What sales enablement needs to know about collaborating with sales operation
How sales enablement and ops can drive change within the sales organization together
How sales enablement differs between large and smaller companies
Collaboration between sales enablement and sales operations is crucial for effective enablement, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Aarti Kumar, VP of Sales Operations at BrightEdge, has some helpful advice for sales enablement professionals who want to build collaboration with sales ops and get a seat at the table. “Be proactive and make sure that you’re in the loop. This is critical, because if you want to know where the ball is going, then you should be there. Alsobe engaged and understand what works for the sales team and what doesn’t work. If you can be that bridge or have that knowledge, you can be the bridge to communicate between two departments.”
With over seven years experience at Symantec, and now at BrightEdge, Aarti has seen how much value a collaborative relationship between sales ops and sales enablement can generate, but it’s not something that happens overnight. “From a strategic aspect, being in tune with what the company and the business are trying to drive is critical for sales enablement. They have to work with sales operations to understand what the company is solving for and how sales operations are playing a role there. It needs to be an ongoing dialogue, it’s not a one and done process,” she explains. “Sales enablement and ops need to speak, on a weekly basis, on a monthly and a quarterly basis. It’s best to have a seat at that table, so you know what’s coming down the pipeline and you can plan for it accordingly,” continues Aarti.
To ensure the relationship runs smoothly, maintaining a constructive feedback loop is key. “Every time decisions were made or projects moved forward the sales enablement team was kept informed. We would tell them the what and they would tell us the how, in terms of getting information to sales. On the flip side, we also got a lot of feedback from them, because, they’re closest to the sales team. That feedback was super effective and it helped shape some of the decisions from the sales operations side,” explains Aarti.
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.”
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.
This post is based on a webinar where Christopher Fulmer, formerly of Blue Coat and now Director of Global Sales Enablement and Product Evaluations at Symantec, explained the importance of data-driven sales enablement to maximize sales effectiveness. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
“Our team in enablement is held responsible for making sure the sales teams have what they need to be successful. It’s their responsibility, and their manager’s responsibility, to make sure they’re continually taking those steps to stay educated. Sales enablement is not just training. My team partners with key teams within our company such as product management, engineering, product marketing, sales leadership, operations, finance, and HR to drive forward the end goal of making us all successful. I’ve found a lot of success when we form those strategic partnerships. When sales win, we win. That’s where we find our success.”
Initially Blue Coat, before being acquired by Symantec, introduced Mindtickle to their sales team. “We took a sales kickoff, which could have been perceived as a challenging time to roll out the technology, and chose that as the time to roll out Mindtickle. This environment, where sales were coming together, helped us roll out Mindtickle as it was an essential tool at that sales kickoff. Because Mindtickle has the flexibility to create separate audiences, it allowed us to push out personal agendas, quick references, surveys, and feedback,” he explained.
“When we left that sales kickoff, every sales rep had been on Mindtickle, was using the tool, knew how to navigate it, and was comfortable with it. When they got back in their sales roles, and I needed to get product information out, I knew that I was pushing it to a team that could quickly absorb it,” he continued.
Blue Coat continued to leverage Mindtickle as their sales team grew
“We found ourselves growing at a hyper rate,” Christopher explained. “We were a fast-moving company in a constantly changing environment. We were leveraging Mindtickle for two main things during that time – our incoming new hires and our existing salesforce.”
“In the cybersecurity area, your entire industry can take a left turn overnight. With just one outbreak or vulnerability, things can dramatically change. How quickly you get information to your sales team and they understand, absorb and go forward with that information can be a driving force as to whether you have a successful outcome. That’s one of the areas that we found success with Mindtickle,” he continued.
According to Christopher, sales onboarding was another way Blue Coat successfully leveraged Mindtickle. “We were onboarding 25 to 35 new sales reps per month, at a minimum, and there were months where we were just wearing out our team running onboarding sessions every week or two. We were able to use Mindtickle to experience faster ramp-up times with our incoming sales reps,” he explained.
Sales enablement was crucial when Symantec acquired Blue Coat
“An acquisition is a great opportunity for sales enablement to be engaged. During Symantec’s acquisition of BlueCoat, our main challenge was how to enable two separate sales teams concurrently. We also had a couple of back-office systems like SFDC. We were able to work with them by working with the Mindtickle team,” Fulmer explained.
“We had a big desire to communicate to the field, and everybody within the company had something they wanted to communicate to them – our integration team, our executive leadership team, and the sales teams. Mindtickle gave us the ability to push out corporate communications, a corporate pitch, and executive communications to the teams very quickly. Through the technology, we were able to target specific teams and simplify messaging. It was a huge benefit to us as we went through that acquisition.”
Symantec now uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams
Fulmar identified four ways that Symantec still uses Mindtickle to enable their sales teams: 1. Onboarding
“An Olympic rowing team is all in sync. Everyone’s got their hand on an oar and they’re driving that boat forward as fast as they can. That’s like a highly effective sales team in action. Everyone with a single focus, driving the boat forward, in sync, working together. A new hire, until that person is ramped up and effective, is in a big pool float dragging behind the boat. They’re not helping, they’re slowing things down. My job is to get that person out of the water, in the boat, put an oar in their hand, and get them working with the team,” explains Fulmar.
Mindtickle is used by Symantec for their onboarding program as Fulmar explains, “I can use it for pre-work to level the playing field so when they do arrive at an onsite training everyone is on the same page. I really need that time, onsite, to be high value, high return. Technology allows us to do that. The ability to track the pre-work and verify that they’ve done it with quizzes and certifications adds the ability to see where there may be gaps or where you need to spend a bit more time with an individual before, so they’re on the right page when they come in. The strengths of the analytics give us the ability to do that.”
“Having them jump on that technology as part of the onboarding process sets the new hires up for success as they continue in their life as a sale team member. I teach them, from day one, how to use that tool and where to find value in it. They’re much more likely to use it when they get in the field than if I wait and expose them to that tool after they’ve been at their onboarding session as a new hire,” Fulmar continues. 2. Quick updates
“This is a big area where we leverage Mindtickle. When I say quick updates, I want to be realistic on what quick is. If it’s something that’s going to take an hour or multiples hours to read and absorb, that’s not my target for a quick update. I use it for something that they can quickly access and absorb. A product update, something around a product release, executive communications, or sales communications are things that I push out in that quick format,” Fulmar explains. 3. Coaching
“The landscape has changed in the sales enablement world over the years,” according to Christopher. “For example, when we used to work on a corporate pitch, we wanted to “certify” the sales reps on it. So we would come up with a plan where someone from my team and someone from the sales management team would get in a room together. We would then ask the sales rep to take time away from the field and come and give that corporate pitch to us so we could certify them. As you can imagine, it was very costly and took time.”
“Now we use Mindtickle. If I want to know whether everyone knows how to articulate our corporate message I can give them an example of me giving that corporate message and then ask each of them, using Mindtickle, to record themselves. They then send that to me on Mindtickle and I can give them feedback and send it back to them. If there needs to be a correction, I can do the correction and send it back to them. They can then redo it and send it back to me.”
“Basically, I can certify that they understand that message without ever having to get on a flight or asking them to take time out of the field. Coaching with Mindtickle is an area that we’re just scratching the surface on now and have found success with,” outlines Fulmar. 4. Surveys and feedback
“I use this when we do a meeting, such as a sales kickoff, to get feedback on the speakers and identify any hot topics the team may want to hear before the meeting. We then push information out to the reps afterward and understand whether that information has been absorbed, they understand it, and if we need to spend more time on it,” explains Fulmar.
Data-driven sales enablement is crucial to maximizing sales effectiveness
“Data is what allows you to show that something you’re doing is working. Without the data, it’s your opinion. I want to be able to show management with something that can be measured and show a result,” according to Fulmar.
“Just a quick example, NFL players go in on day one of offseason and do measurements like strength, speed, agility. They have a measurable starting point. Then towards the end of the offseason training program, they go back and remeasure. They can show where there has been growth and where they didn’t get the growth they expected. Until they have those measurable results, a general manager can say we had a great offseason. Unless you have measurable results, how do you back that up? That’s why I feel like data-driven sales enablement is important for maximizing the sales effectiveness,” he explains.
“Whether we’re running a report on our entire sales force or our managers are running a detailed manager dashboard, Mindtickle gives us the analytics to maximize our sales effectiveness.” Fulmar identified three areas in particular:
It gives the ability to take data and continually learn and refine how they enable their sales team;
It highlights what the sales team is using—what content are they taking advantage of and what are they not; and
If they’re not using content it allows sales enablement to question why. Perhaps the format didn’t work well or the information wasn’t right.
“If I’m looking at the numbers, I can see that kind of information and make adjustments to move forward. I can also show value to our leadership team. If I can show that people within our top 20% of sales are also those people that are our top users on Mindtickle, then I can show a direct correlation that our top people are taking advantage of the technology. Being able to show that kind of value to our senior leadership team, to our board, that’s priceless!”
This post is based on a podcast with Jordy Brazier, VP of Sales Operations for Qubole. You can listen to the entire podcast
here
.
Qubole is the largest cloud and diagnostic big data service, providing businesses with a self-service data platform to help them make data-driven decisions. Their vision is to create an autonomous data platform that is capable of optimizing its performance so data teams can focus on the more strategic and value-added work. Jordy Brazier is responsible for their Sales Operations and enablement, an area he is passionate about.
As a business, Qubole sells primarily to IT decision makers in data-driven enterprise companies. Their customers understand the value of big data and want to leverage it in a more cost-efficient way to improve their performance. In an industry that’s rapidly evolving, sales enablement is key to driving competitive advantage.
“For us, sales enablement is about how we can use content and develop training that increases sales productivity. By sales productivity, we mean the productivity of our reps. Do we look at things like how can we increase their deal size? How can we increase how fast they onboard? We use several programs to execute this, onboarding boot camps, QBR’s, kickoffs and ongoing training as well,”
outlines Brazier.
For each sales enablement initiative, Brazier focuses in on a core metric.
“For example, the primary metric for the onboarding program is time to first deal. We now have a 90-day onboarding program, and we measure how we’re improving by looking at everyone who goes through that program. Are they faster to close? Do they get to their first deal quicker? If we look at other parts of the sales cycle we’re going to use different metrics, but it’s very important to measure a specific metric that’s most directly related to what you’re trying to achieve,”
he explains.
As the company has been scaling rapidly, onboarding has been an area of focus for sales enablement.
“Our sales onboarding is a 90-day program. Once a field rep starts they attend boot camp within the first 30 days,”
Brazier explains.
While Qubole would previously send Wiki and other information to new hires they had no way of knowing who had looked at it before boot camp. But using Mindtickle now gives them the ability to make this process interactive. New hires go through role play certification and now management can measure who’s actually confident and absorbed the information.
“
Everyone is on the same page when we start. It’s not just a 30-minute class and then a test. The questions follow the learning. It’s not a testing platform it’s a learning platform. So we know exactly what they already know and we can take it from there.”
This has allowed Qubole to refocus its boot camp.
“The boot camp is now more of a tool versus being a class. They’ve already trained in the app or in a bite-sized way with quizzes, so when they come to boot camp they’ve already reviewed all the training. And when we put them in front of our executives at boot camp the reps can actually ask much more meaningful questions,”
he continues.
“After getting feedback and looking at the metrics, we’ve focused the boot camp to be all about understanding the value of the company, why is the company’s solution the best. To achieve this we do simulations throughout the boot camp. Reps have to present twice during the boot camp, at the beginning and at the end of the week. They pitch to the rest of the class and get feedback from management, the class, and an existing rep,”
Brazier explains.
It may be intense but it gives Qubole’s new reps the confidence to pitch the product. And they need it because once boot camp is over there is a real customer waiting for them. Working with marketing and the management team, new reps attend a field marketing event within 30 to 45 days of starting, just after boot camp.
“They can pitch live, face to face with good prospects and start to build a pipeline. That really moved the needle for us and shortened the time to the first deal,”
he says. “
We then do a 60 day check in to see if they need help with anything and again at 90 days.”
Qubole also runs several other initiatives including a kickoff twice a year.
“At the kickoff, we look at overall positioning and messaging. We’re in a fast moving market so at each kickoff we revamp the company deck for the entire team,”
he explains.
Before the kickoff, new materials and presentations are made available to reps on Mindtickle. The reps record their pitches and these are reviewed at the kickoff as a learning experience.
The best ones are presented to everyone at the kickoff, leveraging the competitive spirit of their salespeople.
Ongoing learning is also important to Qubole.
“Every week we release a new course or update on what products we have or how to compete on specific products. In Mindtickle we can see who is learning and who needs improvement. We actually give a $100 gift card to the top learner each week. It’s helpful to drive adoption and it makes it fun. It’s one way that we make sure that we are prepared, are true trusted advisors to our customers and are able to deliver true value. That’s super important and that’s why we take enablement very seriously. We really invest in those programs and technology that makes our team the best and puts the firepower behind it,”
explains Brazier.
Interestingly, Qubole also found a correlation between learning scores and the performance of their reps. Their consistently low performers were also struggling to pass the tests on Mindtickle. It was a good indicator that something was just not working.
“It’s all about raising the average. The top-performing reps will probably still be the top performing reps even without training, but if you can bring the majority of middle reps up then you can make a significant difference in the overall productivity,”
he says.
Qubole has certainly gone through a considerable learning curve while implementing its enablement initiatives and Brazier is happy to share his top three tips.
“First, if you don’t have a learning platform, bring one in ASAP. I think that really moved the needle for us. Also, narrow the focus of your boot camp. Don’t incorporate everything under the sun, just focus on the value. And understand that you will only be successful if there is very strong cross-functional collaboration. You need to get the best out of product management and the best out of marketing, so include them early on. Asking them for their inputs and get their buy-in.”
This approach has certainly worked for Qubole, who continues to go from strength to strength.
The role technology plays in enabling sales organizations
How to approach evaluating sales enablement platforms
The steps involved in rolling out an enablement solution
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“There are 400 sales enablement technologies, including CRM. And there are about 45 different categories of products that we’ve segmented into six different super categories,”
explains Nancy Nardin, Founder of
Smart Selling Tools.
It’s no wonder that it can be overwhelming for people to decide what their business needs. While the task of choosing the right sales enablement platform for your business isn’t easy, it’s certainly worthwhile according to Nardin.
“There’s a real opportunity for making a big impact on the organization and revenue. No matter how easy technology is, there are no shortcuts. You really have to have a commitment to making sure everybody is lined up in terms of what’s required to keep it going, what’s required to get salespeople to adopt it,”
she continues.
That’s why going through a thorough process even before you start looking at platforms is important.
“
A lot of companies don’t have a cohesive plan. There’s a lot of parameters to consider before you even start looking at the technology. Get in a war room for a day with some of your constituents and just map it out. Where are you today? Where do you want to head? Then, start your technology journey.”
How Qubole uses sales enablement drive productivity per sales rep
Why technology is crucial to accelerate sales readiness and bring true value to your business
How to leverage sales kickoffs to ensure your reps’ positioning cutting edge
His best advice to anyone creating sales enablement initiatives
To download or subscribe to the Sales Excellence podcast login to Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes or find it here.
Jordy Brazier is Vice President of Sales Operations for Qubole and has been in Sales Operations for over 10 years. Qubole is the largest cloud and diagnostic big data service, providing businesses with a self-service data platform to help them make data driven decisions.
Selling to IT decision makers, they operate in a tough market, releasing new product updates regularly to stay ahead of the curve. This means their sales reps also need to make sure they have a cutting edge positioning. “Every week we release a new course or an updated version of a course about what products we have? And, how to compete with specific products,” explains Brazier. “To drive adoption and see who is going through those trainings is, Mindtickle lets us see who are the learners and who needs improvement. It’s great to have this ability. We want to make sure that we have the best prepared reps when we go into the field. So they can be true trusted advisors to our customers and are able to deliver true value. That’s super important and that’s why we take enablement very seriously and really invest in those programs, into technologies that make them the best and put fire power behind them.”
Qubole has also raised the effectiveness of their reps through its comprehensive onboarding program and certifications.
“It’s had a great impact for us as well. We use best practices to take control of the consumer process, bring true value and accelerating productivity,” Brazier continues.
This post is based on a webinar with Nancy Maluso, Research Director for SiriusDecisions. You can listen to the entire webinar here.
SiriusDecisions empowers marketing, sales, and product professionals to make better decisions, execute with precision and accelerate growth. Nancy Maluso has built and managed successful teams in the technology industry and now brings her passion for improving sales productivity to her research at SiriusDecision.
“Coaching is something that I love. It’s something that actually moves the needle and helps people perform better,” exclaims Maluso. “According to Wikipedia, the know it all of all things Internet, coaching is a form of development in which a person called the coach supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training, advice, and guidance.”
Coaching has been proven to work and sales reps find it valuable. “When we asked high performers where they see value in coaching they said, for example, that on deal collaboration and navigating internal resources coaching was extremely important to their job performance,” says Maluso. “Yet, overall, 22% of reps don’t receive any coaching and only 36% of sales reps actually made quota. The average turnover of B2B sales professionals is about 32% annually, meaning 3 out of 10 territories are left uncovered. And when we surveyed top sales leaders we found that 7 out of the 10 inhibitors to growth have to do with sales skills.”
There is clearly a disconnect. If sales coaching is so valuable to reps’ performance, why aren’t more reps being coached? According to Maluso, for a coaching program to be successful, it must include four critical factors. “First, coaching is an individual game. It’s based on the needs of the individual. We have to have some way of knowing what someone needs in terms of coaching.
The second is a competency map. What skills, knowledge, process, expertise, and tools does an individual sales rep have to have to be good at their job? Thirdly, we need insight, both data, and observations, that allow us to know what the individual needs to be coached on. Effective coaching programs are prescriptive, proactive and persistent. We found that if we don’t provide sales managers and sales leaders with a process and a program combined with some tools to help augment the coaching effort, it typically doesn’t happen.
Finally, there need to be actions that the individual is going to take to make a difference.” When all of these factors are in place sales coaching will be most effective. But successful coaching requires more than just a process.
“From a cultural perspective, we want the program to be constructive, not punitive. Part of that is asking reps to identify and self-correct wherever possible. To have the coach support their sales effort persistently through every stage. It’s not just at the end of a win/loss review for example. It’s before they go to have a conversation with the client; it’s not punitive, it’s supportive,” explains Maluso.
Coaching is also a continuous process, it has no defined endpoint. “If a rep has mastered what they need to do with their job, coaching should continue to help develop them for the thing they want to achieve next. Whether it’s leadership roles or specialization, coaching should continue to support that rep,” suggests Maluso.
Persistence is another important quality in an effective sales coaching program according to Maluso.
“We’ve had clients say to us, “Well I do coaching every quarter. I do it at the quarterly business review.” That’s not coaching. it’s persistent and it’s proactive, and it’s always on,” she explains. To create a program that is persistent and proactive you have to have insights. That’s where the competency map comes in.
“It defines what reps need to be able to do. Then it’s looking at metrics that say, “Are they doing that?” Hopefully, your tools track activities that reps undertake so you can see if they are they making the right number of calls. Are they having the right number of customer engagements? Doing the right number of demos?” she suggests.
Useful information can be gleaned from lagging indicators like your sales funnel or win/loss ratios.
“For example, if the funnel is fat in the middle, but narrow at the top and narrow at the bottom, it might indicate a few things,” she says. “Metrics don’t tell you precisely what’s wrong, they give you indicators. Just like if you hit a golf shot and it goes to the right, a good golf coach will have a sense of why that might be. But until they inspect your actual swing, they’re not going to know specifically what’s wrong with your particular mechanics. The same is true with the sales rep. The dashboard gives indicators, things to probe on. If the funnel’s fat, we might look at, well, are they having trouble with solution design? Maybe they’re not engaging their sales engineer properly. Perhaps they don’t know how to use the CPQ tool. Only by observing them in their work will you know or sure.”
To really understand what’s going on insights have to meet with reality. Data provides one view, but it’s not until you observe what a rep is doing on a regular basis that you can identify how to effectively make a difference. “Managers aren’t observing reps to be Big Brother. It’s about understanding what the rep needs,” she explains.
Observing reps so that you can coach them and make a real difference to their performance requires cadence. That’s where the right tools are so crucial. “Processes and tools can help us make coaching a regular part of weekly one-on-one calls, a regular part of prep before customer calls. Coaching can also be done in groups, talking about individual needs so others can learn. It can be done in a lot of different ways, and processes and tools help us automate some of that process. Bring forward the insights and link them to potential tools that can help us support the rep,” suggests Maluso.
“In my example of the fat funnel, let’s say on observation the manager realizes that they don’t really do enough qualifying questions up front so they’re not able to design a solution effectively, and so things get stuck in the middle. Well by observing that the coaching tool can provide a discovery list of questions that can help in solution design, or a video of a rep who’s showing and demonstrating how to do this well or a role play that they can practice to help them get better. Those are the kinds of tools you can provide to managers so that they can coach more effectively,” she continues.
Good coaching programs are also prescriptive and link actions to outcomes.“They are very specific about what needs to be done. What the rep needs to do is understand what actions they need to take that are different. They need to practice those actions and establish a pattern where the action results in impact. Linking what they’re doing or practicing with the outcome you’re looking for is absolutely critical. You want to record in your tool or within your process exactly what coaching is going on and what we’ve asked of the reps or we’ve asked of ourselves as coaches to help them,” she explains.
One final tip from Maluso is to look at data holistically.“Look for patterns. We might see that all reps are having trouble with discovery; not just yours. We can then go back to product marketing and work with them to develop the right tools and maybe a training webinar on how to do effective discovery,” she suggests. By creating a coaching program that is prescriptive, proactive and persistent you can create a culture of support. This puts the development of your reps front and center, where it should be.
How the sales industry and sales technology have changed in the past eight years
How you can use technology as a strategic differentiator for your business
Whether sales technology should influence your hiring practices
What we can expect to see in the sales technology landscape in the future
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“How can we use technology as a strategic differentiator to help our organization grow in the fastest way possible and really builds relationships with customers?”
That’s the question every organization should ask itself before adding something to their sales stack according to Nancy Nardin, and she would know. Nardin has worked in sales in the Valley since the 1980s – she even sold the world’s first laptop computer. Eight years ago she founded Smart Selling Tools, a place where sales practitioners can learn about sales technology and stay up-to-date on the industry.
With so many different sales technologies now available it can be overwhelming to know what will help your sales organization.
“I don’t think we really should be thinking about the tech too much,” suggests Nardin. “What we should be doing is thinking about what’s keeping us from being as effective and productive as we can be. What’s keeping us from generating more revenue and from serving the customer better? These are the challenges that we need to break down, and then decide what technology is the best technology to apply to that.”
The three mistakes to avoid when hiring your sales enablement team
The best resources to inform your sales enablement strategy
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“CAKE’s at an interesting time right now. We’ve we’ve really established who we’re going after and circled back to make sure the product is what our customers need. We’ve also seen a dramatic incline in sales and now have to build out and establish the process that will cradle that success,” explains David Harrison, Manager of Sales Enablement at CAKE Corporation.
CAKE Corporation is a restaurant technology company that is on a mission to make it easier to run restaurants. Harrison was their first dedicated sales enablement resource and he’s now focused on building out the team and getting their sales stack right.
“One of our big initiatives as a sales enablement team is trying to understand the climate of sales tools that are currently out there, what can help us, and also what can hurt us. An ongoing process for the sales enablement team is to make sure that our sales process is rock solid, and supported by the proper tools because it can really go sideways pretty quick,” he warns.
Another factor that can make or break the impact of sales enablement initiatives is having the right people in place.
“I’ve become a big believer in team dynamics, which has helped mold my hiring strategy. One of my favorite movies is Disney’s Miracle that’s about a 1980’s hockey team that plays the Soviets. In the movie, the coach, Herb Brooks, says “I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right ones.” I think that applies when it comes to hiring, especially for small teams. There isn’t a one-stop shop for the right sales team, and there’s never going to be one for sales enablement either. It’s unique to what the team needs.”
Collaboration between sales enablement and sales operations is crucial for effective enablement, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Aarti Kumar, VP of Sales Operations at BrightEdge, has some helpful advice for sales enablement professionals who want to build collaboration with sales ops and get a seat at the table.
“There are 400 sales enablement technologies, including CRM. And there are about 45 different categories of products that we’ve segmented into six different super categories,”
This post is based on a webinar with Nancy Maluso, Research Director for SiriusDecisions. You can listen to the entire webinar 
“How can we use technology as a strategic differentiator to help our organization grow in the fastest way possible and really builds relationships with customers?”
“CAKE’s at an interesting time right now. We’ve we’ve really established who we’re going after and circled back to make sure the product is what our customers need. We’ve also seen a dramatic incline in sales and now have to build out and establish the process that will cradle that success,” explains David Harrison, Manager of Sales Enablement at CAKE Corporation.