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Does Your New Hire Orientation Program Include Pre-Onboarding?

Abhishek Ballabh on April 22, 2016

Pre-Onboarding is a big miss when it comes to a new hire orientation program. Organizations have a tremendous opportunity to address their recruitment, retention, and productivity challenges by leveraging pre-onboarding.

Do you remember the moment when you received the final offer letter of your first job? Chances are that you are reliving the moment as you read this. A brand new job also generates similar excitement. It is this excitement that is omnipresent during the pre-onboarding phase- the phase between a new hire’s offer acceptance and her joining. Smart organizations can leverage this feel-good atmosphere to their HR advantage by setting the tone for the upcoming new hire orientation program. Is your organization taking advantage?

Sustain the Excitement – They impressed you, now it is your Turn

Pre-Onboarding is a golden opportunity to sustain the euphoria of a new job. Questions and doubts abound at this stage for a new hire. Answering these questions and creating structures for addressing their doubts is a good first step to keep the conversation going and keep them excited. A new hire orientation program usually addresses this, but organizations have an opportunity to start early with pre-onboarding. By simply engaging with the new hire periodically during the pre-onboarding phase, employers can sustain the enthusiasm and eagerness of the new hires.

Help them Search – New hires often search for information about their employers on the internet. Be proactive and help them look at the right places. Providing links to blogs, announcements, company policies, and procedures and newsletters via email would set the ball rolling.
Bring them In – Guest level access to the organization’s enterprise social network could do wonders. If your organization does not have one, create a group on public social networks like LinkedIn as a means to introduce the new hire to the rest of the team.
“I Belong Here” – Socialization is an integral part of a new hire orientation program; socialize early by inviting them to team building activities. If the location of the new hire is a constraint, arrange for online participation.

Manage Uncertainty – Will the New Hire finally join?

The latest Aberdeen report “Onboarding 2013 – A New Look at New hires” reinforced its earlier finding that organizations believe that about 90% of employees decide to stay within the first year. While this statistic has been the driving force behind organizations taking up new hire orientation program seriously, there are instances where a new hire, even after signing on the dotted line, decides not to join. Over the last few years, organizations have been witness to a trend where new hires do not turn up even after accepting offer letters. And this is where pre-onboarding can play a critical role.

From a new hire’s perspective, the pre-onboarding phase of new hire orientation program also brings about a sense of anxiety. Constant communication between the organization and the new hire can help contain this anxiety. By initiating a few simple actions, a new hire onboarding manager can not only counsel the new hire, but also deduce with confidence if they are at risk of losing the new hire.

Schedule Interactions – Structured calls to discuss the new hire’s job and role will help orient the new hire towards the organization’s business objectives early on.
Paperwork – The Aberdeen 2013 research suggests that getting the new hire to complete the tactical aspects (forms and tasks) in a timely manner helps him contribute to business driven projects at the earliest. This step may be boring, but initiating and completing it brings in a formal sense of belonging.

ROI – Help new hires get Productive at the earliest

In the book “The First 90 Days” Michael Watkins puts the break-even point of new hires at 6.2 months. According to the book, new hires consume value for the first three months and only then begin contributing. Research from Aberdeen also indicates it is because of this that only 62% of new hires meet their first performance milestone on time. Thus, pre-onboarding offers a wonderful opportunity to further shorten this 6 month period.

Let the Training Begin – Incorporate learning during this phase. Utilize this time to share research in the form of published documents and white papers, in a consistent manner.
Understand the New Hire – This transitional phase can be a good time to identify what resources can help the new hire when he starts working. It helps the managers identify the right mentor to be assigned and helps the mentor prepare for the new hire. Frequent interactions can help the onboarding manager identify the special qualities the new hire may possess. Identifying these qualities can help the onboarding manager map goals and targets for the new hire.
Great Expectations – The new hire can also utilize this pre-onboarding phase to understand the expectations from the organization. This prepares the new hire and improves the chances of contributing productively to business objectives.

Is your Organization taking advantage of pre-onboarding? If no, why? If yes, what worked and what did not?

How the Best Companies Create an Agile Sales Coaching Model

Shankar Ganapathy on April 19, 2016

There has been a lot of talk about sales coaching recently, and in particular who should be driving it for the most effective results.

There are two schools of thought:

Sales coaching is driven by managers who choose what reps need to be coached on.
Sales enablement is responsible for structured coaching, as a part of an overall sales readiness program.

The former is the proven traditional approach, while the latter is part of a new era of sales coaching. But why has this changed? Haven’t managers been effective in coaching their teams to meet their numbers?

I asked some of our customers, and they explained that, in the past, managers were effective in both tactical and strategic coaching. But that was when product training happened once a year, and product updates occurred only every 6 months (remember V2.3.4 updates?).

Nowadays, product training is a part of day-to-day training and product updates are rolled out every week. In order to ensure that all reps have a consistent message, something drastic had to change.

As business demands change rapidly, the sales training and coaching process also needs to become agiler. There are now more people involved in coaching, with sales leadership, sales enablement, and sales managers all collaborating together to determine and execute the most effective coaching process.

These changes have also led to a new framework for coaching. One that moves away from dealing with specific issues, and instead hones the reps’ skills so that they’re always ready; Ready to convey the right message. Ready to speak to their customers. Ready to sell.

It’s not enough to coach a sales rep to have a conversation with a customer. Customers can find information from many sources, and in all instances, the message from reps must be consistent. So it’s important for reps to be message ready. This forms the foundations for each and every rep to understand your value proposition; something that can be driven by sales enablement and peer-to-peer learning. Only with this solid foundation can managers make a real impact on improving customer readiness. If a manager is left to coach a sales rep who doesn’t understand the message, their time will be less effective and they will struggle to scale their coaching efforts. This is where sales enablement and online tools can be most effective.

In a dynamic environment, your customer persona is constantly evolving, so it’s no longer enough to perfect a standard pitch, your reps need to be able to take into account the customer’s specific pain points and needs. They need to be customer ready. Where managers can make the most impact is in preparing their reps for customer readiness. As drivers of growth, they can utilize their knowledge of the customer to improve reps’ tactical sales.

When you bring customer readiness and message readiness together, you get sales readiness.

#1 Message relevance

With new product updates almost every week, and competitors innovating fast, reps are constantly faced with new use cases and objection handling scenarios. To make sure their message is always relevant, your reps need all of this information to be provided to them in real-time so they can have relevant, value-added conversations with their customers.

For example, one way that I’ve seen this done effectively is by enabling the product marketing team to send out regular updates. As the team that knows exactly what the latest feature is, who it’s relevant for and its benefits, they’re best placed to provide these updates.

#2 The power of collaborative practice

What your reps say to customers, and how they deliver their message, has a significant impact on whether they will close the deal. In old-school coaching models reps were limited to learning from their manager and the immediate team only. But thanks to technology, it’s becoming easier to facilitate collaborative practice using role plays.

For example, the sales mission capability in Mindtickle enables your reps with a safe arena to practice common customer scenarios and receive feedback from managers. They can also learn from their peers. Imagine the impact on your reps’ performance if they learned how to deliver an elevator pitch, how to handle objections, or received competitive pitch coaching, from your top performers across the country and around the globe?

By learning from peers in other teams, and even other sales managers, reps can gain a much broader perspective, and become better sales professionals as well. When done well, I’ve seen as much as 80% of the message learning can be achieved through collaborative practice.

#3 Manager mentorship

Mentoring is one of the best ways for reps to improve sales performance. While every manager has their own style when it comes to coaching and mentoring, when coupled with the processes described above, they will have more capacity to focus on strategic coaching. This will allow them to really hone in on skill development for their reps, helping them to become better sales professionals.

#4 Tactical coaching from manager and peers

There are lots of deal-by-deal tips and tricks that managers and other reps have up their sleeve. When managers have reps who have a solid foundation, they can focus their efforts on tactical coaching. Managers are also privy to the success stories of other reps (and managers). By sharing these across the team, reps can also gain the benefit of this knowledge that plays a pivotal role in ensuring higher win rates.

Bottomline: The coaching process needs to be more agile

Knowing and doing are two very different things, that’s why practice is so important. In order to make the coaching process more agile it needs to include more practice, in the form of role plays, and also leverage technology to enable that practice to be continual. When combined with mentorship and tactical coaching, as part of a well-defined process, you build a sales coaching cadence that will make your company and reps successful.

The First Three Things A Sales Enablement Manager Should Do

Mohit Garg on April 17, 2016

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

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

1. Audit rep’s sales readiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Enable managers to coach better

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Create a sales enablement framework

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

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

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

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

How to Introduce Informal Learning into New Hire Orientation: a 7-Point Action Plan

Mohit Garg on April 15, 2016

Research says informal learning is most effective. Can we actually design informal learning and have strategies and structures around it, say for new hire orientation?

Most experts would agree that a great majority (upward of 70 percent) of workplace learning is informal. But, designing a formal strategy for informal learning is always a challenge, because of the very nature of informal learning which is serendipitous and unstructured. So let me share my learning and strategies, from the design and implementation of social learning programs for thousands of users and numerous customer contexts. In this blog, though we use the context of new hire orientation, the concepts are applicable to a wider range of learning situations.

Informal learning: organizational context has a role

The degree of informal learning depends heavily on the organizational context. An organization that comes across as prescriptive and does not make the new employee comfortable with sharing and expressing, will find it challenging in making employees adopt informal learning channels. e.g. Yammer (ESN – Enterprise Social Networking) adoption has seen huge variance across organizations. While community managers and leadership commitment make a difference, the primary driver is “Would I as an employee feel comfortable sharing my point of view, without the fear of being judged or reprimanded?”. So first things first, an “informal” employee survey to assess the organizational context. But with new employees, there is also an opportunity to break the current organizational mold and provide a fresh experience without baggage.

Online community is low-hanging fruit. Start by building a community for new employees, online is definitely recommended and real-life physical communities are also great if budget and location constraints allow. But definitely create an online platform for social engagement and get all new employees to participate, potentially, even before joining. Pre-Onboarding – the period between the day of the offer and the day of joining is a huge untapped opportunity for most companies.
Give it an informal and fun branding. You don’t have to necessarily label it as a learning community. Start with engagement activities such as quizzes, contests, video contests and team achievements. You will be surprised to see how quickly the community starts to take shape – comments, likes, discussions start flowing in and the network effect kick in once critical mass is achieved. If you launch and don’t see adoption, then seed the community and assign a community manager to identify and persist with likely early adopters – past interns, local employees and internal enthusiasts. If you get 10% of the participants to start posting or sharing, start engaging the others by sending out daily digests with highlights of the community engagement. Persist with informal engagement contests/activities as it will keep the momentum going.
Start from the start. Once the community is engaged, start with posting questions that would be extremely relevant to the new hire group. Questions could be about the company’s roadmap/vision, new hire benefits, career progression or new trends/technologies. You will be pleasantly surprised how the community will latch on to these. The key is to initially post topics that are current and relevant, and that are likely to spark debates and discussions.
Identify and encourage early adopters; create healthy peer pressure. Early adopters are vital to the success of such initiatives. Therefore, the organization would do well to identify them quickly and encourage them. Rewarding the early adopters for legitimate contributions, can jump-start the initiative and generate healthy momentum, not to forget the much-needed peer pressure.
Blend it with formal learning. Create a schedule for formal learning and integrate it. Post links to new training that have been made available. If you are bold, experienced success and willing to take it to the next level, create an achievement system using enterprise gamification wherein both formal and informal learning – social engagement with the community – is rewarded and the achievements – in terms of badges and leaderboard – is visible to the entire community.
Go offline to make it sticky. Organize local meetups and allow the community to interact face to face, to further boost engagement. This is optional, and organizations can manage without this, but if done, it would make the community more sticky and drive engagement to a different level.
Sustain until it self sustains. Virality and the network effect takes a while. The objective is to engage the community activities for a few weeks and more, till the community becomes self-sustaining. Many Mindtickle customers have used the Mindtickle platform for managing the communication and engagement with new hires for the entire first year. This involvement is key.

Leveraging informal learning into mainstream learning and development is still evolving. While there is recognition of its critical importance; frameworks and structures around informal learning are still being discussed, debated, and tested. Questions abound. Should it focus on the process or the outcomes? How to keep it informal in a formal manner?

Therefore, as the concept of informal learning evolves, for organizations, the key thing is to not look at informal learning as a quick fix – buy a solution or a social learning platform or hire a community manager or create brown bag events – it is about creating a culture of learning and sharing. And new hire orientation is a great place to make a start – begin from the beginning.

TOPO and The State of Sales in 2016

Daniel Kuperman on April 15, 2016

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

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

Data-driven sales
The specialization of Sales
Value meets volume
Account based everything
The sales tech stack

What are Data-Driven Sales?

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

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

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

How is Sales Becoming Specialized?

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

Task specialization
Account assignment

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

The Need of Value Plays

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

Limited discovery
Demo roulette
Hands off trial
Fire and forget proposals

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

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

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

The Rise of Account Based Everything

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

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

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

Evolution of Sales Technology

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

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

Sounds simple, but not everyone does it.

Summary of The State of Sales in 2016

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

Mindtickle’s Ryan Pimlott Named Customer Success Hero

Shankar Ganapathy on April 13, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Graphic Summary of TOPO Sales Summit 2016

Daniel Kuperman on April 13, 2016

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

Sales Leadership
Sales Development
Sales Technology
Sales Effectiveness

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

The 4 Pillars of Knowing “What to Sell"

Mohit Garg on April 7, 2016

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

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

There are 4 pillars to what to sell:

Industry
Customer personas
Product
Competitive analysis

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

1. Industry knowledge: setting context from a customer perspective

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

2. Buyer personas: know your customer

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

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

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

3. Know your product as your customer sees It

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

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

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

4. Competitive analysis: understand your worth

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

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

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

Bringing it all together: Articulating the core value proposition

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

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

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

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

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

Outcomes

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

Run Effective New Hire Onboarding Program with These 4 Key Pillars

aseo-sona on April 3, 2016

Written by Lilith Christiansen, Vice President, Kaiser Associates

Hiring employees is the biggest investment you can make in your business. Surprisingly, you may be forfeiting profit and competitive position by failing to invest in the design and implementation of an effective new hire onboarding program. Research has shown that less than a third of executives worldwide are positive about their onboarding experience. This statistic underscores the fact that the way that we onboard our new hires needs to evolve.

To achieve success, onboarding programs should deliver a more seamless experience that is integrated with your business processes. To get you started, we recommend investment in four organizing pillars:

Early career support.
Orientation to your culture and performance values.
Insight into your strategic position, intent and direction.
Activities that enable your new hire to build beneficial relationships.

Delivering a Successful New Hire Onboarding Program

Here are the pillars with actionable online training ideas for the Mindtickle audience. These practices are good starting points, but should not be considered a comprehensive list of best practices.

1. Provide Early Career Support

Acclimating a new hire to your company should begin the moment you offer them the position, and the process should continue for a full year after they start work. Considering that almost a third of employees who have been in their current job less than six months are already job searching, offering ongoing support during the early months is one of the most important things you can do. You can begin the absorption process right from the day that you give the offer by pre-boarding your new hire.

Take Action: With pre-boarding activities such as goal planning, your new hire has the opportunity to begin the integration process from the moment they accept the offer. For example, consider developing a cloud-based online training module on how to develop SMART goals and have them watch it before day 1. After the new hire starts work, consider reviewing your business SMART goals with them and guiding them to create their own 3 months and 6 month plans based on business priorities.

2. Deliver an Orientation to Your Culture and Performance Values

While you may assume that new hires will learn company culture by socializing with your team, cultural norms can be elusive and ill-communicated – so culture is not something you should leave to chance. Using employee work stories such as ones demonstrating integrity related to business practices and/or engagement with community organizations can be a really powerful and memorable way to teach organizational culture.

Take Action: Consider developing a video with the help of long-time employees providing specific examples of how your organization’s performance values might play out in everyday life. There’s no better way to make your employees fall in love with your company than by sharing stories in your onboarding program.

3. Offer Insight into Your Strategic Position, Intent, and Direction

Your new hires view their new job as a step toward their personal goals and success. Onboarding is a journey and your new hires need to feel that they’re an important part of that journey. You can motivate your employees by mapping out clear milestones that allow them to see what the next steps are in the journey.

Take Action: Consider recording leadership panels where business strategy is discussed. Then, have managers debrief the sessions with new hires and discuss the relevance to their specific jobs and teams. Offering insight into the direction of the business with periodic updates is a great way to introduce strategy early in the new hire experience as well as help new hires understand how their role impacts the business.

4. Plan activities that enable your new hire to build beneficial relationships.

A new hire may not know who to turn to if they want to share an idea or have questions about their role and specific processes. Being confident and fitting in at a new company means not just having a mentor, but also having friends and peers to interact with. This means actually having someone there to be supportive every step of the way. Your new hires will perform at much higher levels when they have strong interpersonal networks.

Take Action: For teams with members working remotely, consider having everyone shoot a quick video with a fun fact about themselves, what they specialize in and an invitation to connect. You may also use social and game mechanics to facilitate the connection between your team members. By integrating online social interactions and discovery as part of the new hire onboarding program, you will create a positive effect on productivity and employee retention.

Effective new hire onboarding programs help you foster a more successful work atmosphere, more satisfied employees, lower turnover rate and better bottom line results. Effective new hire onboarding programs also have the added benefit of reducing the time it takes for the average employee to achieve expected productivity levels. This decreases workplace errors, increases morale and minimizes the time spent doing much-dreaded paperwork. A well-planned onboarding program can help shape the future of your company for years to come.

For more helpful details on implementing more effective new hire onboarding programs read my book Successful Onboarding: A Strategy to Unlock Hidden Value Within Your Organization. Ensure that your business does not leave value on the table by designing an effective new hire onboarding program. What is the best part of your new hire onboarding program? Leave a comment and let us know!

How to Make Your Training as Great as a TED Talk

Samudra Neelam Bhuyan on April 2, 2016

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