Understanding the Importance of Coaching for Sales Managers

Understanding-the-importance-of-coaching-for-sales-managers_2Being a sales manager today is less about managing and more about developing, inspiring and growing the skills of your team. This is not easy and can leave a lot of sales managers chasing their tails trying to work out how to improve the performance of their team.
Some focus in on performance appraisals, which means that they’re only checking in on their reps’ performance once or twice a year. That isn’t often enough to build cadence or really help improve how they sell. Others use intimidation tactics or micro-manage which can leave their team feeling discouraged and uninspired.
While training is a useful way to teach new skills, it takes more than a training session or two to make sure it sticks. One of the most effective ways to reinforce, amplify and increase adoption of training is through coaching – in fact, CSO Insights found that implementing a formal or dynamic coaching process can help more salespeople achieve quota by up to 10%. The same research found that informal or ad hoc coaching didn’t achieve the same results.
No great sports person gets to be a world champion without a good coach by the side day-in-day-out, so why do you expect your salespeople to tough it out on their own? The answer may lie in the fact that coaching is hard, and it’s human nature to avoid doing the things that are really difficult. But coaching doesn’t just benefit your reps, it also benefits you which is an added incentive to put in place a formal coaching regime.

Coaching improves your skills

Being able to coach well is a skill that’s in high demand. By increasing your skill base you become more attractive to other employers both within and outside your company. This has the potential to open up new and exciting opportunities to develop yourself or possibly take on a more senior role. If you’ve got your eye on another role in the not so distant future, consider whether learning to coach effectively may help you get there.
Coaching also improves your skills as a manager. Coaching regularly gives you the cadence and insight to identify issues that may be impacting the performance of your team members. Rather than waiting for the annual performance review, you can nip them in the bud and then move onto the next issue. It can also help you put together a succession plan, thanks to the wealth of information that you learn about the strengths of each of your team members.
A flow on effect of developing your team is that they are likely to feel more valued and inspired. Feedback helps people know where and how to improve themselves, giving them a feeling of control over their own destiny and increases their trust in you.
This, in turn, has the potential to improve your retention rates. As you’re aware, recruiting new people is a costly and lengthy process, by improving retention you can improve the efficiency of running your team.
Last but not least, coaching will improve the results for your team, as the research from CSO Insights has found, and improve their productivity. While this won’t happen overnight, as it builds over time your team may meet or even exceed their performance objectives – a benefit that will directly be reflected in your own performance objectives.

So what does coaching really require?

There are several things that you can do that will help you be a good coach.
The most important is to focus on what your people need. This doesn’t mean just looking at what they need to develop but also understanding what they want to develop in themselves. One of the biggest ways to motivate someone to learn and adopt new skills is to do something that they want to do. The key is to set goals so that you can review their progress objectively together.
To build trust it’s important to be mindful, patient and truly listens. There’s no point trying to coach with one eye on your emails and the other on your watch. Show your team members how important their development is to you by giving them your full attention and allowing them to talk and work through an issue with your guidance.
Creating a safe environment is also important to build trust. No one will open up to a coach unless they feel secure, supported and know what they say is confidential. This includes following through on development opportunities or requests. Don’t leave it up them to ask you again – support them and give them the space to develop.
Another element of building trust is to keep your judgment at the door. If your people are worried about being critiqued, they’re less likely to open up and be willing to change. Let them vent their frustrations and work in different ways to find a solution that works for them. While not everyone can perfect everything, a good coach can identify the diamond in the rough and find a way to polish it.
One of the most valuable things a good coach can give is their strategic oversight. It’s difficult for an individual to step back and see how all the different moving parts work together, but a coach can help the individual pull everything together in a cohesive way. This gives them new insights that they can potentially use across different elements of their role. While coaching is about the individual, it’s really a partnership between you and your team member. Together you can both learn new skills and develop yourselves. If you approach coaching with this perspective in mind, it gives you more incentive to coach more often and to get better at it as well.

Is Your Sales Team Over-Managed and Under-led?

5-proven-ways-to-increase-adoption-of-your-sales-enablement-initiatives-500x-500It’s a common misconception that management and leadership are the same things but they’re not. Managing involves dealing with or controlling things – for a sales manager this could be anything from fighting fires to telling reps what they should be doing.

Whereas leadership is about leading people and guiding them to achieve. Both require different skill sets and have vastly different results when it comes to teams. According to author Tom Peters:

 

“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.”

While sales managers need both management and leadership skills, many tend to manage more than they lead. After all, it’s easy to monitor and react to statistics, processes, and deadlines. But it’s much more challenging to inspire and develop a team to achieve by developing and executing a clear strategy. When a sales team is over-managed and under-led it can lead to several problems that may impact your sales results, team turnover and the overall culture of your sales organization.

Managing is not motivating

One of the biggest issues with managing people rather than leading them is that it can be demotivating. Very few people are inspired to succeed when they’re told that they’re not meeting quota.  By focusing in on the numbers or process constantly, sales managers risk alienating and demotivating the majority of their team and make them feel unappreciated.

According to CSO Insights

20% of salespeople turnover each year

– that’s a significant investment walking out the door. They also found that sales managers only spend about 20% of their time actually helping sales reps sell, something that’s unlikely to be a coincidence. Reps that feel supported are more likely to feel motivated and willing to stay. In fact,

87% of millennials and 69% of other employees

say that development opportunities are important to them in a role. That’s one area where leadership is particularly important.

Directing traffic serves a purpose but it’s far more exciting to take your team on a journey to get them to where they need to be. Rather than focusing in on what someone is doing, strong leadership can help guide salespeople on how they can improve and set a clear path to help them achieve it. This is particularly important in this day and age where buyers are well-informed and savvy. They require salespeople who are well-informed and adaptable, and reps need strong leadership to learn these skills.

Leadership is liberating

Sales teams that are truly led are liberated and unconstrained. They’re given wings to do their job well, rather than being bogged down in red tape and control. This doesn’t mean that leadership equates to anarchy, far from it. But a good leader knows how to influence behavior. They will help their team find a way through the necessary elements of their role so that they can focus on what’s really important – selling better and closing deals.

The numbers are of course important, but a good leader knows which numbers to focus on and how to use them to influence their team. That final step is what makes the difference between a manager and a leader. Numbers and processes are good, but ultimately they are just a tool to inform decisions. If you want a salesperson to perform their best, then you need to look at all the aspects of their role. The numbers can inform this, but they will rarely tell the whole story.

Bain & Co has conducted detailed research

over several years about what makes a leader. Their research has identified leadership attributes that focus in on the human aspects of performance and grouped them into four key areas:
over-managed under-led

Leadership is less about monitoring and more about creating an environment where people can thrive. This involves building trust, encouraging people to learn and inspiring them to achieve. It’s about building a sales culture that reaps dividends long into the future.

How to shift the balance from managing to leading

There are several things that you can do to focus on leading over managing. One of the most important is to set a strategy and be clear about its goals. It should set the stage for what they need to achieve and how they will go about doing this. This can then be constantly reiterated through communications, coaching sessions, rewards and KPIs. This gives them clarity and also creates a cadence for them to look forward, develop and strive for their goals.

By linking your team’s development, through training and coaching, they not only see that you’re investing in them but that there is a purpose to what they’re being asked to do. It is here where you can rely on management tools – track leading indicators to identify where to focus your energy. Use all the data available to identify the key areas of focus and inform coaching and training programs. While your reps don’t need to know the detail of the analysis, they should be able to see how the areas of focus link to the overall strategy.

Another important aspect of a sales manager’s role is to make it easier for their team to sell. Many sales roles inevitably come with a lot of non-selling tasks and there’s always room for improvement. This often provides a good opportunity for leaders to seek out feedback and suggestions from their team. By giving their team a forum to have their say, the can feel some ownership over the issues and feel like they are proactively involved in trying to address them.

The role of a sales manager certainly isn’t easy, but it can be far more effective by making a conscious effort to balance the need to manage with the importance of leading.

7 Things that will Transform Sales Readiness in 2018

7-things-that-will-transform-sales-readiness-in-2018-(Conflicted-copy-from-shrawan’s-MacBook-Pro-on-2017-12-28)The end of the year is fast approaching and 2018 is already promising to be another huge year for sales readiness. As the pace of sales accelerates, buyers become even more knowledgeable and industry dynamics continue to evolve rapidly, so there’s no time for sales organizations to slow down. Here’s our forecast of what’s in store for sales readiness in 2018.

1. Sales readiness becomes essential

Just a few years ago Sales Ops was considered a nice-to-have, now it’s an integral part of a robust sales organization. Sales readiness is coming of age and the best sales teams understand how important it is to gain a competitive advantage. In 2018, sales readiness will no longer be viewed as an option and more businesses will see it as an essential element of a winning sales strategy.

2. Artificial intelligence will arrive but not as expected

There has been a lot of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years but it’s still a long way from replacing sales reps. In 2018, AI will start to make a difference in the sales process – it will help reps work smarter and faster, not replace them. There are so many manual tasks that that can be achieved quickly with the assistance of AI according to

Mohit Garg, Co-Founder and Go-To-Market leader

of Mindtickle “

Processes that can easily be automated, eliminating repetitive work, maximizing sales outcomes by taking advantage of data-driven insights, so that the sales reps can focus on closing deals.”

Another area where AI is showing huge promise that will prove its value in the coming year is in the area of dynamic coaching. AI will be able to identify triggers and provide coaching opportunities to managers so they can help reps deal with specific situations in real time.

Tamara Schenk, Research Director of CSO Insights

notes “

Sales leaders will shift their enablement investments between individual contributors and their managers to take advantage of the enormous performance potential of robust coaching approaches that equally leverage coaching skills, process, and AI-empowered technology to make coaching time as effective as possible.

3. Sales stacks will become more tightly integrated

Sales tools lose their effectiveness if they become cumbersome to use and difficult to manage. The trick to optimizing your sales stack is to ensure it is tightly integrated. In the coming year, more emphasis will be placed on building seamless sales stacks rather than just adding more technology to reps’ toolsets. Streamlining your sales stack with seamless integrations will ensure that sales teams can use their tools to improve effectiveness and efficiency rather than being a source of confusion and aggravation.

4. Analytics will enhance sales readiness

Analytics is used extensively to understand how our customers behave, in 2018 organizations will benefit from the data available in sales readiness tools to better understand their reps. This data isn’t just about how many sales calls reps are completing. It also considers their productivity, how effectively they sell and what information they use. This information will enable sales managers and leaders to take the sales readiness of their reps to a new level.

“The right measurement and tracking ensure that key stakeholders are aware of the readiness of their sales team over time and can track improvement,”

explains Nishant Mungali

, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer

for Mindtickle.

5. Millennial needs become the norm

Millennials are now the

largest generation in the US

and this will only continue to grow. So while businesses have focused on the need to address millennial preferences because they were different from Generation X or Baby Boomers, the reality is we must now accept that the preferences of millennials are those of the majority.

This will have a significant impact on sales readiness in the coming year because things that were once considered important to millennials will now become the norm. Bite-sized content, mobile capability, sharing wisdom over classroom teaching, value-driven learning, agility, flexibility to learn on the go and gamification will no longer be optional for sales readiness in 2018. They will all be mandatory to meet the changing needs of the workforce.

6. The cadence is set for continuous learning

With industry dynamics changing weekly and new products features rolling out regularly, it’s no longer sufficient to set and forget training. To maintain your reps’ level of sales readiness they need to be trained regularly. In the coming year, more businesses will shift from periodic training to continuous training enabled by mobile sales readiness tools that facilitate real-time updates to be pushed out to reps anywhere. Learning modules will become smaller and more frequent, making training a regular part of a salesperson’s job.

7. Peer-to-peer learning will take off

Traditionally, external experts have come in to train reps on new techniques and selling models, but this will change in 2018. While external training will still be relevant, internal expertize will become more prevalent, particularly as sales readiness technology enables winning sales techniques to be shared more readily amongst the sales organization.

This could be facilitated through best practice video role plays, success stories that are easily searchable or social tools that facilitate the sharing of knowledge easily. Sales enablement and sales leaders will still continue to play an important role in this process. Together they will ensure that content that is shared is truly the best practice so that peer-to-peer learning becomes the optimal form of learning.

6 Signs Your Sales Managers are Under-Trained

sales-managers-are-under-trained_500x500Research by the Sales Management Association has found that

41% of companies have no budget

to train their sales managers, and half of those that do have a training budget don’t offer any specific training to help them manage or lead a sales team. Yet sales managers are charged with the challenging task of motivating and leading their team to bring home the bacon.

The role of a sales manager is quite broad, so you can’t just look at their team’s quota to determine if they’re doing a good job. Here are six signs that may indicate that your sales managers are in dire need of some specific training.
1. They manage instead of leading

Many sales manager are promoted through the ranks, and while they may have been impressive salespeople, that doesn’t mean they know how to lead a team. Just like sales skills, leadership skills need to be learned either through experience or with specific training. Without these skills, many sales managers may naturally revert back to where they feel most comfortable.

This can manifest itself in several ways. Some may prefer to take over a deal and do the selling themselves. Others might spend all their time on their A players or C players, and leave the majority of their team floundering with no direction.
2. They see everything (or nothing) as a priority

You can’t do everything, that’s a simple fact of life, but it is something that a manager has to learn. Sales managers need to be able to differentiate between the tasks that are urgent and important and those that are not and prioritize them appropriately. The importance they place on particular tasks will be reflected in their team, which will rapidly magnify them. As leaders, sales managers must set the priorities for their team so they know where to spend their time.

Coaching is a classic example of something that is often overlooked even though it should be a priority on a sales managers to-do list. If a sales manager doesn’t know how to coach effectively they may de-prioritize it in favor of something they’re more comfortable with. So if some important things aren’t being prioritized, perhaps look into whether your sales manager has the skills to lead or coach their team effectively.
3. They can’t see beyond the horizon

It’s easy to get distracted fighting fires each day, but sales managers need to find the time to look beyond their immediate priorities and plan for the future. Developing a long-term strategy can be daunting even for experienced managers. It takes time, planning and discipline to develop a strategy that is clear, consistent and can be monitored. Without this, managers may find themselves directing their team aimlessly or, worse still, going around in circles. When you’re leading a team, this kind of ambling is inevitably reflected in how the team behaves – they have no purpose or direction.

If your sales manager can’t articulate exactly what they want their team to focus on in the next three, six or 12 months then they may need some help putting together a strategy that provides their team with clear direction and guides them on how to achieve it.
4. They don’t know how to identify performance issues in their team

Numbers, quotas and KPIs only tell part of the story when it comes to why someone is performing under par. Sales managers need to draw on a range of information and experience to really understand where their team’s skill gaps may be. Once an issue is diagnosed, the sales manager then needs to determine the best way to address the issue.

This can be quite challenging, particularly when some issues aren’t readily solved by training initiatives. For example, if a rep lacks motivation there may be many soft issues that need to be addressed to get their performance back on track – perhaps a good rep feels like they’re being underutilized. An experienced sales manager might bring them into the fold to help motivate other reps, but a less-experienced sales manager may not be able to identify and resolve these performance issues or tackle them in a way that is less than effective.
5. They let the loudest team members dictate the direction

The squeakiest wheel may get the oil but it isn’t always the one that needs the most attention and it’s the same when it comes to sales teams. Just because one person is complaining the loudest, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their issue is the direst or in need of attention. This is an issue that inexperienced sales managers may face the most, particularly if they’re lacking confidence. This can result in potential inequities in their team, misdirection of their energy or even alienate some team members.

Sales managers need to develop their softer skills so that they can manage different personalities effectively. These skills take a long time to develop unless specific training is provided.
6. They lack consistency

It’s not unusual for sales managers to develop their own processes and approach, but this lack of consistency, particularly in larger organizations can quickly become problematic. Sales managers need to be open to learning new things so they can all speak the same language, leverage the same information and embed consistency amongst their teams. This ensures that customer interactions are consistent, the messaging they hear is the same and also ensures that each sales team is on a level playing field.

From an organizational perspective, consistency enables sales teams to be compared accurately and reduces the possibility of confusion. But without sufficient training and guidance, it is almost impossible to achieve consistency across the entire sales organization. The best way to achieve this is for one area to have responsibility for ensuring processes, training, and the information is rolled out and monitored across the entire organization.

The Next Big Opportunity for Sales Enablement: Sales Engineers

If you’re looking for a quick win in your sales enablement programs then look no further than your sales engineering team. One of the most overlooked roles in sales enablement is that of the sales engineer, also known as technical sales, pre-sales or sales consultant. While 94.3% of businesses focus their sales enablement initiatives on frontline salespeople and account managers, only 45.9% shine light on their sales engineers, yet they play a crucial role in the sales process.

Sales-Engineer-enablementSales engineers often require more enablement than reps by virtue of the highly technical nature of their role. They not only need to know everything about their product, competitors, verticals, and industry, but sales engineers must also understand how to apply this information to different use cases and differentiate your product from that of your competitors. Sales engineers touch almost every part of the sales process and play a significant role in proving the success of your product to potential customers.
Sales engineer enablement

The sales engineer is the resident product expert in a sales call – a situation that can be highly stressful even for the most competent professional. They bring together the knowledge of how existing customers use your product, usually learned from the customer success team, with the sales teams understanding of the customer, their pain points, and needs. Essentially, sales engineers need to have the knowledge that both sales and customer success teams have, along with the detailed specifications of your product. As a consultant, they provide the deep knowledge that helps customers see why they should choose your product and be able to demonstrate it.

Their role covers not only initial sales conversations but also customized demonstrations and proof of concepts. It’s the sales engineer who sets up sandboxes and pilots so that customers can trial your product and see their specific use cases in action. This process of proof of concept can take a sales engineer anywhere from one week to six months to complete.

Some businesses have acknowledged the key role that sales engineers play. Symantec designed and implemented a comprehensive enablement program targeted specifically to the sales engineers and they believe well-enabled sales engineers make their pipeline bulletproof.  This is the exception rather than the rule and speaks to the value Symantec have placed on the role of the sales engineer in their focus on customer success. Many companies simply arm sales engineers with the same information that they give their sales reps or customer success teams. While this is a start, it rarely provides them with all the information they need, nor the depth of knowledge required, to complete their role effectively.

Some areas that sales engineers need to be enabled include:

  • Detailed product knowledge that incorporates technical specifications
  • Customer use cases
  • The product roadmap and future releases
  • The RFP process and what security documents are required for different verticals and industries
  • Up to date information on competitor products and industry updates
  • The ability to dive deeper into specific pain points and requirements
  • How to conduct a technical demonstration and manage trials and proof of concepts
  • Each aspect of the sales process including who is involved and understanding when they are required

Given how critical sales engineers are in turning an opportunity into a customer, it’s surprising that more businesses have not focused on enabling their knowledge and needs. Businesses that do this now can achieve a competitive advantage that is almost guaranteed to help them close more deals faster.

How have you enabled your sales engineers?

Let’s Catch Up at Dreamforce!

Dreamforce_sales_enablement
It’s hard to believe that another Dreamforce is already upon us. While the memories of rocking out to U2 are still fresh, we’re raring and ready to blaze a new trail this year. As veterans, we know Dreamforce is exhilarating but equally exhausting.  Between booth dating, session racing, and, of course, cocktailing, all you want to do is put your feet up and have some time out.

We’re here to save you

We’ve lined up some fabulous havens where you can take a load off, and we’d love you to drop by. So, as you enjoy some delicious drinks and bites, let us show you what “great” looks like when it comes to building a world-class sales enablement program.
Most enablement technology drives efficiency but it takes a lot more than efficiency to win consistently today. We’re about making sure your sales team are as confident and capable as they can possibly be when it counts. We’ve got a range of options to suit whatever takes your fancy, and we guarantee that you’ll leave feeling physically and mentally refreshed. Here’s where you can find us:

Eat, Sit, Drink: The Future of Sales Lounge

Future of sales loungeThese couches sure look inviting, don’t they? They’re waiting for you on the ground floor of the Marriott Marquis. It’s a fabulous spot and you can register to attend here. While it would be nice to know you’re coming, you’ll still be welcome if you come by without registering.

Sales Enablement Soiree

This is the hottest ticket in town. Specifically for sales enablement leaders, thought leaders will be sharing insights and best practices and great solutions will be featured.
This exciting event also offers the opportunity to network with your peers and meet us, of course. The Soiree will be held on 8 November at the Four Seasons. It’s advisable to register to attend here, but you can always take your chances and drop by.

Speed date with us

Our dance card is open so come and meet us at either Booth 240 or 1734. If you’re after a chat, a demo, and a complimentary pair of VR glasses, then we’re a sure thing!

Happy Hour

Join us for cocktails and let your hair down at one of San Francisco’s renowned Latin fusion restaurants. We’ll be there for happy hour on November 7th, along with other sales leaders, for a chat and cheeky salsa if you’re daring. Register here.
We look forward to seeing you at Dreamforce’17!

Conversation with Jonathan Hinz and Daniel Kuperman

Seismic and Mindtickle sales enablementThis post is based on a webinar where Jonathan Hinz, Director of Product Marketing at Seismic and Daniel Kuperman, Director of Product Marketing at Mindtickle, discuss maximizing the impact of sales enablement with content and learning. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
Today’s buyers are more informed before they meet with sales reps. They expect reps to be prepared to help them make an educated decision. Unfortunately, modern sellers are stretched so thin by day-to-day demands that they’re often challenged to find the time to really understand their buyers. “This is the gap of knowledge and preparation for sales,” Daniel explained, “There are several aspects to this gap:

  • How prepared the salesperson is to have a conversation with the buyer;
  • What they can offer during that conversation in terms of solutions and insights; and
  • How much they know about your pain, your challenges, and your industry to educate you to move towards the ideal scenario.”

Things have changed for Marketing

Marketing needs to change to ensure it can feed the right leads to sales in this new world order. “At the marketing level, we’ve had this conversation one too many times. We’ve been using marketing automation platforms to broadcast our messages to find and advance leads until they’re good marketing-qualified leads to hand off to sales,” Jonathan said.
“Sales works these leads until they’re won or lost,” Jonathan continued. “Where are the key learnings? How do we win? What content was used? How was training effective? What element went into that salesperson being able to close that deal? How did marketing know what content worked? How did they enhance those leads to get to the point where there was a signature on a piece of paper? These metrics all need to be captured for marketing to optimize the flow and drive better-qualified leads.”

What is the solution?

Sales also need to be equipped to meet these changes.
According to Daniel, “There are three things you need to do to meet these challenges:

  1. Prepare sellers to have the value-added conversations buyers expect from them. This is not just about sales training, but really making sure reps have the knowledge, skills, and behaviors they need to perform in the field;
  2. Ensure sellers have the right information at the right stage of the sales cycle. In today’s environment, reps need very specific training and content at different stages in the sales cycle. This ensures they can adapt to the various situations and demands of their buyers; and
  3. Create a culture of continuous learning so sellers are always prepared to engage with buyers. This is the best way for sales reps to become familiar with new features and product updates quickly without taking them out of their selling environment.”

There are some constraints that must be addressed for this to happen. According to Daniel, these include:

  • Creating a culture of continuous learning without impacting selling time;
  • Understanding that one solution won’t necessarily meet every organization’s needs;
  • Being able to demonstrate the value of your sales enablement initiatives; and
  • Reviewing existing systems to determine if they are inefficient or and need to be updated.

How you really fix these issues?

Sales Enablement plays an important role in addressing these issues.
“The essence of Sales Enablement is really about setting up the framework so Sales can be successful,” according to Jonathan. “Plus, you need to have the right training in place to provide context at the same time. This includes new product launches, new competitive messaging, new decks, new content – sales needs all these different things to quickly absorb this information so they can have better customer conversations.
When that’s done right, sales reps are easily able to access the right assets. They know how to use them, the results are awesome, and they can accelerate deals. They also have a better deal impact and their teams become more efficient.”

The organizational benefits multiply

It isn’t just the sales reps that benefit from these enablement initiatives. There are flow-on effects throughout the organization. From a business perspective, what we see across companies that we work with, is a stage of effects,” explains Jonathan.
“First, there is increased efficiency across the business thanks to improved sales and marketing alignment. People can find content as it’s all in one place. Sales teams can pull assets and know how to use them because the right training is in place. This results in improved content ROI and increased seller productivity,” he continues.
“All this together creates a higher focus on commercial outcomes for the business. New and organic revenue growth is driven by these more productive and effective teams.”
“This improves morale amongst the sales team, particularly because sales reps realize their organization is taking them into consideration,” adds in Daniel. “This also results in significantly reduced attrition rates. If you want to grow your sales organization, improving morale, and how your sales reps are perceived internally is extremely important. It’s a great outcome that will positively impact your bottom line.”

The future state of sales enablement with Mindtickle and Seismic

Mindtickle and Seismic integrate with your CRM system so sales reps have access to them every minute of every day,” Jonathan explains. “They give them the tools and the resources they need to have great customer conversations. By providing them access to the platforms they already use, sales reps do not need to go to offsite training that takes up their valuable sales time.
With this combined solution, you’re able to lock content until knowledge certification has been completed. This means sales reps have to take the training before they can access some content. It’s an awesome capability that can magnify your ability to train and educate your entire sales team.
The solution also has the capability to combine content and training on a landing page that sales can see on a daily basis. The reality is that only a small volume of content in the library is actually used. 80% to 90% of content is generally unused for a good reason -it’s not the stuff that closes deals. It’s the 10% to 20% that does. This is what sales see on their landing page.
If they’re looking for something on a more occasional basis, that’s what Search is for – the every so often use. The training content can be extracted from Mindtickle and put it into the Seismic platform. It’s an incredible capability that really enhances the content and gives it context, “ explains Jonathan.

Customers see ROI and results

Companies that use Seismic and Mindtickle achieve the following results:
Seismic Mindtickle

Organizations need to become agiler to succeed

Sales Enablement is charged with leading the way organizations to address new business challenges so they can accelerate their sales now and into the future.
“Enablement leaders need to create a  culture of continuous learning so their organizations can become agile and adapt well to changes happening in the marketplace,” Daniel advises. “This can be achieved by looking at the technology available today. Mindtickle and Seismic offer one possibility by working together.”
“Regardless of the technology platform that you choose, my recommendation is to make sure that it is aligned with the vision for Sales Enablement at your organization,” he continues. “Make sure that the platform, or combination of platforms, that you choose is actually going to help you move the needle now and as you grow. Don’t just look at the problems you need to solve today, but also think about whether the solution can grow with your organization. A good sales enablement platform should help you tackle all of your issues,  provide strategic insights and facilitate the change management that is required from sales enablement today at organizations of any size.”

Best Practices for Dealing with Sales Enablement Software Vendors

Purchasing_sales_enablement-Software_vendor Purchasing sales enablement software isn’t as simple as deciding what features you want and ticking them off a list. That’s because sales enablement as an industry is at a nascent stage which makes it difficult to know exactly what your business will need today, tomorrow, and into the future.
Sales leaders are also still defining what they need and want from sales enablement. The objectives, success factors and KPIs for sales enablement are still being defined and may continue to evolve. That’s where the right vendor can empower a business to shape its sales enablement strategy in a way that meets its long-term objectives.
Having worked in both Customer Success and Sales, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for a customer to make the right decision, and how that decision can impact their business either positively or negatively. Many businesses tend to start with training and select their software based on the features they need. But enabling a sales force is rarely just about training – it may require a wide range of activities including content, structured coaching, process improvement, and internal communication. It often also requires reporting to sales management that helps identify gaps and opportunities.
The challenge for any sales enablement function is identifying and solving the bigger issues that are impacting their reps. If your sales enablement function is relatively new, you may still be identifying issues and prioritizing them, or trying to anticipate what your business needs in the medium to long-term future. This can be even more confusing if you’re having to deal with salespeople who are focused on selling you software rather than helping you solve your problem.

Start with your end-goal

Tools are an enabler but they’re not the end-game. Before purchasing software it’s important to identify what you want to achieve. Perhaps identify your top sales enablement initiatives for the next one to three years and align these with the objectives of your sales leadership team. These initiatives will depend on your specific business needs. Some examples include revamping your sales onboarding, instigating a manager-led coaching program or ensuring your reps can articulate your value proposition consistently.
Each of your initiatives should be based on the outcomes that you and your business want to achieve. Questions that may be helpful to ask here include:

  • What do your leaders want to achieve?
  • What do our frontline reps want and need?
  • What do our sales managers want and need?

If you’re speaking with a software vendor at this stage they should be able to help you define each of these questions and unravel your issues and help you find a way to solve them. At this point, it’s best not to focus on product features, but rather look at how you can elevate your sales game.

Focus on a partnership

Of course, the features that your sales readiness platform has are important, but a solution needs to have the flexibility and capability to meet your needs now and in the future. This is where it’s important for you to look at the product roadmap and see what’s coming in the future and understand how that may help your organization.
Ask the vendor how they develop their product roadmap and determine its direction. Some take onboard feedback from customers, while others may develop their strategy based on the whims and fancies of a handful of product geeks.

Value transparency and honesty

Software vendors shouldn’t just be there to sell you their platform. What’s most important is that you find the right solution for your business. There’s no point trying to force fit a solution, it will only end up costing you more in the long-run. That’s why I’ve actually referred some prospects to other solutions when I know that we don’t have the solution to their problems. It doesn’t help our customers to end up with a platform that doesn’t address their needs.
That’s where transparency and honesty are important. Every sales enablement platform has its strengths and weaknesses. The key is for you to find the platform that best meets your needs now and in the future. Sales reps play a valuable role in the process of deciding which sales enablement platform is right for your business. A good vendor salesperson will help you solve the problems you’re facing so that your sales can be elevated.

Building a Business Case for Sales Readiness – Step 2: Define the Problem and Calculate its Value

Building-a-business-case-for-sales-readinessIn my last post, we discussed how to go about identifying the issue or symptom that your business is experiencing. The next step in building a business case for sales readiness is to define the exact problems your business is experiencing.
The only way to start honing in on the problem is to identify the metrics that you need to measure for each issue. This will also help you measure your baseline, and in the future, demonstrate the benefit of your readiness initiatives.
Some examples of translating issues into specific metrics include:
With your broad metrics identified you can then design your end goals. For example, if your metric is to improve onboarding ramp-up time, your goal may be to improve how long it takes for your new hires to reach quota. To determine the metrics your business needs to focus on partnering with Sales Ops. This will ensure that you’re both in agreement on what your goals are and work towards reaching the same desired state.
It’s also important to ensure your programs are tightly aligned with the objectives of your sales leadership. While it’s easy to focus in on training, this may only solve part of your problem. Sales reps need to be enabled with a range of things – knowledge, skills, coaching, reinforcement, content, and process – not just training. That’s why it’s important to have access to as many analytics and data points as you can. Research has found that organizations that use sales analytics increase team quota attainment 4x faster than non-users. Sales Ops is often the starting point here, as they use sales analytics to improve forecasting, find ways to ensure that revenue becomes more predictable and identify opportunities to improve sales effectiveness.

Identify all the stakeholders

Sales Ops, as the expert in data and impact correlation, is an important stakeholder for Sales Enablement but they’re not the only one. 36% of businesses don’t make a concerted effort to foster collaboration between sales enablement and other parts of the company.
For your sales readiness initiatives to succeed, Sales Enablement must be the hub that connects the sales team to the different departments that can influence their performance or will be affected by it. For example, if an initiative will save money then involve Finance – they may even be your champion or decision maker further down the track.
Other key players include Marketing who understands messaging and Product who is crucial for any product training and updates on features. And of course, the leadership team who are enablers when it comes to achieving alignment across the company. If you can demonstrate the success of your initiatives you will be well-positioned to ask the leadership team to help you – whether it’s involving other teams or driving adoption amongst your sales organization.
While reps are usually the focus of enablement initiatives, frontline managers also need to be enabled. Win rates can increase by 9% and revenue attainment can increase by up to 18% if you invest in your frontline sales managers.  For example, providing them with structured coaching frameworks can increase quota attainment by 10%.

Calculate the real value of your initiatives

Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and key problems, prioritize them so you can identify which to focus on first. Best-in-class businesses select just a few initiatives to implement successfully before moving onto the next.
The best way to prioritize your initiatives is by the value each will add to the business.
This isn’t easy to do, especially when you don’t have access to perfect data, but it’s an essential part of the process. Benchmark your business against external research, ask stakeholders what benefit they expect to see and speak to Sales Ops to deter
mine the best way to measure your initiative
For example, to measure the effectiveness of your reps demos start with their current conversion rate – perhaps demo to opportunity is 20%. If certifying your reps increases the conversion rate to 25%, then extrapolate from there. If each demo potentially earns $20,000 and each rep does 50 demos a month then: $20,000 * 50 * 5% = $50,000
That’s $50,000 more revenue each rep can earn a month or $600,000 a year. That’s $6 million a year if you have 100 reps. Now, that’s a compelling argument. This table shows some metrics alongside external data points that may help you calculate the value of your initiatives.
While not all of these metrics will be appropriate for your sales readiness initiatives, they provide you with a starting point to define your problem and back it up.

Building a Business Case for Sales Readiness: Step 1 – Identify Your Pain Points

 

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Albert Einstein

Sales-enablement-business-caseAccording to the Bridge Group, sales productivity is the biggest challenge for 65% of B2B organizations. But stating the obvious isn’t a good enough reason to convince your sales leaders and the C-Suite to invest in sales readiness.

But if you told them that the number of reps attaining quota is dropping – from 63% to 53% over the last 5 years – and they could turn this around with specific readiness initiatives, like structured coaching then they may take notice.

Over the next three posts, we’ll outline how to put together a business case for sales readiness that will have your leaders asking where to sign up.

The first step in putting together your business case is identifying what problems sales readiness will solve for your business. To determine what needs to be solved you first need to determine what your pain points are.

Pain points aren’t always obvious so cast your net wide

Pain points are not always easy to identify and they may be different depending on who you ask. That’s why it’s important to gather as much information and as many data points as you can from relevant people internally.

To gain champions internally your business case needs to be aligned with the priorities of the business. So work with Sales Ops to understand where most of your leads drop-off. Enabling your team with competitive insights could be the solution to a $20 million problem, or certifying your reps to do demos could improve your top line by $10 million. By collaborating with Sales Ops you can determine which couple of initiatives present the biggest opportunities and park any that are secondary. By partnering with Ops when presenting to leadership, you also strengthen your positioning.

Sales leaders are not the only people that should be interviewed though. Speak to your end-users and then analyze their responses to see if there are any overarching trends. While you won’t be able to resolve each of their individual tactical problems, if all your reps seem to be struggling at the same point in the sales cycle or with their demos, for example, then you can see where your biggest problems lie.

But it’s not just important to talk to the top 20%, the middle 60% and bottom 20% should also be included, cast your net wide to determine the true issues. For example, if all your reps are complaining about their win rates, then you have a place to start, but if it’s only one group of reps then it may be a reflection of your onboarding program, or something else.

To really identify what’s actually causing some of your problems will require some deeper digging. For example, CSO insights found that aligning the sales process with the customer journey can have a marked impact on win rates, as much as 15%. But before jumping to the conclusion that this will solve your problems, speak to your reps and determine if misalignment with the customer journey is actually part of the problem. Even if it is, there are several ways that this root cause can be addressed – from content for each stage of the buyer’s journey to training, coaching and tools. To determine which combination of these is right for your business and will give you the biggest bang for the buck you need to dig deeper. In this process, you need to connect the dots between what the problem looks like and what is really causing it.

It’s good to be creative when looking for information about pain points and perhaps look beyond your own people. For example, some companies conduct buy cycle reviews to identify issues in their win rates. This involved new sales reps interviewing clients of deals that were recently won, lost, or ended as no decisions to find out what went right and what went wrong. The information is invaluable and may highlight some customer issues that your reps or sales leaders aren’t aware of.

It’s also important to work with sales ops to identify the top areas for improvement. They have access to the data and are most familiar with analyzing the information and your CRM. A common problem for many companies is the amount of non-selling times their reps are doing. Sales Ops may already have data available on this, so partner with them to find a solution.

For example, research has shown that the average rep needs to update over 300 CRM records per week.

If each record takes just two minutes to update that’s 600 minutes, or 10 hours, a week. If you and Ops can find a way to halve that task, that would give each of your reps an extra hour a day to sell.

So speak to them to see if they’ve identified any issues. Perhaps they’ve noticed gaps in your CRM data or have identified some parts of the pipeline that are lagging behind benchmark indicators.

Armed with all this information you’ll be ready to start really getting into the root cause of your issues. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to define your problems and calculate the value you can add by fixing them