go that high? You realize they can – another 30 minutes in line in the jetway. You enter, turn right. And finally, you settle into your seat, crowded on either side by…well. It’s going to be a very long 14 hours.

Right this way, sir

The ticketing area is crazy, but the business class line is empty. The agent takes your passport and smiles. A few clicks and your boarding pass gets neatly and quickly tucked into your passport. With carry-on and backpack, time for TSA Pre-Check. Crazy on the other side, by the way. A TSA agent beckons you. Two minutes later, you’re heading for the lounge. Glass of wine, munchies, a look at the New York Times and boarding is called. At the gate, there’s another empty line, next to all the queued coach passengers. You board, turn left, stow your carry-on, and take your seat. The flight attendant greets you by name and offers you a glass of champagne. You try out the seat controls, look at the menu (nice wines on this flight) and settle back – almost looking forward to the next 14 hours.
So what does this have to do with sales onboarding and training? Hang on, we’re getting there next.

Five questions to ask when refocusing training investments for the future:

For Mindtickle’s November 13 Webinar we’ll be asking five key questions to help you get to the answers you need when it comes to finding the right way to optimize and balance your training investments:

  • What are the barriers to training? For all employees – whether freshly onboard or established veterans – increasing business complexity, new technologies, and new distractions have built a wall that companies need to break through in order to engage workers. Yet, some of those distractions – when’s the last time you checked your phone? – can help break down those walls.
  • Where are the challenges? When it comes to the effect of training, several factors are in play ranging from a lack of learner engagement, often because of a less than ideal experience along with weak content. Complicating things is the inability to effectively measure the impact. To make things even worse, many companies are still stuck in the technological past when it comes to training.
  • Which is it – and, or, versus? Legacy approaches highlight the need to understand where the value of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) is versus newer approaches especially or sales and training enablement. But it’s not an “and/or” situation. Nor is it one versus the other. By understanding what types of learning are needed, and which technologies can best address them, companies can start to find approaches that will help training take-off.
  • What works? While employee engagement and training is one thing, it’s important to consider sellers and their experience. Sellers, more than perhaps any other customer-facing employee, have demands and challenges of their own. For one thing, everyone wants to “help.” And many parts of the organization have a stake. But companies need to build a lens through which to view the seller experience and build training that, like the example I started with, optimize how and what sellers do.
  • Is technology enough? Even with a clear strategy for how to both leverage existing training investments and take advantage of new technologies, companies need to take a step back and recognize that technology, by itself, won’t fix things. Companies need to understand the strengths and limitations of the organization and technology and build a flight plan that takes both into account.

Which would you rather?

Take a moment and think about the experience your organization offers new sellers? Is it akin to the cattle call or “Right this way, sir” boarding experiences?
Those first experiences with your company set the tone, and define on a deep unconscious level, how sellers will regard your company, your brand, your solutions and how they will engage with buyers. For sellers, is your approach “round-em-up and brand ‘em” or is it “welcome aboard, we care about you as the key interface to our all-important customers”?
Even after they board the plane, what happens next? What’s their ongoing experience? Crowded, boring, too much time in class or staring at a screen? Or interactive, helpful, and even entertaining? Do your sellers arrive at their destination relaxed, refreshed and ready to sell? Or exhausted, tense and ready to quit? (And why do so many companies persist in calling it “Boot Camp”? What possible positive association can that have?)
When looking at the onboarding and training experience, consider how your organization, culture, and training and enablement technology can open the mind rather than crush the soul. Your company is probably investing a lot in improving the customer experience – and who often becomes the first human contact for your customers? The seller. What is their experience like? Does it enable them to provide your future customers with the experience they need to buy or develop brand affinity?
Oh, by the way, for my upcoming trip? Thanks to miles and lifetime status – strictly business class, thank-you.
Please join me at Mindtickle’s upcoming webinar on November 13, titled “Enabling Sales People for the Future by Refocusing Training Investments”, where we will discuss how you can refocus training!
About Steven Wright:
Steven looks for the intersection of technology and practice to better enable sellers to improve customer understanding and sales progression. With over 20 years of experience in sales enablement as a practitioner at companies such as IBM and as an analyst at Forrester, Steven focuses on improving sellers’ skills at all levels and has worked with hundreds of companies.
Working with Vendor Neutral, Steven is currently managing Vendor Neutral Certified Profiles, a program from VendorNeutral.com that offers buyers detailed profiles of sales technology solutions to simplify finding the right tech for their needs.

Your Guide to Creating a Sales Onboarding Program that Counts

Simona Galant on October 3, 2018

Helping your team master communication in sales

It’s always an exciting time when a startup is going through a hiring push – new employees are usually a testament to growth. But how should startups approach creating a well-defined, formalized

sales onboarding

program at scale without sacrificing the uniqueness of their product and company culture? One that’s unforgettable? In early growth stage startups, onboarding can often become chaotic and disorganized when it comes to making decisions about procedural and technological investments into human capital management.

Especially, when considering the pressing need to deliver results instantly under high pressure, onboarding often turns into a high-touch, impersonal process on the just the basics. So how do you take your

sales onboarding

program and make it more than just knowing the product overview, basic on-the-job skills, and overall dos and don’ts? With these tips, you can turn your sales onboarding program into an opportunity to give your new hires a unique and personalized experience from their very first day; one that counts.

Clear communication from the start

Given the high level of uncertainty and risk in the early growth stage, it’s important to communicate sales goals and each rep’s sales KPI directly with your sales team from the onset of their onboarding. To thrive in a fast-paced environment, it’s helpful for sales reps to feel comfortable and prepared enough to succeed in order to take responsibility and ownership of the sales process and hit the ground running.

Help them get their feet wet

Regular office visits in the pre-onboarding phase can help kick-start the familiarization process before your reps officially begin their training. This can be a great opportunity to develop a cross-functional understanding of the business across sales, operations, engineering, as well as other teams. Shadowing existing reps also gives new reps an idea of how the company typically approaches potential clients by indirectly experiencing the sales lifecycle themselves.

Know who’s in charge

Since there is typically a handful of people that run the show, getting to know who’s who right from the beginning is extremely important. Create opportunities for new sales reps to work cross-functionally by helping existing projects or sitting in on discussions and team meetings. If possible, you can even let the new hires shadow the founders for a day.

Promote and provide self-learning

While there’s a myriad of information available on-demand online, your new sales reps shouldn’t spend time searching for the right material. Create a shared folder with links and resources for the new reps that sales enablement leaders can contribute content to far in advance of new hire orientation. This way, you can give your new sales reps an opportunity to understand the complexity of business plans, conduct a feasibility analysis, appraise the marketing plan, do the SWOT or even wear the strategy hat for a day.

Consume, consume, consume

Regardless of the growth stage, a startup should have all sorts of material prepared and ready for any incoming sales reps. Product manuals, sales presentations, service handbooks, blogs, website, press coverage, company policies, and procedures – even your Twitter feed – are all instrumental as the best learning sources to help your reps get started. A successful new hire orientation and Onboarding has the potential to promote self-learning and discovery that goes beyond learning about the company – the sooner a new rep stops feeling like a new hire, the more successful they’ll be while ramping up.

At the end of their onboarding process, your new sales reps should come away with knowledge and of the scope of the company useful enough to perhaps even contribute to the new hire onboarding manual themselves in the future.

Why a Sales Onboarding Program Design for Sales Engineers is Important

Deepti Sundareshan on May 14, 2018

Strategic sales onboarding, regardless of team size or role, should be a non-negotiable priority for any company.

Research by the Aberdeen Group backs this up: a recent study found that when onboarded effectively, 71% of employees exceeded expectations, versus a reported 8% by companies without an onboarding strategy. And while it’s a given that every team member needs to learn the same foundations about the company and its culture, different roles require specialized learning.

What’s a sales onboarding program just for sales engineers?

Due to the particular focus on cross-disciplinary skills, the specialized role of the technical sales engineer is a perfect example of the impact effective onboarding can have. Sales engineers bridge the gap between the sales reps and the product: since sales engineers bring deep technical knowledge to the sales process, they need in-depth immersion and training on the product.

This means that basic product training or an overview of APIs, integrations, and use cases are not enough: sales engineers need to know and understand their product like the back of their hands. However, some capabilities that sales engineers need are similar to sales reps: they need to understand their customers and all the ways the product helps them relieve business pain points.

So, what should a sales engineers onboarding include?

Sales engineers need to understand the intricacies of how your product works and be able to apply specific use cases and solutions. They then must be able to explain these to a customer in a way that actually sells your product. To help them become proficient in each of these as quickly as possible, your onboarding should include:

  • Time with your product – The role of sales engineers is to know your product inside out. And, they don’t just need to know the features, they must understand how people use the product and be able to demonstrate it. They need to be able to test and put into practice what they’ve learned.
  • Detail on your product roadmap – Sales engineers need to understand what the product roadmap looks and how it affects your industry and competitive positioning. This will help them tailor discussions and solutions for customers. During the onboarding process, ask engineering and product development to get involved so they can give your engineers a holistic view of how the product works today and the future product roadmap.
  • Certify they can demo – The first time a customer meets an engineer will often be at the product demo. Before the demo, engineers need to understand the customer, their pain points, and needs so they can tailor the demo accordingly. Getting the demo right can make or break the deal. As part of their onboarding let sales engineers see other use cases (recorded or live) and get them to practice different scenarios. They should also be certified in how to complete a tailored demo before meeting a customer. This process ideally will include receiving plenty of feedback from both their peers and managers so they can keep improving and refine their technique.
  • Practice objection handling – Considered an expert, technical sales engineers often face the most challenging objections. They not only need to know what to say but also how to say it in a way that keeps the sale in play. This is a learned skill as it can be easy to get caught up in technical details that the customer doesn’t necessarily need to know. Using role plays and scenario-based training, technical sales engineers can make sure they have mastered handling objections.
  • Understanding competitor products – To explain to a customer why your product is superior to a competitor’s your sales engineers need to understand exactly what your competitor’s products do and don’t do; not just listed features. Depending on how complex your product is, your sales engineer’s onboarding should include a detailed explanation of your key product differentiators as compared to your competitors. For more complex products, give them access to your competitor’s products and let them spend some time seeing how they work.
  • Customer-based Solutions – To give customers real solutions to their problems, engineers need to understand your product in the context of how it works in a business environment. By spending time with your customer success team they can see these use cases in action and perhaps also gather feedback from customers so that they can learn what works and what doesn’t.
  • Relationship building with sales reps – Sales engineers need to build relationships with sales reps so that they bring them into their deals and promote overall sales effectiveness. It’s important to help sales engineers build these relationships and you get the ball rolling by onboarding them together where their coursework overlaps. Enabling engineers to shadow sales onboarding and vice versa, sharing technical sales engineer onboarding with the reps – including the checkpoints and certifications they must complete – will help build their relationships.

Leveraging onboarding course for two different sales roles

When developing your onboarding program you can create a range of courses that cover different roles, and then assign those that are relevant based on job role or even location. For example, your course on buyer personas could be assigned to both sales reps and engineers, but your product training modules for each role may be different.

The need for two sets of skills combined into one company representative, as important as a technical sales engineer, means you can leverage the sales enablement courses for:

  • General corporate onboarding – policies, culture, and organizational strategy
  • Buyer and user personas
  • Product positioning and messaging
  • Industry trends

While it may be tempting to put your engineers through the same onboarding program as your sales reps, it’s important to remember that this may impact their ability to ramp up quickly and start helping your reps sell. Investing in onboarding your sales engineers is one of the best ways to make sure your new hires – reps and engineers – achieve their quota quicker.

Managing Change when Implementing Sales Readiness Tools: a Four-Step Approach

Dhruba Bhattacharya on March 19, 2018

Any form of change is challenging for organizations to manage, but sales teams are particularly sensitive to change. They don’t want anything to take them out of the field or negatively affect their results even for one day. This can make introducing new sales readiness tools particularly difficult.

Mendix, a platform-as-a-service company that helps organizations make web and mobile applications, knew this was an issue but their onboarding and ongoing sales training program needed to change. They were growing rapidly, hiring 15 new sales hires a quarter in a team to a base team of only 68. At the same time, the company was tasked with improving their time to sale, the number of opportunities they generated and their win rate. They wanted to reduce the time and expense of face-to-face training so they chose to implement Mindtickle, a sales readiness platform.

To ensure the new tool didn’t distract their salespeople and actually helped them to sell better sooner, they implemented a four-step approach to address the change.

1. Top-performers engaged with the tool first

Mindtickle was only rolled out to top-performing reps and engaged managers first. These people had all been identified as high performers across a range of metrics. They were called Mendix’s Champions and held up as role models in the organization.

The Champions completed missions on Mindtickle – they practiced their selling skills on the platform and were measured on how they learned and what they had learned. The results were very positive, and they were shown to the entire sales team at their next sales kickoff. By showing top performers visibly embracing change and improving their performance as well, other reps were eager to get onboard.

It was at this kickoff that the leaders of Mendix outlined what they expected of their sales organization in the coming year and explained how Mindtickle would help them achieve that. The sales readiness platform was positioned as critical to the company’s success.

2. Roll it out to the rest of the sales force

With the value of the platform clear and the sales’ objectives linked to Mindtickle, the tool was rolled out to the rest of their sales force. To help in this process Mendix’s Champions were given the responsibility of supporting members of the sales team on their missions. The champions would look at the video role plays in their missions, give them feedback and grade them. These grades were put on a leaderboard to create some healthy competition amongst the team.

This approach worked well, particularly with the younger reps who were keen to learn and improve their selling skills. Seasoned reps were reluctant to try the new tool.

3. Get CEO endorsement and incentive

As they rolled out the tool, the CEO publicly endorsed the platform. This was targeted specifically at bringing the reluctant reps onboard. At the same time, the CEO also introduced a new compensation model where reps could earn a quarterly bonus if they scored well on their missions in Mindtickle. This additional sweetener started to encourage more reps to use the platform.

4. Leaders publicly acknowledge those who have changed

The final step was for the leaders of the sales organization to start publicly acknowledging the people who had embraced the change. This began with the first salespeople to complete their missions being recognized and their scores shared. This process of communication continued every week, where the highest performers in each region were held up as role models. This helped inspire all the other sales reps to adopt and use the platform.

Within a month of rolling out Mindtickle people from each level of the sales organization were using the platform. Two months later 87% of their reps had done a mission on Mindtickle, with seven missions per seller on average. To check on how salespeople were really feeling, Mendix also collected feedback and found that even some of their strongest skeptics were seeing real value in the process. They were learning how to improve their own roles and improve how they communicate.

To keep the momentum going, the company started releasing reports every quarter to the sales organization. These reports disclosed who used the platform most and showed how it was improving sales performance. Some of the successes include:

  • New business development reps were consistently meeting quota after just three months – this had previously taken six months.
  • Their prospecting success rates doubled
  • Top performers had reduced the amount of time it took them to qualify and progress opportunities from 30 days to just seven days
  • The entire sales team was performing at 105% of its targets

Mindtickle is now an integral part of the culture of the sales organization at Mendix. It’s part of their day-to-day work, incentives, and reporting.

Why Companies are Transitioning from Traditional Training to Enablement and Readiness

Deepti Sundareshan on March 15, 2018

More and more companies are transitioning from traditional training methods like classroom training and webinars. They’re recognizing the need for a change and transitioning from traditional training to sales enablement and readiness instead. According to CSO Insights, 59.2% of surveyed companies currently have a sales enablement program. Another 8.5% plan to start one this year.  Let’s take a look at what’s causing this trend.

Why make the change now?

Companies are recognizing they need a change. Here are some symptoms they’re experiencing. These are clear signs that what they’re doing isn’t working anymore.

Quota attainment continually decreasing: It’s been shown that the percentage of sales reps hitting their quotas have decreased year after year since 2012 and is now 53%. You can improve sales performance to meet ever-increasing targets with sales enablement and readiness.

Sales’ declining ability to close Marketing-provided leads: An inability to continually hone sales skills with classroom training and webinars is an issue many companies fact. Sales enablement, when implemented properly, addresses this issue.

Uncertain of what exactly is working and what needs to change: Sales enablement facilitates identification of weaknesses and strengths.  Plus, it makes it easier to implement corrections and adjustments needed to continuously fine-tune the sales process so it keeps pace with ongoing market changes.

Sales rep ramp times are too long: Today’s sales reps average 2 years on the job before changing companies. With an average ramp time of 6 months to full productivity, reps are only effective for three-quarters of the time they are in any given position. The hiring and training process is too costly for team members to be inefficient for such a long time. Sales enablement initiatives shorten ramp time. Not only that, the ongoing learning and growth associated with sales enablement increases rep retention because it fulfills the desire of today’s’ employees for continual improvement.

Sales processes didn’t match reality: Reps are being trained one way and then having to make their own adjustments to make it work on the job. Enablement and readiness ensure that training and practice are properly aligned or corrected as needed.

Reps are only spending a fraction of their time selling: It’s been documented that sales reps are actually only spending 37% of their time on revenue-generating activities. Enablement corrects this issue by increasing their selling time and making them more effective as well.

Competitors are winning:  Competitors who have implemented enablement and readiness are closing more business, due to increased efficiency and effectiveness. It hurts companies who haven’t jumped on the enablement/readiness bandwagon yet. Companies are feeling the pain, by losing market share. They know they need to make a change before it’s too late.

Why are sales enablement and readiness better?

It’s been known for some time that training isn’t productive by itself. Without ongoing coaching and reinforcement, 90% of information shared in a traditional classroom or webinar training is forgotten within a month’s time. There are many reasons that sales enablement and readiness are more favorable. Here are some of the more popular ones:

  • More cost-effective: Besides being ineffective, traditional training is costly, involving expenses such as room rental, transportation, trainers, and lost opportunity. Plus it’s time-consuming and reduces staff efficiency by cutting into valuable rep selling time. Sales enablement and readiness keeps costs under control by keeping reps on the job and productive while eliminating many of the additional costs.
  • Proactive: Current sales enablement practices allow companies to push sales learning or updates, instead of creating something and hoping it will be used/consumed. This creates a state of perpetual readiness for successful rep interactions of any type with prospects and customers.
  • Tailor-made learning paths: Transitioning from classroom and webinar training allows for personalized training. It means that not everyone needs to go through the same training, in the same order, and at the same pace. Reps are able to take quizzes to determine their individual training needs and priorities. This determines their specific learning path.
  • Internally sourced: It used to be that companies would hire external experts to train their salesforce. Enablement/readiness allows for the sharing of best practices through of an internally-sourced library. It can be approved by the enablement/operations and accessible/searchable by all, in bite-sized modules. This library may include examples, demonstrations, and explanations of how to do or accomplish certain goals or skills.
  • Bite-sized/spaced learning: Small, frequent learning sessions minimize the impact on busy schedules and provide repetition that reinforces learning. They’re easy to consume and easy to apply on the job. In fact, research by Hermann Ebbinghaus proves that this is the most effective way to learn and retain information, change behaviors, and develop new skills.
  • Available on-demand: Since sales enablement content is available anywhere and anytime, consistent participation is easy to fit into even the busiest schedule. This eliminates the negative impacts of taking reps off the job for training.
  • Facilitates practice and feedback: Enablement makes it possible for reps to practice new skills in a safe environment by recording themselves on the go. It removes the need to be in an office or to schedule meetings, to know what to strengthen and adjust, while learning new methods or information. Feedback, built into the process, reinforces correct behaviors and prevents the development of bad habits or incorrect information.
  • Allows measurement: Enablement and readiness simplify the documentation and measurement of progress through role-plays, quizzes and other methods. So often, companies don’t measure traditional training results or they are unmeasurable. The new way of learning makes it easy.

I’m sure that it’s clear now why companies are transitioning from traditional training methods to more impactful enablement and readiness. Which methods sound better to you? If you need more information about this topic, read this article about readiness or this article about sales training and enablement.

In Conversation with Christopher Fulmer

Shrimithran R on September 25, 2017

Conversation-Christopher-Fulmer_sales_enablement_symantecThis post is based on a webinar where Christopher Fulmer, formerly of Blue Coat and now Director of Global Sales Enablement and Product Evaluations at Symantec, explained the importance of data-driven sales enablement to maximize sales effectiveness. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
“Our team in enablement is held responsible for making sure the sales teams have what they need to be successful. It’s their responsibility, and their manager’s responsibility, to make sure they’re continually taking those steps to stay educated. Sales enablement is not just training. My team partners with key teams within our company such as product management, engineering, product marketing, sales leadership, operations, finance, and HR to drive forward the end goal of making us all successful. I’ve found a lot of success when we form those strategic partnerships. When sales win, we win. That’s where we find our success.”
Initially Blue Coat, before being acquired by Symantec, introduced Mindtickle to their sales team. “We took a sales kickoff, which could have been perceived as a challenging time to roll out the technology, and chose that as the time to roll out Mindtickle. This environment, where sales were coming together, helped us roll out Mindtickle as it was an essential tool at that sales kickoff. Because Mindtickle has the flexibility to create separate audiences, it allowed us to push out personal agendas, quick references, surveys, and feedback,” he explained.
“When we left that sales kickoff, every sales rep had been on Mindtickle, was using the tool, knew how to navigate it, and was comfortable with it. When they got back in their sales roles, and I needed to get product information out, I knew that I was pushing it to a team that could quickly absorb it,” he continued.

Blue Coat continued to leverage Mindtickle as their sales team grew

“We found ourselves growing at a hyper rate,” Christopher explained. “We were a fast-moving company in a constantly changing environment. We were leveraging Mindtickle for two main things during that time – our incoming new hires and our existing salesforce.”
“In the cybersecurity area, your entire industry can take a left turn overnight. With just one outbreak or vulnerability, things can dramatically change. How quickly you get information to your sales team and they understand, absorb and go forward with that information can be a driving force as to whether you have a successful outcome. That’s one of the areas that we found success with Mindtickle,” he continued.
According to Christopher, sales onboarding was another way Blue Coat successfully leveraged Mindtickle. “We were onboarding 25 to 35 new sales reps per month, at a minimum, and there were months where we were just wearing out our team running onboarding sessions every week or two. We were able to use Mindtickle to experience faster ramp-up times with our incoming sales reps,” he explained.

Sales enablement was crucial when Symantec acquired Blue Coat

“An acquisition is a great opportunity for sales enablement to be engaged. During Symantec’s acquisition of BlueCoat, our main challenge was how to enable two separate sales teams concurrently. We also had a couple of back-office systems like SFDC. We were able to work with them by working with the Mindtickle team,” Fulmer explained.
“We had a big desire to communicate to the field, and everybody within the company had something they wanted to communicate to them – our integration team, our executive leadership team, and the sales teams. Mindtickle gave us the ability to push out corporate communications, a corporate pitch, and executive communications to the teams very quickly. Through the technology, we were able to target specific teams and simplify messaging. It was a huge benefit to us as we went through that acquisition.”

Symantec now uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams

Fulmar identified four ways that Symantec still uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams:
1. Onboarding
“An Olympic rowing team is all in sync. Everyone’s got their hand on an oar and they’re driving that boat forward as fast as they can. That’s like a highly effective sales team in action. Everyone with a single focus, driving the boat forward, in sync, working together. A new hire, until that person is ramped up and effective, is in a big pool float dragging behind the boat. They’re not helping, they’re slowing things down. My job is to get that person out of the water, in the boat, put an oar in their hand, and get them working with the team,” explains Fulmar.
Mindtickle is used by Symantec for their onboarding program as Fulmar explains, “I can use it for pre-work to level the playing field so when they do arrive at an onsite training everyone is on the same page. I really need that time, onsite, to be high value, high return. Technology allows us to do that. The ability to track the pre-work and verify that they’ve done it with quizzes and certifications adds the ability to see where there may be gaps or where you need to spend a bit more time with an individual before, so they’re on the right page when they come in. The strengths of the analytics give us the ability to do that.”
“Having them jump on that technology as part of the onboarding process sets the new hires up for success as they continue in their life as a sale team member. I teach them, from day one, how to use that tool and where to find value in it. They’re much more likely to use it when they get in the field than if I wait and expose them to that tool after they’ve been at their onboarding session as a new hire,” Fulmar continues.
2. Quick updates
“This is a big area where we leverage Mindtickle. When I say quick updates, I want to be realistic on what quick is. If it’s something that’s going to take an hour or multiples hours to read and absorb, that’s not my target for a quick update. I use it for something that they can quickly access and absorb. A product update, something around a product release, executive communications, or sales communications are things that I push out in that quick format,” Fulmar explains.
3. Coaching
“The landscape has changed in the sales enablement world over the years,” according to Christopher. “For example, when we used to work on a corporate pitch, we wanted to “certify” the sales reps on it. So we would come up with a plan where someone from my team and someone from the sales management team would get in a room together. We would then ask the sales rep to take time away from the field and come and give that corporate pitch to us so we could certify them. As you can imagine, it was very costly and took time.”
“Now we use Mindtickle. If I want to know whether everyone knows how to articulate our corporate message I can give them an example of me giving that corporate message and then ask each of them, using Mindtickle, to record themselves. They then send that to me on Mindtickle and I can give them feedback and send it back to them. If there needs to be a correction, I can do the correction and send it back to them. They can then redo it and send it back to me.”
“Basically, I can certify that they understand that message without ever having to get on a flight or asking them to take time out of the field. Coaching with Mindtickle is an area that we’re just scratching the surface on now and have found success with,” outlines Fulmar.
4. Surveys and feedback
“I use this when we do a meeting, such as a sales kickoff, to get feedback on the speakers and identify any hot topics the team may want to hear before the meeting.  We then push information out to the reps afterward and understand whether that information has been absorbed, they understand it, and if we need to spend more time on it,” explains Fulmar.

Data-driven sales enablement is crucial to maximizing sales effectiveness

“Data is what allows you to show that something you’re doing is working. Without the data, it’s your opinion. I want to be able to show management with something that can be measured and show a result,” according to Fulmar.
“Just a quick example, NFL players go in on day one of offseason and do measurements like strength, speed, agility. They have a measurable starting point. Then towards the end of the offseason training program, they go back and remeasure. They can show where there has been growth and where they didn’t get the growth they expected. Until they have those measurable results, a general manager can say we had a great offseason. Unless you have measurable results, how do you back that up? That’s why I feel like data-driven sales enablement is important for maximizing the sales effectiveness,” he explains.
“Whether we’re running a report on our entire sales force or our managers are running a detailed manager dashboard, Mindtickle gives us the analytics to maximize our sales effectiveness.” Fulmar identified three areas in particular:

  1. It gives the ability to take data and continually learn and refine how they enable their sales team;
  2. It highlights what the sales team is using—what content are they taking advantage of and what are they not; and
  3. If they’re not using content it allows sales enablement to question why. Perhaps the format didn’t work well or the information wasn’t right.

“If I’m looking at the numbers, I can see that kind of information and make adjustments to move forward. I can also show value to our leadership team. If I can show that people within our top 20% of sales are also those people that are our top users on Mindtickle, then I can show a direct correlation that our top people are taking advantage of the technology. Being able to show that kind of value to our senior leadership team, to our board, that’s priceless!”

In Conversation with Jordy Brazier

Shrimithran R on August 6, 2017

 

Conversation-With-Jordy-Brazier_500x500This post is based on a podcast with Jordy Brazier, VP of Sales Operations for Qubole. You can listen to the entire podcast

here

.

Qubole is the largest cloud and diagnostic big data service, providing businesses with a self-service data platform to help them make data-driven decisions. Their vision is to create an autonomous data platform that is capable of optimizing its performance so data teams can focus on the more strategic and value-added work. Jordy Brazier is responsible for their Sales Operations and enablement, an area he is passionate about.

As a business, Qubole sells primarily to IT decision makers in data-driven enterprise companies. Their customers understand the value of big data and want to leverage it in a more cost-efficient way to improve their performance.  In an industry that’s rapidly evolving, sales enablement is key to driving competitive advantage.

“For us, sales enablement is about how we can use content and develop training that increases sales productivity. By sales productivity, we mean the productivity of our reps. Do we look at things like how can we increase their deal size? How can we increase how fast they onboard? We use several programs to execute this, onboarding boot camps, QBR’s, kickoffs and ongoing training as well,”

outlines Brazier.

For each sales enablement initiative, Brazier focuses in on a core metric.

“For example, the primary metric for the onboarding program is time to first deal. We now have a 90-day onboarding program, and we measure how we’re improving by looking at everyone who goes through that program. Are they faster to close? Do they get to their first deal quicker? If we look at other parts of the sales cycle we’re going to use different metrics, but it’s very important to measure a specific metric that’s most directly related to what you’re trying to achieve,”

he explains.

As the company has been scaling rapidly, onboarding has been an area of focus for sales enablement.

“Our sales onboarding is a 90-day program. Once a field rep starts they attend boot camp within the first 30 days,”

Brazier explains.

While Qubole would previously send Wiki and other information to new hires they had no way of knowing who had looked at it before boot camp. But using Mindtickle now gives them the ability to make this process interactive. New hires go through role play certification and now management can measure who’s actually confident and absorbed the information.

“

Everyone is on the same page when we start. It’s not just a 30-minute class and then a test. The questions follow the learning. It’s not a testing platform it’s a learning platform. So we know exactly what they already know and we can take it from there.”

This has allowed Qubole to refocus its boot camp.

“The boot camp is now more of a tool versus being a class. They’ve already trained in the app or in a bite-sized way with quizzes, so when they come to boot camp they’ve already reviewed all the training. And when we put them in front of our executives at boot camp the reps can actually ask much more meaningful questions,”

he continues.

“After getting feedback and looking at the metrics, we’ve focused the boot camp to be all about understanding the value of the company, why is the company’s solution the best. To achieve this we do simulations throughout the boot camp. Reps have to present twice during the boot camp, at the beginning and at the end of the week. They pitch to the rest of the class and get feedback from management, the class, and an existing rep,”

Brazier explains.

It may be intense but it gives Qubole’s new reps the confidence to pitch the product. And they need it because once boot camp is over there is a real customer waiting for them. Working with marketing and the management team, new reps attend a field marketing event within 30 to 45 days of starting, just after boot camp.

“They can pitch live, face to face with good prospects and start to build a pipeline. That really moved the needle for us and shortened the time to the first deal,”

he says. “

We then do a 60 day check in to see if they need help with anything and again at 90 days.”

Qubole also runs several other initiatives including a kickoff twice a year.

“At the kickoff, we look at overall positioning and messaging. We’re in a fast moving market so at each kickoff we revamp the company deck for the entire team,”

he explains.

Before the kickoff, new materials and presentations are made available to reps on Mindtickle. The reps record their pitches and these are reviewed at the kickoff as a learning experience.

The best ones are presented to everyone at the kickoff, leveraging the competitive spirit of their salespeople.

Ongoing learning is also important to Qubole.

“Every week we release a new course or update on what products we have or how to compete on specific products. In Mindtickle we can see who is learning and who needs improvement. We actually give a $100 gift card to the top learner each week. It’s helpful to drive adoption and it makes it fun. It’s one way that we make sure that we are prepared, are true trusted advisors to our customers and are able to deliver true value. That’s super important and that’s why we take enablement very seriously. We really invest in those programs and technology that makes our team the best and puts the firepower behind it,”

explains Brazier.

Interestingly, Qubole also found a correlation between learning scores and the performance of their reps. Their consistently low performers were also struggling to pass the tests on Mindtickle. It was a good indicator that something was just not working.

“It’s all about raising the average. The top-performing reps will probably still be the top performing reps even without training, but if you can bring the majority of middle reps up then you can make a significant difference in the overall productivity,”

he says.

Qubole has certainly gone through a considerable learning curve while implementing its enablement initiatives and Brazier is happy to share his top three tips.

“First, if you don’t have a learning platform, bring one in ASAP. I think that really moved the needle for us. Also, narrow the focus of your boot camp. Don’t incorporate everything under the sun, just focus on the value. And understand that you will only be successful if there is very strong cross-functional collaboration. You need to get the best out of product management and the best out of marketing, so include them early on. Asking them for their inputs and get their buy-in.”

This approach has certainly worked for Qubole, who continues to go from strength to strength.

Get free access to the best sales-readiness content.

© 2024 Mindtickle Inc. All rights reserved.