[Podcast] Transforming Sales Enablement for Ongoing Sales Readiness with Joe Booth from SecureAuth

JT Eger on February 4, 2020

As the Senior Director of Sales Enablement and Competitive Intelligence at SecureAuth, Joe Booth is responsible for putting the systems and processes in place to ensure reps are effective in the field. Mindtickle was one of the key tools for helping reps find accurate, up to date information that was consistent across the channels and the sales reps were able to find quickly and easily when they needed it.

“Not only are we able to keep content in Mindtickle and keep that very up to date, but we’re also put together training on how to use that content and also training on sales process and onboarding and a lot of the other things that you would expect from a system like Mindtickle to be able to do. But I would say that Mindtickle being able to integrate with our content management system as well as integrating into our CRM has been a huge, huge gain in productivity and efficiency for our sales reps across the organization,” explains Joe.

Joe continues on to discuss how SecureAuth’s enablement program includes sales certifications for passing different kinds of Missions, Mindtickle’s virtual role-play capability, to develop and practice skills such as elevator pitches, demo presentations, or writing prospect-facing emails. For example, “SecureAuth’s Account Executives complete a video role-play with a screen-share scenario presenting their pitch deck. The Sales Engineers practice a screen recording of a demo.” As continuing enablement, Joe is developing various quizzes associated with these different scenarios as well as coaching programs to engage SecureAuth’s leadership in their enablement programs.

In this 30 minute podcast, Joe explains how SecureAuth:

  • Established best practices and periodically ensures reps are on-message
  • Reduced admin overhead and accelerated the onboarding experience with Mindtickle and Salesforce user-sync
  • Ensured consistent adoption of enablement programs through steady stream of communication
  • Plans for the future of partner enablement and onboarding

5 Reasons to Modernize Sales Enablement

Shankar Ganapathy on November 9, 2018

As the pressure of digitization on sales functions has ratcheted up in the past couple of years, companies are taking another look at modernizing sales enablement – for good reason. Among them:

Selling is getting harder.

Fewer reps are hitting their quotas. According to a recent article by Forbes, 57% of sales reps missed their quotas in the last year – concluding overall that what’s truly hindering sales’ success is the lack of cohesion between departments and the way new sellers are being introduced to the product.

Onboarding is taking longer.

With today’s complex product lines and ever-changing business models, it can take as much as nine months to ramp up new reps.

Buyers are bypassing sales for the information they need.

Customers often complete as much as 70 percent of their journey from their own research, according to industry estimates.

Faced with these challenges, companies are increasingly seeing sales enablement as a strategic imperative that’s vital the sales organizations success. The stage is set for a new kind of sales enablement. For hard-pressed sales organizations, it can’t come soon enough.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is a catch-all phrase with many meanings. But more importantly, what is its purpose?

The idea of training new sales reps, or any other customer-facing employees, to align their objectives with the company’s goals and gain insight to be successful is not a new concept. Knowledge of product(s), brand, and the competitive landscape is imperative to their quickly becoming effective. In the search for continued revenue growth, companies have sought to better equip and prepare those on the front lines of revenue generation: sales teams.

The goal has been, and continues to be, to enable them to reach quota as quickly as possible and consistently, thus the creation of sales enablement. However, as the state of sales enablement constantly changes in scope, it’s needless to say that there’s yet to be a single, universally adopted definition.

Here are a few takes:

  • Search Google and you’ll find, “modern sales enablement is the enablement of sales teams with information, tools, and content that help salespeople sell more effectively.” A more visionary definition of sales enablement from SiriusDecisions explains, “Enablement’s purpose is to ensure salespeople have the skills, knowledge, behaviors, and tools needed to engage [buyers, team, other] in rich conversations.”
  • Forrester Research says, “Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees  with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return on investment of the selling system.”

When Forrester Research asks, “What is sales enablement?” they characterize it with the idea that companies should put their customers upfront. Putting customers first is an excellent approach to creating your sales enablement initiatives. That said, it’s just as important to determine whether your business needs a dedicated sales enablement manager, a big decision for any company.

No matter its current definitions, sales enablement has come a long way in the last five years towards helping sales teams perform better. Reps today are more comfortable in competitive environments, as well as those which sometimes require more complex strategic sales motions.

At the same time, engaging with today’s highly informed and ever-more scrutinizing customers requires salespeople to retain and effectively use ever-more knowledge, skills, and behaviors.

While sales enablement is designed to help sales turn more opportunities into revenue, most traditional sales enablement solutions cannot show how programs correlate to individual outcomes.

What most don’t realize is that there are huge, previously untouched areas where enablement solutions (tools, platforms, and best practice methodologies) can bring more value and revenue to companies.

What Gartner has to say about sales enablement

Companies, both purposefully and accidentally, are missing some useful and obvious strategies. This short-sightedness also applies to sales consultants and training or learning tools vendors –all of whom have implemented or offered otherwise great technology for sales enablement. Let’s take a look at some numbers behind these pain points. Here are some key statistics Gartner recently shared at their conference about the complex reality of most salespeople today:

  • Customers are more complex: over 6 people are typically involved in B2B purchases with over 3 different functions represented.
  • Product complexity: the product portfolio that sellers represent have increased in size by 2.3 times, and only 37% of sellers find it easy to customize their offerings.
  • Internal complexity: sellers have reported that 16.4% of the sales cycle is spent on internal approvals and only 24% of sellers can easily calculate their variable compensation.

What the figures above tell is a story of increased difficulty and complexity for the salesperson in your average B2B company. Now add the picture above with the new reality of how salespeople develop their skills, according to Gartner:

  • 58% of sellers develop their skills through their colleagues
  • 35% of skills sellers use today were acquired in the last year
  • 66% of sellers expect most learning and development to occur outside the classroom
  • 60% of sellers expect to learn and develop just-in-time

Traditional training programs and methods are falling short of the expectations and needs of sellers today and leaving much to be desired. The facts presented by Gartner point in a few different directions as well:

  • Managers are more than ever required to be involved and help drive sales learning and coaching
  • Onboarding programs have to adapt to the new realities of today’s sellers and better enable them to help buyers during their journeys
  • Manager enablement is a critical need to help managers have better conversations, give feedback, identify seller skills gaps, and have career conversations with their reps

Most sales enablement teams would agree that the biggest problem or obstacle they face when rolling out programs is getting managers to spend time with their sellers and with the programs.

The key takeaway? Working with managers to show the impact that their actions can have in sales performance is one of the most important action items in your next sales enablement playbook.

If you have a platform that allows you to measure your sales team’s “readiness” and you can show managers the skill gaps identified through the different initiatives rolled out, you’ll have a much easier conversation when it comes to implementation of a new sales enablement strategy. Regardless of technology, the first step is changing the frontline managers’ mindsets and presenting them with a strong case for enablement.

What modernizing sales enablement programs can do for you

The goal of modern sales enablement is straightforward: to help you and your team win more and bigger deals.

“Sales enablement optimizes the selling motion in order to increase pipeline, move opportunities forward and win bigger deals more efficiently to drive profitable growth.” – Sales Enablement Society

It helps achieve that goal through three its three core capabilities. In short, sales enablement:

  • Helps sellers build out skill sets to deliver phenomenal customer experience. It personalizes, gamifies, coaches, and provides micro-learning modules to deliver resonant and memorable experiences that help sellers master and operationalize new skills.
  • Combines a modern enablement platform with best-practice methodologies. Sellers need a digital solution that they can access anytime, on any device. Modern platforms’ design is informed with industry-leading insights on how acquired skills translate into revenue production and customer engagement.
  • Shows the connection between actions and outcomes. Modern sales enablement platforms harness artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics so you can see how your programs are improving sellers’ capabilities. You can identify knowledge gaps where you might want to do some coaching. The platform provides a clear picture of how sales capabilities impact sales performance and business outcomes.

So without further ado, here are the top five reasons you should consider modernizing your sales readiness programs.

1. Business is in a high growth phase

Many businesses experiencing high-growth tend to deal with business challenges that are right in front of them. Usually when business is booming it’s easy to forget about the longer term future. This short-sightedness can cause major headaches down the road, particularly when there are no streamlined processes in place to track personal or business performance.

Referring to an HBR blog Science of Building a Scalable Sales Team, Mark Roberge from Hubspot points out the importance of taking a disciplined approach when training salespeople so that everyone has good foundational selling skills. According to Mark the result at Hubspot stated that “our salespeople are able to connect on a far deeper level with our prospects and leads”, a process that has consistently resulted in high growth.

2. New sales reps take a long time to meet quotas

Hiring new sales reps is a significant investment for any company, and the longer they take to onboard and ramp up, the more money burned.

“According to Aberdeen Research, companies that adopt best practices across their sales teams had double the quota attainment of their peers. Each sales enablement program that gives a rep more time for core selling nets more revenue. Each best practice program that makes reps more effective translates into topline improvement”.

Modernizing sales readiness programs will help each member of the sales team achieve peak performance. Therefore, sales enablement programs should always include finding ways to improve sales reps’ efficiency and effectiveness with prospects so they can meet their quotas and keep on performing into the future.

3. Sales reps spend too much time on non-selling tasks

The primary job of any sales rep is to continually work on their sales process, generating and qualifying leads, conducting sales demos and closing deals. If Anytime they’re not on these selling tasks it’s usually unproductive, and a poor use of a valuable resource.

“To increase sales productivity, you have to reduce or eliminate tasks that aren’t productive.”- Nancy Nardin

Modernizing the sales readiness programs with a data driven sales enablement platform will help your organization have vision into the sales process and identify how it can help reduce non-selling tasks and increase efficiency across the entire process.

4. Need to increase individual sales quotas next year

According to CSO Insights, 94.5% of firms they surveyed said they were raising quotas. If you too are planning to increase quotas, then you’re going to need a new strategy and a new set of sales enablement tools to get more out of your sales team. A dedicated sales enablement manager should help to ensure that your sales reps be well trained regarding your customers’ needs, be up to date with industry and product news, have the necessary tools and information available with them when they need it. As CSO Insights discovered.

As CSO Insights discovered that the key to achieving higher quotas with the same sales team is to keep your sales team well trained and ready with a new set of skill.

5. Marketing efforts aren’t helping sales sell

If you are increasing your marketing budgets but that’s not translating into helping sales sell more, then having a sales enablement manager could be the reason. A significant part of marketing’s role is to create sales collateral for each persona for every stage of the buyer’s journey, so, it’s crucial that both sales and marketing are aligned and work closely together.

A sales enablement manager can help bridge the gap between marketing deliverables and what the sales team needs. Working with both sales and marketing can make a difference in sales ability to provide valuable content and collateral to customers. For example, the HubSpot sales enablement team sits with the sales reps but reports through to the marketing.

Why change?

To sum up, moving in a direction of a revamped, modernized sales enablement program has the potential to completely turn things around when it comes to your team and their sales readiness. A comprehensive and collaborative approach to sales enablement just might be that secret ingredient when it comes to revamping the way your organization tackles – and wins – sales deals.

Ultimately, here’s what a modern sales enablement platform do for your organization:

  • Accelerate and enhance onboarding to telescope time-to-productivity
  • Coach sellers in the exact areas where they need help
  • Energize your meetings and kickoffs to propel profitability
  • Build sellers’ confidence and effectiveness through guided role-play
  • Track and accelerate business outcomes through reporting and analytics
  • Build reps’ skills through tailored, highly engaging learning and development activities
  • Help sales leaders to make their skills go viral, company-wide.

A Sr. Sales Enablement Leader at MuleSoft Explains Effective Best Practices [A Podcast]

Deepti Sundareshan on May 3, 2018

As

Senior Manager of Sales Enablement, Ali Jones is responsible for MuleSoft’s early stage opportunity strategy and executive briefing program. Her experience brings together Ali’s experience in direct selling and consulting.

“We have a relatively small enablement team at MuleSoft. One person is focused on sales analytics, then three enablement managers each have ownership over part of the sales process. Each of us also has ownership over specific programs and regional alignment as well. We’re generalists yet we also have the opportunity to go deep and really maximize how we engage with our customers and generate revenue,”

explains Ali.

Each function also has their own enablement team, but they each leverage the content and assets that are built by the central team. This flexible structure has enabled MuleSoft to grow and scale up very quickly.

Two crucial parts of their central enablement program are MuleSoft’s onboarding KickStart program and its certification process.

“We take our certification process very seriously,” says Ali. “Salespeople go through multiple rounds and the bar is really high. People take weeks to prepare for their certification. The nice thing is that when they come out of it we are 100% positive that they will nail it in front of a customer.”

So far, over 500 people have been through MuleSoft’s certification program, and they aspire to do so much more with it.

As Ali says, “

sales enablement is such an interesting place to be in the software world. It’s exciting and there are so many interesting things to do.”

In this 20 minute

podcast Ali explains:

  • How MuleSoft has structured its enablement team and compensation to drive sales results
  • What makes MuleSoft’s Kickstart onboarding experience so unique and impactful
  • The tools that have helped MuleSoft enable and scale its sales team
  • The advice she would give to herself if she could do it again

[Podcast] How Sales Enablement can Strategically Guide the Sales Organization with Pat Lynch

Shrimithran R on April 5, 2018

In this

17 minute

podcast Pat explains:

  • How sales enablement has evolved over the past decade
  • How to turn around some disturbing trends in sales performance and productivity
  • The questions that can help sales enablement professionals focus on the right things at the right time
  • How to deal with sales tool fatigue

Pat Lynch has seen the evolution of sales enablement from several perspectives – in large companies like Xerox and FedEx and in research firm CSO Insights, to name a few. Now as Vice President of Enablement Excellence and Innovation at Mindtickle, Pat’s responsible for driving better outcomes for sales organizations through innovation and world-class enablement.

In recent years, Pat has seen some disturbing trends in sales organizations.

“Until last year, selling time for a sales professional was decreasing six years in a row. Now only 35% of a seller’s time is actually spent selling. Until last year, overall quota attainment also went down for six years in a row – from 63% to 51%. These are two alarming trends,”

exclaims Pat.

“Then add in the fact that you may only get 17% of the time with somebody who’s actually interested in purchasing your product or service. That’s very little time to actually develop rapport and trust with a potential customer, let alone trying to sell to them. That means salespeople have to be far more concise about the value-add that they’re bringing.”

While the numbers are worrying, it has ignited a fire under sales organizations. “

They realized that they needed to actually get somebody in the position and hold them accountable to stop these trends going in the wrong direction. With the Sales Enablement Society coming to fruition just about two years ago, we’re now seeing that enablement is a role that’s a critical success factor to getting sales organizations back on track and hitting quota,”

explains Pat.

The growth of sales enablement is certainly a step in the right direction but Pat has observed that some enablement professionals are at risk of missing a big opportunity. “

What often ends up happening is that the sales enablement executive is relegated to being a tactician. They’re trying to solve problems for salespeople. But sales enablement has a fantastic opportunity to look over the horizon to see what’s coming. They can provide strategic guidance to the VP of Sales. Some need to take a step back and look at the big picture and how they can help their sale organization.”

[Podcast] Managing Change in a Global Industry with Johanna Kuusisto – Episode 28

Shrimithran R on March 21, 2018

In this 21 minute

podcast Johanna explains:

  • How to manage industry transformation from a sales perspective
  • How they build and measure sales competencies consistently across remote sales teams
  • Her top three tips for implementing change in a global sales force

Wartsila is a Finnish company with over 18,000 professional in over 200 locations in more than 70 countries. The company enables sustainable societies with smart technology. Their solutions cover the energy and marine industries. We spoke to Johanna Kuusisto, Senior Development Manager. She has a background in Learning and Development and now brings her expertise to the sales team.

“I work in marine solutions and am responsible for supporting our salespeople to sell and serve our customers smarter. We develop processes, tools and competencies that help our salespeople be prepared for the future,”

outlines Johanna.

“Our sales cycle can be anything from one to five years. For example, if a cruise line decides to build a new cruise ship our salespeople first need to be engaged early on to influence and be part of the bidding process,”

explains Johanna.

“There are many players in the process – ship owners, shipyards, ship designers, and operators. Our salespeople need to create relationships and build trust with all of them. We also have hundreds of products that our salespeople need to be aware of and understand the value of. They need to match this value with each customer’s specific needs.”

Long sales cycles and complex products make sales challenging at Wartsila, but the rate of change in their industry is accelerating their need to sell differently. 

“There are mega trends happening in our industry. Regulation is changing, some products will be mandatory. People are also getting older which means we need to develop the tourism and service sector more and this involves influences customers, shipyards and ship owners,”

explains Johanna.

“Our salespeople need to accept this change. They need to be flexible in their mindset and keep their know-how up to date.”

Keeping everyone on the same page can be challenging, particularly with information scattered across emails, social media, and documents. This is amplified by remote and global sales teams.

“

Sales readiness is crucial for a company like us. We need to continuously find new ways to work and connect our people.”

[Podcast] The Future of Sales Enablement with Steven Wright: Episode 27

Shrimithran R on March 8, 2018

In this 20 minute podcast Steven explains:

  • What we can expect from technology in the sales enablement space
  • The key challenges to really enabling your sales team through content and process
  • Some of the pitfalls of trying to get sales enablement change off the ground
  • What are the hallmarks of a good sales enablement practitioner

With 20 years of experience in sales enablement both as a practitioner at companies such as IBM and as a Senior Analyst for Forrester, Steven Wright has seen a lot of change. In this day and age, change is the new normal and how we sell is transforming bringing with it new challenges, particularly with the use of technology.

“Sometimes there’s a very sharp pain and somebody finds a tool that will address it, but they haven’t really thought about the bigger picture. The overall process and program and dedication it’s gonna take to consistently execute on the sales enablement program. This tool may not help them get people onboard or keep them up to speed and keep reinforcing what they’re doing as part of an ongoing process,” explains Steven.

An area where technology has the potential to really transform how we sell in the future is in customer relationship.

“From the sales enablement perspective, companies who are using a lot of different technologies could try and lower the burden of the CRM on sellers so that they’re spending more time selling and less time doing data entry. A lot of that has to do with being able to capture data about sales activities that they were doing like how they are using emails, what they’re doing with content, is it being opened, is it being read and using all those analytics to be a real source of intelligence on what to do next,” says Steven.

Improving the productivity of reps is one area where technology has the opportunity to help and possibly hinder, training is another challenging area, particularly for businesses that have already invested in LMS.

“A lot of companies have a hybrid approach to training. This varies by industry – some have more need for certification like financial services or pharmaceuticals – that the curriculum in an LMS has. Other companies, with a focus on sales, need the approach Mindtickle brings to bear. Something that can be delivered very quickly, which on one hand meets a lot of tactical needs but can be part of a bigger development framework,” explains Steven.

“I think a lot of companies that haven’t made an investment in LMS probably aren’t going to need it if they can adopt the right kind of technology with some of the newer approaches like Mindtickle.”

The future of the Chief Learning Officer

Deepti Sundareshan on March 7, 2018

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”―Benjamin Franklin

The role of Chief Learning Officer (CLO) has been around for several years. CLOs are responsible for driving the strategic direction of an organization’s learning. In the past, some have mistaken the role of a CLO to simply be populating the Learning Management System, but things are changing quickly and the role of CLO is now expected to rapidly adapt.

According to

Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends Report

,

“CLOs should become part of the entire employee experience, delivering learning solutions that inspire people to reinvent themselves, develop deep skills, and contribute to the learning of others

.” This change is being driven by several factors, and each one is shaping the role of the CLO in the future.

The future is coming quickly

It might sound obvious, but learning strategy has to reflect the business’ objectives. In the past, learning has sat to one side and focused in on specific technical knowledge or skills, but that’s no longer enough. The CLO needs to understand how the learning agenda fits into their company, the industry and what their competitors are doing. This is because the learning must not only support the business today but into the future.

While CLO’s don’t have crystal balls, they now need to keep an eye on future trends and ensure that their business has the capability and capacity to adapt quickly when required. Disruption is no longer something that happens to other businesses, it’s a real threat for every business so the CLO has to ensure that the business is prepared to weather any storm that may come their way.

Change is the new normal

In the past, learning programs could take weeks to create and be rolled out over the course of months or even years. This approach no longer works, what you learn today could change or be updated next month. This has dramatic implications for the learning agenda.

Learning programs now need to adapt and be flexible enough to accommodate continuous change. This creates challenges both for those who create learning programs and all for the people who are receiving the learning. Not only does information need to be added, changed and updated regularly, but it also needs to be easy to digest.

Learning is a continuous process, and that can’t be taught in workshops or meetings twice a year. Learning programs need to be fluid and integrated into business as usual. This means that managers and those close to the end users need to be integrated into the learning process.

The closer to a topic you are, the quicker you are able to adapt to any change to it. Things like learning agendas that enable managers to give structured and continuous coaching to their team are part of this change. Just in time training is another development that is gaining speed as it allows employees to stay on top of things as and when they need to know them.

Another thing that’s impacting this is the way work is changing as well. More workers operate remotely, work virtually and have flexible hours. This adds a new layer of complexity to how learning programs are rolled out, accessed and reinforced.

New generations are entering the workforce and older ones are leaving

By 2025, 75% of the US workforce

will be millennials, but presently they share their workplaces with Baby Boomers and Generation X. Managing multi-generational workforces has also made the role of the CLO more challenging. Each generation has different learning preferences – millennials are connected to their mobile phone while many baby boomers prefer face to face communication.

When it comes to developing learning strategies, the preferences and needs of each generation need to be taken into account. If all employees are not engaged then some will be left behind when it comes to development.

CLOs need to look at not only the content of learning programs but also how it is delivered. Some things to consider include social networks, mobile enablement and the way content is structured. For example, millennials have a preference for microlearning, which is a big shift from traditional instructional led training.

The changing dynamics within the workplace is also raising new issues. As Baby Boomers prepare to leave the workforce, along with them goes decades of experience and knowledge. Some would also prefer to remain connected to their workforce, raising the possibility of new learning opportunities like mentoring.

All of these factors need to be included in the learning agenda and prioritized by the CLO in a way that engages all employees and meets business objectives.

Every business function needs to justify their position

In the past, learning has been measured by the number of people who have completed courses but this doesn’t demonstrate the value that the learning programs have added to the organization. As organizations become leaner and more agile, every executive and each function needs show how they contribute to the achieving the business goals. This forms the basis of a business case when competing for resources. To do this CLOs need robust reporting and tracking.

Analysis should show how the learning programs have changed the way people work, made them more productive or improved their revenue earning capability. This must then also dovetail into the broader business objectives. Is the learning program a competitive differentiator in the recruitment marketplace? Does it help the business retain employees? Does the learning have a positive impact on engagement?

Retaining and engaging employees is becoming harder

Learning has traditionally been a one size fits all approach, but in order to retain employees and keep them engaged organizations need to focus in on the individual needs of their employees. Learning programs need to be flexible enough to allow individuals to develop on their own journey. By giving individuals the ability to take some responsibility for their own development and have a say in what capabilities they develop, organizations can improve engagement and build capable workforces.

This means providing learning opportunities outside the classroom. Rather than focusing on role-specific learning and build capabilities. Capabilities extend beyond technical skills and can include understanding, empathy, stakeholder management, and networking. Empower employees to learn at their own pace and to be in charge of their own destiny.

Underpinning all of these developments is the need for technology that supports the changing world of learning. Learning tools that are able to be customized and can adapt to different needs, yet still provide enough structure to support managers and leaders to have consistency in the organization. Technology can’t be an afterthought, it needs to fit in with how people work today and how they will work in the future.

The role of the CLO is certainly changing. With each and every day it becomes more challenging and complex, but it brings so many opportunities to innovate and think differently about how people learn. It’s an exciting time to be a leader in corporate learning.

Drive Behavioral Change Through a Sales Readiness Culture

Deepti Sundareshan on February 21, 2018

One of the main goals of training and coaching is behavioral change. So often these activities, alone, don’t produce the desired improvements. Research by Hermann Ebbinghaus shows that training without reinforcement results in 80-90% of information being forgotten within just one month. A systemic approach to

continuous

coaching and training is necessary to really prepare your salesforce to be “ready” to effectively engage customers and keep them prepared. A culture of sales readiness will do the job. Let’s look at how developing this type of work environment will result in the behavior changes and outcomes you’re seeking.
Continuous learning:

According to Ebbinghaus, the information presented

over spaced intervals is learned and retained more easily and more effectively.

So, learning in bite-sized, frequent increments, also known as micro-learning, fits into sales rep schedules in their usual work environment. This allows them to remain productive as they learn. It also reduces the number of group trainings, or may completely eliminate them, while improving knowledge retention.
Repetitive practice:

Practicing new knowledge application or techniques through role playing is preferable to experimenting with sales pitches or presentation with actual prospects. Your team will be more prepared, confident, and effective in the field as a result.
Feedback:

Timely feedback on role play and practice reinforce desired behaviors while preventing the formation of bad habits. This sales coaching and guidance is critical to driving results. According to the 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Report, formal and dynamic coaching delivers the most significant performance impacts.
Easily applied:

When contextual training is used, your reps don’t have to translate what they learn to effectively apply it in real-life situations. This allows them to easily build on what they know and continually improve.
Accessible anywhere:

Making the elements of sales readiness accessible from anywhere allows team members to learn and participate at their desks or on the go. This improves compliance and results because it makes it easy to complete desired activities without changing their schedules.
Measurement:

The only way to really know if your sales reps are progressing toward the desired level or type of performance is to measure it. Sales readiness includes documentation throughout the process and awards certification when the specified behavior is demonstrated. This may be used to qualify reps to promote new products, ensuring they have the proper knowledge and presentation techniques before doing so.
Best practices:

According to CSO Insights, the sharing of best practices across the sales team is a characteristic of a formal coaching process. This was once accomplished by reps riding along, or listening in on calls, with a more experienced one. A far more efficient method is to maintain recordings or videos of desired behaviors. These are then used as examples for those learning them and helps the student to recognize what success looks or sounds like.
Up-to-date information:

The sharing of internal communications are the final aspect of the sales readiness culture. They’re critical to keeping reps current on product, market, and company changes so they are always prepared to speak intelligently with customers.

All these elements combined create a culture of sales readiness. They’ve been proven to produce the desired behavioral changes on an ongoing basis. Give it a try for continuous performance improvements and successfully attained goals. To learn how Mindtickle can help, check out the value our customers are gaining by reading our

customer stories

.

[Podcast] How Focus can Increase Your Sales Team Performance – Episode 26

Shrimithran R on January 31, 2018


In this 25 minute podcast Steve explains:

  • What makes a great sales team
  • How sales enablement needs differ within sales teams and how technology can help address this
  • How Kaizen can be applied to sales teams to improve their productivity

“Whatever type of sales team you have, the larger it gets the more important the sales enablement and sales operations role becomes. If you have 100 guys, and you save them all 5% of their time, that’s hiring five guys for free,” exclaims Steve Benson.
Steve began his career in software sales and has worked for IBM, HP, and Google. Now as CEO of Badger, he helps field salespeople focus on their best customers and optimize revenue opportunities by mapping out their territories.
The key to optimizing your sales team is a focus. “You have to study your sales team almost like an anthropologist or a sociologist would and use those stats. What people often find is that there’s a lot of value in a lack of focus on field sales teams. People are spending their time on the wrong leads. They’re not focusing on the highest probability deals to close, and making sure that they make it over the line. It’s the same for inside sales team, helping them focus on the right groups, with the right message, at the right time is really important,” explains Steve.
While the focus is important, it’s also essential that sales enablement, operations, marketing and other members of the team understand what each sales reps need when looking at ways to leverage technology.
“What the outside guys need is different to what the inside guys need. What the people who are selling to giant companies need is different than the people that are selling over the phones to small companies. There’s a variety of ways you can split up your sales team and different strategies to do that, but then I think it’s really important that one size does not fit all from your sales tech sack.”

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

Deepti Sundareshan on January 9, 2018

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

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

 

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

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

Managing is not motivating

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

According to CSO Insights

20% of salespeople turnover each year

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

87% of millennials and 69% of other employees

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

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

Leadership is liberating

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

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

Bain & Co has conducted detailed research

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

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

How to shift the balance from managing to leading

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

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

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

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

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