The session about sales efficiency and operations at the SiriusDecisions Summit 2016 was focused on helping define what sales operations is and look at the frameworks in place to help sales ops professionals.
SiriusDecisions broke down sales efficiency by looking at the following elements: productivity and capacity. They define sales productivity as “yield per rep per hour”, where ‘yield’ is the revenue the rep is generating. And state that as a sales ops professional your goal is to use your sales capacity as efficiently as possible, as it is a limited resource. How your reps spend their time is important, if they are not spending it on core selling activities your yield will suffer. So in sales ops, your job is to drive efficiency into the whole selling activity.
There has been an interesting change in the sales operations function, as it has evolved from a tactical, reactive function to a primary driver of sales change.
Sales operations cross the entire sales ecosystem. There are challenges, including:
Maximizing return on value from investment in sales technology
Developing, managing, measuring and improving sales execution processes
Evolving sales operations capabilities and contribution.
The Relative Productivity Framework
This is a handy framework from SiriusDecisions to answer the question: where are your reps spending most of their time?
The problem that SiriusDecisions found is that many of the stages and steps in sales activities are mostly internally-focused. Unless you align the sales process to the buyer’s journey, understanding how the buyer makes decisions, you won’t be able to effectively move the deal forward. And that’s where the Attribute-Based Sales Process from SiriusDecisions helps, map buyer attributes with buyer activities, and seller attributes and activities.
Finally, as it relates to sales technology, SiriusDecisions says that it must fit the user and organizational needs across six key categories:
Criticality: how crucial is this technology to the business?
Risk: what is the likelihood of losing the availability of the tool to the sales organization?
Fit: How well does the tool help fix the problem for which you purchase it?
Scalability: As the organization grows, can the tool accommodate the increasing number of sales reps, products, users?
Data: How secure is the data? How is data maintained?
Integration: Is the tool for sharing the data across all the other platforms?
Another element that SiriusDecisions has added to their thinking is end-user engagement. According to SiriusDecisions, the end user must move beyond adoption to engagement in order to realize the full value of the technology investment. The journey is:
The SiriusDecisions Summit 2016 kicked off to a great start with a series of ‘foundations’ sessions talking about some of their core models and approaches. The first session I attended was the “Sales/Marketing/Product Technology”.
How do you select a technology? Which vendor should you work with? These are questions the session addressed. According to SiriusDecisions, you shouldn’t think about technology first, but assess your current capabilities inside the organization. How are you currently providing for that capability in the organization, where are you currently and where is the gap? This will help you focus on the specific capabilities you need a technology vendor to provide.
Another interesting piece of advice is for you to not look at a technology purchase from an organizational perspective, but rather from an ecosystem perspective. What are the key processes and capabilities that are required to support your business? The focus of your technology selection has to be on strategy so that you can ask “how are vendors going to operationalize my requirements?”.
There are five key challenges most companies face when it comes to sales technology:
Selection: Understanding and navigating the market to choose the vendor that best suits the organization’s needs
Enablement: Training and up-leveling individuals and teams to use the tools and services
Measurement and Reporting: Establishing and maintaining accurate and actionable measurement and reporting to make smarter decisions
Alignment: Managing proliferation and maintaining a tech and service portfolio that serves the needs of the business, not just its components
Roadmapping: Developing a proactive technology and service strategy as well as a planning approach that aligns with long-term business goals
Killing the “Tech Stack”
The best idea I heard on this session was that there shouldn’t be a ‘marketing stack’ and a ‘sales stack’, terms that have become prominent and used to show the point technologies companies are using in their sales and marketing organizations. The problem with this terminology is that it has a silo mentality, that sales should go and look for its own solution set while marketing should focus on its own needs. The SiriusDecisions analyst had a great point, saying that the technology should be aligned to both sales AND marketing needs. Food for thought.
Recently, I found myself having similar conversations about how to manage channel partners with several customers from very different industries. The customers were in retail, technology, and hospitality respectively, but they each had similarities in the way they dealt with these partner relationships. The differences in their channel partner strategies were not due to their industries but rather were influenced by the stage of their business was at, or very specific market factors.
Despite their differences, there was one overriding principle to how they approached their channel partnerships; it’s a strategic investment for their business. While their reasoning may differ, this didn’t detract from the importance of these relationships to their sales efforts and bottom line. For example, FMCG producer Dabur Asia explained how channel partners were a critical player linking their retailers and customers. At the other spectrum, enterprise cloud platform producer Nutanix utilizes these arrangements to help them unlock doors in new geographies quickly.
Common threads also appeared in terms of their sales model and their enablement strategy, so much so, that I identified three broad channel partner strategies. Before I launch into these, it’s helpful to outline what I mean when talking about channel partnerships.
A channel partner specializes in various aspects of the sales process and undertakes this as a service on behalf of a business. Nutanix uses channel partners to help them scale quickly by undertaking just lead generation in some geographies, while they use their own sales engineer to conduct demos. But in new locations where they have no sales team, the channel partners help them expand with minimal investment, by managing their entire sales process right through to closing. They also have premium partners who are able to unlock doors which they cannot directly.
Based on these recent customer discussions the three channel partner strategies I’ve identified are: Exclusive, Targeted and Global.
1. Exclusive channel partnership strategy
Best for when you have a point solution.
A friend of mine has a software startup that sells email encryption software to large enterprises. As large companies tend to purchase their product as part of a broader email security solution, their only go-to-market strategy is to use channel partners who have expert knowledge. They bundle several point offerings as part of an overall solution for the larger business problem. Businesses in this position prefer aligning themselves with channel partners who are SMEs in their field, who they can provide with exclusive access to their solution.
The key challenges in an exclusive channel partnership are to engage your channel partner reps. As each one is an SME in their area, they already know and understand the benefits that you offer, but keeping them highly motivated to sell your solution as part of their bundled package is critical. This is why most point solutions I’ve seen have a dedicated channel manager, who works closely with their partners to make sure they stay engaged.
An effective partner enablement strategy includes a strong onboarding program that focuses in on helping them sell your solution.
As they’re an exclusive channel partner, there’s plenty of scope for you to tailor the program to take into account their business model and even integrate any other training they may have already undertaken. This will ensure your solution makes sense within their overall contingent and adds value to their sales goals. As your channel partner reps are already SMEs the onboarding program doesn’t need to be long or intensive. Providing them with enough information to enable them to have some early wins, will help get them on their way quickly.
2. Targeted channel partnership strategy
Best for when you’re just starting to test the waters with channel partners. Most companies I’ve seen already have a very successful sales track record and are leveraging channel partners to help them grow rapidly. It’s not about signing up everyone who could sell their solution, but rather about building strategic partnerships that will take them where they want to go.
One of our customers sells tea in India, and are leveraging a franchise model to grow their business exponentially. These franchises are essentially channel partners, who open shop fronts to sell their specialty teas.
To maintain their growth trajectory, they’ve found that they need to ensure the franchise reps can represent their business in the same way their in-house sales reps do.
Aligning their channel partners with their business values, customer service philosophy and product messaging is key to their success. Similarly, another customer in the tech industry is building on its $100m revenue base, as it prepares for an IPO in a couple of years. It’s facing the same issues, as its channel partner reps also need to be able to sing the same song as their in-house sales reps to be successful.
This is a high touch strategy, bringing on board only a few channel partners at a time. With only a few channel partners on board, ensuring their success early is critical to maximizing revenue.
The key challenges are being able to not only get your channel partner reps up to speed quickly but also ensure that they understand how to sell your solution effectively. Investing in and providing support to your channel partners early on can make all the difference to their success.
An effective partner enablement strategy includes not only onboarding your channel partner reps quickly, but also certifying them so that you have comfort in knowing they can sell your product or service effectively.
Our high-growth customers that have executed this strategy have actually made sure that their channel partner (or franchise) reps have actually passed their certification before they can go out and sell. While it may take a couple of months to get each new channel partner up to scratch, by putting in place a robust certification program they have found that the additional effort was worthwhile in the long-run.
3. Global channel partnership strategy
Best for businesses that are looking to expand across more than one geography, or even globally in a short time frame.
Depending on your business structure, you may have several different levels to your channel partnerships, some tackling only part of the sales process, while others may sell right through to close. For example, Nutanix, expanded globally in just 24 months by bringing on board channel partners in different countries. In some countries, their channel partners are the sole sales representatives for their product, responsible for the entire sales process. In other locations, they leverage channel partners to supply leads, while their own sales and account engineers conduct demos and close their deals.
The key challenge in this strategy is to keep your channel partner reps engaged with your solution, and up to date with any new information about your product or service. This may cover everything from marketing offers to success stories or even changes in your competitive environment.
An effective partner enablement strategy often has a tiered approach, as different channel partners may have different responsibilities. Nutanix has several tiers to its enablement strategy, as the onboarding and certification required for a channel partner who is charged with closing a deal are different to one who only handles lead generation. The former includes training on demos and objection handling, which would just be superfluous for the latter.
They’ve found it’s critical that their channel partner’s reps are ready to sell at all times. Just like their own in-house sales reps, they need the latest information to do their job effectively. From success stories to competitive insights, keeping them up to date not only builds on their knowledge base, and helps keep them engaged with their solution, ensuring it stays top of mind.
Regardless of which strategy you employ, your end game is to ensure that your channel partners achieve success. So once you have the right partners on board, enabling them to sell your solution is, of course, a priority. Next, I’ll take you through the four things I’ve discovered that can help your channel partners sell more.
When it comes to planning your sales kickoff, the first step is setting your objectives for the event. Do you want to celebrate a great year or challenge your sales team to think differently? Are you reps in need of some motivation after a challenging year, or is training your main focus at the moment? Tom Snyder, Co-founder and Managing Partner of VorsightBP suggests, “Before you begin to plan the meeting what do you want people to be thinking, to know, to be looking at. How will you define, when that meeting is over, that it was successful?”
You want to make the most of having all your salespeople together, so your goals should really define every aspect of the event, from the theme to the agenda. We know it’s easy to stay, but it is possible to do. We’re here to show you how, based on four main objectives: Celebration, Motivation, Education, and Innovation.
1. Celebration
Objective
A celebratory sales kickoff is when you want to reward your team. As Tom Snyder, Co-founder and Managing Partner of VorsightBP puts it, “At a celebration kickoff you want people to feel appreciated. We had a great year. We’ve done a great job. We’re on top of our game. Let’s be proud of ourselves.”
Theme
Steve W Martin, Author of ‘Heavy Hitter’, says “When morale is high, you can be more creative and take bigger risks with the theme you choose.” Themes that allow the team to let loose, like a Night at the Oscars can enhance the mood and make everyone relax and have a little fun.
Speakers / Sessions
When choosing the type of sessions that you would have at a celebration kickoff, Snyder suggests, “Entertainment is the key component. So if you’re going to pick out a speaker or a group to come in make sure it’s about having a fun. If you’re going to do exercises make those about fun.”
“Take advantage of your team’s success by using it to create educational content that the whole team can use moving forward,” suggests Mohit Garg, Co-founder, and CRO of Mindtickle. “Video your award winners explaining what they did to achieve their success, and then share these best practices and success stories with the rest of the team after the event, using your online content library.”
Outcomes
When the celebration is your objective, Snyder suggests that “The outcomes are recognition and appreciation. It’s a transition, how do you transfer that celebration to the coming year.” Keeping this in mind, you can then build your sessions around these outcomes.
2. Motivation
Objective
You’ve had a challenging year, perhaps a new competitor has stepped on your turf and your salespeople are feeling a bit flat. Motivation is what they need from their sales kickoff, as Snyder puts it, “You need to do something different”.
Theme
To motivate your team, your theme needs to reflect concepts that are inspirational or instill a desire to pick themselves up and get back out to battle. Snyder suggests themes that focus on heroics are great for inspiring people. Other ideas could be around building the competitive spirit of your team, Steve W Martin suggests something like. “Survivor! Outwit, Outlast, Outplay!” to get the juices flowing again.
Speakers / Sessions
If you have a heroic theme, Snyder suggests, “The keynote speakers are like the personal hero, the sports hero, the military hero. The personal assignments and themes must also reflect this theme.” If your theme is more specific you can build your thematic sessions around that objective suggests Steve W Martin with this example, “One company wanted to focus their sales team on closing bigger deals. They selected a theme centered around baseball and used the tagline, “Swing for the Fences!” Throughout the meeting, they showed movie clips of the greatest home run hitters of all time. At their awards dinner, the vice president of sales presented inscribed baseball bats to the top sales performers.”
Outcomes
The outcome should tie into your theme, in Steve W Martin’s example above, “meeting attendees were given different colored company baseball hats and jerseys that designated which group they were part of for team-building exercises.” It’s also alright if your objective is a challenging one, in some instances in order to motivate Snyder even suggests that you may be looking for an outcome of nervousness.
3. Education
Objective
Perhaps you’ve just had a major product launch that your reps are struggling to sell, or you are scaling your team and have a lot of new hires, training them on specific sales skills (beyond the initial onboarding program) may be your primary sales kickoff objective. Snyder also notes, “You often see the rumors around, like we’re going to split up territories, these meetings are about dispensing with those rumors and announcing the new.”
Theme
The theme you choose will really be dependent on the type of training or skill development that you’re focusing on in this kickoff. For example, if your focus is on relationship building then perhaps your theme could be something like ‘Profit in Relationships’ or ‘Relationship Driven Results’. Alternatively, if your focus is on using data to improve performance, then you could use a theme that reflects like “Measure Yourself to Be the Best”.
Speakers / Sessions
To encourage and remove any unnecessary apprehension, Snyder suggests having a keynote session that, “talks about resolving the unknown. The speaker is often from the company, like the CEO or CFO. Someone who can come in and tell the truth.” This then opens the way for your reps to focus on the training without fear.
For the actual training sessions, “Make it as practical and as interactive as possible. Role play elevator pitches in front of each other, create a leaderboard and even crowdsource the best ones to be recorded and made available in their content library after the kickoff.” suggests Garg. If productivity is a big issue, Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing Inc suggests, “A best practices presentation on work efficiency (time management, email management, workflow optimization), coupled with reinforcement in the ensuing weeks and months.”
Outcomes
Learning and moving forward are the key outcomes of this type of kickoff. To ensure the new practices are adopted, Garg suggests “Continue to reinforce the concepts and ideas that were introduced at the kickoff in the weeks and months afterward. This may be by way of sound bites from the event, or quick quizzes that let you check how much information has been retained, or that requires some further work.” Steve W Martin also suggests providing something tangible to take away, like a book on advanced sales strategies.
4. Innovation
Objective
In the current business environment, nothing is constant. This makes innovation an important objective for many sales kickoffs. This doesn’t mean that your sales team has to be prepared to disrupt your industry, but as Snyder puts it, the objective is to tell your salespeople “We want you to approach the job differently. We want you to turn on your imagination and be creative. We have to think differently, we have to create a world for ourselves.”
Theme
Picking a theme that really matches the kind of innovation that you’re looking for. As Steve W Martin notes, “All sales forces go through periods of high and low morale. In this situation, the theme should be more commonsensical like “Better, Stronger, Faster,” which provides a platform that meeting presenters can use to talk about changes and upcoming improvements.” Other themes that he suggests include “Disrupt to Win” or “From Challengers to Champions”.
Speakers / Sessions
When choosing sessions, Snyder emphasizes the importance of providing data on why innovation is required, “Speakers are often industry speakers who’ve done research and can provide that data.” He also highlights the need to think differently, “We want to make sure we do teamwork and assignments in these kick-offs so people get the opportunity to work with the people they don’t really see. We get a lot of cross-pollination and creativity.”
“A powerful way to demonstrate innovative thinking is by crowdsourcing ideas and using video to for storytelling and success stories. Get your reps to show their peers how they thought out of the box and the impact it had on their prospects and customers. It’s both inspirational and aspirational,” explains Garg.
Outcomes
The key outcome here is to ensure that the innovative and creative thoughts aren’t left at the kickoff. Garg suggests, “Use sound bites of videos and presentations from the event and push these out over the following weeks and months. You can also use online social tools to encourage your reps to continue to share ideas with the broader team, regardless of their location. Sales managers can also reinforce the new ideas in their regular team meetings.”
There has been a lot of talk about sales coaching recently, and in particular who should be driving it for the most effective results.
There are two schools of thought:
Sales coaching is driven by managers who choose what reps need to be coached on.
Sales enablement is responsible for structured coaching, as a part of an overall sales readiness program.
The former is the proven traditional approach, while the latter is part of a new era of sales coaching. But why has this changed? Haven’t managers been effective in coaching their teams to meet their numbers?
I asked some of our customers, and they explained that, in the past, managers were effective in both tactical and strategic coaching. But that was when product training happened once a year, and product updates occurred only every 6 months (remember V2.3.4 updates?).
Nowadays, product training is a part of day-to-day training and product updates are rolled out every week. In order to ensure that all reps have a consistent message, something drastic had to change.
As business demands change rapidly, the sales training and coaching process also needs to become agiler. There are now more people involved in coaching, with sales leadership, sales enablement, and sales managers all collaborating together to determine and execute the most effective coaching process.
These changes have also led to a new framework for coaching. One that moves away from dealing with specific issues, and instead hones the reps’ skills so that they’re always ready; Ready to convey the right message. Ready to speak to their customers. Ready to sell.
It’s not enough to coach a sales rep to have a conversation with a customer. Customers can find information from many sources, and in all instances, the message from reps must be consistent. So it’s important for reps to be message ready. This forms the foundations for each and every rep to understand your value proposition; something that can be driven by sales enablement and peer-to-peer learning. Only with this solid foundation can managers make a real impact on improving customer readiness. If a manager is left to coach a sales rep who doesn’t understand the message, their time will be less effective and they will struggle to scale their coaching efforts. This is where sales enablement and online tools can be most effective.
In a dynamic environment, your customer persona is constantly evolving, so it’s no longer enough to perfect a standard pitch, your reps need to be able to take into account the customer’s specific pain points and needs. They need to be customer ready. Where managers can make the most impact is in preparing their reps for customer readiness. As drivers of growth, they can utilize their knowledge of the customer to improve reps’ tactical sales.
When you bring customer readiness and message readiness together, you get sales readiness.
#1 Message relevance
With new product updates almost every week, and competitors innovating fast, reps are constantly faced with new use cases and objection handling scenarios. To make sure their message is always relevant, your reps need all of this information to be provided to them in real-time so they can have relevant, value-added conversations with their customers.
For example, one way that I’ve seen this done effectively is by enabling the product marketing team to send out regular updates. As the team that knows exactly what the latest feature is, who it’s relevant for and its benefits, they’re best placed to provide these updates.
#2 The power of collaborative practice
What your reps say to customers, and how they deliver their message, has a significant impact on whether they will close the deal. In old-school coaching models reps were limited to learning from their manager and the immediate team only. But thanks to technology, it’s becoming easier to facilitate collaborative practice using role plays.
For example, the sales mission capability in Mindtickle enables your reps with a safe arena to practice common customer scenarios and receive feedback from managers. They can also learn from their peers. Imagine the impact on your reps’ performance if they learned how to deliver an elevator pitch, how to handle objections, or received competitive pitch coaching, from your top performers across the country and around the globe?
By learning from peers in other teams, and even other sales managers, reps can gain a much broader perspective, and become better sales professionals as well. When done well, I’ve seen as much as 80% of the message learning can be achieved through collaborative practice.
#3 Manager mentorship
Mentoring is one of the best ways for reps to improve sales performance. While every manager has their own style when it comes to coaching and mentoring, when coupled with the processes described above, they will have more capacity to focus on strategic coaching. This will allow them to really hone in on skill development for their reps, helping them to become better sales professionals.
#4 Tactical coaching from manager and peers
There are lots of deal-by-deal tips and tricks that managers and other reps have up their sleeve. When managers have reps who have a solid foundation, they can focus their efforts on tactical coaching. Managers are also privy to the success stories of other reps (and managers). By sharing these across the team, reps can also gain the benefit of this knowledge that plays a pivotal role in ensuring higher win rates.
Bottomline: The coaching process needs to be more agile
Knowing and doing are two very different things, that’s why practice is so important. In order to make the coaching process more agile it needs to include more practice, in the form of role plays, and also leverage technology to enable that practice to be continual. When combined with mentorship and tactical coaching, as part of a well-defined process, you build a sales coaching cadence that will make your company and reps successful.
Picture this: It’s Sam’s first day on the job as a sales enablement manager for Fast Growth Inc., a rapidly expanding tech company, and he’s feeling daunted, to say the least. He’s Fast Growth Inc.’s first-ever enablement specialist. There’s a lot to be done to improve sales productivity and equip the sales reps, and it’s overwhelming for him to decide where to start. It would be easy to spin his wheels for the first few months, but Fast Growth Inc. is on a fast trajectory and are keen to see some quick results. Sound familiar?
This scenario is one that many sales enablement leaders have either faced in their careers or currently face. But not to worry, we’re here to help Sam (and you) get the most out of the next 90 days. Here’s where to start:
1. Audit rep’s sales readiness
To date, Fast Growth Inc.’s approach to sales readiness has been ad hoc, which is no surprise given their team has grown quickly and is planned to expand from 25 to 100 in the next six months. There’s a ton of product and buyer information in wiki documents, emails, and PDFs that grows each week as new product features and bug fixes are introduced. On top of that, each sales manager has their own way to train and keep their staff up to speed. But there’s no standard way to determine whether the sales reps have absorbed all this information, identify what knowledge gaps they have, and if they’re actually really sales ready.
By conducting an audit of all the existing training and product content for both new and seasoned reps, Sam can see where there may be content gaps, and also determine if there is perhaps some content that the sales reps don’t really consume at all. It may be in a format that is not engaging or difficult to understand, or perhaps it’s not really relevant to them at all. At this stage, it’s important for Sam to look at the existing training content objectively, and decide what really is the most important information for these sales reps. For example, as Fast Growth Inc. is a SaaS business it will be most helpful for the reps to have access to use case studies, whereas if it was into big data perhaps detailed training on product features would be more relevant to them.
As part of this process, Sam will also need to identify who owns what content. It’s quite possible there’s some content that doesn’t have clear accountability at all, and Sam may have to broker responsibility for it to ensure that all the relevant information is shared regularly. He’ll need to look beyond the sales managers and build relationships with other business units that may have information that should be included in the sales training content, like the product, marketing, and the customer success teams. These relationships will continue to be important as his role develops over time, with Sam becoming a critical link between the sales reps and these parts of the business.
Once Sam has audited all of the content, he can look at how it’s set out and determine if there is a better way to structure the sales training so that it’s more robust. One of the best ways to look at how effective the training is to use a data-driven approach. Can he measure how knowledgeable a sales rep is once they’ve completed the training? How engaged are they with the training? Is the information in a format that is easily consumed by sales reps, or does the delivery of it need to be improved?
By looking at the training materials objectively, Sam can then identify what the most important information required is and prioritize that. Like with most things, 20% of the content required for sales training should deal with about 80% of the situations faced by sales reps, so having these easily accessible to them should be priority number 1 for Sam.
With so many new reps coming in Fast Growth Inc.’s doors in the next few months, it’s also important that he considers the sales onboarding program and how that should be structured as part of the overall sales training for the company.
2. Enable managers to coach better
The sales managers at Fast Growth Inc have been responsible for both training and coaching the sales reps, but this has changed now with Sam coming on board. The training will be managed by Sam. This doesn’t mean the sales managers aren’t involved though, Sam takes Sales managers to help by recording their pitches, success stories etc.
While the role of coaching sales reps is still left to the sales manager, Sam ~~ equip them with tools that will help them, coach, more efficiently. This should then free up the sales managers so that they can spend more of their valuable time on coaching complex scenarios and advanced problems like objection handling.
The first step Sam can take here is by putting in place the elements to enable sales managers to implement a structured coaching program for their reps. This should at least cover the basics of Sales 101 like prospecting and pitching, using quizzes or certifications that identify where reps have skill gaps so that he can then determine what specific areas their coaching plan should focus on.
One of the best ways to do this is by creating coaching maps for each stage of the sales process and then developing tools or exercises that the sales manager can select to coach their reps in different areas. For example, to coach reps who are struggling to define their value proposition to a customer, Sam can set up an exercise where the rep can record themselves doing a pitch and this can then be reviewed by the sales manager in the coaching session. By setting up a range of tools and exercises like this, the sales manager can then easily implement a structured coaching plan for individual reps.
Ref: Tamara Schenk webinar on “How to equip your sales managers”
With sales managers free to coach on more complex issues, and sales reps’ skill gaps being addressed, there should be a marked change in win rates and sales results. In fact, CSO Insights research indicates that 62.4% of reps will make a plan if there’s a formal plan in place compared to just 53.1% where there’s no coaching plan. Furthermore, an additional 10% of quota will be achieved when a formal plan is in place, which is a great quick win for Sam.
3. Create a sales enablement framework
The final thing that Sam can do in his first few months on the job is to create a robust data driven sales enablement framework. This involves looking at what the sales reps and managers must do in their roles at every stage of the sales process, identify what they need to be able to complete these tasks effectively.
The framework should cover everything from the type of sales collaterals they need, to the tools and technology they use to complete their job. Once Sam has mapped this out for each part of the sales process, he should then ask himself whether the sales reps (and managers) have enough information at each stage of the process to have a meaningful discussion with a prospect. If he concludes that they don’t, then he will need to identify what is required to fill that gap and enable the sales rep.
The gaps in the sales enablement framework could be sales collateral, access to product updates, industry or competitor information, or an understanding of how to use the CRM. In some instances, the information may exist but it may not be readily accessible to the sales rep when they need it, so perhaps mobile sales enablement is a priority. In simple terms, the purpose of sales enablement is to make it easier for sales reps and managers to do their job at any point in time, and this should be the focus of the sales enablement framework.
By achieving these three things, Sam will be able to show the VP of Sales that the sales team is more productive and sales ready than they were three months ago. The next stage for Sam will be to plug the gaps he’s identified in the sales enablement framework and build on the great work he’s started in his first 90 days.
I’m often asked by sales leaders about how to ensure that sales onboarding delivers long-lasting results. After all, you spend so much time and energy hiring and onboarding new sales reps, but like a shiny new car, your investment depreciates the minute they step outside. Trying to reinforce sales training is a challenge many enablement leaders face.
It is natural for the reps to forget the training content and even if they retained everything the readiness of your reps will decline on a relative scale because it is a moving target. Competitors change strategy, industry dynamics change, you introduce new product features or you have published new referenceable case studies.
It’s not only important to help your newbies maintain their level of knowledge by reinforcing their training, but also to sustain their overall sales readiness so they can continue to level up. Therefore, reinforcement is a critical part of an effective onboarding program.
But how should one go about creating a reinforcement plan for new reps that delivers the goods? Some of your gaps for new reps may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues. To get your reps on their way to achieving their sales quota, here are 5 best practices:
Implement periodic refreshers to reinforce sales training
Broadly, speaking there are two types of sales training formats – baseline training modules (think of them as long-form modules that provide a well-structured and comprehensive knowledge about a subject matter, and bite-sized updates to refresh the knowledge imparted in the training modules. These updates when delivered in the right context can not only serve to refresh the knowledge of your sales reps, but they can also help the sales reps connect the dots on how those pieces of information can help them win more deals. Here are a few examples:
Send out a cheat sheet on how to handle specific customer objections or one that outlines the steps to complete one part of the sales process
Send out bite-sized updates on specific product features and how they contribute to the value proposition
Set reminders in SalesForce at points in the process that are critical to CRM compliance
Send a short reminder on their mobile phone that outlines how an A Player prepares for a meeting
Some of your priorities may be knowledge related, while others may be behavioral. So it’s important to use different methods of reinforcement to target specific issues.
Spot check sales readiness
Quick pop-quizzes are a great way to periodically test and reinforce what your sales reps have retained. When combined with explanations for the quiz answers, these quizzes can serve to enhance the knowledge of the reps. This can be particularly useful for small nuggets of information that are easily forgotten.
Mindtickle has over eight different types of quizzes that can make this quite simple to implement, and provide you with data on how your reps performed on each question as well. For example, use a multiple choice question to test their knowledge of the value proposition or label matching to update them on the benefits of a new product feature.
Reinforce sales training with coaching and simulation exercises
While a structured coaching plan should already be part of your sales onboarding, you can reinforce specific skills and troubleshoot issues using mini-simulations. For example, if there is a specific objection that many reps struggle to deal with, you can have them record their response and then go over this with them in your next feedback session. And if done on a regular basis, such exercises help ensure that all sales reps have consistent messaging.
Mindtickle offers an automated workflow for managing these simulation exercises called Sales Missions. Sales managers can create online exercises for their team members which require them to submit an audio-video recording of how they would respond to a sales situation. These could range from cold pitches, elevator pitches, leaving voicemails to handling specific customer queries or objections. These bite-sized missions should take no more than 5 minutes for the rep to do but can help provide very actionable feedback.
Mentoring
You already know your high-performing quota carriers are the best inspiration you can give to a new hire, but they can also help them reinforce the best practices they’ve heard about during their onboarding. By establishing a formal mentoring program or even an informal buddy system, your new hires can hear success stories and winning strategies directly from your rockstars. When positioned as a buddy or mentor relationship, the new hires are likely to be more open to asking questions that they perhaps might consider too “dumb” to ask their manager.
Certain sales leaders do not want to spare a minute of their top sellers for such mentoring activities. I believe that is a short-sighted approach and can be detrimental to the career progression of your “A player” sales reps. Such mentoring programs have dual benefits in the long term. Not only are they beneficial for the newbies, they also offer an opportunity to your “A” reps to get a first-hand experience of essential managerial skills such as coaching, as the first step towards graduation to senior roles.
Make it mobile
By ensuring that reinforcement content and activities are made available to the reps on their mobile devices, those interactions will be integrated into your reps daily routine and quickly become just another part of their everyday sales activities. Moreover, for reinforcement to be effective, the tips and refreshers are much more meaningful when presented in the context of customer situations. For example – the value of a case study or a win story would be most appreciated by a sales rep when presented in the middle of a similar deal that he/she may be assisting with.
Bonus tip: Amplify the impact of reinforcement by leveraging the power of analytics
According to the Aberdeen Group, 20% more sales reps achieve quota when their team implements post-training reinforcement. But before you jump straight in, you must prioritize the key capabilities that you want your reps to focus on, and then determine how best to reinforce those. For example, ensuring that they fully understand your customer personas may be a challenge for some, or many may find CRM compliance to be a pain point. This is where analytics and data can play a big role again.
At Mindtickle, we export the learning performance (scores in quizzes, engagement metrics, and results from pitch testing) in order to create groups of new hires based on their development needs. This data has also been very useful for us to create a standardized refresher track that applies to all new hires.
For example – we observed that most new hires find it hard to retain the advanced functionality of the Mindtickle analytics. Additionally, our data also tells us that the A player reps on our team have consistently shown a very high degree of awareness regarding competition. So we added competition battle-cards to the reinforcement track and additional reinforcement on advanced analytic functionality.
As startups grow and evolve so does their sales team and along with each stage of growth comes different challenges. While each business is different, it is possible to be better prepared and take advantage of the learnings from other businesses, so that you can scale your sales team faster, better and stronger. Here’s an outline of the four key stages of a startup from inception to scaling, and the challenges they face along the way.
Stage 1 – Inception
Sales People:
0
Customers:
0 to 10
Product Stage:
Idea or prototype
Challenges:
Without any salespeople, at this stage, the business is just learning about the size of its opportunity and what its customers (or potential customers) may actually want. This is the customer discovery stage according to
Mark Birch, Investor & Entrepreneur
, with founders focused on building the product and determining if there is any interest in it. Many of the challenges from a sales perspective revolve around finding someone who is interested in your product, and in demonstrating to your potential customer your
passion for the product
.
Stage 2 – Testing
Sales People:
1 (most likely a founder)
Customers:
2 to 5
Product Stage:
Testing and validating the product
Challenges:
At this stage, you know you’re onto something but you’re still testing whether your solution is valid. While you may have only a few customers, your resources are tight so that’s all the business can manage at this stage, but you still want to get your product out to as many people as possible. So according to Terry Kelman, Director of Sales Enablement & Training at Senstay, “talk to anybody you will talk to you. Sell your product for any price you can get.” This may mean you’re giving your product away for free or make it Open Source to encourage testing.
It’s also critical at this stage to get feedback and open a conversation with your customers where possible. Think of it like market research which can be performed using analytical tools, that help you
discover symptoms in your sales process
(or product) and identify where the issues lie.
Stage 3 – Sales Acceleration
Sales People:
2 to 3 (with perhaps one sales manager)
Customers:
30 to 200 (depending on the type of product)
Product Stage:
Testing and validating the product
Challenges:
With only a few salespeople, but the opportunity has proven, the real challenge according to Birch is, “to build a base of loyal, passionate and successful customers to establish credibility while preparing the startup for full-on growth.” As many customers at this stage are early adopters, they provide a source of low hanging fruit for salespeople.
The sales team is still quite unsophisticated in its approach according to Kelman. Prospecting is akin to a shotgun approach and the focus is on selling features and functions rather than customer value or needs. As resources are scarce at this point in the business’ development, “the types of skills needed during this phase differ from those needed to sell more mature products. Salespeople must be resourceful, able to develop their own sales models and collateral materials as needed,” observe
Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway
.
Stage 4 – Revenue Explosion or Scaling
Sales People:
10 to 100
Customers:
As many as possible
Product Stage:
Refining
Challenges:
The biggest issues for startup sales teams tend to arise at this stage. Perhaps the business has just closed Round B funding and investors want to see rapid growth. All bets have been laid and it’s now time to show the results, so most businesses start to hire. As Kelman points out, “What investors don’t understand is that a big increase in the sales force brings big problems for the sales manager”.
This is where startups need to ramp up what Leslie and Holloway call ‘The Sales Learning Curve’, with “the more a company learns about its product, market, and sales process, the more efficient it becomes at selling, and the higher the sales yield”. Sales managers need to look at how they hire, train and scale. As
Professor Mohanbir Sawhney
of Kellogg School of Management explains, “executives need to embed expertise into the company’s processes and structure to lessen its reliance on a few key people.”
This is where sales training and enablement become a key factor that can make or break a startup. With strong training, agile processes and good collaterals, the business can rapidly bring on board new sales reps,
build trust in customers
and potentially have them selling at a rate that meets investors expectations. Another alternative that Swahney suggests is to “tap partnerships to access capabilities, technology, and customers.”
Regardless of how the startup decides to scale, the needs of their sales team will change considerably. Find out how to prepare your business to scale your dream sales team.
You can create interactive videos to engage your learners at a whole new level. In the age of interactive and gamified learning, the one obstacle Learning & Development teams face is the ability to convert the existing text-heavy content into an interactive video. The charge to hire professionals to make great videos is quite high and one does not always have the budget for these video professionals.
What if you could quickly create your own videos, right from your desktop? Surprised? Well, don’t be! Even you can create interactive videos which are short, crisp, to the point, and engage your learners at a whole new level. And guess what? There are many basic tools which are easily available on the internet that allow you to make great videos!
Let’s step through the process of creating a learning video of your existing presentation, with the help of these tools.
The Planning Stage
It is absolutely vital that you plan your conversion process first. This would help you avoid unnecessary “outtakes” and prevent you from pulling your hair out.
To get started, make sure you:
Break down the content into small presentations which cover all the topics. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your learners.
Remember to use animations to strengthen your presentation. These will be very useful to focus your learner’s attention, something that you might have relied on a trainer to do in a classroom setting.
Identify how you can test each topic at the end of the videos and also give them further material to explore. This will ensure that your learners’ interest is kept high even after the lesson has ended
Prepare a script for the voice over that you will record when running the slideshow. You need to have a plan about what to talk about on each slide. It is as good as giving a live presentation in a training session. Make sure the narrative is as interactive as possible. Keeping it casual and having a sense of humor in the script is the way to go.
Keep the video script short and crisp. A learner’s attention span is usually around 3 to 4 minutes, which is why the ideal length of a learning video should not be more than that.
Here is a sample plan for the narrative for a screencast to search for a product on Google.
The Execution Stage
Once you have the topic presentation ready, then starts the fun part! Download a screen recording tool
The tool that we recommend (and use internally) is Camtasia. It has extensive features but is also extremely user-friendly. Camtasia even adds a plug into your MS Office PowerPoint, from which you can record your presentations with a single click. In case you do not like Camtasia, there are lots of screen recorders that can be found on the internet which include:
Download any one of the above, which will enable you to record your screen when you are running a presentation.
Record the Video:
To start recording the video, you will have to use the screen recording tool. Prior to recording, make sure you have adjusted the settings according to your requirements. This will save you a lot of headaches if in case something goes wrong!
Once you are ready with the settings, click the Record button and start the presentation.
Voice During Recording
A very common beginner’s’ mistake during recording videos is that we forget to pay attention to our own energy levels. During a classroom training, the trainers also feed off the energy of the learners, and hence it creates an energetic, interactive experience. But while recording a video, the trainer does not have the energy of the classroom to feed off of. Due to this, even his energy levels drop while recording. This is the surest way to create extremely boring videos.
There are many ways to avoid having low energy during the recording session. Some people have found coffee or energy drinks to be useful, whereas others might resort to standing during the sessions or even jumping up and down in between the recording to maintain their high energy levels.
Important tip: Voice modulation can be the most versatile tool you have while recording a video, to bring emphasis to certain points. Try to use this to your advantage! Even minor fluctuations can be very effective.
Put on the Editor’s Hat:
Now that you have finished recording the video, it’s time to wear the editor’s hat! No movie is recorded in a single shot. You do not want the video to be incomplete or miss its crispness. Let’s add some make-up before it goes live!
In Camtasia, once you are done with the recording, the first step is to set the video output resolution. For web purposes, the best practice is to use the dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixels. If you do not select this and choose a setting which is lesser, the video that will be generated will not be ideal for full-screen playback on today’s screens. This means that your text and images might be too small for the learner to read and comprehend.
A simple timeline with the recording tool allows you to edit the video. In case you are not happy with the current recording, you can go back and record only those parts and merge it to the current timeline.
In the editor, you can very easily trim the video, cut it, increase the voice pitch for certain sections, and even zoom into the video while explaining the important parts. These (and a host of other more powerful features) really put the finishing touches on your video.
The Publishing Stage
Now comes the time to cut, save, and call it a day!
Once you have edited the video, the last step is to save the file in the format most preferred by you. If you any text in your presentations, then the ideal output for the video is the HD option which gives you a high-quality output. However, this does create quite large video files. Hence, if you wish to lower your bandwidth costs, then you could go in for a lesser resolution format. But do make sure that the text in the video is readable for your learners!
Run the video past your teammates or users and collect feedback. Use the feedback when creating the next video!
Congratulations! You just recorded a video with no help from professional video makers. The number of people using this method to record videos is increasing by the day. Though we just focused on making videos through screen recordings, the other popular forms are getting a cam recorder and record the demonstration of you presenting on stage or on a blackboard. Once recorded, you can edit the video with the help of your favorite recording tool.
We certainly hope that you will be creating a lot more videos from your presentations now, and join the brigade of L&D professionals who are using video regularly in their courses.
How do you record your videos? Do you have any tips or tricks that you can share with our community? Do share with us in the comments below!
Recently, I found myself having similar conversations about how to manage channel partners with several customers from very different industries. The customers were in retail, technology, and hospitality respectively, but they each had similarities in the way they dealt with these partner relationships. The differences in their channel partner strategies were not due to their industries but rather were influenced by the stage of their business was at, or very specific market factors.
As each one is an SME in their area, they already know and understand the benefits that you offer, but keeping them highly motivated to sell your solution as part of their bundled package is critical. This is why most point solutions I’ve seen have a dedicated channel manager, who works closely with their partners to make sure they stay engaged. 
When it comes to planning your 
Ref: Tamara Schenk webinar on “How to equip your sales managers”
