If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely already familiar with Mindtickle’s comprehensive, data-driven platform for sales readiness and enablement. Do you also know that many of our enterprise and high-growth SMB customers recognize that achieving their enablement outcomes requires a combination of platform and services? Our customers take advantage of these services to develop engaging content, speed up the time to launch, obtain insights from custom dashboards and integrate Mindtickle into their homegrown, and often customized IT fabric. Deployed separately or as a bundle, Mindtickle’s new Global Services offerings are designed to support you and maximize your target business outcomes.

At Mindtickle, we understand that many organizations are looking for an ongoing, holistic partnership beyond initial implementation. Enterprises, for example, expect proactive solutioning to turn the latest features into capabilities that drive changes in customer-facing teams’ behavior; they need expertise in integrating Mindtickle into their existing, complex IT environment; and they need ongoing guidance in designing, launching, and communicating enablement programs in a coordinated and frictionless manner that overcomes resistance to change while instilling a culture of learning and coaching. For high-growth SMBs, it’s a bit different: They want access to a variety of skill sets that will enable a higher level of enablement and accelerate results, without the time and effort to hire, assemble and train internally.

In addition, now more than ever, all organizations are increasingly embracing the virtual trend; that is, a move toward virtualizing sales motions. As a result, organizations have pivoted to virtual QBRs and SKOs, virtual onboarding and reboarding, virtual partner enablement, virtual coaching, and virtual introductions to new products. Navigating this new world and ensuring operational success in it is often challenging without the expertise of a knowledgeable partner who is native to this virtual world.

Mindtickle Global Services offers the only comprehensive, execution-ready, integrated suite of services available to help enablement leaders augment, enhance, and scale their programs to achieve their business outcomes throughout their enablement journey. With thousands of hours of experience in implementation, content development, and program management, Mindtickle’s Global Services team helps enablement professionals guide their customer-facing teams to excellence at each and every touchpoint.

Our premium engagement model begins with follow-the-sun white glove technical support and a friendly and informative welcome from your experienced customer success manager. Your CSM serves as your champion and can marshal all that Global Services can bring to bear to help you realize business outcomes. These include the following services:

• Education services — Delivers standard and custom Mindtickle platform training to bootstrap your enablement teams
• Managed services — Expert level platform admins ready to operate and manage your Mindtickle platform with zero ramp time
• Professional services — Leverages our cross-industry experience and practices to guide and advise on program implementation, platform configuration, user management, gamification, governance, and change management
• Tech solutions — Integrates Mindtickle into your existing IT fabric and develops custom dashboards to give stakeholders visibility into key metrics such as proficiency, time to productivity, and progress in sales capability.
• Content services — Turns your enablement objectives and concepts into engaging, high-impact enablement programs and content that align with your brand guidelines.

It’s important to note that each service line is not independent of itself; rather, they work cohesively with your CSM to achieve your goals.

Mindtickle’s Global Services is an important piece of an organization’s overall enablement strategy — the piece that empowers customers to fully leverage every bit of functionality of the Mindtickle platform while tapping the Mindtickle brain trust to enrich their end users learning experience.

For more information about Mindtickle’s Global Services, please visit our Services page or contact your CSM!

Change management has always been a challenge, but this year, it seems especially hard. That might be due to the incredible professional and personal change we’ve all had to deal with in response to the global pandemic. The fact of the matter is, we’ve got change fatigue. People are simply tired of change — period.

In the context of sales enablement, change and change management can be especially challenging today. For example, field sales teams have already had to pivot to the new reality of resorting to emailing, calling and web-conferencing instead of the traditional face-to-face selling where they can rely on establishing a connection in person. They’re coping with a new remote-selling environment in which distractions are abundant. And they’re dealing with longer Zoom meetings and shortened attention spans. With all this conspiring to derail their efforts to meet quota in the new normal, the last thing sales teams want to do is adopt any new training initiatives or learning processes that would — in their minds — surely further complicate their lives.

Recently I conducted a live workshop with a sales enablement leader from one of the leading asset management and financial advisory firms to help our attendees address and overcome their challenges. In our live workshop, we uncovered the five common barriers to adoption and provided seven ways to overcome them.

Barriers to adoption — and a framework for overcoming them
New change initiatives in enablement are met with any number of barriers. Here are the five most common ones:

• “We’ve always done it this way, so why change it now?”
• “We already tried that. It didn’t work then, so why try it again?”
• “Will this really make us more efficient, or is it going to be a lot of work that won’t yield a significant measure of ROI?”
• “This feels like it will be too complicated.”
• “It doesn’t seem like we know everything that we need to know about this new initiative. Shouldn’t we figure this out before we proceed?”

In order to move past these barriers and achieve adoption of any change initiative, sales enablement teams must follow some simple steps. They are:

• Establish a vision. Clearly define the change — what needs to be changed and why — and align it to sales and business goals. Revisit this vision periodically to stay on course and make sure everything is progressing in the right direction.
• Understand how to measure success. Identify some high-level metrics that define success. For example, if the adoption rate of a previous sales enablement platform was 35%, adoption of the new platform should exceed that.
• Communicate early and frequently. Clearly communicate the value of the change initiative in a way that will resonate with the sales organization. For example, explain how an enablement platform that offers microlearning delivers convenient learning in the flow of a work-from-home life; discuss with managers how data-driven coaching provides a better way to identify and remedy gaps in learning. Be transparent in all communications.
• Get leadership buy-in. Find leaders within the sales organization to be champions for the change initiative. Perhaps even more importantly, get buy-in from the sales team itself by bringing them in on the pilot program of a new initiative.
• Make it achievable. No matter the initiative, it must be made easy to achieve. For adoption of a new enablement training initiative, for example, this may mean setting up a three-minute video training for the sales team with a short quiz at the end to show them how easy it is to accomplish.
• Be flexible. Adjustments may need to be made as the initiative progresses. Be open to shifting as new concerns or issues pop up.
• Be brave. There will likely be many people poking holes in your plan. Urge everyone involved to avoid “analysis paralysis” and push forward with the understanding that nothing’s perfect, change is hard, and challenges beget growth and innovation.

Author John Maxwell said, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” While embracing change can be difficult, refusing to even acknowledge it can impede overall success, especially in our current challenging environment. Now more than ever, sales enablement teams are working toward meeting the moment with change-management initiatives that prepare, equip and support sales to succeed today and into the future.

A mobile learning culture has never been more important than it is today. Over the last several months, my clients have had to adapt to the enablement and communication needs of a fully remote population. And in that time, the definition of a remote worker has been in a state of change, it’s certainly less traditional than it once was.

I have seen my clients having to accommodate those who now have to support their children with virtual learning activities for school, tackle an increase of duties in and out of the home, and face an overall plethora of added distractions. Moreover, they’re tussling with the fatigue of being behind a laptop for extended amounts of time with little to no external interactions. Thus, when and where it is possible to make a move, they go!

Accordingly, clients have had to adjust their enablement style to become truly mobile. What does it mean to have a truly mobile enablement culture? I’m referring to a methodology that goes beyond the traditional context of “virtual learning.” Rather, it taps into the connotation of 24-7 accessibility, and flexibility that comes with the word “virtual.” Having content readily available on both mobile and desktop sits at the foundation of building out a mobile culture–it certainly accommodates the situations outlined above.

To foster a true mobile learning culture, the content and its delivery platform must address these key types of access with the rep who’s learning in mind – access that they know, access on-the-go, and access in the flow.

• Access that they know. Be sure that the learner is familiar with the tools and the applications that are needed to consume or engage with the content.
  • Communicate the name of the platform, its purpose, and how to access the application. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen organizations roll out an amazing technology platform and the learners have no idea that it exists! Or better yet, even If there is some faint knowledge of the platform, they have no idea how to access it.
  • A brief introduction of the platform(s) can be very helpful. We want to avoid frustration around accessing the platform. Like with most technology, especially applications, if the user experiences difficulties upon initial use, it becomes extremely difficult to re-engage them.
  • Sending an introduction video featuring or narrated by a senior leader introducing the platform, a program imitative, and/or a directive is a common practice amongst our clients. The keynote video is usually followed by a series of content orienting the learner to the functionalities of the platform.
  • Help your learners to “know” the platforms so that they are comfortable using the platform. This leaves the only thing left to do but learn!

• Access on the go. Be sure that the learner can engage or be engaged with the platform no matter where they are.
  • Even prior to COVID-19, flexible work arrangements were growing in popularity amongst organizations around the globe. Now, employees are splitting their work hours between their office and their home. Part of making this transition successful is providing consistent access to all systems and tools. There should be no exception when it comes to a company’s learning platforms.
  • A cloud-based platform allows for consistency across platforms. Learners can log-on to their personal desktop, work laptop, personal tablet, or mobile and get the same experience. If you’re anything like me, and the countless learners whose behaviors I’ve come to know quite well, depending on where you’re going determines the device that you will carry along with you. When heading into the office, learners are often hands-free ready to take action via their desktops. While commuting, a tablet or smartphone will do the trick. Even if driving, a cellular Bluetooth connection to the car speakers works wonders for consuming content on the go. A truly mobile experience.

• Access in the flow. Slightly different from “on the go,” in the flow incorporates learning into the end learner’s flow of life.
  • Think about the scenarios that your learners will face from day to day, especially in the current times we live in. Many learners are multi-tasking their whole life! With children at home, an increase in chores, doubled grocery runs, consuming content must fit into the rhythm of the day as best as possible.
  • Many of my clients develop programming that is high in audio, and visual content. This is quite effective. Imagine the learner preparing dinner and consuming an audio piece of learning content. Thereafter the leaner may decide to relax on the couch and respond to the 2-3 questions added to the tail-end of the video. The learner is naturally moving through the flow of their day, their mobile device is moving along with them.
  • In short, I tell my program owners, as much as possible to go with the flow.

Providing users with learning access that they know, learning access on-the-go, and learning access in the flow of life lends to developing a truly mobile culture. To remain competitive in our new reality, we can’t afford to miss the mark by ignoring the high stakes placed on true mobility. It lends to the new world we’ve transitioned into, whether it is here for today or to stay.

Enablement has been hard at work helping organizations and their sales teams accomplish change for a while now, but never at the pace we’ve seen over the past few months. In response to shifts in buyer and market demands, enablement has at once had to reinvent messaging, sales tactics and processes, all while helping sales teams navigate a heavier reliance on technology. Yes, enablement — along with operations — has facilitated the change needed so newly digital-first sales teams can continue with business as usual.

In a recent webinar, sales enablement experts from TOPO and SecureAuth outlined three things they’ve learned over the past few months that are essential to enabling the success of digital-first sales teams.

Shift in-person onboarding and re-boarding learning to a self-paced and milestone-driven model.
A virtual buying environment, changes in pipeline initiatives and target markets, and shifts in territory coverage have all put pressure on enablement to rethink the competencies, skills and technology needed to create effective sellers. Now more than ever, defined competencies must match the evolving needs of buyers. For example, a strong shift to customer centricity means that enablement must refocus messaging on the needs of the buyer rather than a product pitch. And, because relationship-building is done remotely, enablement must consider how sellers can capture a virtual audience with standout selling skills or social selling. Enablement also must develop virtual selling and tools programs that teach sellers about all the tech tools available to engage buyers.

Of course, learning these new competencies no longer takes place in a classroom, and organizations can’t necessarily rely on after-hours practice. Rather, onboarding and re-boarding exists through buyer centricity; a demonstrated ability to execute sales plays with the right skills (milestones); interactive training requiring the practice of key messaging skills (experiential learning); and feedback from mentors, managers and peers (mentoring and feedback).

One way SecureAuth’s enablement team demonstrated its reinvention of onboarding and re-boarding was through a virtual sales kickoff. For just two hours each day for four days, SecureAuth’s sales enablement team focused on two areas that could move the needle: deal velocity and sales excellence. They homed in on a buyer-centric vision they wanted their team to embrace, and explored how to accelerate internal processes to make it easier for sellers to let the buyers buy. They discussed teamwork, internal collaboration and revised messaging, all over Zoom.

Using existing logos, the team engaged in role playing to practice upselling and cross-selling. Every evening, attendees would record themselves pitching; managers were able to watch the videos and provide feedback, while at the same time getting a sense of where the sales team was in terms of communicating revised messaging. Mindtickle was used for prep work and homework; Slack for direct communication with attendees. SecureAuth even incorporated a trivia platform to bring gamification into the mix. The SKO’s experiential and peer-led nature kept the global salesforce engaged, which was key given that the remote sales team’s attention was likely divided by incoming texts and emails and distractions inherent to a work-from-home environment.

Distribute content both traditionally and by collecting it from the front lines and redistributing. Changes and pivots in front-line messaging, new sales plays, and evolving mission-critical priorities have sparked some necessary changes in how enablement has had to deliver content over the past months. Enablement has responded by providing a seamless flow of content — but it can’t just be a content “dump.” Rather, it must be focused, concise and relevant.

To this end, enablement must respond by developing a newsroom-like insight loop where they’re helping to collect and curate information, usually from front-line recorded conversations. A great example of this is SecureAuth’s “We Heard You” slide, which is presented at the beginning of every customer interaction to show the customer that the sellers are paying attention. It shows problems and results of the problems, as well as the desired state with the desired outcome. Creation of these slides helps SecureAuth’s enablement collect front-line messaging and distribute it digitally so the rest of the team can benefit from it.

Enablement also must provide learning content that can be used at the right time and place by designing “just in time” learning experiences delivered in a short, impactful way with examples. Of course, part of what makes a content program successful is how it’s set up, accessible and consistently used. Enablement teams that can incorporate content into a seller’s workflow using sales enablement technology will ensure that content is convenient, used and valuable.

Remove friction to enable effective remote coaching programs.
One of the areas where enablement teams need to spend more resources is supporting 100% remote coaching programs for front-line managers — support in both their operating cadence as well as the tools they need in order to provide feedback to their teams.

Defining a coaching culture is the first step here. It must be modeled at every level beginning on the first day of hire, must be peer- and feedback-driven, and must be process-driven with tools to document and track progress. The best coaching programs are the result of a partnership between enablement and operations: Performance components must be identified and aligned on to help sellers proactively focus on building selling habits that can improve overall performance.

Enablement must also identify the tools and technology available to effectively provide virtual coaching. Last year, they held 1:1 meetings, and ride-alongs provided managers with an opportunity to observe their team in action. Today, virtual coaching sessions and recorded calls are taking the place of anything in-person. Let’s look at SecureAuth as an example.

Over the past few months, coaching at SecureAuth has evolved significantly. Managers at SecureAuth have always been engaged coaches, but technology has made their coaching much more streamlined and straightforward. For example, rather than having to take time to listen to and analyze all call recordings, call intelligence technology helps surface trends and themes for each seller. Then, if they want to double-click on specific calls to get more information, they have the access they need to do so. The hard analytical work is done; they have the data they need to make decisions around how best to manage performance going forward.

In the process of creating a digital-first sales team through enablement, we see that enablement is reinventing itself. No longer is it simply an engine that provides one-way information exchange. It’s instead becoming a talent development engine that provides value to organizations across industries.

For even more details about creating a digital sales force and the reinvention of sales enablement, check out the webinar “Three Mandates for Enabling Virtual Sellers,” available now.

The world was already moving away from classroom training toward a more ‘blended’ approach — a mix of face-to-face instruction with technology-mediated activities — becoming the preferred model for sales training among today’s organizations. According to Training Magazine’s 2018 Training Industry Report, 69.3% of training hours were delivered with blended learning techniques in 2018, up significantly from 34.7% the year before. But now, having a virtual training option is no longer optional, it’s mandatory. With its cloud-based Sales Readiness platform, Mindtickle is integral to organizations’ virtual and blended learning initiatives, and, together with partners like Halifax Consulting, we’re driving the future of learning and readiness in markets around the world.

Based in Paris, Halifax has been offering consulting and training services to organizations since 2003. Halifax’s Best-Sellers programs include the DEAL® method (business negotiation skills), the LEAD® method (mastering sales skills), the PAC$® method (skills for accelerating growth of large, key accounts), the 5i 5o® method (inside sales) and the BOSS® method (management skills). The company offers its training content in six European languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese — as well as Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. Halifax has historically worked with a range of vendors to provide its online sales training through various point solutions that provide video role playing, coaching, among others. However, its partnership with Mindtickle represents the first holistic solution that addresses all of these capabilities and more to create a unified user experience to true sales capability.

Specifically, Halifax is using Mindtickle as its digital delivery platform for its DEAL® method. The scope of the training includes understanding the balance of power in negotiations, preparing and structuring a negotiation, and how to perform in face-to-face negotiations. To help DEAL® method participants become proficient in negotiation skills, sellers engage with materials through the Mindtickle platform to review before the live class. (Interestingly, Halifax has noted that 80% of its business in the past 10 years has been for pre-class training.) Post-class, Mindtickle provides spaced reinforcement, microlearning, certifications, coaching and role play to deliver a prescriptive and personalized readiness path for each DEAL® student. Combined with Halifax’s in-person training, customers get an all-in-one, unified, blended-learning experience.

Mindtickle’s partnership with Halifax has the added benefit of cultural feet on the ground in markets where culture and language can often be barriers to success. As you know — in addition to its U.S. and India offices — Mindtickle has a U.K.-based office to serve customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa. With help from Halifax’s multi-lingual reps, Mindtickle now has partners to help us serve the French and German markets — and later, the Spain, Italy and Portugal markets (languages that, combined, represent 80% of Halifax’s current content).

Our partnership with Halifax is a real win for Mindtickle, as it unites two leaders committed to bringing blended learning to the next level for customer-facing reps around the world. Not only do users benefit, so do each of us — Halifax, with an all-in-one solution for unified sales enablement and readiness; and Mindtickle, with opportunities to tap into a larger market abroad. We look forward to many more years working with Halifax. We welcome Halifax Consulting to our partner ecosystem!

In the midst of a socioeconomic crisis brought about by COVID-19, organizations are racing to resiliency by embracing telework and remote communications and collaboration approaches as they prepare for a new paradigm, in which all their employees will be remote some of the time, and many will be remote all of the time. Sales leaders especially — charged with shaping the team that brings in revenue for an organization — must make sure their tactics and strategies for training are as effective virtually as they were in the office. To this end, sales leaders are driving initiatives that digitally onboard, train, develop skills, and coach their team members to adopt the digital skills required to make today’s remote customer engagement effective .

As Mindtickle’s Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Gopkiran Rao pointed out in a recent podcast with Sandler Training’s CEO and President Dave Mattson, “This is either a challenge or opportunity for every company out there” (especially when both the buyer and the seller are remote). Of course, while the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of desklessness, the reality is that the global workforce has been moving toward predominantly remote work for a while now.

The podcast discussion began with an overview of the pandemic’s role in reframing our idea of the workplace, but surfaced a number of critical market drivers and conditions as to why equipping field teams for the digital field has been such a challenge for companies in the pandemic environment.

Often with many stakeholders across sales operations, sales training, corporate learning, marketing and frontline sales management focusing on different aspects of seller engagement and productivity, there is breakdown in communication. Understanding this disconnect and determining where an organization falls short in developing a common language to uplevel sales skill can be challenging, and requires stakeholders to think more deeply about their current sales readiness programs, especially in the context of working remotely. Gop and Dave pointed out that now especially, the questions to ask include:

• Do you have remote selling proficiency and how do you measure and reinforce it?
• Do you have the ability to engage and educate your sellers in the flow of work, which is increasingly intermingled with the flow of life?
• Do you have the ability to drive spaced reinforcements of key content and skill critical to engaging remote buyers?
• Do you have the ability to do virtual ride-alongs, or shadowing and quickly address gaps in digital-first selling skill?

The partnership began earlier this year and was almost immediately recognized by leading analyst firm, Forrester Research. In the Forrester Wave™: Sales Training And Services, Q1 2020 by Mary Shea she pointed out that “Sandler Training leans into a self-service, always-on model… In partnership with Mindtickle, the provider embeds its training content into the sales readiness vendor’s tool.” Mary explained that “Sandler Training has made a strategic decision to reduce dependencies on ILT and diversify its training delivery methods. Within the past decade, the provider has pivoted to include learning management systems and online content offerings within a self-service model that leverages top-tier technologies and encourages users to access training content directly from its platform.”

And when the Mindtickle-Sandler partnership was formally announced in June, it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Sandler-Mindtickle partnership is important to addressing common pain points of organizations, because it is a focused effort to align many stakeholders responsible for parts of sales learning, management and coaching and execution. In the podcast, Gop and Dave agreed that the partnership enables a common language, set of processes, skills and knowledge that drive the business outcomes that customers are looking for. In today’s climate, in which organizations’ employees are not only working from home, but are also required to stay effective and engaged with both their teams and their remote customers. It’s more important than ever to be aligned on a repeatable methodology, professional learning, manager observation and intervention, and seller execution. By virtue of Mindtickle’s data-driven virtual training and coaching sales readiness platform and Sandler’s best-in-class sales training, organizations have a standard playbook of best practices, content training, coaching, visibility and expertise that is accessible anytime and anywhere.

Dave said that having this common language and being aligned on methodology is important because it “raises your game so much faster, which is good for the organization, good for the individual and good for the client. It’s a winning combination.”

Only technology (Mindtickle) combined with methodology (Sandler) can make possible affirmative answers to these questions.

In a deskless world, it’s more important than ever for sales teams to be enabled and ready to improve their success rates wherever they are. Together, Mindtickle and Sandler are the “what” and the “how” combined in one partnership to address this need: instilling a transformational virtual sales training and coaching culture of applied knowledge, skills development and behavior change in a joint solution.

Catch Gop and Dave’s entire conversation in a 30-minute podcast. Click here to take a listen.