How Large, Innovative Companies Are Using Their LMSs for ‘Revenue Enablement’

Ryan Pimlott on June 15, 2018

I’ve been in the trenches for over three years with big enterprises while they’ve grappled with leveraging their LMSs (Learning Management Systems; and yes, many have more than one) to drive the continuous learning and development that their sales enablement programs can provide to sales reps so they can stay ahead of their discerning, self-qualifying customers. They all have one common question, “how do we leverage our LMS systems for effective sales enablement? Or do we?”
I usually respond with, “We see the need to drive more productivity from innovative top companies like yours every day. And most companies we encounter are actively seeking better ways to diagnose, swiftly and effectively react to customer requests, and ultimately drive more sales predictability.” But, what’s usually not apparent is that change is happening so fast that companies are failing when trying to use their LMSs for effective sales coaching or adequately disseminating ever-changing sales requirements. LMSs were built for managing and certifying large company employee’s accomplishments (such as certifying that personnel is trained on sexual harassment or discrimination laws). LMSs are not designed for helping effective sales teams consume and retain useful knowledge, develop skills and behaviors they can continuously improve upon, or finally, targeting specific needs and skills’ gaps.
When it comes to enabling sales and client professionals to be successful and repeatedly win deals or renew accounts, corporate learning management systems don’t do the job.

What sales need to be customer ready – beyond an LMS

What do salespeople need? Beyond LMS systems? They need to be prepared to effectively field customer requests and objections. Therefore, they need access to the latest information in an easily consumable format—in real time, not days after a training or coaching session, but at the exact moment, the information is made available.
Then, they need to be able to articulate the right messages during crucial customer conversations. There are no second chances when your competition is on the next call. Sellers who are knowledgeable and articulate are more valued, and often the winners of new business. The fact is that today’s sales professionals need more than reviews, webinars, and classroom sessions. To truly address knowledge and skills’ gaps, managers need to coach their team members on how to improve sales strategies at an ongoing basis. And for coaching, they need robust sales enablement solutions.
Plus, many managers, especially first-time managers need meaningful guidance on what effective sales coaching looks like. Even experienced managers who know how to coach and have exhausted the capabilities of corporate learning management systems need enablement tools to help them identify problem areas and gaps. Coaching is not possible with just an LMS.

More than just sales teams impact revenue

While revenue growth involves new business from sales, it must maintain (or grow) existing revenue from expansions to renewals. That’s why it’s important to point out that those who impact overall revenue growth include not only sales reps, but also customer success managers, customer support professionals, call center professionals, sales engineers, sales enablement managers, learning and development professionals, and product marketers alike. Enablement programs must reach beyond sales’ teams and extend to everyone who impacts revenue maintenance and growth. “Revenue enablement” if you will.
When customer satisfaction (CSAT) and NPS scores are low, customers are highly unlikely to expand or renew existing products or services. That’s why many Mindtickle customers are working on pilot programs and deployments that focus on improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. They repeatedly ask, “how can I diagnose and influence my company’s CSAT scores? Is it by providing all revenue influencers (sales, customer support and service roles) the right knowledge? Or skills? Or tools? How about through effective sales coaching?”

What effective ‘revenue enablement’ should accomplish

An effective revenue enablement solution begins where an LMS ends. It should onboard and updates all revenue influencers quickly and efficiently, and in a way that simultaneously helps them reinforce and retain the knowledge and skills they need.
Moving towards a complete revenue enablement model is the perfect opportunity for enterprise enablement leaders to move from measuring program adoption to correlating programs to performance. Imagine doing real-time correlations with transactional metrics, such as win/loss analysis, conversion rates, etc.
I consider Mindtickle a true revenue enablement solution because our solution actively helps managers coach, enables the retention and reinforcement of knowledge and develops skills and behaviors in an efficient and easily consumable manner. An effective revenue enablement solution like Mindtickle’s should always be there to help revenue influencers fill in skills and behavior gaps throughout the time they’re with a company.
So, if you are like many of our customers who ask where their LMS fits into sales, or what I call revenue enablement, understand that LMSs are key to a modern-day enablement solution, but, they’re just not all you need. Effective revenue enablement solutions begin where the benefits of LMSs end.
Imagine elevating the role of enablement leaders by presenting to your exec team and peers metrics that show a direct correlation between your “revenue” enablement programs and revenue growth?

Knowledge Transfer: The Achilles Heel of Sales Enablement

Daniel Kuperman on May 21, 2018

“The biggest challenge for sales reps to meet their quota is difficulty in differentiating offerings from competition or buyer status quo.”

At the SiriusDecisions Summit this year one of the best sessions I attended was the one on “Sales Knowledge Transfer Framework.” It laid out the case for changing how companies are transferring knowledge to their sales teams.

However, despite all the advancements made in educating companies on the value of sales enablement, it’s surprising that many salespeople are still lagging behind.

Why is this is happening? SiriusDecisions shed some light on the problem:

  • 36% of high-performing reps feel they need more coaching from their managers.
  • High-performing reps are 3X more likely to use role-play when learning.
  • 26% of low-performing managers lack guidance, resources, or support to coach new hires.
  • Low performers are 8X more likely to

    not

    to use role-play in their training programs.

When creating great onboarding or ongoing enablement programs, it’s important to understand how your sales team learns, practices, and receives feedback. Without incorporating these elements, adoption will be low and, you won’t see results.

Competitive updates, objection handling, new messaging, market information and all the knowledge and information you need to transfer to the minds of your sales reps require a considerate plan. Technology now enables you to leverage virtual role-play to complement in-person exercises. Electronic coaching forms can assist managers in following a prescribed approach to observe and help reps in the field. And mobile-enabled micro-learning modules can reach your field team wherever they are without taking time away from selling activities. But technology alone is not enough.

If you are thinking about deploying an enablement solution, first stop to make a list of everyone involved including sales, marketing, and product marketing. Ensure you have buy-in as any new technology deployment is only as good as the people using it. Then, those who create content and want to transfer their knowledge to the sales reps will have new guidelines.

If you’d like to see how other companies have done this successfully, contact [email protected] and we’ll put you in touch with someone that has transformed their sales enablement and can share what they’ve learned. You can also read some of our

customer stories here

.

Gaining a Competitive Sales Advantage with Virtual Micro-Learning

Deepti Sundareshan on May 16, 2018

In today’s ever-changing marketplace, it’s becoming more and more difficult to get an edge over competitors. Developing a strong value proposition is one way to clearly explain to prospects why they should buy your solution over others. In fact, a great value proposition could be the difference between losing a sale or closing it. According to HubSpot, only 69% of B2B firms have established value propositions, yet 54 percent of companies do nothing to optimize theirs. A strong value proposition alone is not enough to get ahead of your business rivals. It takes a well-prepared salesforce who can effectively leverage your value proposition to make the difference. The best way to prepare them to do so is with the ongoing, bite-sized training that’s accessible from anywhere. Here, we’ll show you how you’ll gain a competitive sales advantage with virtual micro-learning.

Attract and retain good talent

According to research by Gallup,

59% of millennials say opportunities to learn and grow are extremely important to them when

applying for a job

. In comparison, 44% of Gen Xers and 41% of baby boomers say the same about these types of opportunities. Plus, the Harvard Business Review found that dissatisfaction with development efforts such as training and coaching cause many to leave their job for another with better development opportunities.

Sales rep engagement increases when micro-learning is used instead of other training methods because it’s in a format that’s easily incorporated into their routine while meeting their desire to learn. It also increases job satisfaction, since the sales staff feels more prepared and enjoys their work more. Plus, micro-learning is fun!

Faster onboarding

Effective salespeople are masters of a complex skill set. It takes technical expertise and fine-tuned people skills to translate product specs into persuasive value. Micro-learning

shortens ramp time. This means less time to full productivity and more reps selling at their full potential at all times. This reduces the financial drain on the organization and creates a stronger selling team compared to those of competitors.

Always up-to-date

In today’s marketplace, there’s always something new to learn and changes to know. They include updates relating to product, marketplace, prospect challenges, industry information, competitors, and the best sales techniques. With micro-learning, your reps are continually learning and always up to date on the latest need-to-know information.

It helps them easily

keep their knowledge and skills fresh. Consistently improving through reinforcement with practice and application, they’re always ready for any prospect or scenario.

The right information at the right time

Since virtual micro-learning is available from anywhere on any device, sales reps can review the information they need, when they need it. For example, they can refresh on value propositions for specific prospects just prior to presenting to or meeting with, them. This easy-to-access information makes it possible for reps to respond promptly to prospect and customer questions too, resulting in increased sales and customer satisfaction.

This content, consumed at the moment the rep most needs it, is reinforced with an immediate application that results in greater retention. The individualized learning experience that micro-learning provides keeps reps interested and wanting to learn more to fill their individual learning gaps.

Increased productivity

Unlike other learning methods,

micro-learning doesn’t interrupt your reps’ daily work, it fits right in. They remain on-the-job instead of sitting in a training room where they aren’t productive. Also, your team members learn faster and retain more with micro-learning, so they’re better prepared to close more business in less time.

Agile

Matching the pace of today’s business, virtual micro-learning is agiler than other forms of training and communication. Due to their brevity, micro-learning courses can be produced quickly and updated on the go. Plus, notifications about changes to your company, competition, product, and more are easily created and distributed with just a few clicks.

This allows your organization to adapt to change quickly and easily in the marketplace.

As you can see, micro-learning enables your sales force to be better prepared to meet with various prospects, differentiate your solution, and win more deals. With the top talent that’s always up-to-date and continually improving, you’ll already have an edge over your rivals. The resulting productivity combined with your ability to rapidly change with the marketplace, your industry opponents will be no match. It’s time for you to give this method of learning a try and experience the competitive sales advantage with virtual micro-learning in your company.

Reducing Overall Sales Training Costs By Using Virtual Micro-Learning

Deepti Sundareshan on May 9, 2018

Historically sales training has been event-based. The costs can really add up with this style of learning. Fortunately, with today’s sales technologies, you no longer need to invest in old-style educational methods. If your organization is like most, you’re looking for ways to contain spending. Using virtual micro-learning is a great way to do so. In fact, it’s been found to cost at least 50% less to develop than traditional training. That’s some significant savings. So, how is it possible to reduce costs with virtual micro-learning for sales?

What is virtual micro-learning?

Micro-learning involves bite-sized, mobile-friendly, highly focused, individualized training content that can be retrieved from anywhere. That’s what makes it virtual. It includes various content types such as videos, games, quizzes, audio recordings, simulations and more. Research shows that learning in short bursts over time, combined with short quizzes, results in a better long-term recall. That’s why this method of learning is more effective than traditional classroom or event-based training.

Where can you reduce costs?

There are many categories where you can reduce costs with virtual micro-learning for sales. They include:

  •         Travel
  •         Facilities and planning
  •         Materials
  •         Trainers
  •         Re-training
  •         Onboarding
  •         Productivity

Travel

Traditional classroom or event-based training often requires your sales staff to travel to a central location. Costs such as airfare or mileage plus meals and other travel-related expenses can really add up. The larger your salesforce the higher this expense. Of course, for global enterprises, travel is even more significant. When utilizing virtual micro-learning, you reduce or eliminate the need for these sales training-related travel costs.

Facilities and planning

Sales training often involves locating and renting facilities for educational events. Even single-day events, or those taught in your own facilities, typically include meals and/or snacks for all participants as well. Micro-learning is incorporated into your sales reps’ activities on an ongoing basis. Plus it’s accessible from anywhere and on any device. This means you no longer need to incur facility expenses or a planner to make the arrangements.

Materials

Sales readiness materials are all stored in the cloud. This virtual micro-learning eliminates the need to produce, transport, or ship bulky training manuals and hand-outs. You no longer need to update existing print manuals or bear the costs associated with such a time-consuming process. The content used for micro-learning are considerably shorter than traditional materials and can be created much more quickly. This reduces development costs.

Trainers

Switching to this short-format, easily accessible learning format means that you no longer need to pay a trainer to teach in live classroom-like settings. You won’t have to pay an instructor’s hourly rates. In fact, you’ll be able to use many internal SME’s, and other knowledgeable staff members, to create training materials. You can also repurpose your existing training content.

Re-training

It’s a known fact that learning is forgotten if it’s not reiterated often. Based on research by Hermann Ebbinghaus’ research, more than 40% is forgotten within just a few days. By the end of a months’ time, participants have lost 80-90% of the information taught. This creates the need to re-train on topics periodically when traditional training methods are used. Reps are taken out of the field, yet again, simply to refresh their memory of material already covered. With micro-learning, you never need to conduct retraining or refresher training sessions. Plus, information reinforcement is built into the easily accessible bite-sized training style.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

(as seen on flashcardlearner.com)

Onboarding

Research indicates that employee retention increases when companies keep them engaged and provide quality training. Virtual micro-learning enables excellent training that accomplishes both of these needs. This, in turn, reduces sales rep turnover, the need for new hires, and the resulting onboarding expenses. Plus, micro-learning accelerates new rep ramp rate because modules are short and easy to digest. This means that they reach full productivity faster, reducing onboarding costs, and increasing their contribution to the bottom line sooner.

Productivity

Although productivity is a soft cost, its financial impact is very real. Traditional training requires your sales force to lose valuable selling time that can never be recovered. Sales dollars are reduced during the time your sales team is at an event. It also takes your reps time to get back into their normal routine once they return from training. Micro-learning doesn’t have this negative impact on sales productivity because it easily fits into your sales reps’ daily schedule.

These savings are just one aspect of the value of using virtual micro-learning to educate your sales force. With pressure to contain costs, this is one way that you can accomplish this goal while getting an edge in the marketplace. Next time we’ll be talking about gaining a competitive advantage with virtual micro-learning. In the meanwhile, you can reduce costs with virtual micro-learning for sales so your organization can start experiencing the benefits now.

Why Its Important to Integrate Sales Engineers into Your Company’s Sales Process

Deepti Sundareshan on May 8, 2018

Sales engineers play a crucial role in the sales process for complex products. With their deep technical expertise, they bring to life the value your product adds to customers. But many sales organizations make the mistake of bringing them into the process too early or too late.

When you’re in the discovery stage, customers don’t need an engineer’s level of expertise, they just need to qualify that your product may be right for them. But if you bring them in when a customer has started to question your product features or value, it may be too late for them to change their mind.

So when should you involve a sales engineer?

Sales engineers should be brought into the sales process early enough to add value to your customer. They often do this by helping the customer understand how your product may solve their problem and address their pain points. In the early stages, sales engineers may make suggestions or give a customer new ideas for them to consider. This helps the customer understand what their own requirements are before they start to evaluate specific solutions.

By the time a customer is matching requirements to vendors, the opportunity for your sales engineer to add value has been lost. This is because customers narrow their perspective of what they need as they progress down the sales process. While sales engineers add a lot of value later in the process, they can really help seal the deal early on by helping customers define their requirements. This process can begin before a customer has even seen a demo of your product.

Sales engineers process

How do you integrate sales engineers into the sales process?

By getting a sales engineer involved in the pitch stage, they can start to understand your customer’s unique needs, what they need and your sales strategy. If they are only brought in at the demo stage, they will be essentially walking into a customer meeting blind – without any context to what has happened before. This is less than optimal for both the sales engineer and your customer.

As sales engineers are involved in many crucial parts of the sales process, from pitch right through to RFP, it’s important to integrate them into the sales process so they, and your reps, always have the information they need. There are four ways to integrate your sales engineers into the process.

1. Tell reps when to get them involved

Your sales process should help your reps understand when they should get a sales engineer involved and how they should be involved. The right moment will depend on your product and how complex it is.

If you’re not sure when or how to get a sales engineer involved, take a look at past success stories that have involved sales engineers. Where and how did they add the most value? This will help you identify where to incorporate engineers into your process.

Once you’ve identified the right time, make sure your sales reps and engineers are trained on this. They should understand why they’re getting a sales engineer involved, the role they play in the sales process and what they can expect. This will give both sales reps and engineers clarity on their roles.

2. Incorporate their tools

Sales engineers use a range of tools to help them work effectively and efficiently. These may include worksheets and selling aids, for example. These tools should not be kept and maintained outside the sales process, but rather integrated into it. This means they should be included in workflows, available centrally so that they’re easily accessible and incorporated into the standard process.

3. Put them in the system

An important part of integrating your sales engineers into the entire sales process is through systems. Your CRM is the heart of your sales stack, so the role of the sales engineer should be incorporated into its workflows. Adding all of their tasks and tools into your CRM workflow will ensure that they know where each customer is in the sales process and are ready to go when your reps need them.

Sales engineers should also use the same enablement or sales readiness software as your reps. This will make sure there are no gaps in their capabilities or the information that both engineers and reps receive. By using the same sales readiness software they can receive the same learning modules, the same quick updates on competitors and product features and the internal communications. This ensures that everyone is on the same page.

4. Connect them to the conversation

There are often many people involved in the sales process and social or collaboration tools are a great way to keep everyone on the same page. Sales engineers should be included in those conversations so they have all the information they need to help your reps close the deal. This is crucial, especially considering that sales engineers often bring in expertise from other parts of the organization. They work closely with the product to understand features and customer success for use cases. By bringing them into collaborative discussions, they can not only add value to the sales strategy but also stay on top of it.

By integrating your sales engineers into your sales process, you can ensure your engineers have all the information they need and are ready whenever your reps need them. This will give each opportunity the best chance of success.

A Sr. Sales Enablement Leader at MuleSoft Explains Effective Best Practices [A Podcast]

Deepti Sundareshan on May 3, 2018

As

Senior Manager of Sales Enablement, Ali Jones is responsible for MuleSoft’s early stage opportunity strategy and executive briefing program. Her experience brings together Ali’s experience in direct selling and consulting.

“We have a relatively small enablement team at MuleSoft. One person is focused on sales analytics, then three enablement managers each have ownership over part of the sales process. Each of us also has ownership over specific programs and regional alignment as well. We’re generalists yet we also have the opportunity to go deep and really maximize how we engage with our customers and generate revenue,”

explains Ali.

Each function also has their own enablement team, but they each leverage the content and assets that are built by the central team. This flexible structure has enabled MuleSoft to grow and scale up very quickly.

Two crucial parts of their central enablement program are MuleSoft’s onboarding KickStart program and its certification process.

“We take our certification process very seriously,” says Ali. “Salespeople go through multiple rounds and the bar is really high. People take weeks to prepare for their certification. The nice thing is that when they come out of it we are 100% positive that they will nail it in front of a customer.”

So far, over 500 people have been through MuleSoft’s certification program, and they aspire to do so much more with it.

As Ali says, “

sales enablement is such an interesting place to be in the software world. It’s exciting and there are so many interesting things to do.”

In this 20 minute

podcast Ali explains:

  • How MuleSoft has structured its enablement team and compensation to drive sales results
  • What makes MuleSoft’s Kickstart onboarding experience so unique and impactful
  • The tools that have helped MuleSoft enable and scale its sales team
  • The advice she would give to herself if she could do it again

Building an Integrated Sales Enablement Ecosystem

Deepti Sundareshan on April 25, 2018

With today’s buyers waiting until they are 60 – 80% along their buying process, depending on which research you read, it’s becoming more and more important for these cross-functional departments to get on the same page. Without this alignment, it becomes nearly impossible for sales to function efficiently and close business as effectively as possible. That’s why building a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem is important.

A sales enablement ecosystem should ensure that salespeople have access to the right content at the right time to advance sales. Plus, it should provide technology to sales staff that will help them streamline their tasks. An ecosystem that consists of a sales enablement platform that sits between the enterprise marketing automation (MA) system and its customer relationship management (CRM) system can facilitate the collection of intelligence from both systems and everything else that happens in between. Combining the data from both systems can help provide analytics and insights to use in decision making. With such a platform, the more solutions you can be integrated, the greater the insights. This intel is valuable to all involved departments including Marketing, Sales, Sales Ops, Product Development, Customer Service, and more. And, it puts everyone on the same page for more streamlined and efficient operations.

There are many benefits to building a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem, including:

Consistent messaging
Improved communications across the entire enterprise help with consistency of branding, messaging, and updated product information. It provides sales with timely information that’s needed to craft messages for specific prospects. Without this free flow of information between departments, it’s more difficult to achieve business success.

Buyer’s journey alignment
Improved marketing and sales alignment with the buyer’s journey is a result of improved intra-department communications. Marketing needs to remain informed concerning prospect motivators and challenges. Sales reps are in the best position to acquire this information and share it with Marketing. Salespeople see the ever-evolving pain points of their leads and are able to share them. This allows Marketing to continually create content to address these as they change.

Agile strategy adjustments
This open feedback from sales reps to other departments, such as Marketing and Operations, facilitates quick changes to sales and marketing strategies.

Ability to share quickly and easily
These adjustments are then easily communicated through this shared platform in the form of updates, training, and new content. And it’s all done with the simple click of a button.

A huge competitive advantage
Due to increased efficiencies, organizations who build a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem gain a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace.

A fully enabled sales team
With all training, coaching, content, and communications funneling through one platform, your sales team is always up-to-date. They are prepared for any prospect or situation and able to create valuable solutions easily.</>

Increased sales performance and productivity
With everything available in one place, sales reps are able to find the content they need quickly, gaining increased selling time. Plus, consistent updates, training, and coaching make them more effective. These elements improve sales results as well.

Building your ecosystem

With so many benefits you’re probably wondering how to go about building a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem for your organization. Start by determining your objectives and goals. Next, select a sales enablement platform that will best meet your requirements. The selection process includes considerations such as ease of use, mobile readiness, integration options, and analytics capabilities. Be sure to consider whether the vendor will be a good partner on the long-term. Implement your selected solution. This includes defining scope, allocating resources, building a process, training, and more. You’ll find additional information about this process in this article.

A clearer structure and open communications provide for better operations. Building a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem keeps Sales, Marketing, Operations, and more on the same page. The many benefits you’ll gain include consistent messaging and improved buyer’s journey alignment. Agile strategy adjustments and sharing of information at the touch of a button allow your organization to stay ahead of other businesses in the marketplace. This gives your company an advantage over the competition. A fully enabled salesforce increases sales performance and productivity. Of course, all of this adds up to a stronger organization and better bottom line. As you can see, it’s worth the effort to start building a completely integrated sales enablement ecosystem so your organization can reap the benefits too.

How to Change from Feature-Based Selling to Value-Based Selling

Deepti Sundareshan on April 17, 2018

When making changes to your sales approach or processes, you want to be sure you achieve your desired outcomes. With a plan in place, you increase the likelihood that you will. Below are the steps you need to take to change from feature-based selling to value-based selling.

To make this transition you’ll want to follow these steps:

  •         Revise your sales process
  •         Update your competency framework
  •         Identify and create the required content
  •         Identify individual knowledge and skill gaps
  •         Guide and coach your reps through personalized training
  •         Provide ongoing updates

Revise your sales process

There are several reasons to revise your sales process. They include changes to your company, team, product, customer base, customer behaviors, and decreased results from your existing process. Changing your sales methodology is often the outcome of one of these reasons. To revise your sales process consider what changes will be necessary to accommodate your value-selling approach. When, in the buyer’s journey, will your reps be initially engaging with prospects? What steps will need to take place, using a value focus, to convert the prospect to a customer? Map this out very carefully so your sales team always knows what’s next to advance through the process successfully. Once the process is implemented, be sure to use metrics and rep feedback to fine-tune and adjust it as needed.

Update your competency frameworks

Before you can make the change from feature-based to value-based selling, you need to update your sales competency frameworks. These plans provide detailed information about behaviors, skills, and knowledge requirements for each sales position. They simplify benchmarking and help you easily recognize successful training outcomes. To update your frameworks, consider what knowledge, skills, and attributes should be removed from your current ones for each sales position. Next, add any new competencies that will be required for effective value selling. Depending on your particular product or service, these will vary. In our discussion about value-selling, we included several categories of skills and knowledge your team must have for success. They include product, case studies, marketplace, industry information, and buyer personas. Compare these to your current competencies to identify the updates needed. If you’d like more information relating to sales competency frameworks, we discuss this topic in more detail in

this article

.

Identify and create the required content

Once you’ve updated your sales process and your competency frameworks, you’ll be able to identify content gaps. Develop updated content that incorporates your new messaging for both internal and external use. Be sure that you have content for every stage of the sales process, prospect industries, and each persona involved in the buying process. Content will include training materials such as buyer personas and corresponding value propositions for each product, industry, and persona. Plus sales playbooks and training materials like audio, video, and written training snippets, assessment quizzes, games, and certification exercises. Client-facing content tools might include case studies, white papers, e-books, and the like. As this content is used, don’t forget to gather feedback on it from your sales team. Track which pieces are used and which are most effective. This will simplify future content planning.

Identify individual knowledge and skill gaps

If you training your entire sales team on the same material, you risk boring more experienced reps while confusing less experienced ones. You should allow reps to fulfill their individual training requirements. To do so, you must identify each team member’s specific knowledge and skill gaps. There are several ways to do this. These include observation of demonstrated skills and behaviors, assessments through task simulations, self-assessments, quizzes, and performance data. To learn more, you can read

this article

about identifying knowledge and skill gaps.

 

Personalized training with coaching

Armed with your reps’ knowledge and skill gap information, you can start guiding and coaching your reps through the personalized training they need. Prioritize their training needs to help them get started. Utilize short bite-sized written and video training modules. At the end of each module, include short quizzes and games designed to measure their understanding while reinforcing what they’ve learned. Simulation missions allow sales reps to practice and apply what they have learned. For minimal impact on their schedules, these are completed via mobile video and coach feedback is provided. This will reinforce correct practices and prevent the development of bad practices. It’s an excellent way to incorporate another layer of coaching.

Leverage gamification

to motivate them to advance through their training. Leaderboards and rewards will activate their competitive nature too while keeping the process fun and engaging. Incorporate certifications at the end of each course to ensure that reps are properly prepared to effectively apply their newly-learned knowledge and skills.

Provide ongoing refreshers and updates

It’s been shown that training, without ongoing reinforcement, is very quickly forgotten. This is why it is important that you provide your salesforce with refreshers and updates. Refreshers can include bite-sized pieces of supplemental information relating to what they’ve already learned. Share cheat sheets, best practice examples, and reminders. Send out pop quizzes from time to time also. This will allow them to recall knowledge they’ve been taught and apply it. Coaching and simulations exercises are also excellent ways to help your team remain effective by using their skills in different scenarios so they’re always prepared. Updates should include information about new content, new success stories, changes in the marketplace, and changes internally. With these, they’ll always have the latest information at their disposal and never be caught off guard by unexpected questions from prospects pertaining to the latest changes.

Now you have a roadmap to help you change from feature-based to value-based selling. Once you’ve completed this process your team members will be prepared to provide more valuable solutions to their prospects. The end result will be consistently elevated rep performance and more closed deals. And isn’t that the goal? Now it’s time for you to get started with this process so you receive the benefits of value-based selling in your organization!

Improve Sales’ Performance By Transitioning to Away from Feature-based Selling

Deepti Sundareshan on April 11, 2018

Organizations are always looking for ways to improve sales’ performance. It used to be sufficient to sell the with pointing out features and benefits. Today’s buyers expect salespeople to understand their business and guide them to solutions that target their specific challenges. The best way to do this is by focusing on value. Research by the Rain Group found that companies that drive value have 9% higher win rates than all others. That results in a dramatic impact on revenue and profitability. So, it’s time to elevate sales performance by transitioning from feature-based to value-based selling.

What is value-based selling?

Value-based selling is a process that leads to tailor-made solutions based on the needs, challenges, and goals of the prospect. These solutions result in the prospect’s desired business outcomes. This undertaking involves carefully considering the opportunity from the buyer’s perspective. To do so, sales reps must understand several things before formulating a solution. They need to know the prospect’s business and how it runs. This helps them identify their goals and challenges. Knowledge of competitors’ strengths and weaknesses are important here, along with an understanding of marketplace trends.

Once reps have a feeling for the buyer’s business, they can refocus the conversation on proving the value your solution will bring to the prospect’s unique situation. This should include detailed cost and benefit information that is both tangible and intangible. Other considerations are Total Cost of Ownership, training, cost of changing, opportunity costs, and time to market. Reps need to gain a deep understanding of which of these costs are important for the buyer to be able to better position the solution’s overall value. Taking the time to understand the customer more deeply helps build the necessary trust and relationship.

Moving from feature-based to value-based selling

To prepare your sales force to engage in value-based selling you must educate them on several topics. These include the following:

  • Product:Make your reps experts in your product. Have them use it so they intimately understand it. They should be able to easily discuss its uses and applications in depth. This will increase their confidence and their credibility.

 

  • Case Studies:Share customer success stories, and use cases with your salesforce. Continually document an assortment of case studies. Make this content available for reps to share with prospects throughout the buyer’s journey. Be sure to include ones from various industries and with diverse outcomes.  Have ones that will resonate with each of the personas most commonly involved in your prospect’s buying committees. This ensures your reps are always armed with the appropriate content to share with everyone engaged in the purchasing decision.

 

  • Marketplace:Keep reps current on competitor changes and new offerings. This will allow them to more effectively differentiate their solutions and build value. Awareness of marketplace trends is important as well. With this precious information, your salesforce will be better prepared to act as trusted advisors to their prospects.

 

  • Industry Information:Provide reps with an ongoing education about key industries that your customers inhabit. This will allow them to more fully understand the challenges and issues prospects are facing. With this knowledge, your reps will become strategic consultants. They’ll be able to tell prospects

    why

    they are experiencing pain instead of simply identifying their pain. Demonstrating understanding, by offering the best solution, enables reps to provide value to prospects and increases success.

 

  • Buyer Personas:It’s become more common for a group of people to make business buying decisions. Arm your sales force with an understanding of the buyer personas most often included in a buying committee. They’ll know how to communicate with each of them. Plus, addressing their concerns and building value will be simplified. This will allow them to build trust and credibility while accelerating the sales process.

It’s clear that feature-based selling is no longer effective. For your reps to produce better sales results, you must prepare them for value-based selling. That involves educating them on many topics such as product, case studies, marketplace, industry information, and buyer personas. Armed with this knowledge, your team members will be ready to successfully engage customers. Plus they’ll be able to formulate customized solutions that win more deals. By now, you’re probably ready to get started.

[Podcast] How Sales Enablement can Strategically Guide the Sales Organization with Pat Lynch

Shrimithran R on April 5, 2018

In this

17 minute

podcast Pat explains:

  • How sales enablement has evolved over the past decade
  • How to turn around some disturbing trends in sales performance and productivity
  • The questions that can help sales enablement professionals focus on the right things at the right time
  • How to deal with sales tool fatigue

Pat Lynch has seen the evolution of sales enablement from several perspectives – in large companies like Xerox and FedEx and in research firm CSO Insights, to name a few. Now as Vice President of Enablement Excellence and Innovation at Mindtickle, Pat’s responsible for driving better outcomes for sales organizations through innovation and world-class enablement.

In recent years, Pat has seen some disturbing trends in sales organizations.

“Until last year, selling time for a sales professional was decreasing six years in a row. Now only 35% of a seller’s time is actually spent selling. Until last year, overall quota attainment also went down for six years in a row – from 63% to 51%. These are two alarming trends,”

exclaims Pat.

“Then add in the fact that you may only get 17% of the time with somebody who’s actually interested in purchasing your product or service. That’s very little time to actually develop rapport and trust with a potential customer, let alone trying to sell to them. That means salespeople have to be far more concise about the value-add that they’re bringing.”

While the numbers are worrying, it has ignited a fire under sales organizations. “

They realized that they needed to actually get somebody in the position and hold them accountable to stop these trends going in the wrong direction. With the Sales Enablement Society coming to fruition just about two years ago, we’re now seeing that enablement is a role that’s a critical success factor to getting sales organizations back on track and hitting quota,”

explains Pat.

The growth of sales enablement is certainly a step in the right direction but Pat has observed that some enablement professionals are at risk of missing a big opportunity. “

What often ends up happening is that the sales enablement executive is relegated to being a tactician. They’re trying to solve problems for salespeople. But sales enablement has a fantastic opportunity to look over the horizon to see what’s coming. They can provide strategic guidance to the VP of Sales. Some need to take a step back and look at the big picture and how they can help their sale organization.”

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