Sales Cadence 101: Why You Need One and How to Build One

Rahul Mathew on September 5, 2024

Let’s face it: B2B buyers are a tough bunch. Day in and day out, these buyers get calls and emails from sales reps. But they’ll only engage with those who meet (or exceed) their high expectations.

If a sales rep expects to get a buyer’s attention (and hold it), they must consistently engage with them at the right time through the right channels. A sales cadence is an important tool that helps sellers do just that.

In fact, with a solid sales cadence (and the right sales enablement to support it), sales reps can improve their outreach, engage more buyers, and ultimately, close more deals.

But what is it?

In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know on the topic, including:

  • What it is, and why it’s important to have one
  • How to create one
  • Sales cadence examples
  • Best practices for driving great results

What is a sales cadence?

One of a sales rep’s primary responsibilities is engaging with prospective customers. However, determining how best to engage with each prospect can be difficult and time-consuming. That’s where a sales cadence comes in.

A sales cadence is a defined series of touchpoints a sales rep uses when engaging with a prospect. With the right one, a sales rep knows when and how to reach out to a prospect. It’s like a roadmap for effective sales engagement and outreach.

Typically, it includes a variety of different types of touchpoints, including:

  • Emails
  • Phone calls
  • Videos
  • Social media engagement
  • In-person meetings

Sales cadences vary based on several different factors, including industry, product or service offering, and company size – among others. Developing one that fits your business’s unique needs and yields the best results is important. Later on, we’ll share some tips for developing your own sales cadence and an example to get the ideas flowing.

Why is a sales cadence important?

Engaging with customers and delivering great experiences is key to closing more deals. But many sellers don’t have the time to do so effectively. Consider the fact that, on average, sellers spend less than 30% of their time selling.

Sellers spend less than

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A sales cadence gives reps a framework for effective sales engagement. Sellers don’t have to sink time into reinventing the wheel for each prospect that comes their way. Instead, they can use a cadence to understand how and when to engage with prospective customers.

When sellers use a data-driven cadence, they’re better able to move prospects through the funnel – and eventually convert them to customers. Sales reps can spend less time developing outreach strategies and more time engaging with buyers.

In addition, it can help new sales reps get ramped up faster. Sales reps don’t have to figure out what type of outreach to use (and when). Instead, they can leverage a sales cadence – and close their first deal faster.

Finally, it helps ensure a consistent customer experience. Every prospect gets the same level of attention, regardless of who their sales rep is.

How to build an effective sales cadence

There’s no one-size-fits-all cadence that works for every organization. Instead, you must develop one that works for your organization and yields great results.

But great sales cadences don’t happen by chance. Instead, there are certain steps any organization must take to build an effective one that empowers sellers to improve sales engagement and close more deals.

Understand your target audience

Before determining how to engage with your audience, you must take a step back to understand who your audience is. After all, different people have different needs and preferences. You wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) engage with the founder of a startup in the same way you’d engage with a marketing manager at a Fortune 100 company.

Consult your buyer personas to ensure you understand key things about your target audience, including (but not limited to):

  • Industry
  • Company size
  • Job title
  • Opportunities
  • Pain points
  • Communication preferences

If you haven’t already created buyer personas, now’s a good time. They’re foundational for any sales and marketing strategy.

Develop a schedule of touchpoints

Once you understand who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to develop a list of outreach touchpoints. This will include initial contact and a series of follow-up touchpoints.

Use what you know about your target audience when creating this schedule. In addition, be sure to leverage data. For example, analyze the touchpoints in closed won deals to see what works. In addition, look at what your top sales reps are doing differently regarding outreach.

Be sure to incorporate a mix of different channels to increase your chances of getting the prospect’s attention. Some channels might include email, phone, LinkedIn messages, and videos.

Determine timing and frequency

If you reach out too often, you risk overwhelming prospects. If you don’t reach out enough, buyers may forget about you and take their search elsewhere.

What’s the best frequency for your sales cadence? There’s no easy answer.

Start with best practices for your industry. In addition, leverage data to understand the timing and frequency of touchpoints that led to closed won deals.

Develop consistent messaging

Prospects should experience consistent, on-brand experiences and messaging, no matter which sales rep they engage with.

Be sure to develop messaging sales reps can use throughout the sales cycle. This might include:

  • Email templates
  • Phone and voicemail scripts
  • LinkedIn message templates

However, it’s important to empower sellers to personalize messaging as appropriate. After all, modern B2B buyers have come to expect tailored communication and experiences.

Measure sales cadence performance and optimize accordingly

It’s not enough to create a sales cadence and hope for the best. Instead, you must continuously measure your sales cadence to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Be sure to track key metrics related to sales cadence performance and engagement. Some examples include:

This includes metrics like email opens, click-through rates, and response rates. If a touchpoint is generating low sales engagement, you may want to replace it, change the timing, or eliminate it altogether.

 This measures how many leads take the desired action at each step of the sales cadence. Examples of these actions might be booking a call, watching a video, or purchasing. If the conversion rate is particularly low on one sales cadence touchpoint, there may be an opportunity to optimize it.

Churn rate can help you understand where you’re losing prospects during the sales cadence. For example, they might unsubscribe to your email or ask that you stop reaching out.

This is the average amount of time it takes for a buyer to complete the entire sales process—from initial contact to closed deal. If you notice customers stalling at a specific point in the sales cycle, there may be an opportunity to optimize the sales cadence.

 ROI is calculated by comparing the costs of running the sales cadence with its revenue. The goal is to ensure revenue far exceeds costs.

Be sure to examine these metrics across the entire sales team – as well as for specific teams and even individual sales reps. For example, if a particular metric for one sales rep is far lower than average, there may be an opportunity to provide additional training and coaching.

Also, be open to feedback from your sales reps. They’re engaging with prospects and have good insight into what’s working and what isn’t.

You can use metrics and feedback to optimize your cadence for better results.

Sales cadence example

As we’ve mentioned before, there’s no single sales cadence that’ll work for every business. Instead, it’s important to analyze what works (and doesn’t) for your company and what resonates with your target audience. Then, you can build one that works for your revenue organization.

But creating a cadence from scratch can feel overwhelming. Starting with a template or seeing some examples can be helpful.

With that in mind, let’s look at an example:

In today’s world, many ways exist to engage with prospects. But phone calls are still a great way to reach people.

Kick off your sales cadence by picking up the phone to briefly introduce yourself and your business. If there’s no answer, leave a brief voicemail.

 

You may not receive a response to your initial call. If that’s the case, follow up with a personalized email.

Don’t go hard on your sales pitch. Instead, use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself and gauge your prospect’s interest in continuing the conversation.

LinkedIn is a popular social media channel for professionals. At this point in the cadence, contact your prospect via LinkedIn. Send a personalized connection request if you’re not already connected to them.

Make another attempt to get your prospect on the phone. If they answer, you can use this as an opportunity to discover. If they don’t answer, leave them a message telling them you plan to follow up via email.

Send a follow-up email to the prospect. Consider including a resource relevant to their company or industry, such as a video, report, article, or guide.

If they answer, you can use this to do more discovery. If they don’t answer, leave a personalized voicemail that speaks to their needs and challenges.

Send a direct message via LinkedIn and/or engage with the prospect’s content on LinkedIn.

Try one more time to get the prospect on the phone.

If there has been little to no sales engagement up to this point, it’s time to end the sales cadence. Thank the prospect for their time, and let them know you’ll no longer be following up. However, leave the door open for the prospect to reach out to you in the future should their needs and priorities change.

Sales cadence best practices

A sales cadence can be a great tool to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales reps. But creating one doesn’t mean it’ll generate great results.

Read on to explore some best practices to help your sellers engage prospects and convert more of them to customers.

Personalize each touchpoint

A report from Adobe found that 66% of B2B buyers expect fully or mostly personalized content when buying a product or service. Generic touchpoints and experiences simply won’t cut it.

of buyers expect personalized content
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Templates and scripts are key to a sales cadence. But be sure your sellers understand the importance of personalizing their outreach based on what they know about a prospect. After all, tailored, relevant communication is more likely to capture your prospects’ attention.

Provide a flexible framework

A cadence helps reps understand what types of outreach to do and when. But it’s important to note that a sales cadence isn’t set in stone. Sometimes, a sales rep can (and should) adjust the sales cadence based on the prospect’s behaviors, responses (or lack thereof), and preferences.

For example, let’s say your cadence includes three phone calls. However a prospect indicates they only want to be contacted via email. In this case, the rep should adapt the cadence accordingly.

In addition, you can use revenue intelligence to understand which deals are most likely to go through. This information can be used to make adjustments to the cadence.

Provide proper training and coaching

Whether it’s a sales battlecard or a cadence or something else – it’s important to ensure your sellers know how to use the tools and resources available to them.

Let’s say you spend a ton of time and resources developing a winning sales cadence. But if your sales reps don’t know how to use it, it won’t have an impact.

Ensure your entire sales team knows your cadence and how to use this tool. Of course, you’ll want to cover it as part of sales onboarding. However, it’s also important to provide ongoing training, coaching, and sales enablement so sales reps can hone their skills.

Be sure to measure KPIs related to sales cadence regularly. That way, you can understand each sales rep’s performance and determine when they might need additional training, coaching, and enablement.

Revisit your sales cadence often

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important to track cadence performance and optimize accordingly regularly.

But there are also other times you should revisit your cadence. Some examples include:

  • When you’re releasing a new product
  • When you’re breaking in to a new market
  • When there’s increased competition

Leverage the right sales cadence tools

A sales cadence has several moving pieces. Multiply that by several prospects, which can be difficult for a sales rep to manage.

Look for opportunities to leverage sales cadence tools and technology. These tools can help you streamline and automate your sales cadence and improve outcomes.

For example, you can use an AI sales assistant tool to automate follow-up emails. Or, you can use an AI-powered tool like Mindtickle Copilot to draft personalized, contextual emails to accompany a piece of sales collateral you’re sharing with a prospect.

With the right sales cadence tools and technology, sales reps can spend less time on tedious, time-consuming tasks and more time building customer relationships and closing deals.

Set your sellers up for success with a winning sales cadence

Modern B2B buyers are busy, and they have high expectations. A proper, data-driven sales cadence ensures your reps know how to reach out to these busy prospects at the rights times and in the right ways. With this framework, sales reps can move more prospects through the funnel – faster.

With Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform, your sales reps have the training, coaching, and tools to master the sales cadence – develop all the other skills they need to crush quota.

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6 Steps to a Winning Sales Enablement Program for Med Device Reps

Christian Pieper on June 12, 2024

Medical devices and pharmaceutical companies play a critical role in our society. After all, these businesses are laser-focused on developing and delivering products that improve medical outcomes and enhance patients’ health and quality of life.

But the life of a medical device or pharma sales rep isn’t easy. Day in and day out, these sellers must contend with a whole host of unique challenges, including (but not limited to) heavy regulation, crowded marketplaces, and demanding buyers.

Today, winning medical device and pharma businesses are investing in sales enablement. For good reason. With the right sales enablement strategy and tools, med device and pharmaceutical sales reps are equipped to deliver engaging, compliant experiences throughout the purchase journey – and ultimately close more deals.

In this guide, we’ll explore everything you need about sales enablement for medical device reps. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of:

  • What sales enablement for medical devices is
  • Why medtech and pharma companies are investing in sales enablement
  • 6 practical steps you can take to create a high-performing sales enablement program for your medical device or pharma business

What is sales enablement for medical device reps?

As a revenue leader in the medical technology sector, you’ve likely heard the term “sales enablement.” But what exactly is sales enablement for medical device or pharma reps?

Sales enablement is designed to increase sales reps’ effectiveness and efficiency. It involves equipping revenue teams with the training, tools, information, and compliant sales content to engage buyers throughout the sales cycle.

While sales enablement is a relatively new concept, it’s quickly caught on in all industries – including medical devices and pharmaceuticals. According to the 2024-2025 Chief Revenue + Sales Leader Outlook Report, the vast majority – 84% – of organizations are investing in a sales enablement function.

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Sales enablement for medical device reps is an enablement practice focused on addressing the unique needs of sales reps in the medical device industry. Later, we’ll look at some of those unique challenges and how medical device sales enablement addresses them.

You may wonder who is responsible for medical device or pharma sales enablement. It varies from organization to organization. But a dedicated sales enablement team is increasingly tasked with managing sales enablement for health tech.

What is a medical device sales enablement platform?

A sales enablement platform is a tool that powers a sales enablement program. A sales enablement platform centralizes everything related to sales enablement. Sales, marketing, and sales enablement teams can always find what they need – all within one platform.

A medical device or pharmaceutical sales enablement platform is a sales enablement tool equipped to meet the unique needs of medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Think of it as a one-stop shop for everything related to medical device or pharmaceutical sales enablement.

Enablement teams use a medical device sales enablement platform to build and deliver programs and initiatives. These teams can also use the medical sales enablement platform to measure the impact of their programs and optimize accordingly.

Medtech sales reps turn to a medical device sales enablement platform to access everything they need to engage with buyers and close deals in a complex, competitive, and highly regulated industry, including:

  • Onboarding
  • Ongoing learning
  • Reinforcement and practice opportunities
  • Coaching
  • Compliant sales content

A medical device sales enablement platform also incorporates robust analytics that can fuel better decision-making. For example, a sales enablement platform can help sales reps determine what step to take next or what content to share based on customer engagement and the historic performance of sales content.
Why should you implement sales enablement for medical device sales?
Let’s face it: medical device and pharma sales reps face a lot of challenges. Some key challenges include:

  • Navigating a heavily regulated industry with big penalties for non-compliance
  • Crowded markets and fierce competition
  • Ever-evolving product offerings
  • Increasingly large buying committees
  • Lengthy enterprise sales cycles
  • Shifting sales climate
  • Heightened buyer expectations

That’s just to name a few.

The most successful med device companies are turning to sales enablement to ensure medtech sales reps have everything they need to overcome these challenges and close more deals faster.

Let’s examine some of the key reasons leading med tech and pharma organizations are investing in sales enablement teams, plans, and tools.

Alignment between marketing and sales

Sales and marketing teams both aim to close more deals and grow revenue. But often, these teams work in silos. They’re so focused on their own work – without regard to what the other team is doing.

This misalignment can cause big problems.

For example, a marketing team might spend much time and effort creating sales content. But if this content isn’t used by sellers or doesn’t improve sales outcomes, the marketing team is wasting its time. They need hard data and feedback from sales teams to create content that resonates with buyers and helps move them through the sales funnel.

Effective sales enablement requires sales and marketing teams to come together to ensure revenue teams have what they need to be effective and efficient. This alignment is a powerful way to improve outcomes.

Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams experience
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Research from Forrester found that companies with aligned sales and marketing teams experience 24% faster growth rates and 27% faster growth over the period of a year.

A single source of truth for compliant information and sales content

The medical device and pharma industries are heavily regulated. Furthermore, medtech and pharma products always evolve, requiring sales collateral updates. Ensuring sales reps always have the latest, greatest, compliant collateral to use with prospects can be challenging.

A sales enablement platform enables organizations to house and organize all sales content in one location. That means sellers can easily find relevant, compliant sales content for any sales scenario. Furthermore, sales enablement teams can easily update content to ensure sales reps have the most current, compliant versions.

Training and coaching that’s relevant to the needs of each seller

It’s well understood that training and coaching both help improve seller performance. But often, organizations take a generic approach to learning and coaching. In other words, they develop generic training and learning initiatives and assign it to all reps – regardless of whether or not it’s relevant.

Training and coaching must be personalized to be effective. Yet, a recent report found that just 40% of C-level executives can identify sales rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training.

A solid sales enablement strategy and the right technology allow enablement teams to understand each seller’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, they can deliver training and coaching that addresses those unique needs.

Engaging buying experiences across the purchase journey

Selling medical devices and pharmaceuticals is getting more and more complicated. Sales cycles are long, and buying committees are growing. Furthermore, each stakeholder involved in a purchase has different needs and challenges.

It can be difficult for medical device and pharma sales reps to keep large buying committees engaged throughout the sales cycle – especially when most interactions take place remotely.

A sales enablement practice ensures that medical device and pharmaceutical sellers have the skills, tools, and content to keep buyers engaged throughout the purchase journey.

For example, some sales enablement platforms incorporate digital sales rooms, enabling all buying and selling team members to align, communicate, and share content. When everyone is on the same page, deals can progress faster.

Data and insights to fuel better sales outcomes

Making decisions based on hunches isn’t an effective approach. Instead, revenue teams must leverage data.

A sales enablement platform can provide robust data and analytics that can be used by sales, marketing, and sales enablement needs. For example, a pharma sales rep can see how different buying committee members interact with a specific piece of content. This intel can help inform next steps.

In addition, some sales enablement platforms incorporate revenue intelligence, which helps medtech sales leaders better predict sales outcomes. If a winnable deal is at risk, sales managers can work with their reps to improve its outcome.

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6 steps to develop an impactful sales enablement program 

Sales enablement can have a large, positive impact on sales performance. But how can you ensure your sales enablement teams and programs run on all cylinders?

Certain steps are essential when developing a sales enablement program for your medical device or pharmaceutical sales team.

Step 1: Collaborate cross-functionally

It’s important to identify who will own sales enablement within your organization. In the past, sales or marketing often owned sales enablement. But increasingly, organizations are investing in dedicated sales enablement teams.

However, sales enablement teams can’t (and shouldn’t) do it alone. Successful sales enablement requires ongoing collaboration from key teams – including enablement, sales, and marketing. You will likely achieve your sales enablement goals when these key teams are aligned.

Step 2: Determine your sales enablement goals

Without goals, creating effective medtech sales enablement initiatives and measuring their impact is impossible. As such, it’s critical to determine your sales enablement goals. In other words, what do you hope to accomplish with sales enablement for medical device reps?

While setting goals for program adoption and completion are important, you shouldn’t stop there. Instead, be sure you’re setting goals related to how your programs and initiatives will positively impact the metrics that matter most to your business – like quota attainment and revenue generation.

Avoid vague goals like “improve sales performance.” Instead, develop goals following the SMART methodology. SMART sales enablement goals are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Relevant
  • Time-specific

You will also need to decide what medical device sales enablement metrics to track to determine whether you’re on track to achieve your sales enablement goals.

Step 3: Define sales excellence

Sales enablement for medical device reps aims to build a team of excellent performers. But first, you have to define excellence.

Look at your best medtech sales reps and determine what makes them different. Use these insights to develop an ideal rep profile (IRP), which spells out the skills and behaviors a medical device or pharma sales rep needs for success at your organization.

Ideal rep profile competencies

Once you’ve developed your IRP, you can measure each rep against this gold standard. It’s a great way to determine where they’re shining and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Step 4: Develop sales enablement programs to support your goals

Once you have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve with sales enablement, you can start building programs and initiatives to help you achieve those goals.

Among countless other factors, sales enablement initiatives vary widely based on goals, team size, and budget. However, some common initiatives include:

Step 5: Tap into the right sales enablement technology

Technology is a key component of any sales enablement strategy for medical devices. Today, some organizations use point solutions to address specific aspects of sales enablement. For example, a medical device company may use one tool for sales content, one for sales training, and one for conversation intelligence.

Requiring your teams to switch between tools can be time-consuming and cumbersome. Furthermore, using point solutions makes it nearly impossible to get a holistic view of how sales enablement for medical device reps is actually improving sales outcomes.

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Instead, consider streamlining your sales enablement tech stack by leveraging an integrated medical sales enablement solution. An integrated medical sales enablement tool incorporates all the key components of sales enablement – all from one platform. Those key components include:

An integrated sales enablement platform like Mindtickle empowers enablement teams to create, deliver, and measure their programs – all in one tool. Furthermore, revenue teams can access everything they need to engage prospects and close more deals.

Step 6: Measure and optimize

Launching a sales enablement for a health tech program and hoping for the best isn’t a good approach. Instead, you must measure consistently to ensure you’re on track to achieve your goals. Regular measurement also enables you to identify problems early on. Then, you can optimize your sales enablement programs to improve outcomes.

Build an entire team of top medtech sellers with Mindtickle

Sales reps in the medical device and pharma industries face significant hurdles. A solid sales enablement strategy – paired with the right sales enablement for health tech platform – empowers sellers to overcome challenges, deliver engaging experiences across the entire sales cycle, and close more deals.

Today, some of the world’s best medical device and pharmaceutical companies—including Integrace Health and Janssen India—depend on Mindtickle to equip their revenue teams with the training, tools, content, and insights they need to crush quota consistently. 

Sales Enablement for Med Devices

Want to learn more about how Mindtickle enables med device and pharma reps to hit quota every quarter?

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What is Business Enablement? Everything You Need to Know

Vivian Batman on May 7, 2024

In the world of business, change is the only constant. Organizations must keep a pulse on change and adapt accordingly. Otherwise, they’re sure to get left behind.

A business enablement mindset is a must for any modern organization. But what is it?

In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about business enablement and answer key questions, including:

  • What is business enablement?
  • How does it differ from sales enablement?
  • What are its goals, and how is success measured?
  • Who is responsible for it?
  • How can business enablement benefit your organization?

You’ll walk away with a clear picture of what business enablement is – and how it helps ensure your organization is effective and efficient – both now and in the future.

What is business enablement?

Business enablement is a relatively new concept. So, let’s start by answering the question, “What is it?”

Every business in the world wants to be successful. That’s a given.

Of course, an organization’s ability to achieve its goals rests largely on its employees. But organizations often don’t equip employees with what they need to be effective and efficient.

A survey from Gartner found that nearly half (47%) of digital workers struggle to find the information needed to be effective in their roles. Furthermore, research from McKinsey & Company found that more than half of employees are “relatively unproductive” at work.

Research from McKinsey found that

of employees are relatively unproductive at work
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When employees don’t have what they need, it negatively impacts the entire organization.

For an organization to achieve its goals, it must set up its employees for success. That’s where business enablement comes in.

It equips employees with the strategies, processes, people, and technology they need to be effective and efficient.

Successful initiatives reduce friction in employees’ workflows, making them more productive. When employees are more productive, the organization is better positioned to achieve its short- and long-term goals.

Business enablement initiatives are often “behind the scenes.” It can include anything from introducing a new technology that automates time-consuming processes to developing a new change management process.

Business vs sales enablement: what’s the difference?

The phrases “sales enablement” and “business enablement” are similar. So, it’s not surprising that people often confuse the two.

However, they aren’t the same thing.

Sales enablement is equipping the revenue organization with the right tools, sales training, information, coaching, and content they need to be effective and efficient in their roles. Modern B2B buyers have high expectations, and sales enablement helps sellers meet those expectations throughout the sales cycle.

While the concept of sales enablement is relatively new, it’s quickly grown in popularity. Per the 2024-2025 Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement team. Typically, a sales enablement manager reports up to the organization’s Chief Revenue Officer. Sales enablement teams rely on sales enablement software to build, deliver, and measure sales enablement programs.

According to Mindtickle research,

of orgs invest in a sales enablement team
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Sales enablement teams focus on supporting the sales team. However, business enablement initiatives typically have a broader audience. These initiatives often impact the entire organization.

Sales enablement Business enablement
Primary audience Sales or revenue team Entire organization
Goal Increase sales productivity Increase organizational effectiveness and efficiency
How they accomplish this goal Equipping sellers with the tools, training, information, coaching, and content they need to engage buyers and close more deals. Equipping all employees with the right tools, processes, resources, and strategies to be productive.
Ownership/responsible party Sales enablement team, typically reporting up to the CRO. Sales enablement closely collaborates with sales and marketing teams. Cross-functional

What are the goals of business enablement?

Ultimately, the goal is to ensure the organization can be as effective and efficient as possible. Business enablement achieves this goal by equipping teams with the right tools, processes, resources, and strategies to eliminate friction and increase productivity.

When employees have what they need to be effective and efficient, the entire organization is more effective and efficient. In addition, the entire organization is aligned around the customer, which means it’s better equipped to meet customers’ needs and expectations. As a result, sales and retention will soar.

What are the performance metrics involved in business enablement?

Organizations can’t simply launch an initiative and hope it’s successful. Instead, they must measure its impact and optimize accordingly.

Establishing goals is the foundational first step of developing an initiative. Then, you can monitor key metrics to see whether your initiative is or isn’t achieving those goals.

But what business enablement metrics do you need to track? It depends on the goals of your project. However, nearly all business enablement initiatives aim to save time and money. So be sure to track metrics to determine whether or not you’re achieving those objectives.

Other metrics that may be measured include:

  • Employee productivity
  • Employee satisfaction
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Customer retention

With consistent measurement, you can identify whether your program is effective and what you can optimize to improve performance.

Who is responsible for business enablement?

Not surprisingly, sales enablement is driven by a dedicated sales enablement team. But who is responsible for business enablement? In other words, who are business enablement specialists, and what are different functions?

Typically, business enablement is a cross-functional effort. The exact teams that are involved vary depending on the initiative. However, there are typically a few groups of people involved:

This is the person (or people) leading a specific initiative. These specialists are responsible for driving collaboration and ensuring the project’s success. Depending on the initiative, the project owner can hail from any number of teams. For example, someone from human resources may be the project owner for a new payroll initiative. A representative from IT would likely lead an initiative focused on rolling out new technology.

These people are expected to adopt a new business enablement initiative or tool. They could be all employees or a subset, such as a specific department.

Typically, this is the person responsible for approving a business enablement initiative. Often, it is the head of finance or IT. Gaining this person’s buy-in increases your likelihood of getting buy-in across the entire leadership team and the organization as a whole.

What are the benefits of business enablement?

Today, a growing number of organizations are adopting a business enablement mindset. That’s not surprising. Business enablement – when it’s done well – can deliver many benefits to the business.

Alignment across the organization

Each team within the organization is focused on their own projects and initiatives. But all too often, these teams work in silos.

It can unite the entire organization toward a common goal. In addition, a business enablement initiative can bring together teams that don’t typically work together. For example, a project may be led by a team composed of members from IT, customer service, sales, marketing, and finance.

Better communication across different departments

Effective communication within a team and across the organization is key. But it can be challenging, especially when teams aren’t working in the same physical location.

Business enablement initiatives can improve internal communication. For example, you might roll out new technology to keep teams aligned on key projects. Better communication will drive better business outcomes.

Improved operational efficiency

There are only so many hours in the day, and you want your employees to make the most of them. But often, they get bogged down by time-consuming, repetitive work.

Business enablement can streamline or even automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks and admin work. That means your employees have more time to make progress on meaningful work.

That means your entire organization can move closer to its goals – faster.
Increased employee satisfaction
Employees with the right tools and processes to do their jobs are more satisfied at work. Satisfied workers are more productive – and more likely to stick around long-term.

A competitive advantage

Customers’ needs and expectations are always evolving. It’s important to understand these expectations and adapt accordingly.

Businesses can leverage business enablement to ensure the organization is aligned with customers’ needs and equipped to meet those needs.

For example, according to Gartner, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. An organization can develop behind-the-scenes processes and leverage new technology to ensure the entire organization can meet customers’ expectations and preferences. If that company’s initiatives are a success, they’ll set it apart from the competition, making it easier to grow sales.

Increased customer retention

Winning new customers is important. It’s equally important to retain existing customers.

Business enablement initiatives enable teams to align around serving the customer. This will increase customer satisfaction, which will boost customer retention. In addition, customers are more likely to recommend the business to others, which will increase referrals.

It’s time to adopt a business enablement mindset

Business enablement is a relatively new concept. But a growing number of businesses are adopting it.

Equipping employees with the tools and processes they need to succeed will increase the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, employees will be better equipped to serve customers, increasing customer acquisition and retention.

Business enablement and sales enablement aren’t the same thing. However, a solid sales enablement strategy – paired with the right technology – is a key way to boost sales productivity.

Today, winning revenue teams leverage Mindtickle’s integrated sales productivity platform to power their sales enablement programs. 

Sales Enablement with Mindtickle

With Mindtickle, sellers can access the training, content, enablement, coaching, and call insights they need to be successful – all from one platform.

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How to Achieve Sales Excellence Through Sales Management Training

Poornima Mohandas on April 23, 2024

In business, it’s often assumed that a person who excels as a sales rep will also be successful as a sales manager. As such, top sales reps are often promoted to sales managers and left to find their way into their new roles.

This approach simply doesn’t work.

Success as a sales rep doesn’t guarantee success as a sales manager, as each role requires different skills and qualities. Even the most seasoned sales reps need proper training to be effective sales managers.

When it comes to sales management training, you may have questions like:

  • What is it?
  • What are the benefits?
  • How can you build a more effective program?

Read on as we answer these and other key questions about the role of sales management training in driving sales excellence.

What is sales management training?

A sales manager is one of the most important roles in a company. After all, they are responsible for building, supporting, and leading a team of sellers so they have what it takes to close deals.

A sales manager’s job isn’t easy, especially as sales teams grow in size. According to Gartner, the average sales manager oversees 7.5 sellers.

The number of sellers the average manager oversees
0

Sales managers must master a certain set of skills to be successful in their roles.

Of course, sales managers must be experts in the market and their company’s products and services. Typically, these are topics covered in sales rep training.

However, sales managers must also master key management and leadership skills like:

  • Hiring new sales reps
  • Setting sales goals
  • Tracking sales quotas
  • Motivating team members
  • Monitoring sales performance
  • Delivering personalized coaching to sellers at scale
  • Sales forecasting
  • Building sales plans

That’s where sales management training comes in.

It’s training that’s specifically focused on helping sales managers build the skills they need to be effective in their roles.

Common sales manager training topics

Effective sales management training covers various topics, which vary from organization to organization. However, some sales manager training topics are common across all organizations.

Sales coaching

According to research from the Sales Management Association, companies that provide effective sales coaching can see a 16.7% revenue increase. 

Companies that provide effective sales coaching can see a

increase in revenue
0 %

Managing team performance

Sales managers must be trained on the many elements of managing sales rep performance. This includes setting goals, tracking metrics, and delivering feedback to improve sales rep and quota performance.

Leadership

Sales managers set the tone for the entire team. Therefore, sales manager training must include honing managers’ sales leadership capabilities.

Recruiting

Filling open positions isn’t enough. Instead, sales managers must be trained to fill the right roles with the right people.

Sales forecasting

Sales managers are responsible for predicting revenue and accuracy matters. Yet, recent research found that 34% of sales organizations cite inaccurate forecasts and limited predictability in the business as one of their top challenges. Sales management training must incorporate training that enables sales managers to create more accurate sales forecasts.

Communication

Effective communication skills are essential for any sales manager. These leaders must be skilled at communicating internally and with prospects and customers.

Sales management training formats

When you hear the phrase “sales management training,” you might picture a conference room with sales managers gathering to learn about a specific topic. You aren’t wrong. Some sales manager training takes place in person. However, there are other popular sales management training formats.

Training can be live but remote. Everyone participates simultaneously, but they do so from different locations. Many sales organizations also deliver on-demand, bite-sized learning and practice opportunities that sales managers can complete independently.

How does sales management training benefit organizations?

Sales leadership training benefits sales managers. With the right training, sales managers are better equipped to do their jobs well.

However, effective management training also benefits sales reps and the organization.

More effective manangers
Higher-performing reps
Improved retention

More effective sales managers

The most obvious benefit is that it helps create more effective sales managers. Sales managers learn the necessary skills, which means they can be successful in their roles.

In addition, ongoing training helps sales managers feel supported. When they feel supported, they’re more likely to stick around long-term.

Higher-performing sales reps

Sales managers play a key role in the performance of their sales reps – for better or worse.

Take, for example, sales coaching. As we mentioned earlier, effective sales coaching boosts seller performance. But sales managers can’t deliver generic, one-size-fits-all coaching to everyone on the team and expect to see great results. Instead, they need the right training and tools to deliver personalized coaching that addresses the needs of each seller. When a sales manager’s coaching skills improve, so too do their sellers’ performance.

On the flip side, a poor sales manager negatively impacts team performance. One study found that a poor-performing sales manager can cost a team a staggering $3.5M.

Improved sales rep retention

Sales reps leave for a variety of reasons. But often, the sales manager is at last partially to blame. Research tells us that 60% of sales reps are likelier to leave a position if their manager is a poor coach.

A great sales manager ensures employees feel supported and appreciated. When sales reps feel their sales manager is invested in their success, they’re likelier to stick around long-term. That means you don’t have to spend time and money recruiting for vacant roles constantly.

How to create an effective sales management training program

Effective sales management training helps ensure your sales managers have what it takes to build and lead a team of top-performing sales reps. But how can you create a great sales leadership training program? Explore some top tips for building an effective sales management training program.

Determine sales management training topics

Of course, your training program should incorporate training on timely topics, such as new product offerings or a shift in the marketplace. But you should also incorporate evergreen topics.

How should you decide on the right sales management training topics? First, you need to identify the skills and qualities of your most successful sales managers. Then, you can build training focused on helping all sales managers master these key sales management training skills and competencies.

Consider the format of your sales management training

What’s the best format for your sales management training? It depends on the topic and the needs of your organization. Some of the best sales organizations leverage real-time training with bite-sized learning that sales managers can complete independently.

Incorporate reinforcement

Delivering sales management training to those new to the company or the role is important. However, sales leadership training can’t be a one-time event. After all, Gartner research found that 70% of information covered during sales training is forgotten within a week.

Gartner found that

of sales training is forgotten within a week
0 %

Be sure to provide ongoing learning and reinforcement opportunities to ensure your training sticks. For example, you can incorporate bite-sized learning modules to reinforce concepts covered during live training. You can also include quizzes and assessments to gauge mastery of key topics.

Provide opportunities for practice and feedback

A sales manager might complete an entire training series on a specific sales management training topic. But that doesn’t mean they know how to put this knowledge into practice.

Be sure to provide opportunities for your sales managers to practice their new skills. For example, managers might record themselves role-playing a coaching session. The sales manager can then watch the recording to observe their performance. They can also get real-time input via artificial intelligence (AI) on how they can improve. In addition, sales managers can share their role plays with sales leadership and their peers to get feedback on improving their skills.

Include sales certifications

Consider adding a sales certification at the end of some of your sales management programs. Earning a certification is a great way for sales managers to demonstrate that they’ve mastered the skills needed for success.

Coach the coach

The importance of coaching sales reps is well understood. But sales managers need coaching too!

Be sure to incorporate sales managers into your coaching program. Sales managers can be coached by their own manager, a more seasoned sales manager, or a combination of the two.

Leverage the right tools

A well-run sales management training program involves several moving parts. Ensuring you have the right technology to power your sales management training program is important.

There are many tools available today that can help you improve the effectiveness of your sales management program. However, many of these tools address just one aspect of sales management training. For example, a company might use sales training software to develop and deliver training. They may also use a sales content management system to house sales content related to sales management training. That company might use a completely different tool to power its sales coaching program.

Switching between several tools takes time and effort. Furthermore, this “tool switching” negatively impacts productivity.

Instead, consider adopting an integrated sales productivity platform. For example, Mindtickle’s integrated platform incorporates training, sales content, coaching, enablement, and conversation intelligence into one solution.

Measure and optimize accordingly

Once you’ve developed a sales management training program, you can’t put it on autopilot. Instead, you need to measure its effectiveness regularly.

Leverage key sales training and sales enablement analytics to understand performance. Then, you can use these insights to optimize your program for even better results.

manufacturing-powerful-analytics

Build a winning sales management training program with Mindtickle

Sales managers play a critical role in the success of their sales team. But often, they don’t receive the training needed to build and hone the skills they need to be effective in their roles.

Sales management training is key to ensuring sales managers have what it takes to build, lead, and motivate their teams. A strong sales management training strategy is essential, and it requires the right tools.

Today, some of the world’s best revenue organizations depend on Mindtickle to power their sales management training program. With Mindtickle’s integrated sales productivity platform, sales managers have the training, enablement, coaching, sales content, and call insights they need to be successful – all in one location.

Sales Excellence with Mindtickle

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How Teradata Transforms Their Sales Enablement Strategy with Mindtickle

Poornima Mohandas on February 21, 2024

Not that long ago, it was rare for an organization to have a dedicated sales enablement team.

But today, a whopping 84% of organizations invest in a sales enablement function.

of organizations invest in sales enablement
0 %

That’s not surprising. When it’s down well, sales enablement has a powerful impact on sales productivity, sales performance, and revenue growth.

But establishing a sales enablement function doesn’t guarantee great results. The most successful organizations are those with the right sales enablement strategy and sales enablement tools.

Teradata, a software company providing cloud database and analytics-related solutions, has experienced the powerful impact of adopting the right sales enablement tools. Recently, we sat down with Morgan Clawson, Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata, to learn more about how the company has transformed its B2B sales enablement strategy for the better with Mindtickle.

Establishing a capability framework for go-to-market roles

In any revenue organization, certain capabilities are needed for success. Those capabilities vary by role. For example, those on the commercial sales team at Teradata require different skills than those on the technical sales team. Yet, many revenue organizations don’t define the competencies needed for success.

With Mindtickle, Teradata has established its first-ever go-to-market capability model, which defines the skills and knowledge each team needs to succeed in the field. Mindtickle provides a place for Teradata’s account teams and their managers to reflect on their sales productivity and efficiency in terms of those key capabilities. The teams also pull data from Mindtickle by capability, which sheds light on the areas where additional enablement is needed.

“This gives us a data-driven approach, which is extremely effective in ensuring the enablement we’re putting out is relevant and meaningful. The more relevant and meaningful it is, the more account teams will consume that enablement.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Megan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

With Mindtickle, It’s easy for the Teradata sales enablement team to measure progress – both in terms of completion and in terms of skill development. “We can show the progression of the teams as they’re participating in enablement and how they’re moving through and mastering different capabilities,” Clawson said.

Transforming Teradata’s approach to sales enablement

Oftentimes, organizations take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to sales enablement. Taking a more personalized approach requires these organizations to understand what kind of sales training and support each seller needs. But often, organizations lack those insights.

In fact, per our Chief Revenue Officer + Sales Leader Outlook Report, a mere 40% of C-level executives can identify strengths and weaknesses to develop customized sales training.

Only

of C-level execs can identify rep strengths + weaknesses
0 %

Mindtickle enables Teradata to group sellers by proficiency level on their capability model. Then, they can provide targeted and relevant enablement to the people who actually need it.

“Mindtickle has transformed our ability to deliver enablement to those who actually need it,” explained Clawson. “Mindtickle allows us to maximize the seller’s time so they’re actually in the field participating and engaging with customers in the ways we’d like them to, as opposed to feeling like they’re chained to their computer taking enablement that doesn’t apply to them.

In addition, Mindtickle has empowered Teradata to take a more collaborative approach to learning and sales enablement. For example, the company uses a lot of coaching forms and missions – which are different module types in Mindtickle.

“With those modules, managers are really able to take a front seat in the enablement activities and exercises that directly impact the efficacy of their sellers,” said Clawson. “Also, they’re able to participate in these really robust feedback loops related to specific sales situations. That more structured feedback loop that Mindtickle facilitates for us is really crucial to helping uplevel our teams.”

Increasing mastery of knowledge and skills

Mindtickle has transformed the way Teradata trains sellers, provides practice opportunities, and reinforces learning. Mindtickle’s certification and badging features have been key to this transformation.

“With Mindtickle, we’re able to build learning paths and missions that demonstrate real-world mastery of concepts and selling motions that are critical to Teradata’s sales strategy,” explained Clawson. “This means our sales teams are actually going into the world with proven, advanced knowledge and skills. They’re equipped to have confident, knowledgeable conversations about the value our solution can bring to our customers. They’re able to get all that information, practice it, and prove they can do these things through the badging program that Mindtickle helps us to facilitate.”

Earning these badges and sharing them on LinkedIn boosts the confidence of sellers. It also boosts buyer confidence. “[Buyers] know when they’re interacting with us we have teams out there that are going out there prepared and ready to deliver value to their customers,” said Clawson.

Working with a partner that’s committed to innovation and customer success

The team at Mindtickle is committed to ensuring the platform meets the needs of its customers – both now and in the future. As Clawson put it, “Mindtickle’s product team is an absolutely phenomenal group of people who are actually working on the platform and making it something that’s actually relevant and meaningful to us enablement professionals.”

The product team regularly meets with customers – including Teradata – to understand their unique needs and challenges. This input informs future innovation. 

“Mindtickle has always been really proactive in seeking to understand what our unique challenges are at Teradata and also finding ways to elevate the platform so it works for us.”
Morgan Clawson headshot
Morgan Clawson
Senior Manager, GTM Readiness at Teradata

Clawson and her team have also found the support team at Mindtickle to be knowledgeable and extremely responsive. “It’s really helped to establish credibility and fidelity with our teams,” said Clawson. We’re seeing a huge uptick in adoption of the platform in our go-to-market teams. I think this is partially due to the quick responsiveness and how helpful Mindtickle is.”

Proving impact and elevating the sales enablement function within the organization

In the best of times, sales enablement teams are under pressure to demonstrate value. This is especially true in today’s economic environment.

Without the right tools, it can be difficult (or even impossible) to demonstrate how B2B sales enablement is impacting the metrics that matter most to businesses. Mindtickle makes it possible.

“If you’re an enablement professional looking for ways to highlight the value and impact of your team to the greater org, Mindtickle allows you to do that,” said Clawson. “We can see very specific correlation metrics to the enablement activities we are producing. I can show very clearly the value my team is bringing to Teradata as a whole, and it’s a great feeling as a supervisor to elevate my team.”

Better Sales Enablement with Mindtickle

Ready to see how Mindtickle can help your sales enablement org can make a bigger business impact? 

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Unlocking Order from Chaos: Tackling Revenue Technology Confusion

Parth Mukherjee on December 7, 2023

We’re excited to launch a new video series focused on reducing chaos in your seller tech stack. In it, our team of experts shares tips on how you can use the tools in your tech stack with one another to improve seller productivity.

This video series covers a wide range of topics, including:

  • Using CRM data and conversation intelligence to inform your 2024 enablement plan
  • How to improve win rates and conversions with revenue intelligence
  • Leveraging your CMS, DSRs, and CRM to inform your 2024 sales content strategy
  • Enhancing coaching with CRM data, enablement analytics, and conversation intelligence
  • How reps accelerate bigger, faster deals with consolidation

Reduce Tech Stack Chaos

Get actionable tips from our team of experts on how to use tools with one another to improve seller productivity. 

Unlock the Videos

Transcription

Hi, everyone. My name is Parth Mukherjee, and I’m the Vice President of Product Marketing at Mindtickle. Today I’m here to talk to you about something that we are hearing a lot from our customers and prospects. And that’s the chaos that we’re seeing in the revenue technology space.

We obviously as a company are deeply passionate about F tech, and believe that every category and vendor out there has something valuable to offer to its users. However, market valuation and investor pressures often drive vendors to create capabilities in many different areas. Not all of these are necessarily aligned with user needs.

Just imagine the tech stack you already have in a go-to-market organization today, especially on the sales side. You have, of course, your CRM. But then you also have sales, onboarding, and training. You have content management systems, you have conversation and revenue intelligence tools, you have sales engagement tools for SDRs, and you have sales forecasting. And then you also have pricing territory compensation management, the list simply goes on.

And now as the boundaries between these categories, blur, users are just confused. Which parts of my stack do I use for which needs and for which use cases at mind tackle we have created a video series that is aimed at helping you cut down this chaos from your sales tech stack. In this video series, we have gathered insights from our customers and the market to help you streamline your sales tech stack, improve your go-to-market strategy, increase venerates, and establish robust enablement practices.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you can expect from each of our experts.

  • Christian guides you on using technology to inform your content strategy. By consolidating content into one platform, layering engagement data, and structuring content for seller use, you can boost engagement with content.
  • Helen provides enablement professionals with three ways to use CRM and conversation intelligence data to improve your 2024 enablement calendar. By reviewing sales stages, evaluating launches, and assessing ramp time for new hires, you can refine your strategy for the coming year.
  • Elisha, another brilliant product marketer on my team addresses the chaos of onboarding in a new company. She emphasizes the power of using CRM enablement analytics and conversation intelligence to identify short-term risks and mitigate long-term ones. By closing skill gaps and aligning coaching with competencies. You end up building a strong coaching culture, which helps ongoing rep performance.
  • Rahul highlights a great customer example in the cybersecurity space by consolidating tools tracking pipeline risk analytics, ensuring repeatable quota contributions, and focusing on the healthy deals in the pipeline. The company improved productivity and accelerated the bigger, faster deals. Listen to this video and learn how they did it.
  • And finally, Lindsey shares a success story where a B2B tech company with Mindtickle’s help, of course, double their win rates. This is an amazing story. They achieved this by driving cross-functional alignment, consolidating technologies, and focusing on buyer engagement. This led to substantial cost reductions and simplified tool usage for the reps which is really, really important.

So I would want you to enjoy these five videos. And I would love to keep this conversation going. Please write to us at [email protected] and share how you have reduced tech stack chaos for your business. We will also follow this series up with a long blog on our perspective on the future of revenue technology. till then happy viewing and a very happy holiday from all of us here at Mindtickle. Thank you.

What are Sales Goals and How to Set Smart Sales Goals for Your Sales Reps?

Rahul Mathew on December 6, 2023

Setting goals is important in all areas of life – both personally and professionally. The world of sales is no exception.

Sales goals help ensure your entire sales team is aligned. Each sales rep must understand the overall goals of the company – and the part they play in achieving those goals.

As a sales leader, it’s important to set goals that will motivate your sellers and ensure they know what’s expected of them. In theory, this seems easy enough. But in reality, setting effective goals (and then achieving them) can be challenging.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at why sales goals are important to sales teams, how to set effective ones, examples of common sales goals, and steps you can take to track and achieve them.

What are sales goals and why are they important for your sales teams?

According to the dictionary, a goal is “an aim or desired result.”

But what are sales goals?

They are clearly defined objectives set for individual sales reps and sales teams. Sales goals articulate what the sales rep or sales team is expected to achieve within a specific amount of time.

Individual rep vs. group sales goals

Some sales goals are created for a specific sales rep. Others are developed for a subgroup of the sales team. For example, an organization might have goals for reps in specific regions – or with specific titles. Finally, some goals are developed for the sales organization as a whole.

Long-term vs. short term sales goals

Sometimes, sales goals are long-term goals. For example, a sales team might have a goal to increase revenue in their region by 20% during the fiscal year. Other goals are short-term. For example, a sales development team might have a goal to increase cold calls by 50% this month.

What are SMART sales goals?

Setting a goal like “sell as much as possible” isn’t the best approach. Instead, the most successful sales organizations use the SMART methodology to develop goals.

The idea of SMART goals was first introduced in a 1981 issue of Management Review. SMART is an acronym that guides individuals and teams in setting more effective goals. SMART goals are:

Generic goals like “close more deals” or “increase revenue” aren’t effective. Instead, goals must be specific, with details about how that goal will be achieved.

If you can’t measure something, there’s no way of knowing whether you were successful. Goals must have specific numbers attached to them.

Stretch goals are a great way to challenge reps. But goals must also be achievable.

Goals must be related to your company’s overall goals and strategy.

Goals must have a specific time attached to them. For example, close 50% more details by the end of Q2 2024.

Why are sales goals important?

Imagine you were going for a hike in the woods but had no idea where you were going and no map to guide you. Chances are, you’d lose your way at some point.

This is similar to what it’s like when sales reps don’t have sales goals.

Without goals, your sales teams don’t know what’s expected of them. They don’t know what they’re working towards – much less how to get there. In such a scenario, sellers are left to their own devices, and your chances of growing revenue are slim to none.

Creating goals is an important way to align your sales team and ensure they understand expectations. Clearly defined sales goals ensure sellers understand the overall objectives of the sales team – as well as the part they pay in achieving those objectives.

Sales goals examples

There’s no magic set of sales goals that will work for every single sales organization. Instead, it’s important to develop sales goals that make sense for your organization.

However, seeing some common, real-life examples of sales goals can be a great way to get the ideas flowing. Here are a few sales goals examples.

Generate more revenue

Reduce sales cycles

Achieve quota

Reduce churn rate

Reduce customer acquistion cost

Improve prospecting

Sales goal example #1: Generating more sales revenue

Increasing sales revenue is a top priority of any sales organization. As such, it makes sense to have a sales goal related to generating sales revenue. Because revenue is quantitative, it’s relatively easy to set a sales goal related to it.

Sales goal example #2: Reducing the sales cycle

A given deal includes several steps – from prospecting to closing the deal. Ideally, a seller would flow through these steps as quickly as possible. After all, the faster a deal goes through the sales cycle, the faster that revenue will hit the bottom line. In addition, when the deal closes, it’ll free up the rep’s time to focus on other opportunities.

  • An example of a sales goal related to reducing the sales cycle might be: Reduce time to close in Q2 by 10% by focusing on good-fit prospects and delivering personalized pitches to prospects that create urgency to act.
  • An example of a goal related to generating sales revenue might be: “Grow monthly recurring revenue by 25% in 2024 by improving cold calling tactics and increasing win rates.”

Sales goal example #3: Achieving quota

The more sales reps meet their sales quota, the more likely you are to reach your revenue growth goals. So it’s not surprising that sales quota achievement is a common sales goal.

  • An example of a sales quota achievement goal is: “80% of sellers in the Northeast region will achieve 80% of their sales quota in Q3.”

Sales goal example #4: Reducing churn rate

It’s more expensive to win a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. As such, sales organizations must aim for a high customer retention rate.

  • A sales goal example related to churn might be: “Reduce customer churn by 25% in the last two quarters of 2024 by improving client success hand-off and adopting a more proactive approach to customer success.”

Sales goal example #5: Reducing customer acquisition cost

Customer acquisition cost – often referred to as CAC – is the amount of money spent to convert a lead to a customer. This cost includes several factors, including:

  • Marketing campaigns
  • Your employees’ time

The longer it takes to convert a lead to a customer, the higher the CAC. As such, it makes sense to create a sales goal related to reducing CAC. An example could be: “Decrease CAC by 10% this quarter.”

Sales goal example #6: Increase cold calls and improve prospecting

Cold calls aren’t anyone’s favorite part of sales. But they’re necessary to meet sales targets.

Many sales organizations set sales goals directly related to cold call quantity. For example, “make 100 cold calls this week.”

When it comes to cold calls, it’s about both quantity and quality. Of course, you want your sellers to be making a lot of calls. But you also want them to be connecting with qualified prospects.

Tips for setting sales goals

Now that you know some common sales goals, it’s time to set your own. But how? There are some tried-and-true steps to take to get started with setting sales goals.

Step 1: Determine the type of sales goal
Step 2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology
Step 3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable
Step 4: Consider incentives
Step 5: Clearly communicate your sales goals
Step 6: Measure success of your sales goals

Step #1: Determine the type of goal

Before developing a goal, you must first determine what type of goal it is. For example, is it a goal for the entire sales team? Or is it a goal for a specific portion of your sales team or even a specific seller?

Next, determine what category of goal it is. For example, is it a sales goal related to revenue? Or perhaps you are aiming to develop a sales goal related to deal size.

Some organizations opt to start with sales goal templates. Sales goal templates can be a great starting point that can be customized to fit the needs of your business.

Remember: any sales goal you create should be aligned with your overall business strategy and objectives.

Step #2: Develop the goal based on the SMART methodology

Vague goals aren’t effective. As an example, consider a sales goal of “increase sales revenue.” Sure, this goal provides a high-level overview of the objective. However, we don’t know how much the team is aiming to increase revenue – or what the deadline is for doing so.

A better approach is to write SMART goals that are:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-bound

Make sure the SMART goals you set check every box on this list.

Step #3: Strike the right balance between challenging and achievable

You don’t want to set a goal so high that it’s impossible to achieve. That will only frustrate your sellers. What’s more, when these unrealistic sales goals aren’t achieved, it’ll damage morale.

But you also don’t want to set your sales KPIs too low. If your sales targets are too low, your team isn’t achieving its full potential.

Instead, it’s important to ensure your goals are challenging, yet achievable. Stretch goals are great, but they must be realistic, based on past sales data and sales enablement analytics.

Step #4: Consider incentives

Each member of your sales team should have a clear understanding of how they’re compensated based on individual and team performance. But for some sales goals, you may want to incorporate an additional incentive or reward.

Step #5: Clearly communicate your goals

Let’s say you spend time and effort developing individual and team goals. But then you don’t communicate those goals with the teams. If your sales reps don’t know their goals, how can they be expected to achieve them?

Be sure all sales reps know their individual and team goals. It’s also important to provide context for the goals. For example, a sales rep may scoff at a goal related to cold calling. However, if they understand the reason behind this goal (for example, increasing pipeline and closing more deals), they’ll be more motivated to achieve it.

Step #6: Measure progress toward your sales goals

When it comes to goals, ongoing measurement is key. Otherwise, you have no insight into whether you’re on track to achieve those sales goals.

Be sure you can easily track progress on individual and team levels. Of course, sales managers and leaders should have easy access to this information. However, it’s also important that each sales rep has insight into their progress.

Tracking and achieving your sales goals

Now that you’ve set your sales goals, it’s time to work toward achieving them. But how can you improve your chances of achieving your sales targets? Here are a few tips that can help.

Continuously measure progress toward sales goals

Let’s say you set a sales goal to increase each rep’s percentage of closed deals by the end of the quarter. But you don’t measure their progress until the last day of the quarter. If your reps fall short, there’s not much you can do at that point.

Don’t wait until the end of the goal’s specified time period to measure results. Instead, measure progress toward your sales goals on an ongoing basis. That way, you can identify challenges early on and work to correct them. Once you’ve overcome those challenges, you’ll be better equipped to achieve your sales goals.

Provide visibility into progress

Sales leadership should easily be able to access data, sales dashboards, and reports to see how their teams are progressing toward their goals. However, it’s also important to provide sales reps with visibility into progress. Seeing where they’re at in terms of achieving their sales goals can motivate them to work harder to achieve them.

Define what it takes for a sales rep to be successful

At every sales organization, there is a set of skills and competencies necessary for success. It’s important to document those competencies in an ideal rep profile (IRP). Then, measure each rep against that IRP to determine where there are gaps that need to be addressed.

Deliver training and enablement to improve key sales skills

Imagine it’s halfway through the quarter. You have a sales rep that looks like they’re going to miss their sales quota – yet again. But they’re not able to articulate what’s going wrong.

By leveraging conversation intelligence, you notice the rep is faced with a lot of objections on sales calls – and they’re having trouble overcoming those objections. There’s no doubt this is standing in the way of them achieving their sales KPIs.

Sales managers can use these insights to provide additional sales enablement and practice opportunities for this rep. For example, they assign the rep some bite-sized learning content or ask that they complete and submit some role-plays for review. In addition, the sales manager can deliver individualized coaching to help the seller boost their objection-handling skills, which will increase their likelihood of meeting their sales goals.

Recognize success toward sales goals

When your sales reps achieve their sales goals, be sure to recognize their achievement. Of course, bonuses and incentives are a great way to motivate your team. But verbal recognition can be effective, too. Remember: a little recognition can go a long way in motivating your team to continue to aim for success.

Crush your goals with Mindtickle

Setting sales goals is a foundational way to align your sales team and improve sales performance. It’s important to take the time to establish thoughtful, data-driven sales goals – and then ensure every seller has what it takes to achieve those goals.

Today, some of the best sales organizations depend on Mindtickle to crush their sales KPIs.

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Mindtickle equips sales leaders with the data they need to develop and track challenging, yet realistic sales goals. In addition, sales reps can access the training, enablement, and content they need for sales success – all in one revenue intelligence platform. What’s more, Mindtickle incorporates conversational intelligence which enables sales managers to understand what’s happening in the field so they can provide coaching to improve outcomes.

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4 Practical Ways to Increase Sales Productivity

Nick Salas on March 29, 2022

Today, sales reps spend only 23% of their time on core sales activities and direct engagement with buyers. They spend an increasing amount of time on administrative chores like entering data into a growing number of disconnected sales tools. As a result, sellers are frustrated by the growing number of tasks that get in the way of their main job: selling.

To improve sales productivity, you need to focus on removing the roadblocks eating up your team’s time so reps can prioritize revenue-generating activities. Even a small uplift in the amount of time each rep spends on core selling activities will add up to a big productivity boost across your entire sales team. Here are four practical ways you can help your sales team dedicate more time to closing deals and driving revenue for your business.

1. Automate data entry

McKinsey estimates that “31% of all sales-related activities can be automated” to improve your team’s productivity levels. Data entry is a perfect candidate for automation because putting data into your customer relationship management program (CRM) is time-consuming and one of the biggest frustrations for sales professionals.

As reps work on more complex deals with multiple stakeholders and more touchpoints, each interaction creates more information and data for them to keep track of. It takes a long time to add detailed notes and provide meaningful updates for each sales activity in your CRM. Salesforce Research found that 63% of sales reps are logging more customer interactions in their CRM than they did in 2019.

To get data into your CRM faster, you need to automate data entry. Automation also improves data quality by reducing the number of incomplete CRM records — normally a clear sign that a rep started to update their records and then jumped on another call.

Use AI to analyze call recordings, outreach emails, and social media messages, looking for topics discussed, key messaging, or competitors mentioned. Then, connect that AI with your CRM to automatically link to call recordings and other sales activity, along with appropriate tags based on the insights it gathers. Using AI to automate data entry enables sellers to spend less time inputting info without compromising data quality.

2. Consolidate tools to reduce context switching

Context switching is where you jump between projects, tools, and tasks — and it affects your productivity levels and focus. For example, Asana found that “workers switch among 10 apps 25 times per day,” greatly reducing their efficiency.

For sales organizations, tool overload seems even worse. In 2019, the median number of sales-specific tools used was nine, but that has almost certainly increased as companies shifted to remote working during the pandemic. Additionally, a study by Oracle revealed that “updating multiple systems that ought to be connected” is one of the biggest frustrations for sellers. It takes a lot of time and feels like an unnecessary duplication of their work.

Consolidating your sales tech stack can increase productivity by reducing duplicated effort and context switching. According to Forrester, there is a “significant overlap in features and functionality that exists between different sales tech categories.” Consolidation will bring “greater value for buyers of sales tech, reducing dependency on point solutions.” A closer analysis of your existing tech stack may reveal duplicate functionality across multiple tools — so consolidation will save the business money, as well as help your sales reps increase productivity.

Before you start consolidating tools, sales managers should ask their teams which ones they use most and where they spend the most time duplicating work. This will help you understand the biggest inefficiencies for your sales teams and how your existing tech stack is affecting their workflow.

Then, you can review your existing tools and the functionality you get across each. Look for:

  • Overlapping features
  • Duplicate functionality
  • Opportunities to set up new integrations between tools
  • Options to switch to an all-in-one platform instead of multiple disparate applications

For example, Mindtickle’s Sales Readiness Platform brings sales enablement, content management, conversation intelligence, and sales coaching together into one platform. Ken Blank, senior sales enablement program lead at Infoblox, explained, “We’ve been able to bring multiple disjointed systems into one single platform for our internal customers as well as the enablement team.”

Learn more: How Mindtickle helped Infoblox adopt a single-platform approach for enablement, content, and conversation intelligence

3. Improve access to content and resources

Finding the best content and resources is another inefficiency for many sales teams. Forrester states that “not having the right content” is one of the biggest productivity challenges facing sales teams and that “finding content and information is a significant productivity obstacle.”

Sales teams often struggle because they don’t know what content is available to them or where to find it in shared drives. Finding sales content can be especially difficult if another team (such as marketing) creates the content, and each team has different ways of organizing assets. You can help sales reps improve their productivity by making it easier for them to find and use sales content to move their deals forward.

Adopting a dedicated sales content management system makes it easy for reps to access your sales content. It provides a single, searchable home for all your content assets. In addition, you can organize your content into hubs based on topic or content type so that it’s categorized based on how your sales team will use or search for it.

When it’s easier for sellers to find relevant content to use in their sales interactions, reps aren’t spending time scrolling through shared drives hunting for relevant case studies. Instead, they can focus on their next sales conversation, equipped with the information they need for the call or follow-up message.

4. Make training and coaching an ongoing priority

At first glance, it may seem like sales training and coaching will negatively impact your sales team’s productivity. You may think it’s yet another activity that takes up reps’ time. That’s likely to be true if your company sees sales training as an ad-hoc checkbox activity rather than a long-term value-add. But personalized, continuous training helps reps improve their skills, enabling them to follow best practices and learn from other team members how to be more efficient and productive in their work.

Adopting a structured sales readiness program enables sellers to increase knowledge, enhance performance, and adapt to change. It makes training and coaching an ongoing priority and helps to foster a team culture of continuous improvement.

Training that’s personalized to each rep helps individuals make targeted improvements in key areas. For example, some reps struggle to handle objections, while others struggle to have conversations about your pricing. Sales leaders can help agents improve on areas of weakness that have been identified using AI to analyze sales call recordings and other customer interactions. This helps reps improve their productivity by handling these regular, recurring situations more easily.

Increase sales productivity by helping reps spend more time doing what they love

The people in your sales team became sellers for many reasons, but not one of them did so because of their love of admin and time-consuming data entry. But as sales processes become more complex and companies adopt more tools and technology, the art of sales seems to take a back seat.

Sales leaders need to enable their reps to focus on what they love doing — building relationships with prospects and helping them solve their problems and challenges. Reps who can spend more time on core sales activities will be happier and stay with your organization for longer because they’ll be doing what they signed up for. You can help them spend more time selling by automating tasks and streamlining processes.

The math is simple: to close more deals, your sales executives need to speak with more prospects. Increasing sales productivity isn’t just good for your sales team — it’s good for the entire business.

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