If you’re looking for a quick win in your sales enablement programs then look no further than your sales engineering team. One of the most overlooked roles in sales enablement is that of the sales engineer, also known as technical sales, pre-sales or sales consultant. While 94.3% of businesses focus their sales enablement initiatives on frontline salespeople and account managers, only 45.9% shine light on their sales engineers, yet they play a crucial role in the sales process.
Sales engineers often require more enablement than reps by virtue of the highly technical nature of their role. They not only need to know everything about their product, competitors, verticals, and industry, but sales engineers must also understand how to apply this information to different use cases and differentiate your product from that of your competitors. Sales engineers touch almost every part of the sales process and play a significant role in proving the success of your product to potential customers.
The sales engineer is the resident product expert in a sales call – a situation that can be highly stressful even for the most competent professional. They bring together the knowledge of how existing customers use your product, usually learned from the customer success team, with the sales teams understanding of the customer, their pain points, and needs. Essentially, sales engineers need to have the knowledge that both sales and customer success teams have, along with the detailed specifications of your product. As a consultant, they provide the deep knowledge that helps customers see why they should choose your product and be able to demonstrate it.
Their role covers not only initial sales conversations but also customized demonstrations and proof of concepts. It’s the sales engineer who sets up sandboxes and pilots so that customers can trial your product and see their specific use cases in action. This process of proof of concept can take a sales engineer anywhere from one week to six months to complete.
Some businesses have acknowledged the key role that sales engineers play. Symantec designed and implemented a comprehensive enablement program targeted specifically to the sales engineers and they believe well-enabled sales engineers make their pipeline bulletproof. This is the exception rather than the rule and speaks to the value Symantec have placed on the role of the sales engineer in their focus on customer success. Many companies simply arm sales engineers with the same information that they give their sales reps or customer success teams. While this is a start, it rarely provides them with all the information they need, nor the depth of knowledge required, to complete their role effectively.
Some areas that sales engineers need to be enabled include:
Detailed product knowledge that incorporates technical specifications
Customer use cases
The product roadmap and future releases
The RFP process and what security documents are required for different verticals and industries
Up to date information on competitor products and industry updates
The ability to dive deeper into specific pain points and requirements
How to conduct a technical demonstration and manage trials and proof of concepts
Each aspect of the sales process including who is involved and understanding when they are required
Given how critical sales engineers are in turning an opportunity into a customer, it’s surprising that more businesses have not focused on enabling their knowledge and needs. Businesses that do this now can achieve a competitive advantage that is almost guaranteed to help them close more deals faster.
This post is based on a webinar where Mark Tefakis, VP of Global Enablement at Fuze, shares the key pillars of successful sales enablement and how to show its ROI to your leadership.
Fuze is an award-winning “cloud-based unified communication platform that addresses complexities around the modern workforce with the ability to work in a way that drives efficiency and effectiveness for the growth and profitability metrics companies need,” explains Mark. “Founded in 2006, we’re headquartered in Boston and have offices throughout Europe, into Australia, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.”
The evolution and need for sales enablement
“Sales Enablement centered around training and development initially and expanded into how you fully enable the sales organization,” Mark continued. “A lot of CSOs are being challenged with having a constant pulse on the business, to be able to report on where they are today, where they’re going tomorrow, and knowing the lead and lag indicators so they can be responsive to the demands of the business. The discipline of sales enablement is a foundational set of processes and standards that help the CSO address that pressure and scrutiny. This foundation includes time to ramp (TTR) [onboarding], ongoing enablement [to increase productivity], and [preventing] unplanned churn.”
The five pillars of sales enablement
Mark developed the concept of the five pillars of sales enablement through his experience in sales and sales leadership. They are:
Organizational alignment: “Before you get started you have to understand the dynamics around the organizational alignment. Do you have governance and some process in place where everybody understands the vision, strategies, initiatives, scorecards, and metrics that you’re putting in place to drive the success of the program? That’s critically important,” explained Mark.
Role-based certification: Most sales organizations have several different roles that vary by company and industry. Role-based certification involves identifying the competency model tied to the skills and knowledge associated with each role. As you look through the motion of each role, what is the thing reps need to know, say, show, and do as they manage the day-in-a-life of performing against the expectations of the role? Next, turn it into a curriculum and how you want to train, develop, and evaluate the performance of these roles. There are three levels that comprise this certification model:
Lecture and test the retention of knowledge;
Exercise and application, transitioning from understanding a concept into applying and exercising the skill tied to that concept prior to going out into the field; and
Managers evaluateperformance in the field and coach.
Enablement on demand: “Leverage technology to streamline how effectively you execute against the things that are defined in the role-based competency model. There’s no need for heavy dependency on instructor-led training or virtual training when there are technology and applications that allow you to better drive efficiency and effectiveness, plus scale better for the organization within a proper cost model,” explains Mark. “Leverage technology as part of this foundational layer and put the power in the palm of the hand of the individual. Do this within cloud-based applications, with integration into CRM, where you can tie learning and sales supporting assets to a specific sales scenario, prescribing assets and learning based on that scenario. Also building in some gamification to drive contest around how people learn is really compelling. I would encourage you to think about enablement on demand,” he continues.
Predictive analytics: “It’s one thing to look at reports and reference a dashboard of things that happened in the past. It’s another to look through the windshield, at the road ahead, and predictively be able to tell where your business is going. If you establish the right lead and lag metrics, supporting technology can show when individuals in your sales organization are heading for disaster. You can then start to prescribe specific learning to get them over that hurdle so they can start to perform much better,” suggests Mark.
Sales advisory boards (a.k.a. voice of the customer): “If you don’t establish champions and have a feedback loop from the sales organization, you will battle some apprehensive people while you’re pushing programs out. This is a mechanism for you to be able to gather insight and feedback in a structured fashion. Sales can contribute to the design and development of your initiatives through localized champions who can support and help drive adoption,” he explains.
“With the five pillars of successful sales enablement,” Mark explained, “we’re leveraging really interesting technology to help do this so you can scale with the demands of the business. You’re not asking the CFO for a ton of bodies, you’re actually leveraging the power of technology, and better equipping and enabling the field based on the power in the palm of your hand, which ties back to the center pillar of enabling on demand.”
How sales enablement works at Fuze
“First and foremost is sales methodology. Whether you do it internally or you leverage an external partner, you have to start there because that is the foundation that drives the rest of the bubbles to the right,” Mark continued.
“Once you have that in place, you then start to think in terms of how to establish a best practice approach to outreach and engagement to the marketplace. We use Mindtickle for our learning management system and recently launched it to our global sales organization. We use Savo for our content management system and a combination of both Mindtickle and Savo to help us with ‘voice of the customer’ and engagement with the field. This gives us the pulse of what’s going on,” explains Mark.
“All of these equate to very effective sales productivity based on the pillars and the underlying enablement technology that you can put in place.”
This post is based on a webinarwhere Jonathan Hinz, Director of Product Marketing at Seismic and Daniel Kuperman, Director of Product Marketing at Mindtickle, discuss maximizing the impact of sales enablement with content and learning. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
Today’s buyers are more informed before they meet with sales reps. They expect reps to be prepared to help them make an educated decision. Unfortunately, modern sellers are stretched so thin by day-to-day demands that they’re often challenged to find the time to really understand their buyers. “This is the gap of knowledge and preparation for sales,” Daniel explained, “There are several aspects to this gap:
How prepared the salesperson is to have a conversation with the buyer;
What they can offer during that conversation in terms of solutions and insights; and
How much they know about your pain, your challenges, and your industry to educate you to move towards the ideal scenario.”
Things have changed for Marketing
Marketing needs to change to ensure it can feed the right leads to sales in this new world order. “At the marketing level, we’ve had this conversation one too many times. We’ve been using marketing automation platforms to broadcast our messages to find and advance leads until they’re good marketing-qualified leads to hand off to sales,” Jonathan said.
“Sales works these leads until they’re won or lost,” Jonathan continued. “Where are the key learnings? How do we win? What content was used? How was training effective? What element went into that salesperson being able to close that deal? How did marketing know what content worked? How did they enhance those leads to get to the point where there was a signature on a piece of paper? These metrics all need to be captured for marketing to optimize the flow and drive better-qualified leads.”
What is the solution?
Sales also need to be equipped to meet these changes.
According to Daniel, “There are three things you need to do to meet these challenges:
Prepare sellers to have the value-added conversations buyers expect from them. This is not just about sales training, but really making sure reps have the knowledge, skills, and behaviors they need to perform in the field;
Ensure sellers have the right information at the right stage of the sales cycle. In today’s environment, reps need very specific training and content at different stages in the sales cycle. This ensures they can adapt to the various situations and demands of their buyers; and
Create a culture of continuous learning so sellers are always prepared to engage with buyers. This is the best way for sales reps to become familiar with new features and product updates quickly without taking them out of their selling environment.”
There are some constraints that must be addressed for this to happen. According to Daniel, these include:
Creating a culture of continuous learning without impacting selling time;
Understanding that one solution won’t necessarily meet every organization’s needs;
Being able to demonstrate the value of your sales enablement initiatives; and
Reviewing existing systems to determine if they are inefficient or and need to be updated.
How you really fix these issues?
Sales Enablement plays an important role in addressing these issues.
“The essence of Sales Enablement is really about setting up the framework so Sales can be successful,” according to Jonathan. “Plus, you need to have the right training in place to provide context at the same time. This includes new product launches, new competitive messaging, new decks, new content – sales needs all these different things to quickly absorb this information so they can have better customer conversations.
When that’s done right, sales reps are easily able to access the right assets. They know how to use them, the results are awesome, and they can accelerate deals. They also have a better deal impact and their teams become more efficient.”
The organizational benefits multiply
It isn’t just the sales reps that benefit from these enablement initiatives. There are flow-on effects throughout the organization. “From a business perspective, what we see across companies that we work with, is a stage of effects,” explains Jonathan.
“First, there is increased efficiency across the business thanks to improved sales and marketing alignment. People can find content as it’s all in one place. Sales teams can pull assets and know how to use them because the right training is in place. This results in improved content ROI and increased seller productivity,” he continues.
“All this together creates a higher focus on commercial outcomes for the business. New and organic revenue growth is driven by these more productive and effective teams.”
“This improves morale amongst the sales team, particularly because sales reps realize their organization is taking them into consideration,” adds in Daniel. “This also results in significantly reduced attrition rates. If you want to grow your sales organization, improving morale, and how your sales reps are perceived internally is extremely important. It’s a great outcome that will positively impact your bottom line.”
The future state of sales enablement with Mindtickle and Seismic
“Mindtickle and Seismic integrate with your CRM system so sales reps have access to them every minute of every day,” Jonathan explains. “They give them the tools and the resources they need to have great customer conversations. By providing them access to the platforms they already use, sales reps do not need to go to offsite training that takes up their valuable sales time.
With this combined solution, you’re able to lock content until knowledge certification has been completed. This means sales reps have to take the training before they can access some content. It’s an awesome capability that can magnify your ability to train and educate your entire sales team.
The solution also has the capability to combine content and training on a landing page that sales can see on a daily basis. The reality is that only a small volume of content in the library is actually used. 80% to 90% of content is generally unused for a good reason -it’s not the stuff that closes deals. It’s the 10% to 20% that does. This is what sales see on their landing page.
If they’re looking for something on a more occasional basis, that’s what Search is for – the every so often use. The training content can be extracted from Mindtickle and put it into the Seismic platform. It’s an incredible capability that really enhances the content and gives it context, “ explains Jonathan.
Customers see ROI and results
Companies that use Seismic and Mindtickle achieve the following results:
Organizations need to become agiler to succeed
Sales Enablement is charged with leading the way organizations to address new business challenges so they can accelerate their sales now and into the future.
“Enablement leaders need to create a culture of continuous learning so their organizations can become agile and adapt well to changes happening in the marketplace,” Daniel advises. “This can be achieved by looking at the technology available today. Mindtickle and Seismic offer one possibility by working together.”
“Regardless of the technology platform that you choose, my recommendation is to make sure that it is aligned with the vision for Sales Enablement at your organization,” he continues. “Make sure that the platform, or combination of platforms, that you choose is actually going to help you move the needle now and as you grow. Don’t just look at the problems you need to solve today, but also think about whether the solution can grow with your organization. A good sales enablement platform should help you tackle all of your issues, provide strategic insights and facilitate the change management that is required from sales enablement today at organizations of any size.”
Purchasing sales enablement software isn’t as simple as deciding what features you want and ticking them off a list. That’s because sales enablement as an industry is at a nascent stage which makes it difficult to know exactly what your business will need today, tomorrow, and into the future.
Sales leaders are also still defining what they need and want from sales enablement. The objectives, success factors and KPIs for sales enablement are still being defined and may continue to evolve. That’s where the right vendor can empower a business to shape its sales enablement strategy in a way that meets its long-term objectives.
Having worked in both Customer Success and Sales, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for a customer to make the right decision, and how that decision can impact their business either positively or negatively. Many businesses tend to start with training and select their software based on the features they need. But enabling a sales force is rarely just about training – it may require a wide range of activities including content, structured coaching, process improvement, and internal communication. It often also requires reporting to sales management that helps identify gaps and opportunities.
The challenge for any sales enablement function is identifying and solving the bigger issues that are impacting their reps. If your sales enablement function is relatively new, you may still be identifying issues and prioritizing them, or trying to anticipate what your business needs in the medium to long-term future. This can be even more confusing if you’re having to deal with salespeople who are focused on selling you software rather than helping you solve your problem.
Start with your end-goal
Tools are an enabler but they’re not the end-game. Before purchasing software it’s important to identify what you want to achieve. Perhaps identify your top sales enablement initiatives for the next one to three years and align these with the objectives of your sales leadership team. These initiatives will depend on your specific business needs. Some examples include revamping your sales onboarding, instigating a manager-led coaching program or ensuring your reps can articulate your value proposition consistently.
Each of your initiatives should be based on the outcomes that you and your business want to achieve. Questions that may be helpful to ask here include:
What do your leaders want to achieve?
What do our frontline reps want and need?
What do our sales managers want and need?
If you’re speaking with a software vendor at this stage they should be able to help you define each of these questions and unravel your issues and help you find a way to solve them. At this point, it’s best not to focus on product features, but rather look at how you can elevate your sales game.
Focus on a partnership
Of course, the features that your sales readiness platform has are important, but a solution needs to have the flexibility and capability to meet your needs now and in the future. This is where it’s important for you to look at the product roadmap and see what’s coming in the future and understand how that may help your organization.
Ask the vendor how they develop their product roadmap and determine its direction. Some take onboard feedback from customers, while others may develop their strategy based on the whims and fancies of a handful of product geeks.
Value transparency and honesty
Software vendors shouldn’t just be there to sell you their platform. What’s most important is that you find the right solution for your business. There’s no point trying to force fit a solution, it will only end up costing you more in the long-run. That’s why I’ve actually referred some prospects to other solutions when I know that we don’t have the solution to their problems. It doesn’t help our customers to end up with a platform that doesn’t address their needs.
That’s where transparency and honesty are important. Every sales enablement platform has its strengths and weaknesses. The key is for you to find the platform that best meets your needs now and in the future. Sales reps play a valuable role in the process of deciding which sales enablement platform is right for your business. A good vendor salesperson will help you solve the problems you’re facing so that your sales can be elevated.
In my last post, we discussed how to go about identifying the issue or symptom that your business is experiencing. The next step in building a business case for sales readiness is to define the exact problems your business is experiencing.
The only way to start honing in on the problem is to identify the metrics that you need to measure for each issue. This will also help you measure your baseline, and in the future, demonstrate the benefit of your readiness initiatives.
Some examples of translating issues into specific metrics include:
With your broad metrics identified you can then design your end goals. For example, if your metric is to improve onboarding ramp-up time, your goal may be to improve how long it takes for your new hires to reach quota. To determine the metrics your business needs to focus on partnering with Sales Ops. This will ensure that you’re both in agreement on what your goals are and work towards reaching the same desired state.
It’s also important to ensure your programs are tightly aligned with the objectives of your sales leadership. While it’s easy to focus in on training, this may only solve part of your problem. Sales reps need to be enabled with a range of things – knowledge, skills, coaching, reinforcement, content, and process – not just training. That’s why it’s important to have access to as many analytics and data points as you can. Research has found that organizations that use sales analytics increase team quota attainment 4x faster than non-users. Sales Ops is often the starting point here, as they use sales analytics to improve forecasting, find ways to ensure that revenue becomes more predictable and identify opportunities to improve sales effectiveness.
Identify all the stakeholders
Sales Ops, as the expert in data and impact correlation, is an important stakeholder for Sales Enablement but they’re not the only one. 36% of businesses don’t make a concerted effort to foster collaboration between sales enablement and other parts of the company.
For your sales readiness initiatives to succeed, Sales Enablement must be the hub that connects the sales team to the different departments that can influence their performance or will be affected by it. For example, if an initiative will save money then involve Finance – they may even be your champion or decision maker further down the track.
Other key players include Marketing who understands messaging and Product who is crucial for any product training and updates on features. And of course, the leadership team who are enablers when it comes to achieving alignment across the company. If you can demonstrate the success of your initiatives you will be well-positioned to ask the leadership team to help you – whether it’s involving other teams or driving adoption amongst your sales organization.
While reps are usually the focus of enablement initiatives, frontline managers also need to be enabled. Win rates can increase by 9% and revenue attainment can increase by up to 18% if you invest in your frontline sales managers. For example, providing them with structured coaching frameworks can increase quota attainment by 10%.
Calculate the real value of your initiatives
Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and key problems, prioritize them so you can identify which to focus on first. Best-in-class businesses select just a few initiatives to implement successfully before moving onto the next.
The best way to prioritize your initiatives is by the value each will add to the business.
This isn’t easy to do, especially when you don’t have access to perfect data, but it’s an essential part of the process. Benchmark your business against external research, ask stakeholders what benefit they expect to see and speak to Sales Ops to deter
mine the best way to measure your initiative
For example, to measure the effectiveness of your reps demos start with their current conversion rate – perhaps demo to opportunity is 20%. If certifying your reps increases the conversion rate to 25%, then extrapolate from there. If each demo potentially earns $20,000 and each rep does 50 demos a month then: $20,000 * 50 * 5% = $50,000
That’s $50,000 more revenue each rep can earn a month or $600,000 a year. That’s $6 million a year if you have 100 reps. Now, that’s a compelling argument. This table shows some metrics alongside external data points that may help you calculate the value of your initiatives.
While not all of these metrics will be appropriate for your sales readiness initiatives, they provide you with a starting point to define your problem and back it up.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
― Albert Einstein
According to the Bridge Group, sales productivity is the biggest challenge for 65% of B2B organizations. But stating the obvious isn’t a good enough reason to convince your sales leaders and the C-Suite to invest in sales readiness.
But if you told them that the number of reps attaining quota is dropping – from 63% to 53% over the last 5 years – and they could turn this around with specific readiness initiatives, like structured coaching then they may take notice.
Over the next three posts, we’ll outline how to put together a business case for sales readiness that will have your leaders asking where to sign up.
The first step in putting together your business case is identifying what problems sales readiness will solve for your business. To determine what needs to be solved you first need to determine what your pain points are.
Pain points aren’t always obvious so cast your net wide
Pain points are not always easy to identify and they may be different depending on who you ask. That’s why it’s important to gather as much information and as many data points as you can from relevant people internally.
To gain champions internally your business case needs to be aligned with the priorities of the business. So work with Sales Ops to understand where most of your leads drop-off. Enabling your team with competitive insights could be the solution to a $20 million problem, or certifying your reps to do demos could improve your top line by $10 million. By collaborating with Sales Ops you can determine which couple of initiatives present the biggest opportunities and park any that are secondary. By partnering with Ops when presenting to leadership, you also strengthen your positioning.
Sales leaders are not the only people that should be interviewed though. Speak to your end-users and then analyze their responses to see if there are any overarching trends. While you won’t be able to resolve each of their individual tactical problems, if all your reps seem to be struggling at the same point in the sales cycle or with their demos, for example, then you can see where your biggest problems lie.
But it’s not just important to talk to the top 20%, the middle 60% and bottom 20% should also be included, cast your net wide to determine the true issues. For example, if all your reps are complaining about their win rates, then you have a place to start, but if it’s only one group of reps then it may be a reflection of your onboarding program, or something else.
To really identify what’s actually causing some of your problems will require some deeper digging. For example, CSO insights found that aligning the sales process with the customer journey can have a marked impact on win rates, as much as 15%. But before jumping to the conclusion that this will solve your problems, speak to your reps and determine if misalignment with the customer journey is actually part of the problem. Even if it is, there are several ways that this root cause can be addressed – from content for each stage of the buyer’s journey to training, coaching and tools. To determine which combination of these is right for your business and will give you the biggest bang for the buck you need to dig deeper. In this process, you need to connect the dots between what the problem looks like and what is really causing it.
It’s good to be creative when looking for information about pain points and perhaps look beyond your own people. For example, some companies conduct buy cycle reviews to identify issues in their win rates. This involved new sales reps interviewing clients of deals that were recently won, lost, or ended as no decisions to find out what went right and what went wrong. The information is invaluable and may highlight some customer issues that your reps or sales leaders aren’t aware of.
It’s also important to work with sales ops to identify the top areas for improvement. They have access to the data and are most familiar with analyzing the information and your CRM. A common problem for many companies is the amount of non-selling times their reps are doing. Sales Ops may already have data available on this, so partner with them to find a solution.
For example, research has shown that the average rep needs to update over 300 CRM records per week.
If each record takes just two minutes to update that’s 600 minutes, or 10 hours, a week. If you and Ops can find a way to halve that task, that would give each of your reps an extra hour a day to sell.
So speak to them to see if they’ve identified any issues. Perhaps they’ve noticed gaps in your CRM data or have identified some parts of the pipeline that are lagging behind benchmark indicators.
Armed with all this information you’ll be ready to start really getting into the root cause of your issues. In the next post, we’ll discuss how to define your problems and calculate the value you can add by fixing them
How to achieve cross-functional alignment for your sales enablement initiatives
What to look for when evaluating sales enablement technology
How bot technology will transform sales enablement in the future
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Sales enablement means different things to different people. Some think of it as training and knowledge while others view it as being about developing sales capabilities or improving the overall effectiveness of their deals.
“My northern star when it comes to sales enablement is how do I enable people to transform an organization, to transform faster and better than they did before,”
states Glen Lally, Global Vice President of Enablement and Innovation for SAP.
“SAP is a large organization with 90,000 people, so we have multiple lines of business and each line of business has their own enablement function. It’s important to work cross-functionally with sales operations, with marketing, with the sales organization and put the field at the center of what you do. Understand what’s working and what’s not for them, and be that cross-functional partner that can bring all of these different pieces together to be successful,”
explains Glen.
“Netflix summed it up well by saying you need to be tightly aligned and loosely coupled.”
This, coupled with a growing sales stack, are some of the biggest challenges facing sales enablement leaders in large organizations when trying to enable their sales teams effectively.
While buyers have access to more information, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re equipped to make better decisions. In fact, all this information has the potential to overwhelm them, making it even harder to make a decision about a big purchase. The result is a prolonged decision making process and an elongated sales cycle.
Research by Corporate Executive Board has found that more information just means customers have more questions, with 65% spending as much time getting ready to speak to a sales rep as they’d anticipated the entire purchase process would take. When coupled with an increase in the number of decision makers – up from 5.4 to 6.8 people in the past two years – it’s even harder to get a decision.
This brings current selling techniques into question. While reps have been focused on responding to customers by giving them more information to help them make decisions, this reduces the ease of purchase by 18%. Whereas reps who are more prescriptive in their approach actually increase the purchase ease for their customers by 86%.
What is prescriptive selling?
Prescriptive selling involves making a recommendation to customers backed with reasons why it’s the best solution for them. This approach involves the rep demonstrating their understanding of the customer’s pain points and needs while offering a valuable solution. It’s proactive and makes it easier for the customer to purchase. It may even reduce the chances that the customer will regret the purchase later on.
And here’s the clincher – a supplier is 62% more likely to win a high-quality sale if they make purchasing easier for their buyers.
The key to prescriptive selling isn’t just about giving the customer a clear recommendation – it’s actually in the organization’s approach to selling. Sales organizations need to be more prescriptive in how their reps can convey these messages in their customer conversations.
So how do you start?
The starting point for any prescriptive selling approach is the customer’s journey. This journey must start before the customer is even aware of your organization or product. Because it’s at this early stage when they’re first bombarded with information and need a prescriptive approach to help guide them through their decision. This means each piece of content across all channels should have a prescriptive lens.
This approach then flows onto all aspects of the sales process. How reps approach conversations, how they articulate the value proposition, and how they deal with objections, should all be more prescriptive. They should all focus on how to help customers make a decision, rather than why they should purchase your product.
This approach also requires a more prescriptive approach to how your reps sell. While formal scripts are rarely appropriate in many complex sales situations, sales organizations should be more prescriptive about how their salespeople should approach different sales situations.
Don’t worry, consultative selling still has its place
While it may seem like prescriptive selling is moving away from the consultative approach to selling, and towards a more rigid sales process, it actually brings together the best of both approaches. Customers won’t respond to well something that feels like a hard sell. Rather they want a solution that meets their specific needs.
But salespeople can rely on more prescriptive content and diagnostic exercises that help customers pinpoint their needs. By providing reps with access to information and real-time training that helps them respond to a customer’s questions they can be more prescriptive and more consultative in how they sell.
The end result is a consistent sales approach. All reps sing from the same songbook, and the way they guide customers along their purchasing journey is similar. With everything tied to the customer’s own purchasing journey, it should also make the process easier for the customer. And as the research shows, the easier the purchasing journey the more chance of a positive decision.
While marketing content is one important part of this process, sales reps also need to be enabled with the tools and information they need to be prescriptive. That may include role plays to practice their messaging, on-demand feedback and coaching from their managers, success stories and examples from their peers, and up-to-date information that they can apply in their customer conversations.
This is a fundamental shift away from the traditional sales approach. No longer can reps just focus on how to get a customer to buy their product. Their role now is to help customers make a decision, full stop. Their customers will thank them for it, and so will their leaders.
Sales roles are becoming more specialized. In B2B tech this is most prevalent with sales teams divided into Sales Development, Sales Engineering, Account Executives, and Account Managers. Within each of these groups, there is often further segmentation – based on account size, industry, and territory. The larger your sales team, the more specialized your roles are likely to be.
This type of segmentation helps with focus, productivity, and scale. When you dig deeper you find that sales reps are also grouped based on their individual performance – “A” players, “B” players and “C” players form the traditional bell-shaped curve.
While most companies do this and it is commonly accepted, one important element seems to ignore the different segments – sales training. Training is rarely tailored to suit the different needs of each segment of the sales organization.
Routine training sessions tend to be mandatory and pushed out to all reps at the same time. Sales kickoffs, whether annual or quarterly, are notorious for treating all reps the same. Forcing them to sit in a room for hours on end listening to the same sessions. And even sales onboarding programs tend to be structured for the masses. The entire class of new hires have the same training sessions and only break apart for separate sessions that are based on the rep’s main role (e.g. SDR vs AE).
These training sessions also rarely engage reps or require them to demonstrate outcomes. There may be a quick test at the end to make sure they heard everything, but it rarely provides any real information about whether the reps are sales ready for their specific role. We know sales reps thrive on outcomes – they chase revenue because they have targets, they use content because it helps accelerate deals – so why don’t we train them to sell better rather than just rote learning?
New technologies are more convenient for training. They enable on-demand and online training and give reps the ability to consume training content at their own pace. But this approach lacks a basic tenet of adult education – it needs to take into consideration the learner’s experience, background, and preferences (e.g. accessing training and content on mobile devices vs computer).
This means your top-performing reps should be treated differently to your middle performers when it comes to learning. But that’s not all. It’s also important to understand exactly what areas of improvement each person needs and how to improve their performance.
Mapping competencies in sales training and enablement initiatives
When it comes to sales enablement, the most mature companies have created specific models for sales competencies. These have been developed with full buy-in from the company’s leadership. They understand that an ideal sales rep has certain skill sets and follows particular behaviors, and have codified those into different categories. How reps are measured is also clearly communicated to them.
Taking each of these categories into consideration, enablement and training initiatives are then mapped to each category. It’s important to note that ‘training’ and ‘enablement’ are different and the sales team should be evaluated against each of them.
If you map each sales rep against the respective competency list for their specific role you can then identify if there are any gaps and start tailoring their training requirements and deliver specific training to address them. This means each rep will receive very specific training that they require to improve how they sell and excel. Reps that are already at the required competency level won’t have to participate in unnecessary training.
We have also seen companies take this to the next level by tying sales compensation to reps corresponding “sales readiness” levels.
Automating competency mapping
I know this all sounds great, but how do you actually implement something like this without hiring more staff? The answer lies in technology. Traditional LMS focus on solving the perennial HR problem of whether employees have completed their required courses. They tend to focus on compliance rather than building competencies.
Sales reps need to build specific sales competencies and leaders need to see how each directly contributes to revenue. That’s why sales readiness technologies have gained traction. They help companies transform their approach to sales training. They can do this in several ways including:
Identify trends in sales performance: Using outcome-driven analytics your leaders can see how teams are performing against specific sales competencies and identify trends. For example, see what kind of information or training teams have completed (like commercial insights, negotiating techniques or pricing), and determine which of these are translating into more sales.
Identifying competency gaps: Using analytical tools that allow you to drill down into regions, territories and even individual sales reps, you can see whether there are any gaps in sales competencies or if perhaps there are other areas that need to be addressed.
See the big picture: Put all your training initiatives into one place – including role-plays and coaching initiatives – so you can have a precise picture of their combined impact in achieving the competency levels. This also allows you to identify opportunities to tweak or even create new programs.
Share insights and reports with sales leadership: It is easier to demonstrate what leaders need to do when you can show them hard data. By proactively sharing reports on gap analysis along with your suggestions for improvement, you can highlight how sales performance can be improved.
Demonstrate how training has improved sales: Overlay the reports on your training and enablement programs with pipeline and sales reports to show just what improvements the initiatives have made to topline revenue, your pipeline, and deals.
Sales readiness technology has the power to help your sales organization refocus your training toward sales competencies. This can dramatically change how your training is delivered, how your reps perceive sales training, and your sales team’s overall performance.
The end of traditional sales training is nigh and successful companies are already riding this new wave of competency-based dynamic training. It’s helping them scale their sales teams and enabling them to beat the competition. Are you ready to jump onboard?
have a sales enablement or sales readiness function. This is the area that is responsible not only for sales training but ensuring reps are coached, receive appropriate reinforcement and have all the tools they need at their disposal. According to research by the ATD, continuous investment in training and reinforcement activities, like coaching, with sales reps results in over 50% higher net sales per employee. This translates into a 40% higher gross profit per employee and 20% higher ratio of market-to-book value.
Now mentally calculate what a difference those achievements would make to your bottom line and your shareholder value. It’s a compelling case for sale readiness, but how do you convince your CEO?
Here are three reasons why your CEO can’t ignore sales readiness any longer. Give them context: Disruption is the new normal
The C-Suite can no longer just set a strategy and watch it being implemented over the next 6 to 12 months. Every industry is changing rapidly and all hands are required on deck to ensure your business doesn’t fall victim to the next disruptor.
According to Eugene Clerk of Credit Suisse
, the average age of a company listed on the S&P 500 has fallen from 60 years old in the 1950s to less than 20 years old today.
That means the company that is getting ready to disrupt your business may not even exist yet.
With so much change occurring, your frontline teams need to have direct alignment with leadership. Whether your business is just tweaking strategy or pivoting, your sales reps need to be able to deliver the vision as soon as you make a change. Otherwise, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you risk your customers and competitors being more up-to-date than your sales reps.
That’s why your CEO needs a direct line to the frontline teams, so they can change their messaging quickly.
Most companies tweak or change their messaging regularly, to keep up with competitive changes and new product updates. A lot of time and effort goes into each change, especially if it involves a new product rollout. Given that anywhere
between 33% and 80% of new products
fail, and each can cost millions of dollars, it’s worth taking the time to try and get it right. According to Harvard research, the
biggest reason new products fail is lack of preparation.
A lot of resources are devoted to designing the product, but the finer details of the launch are forgotten, like preparing your sales team to sell it.
Add on top of that, the cost and lost sales that you’ll incur by taking your reps out of the field to attend classroom training each time you roll out a new feature, and it builds a compelling case to find a sales readiness solution that works.
Reps belong on-the-field, that’s why sales readiness technology is crucial now. It enables your reps to cope with constant change while they’re on the field.
2. To grow shareholder value you need to measure effectiveness as well as efficiency
In order to maximize your shareholder value, you can’t just deliver some training to your sales reps and cross your fingers. Your business needs to be able to measure what knowledge has been transferred and quantify how much topline revenue it will generate.
Quantifying results has traditionally been easy to do with tools that profess to improve the efficiency of your sales team. Automatic diallers and emails, and a vast array of other selling tools have all helped your sales organization achieve more with the same amount of resources. But when it comes to effectiveness, you need to be able to demonstrate the ROI to your shareholders.
One way that you can measure the revenue impact of efficiency initiatives on your sales organization is by tracking if they are achieving larger deal sizes and increasing their win rates, for example. Sales readiness tools help reps improve these metrics by improving how effective they are at selling.
Research by CSO Insights
looked at how win rates increased after reps received appropriate training on social selling. They found that training that met or exceeded expectations also improved win rates by 38% and improved quota attainment by 51%. Then a
dd on top of that the impact of effective sales coaching, that can see
win rates increase from 25% to 54%
over 18 months.
But for a sales coaching program to be effective, it needs to be systematic. Sales leaders can use sales readiness tools to identify what reps need to be coached on, and leverage tried and tested programs to coach their reps. Overlay individual sales performance before and after coaching, and you can predict what the longer-term impact on your revenue will be.
Of course, if you’re scaling it may also be necessary to hire more reps, to cover broader markets and industries as well. However, hiring 10x more reps is unlikely to translate into 10x revenue. That’s because new reps need time and skills to ramp up and become productive. Depending on your product and market this can take 6 months or more. That means your bottom line will take a hit while your top line remains flat, placing your ambitious expansion plans in jeopardy.
Sales readiness tools are also designed to onboard and ramp up your new hires quickly. They give managers and sales enablement leaders the tools to identify and nip any problems in the bud and work out how to get each individual new hire to productivity as soon as possible. The quicker they’re onboard, the more shareholder value they will generate.
Research by Aberdeen has found that 34%
more new hires achieve quota after receiving reinforcement for their training. When you consider that the average B2B sales rep costs $29,000 to hire and takes 7.3 months to achieve full productivity, anything you can do to bring that down will have an immediate impact on your top (and bottom) line.
Sales management can predict the impact of these initiatives on your bottom line by measuring how much quicker new hires are becoming productive – time to first sale or time to achieving quota, for example. If all your reps achieve their quota a couple of months earlier, that’s two months worth of revenue that goes straight to your top line. 3. Show the long-term value of your investments
The C-Suite rarely gets into the minutiae of sales initiatives. For example, they might see some glossy publications and a rather hefty cost centre, but do they know what the return on these investments really is?
To make decisions on where to allocate resources they need to see the bigger picture. What economic impact will sales readiness initiatives collectively have over the course of the year?
Take collateral for an example.
Research indicates
that between 70% to 80% of collateral is never used. That’s a huge sunk cost, but it doesn’t mean that the content isn’t valuable. Rather than just cutting the budget, show the C-Suite how much more value this investment can create if you enable your reps.
According to SiriusDecisions, one of the reasons 63% of sales reps fail to achieve quota is because they can’t find and use the relevant content. Now if sales readiness tools can enable your reps to use collateral to their advantage, those reps who aren’t making quota can potentially improve their performance. A simple calculation can show you just how much of an impact that can potentially have over the course of an entire year.
Now extrapolate that over the course of every single product launch or new feature that you release. If sales readiness tools can improve how your reps sell each new product and feature, how much more will you sell each year?
It’s a compelling argument that your CEO will find difficult to ignore. Then the question doesn’t become whether you should invest in sales readiness, it’s why haven’t you invested in it yet?
Sales engineers often require more enablement than reps by virtue of the highly technical nature of their role. They not only need to know everything about their product, competitors, verticals, and industry, but sales engineers must also understand how to apply this information to different use cases and differentiate your product from that of your competitors. Sales engineers touch almost every part of the sales process and play a significant role in proving the success of your product to potential customers.
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