5 Tips to Reinforce Sales Training

Mohit Garg on April 1, 2016

I’m often asked by sales leaders about how to ensure that sales onboarding delivers long-lasting results. After all, you spend so much time and energy hiring and onboarding new sales reps, but like a shiny new car, your investment depreciates the minute they step outside. Trying to reinforce sales training is a challenge many enablement leaders face.

It is natural for the reps to forget the training content and even if they retained everything the readiness of your reps will decline on a relative scale because it is a moving target. Competitors change strategy, industry dynamics change, you introduce new product features or you have published new referenceable case studies.

It’s not only important to help your newbies maintain their level of knowledge by reinforcing their training, but also to sustain their overall sales readiness so they can continue to level up. Therefore, reinforcement is a critical part of an effective onboarding program.

But how should one go about creating a reinforcement plan for new reps that delivers the goods? Some of your gaps for new reps may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues. To get your reps on their way to achieving their sales quota, here are 5 best practices:

Implement periodic refreshers to reinforce sales training

Broadly, speaking there are two types of sales training formats – baseline training modules (think of them as long-form modules that provide a well-structured and comprehensive knowledge about a subject matter, and bite-sized updates to refresh the knowledge imparted in the training modules. These updates when delivered in the right context can not only serve to refresh the knowledge of your sales reps, but they can also help the sales reps connect the dots on how those pieces of information can help them win more deals. Here are a few examples:

  • Send out a cheat sheet on how to handle specific customer objections or one that outlines the steps to complete one part of the sales process
  • Send out bite-sized updates on specific product features and how they contribute to the value proposition
  • Set reminders in SalesForce at points in the process that are critical to CRM compliance
  • Send a short reminder on their mobile phone that outlines how an A Player prepares for a meeting

Some of your priorities may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues.

Spot check sales readiness

Quick pop-quizzes are a great way to periodically test and reinforce what your sales reps have retained. When combined with explanations for the quiz answers, these quizzes can serve to enhance the knowledge of the reps. This can be particularly useful for small nuggets of information that are easily forgotten.

Mindtickle has over eight different types of quizzes that can make this quite simple to implement, and provide you with data on how your reps performed on each question as well. For example, use a multiple choice question to test their knowledge of the value proposition or label matching to update them on the benefits of a new product feature.

Reinforce sales training with coaching and simulation exercises

While a structured coaching plan should already be part of your sales onboarding, you can reinforce specific skills and troubleshoot issues using mini-simulations. For example, if there is a specific objection that many reps struggle to deal with, you can have them record their response and then go over this with them in your next feedback session. And if done on a regular basis, such exercises help ensure that all sales reps have consistent messaging.

Mindtickle offers an automated workflow for managing these simulation exercises called Sales Missions. Sales managers can create online exercises for their team members which require them to submit an audio-video recording of how they would respond to a sales situation. These could range from cold pitches, elevator pitches, leaving voicemails to handling specific customer queries or objections.  These bite-sized missions should take no more than 5 minutes for the rep to do but can help provide very actionable feedback.

Mentoring

You already know your high-performing quota carriers are the best inspiration you can give to a new hire, but they can also help them reinforce the best practices they’ve heard about during their onboarding. By establishing a formal mentoring program or even an informal buddy system, your new hires can hear success stories and winning strategies directly from your rockstars. When positioned as a buddy or mentor relationship, the new hires are likely to be more open to asking questions that they perhaps might consider too “dumb” to ask their manager.

Certain sales leaders do not want to spare a minute of their top sellers for such mentoring activities. I believe that is a short-sighted approach and can be detrimental to the career progression of your “A player” sales reps. Such mentoring programs have dual benefits in the long term. Not only are they beneficial for the newbies, they also offer an opportunity to your “A” reps to get a first-hand experience of essential managerial skills such as coaching, as the first step towards graduation to senior roles.

Make it mobile

By ensuring that reinforcement content and activities are made available to the reps on their mobile devices, those interactions will be integrated into your reps daily routine and quickly become just another part of their everyday sales activities. Moreover, for reinforcement to be effective, the tips and refreshers are much more meaningful when presented in the context of customer situations. For example – the value of a case study or a win story would be most appreciated by a sales rep when presented in the middle of a similar deal that he/she may be assisting with.

Bonus tip: Amplify the impact of reinforcement by leveraging the power of analytics

According to the Aberdeen Group, 20% more sales reps achieve quota when their team implements post-training reinforcement. But before you jump straight in, you must prioritize the key capabilities that you want your reps to focus on, and then determine how best to reinforce those. For example, ensuring that they fully understand your customer personas may be a challenge for some, or many may find CRM compliance to be a pain point. This is where analytics and data can play a big role again.

At Mindtickle, we export the learning performance (scores in quizzes, engagement metrics, and results from pitch testing) in order to create groups of new hires based on their development needs. This data has also been very useful for us to create a standardized refresher track that applies to all new hires.

For example – we observed that most new hires find it hard to retain the advanced functionality of the Mindtickle analytics. Additionally, our data also tells us that the A player reps on our team have consistently shown a very high degree of awareness regarding competition. So we added competition battle-cards to the reinforcement track and additional reinforcement on advanced analytic functionality.

Is New Employee Orientation Good Business Strategy? – Insights from Mindtickle Research

Mohit Garg on March 12, 2016

new employee orientation business research

Today’s businesses – big and small – are under tremendous pressure to deliver profitable growth year after year. Equity markets, private investors, competition – you name it. Add to this, the uncertain elements of risk. It is pretty tough out there for most businesses – global and local.

To address these challenges with confidence, businesses need the dependable lever of high-performing engaged employees. Ironically, this throws up another business challenge, of Managing Talent. A shrinking workforce because of aging employees is further complicating this matter. Never before in business, has it been so important to attract, retain and grow talent, as today – and become an Employer of Choice. Therefore, the increasing importance of new employee orientation.

New Employee Orientation isn’t just an HR initiative, as most businesses think, but a unique opportunity to catapult your new employees into a high-performance orbit in the pursuit of business objectives. World-Class companies and organizations understand the link between New Employee Orientation and Business Execution. The annual “The Great Place to Work” list featuring the World’s top blue-chip companies is a standing testimony to this. These companies have also created stakeholder value consistently over the years, emerging as corporate leaders in their respective industry sectors and beyond. Businesses, across the board, have this incredible opportunity to leverage New Employee Orientation to drive good competitive business focused on profitable growth, employer of choice, risk management.

1. Profitable growth

Businesses exist to maximize profits – an objective they need to pursue in a sensitive, sustainable and relentless manner, in this fast-changing milieu. Simply put, businesses have to grow revenues and minimize costs. New Employee Orientation has a critical role to play in impacting each of these positively, by driving,

  • Time to productivity of new hires
  • Employee retention and addressing employee turnover
  • Employee engagement

Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company and a global thought leader in business research, has been at the forefront of exhaustive cutting-edge business research in the area of New Employee Orientation. Its numerous studies on Onboarding, over the years, have time and again, established how businesses have achieved improved productivity, employee retention, and engagement, through New Employee Orientation. The studies have established that through new hire onboarding, organizations can focus on their biggest asset, their employees because the experience of new hires has a direct impact on profitability.

new employee orientation as business strategy

In the book “The First 90 Days” Michael Watkins puts the break-even point of new hires at 6.2 months, highlighting it remarkably through this graphic.

As can be seen from the graphic, new hires consume value for the first three months and then begin contributing. New Employee Orientation can improve the chances of achieving this break-even on time and at times, even early. Any slippage in onboarding new hires would not only add to direct and indirect costs, it would also result in loss of revenues, especially in the case of top management executives and business facing employees.

Employees and new hires in an organization, given their bearing on revenues and expenses, can be broadly classified into the following:

a) Top management – Employees at a senior level often in leadership roles are the most expensive assets for an organization, but they can be the most productive of the new hires as they will be the one to guide their team to perform up to potential and contribute to the company’s growth. Personalized new employee orientation for leaders that help them is indispensable to get them contributing in a meaningful productive way. They:

  • Align with the company’s overall business strategy,
  • Understand short and medium term business imperatives,
  • Experience the company culture, and
  • Bond with their team

b) Employees on the Business Front – New hires who are in the marketing and sales departments contribute to the revenue and profits of organizations directly. New Employee Orientation can establish and communicate a ‘line of sight’ from the new hire’s performance to the company’s goal. This can help them see and understand how quickly their productive contribution can benefit the organization, their performance and ultimately their professional careers.

c) Business Support Functions like Human Resources, Accounts – While new hires in these departments do not impact company revenues directly, it is essential that they get productive at the earliest to optimize on costs. New Employee Orientation can help engage and motivate these new hires to become productive sooner.

In one of its studies, Aberdeen interviewed 466 companies that were running some form of new employee orientation. It was found that the top 100 of these companies reported a 24% year-over-year decrease in time to productivity for new employees and 12% year-over-year decrease in cost per employee for onboarding. Another example is to look at the talent management practices of IT and ITES outsourcing companies that have been recruiting in large numbers over the last few years. All the top tier IT outsourcing companies have institutionalized new employee orientation to buttress their off-shoring business strategy that thrives on “cost arbitrage” and “value creation”.

The present-day economy continues to make it expensive and challenging to find, hire and retain talent. The cost and time involved in the recruitment process make employee retention a priority for all business. Retention of employees is critical because hiring employees and training them to contribute directly to business costs. Added is the fact that a new employee makes a decision to stay with the company within the first six months. So, in the initial onboarding phase, the employer is vulnerable with respect to the new employee. Therefore, the necessity of new employee orientation.

Employee turnover is not always about direct costs. It consumes expensive management bandwidth, dampens employee morale and not to mention the loss in revenue opportunities. Worse still, if the leaving employee joins the competition, it increases the possibility of loss in market share. So, new employee orientation assumes significance when onboarding new hires.

An Aberdeen Survey based on the analysis of about 282 organizations, reported that organizations which conducted a new employee orientation program saw a 50 % increase in retention rates. The report also stated that the new employee orientation program was used as a means to reaffirm the new hire’s decision to join the organization and ensure a long-term commitment from the new hire thereby reducing costs of hiring and training. Other than increasing employee retention rates, the study highlighted the opportunity of leveraging new employee orientation to help new employees plan long-term careers with companies. Without a doubt, organizations have experienced higher retention rates and lower turnover costs by having a new employee orientation program.

3  Employee engagement

An exhaustive study by Aberdeen on Employee Engagement pointed out that almost all 466 participating organizations identified New Employee orientation as a means to engage and align employees. The same report states that employee engagement contributes to retention, productivity and most importantly drives customer satisfaction – an important revenue driver. In fact, the top 100 organizations marked engaging employees to drive customer satisfaction as the top objective of their onboarding program, and rightfully so.

Increased customer satisfaction leads to positive word of mouth, loyalty, repeat business, cross-selling opportunities, and high-quality referrals. All these are key revenue opportunities that businesses can capitalize on, by driving employee engagement through new employee orientation.

New employee orientation can drive employee engagement and alignment by focusing on new hire development and performance, taking frequent informal feedbacks, updating them on a company’s vision and encourage leadership where appropriate. New Employee Orientation can work wonders in aligning the new hires to business strategy and execution. Employees who are engaged early, from the word “GO”, are better placed to deliver a quality experience to customers.

2. Employer of choice

The ups and downs of the economy have made, sourcing and retaining good talent, extremely challenging. To counter this, organizations are striving hard to become employers of choice, as part of a business strategy. Therefore, businesses are adopting Talent Management Best Practices with New Employee Orientation being right up there. The reason is simple and straightforward, to make a good solid First Impression. This is also corroborated by the research from Aberdeen that suggests that New Employee orientation can help make that first good impression, which in turn positions the company as an employer of choice.

New employee orientation is a good “first” opportunity to introduce company culture and tradition. Culture and traditions are unique to an organization and give it the advantage which takes them towards successful business outcomes. Onboarding program can help introduce this culture to the new hires at the earliest. The sooner the new hires understand the culture of the organization, the more engaged and aligned they are, to perform. New employee orientation is also an opportunity for employers to demonstrate respect, reward, and responsibility, such that they are able to retain the new hires forever.

It is really interesting to note how Facebook and Google – Best companies to work for in 2013 – communicate their engineering and people culture through New Employee Orientation.

All new engineers – fresh or laterals – at Facebook undergo the Engineering Bootcamp during new employee orientation. This Bootcamp is intricately linked to Facebook’s Scale strategy. Facebook uses the ratio of users to engineers metric, to scale and grow. Through the Engineering Bootcamp, Facebook not only onboard engineers to push code onto the live site, but also germinates an engineering culture of fearlessly fixing bugs and not leaving it to code another day.

The new hires at Google are called Nooglers, no marks for guessing why. Through this, Google propagates its culture to new hires, helps new hires make connections in their workplace and increase their motivation.

Not surprisingly, both Google and Facebook appear in the Best companies to work for in 2013 list. Employers of choice, undoubtedly.

Great workplaces are responsible towards their employees. They respect, reward and compensate the employees well enough to earn their trust and loyalty creating a brand name for their company in the eyes of the outsider.  Great workplaces are employee focused and judiciously use the new employee orientation to also share the company’s immediate goals with the new hires. They understand that an aligned, engaged employee who trusts the leaders of the company will make extraordinary contributions to the success of the business.

3. Risk management

Remember Enron and Arthur Andersen. And more recently, Lehman. The risk is truly real – whether it is market, regulatory, reputational and operational. New Employee Orientation is a non-negotiable opportunity to sensitize the new hires on the various aspects of risk, whether it is with respect to the organization or the industry sector it operates in. Organizations would do well to customize the New Employee Orientation program with respect to risk sensitization, depending on the criticality of the position of the new hires. Senior management onboarding can definitely feature an exclusive track on risk management.

New employee orientation, so what’s next?

Challenges of the Economy, the positive impact new hires can have on business and many other business imperatives, are putting increasing pressure on organizations to include New Hire Onboarding in their business strategy and with good reason. Business profitability, typical HR challenges like Employee Engagement and also risk management, new employee orientation programs can address it all.

Only having a new employee orientation is not enough. As the wants and needs of each organization are different, the approach to new employee orientation should also correspond accordingly. Organizations have to determine the best practices for their new employee orientation and implement them in the pursuit of their business objectives. Many approaches to new employee orientation are possible:

  • Formal and informal
  • Full and partial Automation
  • Mentoring
  • and more currently, Enterprise GamificatioN

Onboarding approaches that drive engagement, alignment, productivity and contribute to company growth, have the highest chance of driving business success. This is where the importance of social HR comes to the fore. Jeanne Meister, best-selling author of “The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today” in her January 2013 Forbes article touted 2013 as the Year of the Social HR, wherein organizations would integrate social technologies in recruiting, developing and engaging employees. Of the five social media trends that Meister writes, will impact HR in 2013, Enterprise Gamification ranks at the top.

The World’s leading knowledge organizations like Deloitte and Capgemini have already taken leadership in employing Enterprise Gamification to drive higher levels of employee engagement. Fresh graduates joining the workforce, the now omnipresence of Gen Y millennials at the workplace and the rise of remote teams, are all contributing to heightened interest in the concept of gamification to drive business execution.

Business, it seems is discovering FUN, all over again. And what better than to begin at from the starting line – New Employee Orientation. Get, set, go!

From Bootstrapping to Acceleration: How Startups can Scale Sales

Shankar Ganapathy on March 9, 2016

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

Stage 1 – Inception

Sales People:

0

Customers:

0 to 10

Product Stage:

Idea or prototype

Challenges:

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

Mark Birch, Investor & Entrepreneur

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

passion for the product

.

Stage 2 – Testing

Sales People:

1 (most likely a founder)

Customers:

2 to 5

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

discover symptoms in your sales process

(or product)  and identify where the issues lie.


Stage 3 – Sales Acceleration


sales enablementSales People:

2 to 3 (with perhaps one sales manager)

Customers:

30 to 200 (depending on the type of product)

Product Stage:

Testing and validating the product

Challenges:

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

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

Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway

.

Stage 4 – Revenue Explosion or Scaling

Sales People:

10 to 100

Customers:

As many as possible

Product Stage:

Refining

Challenges:

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

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

Professor Mohanbir Sawhney

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

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

build trust in customers

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

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

Shankar Ganapathy on March 6, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Having this clarity is a win/win for everyone.

2. Mapping the buyer experience

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

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

3. Incorporating buyer personas into sales training

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

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

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

4. Keep it fresh

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

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

Make Hiring Smart Salespeople Your Competitive Advantage

Shankar Ganapathy on March 2, 2016

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

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

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

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

Find the right candidate

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

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

Qualify candidates

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

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

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

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

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

The interview process

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

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

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

Onboarding Managers: Look Beyond the New Employee Orientation Checklist

Abhishek Ballabh on February 26, 2016

Onboarding programs should move beyond merely completing a new employee orientation checklist. Today, onboarding managers need to conduct a well-designed, centralized, and cohesive orientation program, well beyond the scope of a new employee orientation checklist.

Let’s look at the six ways to create a great atmoys to sphere where new hires feel that they are a part of something special.

1. Send a welcome kit

Making good first impressions applies not only to blind dates and clients but with new hires as well. Putting together a welcome kit will ensure a new hire feels welcome and valued. The kit should contain:

  • Welcome letter
  • Directions to the office
  • List of restaurants, banks, and entertainment in the area
  • A schedule for Day 1
  • Name and contact details of the assigned mentor

A continuously updated new employee orientation checklist should make this task easy for onboarding managers.

2. Day 1 celebration

A small celebration makes an employee feel welcome. The simple process of having the workspace ready with phone connections, PC/laptop, an email account, and a bag of snacks communicates a great deal – especially on the first day. Involving senior members in team-building activities and lunch with the team will increase the new hire’s comfort level.

3. Mentor program

A mentor or buddy can act as the go-to person for the new hire and guide them through filling out forms and understanding benefits and company policies. The role of the mentor should continue until the end of the new employee orientation program. Companies like Motorola give the mentors access to hiring data, which helps the mentor assist the new hire with the necessary tools and resources required to make him/her productive from the start.

4. Share your organization’s goals

It is essential to share your organization’s goals for the near future and highlight the expectations from the new hire by defining his role in achieving this goal. Establish the fact that the employee and the employer grow together.

5. Focus on the skill set

All Employees, new hires, and laterals alike are constantly, are looking to improve their skill sets. A clear roadmap with training programs scheduled during the coming months that are integrated well with the new hire’s performance management plan will indicate to the new hires that the company will take all efforts to increase their skill set and contributions in an organized manner.

6. Ask for feedback

A new employee orientation program is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process. Feedback plays an important role here. Provide a timeline for new hires indicating when and how their inputs will be taken. Ensure to act on the inputs given and communicate to the new hire that the issue is being addressed or has been solved.

Helping to create a great workplace is very appealing – especially to managers and leaders who are aware of the benefits that come with great workplaces. The Aberdeen Report 2010 survey revealed that the initial experiences of a new employee have a direct impact on an organization’s productivity and profitability. The report also states, “Make a good impression and you can be considered an employer of choice.”

The new employee orientation checklist is definitely a good start and onboarding managers would do well to adopt all or some of the above-mentioned tips to enhance the onboarding experience.

Sales Training Practices for a Robust Sales Onboarding Program

Mohit Garg on February 9, 2016

I’ve written previously about how effective onboarding of sales reps can increase the top line of your business, but how exactly should you do it? Given that it can take between 6 to 9 months to get a new sales rep to meet their quota, the benefits of expediting the process are high both in terms of opportunity cost and having to hire fewer reps to meet your targets. I’m often asked to share tips and best practices when implementing sales onboarding training, so I thought it was worth putting my thoughts down.

Broadly, when developing a sales onboarding process, I suggest dividing the program into 5 stages.

Training is the first stage of the sales onboarding process; this post will cover this stage in detail. Future posts will then go through Assess, Coach, Analyze and Reinforce.

sales onboarding frameworkSales training stage

The training stage should take about one month to complete, and cover two key aspects; “What to Sell” and “How to Sell”.

What to sell

There are 4 key pillars of “What to Sell.” These put the customer front and center and should cover foundational knowledge regarding the customer’s industry, business, and needs. It also ensures that your rep understands, and can articulate, the product’s unique value proposition so that they can engage a prospect in meaningful conversation when they’re ready to sell.

By the end of the “What to Sell” section, your rep should be able to understand and articulate what the different customer personas are, how they differ, and how to recognize them. They should also understand how the product satisfies their needs, and articulate the value proposition clearly, along with its competitive advantage.

Through the use of online learning, your sales rep can learn some of the “What to Sell” components during the pre-join period, saving you both time and money. For example, with online learning, you can introduce your new hires to the company culture and corporate vision, as well as a broad introduction to your customers (perhaps add some testimonials), and other publicly available or non-proprietary information. A structured online program prior to their first day will make it easier for them to get up to speed, and get them excited about starting to work with you. After day 1, you can then combine on-demand training, with both live training and online resources, so that your reps can review materials at their convenience.

How to sell

The “How to Sell” component should cover tools and processes that will make your rep more efficient and shorten the sales cycles. This is functional and should be tailored to your business.

For example, consider these questions:

  • How are leads generated within your business?
  • Is there a marketing team that supports them, or will the rep be expected to prospect for themselves?
  • What prospecting best practices are used by your best reps?
  • What is market intelligence available within the business?
  • What questions should they ask a customer when qualifying them?
  • What CRM is used, and how is the information recorded in it?
  • What are each of the components of the sales cycle, from demo to follow-up?

This is all invaluable knowledge, designed to ensure your rep will be ready to get out there and sell, once the onboarding is complete. Success stories, product updates, and best practice sales initiatives, are also important to include here.

Data point: 30% of reps in a typical company are not aware of latest wins and success stories.

sales onboarding

How do you make sales training effective?

Flip It

One method that I’ve found effective when delivering sales training is a flipped classroom.

The structured learning plan can be shared with the reps upfront so that they understand how each topic will be approached. The trainer here is more of a consultative guide, rather than a teacher; this engages reps from the get-go and gives them the opportunity to take the initiative in their own learning. Reps are encouraged to speak to each other, benefit from their peers’ perspective, and get hands-on with the product.

The key to this training model is to ensure that you have defined the required business outcome, provided the pre-work and pre-material, and then develop a structured in-person facilitation format. This will ensure that sales reps come in prepared with their questions, and engage in a democratic learning process.

They can then apply their understanding, reinforce it, and even go beyond by taking on more challenging tasks if they wish to stretch themselves.

Leverage the power of the video format

We have found that 92% of people will watch a full video, compared to only 78% when given a presentation. The impact is much more engaging for the learner, like this video that I use when training our new reps at Mindtickle.

One thing to keep in mind when creating sales training videos, the ideal length is between 3 and 10 minutes. Anything longer is likely to disengage your audience.

Test-to-teach

An important aspect of training is to determine if the reps absorbed the knowledge. While I’ll go through assessment and certification when I cover the “Assess” stage, it’s worth talking about the “test-to-teach” approach I have practiced for the last four years. It’s an integral part of the Train stage.

The test-to-teach approach employs quick quizzes as a way to reinforce the material, as opposed to an examination or assessment objective. Small bite-sized modules and quizzes, not only reinforce specific nuggets of knowledge have been retained, but also get the neurons fired up when combined with explanations and additional (contextual) along with the correct answers. It’s a bit like running a series of small sprints, building fitness in short, sharp bursts, that will help you get through the marathon in the long run.

The tests are small so there’s also a greater chance of the rep completing it, in fact, Mindtickle data shows that 88% of learners complete test-to-teach modules.

Gamification

Gamified techniques are not a new concept in the sales enablement space, but in my opinion, very few teams tap into the full potential of this technique. When implemented right, gamification can enable peer-to-peer feedback, benchmarking against a standard of performance (and a little healthy competition), and positive reinforcement, all have the potential to keep sales reps engaged and learning. Gamification can also be leveraged to provide the new sales reps a sense of aspiration by making the points meaningful in real-life. One of our clients projects the new hire leaderboard on the sales floor provide bragging rights to the new reps against their peers and fosters a sense of healthy competition.

Following these handy tips in your sales onboarding process will help you move the bell curve forward, and result in a higher percentage of new hires achieve their sales quota after the initial ramp-up phase.

Is It Time To Hire a Sales Enablement Manager?

Mohit Garg on February 3, 2016

There are many factors that affect sales target achievement. Unfortunately, many of those are beyond your circle of control such as competitor pricing, state of economy etc. The good news is that predictable sales can be accomplished in any environment by adopting a disciplined approach to sales management.

Most sales organizations do a pretty good job of managing the well-known levers of sales management such as hiring the right talent, actively managing the pipeline and CRM reports, and optimizing OTEs and incentive structures. However, the number of organizations that leverage sales enablement the right way is shockingly low. Mindtickle’s survey of more than 40 tech startups with more than $10M in venture funding revealed that less than 25% of those organizations were even thinking about a systematic approach to sales enablement.

Mindtickle Benchmark Report New Sales Enablement Standard

Is sales enablement a nice-to-have, or do you really need it?

Most of those sales leaders claimed that they were too small and tight-knit to formalize the enablement function and that they were (somehow) managing to achieve quarterly targets. But the fact that they may have been overlooking is that it is just a matter of time before the ad-hoc approach will start limiting the growth of these companies. What are the tell-tale signs that you could be in the same boat?

  • Are you consistently losing deals in the last stage?
  • Is the sales cycle all over the place?
  • Do your new sales reps take 6–9 months to start hitting their quotas?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, your sales funnel may need fixing, and it would serve you well to get an expert (aka sales enablement manager) to fix it. That is because most fast-growing sales teams start showing symptoms of a broken process, and it is important to plug these gaps as early as possible.

Here are some common examples of what actually might be going on in the sales process that may lead to the above symptoms:

1. Failure to identify the buyer persona and needs
Simply buying and setting up marketing automation and lead intelligence tools doesn’t help. If there is limited adoption of those tools (as is the case in most fast-growing companies), it is likely that the SDRs are not doing enough digging before and during lead prospecting and qualification. If the sales reps would make it a practice to look up the marketing automation system for what actions did the lead perform on the website, or do some basic research on what kind of type of buyer they are dealing with, they could prioritize their leads and be better prepared to deal with the initial part of the sales process. Unfortunately, most sales reps need some hand-holding and nudging to adopt these practices, and this is one of the low-hanging fruit that data driven sales enablement helps achieve.

2. Lack of readiness to instantly respond to customer needs
Let’s take the example of a common sales situation wherein the prospect raises a query about a product feature, asks for a relevant case study or pops up a question about a competitor’s offering. If the SDRs are not truly “sales ready” i.e. they are not equipped with thorough product knowledge, up-to-date information on features, use cases, and customer stories, they will not only contribute to lengthening the sales process but importantly lose opportunities to communicate the value proposition of their offering. Such instances of sales unpreparedness can result in 30% longer sales cycles.

3. Lack of systematic process and tracking
Every single one of the 40 fast-growing tech companies that we interviewed confessed that they did not have comprehensive tracking of sales onboarding and ongoing training activities. Typically content was stored on the document repository, and they had no clue about what content was being accessed and by whom. In most cases, less than 10% of sales training content was accessed even once by the sales reps. The participation in webinars and classroom sessions was either not tracked at all or recorded manually.

How does sales enablement in your organization stack up?

The following table identifies four stages of sophistication and effectiveness of a sales enablement organization ranging from “Undefined” to “World Class.”
sales maturity v2
Source: demandmetric

What is sales enablement?

According to Aaron Ross, author of the book, Predictable Sales, “Sales Enablement is the process of arming an organization’s sales force and everyone else who is customer facing with access to the right insight, experts, and information at the right time (specific sales step) in the right format in order to increase revenue. It is often used to describe a variety of tools, processes, and methodologies that are applied to enable a sales force, both direct and indirect. The range of sales enablement can span everything it takes for a salesperson to do their job more effectively.”

What are the KRAs of sales enablement?

The top five priorities of the sales enablement function are:

  • Coordinating with sales leadership to define sales support initiatives
  • Creating written content that educates sales reps and customers, and helps in taking deals forward
  • Keeping sales team prepared for customer conversations
  • Managing the content repository and enabling easy access to them
  • Providing ad-hoc support for sales reps

Do you now think it is the right time for your organization to invest in sales enablement?

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