Sales enablement is a critical function of an effective sales initiative. Sales leaders must support the transformation by developing optimized onboarding, training and development and reinforcement programs. Your organization also needs a system in place to continually track results, make adjustments and communicate.
The following are several sales enablement best practices to integrate into your sales transformation process.
Hiring a sales consulting partner is a big decision for your business. You know your organization best. It's important to keep what's working and fix what isn't. To produce lasting results, a sales leader needs to “find the right fit” for the critical pieces of the sales transformation puzzle.
Long story short, if you need to generate more revenue per rep, you may want to consider bringing in an outside perspective. It's likely that the problem won't go away without a concerted effort to change course. Below are four challenges we see most often.
Your front-line managers are a critical component to the success of your sales initiative. Improving sales performance and reinforcing a sales initiative starts with enabling a team of great managers.
Best-in-class sales organizations invest in training programs for even their most veteran reps. Aberdeen research shows that top companies use external sales consultants 61 percent more than their under-performing peers. Sales training is a competitive and crowded industry. When you're picking the right solution for your organization, it can be difficult to cut through the clutter.
Google "Sales Training" and you'll see that you can hire everyone from a single consultant to a firm with customized solutions that scale. No matter your decision, there are some basic techniques you can leverage to ensure you're getting the return on your coveted sales enablement dollars.
Here are some of our best practices:
Reinforcement is a critical and an often overlooked component to a sales training initiative. We often have people email us asking for a quick training event for a sales kick-off or a mid-year meeting. While we are always happy to engage with any person who wants to do business with us, we often start the conversation with asking what outcomes the organization is looking to drive. Most of the time, their desired results can be achieved with a "quick training event."
Perhaps the sales team is selling features and functions or the salespeople are having trouble getting to decision makers. One event may help, but it won't drive lasting change. You need reinforcement to truly transform your sales organization.
Putting a band-aid on a problem with your sales team only delays its evolution. If you want to drive true sales transformation and create real sales impact, you need to identify the root cause of your team's struggles. (Hint: it's not likely that they simply need to make more calls.)
We've worked with sales organizations for years and in our experience, the primary root issues that negatively impact most sales teams fit into a few common categories. Here are four areas that we see most often and may help you identify the root cause of your team's struggles:
Thirty years ago, customers’ primary demands were related to product quality. Once international competition met and ultimately surpassed the existing quality standards, it became critical to build quality assurance into most elements of the manufacturing process in order to remain competitive. With that accomplished, while still necessary as the price of entry, quality could no longer be considered a significant competitive advantage. Twenty years ago, with higher quality standards in place, service became a competitive advantage and the driving force in winning market share. Consequently, demands for service forced suppliers to look at customer satisfaction as the primary criterion for success.
Many of you are just wrapping up another quarter. At this point, you’re either feeling good about how the rest of the year will go, or you’re scrambling to fix what’s not working, so you can salvage a number.
A true sales transformation partner leverages your best practices, finds opportunities that will have the greatest impact and help you drive adoption and alignment throughout your organization. When you consider working with an outside company, remember that you’re looking for a true business partner. You don’t want a company who will replace all the initiatives that are embedded in your organization. You know your company best. Keep what’s working. Change what isn’t.
Selling is always easier when you adjust the sales conversation based on what your buyer needs. Audible-ready sellers excel at actively moving conversations forward by articulating value and differentiation in a way that ties their solutions to their buyers' most pressing business issues.