In Conversation with Mark Tefakis of Fuze

MARK-TEFAKIS_sales enablement_fuzeThis post is based on a webinar where Mark Tefakis, VP of Global Enablement at Fuze, shares the key pillars of successful sales enablement and how to show its ROI to your leadership.
Fuze is an award-winning “cloud-based unified communication platform that addresses complexities around the modern workforce with the ability to work in a way that drives efficiency and effectiveness for the growth and profitability metrics companies need,” explains Mark. “Founded in 2006, we’re headquartered in Boston and have offices throughout Europe, into Australia, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.”

The evolution and need for sales enablement

“Sales Enablement centered around training and development initially and expanded into how you fully enable the sales organization,” Mark continued. “A lot of CSOs are being challenged with having a constant pulse on the business, to be able to report on where they are today, where they’re going tomorrow, and knowing the lead and lag indicators so they can be responsive to the demands of the business. The discipline of sales enablement is a foundational set of processes and standards that help the CSO address that pressure and scrutiny. This foundation includes time to ramp (TTR) [onboarding], ongoing enablement [to increase productivity], and [preventing] unplanned churn.”

The five pillars of sales enablement

Mark developed the concept of the five pillars of sales enablement through his experience in sales and sales leadership. They are:

  1. Organizational alignment: “Before you get started you have to understand the dynamics around the organizational alignment. Do you have governance and some process in place where everybody understands the vision, strategies, initiatives, scorecards, and metrics that you’re putting in place to drive the success of the program? That’s critically important,” explained Mark.
  2. Role-based certification: Most sales organizations have several different roles that vary by company and industry. Role-based certification involves identifying the competency model tied to the skills and knowledge associated with each role. As you look through the motion of each role, what is the thing reps need to know, say, show, and do as they manage the day-in-a-life of performing against the expectations of the role? Next, turn it into a curriculum and how you want to train, develop, and evaluate the performance of these roles. There are three levels that comprise this certification model:
    1. Lecture and test the retention of knowledge;
    2. Exercise and application, transitioning from understanding a concept into applying and exercising the skill tied to that concept prior to going out into the field; and
    3. Managers evaluateperformance in the field and coach.
  3. Enablement on demand: “Leverage technology to streamline how effectively you execute against the things that are defined in the role-based competency model. There’s no need for heavy dependency on instructor-led training or virtual training when there are technology and applications that allow you to better drive efficiency and effectiveness, plus scale better for the organization within a proper cost model,” explains Mark. “Leverage technology as part of this foundational layer and put the power in the palm of the hand of the individual. Do this within cloud-based applications, with integration into CRM, where you can tie learning and sales supporting assets to a specific sales scenario, prescribing assets and learning based on that scenario. Also building in some gamification to drive contest around how people learn is really compelling. I would encourage you to think about enablement on demand,” he continues.
  4. Predictive analytics: “It’s one thing to look at reports and reference a dashboard of things that happened in the past. It’s another to look through the windshield, at the road ahead, and predictively be able to tell where your business is going. If you establish the right lead and lag metrics, supporting technology can show when individuals in your sales organization are heading for disaster. You can then start to prescribe specific learning to get them over that hurdle so they can start to perform much better,” suggests Mark.
  5. Sales advisory boards (a.k.a. voice of the customer): “If you don’t establish champions and have a feedback loop from the sales organization, you will battle some apprehensive people while you’re pushing programs out. This is a mechanism for you to be able to gather insight and feedback in a structured fashion. Sales can contribute to the design and development of your initiatives through localized champions who can support and help drive adoption,” he explains.

“With the five pillars of successful sales enablement,” Mark explained, “we’re leveraging really interesting technology to help do this so you can scale with the demands of the business. You’re not asking the CFO for a ton of bodies, you’re actually leveraging the power of technology, and better equipping and enabling the field based on the power in the palm of your hand, which ties back to the center pillar of enabling on demand.”

How sales enablement works at Fuze

“First and foremost is sales methodology. Whether you do it internally or you leverage an external partner, you have to start there because that is the foundation that drives the rest of the bubbles to the right,” Mark continued.
“Once you have that in place, you then start to think in terms of how to establish a best practice approach to outreach and engagement to the marketplace. We use Mindtickle for our learning management system and recently launched it to our global sales organization. We use Savo for our content management system and a combination of both Mindtickle and Savo to help us with ‘voice of the customer’ and engagement with the field.  This gives us the pulse of what’s going on,” explains Mark.
“All of these equate to very effective sales productivity based on the pillars and the underlying enablement technology that you can put in place.”

In Conversation with MuleSoft on Sales Coaching

 

This post is based on a webinar where Stephen Hallowell, VP of Sales Enablement at MuleSoft discusses why companies should invest in sales coaching.

MuleSoft is a leading high-growth technology company that focuses on application integration under one platform. With over 800 employees and over 1000 enterprise customers across 60 countries, MuleSoft has had astounding growth.
“We have been evolving quite a bit as a company over the years. We have gone from what was a fairly tactical engagement to selling business value associated with what otherwise can be a pretty technical concept. We are enabling change on a broad scale inside some very large companies,” explains Hallowell.

Why sales coaching matters

A significant part of MuleSoft’s success can be credited to their investment in sales coaching. “To improve the outcome and win more deals, the sales rep has to start doing things in a fundamentally different way than they were previously. Natural behavior is to put one foot in front of the other and keep marching straight. We need our sales reps to stop and take a left turn at some point. The only way that we’ve been able to drive that behavior change is through coaching, ” says Hallowell

Two main aspects of the coaching program 

Sales leadership at MuleSoft decided that their sales coaching initiative should answer two questions:

  1. Are

    their reps doing what is important?

  2. How can their managers help their reps sell the right way?

Most sales teams get their approach to the second question right by coaching their sales reps. But the first question is often under-recognized yet it’s vital to ‘accountability’.
“If the manager doesn’t actually know and doesn’t have the ability to know, whether somebody’s doing the right thing, and the individual contributor also doesn’t know, you can never get that self-diagnosis. The more you can make it very apparent to people what they’re doing well and what they’re not doing well, you create the need for change,” explains Hallowell.
“If somebody comes in and coaches me and says, “Ah, well, hey, here’s a better way of doing things,” and I haven’t seen that reason yet for doing things differently, I’m not going to get the results out of it,” he continues.

Building a competency map

The first step was to identify what knowledge gaps their managers had. This was done through effective benchmarking.
“To kick this off, we did some benchmarking with our managers by assessing them against some third party statistics. That helped us realize some are exceptional and some are not. That helped create that need for change across all levels of the organization,” explains Hallowell.
Once the gaps were identified, the next step in the process was to train them effectively on their skill gaps. “The next thing we did was build the competency maps. We did that probably 9 to 12 months into the process. In my experience, for a competency map to be effective it’s got to be somewhat detailed, just because you’ve got to be precise about what you want people to do. That level of detail delivered too early can be a bit overwhelming. Trying to find that right balance of really defining for the managers, these are the specific behaviors and skills you need to coach, to giving them enough detail to be actionable, but not so much detail that you overwhelm them,” explains Hallowell.

Designing the certification program

“One important thing we drove was a significant relaunch of our messaging. A pool of leaders and individual contributors locked themselves in a room for a couple of days and came out with something that everybody felt really good about. Once it reached the field, there was no question of “Is this the right message?” Our leaders bought into it,” says Hallowell. The primary element in the coaching program at MuleSoft was message calibration, which was done by the leadership team.
“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,” explained Hallowell.

Coaching is not a checkbox exercise 

The importance of this program is well understood given that over 500 employees went through the coaching program. The program was well received across the organization. What exactly worked for MuleSoft?
There were multiple factors including support from their leadership, setting high benchmarks for their sales reps and providing personalized feedback for each rep.
“One of the things that were really important for us is that this wasn’t just a check the box exercise. If it had been simply a box-checking exercise, there wouldn’t have been a lot of opportunity for coaching. I can’t overstate the importance of really broad management support and solving a pain point that everybody recognizes. The next thing is holding that performance bar very high. We did not pass people who were not completely 100%. Yeah, it might take a little longer than we want, but we’re going to make sure we get everybody’s attention on,” says Hallowell.

Finally, make it awesome

The success of a coaching program is measured on how well it is adopted.

The last thing I’ll leave you with is we have a set of core values at MuleSoft. One of them is to make it awesome. It’s one that I love. I use it with my team all the time, and I think it’s so important in our role. You’re going to ask a lot of people going through this program. If they detect anything that’s not awesome, they’re not going to invest,

says Hallowell.

Did Hallowell and his team make it awesome? Given their success, it sure looks like they did. The coaching program helped MuleSoft scale their sales team without compromising on the performance of any individual. Their average selling price went up from $ 77K to $169K. And feedback about the coaching program was really positive across all levels of the organization.

“A number of people that came up to me and just said, “Thanks for making me go through that.” I think this quote is verbatim from half a dozen people, said, “You know, I was pretty skeptical about this thing when we first started, but I’m so glad you made me do it. I’m so much more confident with my customers,” says Hallowell proudly.

How ForeScout Achieved Sales Delivering a Consistent Pitch [ Podcast, Part 2]

In this 5-minute

interview Capovilla outlines:

  • What their 30 – 3 – 30 corporate pitches are;
  • What is covered in ForeScout’s corporate pitch certification program; and
  • How their scorecard works to ensure all their new reps are on the pitch.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

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sales excellence forescoutAs Director of Sales Enablement at ForeScout, Renee Capovilla was set an ambitious goal. “The goal was that when asked about ForeScout and what ForeScout did –  a consistent message would come out. And so we have this corporate pitch program which serves as a framework to which we present our capabilities, our differentiators and our value to our customers.”

Capovilla not only took on the challenge but developed a company-wide corporate pitch certification program. But this isn’t just a quick elevator pitch. It’s a detailed three-part process that all sales reps are required to be certified in within their first 30 days.

“It enables that discussion around the security buyer’s challenge, we present use cases, the current infrastructure gaps that could be occurring and then we help walk the customer through how Forescout can uniquely address each one of them.

It’s really more than just a pitch. It’s taking our customers on a journey of our security platform.”
Listen now

to hear how Capovilla introduced and implemented a company-wide corporate pitch certification program.

Avalara’s 5 Levels of Sales Certification [Podcast, Episode 3]

In this 12-minute

interview Marcouiller outlines:

  • How Avalara transformed its enablement and onboarding program to scale
  • His five-level process for onboarding and certifying new sales hires, and
  • How Avalara has structured its five unique sales teams while maintaining the same corporate look and feel

Listen now

to hear how Marcouiller manages the challenges of scaling and enabling five leading sales teams at once.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud or find it here.

Sales Excellence Chuck“Sales enablement is the foundation pillar, saw sharpener and keeper of the flame.”

That’s how Chuck Marcouiller views his role as Director of Sales Learning at Avalara. With a sales force of 325 people scattered across 5 countries and numerous cities, Avalara has managed to achieve scale and maintain enviable growth rates of between 40 – 60% year on year.

“My role is to ensure that each member of the sales team has the foundational skills when they come on board, and then and as they progress they continue to sharpen their skills weekly and make sure that they stay grounded in our strong corporate culture,” explains Marcouiller. “Managing five different sales forces, each unique with their different skill sets and different needs, yet trying to get them to look and feel as if they’re one Avalara, gets to be a bit of a challenge.”

“For us sales excellence really is having a marketplace leading highly capable sales force, creating customers at a rate that meets or exceeds our growth plan. And sales enablement is providing the training and tools that meet the salesforce’ needs to meet the needs of our customers and adapt to the ever-changing marketplace dynamic.”

Maximize Channel Partner Success with Robust Onboarding and Certification

Channel partner onboarding CertificationIn my previous post, I talked about how important our customers believed it was to get their channel partners set up for success quickly. Many felt that ramping up their partner’s reps to sell their product as early as possible was critical to their future success. And some found out the hard way that if it took too long for their channel partners to start closing deals, their reps simply lost interest in their product and it was then virtually impossible to get them back on track.

But those that managed to onboard and certify their channel partners early believed that it solidified their partner’s ability to sell their product with confidence, and in some instances even gave them the edge over other products in their channel partner’s suite.

The channel training continuum

Channel Training Continuum

While the depth and breadth of your onboarding and certification will vary depending on where you sit on the channel training continuum, I’ve identified three areas where our customers focused their efforts.

  1. The welcome kit
  2. Channel partner kickoff
  3. Channel partner onboarding and certification

The welcome kit

Most people I spoke to felt that a welcome kit was the bare basics that were essential to set their channel partners on the right track. Some things that they recommended including were:

  • Stakeholder details: Giving them points of contact when they need to register a lead or have an objection query;
  • Welcome message from your leadership team: Providing high-level information on the product and where your channel partners fit into the overall business strategy; and
  • Process and product information: Giving them access to everything to get them started, from your partner enablement platform to price lists and product information.

Most felt it was best to make the welcome kit available on their partner enablement platform rather than overwhelming reps with bulky hard copies or attachment-laden emails.

Channel partner leadoff

To get their new relationship off to a flying start, most customers held a channel partner meeting in the first couple of days. One customer used the leadoff as an opportunity to relay their vision for the relationship and generate excitement about their products.

While it is possible to conduct the leadoff remotely most felt it was more effective in person. One organization brought in some of their business leaders and key stakeholders to speak to their new sales team in real time. They felt this was not only very impactful but also showed their channel partners how committed they were to their success and the relationship.

Channel partner onboarding

In my discussions, I was interested to learn that not all channel partner onboarding programs were created equal. Some companies had different levels of training depending on what the primary KPIs of the channel partner’s reps were. This in turn also influenced how long the onboarding process took, and ranged anywhere from three to ten days.

For example, one business used a channel partner only to generate leads for them. Their training included:

  • How to frame an elevator pitch
  • Product training
  • How to conduct cold campaigns
  • Examples of email templates and cold calling scripts
  • Their best success stories

Another customer also charged their channel partner with managing opportunities, so their onboarding program also covered:

  • In-depth product capabilities and benefits
  • How to conduct a product demo
  • Handling common objections
  • Case Studies and talking points

Regardless of the depth of the training provided, all of our customers found that their onboarding program was most effective when it included a mix of media such as video, presentations, quizzes and even role plays. For example, one used quizzes to help reinforce product training and role plays to perfect elevator pitches.

One of the customers I spoke to runs a very complex channel partner program, with a tiered approach to their partners’ sales team. Some channel partner’ reps only conducted lead generation, while others were charged with seeing the sales process right through to closing. In line with these different services, their onboarding program had several training paths. This ensured that no one was being trained for anything they didn’t need, thereby cutting down the onboarding time for some reps so they could start selling quicker.

Another organization that I spoke to found that it made sense to tailor their onboarding program so that it fits in with their channel partner’s specific business model. This high touch approach meant that they couldn’t bring on board several channel partners at the same time. But they believed that taking a bespoke approach reaped greater benefits in the long run as their onboarding program made more sense to their channel partner. In some instances, they even removed parts of their onboarding program because they found it had already been covered by another product’s process. This not only cut down the onboarding time for their product but also ensured they weren’t providing reps with the information they’ve already been trained on.

Mindtickle Learning Board

The shorter training sessions, when coupled with other tools also helped improve engagement. All of the companies I spoke to believed that the information in their onboarding was adopted more readily when it was made interesting or had a tangible outcome. Some facilitated peer to peer interaction in the learning process, while others created healthy competition by gamifying outcomes.

While each organization bore the responsibility for putting together their onboarding program, some also involved their channel partner when creating the program. Many found this is to be particularly helpful when the channel partner was responsible for a marketing budget, as it gave them buy-in into the onboarding process.

Channel partner certification

All of our customers felt that certifying their channel partner’s reps was an important step in their partner management process, and translated into a greater share of wallet for their product.

One company commented that as their certification process improved, they were able to scale their business faster as well. This is because the certification process helped them identify what additional coaching or training their channel partner’ reps required, and also enabled them to prioritize their efforts between different channel partners.

Just as the onboarding process had different tiers, those customers with complex channel partner relationships also had different levels of certification for individual reps. For example, one organization used:

  • Level 1 – For partners who are responsible for lead generation
  • Level 2 – For partners who are also responsible for conducting demos
  • Level 3 – For partners who are also responsible for closing the deal

They then rolled up these individual certifications as part of their broader accreditation for each channel partner.

The 4 Pillars of Knowing “What to Sell"

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

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

There are 4 pillars to what to sell:

  • Industry
  • Customer personas
  • Product
  • Competitive analysis

sales onboarding

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

1. Industry knowledge: setting context from a customer perspective

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

2. Buyer personas: know your customer

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

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

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

3. Know your product as your customer sees It

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

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

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

4. Competitive analysis: understand your worth

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

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

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

Bringing it all together: Articulating the core value proposition

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

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

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

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

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

Outcomes

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