[Podcast] How to Coach your Customer to Choose your Product with Jeffrey Lipsius (Episode 11)

Abhinav Guru on February 20, 2017

In this 15 minute

interview Lipsius outlines:

  • Why decision coaching is important to your customers
  • What are the must-have components of a top-notch sales training program
  • How to coach your sales reps so that it sticks
  • The link between mindfulness and sales performance

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podcast_jeffrey_lipsius_selling_to_the_point
“The new problem customers are facing is that they have too many choices. And making decisions are difficult because they’re so distracted, everybody wants their attention instantly. Customers now really need somebody’s help to coach them through the decision process.”

And that’s where the modern salesperson can step in according to Jeffrey Lipsius, Author, and President of Selling To The Point. With over 30 years experience in training salespeople, Lipsius has seen how the sales game has changed in the digital age.

“The salesperson has to be the learner, not the teacher. So the salesperson has to be very customer aware. Because if you are customer aware then you’re going to be able to respond in a way that’s going to help the customer make better decisions. All this talk about salespeople getting customer buying resistance, handling objections and being difficult in prospecting, that all goes away if the customer believes that the salesperson is there to help them make a better decision.”

That’s why Lipsius believes that decision coaching is a very important tool for a salesperson add to their tool chest. “A salesperson really only has to pay attention to 3 factors in the customer’s decision process,” says Lipsius.
Listen now

to find out Lipsius’ three C’s to the customer decision process.

[Podcast] How Outreach Motivates Reps to Stretch their Sales Skills (Episode 10)

Daniel Kuperman on January 27, 2017

In this 11 minute

interview Turner outlines:

  • Outreach’s model for tapping into the motivational drive of its individual sales reps
  • How Outreach has leveraged technology to motivate and develop sales skills
  • The six areas that were critical to accelerating Outreach’s revenue growth

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

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outreach_sales_excellence_podcast“Everybody has different motivational factors. Some people look at pleasure versus pain as being a motivating factor or hope versus fear, acceptance versus rejection, even success versus failure.”

The challenges of motivating individual sales reps were amplified for Outreach as the business grew 20% week on week. As the company’s second employee Jacob Turner has played a pivotal role in developing a framework that has seen the business keep it’s now 40 strong sales team motivated.

“Motivation isn’t just about financial reward. A lot of people, especially millennials, are interested in giving back,” he explains. “Instead of giving people money we’re investing in experiences.” The biggest motivator in Turner’s experience is their weekly sales gym.

“Sales gym is about giving reps access to different concepts of sales and psychological practices. Like what’s the difference between feedback and feed-forward, what types of leaders are out there, how to be a better leader, and things like that.” he continues. What makes the Outreach sales gym unique is that it’s a virtual classroom that relies on Slack and a webcam.

“They’re not really Outreach specifically. It’s more about how to be a better salesperson.” And isn’t that what every salesperson wants? Listen now

to hear how Turner took his sales reps to the gym to stretch their skills.

[Podcast] How to Enable Your SDRs for Success with Inside Sales Bootcamp (Episode 9)

Abhinav Guru on January 9, 2017


In this 15 minute interview Duchen and Reisert outline:

  • What makes a great SDR onboarding program;
  • How you can reduce the ramp up time for your new SDRs;
  • What role a manager plays in the onboarding process; and
  • What sales enablement professionals can do to improve the success of their SDRs.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here
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inside-sales-bootcamp-podcast“Onboarding SDRs can actually be really tricky especially for an organization that is doing this for the first time,” explains Ryan Reisert who’s seen his fair share of inside sales onboarding programs.
Along with Mike Duchen, Reisert is co-founder of Inside Sales Bootcamp, a sales acceleration engine for high growth. They help companies onboard and ramp up their SDRs.

“I see a lot of companies struggle when they start to create their outbound program. Because they’ve had success with inbound, they’ve got a lot of leads coming in, but they start their outbound function without actually going through the data or at least trying to understand what expected outcomes can look like. Without setting that up front, you’re set yourself up for long term failure,” he continues.

“This is not an easy role when you look at what the day to day of an SDR actually looks like,” adds Duchen.  “A rep will be doing 100 activities per day, every day. It’s a lot of work. And on top of that, they’re probably getting rejected eight or nine out of ten times.”

Inside sales is a tough job, which is why every enablement initiative you implement that helps your SDRs do their job will lead them (and you) on the road to success.

[Podcast] How Oracle Built its Sales Enablement Function from the Ground Up with Roderick Jefferson (Episode 8)

Abhinav Guru on December 10, 2016


In this 18 minute interview Jefferson outlines:

  • His formula for creating an effective sales enablement function from scratch;
  • How sales enablement can earn a seat at the executive table; and
  • How sales enablement can help businesses adapt to the challenges of managing successful multi-generational sales teams.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here
Oracle_Marketing_Cloud_Sales Enablement“Sales enablement is the hub that spokes out to every part of the organization. We work with product marketing, product management, marketing, sales, IT etc. So we kind of translate languages if you will, between those groups.”
As Head of Global Enablement at Oracle Marketing Cloud, that makes Roderick Jefferson chief translator. His collaborative approach to sales enablement means that he focuses on deciding what the business requires.
“The one thing we never want to do in enablement is assuming that we know what a stakeholder needs. So we sit down and ask those questions, like how do you define success beyond simply wrap up time? What other components would you like to see added to enablement? What do you see as the deficiencies now?” comments Jefferson.
“Because enablement has to be a sales partner, it cannot be a sales scribe that you just throw things at,” he continues. “You only think about sales training when something is broken. Think about enablement as a fabric that weaves across and through the entire understanding and culture of a company.”
It’s this perspective that Jefferson has followed throughout his career in sales and sales enablement. Listen now to hear how Jefferson has built sales enablement functions from the ground up at blue-chip companies including salesforce.com, eBay, and Oracle.

[Podcast] How to Train Best-in-Class SDRs with Craig Ferrara and Chris Snell of AG Salesworks (Episode 7)

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016


Listen nowto hear how AG Salesworks helps businesses prepare their SDRs for success.
In this 13 minuteinterview Ferrara and Snell outline:

  • What core competencies make an SDR best in class;
  • How training for a new SDR differs from an experienced professional; and
  • What are the best metrics to use when benchmarking your SDRs.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here.
AG Salesworks SDR Training“It’s just like the framework of a car. It doesn’t matter what color they are. It doesn’t matter what the whistles in the car are. It’s what the frame is, and you can take that one frame and make it blue, and then make the next one red. And the red one has a pleather interior and a blue one has got leather interior. But as long as the framework is where you can take that from sale to sale with you.”
Training SDRs is just like building a car according to Chris Snell, Strategic Advisor at AG Salesworks. And Craig Ferrara, VP Client Operations agrees.
“We’ve worked with nearly 400 companies’ in completely different spaces. And whether they’re HR or IT or operations, the core competencies that we typically follow, our training process is relevant to all of them. You know that foundation, no matter what industry, will still have application and it works across all industries.”
So it begs the question, what framework do you need to train best-in-class SDRs for your business.

[Podcast] How Qualtrics has Created a Customer Centric Approach to Sales Enablement with Charlie Besecker (Episode 6)

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016

Listen nowto hear how Besecker has created a customer-centric perspective to sales enablement to Qualtrics.

In this 16-minuteinterview Besecker outlines:

  • How to put customer experience at the core of your sales enablement strategy;
  • What a “white gloves” onboarding experience includes; and
  • How to improve the sales enablement experience of your reps.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here.
Qualtrics sales enablement“One of the mistakes that a lot of companies are starting to kind of fall into is really just death by complexity,” observes Charlie Besecker.
As head of Qualtrics’ global enablement function, his focus is simple, “You’ve got a group of insanely engaged, motivated, ambitious people that are smart and angry. What can we do to make this entire process more efficient and ultimately more effective?”
Qualtrics is the leading customer experience software, and it lives and breathes its customers first approach right down to how it enables its sales force. “Our success is directly correlated with the satisfaction of our customers. We don’t succeed if they don’t renew and if they don’t love our product and love the experience they have with Qualtrics then they won’t renew. And so that’s why we don’t really talk about Qualtrics’ success in sales without the other being the success of our customers,” explains Besecker.
This approach permeates all aspects of its enablement strategy from professional development to the onboarding experience of its new hires. Besecker has termed the latter a “white gloves” experience. “The whole white gloves concept is really akin to some of the finest hotels that you can visit, where we are attempting to anticipate that wants and needs of our new hires before they realize those needs themselves.”

ForeScout Combines Technology & Role Play for Successful Sales Onboarding [Podcast, Part 3]

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016

In this 7-minute

interview Capovilla outlines:

  • How ForeScout’s 30 – 60 – 90-day onboarding program is structured;
  • What the pitch back is and how it’s used to keep new hires on track;
  • Her advice to new sales enablement directors on how to build an onboarding program from scratch; and
  • How ForeScout has leveraged technology in its onboarding.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

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,

Stitcher

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iTunes

or find it

here

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forescout sales onboarding“

The best way to learn is to have the trainees apply concepts to real deals so we have them do teach back concepts. We do a lot  of these role plays where the trainees have to present what they’ve learned to their peers and it’s through that collaboration that the learning really starts happening.”

Renee Capovilla, Director of Sales Enablement at ForeScout, is reflecting back on what has been critical to ramp up their new sales hires quickly.  “Our goal is to really pack those first 90 days with a lot of learning and effective training and then get them out into their territory. But it’s about month six to nine that they start hitting their productivity targets.”

Ramping up new sales hires so quickly is no mean feat and Capovilla puts it down to a combination of effective learning and smart use of technology. “You want to know how they are using [their learning] on a sales call and the only way you’re going to know that is if they tell you. So the pitch back is so important for us, to hear what they are going to say when they get to the customer, a great way to reinforce the learning through listening,” she says explaining the importance of online role plays.

When prompted to explain her secret to success she offered humbly, “I think what I might have as an advantage is the fact that I enabled the technology sooner rather than later. Don’t feel intimidated to add technology early on, because it won’t just help with the cycle time.”

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

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016

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.

ForeScout Turns A Players into Superstars with Sales Playbooks [Podcast, Part 1]

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016


In this 12-minute

interview Capovilla outlines:

  • The  6 core elements to ForeScout’s sales excellence
  • How their sales playbook helped the business scale
  • When is a good time to develop your businesses playbook
  • What your sales playbook should include

Listen now

to hear how Capovilla has used their sales playbook to turn A Players into Forescout superstars.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

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Forescout sales enablement“The goal of a sales playbook is to capture and certify what your top performers are saying, asking and doing at every stage of the sales cycle.”

Renee Capovilla is Director of Sales Enablement at ForeScout and she came up with the concept of a sales playbook when she was a one-person team looking to scale their sales team quickly. She’s since taken the playbook and created the company’s own ‘sales university.’ Core to the sales playbook is the sales process.

“The sales process has to be the representation of your top performers so it’s going to be as detailed as it needs to be to capture what they are doing, saying and asking,”

explains Capovilla. “The playbook’s main objective is to drive excellence throughout the sales process. The playbook begins at the onboarding program. It’s the basis for developing the university courseware and the reference coaching guide that drives our overall process and best practice application post the onboarding experience.”

“Our sales playbook has enabled us to give clear direction and guidance on what the rep should do say, do and ask it at every stage of their sale cycle, replicating the best of the best.”

MongoDB’s Formula for Sales Success [Podcast, Episode 4]

Daniel Kuperman on September 6, 2016

In this 12-minute

interview Powers outlines:

  • The key tenets of sales excellence for MongoDB;
  • How MongoDB’s onboarding program and advanced sales training keep their reps at the top of their game; and
  • How their sales reps become Courageous Qualifiers.

Listen now

to hear how Powers equips MongoDB’s sales team to differentiate themselves in the market.

To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to

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iTunes

or find it

here

.

Sales_excellence_podcast_episode4“A key tenet of sales excellence is an effective, purposeful and great discovery with the customer. Ensuring that both you and that customer or prospect are really focused on the biggest business issues at hand.”

Jeremy Powers is Senior Director of Sales Enablement at MongoDB and he’s kicking some big goals while the company’s sales team scales rapidly. A critical component of their sales enablement strategy is their onboarding boot camp.

“During boot camp we always give our reps a forum to practice. Really try things, struggle a little bit and really dive in using real-life customer opportunities. That’s a win any time you can do that.”

“The goal of our onboarding program is to provide our sales team with an in-depth understanding of the industry, our customers, our technology and our solution sets. Then build upon that baseline to equip our reps to consistently qualify for opportunities, get and set great meetings with the right people and ultimately prepare them to engage in highly effective, highly valuable conversations with prospects,” he continues.

“Ultimately we want to arm our sales team to not only differentiate themselves based on what we sell but also on how they sell and interact with customers.”

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