The Missing Link in B2B Selling: Prescriptive Selling

Shankar Ganapathy on October 15, 2017

B2B-sales-prescriptive-sellingWhile buyers have access to more information, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re equipped to make better decisions. In fact, all this information has the potential to overwhelm them, making it even harder to make a decision about a big purchase. The result is a prolonged decision making process and an elongated sales cycle.

Research by Corporate Executive Board has found that more information just means customers have more questions, with 65% spending as much time getting ready to speak to a sales rep as they’d anticipated the entire purchase process would take. When coupled with an increase in the number of decision makers – up from 5.4 to 6.8 people in the past two years – it’s even harder to get a decision.

This brings current selling techniques into question. While reps have been focused on responding to customers by giving them more information to help them make decisions, this reduces the ease of purchase by 18%. Whereas reps who are more prescriptive in their approach actually increase the purchase ease for their customers by 86%.

What is prescriptive selling?

Prescriptive selling involves making a recommendation to customers backed with reasons why it’s the best solution for them. This approach involves the rep demonstrating their understanding of the customer’s pain points and needs while offering a valuable solution. It’s proactive and makes it easier for the customer to purchase. It may even reduce the chances that the customer will regret the purchase later on.

And here’s the clincher – a supplier is 62% more likely to win a high-quality sale if they make purchasing easier for their buyers.

The key to prescriptive selling isn’t just about giving the customer a clear recommendation – it’s actually in the organization’s approach to selling. Sales organizations need to be more prescriptive in how their reps can convey these messages in their customer conversations.

So how do you start?

The starting point for any prescriptive selling approach is the customer’s journey. This journey must start before the customer is even aware of your organization or product. Because it’s at this early stage when they’re first bombarded with information and need a prescriptive approach to help guide them through their decision. This means each piece of content across all channels should have a prescriptive lens.

This approach then flows onto all aspects of the sales process. How reps approach conversations, how they articulate the value proposition, and how they deal with objections, should all be more prescriptive. They should all focus on how to help customers make a decision, rather than why they should purchase your product.

This approach also requires a more prescriptive approach to how your reps sell. While formal scripts are rarely appropriate in many complex sales situations, sales organizations should be more prescriptive about how their salespeople should approach different sales situations.

Don’t worry, consultative selling still has its place

While it may seem like prescriptive selling is moving away from the consultative approach to selling, and towards a more rigid sales process, it actually brings together the best of both approaches. Customers won’t respond to well something that feels like a hard sell. Rather they want a solution that meets their specific needs.

But salespeople can rely on more prescriptive content and diagnostic exercises that help customers pinpoint their needs. By providing reps with access to information and real-time training that helps them respond to a customer’s questions they can be more prescriptive and more consultative in how they sell.

The end result is a consistent sales approach. All reps sing from the same songbook, and the way they guide customers along their purchasing journey is similar. With everything tied to the customer’s own purchasing journey, it should also make the process easier for the customer. And as the research shows, the easier the purchasing journey the more chance of a positive decision.

While marketing content is one important part of this process, sales reps also need to be enabled with the tools and information they need to be prescriptive. That may include role plays to practice their messaging, on-demand feedback and coaching from their managers, success stories and examples from their peers, and up-to-date information that they can apply in their customer conversations.

This is a fundamental shift away from the traditional sales approach. No longer can reps just focus on how to get a customer to buy their product. Their role now is to help customers make a decision, full stop. Their customers will thank them for it, and so will their leaders.


The End of Sales Training As We Know it

Daniel Kuperman on October 15, 2017

Sales training as we know it has changed.

Sales roles are becoming more specialized. In B2B tech this is most prevalent with sales teams divided into Sales Development, Sales Engineering, Account Executives, and Account Managers. Within each of these groups, there is often further segmentation – based on account size, industry, and territory. The larger your sales team, the more specialized your roles are likely to be.

This type of segmentation helps with focus, productivity, and scale. When you dig deeper you find that sales reps are also grouped based on their individual performance – “A” players, “B” players and “C” players form the traditional bell-shaped curve.

While most companies do this and it is commonly accepted, one important element seems to ignore the different segments – sales training. Training is rarely tailored to suit the different needs of each segment of the sales organization.

Routine training sessions tend to be mandatory and pushed out to all reps at the same time. Sales kickoffs, whether annual or quarterly, are notorious for treating all reps the same. Forcing them to sit in a room for hours on end listening to the same sessions. And even sales onboarding programs tend to be structured for the masses. The entire class of new hires have the same training sessions and only break apart for separate sessions that are based on the rep’s main role (e.g. SDR vs AE).

These training sessions also rarely engage reps or require them to demonstrate outcomes. There may be a quick test at the end to make sure they heard everything, but it rarely provides any real information about whether the reps are sales ready for their specific role. We know sales reps thrive on outcomes – they chase revenue because they have targets, they use content because it helps accelerate deals – so why don’t we train them to sell better rather than just rote learning?

New technologies are more convenient for training. They enable on-demand and online training and give reps the ability to consume training content at their own pace. But this approach lacks a basic tenet of adult education – it needs to take into consideration the learner’s experience, background, and preferences (e.g. accessing training and content on mobile devices vs computer).

This means your top-performing reps should be treated differently to your middle performers when it comes to learning. But that’s not all. It’s also important to understand exactly what areas of improvement each person needs and how to improve their performance.

Mapping competencies in sales training and enablement initiatives

When it comes to sales enablement, the most mature companies have created specific models for sales competencies. These have been developed with full buy-in from the company’s leadership. They understand that an ideal sales rep has certain skill sets and follows particular behaviors, and have codified those into different categories. How reps are measured is also clearly communicated to them.

Taking each of these categories into consideration, enablement and training initiatives are then mapped to each category. It’s important to note that ‘training’ and ‘enablement’ are different and the sales team should be evaluated against each of them.

If you map each sales rep against the respective competency list for their specific role you can then identify if there are any gaps and start tailoring their training requirements and deliver specific training to address them. This means each rep will receive very specific training that they require to improve how they sell and excel. Reps that are already at the required competency level won’t have to participate in unnecessary training.

We have also seen companies take this to the next level by tying sales compensation to reps corresponding “sales readiness” levels.

Automating competency mapping

I know this all sounds great, but how do you actually implement something like this without hiring more staff? The answer lies in technology. Traditional LMS focus on solving the perennial HR problem of whether employees have completed their required courses. They tend to focus on compliance rather than building competencies.

Sales reps need to build specific sales competencies and leaders need to see how each directly contributes to revenue. That’s why sales readiness technologies have gained traction. They help companies transform their approach to sales training.  They can do this in several ways including:

  • Identify trends in sales performance: Using outcome-driven analytics your leaders can see how teams are performing against specific sales competencies and identify trends. For example, see what kind of information or training teams have completed (like commercial insights, negotiating techniques or pricing), and determine which of these are translating into more sales.
  • Identifying competency gaps: Using analytical tools that allow you to drill down into regions, territories and even individual sales reps, you can see whether there are any gaps in sales competencies or if perhaps there are other areas that need to be addressed.
  • See the big picture: Put all your training initiatives into one place – including role-plays and coaching initiatives – so you can have a precise picture of their combined impact in achieving the competency levels. This also allows you to identify opportunities to tweak or even create new programs.
  • Share insights and reports with sales leadership: It is easier to demonstrate what leaders need to do when you can show them hard data. By proactively sharing reports on gap analysis along with your suggestions for improvement, you can highlight how sales performance can be improved.
  • Demonstrate how training has improved sales: Overlay the reports on your training and enablement programs with pipeline and sales reports to show just what improvements the initiatives have made to topline revenue, your pipeline, and deals.

Sales readiness technology has the power to help your sales organization refocus your training toward sales competencies. This can dramatically change how your training is delivered, how your reps perceive sales training, and your sales team’s overall performance.

The end of traditional sales training is nigh and successful companies are already riding this new wave of competency-based dynamic training. It’s helping them scale their sales teams and enabling them to beat the competition. Are you ready to jump onboard?

3 Reasons why your CEO Can’t Ignore Sales Readiness any Longer

Shankar Ganapathy on September 25, 2017

3-reasons-CEO_invest-sales-readinessOnly 32.7% of companies

have a sales enablement or sales readiness function. This is the area that is responsible not only for sales training but ensuring reps are coached, receive appropriate reinforcement and have all the tools they need at their disposal. According to research by the ATD, continuous investment in training and reinforcement activities, like coaching, with sales reps results in over 50% higher net sales per employee. This translates into a 40% higher gross profit per employee and 20% higher ratio of market-to-book value.

Now mentally calculate what a difference those achievements would make to your bottom line and your shareholder value. It’s a compelling case for sale readiness, but how do you convince your CEO?

Here are three reasons why your CEO can’t ignore sales readiness any longer.
Give them context: Disruption is the new normal

The C-Suite can no longer just set a strategy and watch it being implemented over the next 6 to 12 months. Every industry is changing rapidly and all hands are required on deck to ensure your business doesn’t fall victim to the next disruptor.

According to Eugene Clerk of Credit Suisse

, the average age of a company listed on the S&P 500 has fallen from 60 years old in the 1950s to less than 20 years old today.

That means the company that is getting ready to disrupt your business may not even exist yet.

With so much change occurring, your frontline teams need to have direct alignment with leadership. Whether your business is just tweaking strategy or pivoting, your sales reps need to be able to deliver the vision as soon as you make a change. Otherwise, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you risk your customers and competitors being more up-to-date than your sales reps.

That’s why your CEO needs a direct line to the frontline teams, so they can change their messaging quickly.

Most companies tweak or change their messaging regularly, to keep up with competitive changes and new product updates. A lot of time and effort goes into each change, especially if it involves a new product rollout. Given that anywhere

between 33% and 80% of new products

fail, and each can cost millions of dollars, it’s worth taking the time to try and get it right. According to Harvard research, the

biggest reason new products fail is lack of preparation.

A lot of resources are devoted to designing the product, but the finer details of the launch are forgotten, like preparing your sales team to sell it.

Add on top of that, the cost and lost sales that you’ll incur by taking your reps out of the field to attend classroom training each time you roll out a new feature, and it builds a compelling case to find a sales readiness solution that works.

Reps belong on-the-field, that’s why sales readiness technology is crucial now. It enables your reps to cope with constant change while they’re on the field.

2. To grow shareholder value you need to measure effectiveness as well as efficiency

In order to maximize your shareholder value, you can’t just deliver some training to your sales reps and cross your fingers. Your business needs to be able to measure what knowledge has been transferred and quantify how much topline revenue it will generate.

Quantifying results has traditionally been easy to do with tools that profess to improve the efficiency of your sales team. Automatic diallers and emails, and a vast array of other selling tools have all helped your sales organization achieve more with the same amount of resources. But when it comes to effectiveness, you need to be able to demonstrate the ROI to your shareholders.

One way that you can measure the revenue impact of efficiency initiatives on your sales organization is by tracking if they are achieving larger deal sizes and increasing their win rates, for example. Sales readiness tools help reps improve these metrics by improving how effective they are at selling.

Research by CSO Insights

looked at how win rates increased after reps received appropriate training on social selling. They found that training that met or exceeded expectations also improved win rates by 38% and improved quota attainment by 51%. Then a

dd on top of that the impact of effective sales coaching, that can see

win rates increase from 25% to 54%

over 18 months.

But for a sales coaching program to be effective, it needs to be systematic. Sales leaders can use sales readiness tools to identify what reps need to be coached on, and leverage tried and tested programs to coach their reps. Overlay individual sales performance before and after coaching, and you can predict what the longer-term impact on your revenue will be.

Of course, if you’re scaling it may also be necessary to hire more reps, to cover broader markets and industries as well. However, hiring 10x more reps is unlikely to translate into 10x revenue. That’s because new reps need time and skills to ramp up and become productive. Depending on your product and market this can take 6 months or more. That means your bottom line will take a hit while your top line remains flat, placing your ambitious expansion plans in jeopardy.

Sales readiness tools are also designed to onboard and ramp up your new hires quickly. They give managers and sales enablement leaders the tools to identify and nip any problems in the bud and work out how to get each individual new hire to productivity as soon as possible. The quicker they’re onboard, the more shareholder value they will generate.

Research by Aberdeen has found that 34%

more new hires achieve quota after receiving reinforcement for their training. When you consider that the average B2B sales rep costs $29,000 to hire and takes 7.3 months to achieve full productivity, anything you can do to bring that down will have an immediate impact on your top (and bottom) line.

Sales management can predict the impact of these initiatives on your bottom line by measuring how much quicker new hires are becoming productive – time to first sale or time to achieving quota, for example. If all your reps achieve their quota a couple of months earlier, that’s two months worth of revenue that goes straight to your top line.
3. Show the long-term value of your investments

The C-Suite rarely gets into the minutiae of sales initiatives. For example, they might see some glossy publications and a rather hefty cost centre, but do they know what the return on these investments really is?

To make decisions on where to allocate resources they need to see the bigger picture. What economic impact will sales readiness initiatives collectively have over the course of the year?

Take collateral for an example.

Research indicates

that between 70% to 80% of collateral is never used. That’s a huge sunk cost, but it doesn’t mean that the content isn’t valuable. Rather than just cutting the budget, show the C-Suite how much more value this investment can create if you enable your reps.

According to SiriusDecisions, one of the reasons 63% of sales reps fail to achieve quota is because they can’t find and use the relevant content. Now if sales readiness tools can enable your reps to use collateral to their advantage, those reps who aren’t making quota can potentially improve their performance. A simple calculation can show you just how much of an impact that can potentially have over the course of an entire year.

Now extrapolate that over the course of every single product launch or new feature that you release. If sales readiness tools can improve how your reps sell each new product and feature, how much more will you sell each year?

It’s a compelling argument that your CEO will find difficult to ignore. Then the question doesn’t become whether you should invest in sales readiness, it’s why haven’t you invested in it yet?

Striking a Balance between Proactive and In the Field Sales Coaching

Shankar Ganapathy on September 25, 2017

proactive-in-the-field-sales-coachingMarathon runners don’t go out on the field and keep running until they get an injury. They work with their coach to put in place a plan that makes them strong and keeps their muscles supple. All those hours in the gym and time spent with trainers is helping them to increase their chance of winning and reduce their chance of injury. This ensures they’re not worrying about it when they’re racing towards the finish line. But when they’re in the race they still need refreshments to keep them going and performing their best.

They need both proactive coaching and refreshments in the field.

It’s no different for sales reps. They need proactive sales coaching to help build and improve their sales skills for long-term benefit. But they also need on-the-field coaching so they’re refreshed and ready for their next customer meeting.

The benefits of sales coaching are well established, but coaching is often misunderstood.

While coaching on the pipeline and tactical sales activities is important, reps need more to be successful. They need a proactive approach that reinforces behaviors. And they need a cadence to this, it’s not enough to rely on coaching sessions at QBRs or sales kickoffs. That’s why managers and sales enablement teams need to find the right balance between the two.

Too little proactive coaching and your reps will be unprepared for the field. Not enough in-the-field coaching and they might find themselves struggling to close deals.

Proactive sales coaching is about prevention

Proactive coaching is about honing your rep’s skills, building their knowledge and ensuring they understand and can articulate the messaging. It focuses on product knowledge, competitive insights, and industry information.

Now I can hear sales managers starting to gasp. After all, you’ve got a lot on your plate – helping out with demos and objection handling – but your role as a sales manager is much bigger than that.

That’s why best practice sales organizations have a structured coaching program. It provides a framework to coach consistently and ensures reps are up to date and trained in the areas they need the most regularly. By leveraging technology, your reps can handle part of the process themselves. They can practice a demo and allow you to give them feedback without having to be in the same room.

If you are in a hyper-growth industry this type of coaching may occur quarterly, or even more frequently.

In-the-field coaching is about reinforcement

Traditionally, most managers have focused on in-the-field coaching. You sit through a meeting with a sales rep and, in the car ride back to the office, give them feedback and coach them on how they could improve their performance. This is trigger based coaching – you saw something that needed to be coached and reacted.

While this kind of tactical coaching has its place, it isn’t strategic. For in-the-field coaching to be strategic it requires managers to have the ability to step back and look at the bigger picture. What are your reps doing well and where do they need to improve?

For example, if a rep is struggling in three stages – demo, competitive objections and closing – how do you approach all three? This requires a structured approach – show, observe and remediate. You need to show them how to do their demo. This must be coupled with regular, on-field observation so you can monitor how they are performing. Then finally it requires remediation at each specific stage, not just a broad brush approach.

Their coaching strategy also needs to be aligned with the broader business objectives and identify what ongoing issues their individual team members need to have reinforced. This then sets the foundations of what to coach on.

To achieve this, the proactive coaching must be specific and well-structured.

Data holds the key to coaching

Traditionally, managers have had access to lagging indicators to help them identify what to coach on. But by the time you can see your win rates declining, it’s already too late to stop the losses from happening.

To stay ahead of the game, managers need to leverage data to identify what their reps need to be coached on and identify their gaps. This is important for both proactive coaching and structuring in-the-field coaching. That’s where data analytics comes in.

Thanks to the advent of sales readiness and enablement technology you now have access to a wide range of data that can help you identify where your reps might be struggling or where their knowledge or skill gaps are.

Structured coaching on baseline knowledge, new product updates and message articulation can be performed when it is convenient for reps using sales readiness technology like Mindtickle. Coaching is accessible anywhere and reps can complete role plays when it suits them. Feedback can be provided instantly, or reviewed by the rep when they have time.

Certifications and quizzes give managers information about who is up to speed and what areas your individual reps may require additional training or coaching on. When integrated with your SalesForce CRM you can also conduct analysis based on role, region, cohort, whatever way you want.

This data can also be used for in-the-field training. Analyze how your best reps use their sales readiness technology before meeting a prospect. This information can then be used to identify how to coach your B and C players before their next big meeting. Leverage quizzes to identify areas where your reps need to have their knowledge reinforced. When combined with structured activities, like specific objection handling exercises, managers can provide valuable in-the-field coaching based on what reps actually need, rather than their own intuition or observation.

With the power of data at your fingertips, you can make a fundamental shift in how you coach your reps, build their sales skills and resolving immediate issues. Rather than solving a problem once it’s come to your attention, you can proactively nip issues in the bud.

So rather than waiting to find out where your reps weak spots are, leverage tools that help you prevent issues becoming injuries that leave your sales reps sitting on the bench.

How Does a Sales Readiness Solution Differ from an LMS?

Shankar Ganapathy on August 15, 2017

sales readiness versus LMS 1Just the mention of the phrase “sales training” usually elicits a groan from sales reps and managers alike. That’s because it’s traditionally been expensive, time-consuming and may offer little visible benefit. While technology has automated and improved almost every business area, from Finance to Marketing, sales training seems to have been left behind.

While good old learning management systems (LMS) have had an important role to play, in a dynamic and agile world they now seem a bit outdated. Content creation and delivery are still important, but the emphasis is now on how we deliver content and the outcomes they produce.

For forward-looking sales enablement leaders, the traditional LMS just doesn’t help them make the impact on the sales organization that they need. And without the desired impact or outcome, they’re left struggling to elevate the role of sales enablement within their business.

That’s why many are now turning to sales readiness technology. Sales readiness shifts the focus of sales training away from imparting knowledge to delivering real outcomes.

While traditional LMS enabled sales training, sales readiness technology enables sales effectiveness. Sales readiness platforms also enable sales training, but they also actually help your sales reps become better at selling by focusing in on improving their skills and execution.

Sales readiness is an outcome-oriented approach that identifies the capabilities your reps need to win more deals and enables them to develop these. It provides tools that enable your reps with the right knowledge and helps them develop their selling skills so they can use that knowledge in real life scenarios. It also helps sales managers and subject matter experts build a regular cadence to coach sales reps, and gives them the analytics they need to monitor how their reps are improving.

LMS only focuses in on one aspect: providing knowledge through training. An LMS focuses on learning management, while the objective of sales readiness solutions is to achieve learning outcomes. They do this by honing in knowledge, skill development, execution discipline, and analytics.

How-Sales-Readiness-Platforms-Achieve-Learning-Outcomes_3

Sales readiness solutions are a natural evolution from LMS. In an agile world, outcomes become even more critical, and sales are all about outcomes. So anything that can help your reps improve their sales performance is business critical.

Sales readiness tools help your reps improve their capabilities whenever they need to. It’s like when you’re preparing for a marathon. All those weeks and months in the gym help flex your muscles and prepare them. But your barbells aren’t going to help you on the day of the big race. That’s when you need all the little things that make you agiler and keep you performing at your best – great shoes, plenty of fluids and little bursts of energy.

While LMS have traditionally helped do the hard yards in the gym they don’t have the same agility and just-in-time capabilities that sales readiness solutions have. In this day and age, having the right information and tools just when you need it can make all the difference between closing a deal or losing to a better-equipped competitor. Which outcome would you prefer your reps achieve?

Why Sales Enablement needs to work with Sales Ops

Shankar Ganapathy on August 8, 2017

Why-Sales-Enablement-needs-Sales-OpsThere are many functions powering modern sales teams, Sales Enablement, and Sales Operations are two examples. As a company grows each function evolves and roles are more clearly defined, it will become easier to identify the organizational structure. But organizational charts don’t always reflect the dependencies that different roles have on each other.
While Sales Enablement and Sales Operations may solve different problems in your organization, they need each other a lot more than you may realize.
Sales Enablement is focused on ensuring reps are prepared and effective at selling. They are often responsible for a broad range of deliverables from sales training, coaching and onboarding to communication, sales process and even performance analysis.
Sales Operations is the data engine room that is constantly looking for ways to improve the sales execution, optimize processes and report to sales leadership on any gaps that need to be plugged. Their role may include managing the CRM, process design, and management, territory planning, deal routing, contract management, optimizing and overseeing sales incentive plans, forecasting and performance analysis.

Sales Ops bookends Sales Enablement

As Sales Ops is responsible for much of the data analysis that supports the sales function, they are often the first port of call when management is searching for insights. For example, Ops may identify that certain reps get stuck at a particular point in the sales process, like just after they’ve given a demo. While they may be the first to alert sales leadership that there is a problem, further investigation will be required to determine what the problem is and how to fix. That’s where Sales Enablement steps in.
Sales Enablement can take these insights and investigate to identify the core problem and determine the best way to fix them. By working out what’s causing the sales cycle to stall at that particular point, Sales Enablement can determine what their reps need to speed up the process and get them closer to closing the sale or moving onto a new prospect. The quicker this problem is resolved, the more revenue your sales engine can potentially generate. By relying on Ops to help detect issues at the start of the enablement process, Sales Enablement can identify business issues and fix them. This gives them the ability to be outcome-oriented and create a measurable impact on business results.
At the other end of the enablement process, Sales Ops also plays a crucial role in measuring the impact of enablement initiatives. With all that data at their fingertips, Ops have the ability to identify the right indicators to determine if enablement initiatives are having the desired effect or if reps are still stuck at the same point. They can also track these metrics so that Sales Enablement can demonstrate that their enablement initiatives are working.

Together Ops and Enablement are stronger

Sales Enablement and Sales Ops have the potential for a perfect partnership. Their roles complement each other and they have the same overriding objective – for the sales organization to be more effective and efficient.
There is another key benefit for Enablement to collaborate with Ops, by combining forces the two functions can have a much greater impact and a stronger voice. While Sales Enablement may rack up some spectacular wins, it can be challenging to ensure they get the management attention they deserve. That’s where partnering with Ops can help.
As Tamara Schenk points out, collaboration is key to a productive relationship with Sales Ops. To facilitate this collaboration the business will require a defined interface that ensures their process, messaging and communication is consistent and connected. To achieve this collaboration, an alignment framework is helpful.Why-Sales-Enablement-needs-Sales-Ops
Sales Ops is typically involved in the front and back-end processes that create the strategic framework, forecasting, and analysis. They are also responsible for managing sales automation processes that often improve the efficiency of the sales organization. Sales Enablement’s role is focused on the reps and their capabilities. Building knowledge, sales skills, execution discipline, and effectiveness.
While the two roles do not overlap, they rely on each other to play integral roles in improving the sales organization. Sales Ops on its own can improve the efficiency of the sales machine, but it’s Sales Enablement that ensures it is effective.
By backing up Sales Enablement wins with metrics from Ops, together you can demonstrate how much more effective the sales organization is operating. Enablement and Ops share common goals, which means they can leverage each other’s strengths to achieve even more.


When Hiring for Sales Enablement, What’s the Best Fit – Product Marketing or Sales?

Shankar Ganapathy on July 24, 2017

hiring-sales-enablement-marketing-salesSales enablement is currently at a nascent stage, which means it can be difficult to find good quality people with enablement experience. Many often fall into sales enablement roles because someone suggests it to them or perhaps they’ve taken on some of the functions of the role as part of their position in sales or marketing. It’s something we’ve been thinking about a lot at Mindtickle as we help sales organizations scale rapidly, so when our co-founder and CRO, Mohit Garg, asked this question on LinkedIn, I found the broad range of responses quite interesting.
According to Lucas Gerler, The Sales Enablement Society polled its members and found that about 40% of current practitioners come from marketing, about 30% from sales, and the remaining 30% from other roles. There are benefits to be gained from hiring from both sales and marketing backgrounds.

Sales is in your DNA

As Renee Capovilla said “If you have “walked” in the shoes of the customers you are serving your deliverables reflect that DNA.” And when it comes to sales enablement your customer is the sales organization, so having experience in sales is a big advantage. It gives you credibility on the field, particularly if the role involves delivering sales training and liaising with the sales organization regularly. Having sales management experience also gives you credibility with the C-Suite according to Chuck Marcouiller, “I believe the key customer of sales enablement is the CRO and senior sales leaders. Having a sales leadership background gives the street credibility and insight into what sales leadership is facing.”
The benefit of having sales experience extends beyond just credibility. It means that you know how to empathize with your customers and the problems that sales reps experience daily. A view affirmed by Nancy Maluso who said: “insights into the seller persona is critical.” This includes an understanding of the buying process and the sales skills that are required to convert a prospect to an opportunity and close the deal faster. Salespeople don’t need to know the thought process behind the product, they need to know their customer and how the product helps them.
But having sales experience isn’t enough as sales enablement must collaborate with so many areas and brings together a diverse range of skills. That’s why salespeople who have held a range of roles in an organization tend to be a good fit. If someone has worked in sales ops, been involved in process improvement, knows how to build partnerships internally or understands how to leverage technology to improve how they do their job, then they bring a lot to the table.
“I’ve found that folks with a pre-sales background perform very well. They understand selling and the sales process and they have deep knowledge of your products and can translate their value in a way sales (and customers) can understand,” explains Daniel West.

Marketing skills enrich customer conversations

While sales understand the customer, product marketing understands the persona and how they relate to the product. This means they can synthesize information about the customer from research and other sources and understand the psychology behind how to communicate with a customer effectively. When coupled with execution skills like lead generation this can be a very powerful skill set that enriches the sales enablement team.
Marketing skills are also favorable at the execution level for some aspects of sales enablement. Content delivery and program management are two areas where marketing can really create knowledge. It may also be beneficial to look beyond product marketing and consider people in regional marketing functions. This is because those roles often incorporate many types of enablement and field sales activities.

Blending sales and marketing may be the right mix

Perhaps the real answer lies in not choosing one over the other, but rather bringing together a blend of skills in your sales enablement team. While people with a sales background know how to approach customers, those in marketing understand how to craft a compelling message to a persona. When both come together they can create the right blend that can enable your sales team and continuously hone and improve their skills.
It’s not easy to find people who have straddled both sales and marketing over the course of their career but you can occasionally find a salesperson who has a knack for product marketing or vice versa. But if you have a sales enablement team then it is perhaps best to create an environment where you can leverage a cross-functional skill base and place people in roles that work to their strengths. This approach can give you the best of both worlds.

Sales enablement is multi-faceted

While the primary discussion is around whether sales or marketing skills are best for sales enablement roles, the reality is that enablement is a multi-faceted role. It’s not enough to understand the customer, craft a message and train the sales team. It also involves making sure they’re more effective at their role and have everything they need to be ready for every sales conversation. This requires analytical skills, an understanding of technology and the ability to improve and re-engineer processes. Sales enablement needs the skills to develop and execute content and training programs, which requires a combination of these skills.
In many respects, sales enablement requires a multidisciplinary approach, which is why some practitioners come from consulting, engineering or even training. The key for any sales enablement leader is to align the desired business outcomes to projects and milestones. They must work with learning specialists to design the right outcome-oriented program.

Each sales organization is different and must find its right blend

When it comes down to it, there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to this question – it really depends. It depends on the stage your business is, the verticals you’re targeting, your product and your growth trajectory.
The needs of a sales organization also change over time and so do the skills they require in their enablement team. That’s why identifying what your organization requires now and then building a strategy and a team that can deliver those specific needs is so important.
By its very nature, sales enablement needs to be forward-looking and able to pre-empt what sales require before it becomes a real problem. This strategic outlook should translate into your hiring strategy. A sales enablement team needs to enable the acceleration of sales, and you need a team that can support your strategy to achieve this. 

Sales Disrupted: Preparing your Sales Organization to IPO

Shankar Ganapathy on July 24, 2017

sales preparing to ipoPreparing to IPO is a massive task. It’s not enough to have the legal paperwork and financial reporting ready, your business also has to be able to demonstrate that it’s up to the task. As Joe Sexton, who helped prepare our customer AppDynamics for its IPO journey, has said: “you have to act like a public company before you actually become one.”
When it comes to your sales organization that means ensuring you have all the necessary rigors in place from your sales process to culture. This process should start about 24 months before you’re planning to IPO. There are six areas that we suggest focusing on when considering how to enable and prepare your sales organization to be ready to IPO.
sales preparing to ipo 2

Ensure your messaging is consistent

While consistent messaging is crucial for any sales organization, when your business is preparing to IPO its importance becomes elevated. It also becomes more important to look at consistent messaging from a data-driven perspective. From CEO to SDR, everyone needs to sing from the same songbook so your customers and the public see a cohesive sales machine. The entire company should be aligned on your message and articulate it because this will become a core part of your overall IPO strategy
Core to messaging is your company’s story.
MuleSoft, who recently made its public debut, refined its messaging with a core team of leaders. It then created a certification program to ensure each member of its frontline team was on message before they had customer conversations.
“We had the core team record themselves in the Mindtickle platform to provide examples and best practices. Then we formed a group of best performing reps and managers who we call black belts. This group of black belts then certified the full team. We had over 500 people go through this program,” explains Stephen Hallowell, VP of Sales Enablement at MuleSoft.
Leadership support was key to the success of their messaging as well as setting benchmarks and ensuring each rep received personalized coaching. AppDynamics also underwent an extensive company-wide process to certify their reps on consistent messaging. Each rep had three chances to achieve certification of their message or they were out.

Build capacity for growth

Investors will want to see a company that is growing and poised for further growth. This is not the time to take your foot of the pedal, a business that is preparing to IPO should be continuing to scale sustainably. In fact, public tech investors like revenue growth rates above 30% in the two forecasted years after the IPO. Others suggest that a business should already be achieving $100 million in revenue by the time they IPO, and still be growing.
Building the capacity for growth isn’t just about adding more reps though. In fact, the key to building sales capacity is ensuring you’re not over-investing.  In order to grow a business needs more reps who are selling more effectively and meeting quota. You need to do more, smarter, better with the resources you have as well.
This goes beyond just looking at quotas and considering how to ensure more of your reps are able to achieve or even smash their quota. If you’re hiring new reps, how long does it take them to ramp up and what can you do get them fully ramped up quicker. How effective are your current reps? Can you identify what is causing them to lose deals?
This can be achieved in several ways, enablement initiatives like onboarding and effective sales coaching can make a significant step change in the way your reps perform. For example, Mulesoft executed a structured coaching program to drive behavioral change. They identified execution gaps and built competency maps to help them pinpoint where to target their coaching efforts to make a real difference in the performance of their sales reps.
AppDynamics looked at the yield of each rep, being what the rep should be able to produce. This yield helped them define their sales capacity and identify what capacity they needed to hit their targets.

Button down your processes

Before IPO, all your sales processes need to be rock-solid. That means having in place everything from demand generation tools to pipeline management. Processes should be streamlined, understood and scalable. Investors will expect execution excellence. This means more than just having a consistent sales process and methodology that is used by all reps. Coaching processes should also be in place to ensure any gaps are identified and able to be rectified quickly.
It’s also important to look across your entire customer facing team. While much effort is focused on field sales reps, inside reps and even customer success teams play an important role. By qualifying leads and ensuring they are nurtured or moved onto field sales when the time is right inside sales helps improve efficiency and reduce your sales cycle. While customer success can play an important role in customer retention and renewals.
AppDynamics developed a culture of excellence in pipeline generation. Every Monday field sales reps focused on prospecting, according to our VP of Sales, Cameron Essalat, this was called PG (pipeline generation) Mondays. , in addition to marketing, partners and inbound sales. These efforts supercharged their sales pipeline and helped the business continue to scale rapidly.

Continue to invest in capability

Creating a strong pipeline is important, but the investment will be sunk if your reps are not able to convert those leads. This is where focusing in on sales effectiveness to build capability is key.
Your reps’ skills need to continue to be developed so they can constantly improve and stay on top what they need to. Building capability can include enablement initiatives that ensure regular communication, develop structured coaching and provide reps with tools that keep them constantly up to date and primed to sell at their best.
The more you invest in your sales team the more important retention becomes. This is why it’s also important to consider the type of sales culture you want for your business and put in place processes and initiatives to help you achieve this.

Measurement is imperative

You’re no longer a small startup that’s testing a new product. By the time you’re 24 months out from IPO, your business will be still scaling but revenue should be becoming more predictable. But just because your revenue is predictable doesn’t mean you shouldn’t maintain a tight rein over your performance.
To control and identify issues before they become major problems it’s important to identify what areas have the power to transform or derail your sales. Then you can determine which leading indicators to monitor so you can stay ahead of the game and make any necessary adjustments to keep you on track. If you’ve only got an eye on lagging indicators like topline revenue, you aren’t giving yourself an opportunity to foresee issues and address them before it’s too late.

Build a sales stack that supports growth

Your sales stack should support your growth and help your reps sell, not give them yet another thing to learn. Precious time and resource can be saved by building a sales stack that is intuitive and leverages integrations wherever possible.
Many efficient businesses anchor their sales stack to their CRM so reporting and activity can be streamlined in one place. It makes sense, but of course, your sales stack must also support your other core initiatives to create consistent messaging, build capacity and capability and execute your processes. With these six measures in place, you can not only prepare your business to IPO when the time is right but also help it continue to scale and achieve its growth potential.

Sales Readiness for Each Stage of Your Startup

Shankar Ganapathy on July 24, 2017

sales readiness for startupsYou can’t just set and forget sales enablement or readiness initiatives. As your startup grows and your operating environment changes, so do the challenges that your sales organization is dealing with. That’s why your sales reps will need different things to develop and improve their sales readiness at each stage of your business’ evolution.

Sales-Stages-of-Startup

1. Sales acceleration

Product stage:

Focus is on testing and validating your product
Revenue:

$100k to $500k
Funding stage:

Bootstrapping or seed funding
Size of sales team:

1 to 2 (often including the founder)
Sales structure:

Often unstructured with ad hoc process development
Sales challenges:

No dedicated sales enablement resources but the business needs some quick wins to help it validate its business model. The key challenge here is making sure they hire the right salesperson as one wrong move can lead to disaster.

Essential sales readiness initiatives:

At sales acceleration, it’s all hands on deck. While resources are scarce, putting in place the bare bones of a sales readiness program will set your business up and help new reps hit the ground running. These initiatives include:

  • Basic sales onboarding to give new hires the knowledge they need to get up to speed quickly.
  • Basic collaterals to support sales conversations and drive simple marketing campaigns.
  • Preliminary buyer personas that start defining who your target audience is.
  • Simple processes that ensure you’re not recreating the wheel either every new hire or customer conversation. This includes bringing together information and tools and putting in place same basic messaging principles.

2. Revenue acceleration

Product stage:

Refining and testing as market knowledge increases
Revenue:

$2m to $10m
Funding stage:

Series A to Series C
Size of sales team:

5 to 30
Sales structure:

As you hire rapidly the sales team is scaling. To meet the needs of the growing team defined sales processes, guidelines and procedures are put in place.
Sales challenges:

New product features are being added every week which is continuously impacting your customer value proposition and pitch. Sales team turnover is increasing as you hire rapidly and need to show investors that you can achieve results quickly.

Essential sales readiness initiatives:

It’s all systems go with both your product and sales team. To meet growth targets your sales team needs to keep up with a constantly evolving product and new team members. This small startup is now looking like a fully-fledged business.

  • As the product is refined, the customer messaging changes regularly. To keep up your sales reps’ messaging needs to be almost constantly re-calibrated.
  • Your competitors are just as active as you, which means your sales reps need to be updated regularly on your product, competition and industry changes to make sure they’re always one step ahead of their customers.
  • A structured onboarding program is now essential thanks to your fast-growing sales team.
  • While individuals have previously led process initiatives, it’s now important to develop sales processes that are driven by business requirements.
  • Getting the most from every sales reps is crucial. Driving sales efficiency, so you can achieve more with the same resources will help drive sales performance.
  • Other support departments in your business are also growing, like Marketing and Product. In order to stay on top of what they’re doing and co-ordinate efforts collaboration is vital.

3. Hyper-growth

Product stage:

This is now

well-refined
Revenue:

$10m to $100m
Funding stage:

Series D to Series E
Size of sales team:

30 to 250
Sales structure:

Distributed

sales force located in multiple markets. Your competitors are starting to take notice and more are entering your niche.
Sales challenges:

As you grow hiring and onboarding increasingly become even more challenging especially as you start hiring in new geographies and internationally. Sales management starts to feel the unique challenges of managing remote individuals and teams.

New products are introduced which also requires reboarding of your existing reps.

Essential sales readiness initiatives:

You’re no longer part of a small business. With growth comes the challenge of managing more people and ensuring they’re all on strategy and singing in the same key.

  • Sales onboarding continues to evolve and is now a regular and predictable process.
  • With each new product launch there is a need to co-ordinate the approach, not just within your sales team, but also between your other business functions.
  • A sales kickoff is now an integral part of your sales calendar, designed to invigorate, inspire and keep your reps on track.
  • With so many reps across a wide range of locations, keeping them all on message can be a struggle. That’s where certifying their message can help bring consistency regardless of geography.
  • Coaching is now an essential part of your sales managers’ roles. They lead this initiative to drive sales effectiveness and skill development.

4. Profit and expansion

Product stage:

Maturing
Revenue:

$100m and beyond
Funding stage:

Pre-IPO
Size of sales team:

250+
Sales structure:

Proven sales processes and methodologies are in place and they support your mature sales organization. The goal now is to achieve a predictable sales method that produces predictable results.
Sales challenges:

Sales effectiveness and capacity building are key, but they must be achieved while still managing to keep costs under control.
Essential sales readiness initiatives:

Your sales engine is now scaling to achieve predictable revenue. All your sales initiatives are designed to keep the machine humming along while identifying new and innovative ways to enable your sales team and continuously improve how they operate.

  • It’s all about the data now, so you’re constantly looking for ways to refine and improve the metrics that are helping you drive your business.
  • New capabilities and capacity are being built to ensure that predictable revenue can be achieved.
  • Your internal culture needs some focus to ensure that it is geared to constantly enable your business. This mindset should permeate every aspect of your business including strategy, analytics, logistics and operations.

What your reps need to always be prepared and sales ready is constantly changing. Even once your business has matured post-IPO your sales readiness initiatives will need to be evaluated and reviewed on an ongoing basis. This is because, just as your business always strives to achieve more, so do your competitors and your customers. This drives the momentum for continuous improvement. Once you have the essentials in place, sales readiness is about taking your sales reps to the next level so they can always stay at the top of their game.

Sales Disrupted: A Framework to Deal with Disruptive Forces

Shankar Ganapathy on July 4, 2017

We live in an age of constant change. An age where disruption is the new normal. But there are some events that can jolt your sales organization into a new phase instantly. And in an instant, you have to rethink your approach and adapt.
Sales-Disrupted

The disruptions that impact our customer’s most often include:

  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Preparing to IPO and beyond
  • A surprise new competitor
  • Regulatory changes that impact how you sell

Perhaps your business has been part of a merger or acquisition or is preparing to IPO, a new competitor strategy has taken you by surprise, or a regulatory change has completely changed how you can sell. These significant events can take the

sales readiness of your sales organization

back a step or two and it can take you weeks, months or even years to recover and adapt. But that doesn’t mean you need to recreate the wheel every single time. By following or framework you can identify how your business needs to adapt and get back on track quicker.

A framework for enabling sales disrupted

The key to recovering from a sales disruption is to be agile. Your reps need to be enabled so they can pick themselves up and get back out there quickly.  But speed alone isn’t enough if your reps aren’t prepared with the right things to get them back on track.

Before reacting, take a step back and look at

what parts of your business

the disruption is impacting:

  • Resources: Do you have the right resources to take your business forward? This isn’t just about having enough salespeople, but also consider whether they’re all up to standard. Perhaps you need more support resources or different tools to help your sales organization be agiler.
  • Processes: Do your processes meet the needs of your sales organization now? Your processes need to be agile enough to adapt or at least be reviewed when a disruptive change occurs. It’s also important to look beyond your sales processes and to any other business process that may be impacted like customer success or logistics to ensure that they also meet the needs of your new world order. The more stable and adaptable your processes are, the easier it will be for your business to react quickly to disruption.
  • Values: Your corporate values flow through your entire organization, but how are they applied to your sales organization. Your sales reps need to have some autonomy to apply your values, but these need to first be communicated well so they are applied correctly. This can filter down to the type of business you wish to attract or how your reps react when faced with stiff price competition. Agile businesses empower their employees to act within their values.

Taking this approach one level down, you can then establish an enablement framework that considers the three areas where your reps may need support; Knowledge and Messaging, Sales Skills, and Execution Discipline.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help identify what enablement initiatives need to be in place.
Knowledge-and-messaging

What initiatives your sales organization needs the most will depend on what has caused the disruption to your business. For example:
Disruption #1: Mergers & Acquisitions:

 The core objective here is to retain customers and maintain momentum through a period of internal change. Often knowledge and messaging is the most crucial focus area for enablement activities as reps require regular communication and the value proposition may need to be rebaselined.
Disruption #2: IPO:

 As you prepare for IPO execution discipline is key, ensuring you have all your processes in place. Post-IPO this may shift to knowledge and messaging as communication becomes more important and the business’ messaging changes.
Disruption #3: Surprise competitor:

 Knowledge and messaging are critical when going into battle with a new competitor. YYour value proposition needs to be sharp and your reps will need to be up-to-date with the competitive landscape and offerings.
Disruption #4: Regulatory changes:

– While knowledge and messaging is important, depending on the regulatory change, it may impact the sales process and the skills your reps require.

Put a plan in place

To drive your enablement program put in place milestones and a process to achieve these. For example, if you want to develop a consistent message across the organization, what’s the message? How will you communicate this? How will you know that it has been a success? Who will need to be involved in the process?

This plan will map not only what needs to be done, but also which stakeholders will be involved in each step and what other tools you need to achieve it.

Measure, measure, measure

Once you know what areas require focus you can then consider what insights you require. The closer you are able to monitor your reps progress, the quicker you will be able to identify any gaps in their knowledge or skills and plug them. This will keep any revenue leakage from the disruption to a minimum.

By focusing in on leading indicators of

 sales effectiveness and efficiency

, rather than lagging indicators, the more control you will have over your revenue. For example, if your value proposition has changed then reviewing your reps’ elevator pitch will be important. Role plays can be used to provide coaching and feedback and certifications provide a mechanism to measure how prepared reps are for their customer conversations.

Dealing with disruption is never easy. Knee-jerk reactions are common, but they rarely have the desired effect. By following a structured approach you can ensure your sales reps are enabled to deal with the disruption quickly and confidently. Who knows, it may even put you in the position to outsmart the disruptive force.

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