How to Conduct Half Year Reviews For Your Sales Team

Shankar Ganapathy on June 3, 2016

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

So How Often Should You Review Your Sales Reps?

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


Insights from #SDSummit: Sales Enablement Dissected

Daniel Kuperman on May 25, 2016

MT_sales-enab-dissect_1This session at SiriusDecision Summit 2016, titled “Sales Effectiveness: Enablement,” was part of their ‘foundations’ series at the event and so far one of the best I attended. The analysts started by helping define sales enablement as the function responsible for the following:

  1. Talent: How do you attract, onboard and optimize sales employees?
  2. Assets: What are the internal-facing content and activation content being used with the buyer?
  3. Communication: How do we make sure the sales reps get the information they need from the org and how do we get their feedback about what is working and what is not?
  4. Functional Structure: How do we structure the organization to support this scope?
  5. Measurement and Insight: How do we measure and identify what is working?

If you’re interested in learning more about modern sales enablement, read on here.
But if you are a sales enablement professional looking to get the basics, copy these 5 key areas and post it in front of you as these are your mandates.
I like the way SiriusDecisions summarized the role of sales enablement by saying that
Sales enablement helps strategy become action
The difference between the Sales Ops and Sales Enablement was also discussed. While Sales OPs focuses more on the efficiency piece, sales enablement focuses mostly on the effectiveness part (think of SiriusDecisions Sales Efficiency and Effectiveness chart). The true power is when those are aligned to drive higher yield per rep for your organization (e.g. more revenue per rep).
MT_sales-Ecosytem_2

What keeps sales enablement up at night?

If there is one thing sales enablement professionals need to constantly think about is “how do we drive greater sales productivity?”. Easier said than done because according to SiriusDecisions there are five challenges most sales enablement departments face:

  1. Organizational structure and roles: how do I make sure I have the right people, processes, and metrics in place?
  2. Sales asset management: We have too much content, we can’t find it, use it, and personalize it.
  3. Sales talent acquisition: In this extremely competitive market for talent where only 4% of top B2B reps are looking for work how do we attract the best?
  4. Sales onboarding: How can we accelerate time to competency for our sales reps?
  5. Ongoing development: How can I create long-term value of my training initiatives? How can I create long-term opportunities for micro-learning for my reps in the field when I have new content, products, messaging?

Sales Talent Lifecycle Framework
During the session, SiriusDecisions introduced The Sales Talent Lifecycle Framework.
MT_sales-talent-Lcycle
This framework is for helping sales enablement professionals to figure out how to answer questions about how to attract, onboard and optimize their sales reps? Notice how the framework shows the competencies, company actions, tactics, and employee actions throughout the process. A key learning from this section of the presentation was that companies need to approach the job of attracting quality reps from a demand generation process. With the scarcity of sales talent, it is even more important to think about attracting talent the same way you generate qualified leads to the sales team.
But what do you do after a new sales candidate agrees to join the company? Not to worry as SiriusDecisions also has a framework called the Sales Onboarding Effectiveness and Efficiency Model. Here’s a glimpse at one of the sections:
MT_sales-onb-effect-effici-model_2
Notice how the Competencies are divided into three areas:

  1. Knowledge
  2. Skills
  3. Process

Each one has suggested items to consider as you build your own onboarding program. But as important as it is to teach reps key skills, processes, and tools, can they take what they just learned and actually apply it? Role-play certification becomes very important to ensure the reps can articulate in their own words your value proposition, handle key objections, and close the sale.
A good way to do it is by giving them scenarios to practice from. SiriusDecisions also talked about different levels of certification for role-plays:

  1. Content: Tests if the reps know the content that was taught, can be done with basic video role-play scenarios
  2. Application: Test if the reps know how to do it, with live scenarios or simulation
  3. Execution: Can reps actually perform in the field? This is done via active coaching of reps in the field

A good analogy used during the presentation is the first level of certification is like a Shakespearian play where you perform the script to the letter. The second and third levels of certification are more akin to improve. How are you certifying your reps?

Insights from #SDSummit: Driving Sales Efficiency with Sales Operations

Daniel Kuperman on May 24, 2016

The session about sales efficiency and operations at the SiriusDecisions Summit 2016 was focused on helping define what sales operations is and look at the frameworks in place to help sales ops professionals.
MT_sales-operations_1

SiriusDecisions broke down sales efficiency by looking at the following elements: productivity and capacity. They define sales productivity as “yield per rep per hour”, where ‘yield’ is the revenue the rep is generating. And state that as a sales ops professional your goal is to use your sales capacity as efficiently as possible, as it is a limited resource. How your reps spend their time is important, if they are not spending it on core selling activities your yield will suffer. So in sales ops, your job is to drive efficiency into the whole selling activity.

There has been an interesting change in the sales operations function, as it has evolved from a tactical, reactive function to a primary driver of sales change.

Sales operations cross the entire sales ecosystem. There are challenges, including:

  • How to measure, manage and increase sales productivity
  • Improving revenue predictability
  • Maximizing return on value from investment in sales technology
  • Developing, managing, measuring and improving sales execution processes
  • Evolving sales operations capabilities and contribution.

The Relative Productivity Framework

This is a handy framework from SiriusDecisions to answer the question: where are your reps spending most of their time?
MT_relative-prod-frame

The problem that SiriusDecisions found is that many of the stages and steps in sales activities are mostly internally-focused. Unless you align the sales process to the buyer’s journey, understanding how the buyer makes decisions, you won’t be able to effectively move the deal forward. And that’s where the Attribute-Based Sales Process from SiriusDecisions helps, map buyer attributes with buyer activities, and seller attributes and activities.
MT_attrib_sales_process_2

Finally, as it relates to sales technology, SiriusDecisions says that it must fit the user and organizational needs across six key categories:

  1. Criticality: how crucial is this technology to the business?
  2. Risk: what is the likelihood of losing the availability of the tool to the sales organization?
  3. Fit: How well does the tool help fix the problem for which you purchase it?
  4. Scalability: As the organization grows, can the tool accommodate the increasing number of sales reps, products, users?
  5. Data: How secure is the data? How is data maintained?
  6. Integration: Is the tool for sharing the data across all the other platforms?

Another element that SiriusDecisions has added to their thinking is end-user engagement. According to SiriusDecisions, the end user must move beyond adoption to engagement in order to realize the full value of the technology investment. The journey is:
MT_sales-tech-EU-engagement


Insights from #SDSummit: Killing the Sales and Marketing Tech Stack

Daniel Kuperman on May 24, 2016

The SiriusDecisions Summit 2016 kicked off to a great start with a series of ‘foundations’ sessions talking about some of their core models and approaches. The first session I attended was the “Sales/Marketing/Product Technology”.

MT_Killing-salesHow do you select a technology? Which vendor should you work with? These are questions the session addressed. According to SiriusDecisions, you shouldn’t think about technology first, but assess your current capabilities inside the organization. How are you currently providing for that capability in the organization, where are you currently and where is the gap? This will help you focus on the specific capabilities you need a technology vendor to provide.

Another interesting piece of advice is for you to not look at a technology purchase from an organizational perspective, but rather from an ecosystem perspective. What are the key processes and capabilities that are required to support your business? The focus of your technology selection has to be on strategy so that you can ask “how are vendors going to operationalize my requirements?”.

There are five key challenges most companies face when it comes to sales technology:

  1. Selection: Understanding and navigating the market to choose the vendor that best suits the organization’s needs
  2. Enablement: Training and up-leveling individuals and teams to use the tools and services
  3. Measurement and Reporting: Establishing and maintaining accurate and actionable measurement and reporting to make smarter decisions
  4. Alignment: Managing proliferation and maintaining a tech and service portfolio that serves the needs of the business, not just its components
  5. Roadmapping: Developing a proactive technology and service strategy as well as a planning approach that aligns with long-term business goals

Killing the “Tech Stack”

The best idea I heard on this session was that there shouldn’t be a ‘marketing stack’ and a ‘sales stack’, terms that have become prominent and used to show the point technologies companies are using in their sales and marketing organizations. The problem with this terminology is that it has a silo mentality, that sales should go and look for its own solution set while marketing should focus on its own needs. The SiriusDecisions analyst had a great point, saying that the technology should be aligned to both sales AND marketing needs. Food for thought.



What Channel Partner Strategy is Right for Your Business?

Shankar Ganapathy on May 14, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

1. Exclusive channel partnership strategy

Best for when you have a point solution.

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

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

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

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

2. Targeted channel partnership strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Global channel partnership strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Improve the Impact of Your Sales Kickoff

Shankar Ganapathy on April 26, 2016

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

1. Celebration

Objective

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

Theme

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

Speakers / Sessions

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

Outcomes

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

2. Motivation

Objective
New Call-to-action

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

Theme

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

Speakers / Sessions

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

Outcomes

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

3. Education

Objective

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

Theme

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

Speakers / Sessions

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

Outcomes

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

4. Innovation

Objective

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

Theme

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

Speakers / Sessions

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

Outcomes

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


The First Three Things A Sales Enablement Manager Should Do

Mohit Garg on April 17, 2016

Picture this: It’s Sam’s first day on the job as a sales enablement manager for Fast Growth Inc., a rapidly expanding tech company, and he’s feeling daunted, to say the least. He’s Fast Growth Inc.’s first-ever enablement specialist. There’s a lot to be done to improve sales productivity and equip the sales reps, and it’s overwhelming for him to decide where to start. It would be easy to spin his wheels for the first few months, but Fast Growth Inc. is on a fast trajectory and are keen to see some quick results. Sound familiar?

This scenario is one that many sales enablement leaders have either faced in their careers or currently face. But not to worry, we’re here to help Sam (and you) get the most out of the next 90 days. Here’s where to start:

1. Audit rep’s sales readiness

To date, Fast Growth Inc.’s approach to sales readiness has been ad hoc, which is no surprise given their team has grown quickly and is planned to expand from 25 to 100 in the next six months. There’s a ton of product and buyer information in wiki documents, emails, and PDFs that grows each week as new product features and bug fixes are introduced. On top of that, each sales manager has their own way to train and keep their staff up to speed. But there’s no standard way to determine whether the sales reps have absorbed all this information, identify what knowledge gaps they have, and if they’re actually really sales ready.

By conducting an audit of all the existing training and product content for both new and seasoned reps, Sam can see where there may be content gaps, and also determine if there is perhaps some content that the sales reps don’t really consume at all. It may be in a format that is not engaging or difficult to understand, or perhaps it’s not really relevant to them at all. At this stage, it’s important for Sam to look at the existing training content objectively, and decide what really is the most important information for these sales reps. For example, as Fast Growth Inc. is a SaaS business it will be most helpful for the reps to have access to use case studies, whereas if it was into big data perhaps detailed training on product features would be more relevant to them.

As part of this process, Sam will also need to identify who owns what content. It’s quite possible there’s some content that doesn’t have clear accountability at all, and Sam may have to broker responsibility for it to ensure that all the relevant information is shared regularly. He’ll need to look beyond the sales managers and build relationships with other business units that may have information that should be included in the sales training content, like the product, marketing, and the customer success teams. These relationships will continue to be important as his role develops over time, with Sam becoming a critical link between the sales reps and these parts of the business.

Once Sam has audited all of the content, he can look at how it’s set out and determine if there is a better way to structure the sales training so that it’s more robust. One of the best ways to look at how effective the training is to use a data-driven approach. Can he measure how knowledgeable a sales rep is once they’ve completed the training? How engaged are they with the training? Is the information in a format that is easily consumed by sales reps, or does the delivery of it need to be improved?

By looking at the training materials objectively, Sam can then identify what the most important information required is and prioritize that. Like with most things, 20% of the content required for sales training should deal with about 80% of the situations faced by sales reps, so having these easily accessible to them should be priority number 1 for Sam.

With so many new reps coming in Fast Growth Inc.’s doors in the next few months, it’s also important that he considers the sales onboarding program and how that should be structured as part of the overall sales training for the company.

2. Enable managers to coach better

The sales managers at Fast Growth Inc have been responsible for both training and coaching the sales reps, but this has changed now with Sam coming on board. The training will be managed by Sam. This doesn’t mean the sales managers aren’t involved though, Sam takes Sales managers to help by recording their pitches, success stories etc.

While the role of coaching sales reps is still left to the sales manager, Sam ~~ equip them with tools that will help them, coach, more efficiently. This should then free up the sales managers so that they can spend more of their valuable time on coaching complex scenarios and advanced problems like objection handling.

The first step Sam can take here is by putting in place the elements to enable sales managers to implement a structured coaching program for their reps. This should at least cover the basics of Sales 101 like prospecting and pitching, using quizzes or certifications that identify where reps have skill gaps so that he can then determine what specific areas their coaching plan should focus on.

One of the best ways to do this is by creating coaching maps for each stage of the sales process and then developing tools or exercises that the sales manager can select to coach their reps in different areas. For example, to coach reps who are struggling to define their value proposition to a customer, Sam can set up an exercise where the rep can record themselves doing a pitch and this can then be reviewed by the sales manager in the coaching session. By setting up a range of tools and exercises like this, the sales manager can then easily implement a structured coaching plan for individual reps.

sales enablementRef: Tamara Schenk webinar on “How to equip your sales managers”

With sales managers free to coach on more complex issues, and sales reps’ skill gaps being addressed, there should be a marked change in win rates and sales results. In fact, CSO Insights research indicates that 62.4% of reps will make a plan if there’s a formal plan in place compared to just 53.1% where there’s no coaching plan. Furthermore, an additional 10% of quota will be achieved when a formal plan is in place, which is a great quick win for Sam.

3. Create a sales enablement framework

The final thing that Sam can do in his first few months on the job is to create a robust data driven sales enablement framework. This involves looking at what the sales reps and managers must do in their roles at every stage of the sales process, identify what they need to be able to complete these tasks effectively.

The framework should cover everything from the type of sales collaterals they need, to the tools and technology they use to complete their job. Once Sam has mapped this out for each part of the sales process, he should then ask himself whether the sales reps (and managers) have enough information at each stage of the process to have a meaningful discussion with a prospect. If he concludes that they don’t, then he will need to identify what is required to fill that gap and enable the sales rep.

The gaps in the sales enablement framework could be sales collateral, access to product updates, industry or competitor information, or an understanding of how to use the CRM. In some instances, the information may exist but it may not be readily accessible to the sales rep when they need it, so perhaps mobile sales enablement is a priority. In simple terms, the purpose of sales enablement is to make it easier for sales reps and managers to do their job at any point in time, and this should be the focus of the sales enablement framework.

By achieving these three things, Sam will be able to show the VP of Sales that the sales team is more productive and sales ready than they were three months ago. The next stage for Sam will be to plug the gaps he’s identified in the sales enablement framework and build on the great work he’s started in his first 90 days.

TOPO and The State of Sales in 2016

Daniel Kuperman on April 15, 2016

scott albro topo sales summitLast week we attended the TOPO Sales Summit 2016 event in San Francisco. It was a great event with over 650 attendees, all interested in improving their sales edge.

Scott Albro, TOPO founder, and CEO, opened the summit with a great talk about the State of Sales in 2016. According to Scott, there are 5 key themes to pay attention to this year:

  1. Data-driven sales
  2. The specialization of Sales
  3. Value meets volume
  4. Account based everything
  5. The sales tech stack

What are Data-Driven Sales?

Scott discussed how data analysis is increasingly driving sales decisions; from correlating activities and pipeline metrics to better efforts at understanding all the data that is being collected to actually make sense out of it.
Part of the data-driven decision making in sales also has to do with the ICP or Ideal Customer Profile. Data drives the ICP which in turn drives decisions. For example:

  • Data collected: internal, external, qualitative
  • ICP: geo, industry, behavior
  • Decisions: GTM, sales process, messaging, sales plays

Based on the data you collect you can create your Ideal Customer Profile, which in turn will influence your go-to-market strategy, your messaging and sales plays. Think about how you are doing this today at your company.

How is Sales Becoming Specialized?

The second topic Scott discussed was the specialization of sales. He painted a picture of two types of specializations that are now becoming more prominent in sales organizations:

  • Task specialization
  • Account assignment

Task specialization is the creation of groups to deal with specific tasks. By understanding that certain task groups are better done with a dedicated team, companies are forming SDR groups, Account Executive groups and Account Management groups, for example. Account assignment involves focusing of sales teams on accounts that match a certain profile, like their size or a specific vertical. More mature sales organizations are very good at applying specialization and account assignment to drive sales productivity.

The Need of Value Plays

A concerning item that was mentioned was the trend related to volume and velocity in sales, especially among fast growing startups in the Silicon Valley area. Scott listed several bad habits that are forming including:

  • Limited discovery
  • Demo roulette
  • Hands off trial
  • Fire and forget proposals

I myself have been the victim of more than one of these habits, which only erodes the sales person’s reputation and decreases the likelihood of closing an otherwise healthy opportunity. This is why the third item on the list from TOPO is the need to add VALUE to the volume and velocity game, which can be done by applying what Scott themed “Value Plays”. These include:

  • Discovery to uncover pain
  • Discovery driving demo;
  • Guided trial process;
  • Stakeholder workshops to get buy-in; and
  • Proposal review meeting focusing on re-articulating value.

It is a good time for you to review how your sales team is executing on each step of the process and understand if they are playing a volume+velocity game or adding value to the equation as well. It’s never too late to fix things!

The Rise of Account Based Everything

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is so 2015, now we are talking about Account Based Everything (ABE)! According to Scott, 90% of TOPO’s client inquiries are about ABM. The problem with ABM is that it reaches only a small percentage of your target accounts unless you can have coordinated efforts between marketing, sales development, sales and customer success.
What this means is that the entire organization, (or at least the customer-facing departments), have to change to an account based mentality.
The attributes of ABE are:

  1. Target high-value accounts
  2. Data and intelligence-driven programs and campaigns
  3. Orchestration across marketing, sales, sales development and customer success
  4. Experiences that are valuable and personalized
  5. High effort and frequency of outreach that’s coordinated

So as a takeaway of this section, if ABM is part of your toolkit, it’s time to evaluate the results and determine how you can improve on them by coordinating with other teams, transforming it into an ABE program.

Evolution of Sales Technology

The fifth item in the mix is the Sales Tech Stack. When discussing the latest technologies available for sales teams it is clear that the best performing organizations are now looking at it not just from a ‘how we use technology’ point of view, but also from a ‘how we can leverage technology to sell’ mentality.
The new ‘tech stack’ for sales is aimed at improving the sales process, but there has been a mass proliferation of tools making it difficult to judge which are the best for your company. Another issue is sales rep adoption, which is still the number one challenge among companies that want to adopt new technologies.
Sales technology has evolved from simply recording what is happening, to automating sales activities, to finally being able to enhance human sales skills. The three questions you should ask yourself before adopting a new sales technology are:

  1. What technology can I adopt that will have the biggest impact on revenue growth?
  2. Where will the technology be more successful?
  3. What benefit will it deliver?

Sounds simple, but not everyone does it.

Summary of The State of Sales in 2016

For a great visual summary of the TOPO Sales Summit keynote presented by Scott Albro, check out the infographic below.
Scott-Albro_State of Sales

Mindtickle’s Ryan Pimlott Named Customer Success Hero

Shankar Ganapathy on April 13, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Graphic Summary of TOPO Sales Summit 2016

Daniel Kuperman on April 13, 2016

Topo Sales SummitTOPO’s first ever sales summit last week was a great success. Two packed days of engaging sessions, great food, and interesting discussions. The conference was divided into four tracks:

  • Sales Leadership
  • Sales Development
  • Sales Technology
  • Sales Effectiveness

This helped attendees get to the sessions most relevant to their needs. But the best thing about the conference is that most of the sessions were given by industry veterans and practitioners from companies such as RingCentral, Linkedin, Google, Nutanix, Bloomreach, Cloudera, AppDirect and more.
If you missed the conference, don’t worry! Mindtickle has got you covered. We have created a visual summary of some of the keynotes and main sessions for you to download.
Check out the infographics below and re-live the event or check out what you missed!

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