The 4 Pillars of Knowing “What to Sell"

Mohit Garg on April 7, 2016

The training stage of any sales onboarding program is by far the most important. This is when the new reps learn the essential knowledge that sets the stage for their success in subsequent steps in the onboarding process, and then eventually in their future selling activities.

In order for this “training” to be truly effective, it is extremely important for the company’s product or service to be projected to the new hire from the eyes of the customer – in the context of the customer’s business, industry, challenges, needs, opportunities and pain points.  Learning “What to Sell” is much more than just product training or learning how to describe the company’s solutions and services. Rather, it should prepare your reps to articulate the true value proposition behind those offerings when they get in front of a customer.

There are 4 pillars to what to sell:

  • Industry
  • Customer personas
  • Product
  • Competitive analysis

sales onboarding

These pillars support the articulation of the value proposition and stand on a firm foundation of case studies and success stories.

1. Industry knowledge: setting context from a customer perspective

Before your rep can put your product and their customer’s needs in context, they need to understand your business model and its surrounding ecosystem. This isn’t so much about specific players in the industry, but rather about how your customer sees your industry and what are the first impressions that the customers build as they research the various options available in the market.  For example, they may come across influencers in the field, industry bodies and complementary products and service providers, that will all have a role in influencing their thoughts and understanding of how they can solve their specific problem. It’s for this reason that it’s critical for your new sales reps understand your industry and how your customer perceives it.

2. Buyer personas: know your customer

The second pillar is about knowing your customer. Who are they? What are their specific problems? What do they know about how to solve their problem? What is their buying process?

In most businesses, there is more than one customer persona for each product, for example, at Mindtickle we have several different buyer personas and sub-personas as well, that cover differences between customer industries. While the Mindtickle platform may be evaluated and administrated by sales enablement and training professionals, the ultimate approval and decision makers end up sales leaders in fast-growing companies.

For each buyer persona (and sub-persona), the sales rep should understand the type of messages that resonate with them, what channels they research and purchase through, what their specific problems are, and what level of maturity in the buying process they are at. This is all valuable information that forms the basis for how your reps adjust their messaging depending on whom they are interacting with.

3. Know your product as your customer sees It

Knowing your product and its features is only part of this pillar. Your sales reps add value to your customers by not only understanding their product features but by shining a torch on how to apply them to your buyer’s specific needs and issues. They should be asking themselves how does the product solve the buyer’s problem? How often do the customers use the product and for what purpose? What will be the impact on the customer if they purchase this product (for example will it increase their revenue or save time perhaps)?

By not only understanding your product but also its context to the customer, you can make a huge difference to the buyer and also your bottom line. For example, one of our customers discovered that by training their reps not only on the features of its different product offerings but also on how each product met the needs of different customer personas, their sales reps were better equipped to sell to different customers more competently. This gave them a distinct competitive advantage and increased their sales.

For product companies, the most effective and easiest-to-implement process for sales reps to develop an appreciation of the product to have them step into the shoes of the customer and experience the product themselves. While this is not as easy and straightforward to experience for services and solution companies, observing and studying customer stories can be almost as effective.

4. Competitive analysis: understand your worth

One of our customers is one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Silicon Valley and was able to leverage its competitive advantage because it performed an extensive competitive benchmarking exercise and trained its sales reps on the competitive landscape in which it operated.

This goes further than just knowing who your competitors are and looking at how your product stacks up against your competition. Don’t just look at what features your product has that your competitors don’t, but also which customer personas value these features and the use cases and contexts in which each of those relative strengths and weaknesses manifests themselves. For example, if you’re dealing with a customer persona who values analytics and reporting, then they will specifically value knowing that you can make data-driven decision-making easier and more cost-effective for them.

Another component that your new reps should learn about the competitive environment is how to handle customer objections and feature requests. It is quite likely that many of your prospects may also reach to your competitors before making a final decision. Therefore, by understanding their offering your reps will know the context of the objections based on competitor comparisons and be able to rebut them effectively. As a general rule of thumb, about 80% of your objections will be standard and can be trained mostly online. Sales managers can then deal with skill gaps or non-standard objections during the Coaching stage of onboarding.

Bringing it all together: Articulating the core value proposition

Overarching the four pillars is the core value proposition, the promise of why your company and your offering exist. There isn’t just one value proposition for a product or service, but rather multiple tiers that are tailored to different buyer personas, addressing the issues that are relevant to them respectively. By building on the context of the overall industry, understanding the buyer’s specific needs, and how your product can serve that need, your sales rep would be best positioned to create a compelling elevator pitch. While an elevator pitch may only have limited utility, when combined with real customer stories and examples, the deep understanding of the value proposition is an essential ingredient of a compelling and persuasive sales conversation with a prospect.

Finally, bring To life what to sell through case studies and customer stories

Underpinning your pillars and value proposition are case studies and success stories that provide color and context to how to deal with issues out on the field. Observing and listening into real customer calls or demos can be a great opportunity for new reps to see those stories being played out in real action.

Maintaining a library of video recordings of how experienced reps steer customer discussions can also be really valuable as it provides an opportunity for new reps to pick up sound bites and examples that have been tried and tested. In addition, sharing a repository of referenceable customers, case studies and stories can be an invaluable resource for sales reps.

The good news is that most of these “what to sell” components can be learned almost completely online, freeing up time for sales managers to be more involved at other stages of the onboarding process where they can add more value.

Outcomes

If done right, at the end of this stage they should be able to identify and relate with the customer personas, articulate the value proposition as it applies to specific customers and handles the majority of customer objections. This can be validated through online quizzes and mock pitching exercises. By certifying your sales rep at this point, you can see what knowledge they’ve achieved and where there may be some skill gaps to work on. Of course, if they pass their What to Sell certification, you can give them their learners permit knowing they’re on their way to becoming competent and are ready to move onto learning How To Sell.

14 Best Practices for Making Sales Kickoff a Success

Shankar Ganapathy on March 23, 2016

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

Mindtickle Sales Kickoff Kit Download

1. Align sales kickoff content with company goals

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

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

2. Choose a theme for your event

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

3. Set the agenda carefully

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

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

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

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

4. Set pre-work for the sales kickoff

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

5. Create an atmosphere of healthy competition

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

6. Provide time for interaction and cross-pollination

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

7. Share success stories

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

8. Include a variety of sessions

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

9. Don’t forget your customers

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

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

10. Celebrate and recognize your top players

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

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

11. Reinforce concepts

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

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

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

12. Pay attention to the details

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

13. Request and act on feedback

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

14. Evaluate the event

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

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

From Bootstrapping to Acceleration: How Startups can Scale Sales

Shankar Ganapathy on March 9, 2016

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

Stage 1 – Inception

Sales People:

0

Customers:

0 to 10

Product Stage:

Idea or prototype

Challenges:

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

Mark Birch, Investor & Entrepreneur

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

passion for the product

.

Stage 2 – Testing

Sales People:

1 (most likely a founder)

Customers:

2 to 5

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

discover symptoms in your sales process

(or product)  and identify where the issues lie.


Stage 3 – Sales Acceleration


sales enablementSales People:

2 to 3 (with perhaps one sales manager)

Customers:

30 to 200 (depending on the type of product)

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway

.

Stage 4 – Revenue Explosion or Scaling

Sales People:

10 to 100

Customers:

As many as possible

Product Stage:

Refining

Challenges:

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

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

Professor Mohanbir Sawhney

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

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

build trust in customers

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

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

Shankar Ganapathy on March 6, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Having this clarity is a win/win for everyone.

2. Mapping the buyer experience

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

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

3. Incorporating buyer personas into sales training

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

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

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

4. Keep it fresh

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

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

Make Hiring Smart Salespeople Your Competitive Advantage

Shankar Ganapathy on March 2, 2016

In order to have a high-performing sales team you need amazing people, but hiring smart salespeople reps isn’t exactly easy. Especially if you’re charged with finding 10, 20, or 100 new reps to scale your high-growth business. In today’s dynamic environment, it’s not enough to just put an ad online or hire a recruiting company and cross your fingers.

As a sales leader, you also need to be involved and engaged in the process to ensure you get the best candidates and close the deal with them quickly; before they’re snapped up by someone else. After all, the average time to hire an SDR or AE can now be as short as 2 weeks, so there’s no time to waste.

So how do you attract top talent in a competitive and dynamic industry?

There are some things you can do when looking for and qualifying for the right candidate. Grace Mason, Head of Sales at Betts Recruiting shared some of her best practices that will help you make hiring your competitive advantage.

Find the right candidate

While partnering with a recruitment agency can help you find some great candidates, it’s also important to be proactive about your recruiting efforts. “Implement an employee referral incentive program. Good people often know good people,” suggests Mason Tweet This. “This can help with retention. If your reps are referring their colleagues and friends to work at your company, they will likely stay at your company longer and also help get that rep up to speed with additional support.”

Another way to potentially find candidates, particularly if you need to hire several reps quickly, is by hosting a “Happy Hour” Tweet This. Mason suggests holding this after hours, bringing your entire team along as well. They can bring along referrals as well, and your recruiting firm can help you fill the room with potential candidates. It’s a good way to see how well each individual fits into the culture of your business and can cut down the number of phone screens you need to do when qualifying candidates.

Qualify candidates

Looking through hundreds of resumes can be overwhelming, but there are some things you can look out for that will help you qualify the candidate. “Look for any red flags on their resume. Overall does their resume make sense? For example, career progression or any job changes,” suggests Mason.

Checking things like tenure at their past companies; have they stayed for a while or been promoted? If their dates don’t line up or they move around a lot, that’s something to be aware of when deciding whether you want to progress to the next stage with a candidate.

“For sales roles specifically, metrics are probably the most important thing you need to look at when reviewing a candidate. So if they’re a sales rep, their resume should read like a baseball card.” Mason suggests looking at things like:

  • What was their quota?
  • What was their attainment of that quota?
  • What was their average deal size?
  • What big logos have they closed?

These are all indicators that will help you determine if the candidate may suit your business requirements.

The interview process

After making it through the initial qualification stage, you will need to interview the candidate. “Throughout the interview process it’s very important to focus on quality control as a hiring manager,” says Mason. So how do you conduct quality control checks?

  • While talking to the candidate, consider whether they will fit into the culture of the organization, and respond to your management style.
  • Challenge them on their numbers and do the math. Does their bonus equate with the quota attainment they’ve listed on their resume and their base salary and OTE?
  • Encourage them to interview you about your company so you can asses their long-term intentions and interest;
  • Find out why they want to leave their current organization, as under-performance is a leading reason why reps churn;
  • Ask them behavioral questions that give you an indication of how they would deal with specific situations, like “How would you approach a short sales cycle differently than a long sales cycle?” or “How do you research prospects before a call or meeting? What information do you look for?”; and
  • Find out what their future plans are by asking about their medium to long-term goals, and how they intend to achieve these.

Throughout the interview, always bring everything back to their resume; challenging the candidate on what they have included there. After all, if you’re recruiting a salesperson they will no doubt be good at selling themselves, so the interview process is about finding out what they have achieved and how they did it.

Online Sales Training Platform: 4 Things to Look for in a Great Platform

Mohit Garg on February 3, 2016

Today’s sales training is rapidly moving away from live on-site seminars and classes. Online sales training eliminates the need to gather your sales team in one place. Training materials can be delivered to your sales reps directly on their computers and mobile devices. If your company is looking at investing in an online sales training platform, here are four things that you should consider.

Does the online sales training support diverse sales training formats?

People learn differently so the training material should be available in a number of different formats.

  • Online video lectures and narrated slide presentation are great for communicating with your sales reps. Videos can also be used to present sale situation role-plays.
  • Audio recordings are great for sales reps who want to listen to training while driving their car or doing some other activity that does not demand their complete attention.
  • Some people want to review and study written material. This printed material can be delivered as a PDF file. This is a great way to distribute review sheets and study guides for any assessments and tests.

Does your sales training platform support different instructional modalities?

Your company may want to offer a variety of training options. It is important that the online sales training platform that you select support these different instructional modalities.

  • On-demand training is great for on-the-go sales reps. The platform should provide the ability for your reps to download and stream training seminars to their mobile devices.
  • Live online lectures are a great way to get your team together all at once. Your online platform should support virtual conferences where everyone can watch and participate in the same live lecture. This captures the benefits of attending a class without the need have everyone in the same geographic location.
  • The platform should also support social learning by having discussion forums, chat capabilities and other ways that your sales reps can connect with each other to discuss what they are learning. This kind of social interaction is essential for online sales training.

Is the sales training platform customizable?

Most online sales training comes with a set of off-the-shelf training modules. These modules are great for the basics, but you will most likely want to be able to add your own content to the learning platform. You may have specific techniques that work well with your market or product specific information that you want to communicate. The learning platform should allow you to easily create and post your own training content.

Does your sales training platform have tracking and metrics?

You want to make sure that your reps are actually using and benefiting from the training program that you put together.

  • A learning platform should track the progress of each sales rep and record the training that he or she has gone through. It should also be able to assess the rep’s mastery of the content through quizzes, test, and other assessments.
  • The training platform should integrate with other performance metrics. In this way, you can see if increased training leads to increased performance from your team.

Choosing an online sales training platform is an important decision. These are just a few of the factors that you can look at to guide your choice.

Are Learning Styles Still Legit Or is This a Myth?

Mohit Garg on February 3, 2016

Back in the early 80s, psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard University claimed to have identified the following seven types of intelligences:

  1. Visuo-spatial
  2. Bodily-kinesthetic
  3. Musical
  4. Interpersonal
  5. Intrapersonal
  6. Linguistic
  7. Logical-mathematical

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is the basis of the concept of everyone having their own learning style. According to one survey conducted by a research team at the University of Bristol, 82% of teachers accepted the common concept as truth. Must be true because most people believe it, right? Are learning styles still legit or is this a myth?

Read More about Are Learning Styles Still Legit Or is This a Myth?

The Flipped Classroom Action Plan in Just 5 Easy Steps

Shankar Ganapathy on January 20, 2016

flipped classroom in 5 steps
Companies that implement ongoing education for their employees are setting the stage for long-term success. Your employees need to upgrade and broaden their skills periodically as well as stay familiar with the latest industry trends, technology, and practices.
This can’t be understated. Technology evolves rapidly in most industries. Failure to maintain the skills needed to succeed, makes it challenging for employees to perform their duties with any degree of productivity.

The reality of implementing ongoing training consistently with sales reps in the field, customer service agents on the go and busy remote employees, is an entirely different story altogether…

The flipped classroom approach presents a highly scalable way of making an ongoing training program a reality for any business that needs to keep employees up to date. The premise behind the flipped classroom is to create an environment where the lecture and homework aspects of your course are reversed. Today’s employee, more tech-savvy than ever before, is used to consuming learning content online. This enables trainers or managers to spend time in class engaging in discussion, applying concepts and answering employee questions.

In 4 Signs You Should Invest in a Flipped Classroom, we gave you a few questions to consider for an investment in the flipped classroom approach. Here is step by step tips on how to develop and implement the flipped classroom for your organization.

Action Plan for Developing Your Flipped Classroom Training

  1. Start By Setting Objectives – It’s important to know your objectives before you start designing a plan. Set the end objectives you want to achieve with your training program. For example, assume a bunch of new sales hires are joining soon. Objectives of the training could be focused on getting the sales reps prepared on buyer personas, buying habits, customer pain points and how your product addresses the customer’s needs. In addition, objectives could also cover how your product solves the customer’s problem and the positive impact.
  2. Develop a Training Plan – Once you identify what outcomes are needed from the learning activity, decide on the optimal mix of training content for your organization and develop an outline. Create a training structure based on your objectives and priorities. Then, identify topics that go inside each of the training elements.

Mindtickle Sales Onboarding Course Example

Mindtickle Sales Onboarding Course Example

Note that there is no one size fits all solution. Instead, customize your approach to every topic keeping in mind the opportunity for pre-work. You want to first have employees experience the learning activity on their own, then come to the classroom prepared for discussion.
3. Prepare Content for the Training –  Video is an excellent medium for delivering the flipped classroom approach and preparation will reduce the amount of time it takes to produce the videos. (Unless you are an improv whiz!). For example in sales onboarding, simply record your “A player pitch” for a highly engaging demo to use in your training.
As you review content, look at your objectives and include data that makes for a good introductory overview along with seminal concepts. Every topic in the Analytically evaluate if your training content will meet the objectives.
Repurpose PowerPoint presentations into smaller presentations covering the topics. Script out your presentations from slide notes. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your employees!
Recording video is much easier than you may think. You can use your mobile phone to record videos and use simple tools to do basic editing. A parting thought on video – resist the urge to be a perfectionist when recording or editing. When delivering live training there are bound to be mistaken here and there. It’s no different with video so don’t worry about small errors!
4. Implement the Flipped Classroom – When your employees go through the course online and come back to the classroom for an effective face-to-face session, it is even more critical to foster a team of intrinsically motivated employees. Having the right incentives in place will allow you to run a successful training with enthusiastic employees. Deliver the in-class discussion questions for each topic ahead of time. Let your employees know that they should prepare for in-class conversation and questions by sharing a structured learning plan with them upfront and explaining your ground rules and expectations about participation.  It is critical that they understand that those who come to training having completed the lesson, engaged and ready to ask questions to get far more out of the experience those are unprepared.
5. Evaluate Training Results – The next step is to evaluate (through an assessment) the efficiency of the training. The analysis of the training report will give you information on knowledge gaps on which your employees can be coached in the face to face session. It is important to seek feedback from your employees and deliver quizzes and assessments to ensure that you are on track to meet objectives. If some videos are not effective, find out what is effective! Finding out what works may take some time. Once the flipped training is complete deliver a final assessment to evaluate knowledge. Now your employees are prepared to do their job efficiently!
With the flipped classroom it is important to remember that the experience can be as much of a learning experience for you as a trainer as it is for your trainees. No doubt there is a learning curve and there may also be some resistance as you make the shift away from more traditional approaches to the flipped classroom model. Give the flipped classroom a chance and keep iterating to meet your organization’s goals!
What do you think about the flipped classroom approach?

Mike Kunkle on Sales Onboarding (Part 1)

Mohit Garg on January 13, 2015

Mike Kunkle Sales Onboarding

So you just hired a new salesperson? For many businesses, the ramp-up time for new sales reps is typically six months or more. With turnover being slightly less than two years for most reps, companies need to have a solid onboarding plan in order to realize a return on their investment. An outdated or overly labor-intensive sales onboarding program leads to increased turnover and wasted company resources.

sales onboarding ramp up times

Source: via Mike Kunkle, Sales Onboarding: Twice as Good, Half the Time

Sales onboarding isn’t just about going through pitch videos or having new reps shadow tenured sales reps. Not only should your sales onboarding have a clearly defined objective and end goal, your sales reps also need to know the milestones that they need to achieve to be successful. Your new salesperson has potential, but that potential is only unlocked with a structured onboarding program. For advice on what excellence in sales onboarding looks like, we turn to Mike Kunkle, a recognized leader in sales training and organizational effectiveness. Mike shares actionable steps you can take to help accelerate ramp-up times and reduce turnover.

What are the pressures and trends that sales managers must contend with today?

Mike Kunkle: The pressure is still all about the number… making your sales quota. It’s the environment that’s changed. Due to information available online, with a few clicks, today’s buyers are doing their own research before reaching out to suppliers. Buyers are more informed than ever – although not always more accurately informed.
Along with these changes in buyer behavior, there are more RFPs than ever before and more decision-makers involved. For instance, the average number of buyers involved in a complex sale is 5.4 (according to CEB). If that’s the average, there are some that have even more buyers involved.

Tweet This: “The pressure is still all about the number… making your sales quota.”

Then there are factors like corporate cost reductions that result in shrinking training departments and budgets, making it more difficult to serve our sales forces.  To further complicate things, even in this day and age of big data, many still roll the dice when we hire and select sales reps on gut feel.

Bottom line is that the expectations placed on sales managers are enormous, and often organizations pull them in far too many directions, rather than removing obstacles to allow them to focus on hiring, training, coaching, and managing their teams as effectively as possible.

You said: “It takes many companies from 7 to 12 months to ramp-up their new sales reps.” Why is sales reps ramp time moving in the wrong direction?

Mike Kunkle: If you look as far back as 2003, which I did recently for an article I was writing, ramp-up times were shorter. “Ramp up times have generally gotten longer over the years. There’s variance, but if you trend-line the data, we seem to be headed in the wrong direction. There could be quite a few reasons for that, though, including a more complex, competitive business environment, a shift toward the buyer’s market, and/or an increase in complexity of problems, opportunities, and solutions to address them, or even some year-to-year difference in research protocol or other speculative reasons.”

Selling was a lot less complex than it is today, and to a large degree, it’s because there wasn’t a proliferation of information on the Internet. It was before buyers were doing so much research on their own.

Combine that with a drain on training department budgets and sizes, in comparison to the early 2000’s, and how much new reps need to learn to be productive, and it’s not hard to imagine why onboarding remains a sales challenge.

Question: What can be done to accelerate sales rep ramp time?

Mike Kunkle: I’d start by defining outcomes. When you say accelerate, is that just a faster time, or is it higher productivity in the same time, or both shorter ramp-up time with higher productivity? The first thing is to get clarity around what you want and benchmark where you are, so you have a measuring stick to gauge your progress. Put a stake in the ground saying, “This is where we are today.” Then ask yourself: “where are we aiming and what are we trying to do?”
When companies actually try to shorten their ramp up time, many of them are actually deterring productivity as opposed to enhancing it. There’s an awful lot of five days of death by PowerPoint in orientation and onboarding.

Tweet This: “The sales job has become increasingly complex.”

We need to step back and apply some sound instructional design thinking, stuff that has been around since the dawn of time. Analyze top producer practices and really try to understand what are the differentiating factors between top and mid producers. Then document the best practices in your organization.

The best practices give you a real focus on what are the things that are making a difference. When you’re developing content or teaching content to new people, you know what you’re teaching gets results. This is where hard core prioritization and decisions need to be made. What are the absolute need-to-know and need-to-do things to achieve sales rep productivity?
For example, three common goals I’ve used in some businesses include:

  1. making their first sale,
  2. achieving their first monthly quota,
  3. and then making quota 3 months in a row.

These goals won’t work for every business. They have to match reality, and when achieved, they signify that the employee is truly ramped-up and a fully-productive sales rep. The concept sounds simple but it is far from easy… People struggle most with the NEED to know vs. NICE to know piece.

You also want to have ways to reinforce what is taught such as job aids, places to get answers, buddies or mentors, and plenty of follow-up and coaching from either specialized onboarding coaches or sales managers.

Check back for part 2 of our interview on sales onboarding with Mike Kunkle. We’ll cover common mistakes training managers make in sales onboarding as well as actionable advice and best practices.

You can see more of Mike’s thoughts about sales onboarding at http://bit.ly/SalesOnboardingLI

Mike KunkleMike is a training and organizational effectiveness leader with special expertise in sales force transformation.
After his initial years on the frontline in sales and sales management, he spent the next 21 years as a corporate manager or consultant, leading departments and projects with one purpose – improve sales results.

Today, in his role as commercial training & development leader for a Fortune 10 corporation, Mike uses his in expertise in best-in-class learning strategies, methods, processes, and change leadership to develop the capabilities of sales representatives and sales managers to drive business results.

Mike freely shares his own sales transformation methodology, speaking at conferences and writing online (see http://slidesha.re/PerfLevers082011  and http://bit.ly/EffectiveSalesLearningSystems as examples) and can be reached at <mike at mikekunkledotcom>, through his blog at http://www.mikekunkle.com, or on various social media sites.

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