Most of us are working from home right now, which unfortunately means we can’t turn to our coworker next to us to ask a quick question. But working remotely doesn’t mean sharing best practices has to stop altogether. In fact, it shouldn’t. Continuing to share knowledge across remote customer-facing teams is key to making sure everyone is using the same playbook to effectively engage with customers, partners and internal teams, no matter where they are.

Leaders in sales enablement and marketing have a big role to play here, aligning all remote team members on messaging, sales processes and requirements. To develop and deliver personalized, adaptive and contextual content, sales enablement and marketing teams should work closely with reps to identify the following:

• Cohorts in accounts they call on. Understanding cohorts or personas in accounts is a critical early step, as it informs the messaging and content that needs to be developed to address the concerns and needs of each stakeholder involved in a purchase. For example, a CEO’s concerns will be different than that of an HR manager. Messaging should be tailored to each one to address those unique concerns. Once determined, reps should be aligned on how to approach each cohort.
• Sales processes they go through. As reps move through the sales cycle, it’s not uncommon to miss steps in the process. Aligning on sales processes helps identify potential gaps, which in turn can trigger the development of tools such as value-messaging workshops.
• Field requirements for collateral. Field reps need different content and collateral at each stage of the sales cycle. Sales enablement and marketing can help these reps stay remote and ready by aligning on what they need at what stage, and where. For example, should FAQs and objection handling guides be pushed out as spreadsheets or in a weekly digest or daily notification? If an organization is rolling out a competitive program, field reps may do best with a combination of instructor-led workshops that offer call-an-expert sessions.
• Common buyer objections. Overcoming objections is often the most difficult skill for a rep to master. Reps typically learn them at the beginning of their tenure at an organization, but it’s not a “one and done” skill; that is, becoming adept at handling buyer objections comes only with time. As marketing and sales enablement uncover the common buyer objections field reps face, they can use this information to guide the development of relevant tools, such as objection-handling training, that can accelerate the mastery of this skill.

Working remotely is no excuse to pull back on knowledge-sharing, as customers and prospects are savvier and have higher expectations than ever before. In order to be remote and ready, customer-facing reps must continue to hone their sales skills and stay updated on all aspects of their customers’ business and market. Sales enablement and marketing can empower customer-facing reps to do so by sharing content and collateral that aligns the entire team on messaging and processes. And, when delivered through a Sales Readiness platform, this task is simplified, personalized and more engaging for the learner.

Like many other companies at the moment, Mindtickle has been learning to adapt to a 100% virtual environment. As such, we just wrapped up our Q2 Quarterly Business Review (QBR), and we were able to conduct the entire process and meeting virtually. In a way, it was a living QBR with sales and other team members presenting content based on their own lessons learned. Fortunately, it was a success with engagement being strong throughout! But of course, there are always lessons to be learned for making these better and better over time. As the Head of Sales Readiness, I oversaw the QBR ranging from the format and structure to the sessions and post-event engagement. As part of that experience, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of the lessons learned.

• Make sure you have a theme. Even though I know what the theme was and the objectives, I should have communicated better to the field instead of assuming they would discern the theme by piecing all of the sessions together. Make sure to market the QBR with a lot of excitement ahead of time.
• Pick a platform to support your plan. Without Mindtickle, it would have been difficult to put a logical framework together for the sales teams to follow. Being able to use a platform designed specifically for making virtual QBR’s successful obviously gave me an advantage. But it is important to remember that, regardless of what platform you use to execute the virtual QBR, ensure that the flow and logic of the structure make sense. I constantly checked and re-checked that the sessions were being organized in the proper order and that the times were aligned with the agenda, and the technology helped keep me accountable to that.
• Segment your virtual QBR. Breaks are not only encouraged, they are mandatory if you want your QBR to succeed. You can’t expect to have an engaged team for a full day or a couple of half days without building in some breathing room. I built in three breaks throughout the day and that seemed sufficient, but when creating the agenda, assume that your learners are going to need mental and physical breaks throughout.
• Pre-work is essential. While pre-work is an important part of the virtual QBR, I would incorporate additional activities including having the presenters pre-record some brief messages and shorten the live presenting time. One key learning is resist the urge to schedule 60-minute sessions in a virtual QBR. 30-minute sessions are ideal and even those can test the attention spans of reps. Make the pre-work such that the live presentations take care of themselves and all that are left are questions and possible brief reiteration.
• Keep people excited and engaged. Not only did I build in knowledge checks throughout the day and during breaks, but we also played online games with questions and topics completely unrelated to the QBR content. It shouldn’t be all work and no play and you should give the team an opportunity for a mental break to have some fun.
• Assign a moderator to check messages. As the organizer especially in a virtual environment using Zoom, you’ll likely be bombarded with questions, technical issues, clarification, follow-up, etc. during the QBR, which is not only difficult but stressful. Ask someone to help moderate the questions and the chatter that comes through during the day.
• Do dry runs beforehand. The dry runs we did with the presenters allowed myself, along with sales leadership, to ensure that the message was concise and focused, which helps keep people engaged throughout the day.
• Create breakouts to accommodate different discussions. Something we didn’t do but will certainly incorporate next time, is to use the breakout room feature in Zoom. Give the teams time to digest and talk about how they can apply what they are learning throughout the day in a safe space without worrying about interrupting the sessions.
• Keep participants on their toes and engaged. We’ve all done it – turned off our video during a video call. To keep everyone honest, randomly ask participants to turn on their cameras and say something about themselves throughout the day. This ensures they are staying engaged and provides everyone an opportunity to learn something new about their peers.
• Reinforce knowledge and key learnings through structured post-work. Organize post-QBR work that will make an impact and that will reiterate key themes learned throughout the day. Using Mindtickle, we accomplish this through a series of quizzes and exercises that occur right after the QBR and over several weeks to ensure knowledge reinforcement.

While the feedback was that this was a very successful event, I (and I’m sure my enablement professionals agree) am always looking for ways to improve the experience Every training is as much a learning experience for sales enablement as it is for the sales teams.

I hope these insights are useful and I invite fellow sales readiness and enablement professionals to comment and join the discussion. For more blogs like this and other resources to help keep teams remote and ready, visit our “Remote and Ready” page.

For sales enablement leaders, a remote workforce can be difficult to navigate. Their daily mandate is to keep customer-facing teams actively engaged through sales training and coaching, which can be challenging to conduct primarily or entirely remotely — or are they? The fact is, working remotely is no excuse to pull back on training and coaching because it CAN be done remotely just as well as it’s done in the office or better — that is, if communication is consistent and cogent, if everyone is aligned on sales methodology and processes, and if you have a Sales Readiness platform to underpin it.

Before getting into how to facilitate remote training and coaching, however, it’s important that sales enablement leaders make sure all enabling information and content are specific to the markets, segments, and customers that customer-facing employees are encountering. It should all be aligned with the steps and activities sales reps execute as part of the sales process. It should also be in line with the sales methodology and expectations for customer-facing interactions.

With that in place, let’s dive into how to ensure sales enablement delivers value for remote workers.
First, every content asset and communication designed to align with and keep the sales force highly engaged must deliver ROI. Enabling this requires the following:

• Frequent push and pull-based, personalized communications sent in a rep’s preferred channel will draw greater interest in training. For example, communications that pop up in the flow of a sales rep’s daily work life — such as in an email or app, through the Salesforce dashboard or other CRM, or in newsletters — drive higher engagement.
• Reps must be able to consume content on their own schedule and modality. Never has this been more important than now, with an often-unpredictable work environment and work hours.
• Learning delivered in different formats caters to different learning styles. Microlearning in the form of videos, polls, quizzes, podcasts, and gamified content tends to drive higher consumption and retention among reps. Video is also a powerful tool for practicing and polishing pitches through guided role play. With it, reps can practice interacting with customers in simulated sales scenarios to improve their presentations and get real-time feedback from managers or coworkers.
• Don’t overlook coaching delivered remotely. With regular video coaching sessions, reps can build incremental skills development and then see how they’re tracking to plan. And, when it has structure and regular cadence, virtual coaching can be as valuable as in-person coaching.

Keeping remote employees engaged and active isn’t a challenge relegated only to sales enablement leaders. CROs are indirectly impacted by sales enablement’s success too, because hitting their numbers depends on reps’ active engagement with sales training. With that in mind, CROs can help their team stay aligned in this remote setting and confirm that they’re retaining information in four ways.

• The first is by monitoring updates in activity logs in the CRM, conducting one-on-ones with managers and engagement reporting.
• CROs can also help their remote teams by tracking reps’ deliverability and engagement statistics, such as email sends, bounces, opens, click-throughs, and repeat opens. By monitoring whether their teams are seeing an uptick in deal velocity across stages and over time, driving better engagement with buyers, and securing more “solutioning” activities like workshops and proofs of concept, CROs can identify problem areas and develop plans of action to address them.
• Finally, by maintaining open lines of communication with marketing, CROs can ensure the most impactful content is pushed out in the most effective ways. After all, CROs know what messaging will resonate with which channels to drive revenue.

It’s unclear when we’ll be able to get back to business as usual, but that doesn’t mean that every task must be put on hold. Customer-facing employees can keep some sense of normalcy and continuity in their day-to-day by continuing to develop their skillsets from home. With an understanding that training, coaching and microlearning are just as important for reps working from home as they are for those in the office — and a Sales Readiness platform to support those functions — Mindtickle is well-prepared to help them.

As many teams are shifting to working and training remotely—often for the first time—managers are forced to prepare and re-strategize to ensure teams remain productive. This unexpected development has left organizations feeling the pressures of meeting quotas, supporting customers, and evolving daily with the ever-changing business climate.

It also presents an opportunity to learn just how essential sales readiness is, and how your organization can (and should) build a strategy for remaining sales-ready in any situation.

How a Crisis Can Affect Sales Readiness

Maintaining sales readiness is an especially tricky piece of the puzzle during a pandemic, as sales teams face unique challenges at each step of the buyer’s journey. It’s key to avoid disruptions where possible, and that requires some foundational changes to thinking and overall infrastructure.

If you’re not already considering how your team can remain sales-ready throughout the global COVID-19 crisis, you certainly should be. Without adjusting to continue driving engagement, you’re at risk for miscommunication, lack of preparedness, disengaged reps, and damage to customer relationships. Reps who aren’t sales-ready might not be receiving the training, updates, or resources required to effectively sell in the midst of uncertainty.

How to Enable Sales Readiness Remotely

So how, as sales managers, can we avoid crumbling under the pressure of selling during a pandemic? Here are our top tips for remaining sales-ready during a crisis:

Refine Your Onboarding Program for Remote Use

New-hires are generally presented with at least some in-person training during their first few days or weeks at an organization. This helps to build relationships, expectations, and engagement. But your typical onboarding process has likely been thrown to the wind as in-person gatherings are on hold. That doesn’t mean your onboarding program has to be any less effective for new reps.

Developing the right content for a virtual onboarding experience may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, you likely already have the right foundational resources at your fingertips and can reuse some of those materials to create a remote process. The good news: creating easily accessible videos, quizzes, quests, and even gamifying the process can increase engagement and retention. You should also focus on closely tracking reps’ progress as they advance through the program, allowing opportunities for progress check-ins and further training, as needed.

Keep Reps Informed with Regular, Standardized Communication

It may feel strange if you’re used to holding weekly in-person meetings to provide updates and news, but keeping the line of communication open during times of remote work is essential. As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to evolve, your team will need to remain up-to-date on announcements, both sales-specific and org-wide. News on policy and process changes, competitors, and customers should be shared regularly so that reps remain informed and consistent with messaging.

Weekly or daily email updates are great, but often get buried as reps are inundated with messages, especially during a time of crisis. Platforms that enable you to provide reps with updates in a variety of formats can ensure that reps are actually engaging with key information. Your teams will be ready-as-ever if they can easily and remotely access announcements, key competitor coverage, win stories, and more from a centralized location.

Optimize Consistent, Remote Training & Coaching

Training and coaching don’t stop when the onboarding process ends. In fact, continuous training is especially important as reps are transitioning to a work-from-home environment, where they’re likely in need of specific information about selling effectively during a time of crisis. Some new skills will need to be developed as teams pivot messaging, techniques, and overall strategy.

One effective way to keep reps engaged with continuous virtual training is to gamify the process with video games, leaderboards, social elements, and gamified quizzes. Prepare your team members with enjoyable, fun coaching and reinforcement opportunities that will contribute to their overall readiness.

Increase Pipeline Visibility

It can be difficult for teams to ensure that every rep has visibility into what’s happening with the sales pipeline, particularly if everyone is working remotely (and even more so if the remote work was unplanned). But providing an understanding of where deals are in the pipeline is another key component to remaining successful during a crisis.

Through pipeline transparency, managers and reps will have a visual representation of win rate and length of sales cycle, and will be able to determine how those factors are being impacted by the pandemic. These insights can be used to understand which assets are most successful at which point in the sales cycle, and whether or not certain reps need additional training.

Be sure to provide easy access to this meaningful information, as it can give your sales team a competitive advantage, particularly during a time of crisis.

Encourage Meaningful Communication Among Reps

In addition to providing top-down information, you should also motivate your sales reps to communicate with one another. Not only will this support and maintain a team environment, it will also provide a space for reps to learn from each other’s wins and losses, and to share tips for being as successful as possible during a crisis.

This can be a challenge when each rep is working from home and is bogged down by the stresses of their workload, but prioritizing meaningful—albeit, virtual—conversations can have a real impact on morale and performance.

You can encourage reps to record and share videos recounting sales interactions (both the successes and failures), tips for working from home, or expressing any questions or concerns. These messages should be posted to a centralized location, where other reps can respond with videos or written comments to keep the conversation going.

How Technology Can Ensure Sales Readiness During a Crisis

If you’re new to developing a sales readiness program or don’t have the right tools to help your team thrive, ensuring readiness during a pandemic may feel overwhelming. The right software can provide easy, remote access to essential content and resources and eLearning for continuous training to keep reps engaged while working from home.

What’s more, your new hires won’t fall behind in the onboarding process, as a proper tool will ensure the right remote training at the right time. And everything can be tracked and analyzed to measure progress for individual reps so you can rest assured that your remote team is learning and selling effectively, regardless of where they’re working from.

Mindtickle’s Sales Readiness Platform can tie all of your initiatives together—from onboarding, to communication, to training and coaching—and provide actionable insights through data and analytics. Keeping your reps on track through virtual micro-learning and continuous remote coaching can help your sales team overcome the many obstacles presented by this and any crisis.

To learn more what the Mindtickle platform can do, request a demo or determine your potential return with our comprehensive ROI calculator.