How Qubole uses sales enablement drive productivity per sales rep
Why technology is crucial to accelerate sales readiness and bring true value to your business
How to leverage sales kickoffs to ensure your reps’ positioning cutting edge
His best advice to anyone creating sales enablement initiatives
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here.
Jordy Brazier is Vice President of Sales Operations for Qubole and has been in Sales Operations for over 10 years. 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.
Selling to IT decision makers, they operate in a tough market, releasing new product updates regularly to stay ahead of the curve. This means their sales reps also need to make sure they have a cutting edge positioning. “Every week we release a new course or an updated version of a course about what products we have? And, how to compete with specific products,” explains Brazier. “To drive adoption and see who is going through those trainings is, Mindtickle lets us see who are the learners and who needs improvement. It’s great to have this ability. We want to make sure that we have the best prepared reps when we go into the field. So they can be 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 and really invest in those programs, into technologies that make them the best and put fire power behind them.”
Qubole has also raised the effectiveness of their reps through its comprehensive onboarding program and certifications.
“It’s had a great impact for us as well. We use best practices to take control of the consumer process, bring true value and accelerating productivity,” Brazier continues.
This post is based on a webinar on the secret to building a sales enablement powerhouse. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
Procore is the world’s most widely used construction project management software. It helps contractors keep track of their projects throughout the entire lifecycle of a project, from bidding to closeout, and helps them reduce errors and cost overruns. Procore was featured on Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2016 and reached unicorn status on Dec 2016. With such high growth, the size of the company inevitably increased, and they now have over 700 employees in 7 offices across the United States.
Three challenges triggered Procore’s need for sales enablement
Procore’s sales team was growing rapidly and they were having difficulty gauging the performance of their sales team, so they implemented a structured sales enablement program. Alex Jaffe, Sales Enablement Manager for Procore, played a critical role in executing this strategy. The key challenges they addressed by implementing a well-structured sales enablement program included:
Keeping their salespeople up-to-date on a constantly evolving product, industry, and competitive information.
Aligning their core messaging and sales process in a period of hyper-growth. This included hiring new reps and ramping them up quickly.
Managing and delivering sales collateral in a way that ensured a consistent customer experience
They focused on three key areas of excellence
“Our approach to sales enablement is in three different areas of excellence. They are selling skills, a definite approach to product and industry is being a powerful leader in that perspective, and then working efficiently with our technology and maximizing the results. So, we focus really in depth on creating the knowledge, process, and skills to make it simple and digestible,” explained Jaffe.
The strategy was deployed using a two-prong approach
Sales enablement at Procore was structured into two distinct categories:
Segment based
Functional based
All roles within the categories functioned as a conduit between sales and the different departments involved in each initiative.
The distinction based on functions and initiatives helped Procore handle their overall sales enablement program with ease.
“If you have one person focusing on sales enablement then you are not going to be able to to boil the ocean and focus on all the areas. What you guys can do is use productivity measures and understanding of what you can maximize and then do the prioritization based on that. So, at Procore what we have done is split these into two distinct buckets, which we think are two different mindsets. Different people are responsible for each of these initiatives,” explains Jaffe.
Procore’s sales enablement framework
Procore facilitated a structured, streamlined and outcome-oriented onboarding process to ensure their reps were set up for success. The first 90 days was the initial onboarding phase, and from then on it was about continual improvement, called ongoing enablement.
“We start with a simple framework that works pretty well for us. It’s very important to see sales readiness in the two distinct views. First, the onboarding, which we view as 0-90 days, and then the ongoing enablement which is 90 plus days,” explains Jaffe.
Setting expectations is key to your onboarding program
With the framework in place, Jaffe then suggests setting goals and targets based on your onboarding program. “The first thing that you guys need to start on from an onboarding perspective is understanding the approach you want to do. Ultimately the one thing that you need to address is at what stage of onboarding you are, and what are the outcomes that you want to drive. So, if you are running let’s say, an onboarding program that’s five days long on the next Monday, what does the sales reps need on that day to be successful and working on their own. Maybe it’s about understanding the pitch, understanding the customer stories and understanding how to demo and that’s all that it is. Driving those outcomes and then taking the 30-60-90 days approach and asking what outcomes do I need my teams to have in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and then proceed to ongoing enablement.”
There are three important objectives to an ongoing plan
According to Jaffe ongoing enablement is as important as the initial onboarding phase. He recommends that it’s tailor-made for each of your ramped up reps. Procore leverages Mindtickle for its ongoing enablement to achieve these three objectives:
Constant reinforcement of knowledge and skills
Regular updates of knowledge and processes
Periodic re-calibration of processes and skills
Aligning your objectives helps to measure the impact of your program
Before you think about measuring the impact of your program, Jaffe suggests ensuring that it ’s well aligned with your overall objective.
“I think aligning your objectives with your global sales objectives as well as your company’s’ is critically important when you are measuring the impact of sales enablement. Sales enablement is not in a bubble creating its own objectives, it’s going to be completely dependent on what are we trying to drive at a company level and a global sales team level,” explains Jaffe.
At the end of the day, outcomes matter
Jaffe shared insights on how the impact of this program was measured and shared their impressive outcomes. “The most important thing with measuring the impact is identifying leading vs. lagging indicators. Leading indicators are going to be what you can coach and train your reps through. Lagging indicators are how you are going to measure that success. Lagging indicators are going to be the results closed, dollars won improvement in sales and things like that. Leading indicators would be an adoption of your program, how comfortable your reps are with the program.”
Procore has achieved impressive results with their sales enablement strategy, the figures speak for themselves:
>90% adoption of content and sales enablement technology
Sales reps rate the overall program at 4.8/5 according to their internal NPS survey
99% of their sales reps recommend the program
Through a well-structured sales enablement program, Procore has been able to keep pace with their globally expanding sales team. With Mindtickle they have found the right balance between strategy, data, and technology to achieve an impressive outcome.
Listen now to learn how Powers deployed a successful sales onboarding program and maximized value from their boot camp experience.
In this 16-minute interview Powers outlines:
How onboarding helped MongoDB’s sales reps achieve sales excellence
How you can reinforce information after your boot camp
The key metrics that determine the success of an onboarding program
How sales enablement is structured and who owns it at MongoDB
“At MongoDB, we have a pretty thoughtful and structured approach to our new-hire onboarding. The goal is to provide the sales team with an in-depth understanding of the industry, our customers, our technology and solution sets. The second step is to build upon that baseline and knowledge to equip our reps to consistently qualify their opportunities, setting great meetings with the right people and then ultimately prepare them to engage in highly effective, highly valuable conversations with prospects.”
That is the vision behind the sales onboarding strategy at MongoDB. MongoDB is a leading technology company who spends nearly six times the industry average onboarding their sales reps. In this episode of the Sales Excellence Podcast, Jeremy Powers, Senior Director of Sales Enablement, shares how they structure their sales onboarding and boot camps to maximize their results.
“I think we took somewhere around 11 months before a rep was productive. In the last six to eight months we have really fine-tuned this onboarding program using Mindtickle from the boot camps to advanced sales training. And what we have seen is very consistently our people getting ramped in about five months. So we’ve gone from 11 plus months down to five which is just tremendous,” exclaims Jeremy.
When it’s time for your sales organization to invest in sales enablement and productivity
How to enable your sales managers to perform at their best by shifting their mindset
How to prioritize and continuously improve sales enablement and training initiatives
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to
Soundcloud
,
Stitcher
,
iTunes
or find it
here
.
“If you’ve got to double your revenue to stay on track with your projections, you can’t do that on 30k deals. And if marketing is doing great things and attracting really great logos, but sales aren’t doing the right things, you’re not going to get what you’re looking for. And if sales is doing a really good job targeting their accounts and they’re motivated to hit the phones, but marketing isn’t giving them any air cover you’re not going to get the lift you’re looking for.”
That was the problem the Marketo was facing by relying on inbound marketing for its sales leads. So it decided to find a new way to scale, and leveraging the power of Account Based Marketing Engagio was born. Ray Carroll moved to Engagio as VP of Sales and was tasked with the job of building and scaling this next generation marketing technology company. As the business grew the issue of sales productivity became more apparent.
“The incremental efficiency on the average sale price, the time it takes to get a rep to productivity, the average sales cycle; you get those gains through having a first-class sales enablement function. And that’s why you see companies like Box, Zendesk, and HubSpot have Directors of Sales Productivity. Because if you can get 500 people with all deals at a 1% more close rate or making their deal cycle less, that is a significant uplift. That’s bigger than any single deal which you close for half a million dollars,” explains Carroll.
Thanks to sales enablement the role of the sales manager is also changing. “Managers have to realize that your job no longer is having your name in lights or closing the deal. It’s helping your team be as good at their job at scale, and only when you do that will you win as a team. It’s shifting from tactical to strategic.”
Listen now
to find out how Carroll has helped Engagio make the transformative shift from tactical to strategic sales.
As Manager of Sales Enablement at Procore Technologies, this collaborative approach to enablement has been core to Alex Jaffe’s
success. Procore is one of the world’s most widely used construction management software that recently hit unicorn status.
But it hasn’t been an easy ride Jaffe reflects, “New reps were coming in and we didn’t even have phones set up or Salesforce login. So we really focused on building the foundation. Depending on where you’re at in your company lifecycle you’re going to have different challenges, but it’s all going to revolve around your rapidly growing sales team.”
“Just like racing car drivers, even the rock stars in your sales team need to make sure that their car is perfectly tuned for the track they’re racing on. Sales enablement is just like this. It allows your racing drivers to go fast and go well,” chimes in Marc Wendling, Vice President of Sales at Mindtickle.
In this webinar Alex and Marc explain:
How to create a sales enablement program that meets the needs of each stage of your sales reps’ development;
What role stakeholders, technology and data play in building a sales enablement framework;
Why coaching your sales managers is just as important as training your reps; and
How coaching can be personalized to meet each of your reps’ individual needs.
Listen now
to hear Alex Jaffe of Procore Technologies, along with our VP Sales, Marc Wendling, talk with Larry Reeves of AA-ISP about how to create a sales enablement powerhouse that will help you make your sales reps successful.
In this 15 minute interview Duchen and Reisert outline:
What makes a great SDR onboarding program;
How you can reduce the ramp up time for your new SDRs;
What role a manager plays in the onboarding process; and
What sales enablement professionals can do to improve the success of their SDRs.
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here “Onboarding SDRs can actually be really tricky especially for an organization that is doing this for the first time,” explains Ryan Reisert who’s seen his fair share of inside sales onboarding programs.
Along with Mike Duchen, Reisert is co-founder of Inside Sales Bootcamp, a sales acceleration engine for high growth. They help companies onboard and ramp up their SDRs.
“I see a lot of companies struggle when they start to create their outbound program. Because they’ve had success with inbound, they’ve got a lot of leads coming in, but they start their outbound function without actually going through the data or at least trying to understand what expected outcomes can look like. Without setting that up front, you’re set yourself up for long term failure,” he continues.
“This is not an easy role when you look at what the day to day of an SDR actually looks like,” adds Duchen. “A rep will be doing 100 activities per day, every day. It’s a lot of work. And on top of that, they’re probably getting rejected eight or nine out of ten times.”
Inside sales is a tough job, which is why every enablement initiative you implement that helps your SDRs do their job will lead them (and you) on the road to success.
You’ve just recruited some really promising sales reps with an impressive track record as rainmakers. On day one, HR arranges their computer, gives them a smartphone, and takes them through the company’s online onboarding portal. The following month is a blur of job-specific training workshops and e-learning, as your new reps try to get up-to-speed on your product, target customers, and industry intel. The volume of information they are scrambling to absorb is overwhelming.
Fast forward 8 months and the rainmakers appear to be going through a dry spell. Many of your sales teams haven’t met their quota and your Sales Managers complain that their reps don’t seem to understand the product, let alone the needs of their customers. And you’re left having to explain the lackluster sales results to the Board.
It’s easy to blame the recruitment process here, but it’s more likely that your sales onboarding program could benefit from a more systematic approach.
You are not alone, according to a research done by Brigade Group, 50% of new hires never meet their quota even after onboarding.
What is onboarding for sales reps?
Onboarding is about making sure that the sales rep is truly sales-ready. It’s about understanding the industry, building detailed product knowledge, getting under the skin of the customer persona, learning how to qualify a lead, and pitching to them effectively. In short, onboarding is about learning “what to sell” and “how to sell”.
While new hire orientation can be done relatively quickly, onboarding is a process that can take up to 12 months. In my experience, with a robust process, the right tools, and effective measures, it is possible to cut down sales onboarding time by at least 30-40%. In fact, I’ve seen companies with about 100 sales reps increase their revenue by 8% as a result of effective onboarding. The potential value to the top line can be even higher for smaller sales teams.
I suggest following a five-step high-level sales onboarding process:
How do you measure if the onboarding was effective?
Following a process is one thing, but it’s only useful if you can measure and track how effective the onboarding has been for the new hire. I’ve found it to be most effective to benchmark new hires against existing sales reps. While no individual is the same, generally your existing sales reps fall into three categories:
The A Players – These are your high performing sales reps who consistently exceed targets
The B Players – They are just about meeting targets, and need some attention to keep them on track
The C Players – These reps need some help and guidance to get them performing on quota
By predicting which category the new hires fall into, your sales managers can personalize their coaching efforts based on the needs of each individual. I’d suggest using the following 4 metrics to measure your new sales hires and the effectiveness of your onboarding program:
Time to Complete Training – Where your training includes some self-paced learning modules and assessment, you can measure how long it takes someone to complete the program and demonstrate that they’ve absorbed the knowledge. This is one of the reasons using an effective online training program is particularly helpful for sales onboarding as it lets you automatically track this metric.
Time for Sales Readiness – Ready to engage customers without the assistance of a more seasoned team member.
Time to Close First Sales Deal – The amount of time it takes to make the first sale is a landmark measurement for both the individual and the business. However, when coupled with Time to Meet Quota, it provides a good indicator of the potential success of the new hire as well.
Time to Meet Quota – At Mindtickle, we define productivity as the first month that the sales rep achieves their quota so this measurement is the most appropriate for our business. However, other industries with longer lead times or more seasonal products may consider it more appropriate to measure the first quarter in which quota is achieved instead. The important thing with this metric is ensuring that it is easy to measure.
Average sales cycle (time to close deals) – In my experience, the time spent to close a deal is the best proxy for productivity. It shows how efficient the rep is in taking a customer through the sales process and getting a result. It also should be easy to measure through the tools available in your CRM.
This also helps provide a handy framework when you’re reporting upwards on how your new recruits are performing.
Using this process and measurement framework provides not only your managers with a well-structured process, but also gives your new hires the required support that will help them become sales-ready sooner and close deals faster.
So, are you ready to increase your top-line revenue?
Business leaders often say that their employees are the most important asset of their business. However, without a strong new hire orientation program, some companies are failing to invest in employees. This puts long-term success in serious jeopardy.
New employee orientation, if done right, can lead to more productive workers and, ultimately, increased customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, a lot of organizations are doing it wrong. So, how do you it right? We outline the first steps for building out a new hire orientation template that will get your team ramped up and productive.
How we make a difference
New hire orientation should instill a sense of accomplishment from day one. They should be inspired enough to go home and proudly explain their new role to their family, friends, and neighbors: “We sell products that make a difference.” Whether they run a department or are an individual contributor, all employees need to know that they are significant to the big picture. You can give them that by:
Explaining how the business works and how they fit in and contribute.
Talking about trends and opportunities and how your company plays a part in changing the lives of customers.
Offering an energetic multimedia presentation that illustrates the company’s proud traditions and opportunities.
Customers
Serving customers should be the number one goal of any company. When an employee understands the company’s number one goal, they are more likely to work a job with a clear feeling of purpose. You don’t have to provide new hires with a list of customer names and addresses. But you should make sure that employees from top to bottom see customers as more than faceless, nameless deep pockets who pay for your products or services. Here are some areas to cover to ensure that your new hire is able to stand in your customer’s shoes:
Share customer success stories and what value you are adding to customers.
Understand your customer’s full range of options, as well as his or her ecosystem of providers and competitors.
Know your customer’s experience, try role-playing exercises at all points of the customer’s experience with your company.
Anticipate customer needs. Follow trends and know what customers will want tomorrow. With scenario planning, new hires can serve customers better by watching out for underlying market shifts that impact your industry.
Products and services
From orientation forward, demonstrate your company as your customer’s hero. You can do that by helping employees develop an understanding of how your products–whatever they are–help individuals, families, or businesses meet everyday challenges.
Your new hire orientation could include anecdotes that describe how your company helped fill a need or provided the solution to a specific problem. Intimate knowledge of your company’s place in consumer’s hearts can be another source of employee pride.
Consider a video presentation that follows your products and services from production to consumer and beyond. That might sound a bit hokey, but it can help new employees understand how your company connects with customers. Putting a video in new hire orientation will help employees engage and make material relatable and easier to remember. Developing effective training videos takes some work, but it is not difficult.
How to reach customers
Even if a new employee isn’t a part of the sales force, he should understand how your products make their way to the consumer.
What is the core benefit of your product and service?
How do marketing and sales work together?
Does your company ship worldwide from a central distribution point?
Are your products or services offered to the public by retailers?
Do you reach customers via direct sales associates?
The answer to “How do we sell?” will be a part of an employee’s identity throughout their life on the job. It can demonstrate your company’s local or global reach or help a new employee understand that there is a ladder of opportunity should sales be their ultimate goal.
Journey so far
Employees need to know that they are a part of something stable. Even if it isn’t a big conglomerate, they should know that the company has a history and a future, and that they can be a part of it. That doesn’t mean that new employee orientation should include a detailed analysis of a decade of annual reports, but employees should hear about the company’s foundation and plans for growth.
The path you lay out for new employees during new hire orientation paves the way for their journey into a long-term relationship with your organization. This template will get you started with a strong foundation to welcome your new hires and get them productive more quickly. Show them where they fit into the big picture and set the stage for a bright future!
This post is based on a webinar on how to accelerate new hire productivity for consistent production with sales onboarding. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
CrowdStrike is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Silicon Valley. It is on a mission to stop breaches through next-generation anti-virus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed hunting – all in the cloud. CrowdStrike has a unique ability to not only prevent cyber attacks but also respond to malicious attacks. It’s no surprise then that they were recently ranked number 40 on
Deloitte’s’ technology Fast 500
, North America, recognized for the exponential growth of 2,665% in the past 3 years. Thanks to this stunning growth trajectory the company’s sales force has doubled recently and is continuing to grow rapidly. Rapid growth comes with its challenges
Trying to maintain exponential growth was CrowdStrike’s biggest sales enablement challenge. To achieve this Tracey Meersman, Director of Sales Enablement, believed the key was to focus in on how they onboarded their new sales hires. It’s a sound strategy when you consider that 60% of businesses with onboarding programs ramp up faster and achieve double the top line revenue per rep with an agile structured onboarding process.
To create their successful onboarding program CrowdStrike ensured it was: The onboarding program has five distinct phases
“The complete program is pretty quick, just 90 days with ongoing mentoring and coaching opportunities. One of the things that we’re tasked with is helping our B players become A players, and to ramp people as quickly as possible as the cost of onboarding is very expensive. And we’re tasked with trying to get everyone ramped on their phones, so they’re out in the field, selling and achieving quota as quickly as possible,”
comments Meersman.
The 5-part onboarding program was designed to achieve this while incorporating CrowdStrike’s four building blocks of onboarding; compliance, clarity, connection, and culture.
Pre-Boarding
Phase one begins prior to the new hire commencing with CrowdStrike, leveraging technology to deliver courses to future employees. “
Topics include the company’s strategy, resources, benefits, and compliance. The objective is to identify CrowdStrike’s advantages, complete onboarding activities and reaffirm their decision to join CrowdStrike,”
explains Meersman.
Pre-Bootcamp
“Phase 2 occurs on the new hire’s start date with a virtual webinar. Topics include a product overview, initiatives and most importantly an opportunity to ask questions. The objective is to accelerate their ramp and productivity by utilizing tools and resources, engaging in the culture and finalizing onboarding requirements. For sales new hires, they are added to the CrowdStrike Sales Academy. A learning platform powered by Mindtickle which we use specifically for sales. New hires are assigned specific learning activities related to their role. This includes the mobile capability to complete learning through the Mindtickle mobile app,”
continues Meersman.
Bootcamp
“And Phase 3 is an in-person program featuring executive presentations and departmental overview. For new sales hires this includes an additional 1.5-day interactive boot camp to align selling strategies to the company’s growth objectives by articulating our key messages and unique business value. New hires are onboarded a minimum of one week prior to attending the in-person program and there is pre-work to provide foundational knowledge. The boot camp provides an opportunity to pitch back messages in CrowdStrike’s unique business value as well as align with the sales process in the key prospect and customer program. “That allows us to be able to use a scenario-based approach through the Mindtickle platform as well,”
explains Meersman.
Post-Bootcamp
With boot camp completed the next aspect is to align the learning with real-world selling.
“So how often have we heard from sales reps, ‘I’ve never used this or that. It’s not what my customers want/need to hear’? More than once, right? So our onboarding program aligns with real-world sales scenarios with learning activities at specific intervals in their onboarding journey including the opportunity for sales scenarios and coaching by their manager. they also have the opportunity to have a buddy to be able to reinforce the learning and provide just-in-time information,”
explains Meersman.
Continuous Reinforcement
“
[Continuous reinforcement] is also a key component that includes personalization, scalability, structured and milestone-based approaches. So each learning activity in CrowdStrike’s sales academy includes a knowledge transfer. We have the ability to teach hires, not penalize them through the use of what Mindtickle refers to as ‘tickles’. So those would be matching true-false to multiple choice questions. There are 16 different tickles within Mindtickle and we try to utilize all of that. We also do continual learning in terms of providing a quick update and courses. We try to push those out on a weekly basis so the new hires are not just getting onboarding information they’re also getting just in time information that’s related to their role,”
outlines Meersman. Milestones help drive consistency
“It’s imperative for our growth and success that the program is standard and consistent,”
explains Meersman.
“Therefore there are key milestones within the onboarding program at weeks one to four as well as at 60 and 90 days. CrowdStrikes’ Sales Academy provides the structure through workflows, with key milestones to be successfully completed at each interval. The sales rep needs to complete the activities before moving forward to the next onboarding phase. When we’re looking at the components of the onboarding program we’re looking at five distinct areas; one is, understanding the buyer, understanding CrowdStrike’s offerings, beating the competition, CrowdStrike’s differentiation, including our unique business value, use cases and success metrics and all the sales tools and resources.” Personalization helps each new hire learn what they need to
When you’re onboarding tens or hundreds of new sales reps at a time personalization is a huge challenge. So how does CrowdStrike achieve this?
“First the process and programs need to be personalized for each role. As with many sales organizations, there are various target markets and associated roles and responsibilities. The program needs to be role-based. So our onboarding guide, though applicable for the entire sales team, has call outs for specific roles,”
explains Meersman. This is easily achieved thanks to Mindtickle’s deep integration with
salesforce.com
that enables the onboarding program administrators to allocate aspects of the course to specific roles, markets or responsibilities. Scalability is achieved by leveraging mobile technology
“The other key component of sales onboarding at CrowdStrike is that it had to be scalable. Utilizing CrowdStrike Sales Academy ensures that the sale onboarding program is scalable through the app based Mindtickle platform. From day 1 forward the program is available 24/7 to new hires. And soon the platform will have the capability for managers to be able to run their own report to track progress,”
comments Meersman. Experiential learning aligns to real-world selling
“When we looked at our program we also wanted to be able to blend learning and activity. Within our approach and utilizing the Mindtickle platform, we’re able to provide a blend of self-paced knowledge combined with activities that are reviewed by the rep’s manager, which provides a virtual coaching opportunity. This is really key for the manager to be involved in the new hire’s onboarding,”
explains Meersman.
“
This is accomplished by having the reps complete what is known in the Mindtickle platform as missions, that are activities that your rep completes. These include elevator pitches and value proposition as well as email and voicemail pamphlets And respond to specific situations including objection-handling, competitive scenarios etc. So rather than spend time and resources having the new rep deliver the poor pitch during our boot camp, they have to complete this within the CrowdStrike Sales Academy after boot camp. Again this is reviewed by their manager and provides an additional coaching opportunity.”
Experiential learning is also applied to peer-to-peer learning.
“From the experiential learning standpoint it is very key we get this all the time from reps. I’d like to see how one of my peers and how they pitch, how they handle the objection. In the real world they’re often presenting to executives, so they want to be able to build up that knowledge and see how their other peers are doing it as well.”
Utilizing Mindtickle’s app, CrowdStrike is also able to share peer examples so the reps can learn from each other in their own time as well.
“And we talk a lot about sales rep but there’s also the capability for a day technical salespeople to be able to do a demo as well through the platform. So it’s not just the pitches for the field sales rep but also applicable for the technical sales people as well,”
adds Meersman Communication between reps and management enhances coaching opportunities
Communication should go two ways. Leveraging the Mindtickle app CrowdStrike is able to facilitate this kind of communication.
“This allows the new rep and manager to effectively communicate progress, areas of improvement and also coaching opportunities. Reports are also available to managers so that they can track that progress. Right now I provide those reports to them but there will be a self-service portal coming soon,”
“Additionally each new hire should buddy with a peer with whom they connect on a regular basis, learn how to be successful in their role and feel comfortable asking questions they don’t want to ask their manager. The buddy reinforces the key learnings and helps the new hire if they require training on utilization of key tools and resources. So think of all of those questions that you don’t want to ask your manager like how to use Salesforce, find specific tools and resources etc.” And make it easy … for reps and for sales enablement
Tools have to be easy to use otherwise they’re not really enabling the rep. “
And that’s really a key component because so many sales reps live in salesforce they have access to the Mindtickle platform through salesforce. So there’s no need to login to an official website. This makes it very very easy and because the Mindtickle app has the mobile capability as well it’s also very easy to access.”
But enablement and collaboration are also important for the administrators of the system as Meersman explains, “
I am a strong party of one. A one-woman show in terms of creating and maintaining the content. I know of many who are probably in the same situation. The good news is that I have a great relationship with our product marketing organization. And we work together to be able to create content. And also others meet within the organization depending on what the topic is.”
“So my commercial for Mindtickle is nobody ever said that it was fun using an LMS. I love the Mindtickle platform and our reps do as well because we have the mobile capability, we have the tickles or the gamification and social aspects, and we can push out bite-size chunks to people as well as perform better missions which are really the scenario-based approaches. And that provides reinforcement.”
Meersman continues “
My philosophy is it does not have to be so hard. In every sales enablement role I’ve had, it’s been a new role and I basically had to onboard myself which in turn led me to create onboarding programs for sale new hires. It was challenging for me, I didn’t have it to be challenging for the new sales hire. It’s my role and responsibility to connect the dots for sales reps to make it easier to learn quickly and attain specific productivity metrics.” CrowdStrike’s onboarding program has been a success for management and reps
CrowdStrike has seen impressive results with their new hire sales onboarding. “
The typical ramp time for an enterprise software sales rep in our industry is six to 12 months. However, we’ve been able to fully ramp reps in half that time. Over 70% of ramped reps achieved or exceeded quota in their first quarter following their ramp.”
Meersman continues,
“We define ramp as the rep’s ability to achieve quota.”
“Our boot camp has received an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5. 99% of reps recommend the program, but in terms of value, our ratings are 100%. And we’re also correlating the training to learning. Out of our top 10 reps, the majority has been onboard for less than one year but are top in completing training. And several of them have been promoted. We also use KPIs and our onboarded reps are achieving or overachieving those KPIs as well,”
Meersman says proudly.
And the feedback from the field speaks for itself.
“Of all my years of various on boarding / new hire trainings I will say that this was the best experience and easiest to grasp.” ~
New sales rep
“You’ve got it down to a science, and I just wanted you to know how valuable it was in helping to get me ramped up.” ~
This post is based on a podcast on how ForeScout enables its sales team for their competitive advantage. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast
here
.
ForeScout is a cutting-edge network security company that can detect devices the instant they connect to a network. They are at the forefront of cybersecurity and have been named one of the
20 Fastest Growing Security Companies in 2015
by the Silicon Review. The company has customers around the world and requires a cohesive sales team in order to keep up with growing demand.
According to Renee Capovilla, Director of Sales Enablement, their motto is to turn its A players into ForeScout sales superstars by mastering six core elements:
Industry knowledge;
Buyer knowledge;
Product knowledge;
Pitch knowledge;
Process knowledge; and
Systems knowledge.
The business encountered challenges in the process, messaging and onboarding
When I first joined ForeScout it became very clear to me that we needed to up-level our sales process. We had a documented sales process but it just wasn’t being followed consistently. Moreover, from a messaging perspective, there was no consistency across the sales organization. In order to scale the business and to accelerate our new hire ramp up, we needed to re-engineer our sales process and more importantly document that.”
Three solutions were identified
To address the key challenges, the company focused its efforts on three key areas.
Creating a sales playbook
“The goal of the playbook is to capture and certify what your top performers are saying, asking and doing at every stage of the sales cycle. A playbook needs to provide guidance around first the deal, the call and the forecast management best practices throughout the sales process. Because we have a complex sale process and we work with a lot of very high stake deals, it’s critical that the playbook clearly defines the roles and responsibilities and the rules of engagement of all the different seller stakeholders, to ensure that we in the end delight that buyer throughout the selling process,”
explains Capovilla.
“The playbook should use the sales process as the framework. This approach has enabled us to give that clear direction and guidance on what the rep should do say, do and ask it at every stage of their sale cycle, replicating the best of the best. Then as part of this, it should also include a review section which is the coaching questions at every stage. This is where the manager comes in and plays the part of the coach with the rep, it’s a must-have.”
“We also have sections for the buyer role profiles, so we understand the buyer we are selling to and what they are doing through the sales process so we can lead them through it. We have security topic focus conversational tracks that really draw out the business value for why we are talking to those buyers and then we have an objection handling section which is again one of my favorites. And then we have key customer success story section where reps can talk about other customer successes again embellishing that conversation with the customer,”
outlines Capovilla.
The sales playbook is currently being migrated to Mindtickle so that the technology can be leveraged for all aspects of the process.
Instituting a corporate pitch certification program
When approaching the issue of consistent messaging, ForeScout decided to institute a company-wide corporate pitch certification program.
“This corporate pitch program serves as a framework to which we present our capabilities, our differentiators and our values to our customers. It enables that discussion again around security buyers’ challenges, we present use cases, the current infrastructure gaps that could be occurring and then we help walk the customer through how ForeScout can uniquely address each one of them.”
“I call it the 30 – 3 – 30. You need to be able to just give a 30-second pitch on your company. I think everybody has to have that in their arsenal of conversation. Then we go into the three which is the “three-minute elevator pitch.” That’s where you start talking a little bit more about the buyer challenges and a few of the use cases, but not in too much depth because we have to stick to three minutes. And then the last is, of course, the 30, and that’s where we consider the full-on pitch,”
she continues.
Each pitch is recorded and reviewed using Mindtickle and feedback is provided back to the reps. This then enables the certification to be recorded as well.
Building a robust onboarding program
ForeScout’s onboarding program builds on the sales playbook.
“We use the playbook content as the basis for developing our sales university and we use Mindtickle. Our perspective is that the playbook beckons that onboarding program. It’s the basis for developing the university courseware and the referencing coaching guide that drives our overall process and best practice application post the onboarding experience,”
Capovilla explains.
“We have tackled it in a 30-60-90 day approach. The first month is focused on completion of the online courses that we have put in Mindtickle, along with the prescribed shadowing activities. Around week four to six we bring in the new hires to a boot camp, where we expose them to the best people. We bring the concepts that were taught in those online courses to life, and learning scenarios and role play sprinkled with a little bit of tribal knowledge and customer situations. In my opinion, the best way to learn is to have the trainees apply the concepts to real deals so we also have them do teach back concepts, that’s the role play. We do a lot these role plays, where the trainees have to present what they’ve learned to their peers, and it’s through that collaboration that the learning really starts happening.”
“That’s why I got the platform:
because all of that is in Mindtickle. We use that platform to push out quick updates, to make sure that they haven’t forgotten what we taught them initially in the courses and the missions. One of my favorites is the pitch back because you really want to know once the rep knows it. You want to know how they are using it on a sales call and the only way you’re going to know that is if they tell you. So the pitch back is so important for us to hear what they are going to say when they get to the customer, a great way to reinforce the learning through listening,”
she explains.
“Mindtickle allows me to ramp up my onboarding as well as my ongoing field training. I enable the technology sooner rather than later. Don’t feel intimidated to add the technology early on, because it won’t just help with the cycle time,”
Capovilla continues.
“It’s the ease of use for both the administrator and the user. I’m on both sides of the platform all day long. I quickly set-up a course, a mission, a pitch back. It’s so easy and then from a user perspective, I love the UI. It’s just beautiful and simple and clear, you know what you need to do. We also love the fun and interactive learning experience. Invariably we hear comments like ‘this was the best learning experience I have had, very positive’. I think people learn a lot from seeing themselves.”
New hires are now hitting productivity targets within six to nine months
In a dynamic industry that is constantly evolving getting new hires to ramp up is challenging, but ForeScout has found their sales playbook and onboarding program so effective that by the six to nine month mark their new hires are hitting their productivity targets. They are also expected to deliver their corporate pitch within their first 30 days, using a scorecard to help judge it impartially.
“If you partner with the right companies they will work with you on your team. Mindtickle’s been great. I don’t look at them as a vendor, I look at them as a partner. So when I get stuck or have a challenge, I call my Customer Success rep and we work through it. It’s really like having another person on my team. That’s how I have been able to be successful,”
CrowdStrike is one of the fastest growing technology companies in Silicon Valley. It is on a mission to stop breaches through next-generation anti-virus, endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed hunting – all in the cloud. CrowdStrike has a unique ability to not only prevent cyber attacks but also respond to malicious attacks. It’s no surprise then that they were recently ranked number 40 on
This post is based on a podcast on how ForeScout enables its sales team for their competitive advantage. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast 