You know as I look at the title of the last SalesCraft meeting, “The Power of Collaboration in Sales Enablement”, I think I missed the mark somehow.  The overall idea is sound – the greater the level of collaboration amongst your sales teams and experts, the better these teams will perform, right?  It makes sense, but I have to ask, “Is this a real problem, or one that has been manufactured?”

I feel pretty confident that if we were to test the average sales teams collaboration skills against the skills of the general population, the sales team would outperform the rest every time.  Salespeople are natural collaborators and contrary to commonly held stereotypes are highly team-oriented.  The bottom line is – any sales rep who can’t identify and align the resources s/he needs to close a deal doesn’t need more technology, s/he needs to be fired!

Collaboration happens in every company, every day in organic, informal, creative ways that generate real results.  Much like selling, it is the human element of collaboration where the magic happens.  So, why all the recent buzz around collaboration?

Many companies are exploring taking what has long been an informal “soft” skill and formalizing or at least facilitating it.  Everyone knows that people are connecting, communicating and perhaps even collaborating in different ways due to social media and online tools.  Complete strangers have found me as a result of this blog and connections based on shared interests have been formed.  And we can all sense that the careers of the kids graduating from college in this decade will be impacted by being “connected” to everyone they ever met.  It’s difficult to predict the outcome, but it will be fascinating to watch.  In the meantime there is a natural desire to figure out how to leverage “social” in ways that will generate an advantage for our business.

At our July 2011 SalesCraft meeting we were fortunate to have Matt Tucker, co-founder and CTO of Jive Software along with Viviana Faga, who led the discussion.  Here are just a few of the highlights discussed on the topic of collaboration:

Integration of Internal & External Information – Asking our sellers to navigate between intranets and extranets to find the information they need is fast becoming a dated approach. While previously necessary due to security needs and the limits of technology, an integrated approach represents a significant step forward.

Acceleration of New Hire Ramp – Jive is a company that “drinks its own champagne”, leveraging their technology for their own sellers.  A best practice used at Jive is to recommend five people for new hires to “follow” upon joining the organization to get their network off to the right start.

Specialty Sales Teams Have Unique Needs – Jive’s experience has shown that technical sellers in particular have a higher propensity to adopt collaboration tools.  These folks are naturally more inclined to communicate through their keyboard and share knowledge at a greater level of detail.

Replacing Volume with Value – Matt Tucker stated, “If social creates more noise than email, we’ve failed.”  This is really a call to action for all sales enablers.  Quality must be a priority over quantity in all forms of sales enablement, whether we’re talking about communications, content or training.  Excellence does matter and we must treat our salespeople’s time as a rare and precious commodity.  Noise is not an option.

The Rapid Pace of Change – Collaboration is also a potential answer to a selling environment that has become far more complex.  Today, buyers have more information; decision-making authority often resides with a committee rather than an individual; and the pace of business is faster than ever.  This requires sales teams to not only deliver on a quarterly number, but to manage more information and resources than ever before. So if collaboration has the potential to level the playing field between buyers and sellers, it becomes a compelling solution.

A Tainted Environment? – But of course there’s a little more to it.  Collaboration has inherently positive associations and yet collaboration facilitated by technology and delivered from “corporate” is reminiscent of something else.  Remember when CRM – which is account management facilitated by technology and delivered from corporate – was going to solve all of our problems?  We need to acknowledge there’s some baggage created by CRM or more accurately by the way we’ve implemented CRM.  For a decade or more we’ve been delivering technology and telling the field that it’s going to make their lives better, while using it to micromanage too many aspects of their job.  We have taught our sales teams not to trust us when it comes to technology initiatives coming from corporate.

Without Trust, There is No Collaboration – To realize the benefits from collaboration tools like those provided by Jive, we’re going to have to reestablish trust with our sales teams and deliver an experience that is truly positive.  That means resisting the urge to use collaborative tools to micro-manage and second-guess our sellers.  Collaboration tools can be used to coach and mentor sellers.  Data can be collected that ties collaboration to productivity.  But the information provided by the technology must be used positively or salespeople will not adopt it and collaboration will go underground again.  And with that, your collaboration initiative will fail.

Looked at more broadly, the technologies that truly enable the sales team must reverse the damage done in the past.  One could make the argument that if we’d had a more balanced approach to truly enabling our sales teams all along, much of the mistrust generated over the past decade could have been avoided.  An emphasis on delivering technology that serves the needs of both the organization and the sales team is needed to reestablish trust.  Or an even better way to put it – deliver only technology that serves the needs of the sales team knowing that the benefits will extend to the entire organization.

An Inverse Model for Rollout & Training – Consider a different approach for the rollout and training of collaboration tools.  Focus less on training the user base on how the technology works and more on teaching managers how to leverage the technology to support their teams.  If management uses collaborative tools positively, the sales teams will follow suit.

I also recommend that you pilot collaboration technology with early adopter groups and generate some “pull” from the sales team.  Your work is far easier if the sales team is asking for the technology.

Don’t Over-Rotate on “Social” – The word “social” has become ubiquitous.  Collaboration and social can sometimes be intertwined and that may be one of the most powerful aspects of the solution offered by Jive.  Taking the vast array of information available externally and allowing that information to be prioritized and integrated into internally generated communications and materials is something to get excited about!

At the same time, “social” is not fully understood by all and tends to mean different things to different people.  Be sure that you evaluate your company’s’ needs and readiness for collaboration tools without getting caught up in the buzz on “social”.  Social as a concept does not represent a strong value proposition.  Social as a path to leveling the playing field between buyers and sellers is another story.

Final Thoughts

So if you’re looking to empower your sellers, collaborative and social selling technologies should be on your list, but be prepared to take extra time reset expectations and create an environment of trust.  Flipping the on switch is not going to generate big results.  Technology will allow us to do things that were never possible before, but we need to take ownership of how we integrate the technology into the sales culture and set it up to succeed if we truly expect it to be transformational.

Uncategorized

Listen to the audio as www.salescraft.com

Ahhh Kickoff!  There’s nothing like it.  An annual event for most sales organizations that signifies the beginning of a new year – time to put last year behind us, size up the opportunity for the year ahead and get to work!  This is an important ritual for sales people and sales leadership and everyone agrees that Kickoff is about recognition, motivation and networking with your peers – all good things.

Having planned several Kickoff events for VMware and Hyperion as well as a few others, I’ve learned a few things along the way.

-      It is human nature to rally around an event, especially if there is a stage involved.

-      Too often, an event overwhelms the strategy behind the event.

-      No matter what happens at Kickoff, the executive team will call it a success.

So what can we learn from this?  Despite the hard work and expense of a Kickoff, it is a relatively low risk event.  People WILL step up and deliver, and any inconsistencies in strategy can be covered up by a killer video or a great guest speaker.  Besides, the boss is emotionally wired to see only the positive.  So, we’re done, right?

Not if you think about the possibilities of what a Kickoff could be in the future.  This was the topic for our first SalesCraft event of 2011 and it seemed clear that everyone could see the untapped potential of a Kickoff that aspires to be more than a well-produced pep rally.  As we surveyed the room, here’s what we learned –

-      On average, most companies spend between $2800 – $3200 per person on Kickoff.

-      Despite attending dozens of Kickoffs, not one person could remember anything of significance they learned at a Kickoff. (Although there was one disturbing tale of a man and a horse…)

-      Very little effort has been applied to measuring the ROI for Kickoff.  Everyone does a survey, but the survey evaluates the event rather than the impact.

So, let’s look at this more closely.  For a medium to large sized global company, Kickoff costs between $2 million and $10 million.  There are very few investments of this size and scope that your organization would support without being tied to results.  One of the best quotes on Kickoff I’ve ever heard was from a CEO who said “at Kickoff, your best sales people decide whether or not they want to commit to another year”.  If that’s true and I believe that it is, then Kickoff is a strategic tool for retaining top talent.  Reinventing Kickoff as a perpetual event tied to an annual sales enablement platform factors the salesperson and what they need to be successful during the year into every aspect of planning Kickoff.  This will not be lost on your top performers.

More than once I’ve had a sales leader ask me how to extend the Kickoff experience beyond the event.  These are often the people who do my reviews and decide how large my bonus will be, so I’ve spent some time thinking about this one. I believe that in order for Kickoff to be “perpetual”, significant behavioral change must happen in a number of areas.

Kickoff as a Sales Enablement Platform – This seems like an obvious idea, but today enablement or training is a lesser priority at Kickoff and often something that is added on to the agenda with far less fanfare than the awards dinner.

Here are a couple of key changes that must occur.

-      The annual sales enablement agenda must be set as part of the planning process for the upcoming year, and Kickoff should be one of the deliverables to the overall plan.

-      Clear goals and objectives for the annual enablement agenda that align to revenue and business objectives must be set.

-      Field leadership must be willing to benchmark the sales team against those goals (think of this as pre-work for Kickoff).

-      Kickoff budgets and how they are managed must be reassessed in light of the enablement priorities.

-      Field leadership must be fully on board.  They must be engaged early in the process and play an active role in supporting and reinforcing the enablement agenda.

-      Kickoff must be managed by Sales Enablement as opposed to an Events team.  But don’t lose sight of the important role of Marketing or the Product teams contributions to the overall plan and priorities for the year.

-      The plan for post-Kickoff must be signed-off and have full support from sales leadership prior to Kickoff in order to keep momentum strong once the event is over.

At the SalesCraft meeting, we broke into three groups to discuss what must change in the planning process and approach to Kickoff in order to make Kickoff a year round experience.  Here are just a few of the big ideas.

Benchmark Before the Event – With the sales enablement agenda set for the year prior to Kickoff, it is critically important that you benchmark the sales team to determine current skill levels you can measure against throughout the year.  This is how you establish metrics you can tie to results.

• Get sales leadership buy-in through pre-briefings and commit to sharing benchmarking results with management.
• State the enablement goals clearly.  This means you must have clearly established objectives and executive sign-off.
• Develop pre-work that benchmarks the current skill level and builds anticipation for the enablement content to be delivered at Kickoff.
• As you develop the content for Kickoff, be sure to incorporate a beta test process to review the training and materials with a group of people who are representative of your sales audience.  Incorporating their feedback can dramatically improve the final deliverable and reduce any risk associated with the launch of a new enablement initiative.

At Kickoff – This is the launch event for your enablement agenda so it has to be high-quality.  Don’t be afraid to put the attendees through their paces – engagement-based learning is key.  Make sure that all presenters are familiar with the enablement goals and objectives and encourage the executives (particularly those with speaking roles) to connect the enablement agenda to the key initiatives for the year.  By doing this, you will connect the enablement received by the sales team to the results they must deliver.

Making Kickoff Stick – Consider adjustments to the Kickoff agenda that drive reinforcement after the event.  This includes keeping the sales leaders after the Closing session to prepare them for how to support the messages and lessons learned at the event and give them some management skills to incorporate the curriculum into activities with their team.  This is also a good time to share plans for post-work and present the enablement agenda for the year in greater detail.

After Kickoff – Conceptually, a “perpetual” Kickoff is the equivalent of an annual sales enablement plan.  And this means that in many ways, the real work begins once Kickoff is over.  Immediately following Kickoff, be ready to reinforce the messages and learning from Kickoff by making the materials available.  Also look at programs that require them to use their skills and potentially be certified.  The aspect of certification may be daunting, but it is human nature to follow-through on an activity that has a demonstrable outcome.  Certification is also something which can be measured and tied to results.

Also plan to promote examples of success which reinforce the enablement plan.  From there the opportunity exists to leverage top enablement “adopters” to take on mentorship roles for the next phase of the enablement plan.

Where appropriate and if budget allows, look to mid-year events that can be executed locally or support deeper learning for key segments of the field organization such as the channel or technical teams.  These events should be incorporated into the enablement plan for the year and build on skills developed at Kickoff.

Between the large events, explore how to use video, webinars and even online simulations to support the enablement agenda.  A powerful sales enablement technology platform is needed to support these efforts.  Look for a solution that leverages current tools such as video and mobile access along with learning management system capabilities.  Throughout the year, sales leadership, content and communications all can be leveraged to extend and reinforce the kickoff experience.

Other Fun Ways To Extend Kickoff

-      Create a theme for Kickoff that you can leverage all year long and incorporate it into everything you do for the year.

-      Build contests into your enablement agenda and don’t be skimpy with the prizes – people like to win.

-      Tie at least one of your awards to achievements through enablement.

Implementing Change

Change is difficult in any organization, but perhaps even more so when you plan to change an event like Kickoff which has such emotional resonance with sales leaders and attendees.  All of your stakeholders are familiar with Kickoff – they’ve done this before and will likely revert to past norms when planning your upcoming Kickoff.  This is why you must be prepared to sell the concept of a perpetual kickoff early and obtain executive sponsorship for the change.  Then be prepared to actively sell the value of a perpetual Kickoff more broadly and pro-actively manage the new approach.

Final Thoughts

So if you’re looking for something juicy to sink your teeth into, perpetual Kickoff may be the ideal opportunity.  Even if you’ve just recently held your Kickoff, you can begin piloting some of these ideas for extending the kickoff experience now.  Start building your case for next year at least six months prior to end of year.

Many sales enablement teams are looking for ways to raise visibility and obtain resources for enablement activities.  Hitching your enablement plan to Kickoff is not only an impactful and powerful way to deliver results for the organization and field leadership, but it is an elegant way to raise visibility and demonstrate the value of sales enablement.

Uncategorized

Listen to the audio at www.salescraft.com

The sales enablement challenge has many facets to it, but whether you are tackling content, communications, training or motivation (to name just a few) – there is a limit to how much often small and understaffed enablement teams can accomplish on their own.  In order to truly realize the value of sales enablement investments, you need to extend your reach and get to the sales teams where they live.  And there is no better way to do that than by recruiting the front-line sales manager to be you enablement emissary.  It really does take a village folks!

Now this is easier said than done, because let’s face it – frontline sales managers are on the front lines!  Their success is completely dependent on making their number each quarter.  Supporting and reinforcing an enablement plan that will make their salespeople more productive and develop their skills is important, but all too often good intentions are lost in the heat of making the number.

But what if you can enable the sales leaders to enable their teams?  Is it possible to exponentially expand the impact and force of your enablement efforts by incorporating sales managers into your enablement strategy?  So how do you make first line sales managers your partner in Sales Enablement?

At our final SalesCraft event of 2010, Walter Rogers of Baker Communications who specializes in coaching sales leaders walked us through the importance of investing in first-line managers as a critical component of a successful sales enablement strategy.

Walter presented some compelling data that brought home just how important front-line sales managers are to the business and highlighted the risk associated with failing to focus on this very important role within our sales organizations.

Not only are most of our sales manager’s coming into their roles with little or no training, many are basing their leadership approach on dated or ineffective styles of management that do little to retain and develop the best talent.  What’s more, Walter shared a U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Data chart that showed the supply of skilled sales executives decreasing in both the U.S. and Europe over the next ten years.  That means that not only will there be substantial competition for our best sales leaders, but that it will be hard to hire from the outside.  It’s time to invest in developing this key segment.

Walter had more data than we had time to cover in one evening, so he focused on three key areas.

• Culture – Culture is a critical factor that determines how an individual responds to their environment.  It is often overlooked or misunderstood.  But a strong sales leader knows that culture has a significant impact on team performance.  Walter suggested that sales leaders who understand this will leverage a strong culture where it exists and substitute an effective local culture when necessary to ensure the environment supports the team.  Walter suggested honestly looking at the culture to determine if it is merit or entitlement based?  Is the behavior characterized by straight talk or is it passive aggressive?  And is the environment accountable or parental – meaning do individuals take responsibility for their actions or is there someone protecting them against possible repercussions?  Once the assessment is made, take the necessary steps to enhance or adjust the culture to support the team.
• Coaching – The focus on this part of the discussion was on how to coach in the moment and make coaching part of the ongoing interaction and communication style between sales leaders and reps.  How many of us really understand how to coach versus how to train?  Is it a skill set we’ve cultivated in our sales manager’s?  Walter showed examples of the differences between how a manager asks a question and how a coach will ask a similar question but achieve very different results.  He also shared how the best sales leaders/coaches will breakdown questions into near term, long-term and situational scenarios.
• Leading Indicators – Walter suggested that while both lagging and leading indicators are relevant to managing the business, it is the leading indicators which indicate future success.  These are often cause and effect efforts tied to pipeline, onboarding, account planning and more.  By identifying the leading indicators for his or her team, a sales leader can manage to those outcomes and stay ahead of the game.

These concepts are a great starting point to understand how frontline sales managers can be more effective in their roles and as sales enablement teams look at where to invest scarce resources, it is something that is likely to have a big impact, but it will require dedication and follow-through to see results.
At the same time, leveraging these front-line sales leaders is low-hanging fruit for the sales enablement team. Here are some additional thoughts on how to “recruit” your sales managers to help you carry the sales enablement flag.

Create a Focus Group – This can be done formally or informally, but either way you must put the idea in front of your sales leaders and incorporate their interests and concerns into your plan.  Ask questions!

• What are your priorities for enablement?
• How would you like the materials delivered?
• How do you see your role?
• How prescriptive should the program be?
• How would you reinforce and measure enablement efforts?
• How does this align with your personal development goals?
• What do you want to avoid.

Internal Selling – With your research complete you should have everything you need to put your plan together.  Now you have to sell it.  If your company is large enough to include regional sales directors and vice-presidents they must support the effort.  Identify all of the key stakeholders and get their buy-in.  This means you have the budget, staff and resources identified to pilot successfully.  Set expectations now around what you will be asking for if the pilot succeeds.

Pilot with Metrics – Identify a set of front-line sales managers to pilot the program and determine how you will measure the impact.  Select the pilot group based on enthusiasm and ability to influence the larger group and be an advocate for the program.  Create success metrics that are both subjective and objective.  Revenue impact is important, but can also take time and be hard to prove.  Consider benchmarking the targeted teams on specific learning objectives at the beginning of the pilot and evaluate progress at the 90-day mark.

Rollout & Monitor Closely – As part of the pilot, commit the sales leaders to participating in a weekly call to determine what’s working and what needs to be adjusted.  This is a great time to capture sound bites that you can use to update your leadership on the progress of the pilot.  This is also an opportunity to teach your first line sales managers on how to enhance their coaching skills.

Hopefully this blog has given you some ideas on how to extend the reach of your sales enablement efforts by recruiting your frontline sales leaders to be your partner in sales enablement.  Sales leaders like actionable, results-oriented activity and each and every one of them want to be better at what they do.  Explore a program that both extends your reach with sales enablement and develops that very important and influential group of front-line sales leaders at your company.

Uncategorized

Register today

You’ve just invested a lot of money and dedicated significant resources to delivering the best kickoff ever! Great job!! The sales team is fired up and ready to take on a new year. The executives couldn’t be more pleased and you’ve more or less recovered. So what comes next? And how do you prevent your sales teams from returning to status quo the minute they return home? Do your sales leaders know how to take the global messages delivered at Kickoff and make them actionable at the local level?

Find out how to extend the messages, knowledge and energy of Kickoff into the rest of the year in a way that delivers real results. Learn what to do before, during and after Kickoff in order to set a foundation for sales enablement, leadership and performance throughout the entire year.

Discussion Lead:

Sharon Little, SalesCraft Founder

Sharon is a sales enablement pioneer with extensive experience in field communications strategies. She has been responsible for managing Kickoff events for companies including VMware and Hyperion.

Register today

SalesCraft Meetings

Tackling the Toughest Sales Enablement Initiative: Content

Because sales enablement is still at the early end of the adoption curve, in many ways it is an initiative in its own right.  Most of us are still working hard to establishment sales enablement within our organizations and create a unique identity separate from sales operations, sales readiness or marketing programs.  It’s the internal selling that often makes the difference between success and failure.

At our most recent SalesCraft event in August, Kevin Temple of Enterprise Selling Group led an interactive session to walk us through why initiatives succeed or fail and what all of us can do to set our initiatives up for success.

Kevin is a skilled teacher and facilitator with all-important sales DNA.  After guiding us through all the reasons initiatives fail, Kevin shared with us research to support that many initiatives are never setup to succeed.

After surveying the room Kevin took us through a planning and development framework that included seven key components to creating successful initiatives.  Let me focus on three that I think are especially relevant to sales enablement.

• Establish Credibility – Sales enablement is in its infancy and while great strides have been made in the last few years, many organizations have yet to “mainstream” and fully endorse and support sales enablement efforts.  That means that engagement models, organizational ownership and even the basics like funding and measurement are all open for interpretation.  This makes your job as a sales enablement leader much harder.  One of the components of establishing credibility is identifying and delivering “quick wins”.  This is incredibly important when your customer is a cynical sales organization.  Create your wins, keep them coming and make sure your promote success at regular intervals.

• Coalition Building – Let’s face it – sales enablement requires some serious cross-functional skills.  Keeping your head down and hiding in a silo is not an option for the sales enablement faithful.  Your ability to navigate cross-functionally will directly influence your success or failure.  Figure out who your constituents are and make friends early and often.  The harsh truth is that sales enablement often threatens the status quo and many will be threatened by your efforts.  So brush up your interpersonal skills – you’re going to need them.

• Communication – This is one that is often overlooked; the assumption is that everyone knows how to communicate and a simple email will do the trick.  And with everything else on your plate, it’s easy to let this one go until the last minute, send a quick email and call it a communication plan.  All of your hard work can be erased by a poor communication plan.  Take the time to put a robust, thoughtful communication plan in place that incorporates pre-launch, launch and post-launch.  Make sure that you use the right communication vehicles, taking advantage of both standard forms of communication (email, portal) and more unique methods like video and audio when warrented.

In previous blogs I’ve talked about where to get started with sales enablement and how to expand on early successes.  Let me spend some time talking about the one sales enablement initiative that most likely to make you wish you’d never heard of sales enablement.

It’s called CONTENT.

If you’re Marketing organization is like most, it literally creates content at exponential rates.  At VMware, we went from 1,000 pieces of content in our field portal to 5,000 in less than a year.  More is not better.  The field doesn’t actually want more – they want customer-ready consistent materials that are simple and straightforward.  So the content initiative attempts to figure out how to connect the smart, prolific, well-intentioned marketing materials and package them into something the field can use.

This is a multi-phased process, but here are a few guideposts.

Get Outside Help

You can’t do this alone.  There are more land mines, opinions and complexities than you can imagine right now.  An outsider can bring expertise and help drive consensus from a neutral perspective.

Don’t Boil the Ocean

There are many ways to slice your content.  By buyer, industry, field role, product, solution, etc.  Identify them all and pick one or two.  Pick the ones that are tied to the greatest amount of revenue and will most closely resonate with your target customers..

Create a Framework

A documented framework for content creation and approval will take a lot of drama out of the process.  Design a framework separate that everyone can agree to before developing any actual content.  This will streamline both the development and the approval cycles.

Drive Adoption

This means a communication plan, training, reinforcement, follow-up and metrics.  Don’t skimp on this part – you can create the holy grail of content, but if no one ever uses it, it doesn’t matter.

With a lot of hard work and a little luck, your success in this initial phase of content creation will lead to even more work to do.  But it’s worth it as you will be solving a real problem for your company that impacts field productivity, improves customer engagement and takes away a few wins from the competition.  Isn’t that what Sales Enablement is all about?

Uncategorized

The good news is the Sales Enablement appears to be a real thing.  Ten years from now we’re all going to be able to say that we were pioneers.  Or at least that’s the way it plays out in my head.  But in between now and then we have some real challenges.  It’s always the case when you’re blazing new trails – the one in front has to swing the machete.  So how do we clear a navigable path while saving some energy to enjoy the destination when we get there?

At the last SalesCraft event in June, we were fortunate to be joined by Joe Galvin of Sirius Decisions.

Joe is a passionate thought leader in the area of sales enablement and arguably years ahead of the rest of us when it comes to seeing what’s possible.

Joe brought out the fire hose and we all struggled to take notes. The room was immersed in the possibilities of what sales enablement could deliver to our organizations, why it was important and where to start.

Here are a few key points from Joe’s talk.

• Evolving Requirements – The knowledge required to be a salesperson in today’s environment is constantly changing.  Acquisitions, product enhancements, and competitive threats all contribute to a constantly changing environment.  At some point, it is too hard to keep up, so many salespeople will stop trying and simply stick with what they already know.  A real challenge when you’re acquiring new companies or introducing new products.
• Digestibility – Marketing becomes so intent on getting their message to the Field, that in order to capture mindshare, they create more content and repeat it in various forms.  The Field is in “content overload” and they lose their ability to digest it all.
• Sophisticated Buyers – Thanks to the ready availability of information, buyers know a lot more than they used to when contacting sales for the first time.  When they are ready to engage, they expect an informed, knowledgeable salesperson.  Sales needs to be able to meet them where they are if an effective meeting is going to take place.
• Measuring Productivity is Key– More calls of higher quality is the goal. Drive towards delivering more active opportunities, increased conversions, and higher close rates.  Revenue performance is relative, but tied to too many external variables.

What Does a Sales Executive Think About Sales Enablement?

If you’re lucky it’s just now hitting their radar.  They want their teams “enabled”, but what does that mean?  This is the challenge before you – to help the sales executives at your company to see sales enablement as mission critical.  And you’re going to have to define it for them.  What is it? How is it different?  How do you get from where you are to where you want to be?  And what about funding?

What is the Vision?

When all is said and done, what are you building?  The goal is a robust, flexible, innovative enablement strategy that takes into account your company’s goals and objectives, growth strategy and culture.  Equally important is a plan that is modern, scalable and integrated.  Enablement encompasses training, communication, leadership, motivation, and development.  Integration among these components is key to enablement.

The real goal is to enable sales to have customer conversations that are relevant and even revolutionary for the customer while ultimately being financially impactful to your business.

Translation, Packaging and Gate-Keeping

As a sales enablement professional, you play a very unique role.  Essentially, you sit at the intersection point between Marketing and Sales.  It may not feel like the safest place to be, but try to think of it as an adventure.  The whole company wants to get to the sales team. For sales enablement to work, they have to go through you.  It’s your job to represent their interests in a responsible, effective manner and package information in a way the field can use it, and deliver it to a customer.

Milestones

Sales enablement utopia is not going to happen overnight.  It’s going to take awhile, probably longer than you would like; so pace yourself.  And since this is unchartered territory, how do you know if you’re heading in the right direction?

Enablement 1.0

• Establish a Leadership Platform – Your executive team is key to enablement success.  People crave leadership and enablement cannot happen unless your enablement efforts are aligned to leadership objectives.
• Cleanup Communications – Everyone communicates, right?  Exactly.  And everyone in your company wants to communicate with your sales team.  It all becomes white noise very quickly.  Streamline and up-level your field communications.  The focus needs to be on the audience.  Remove vanity projects.
• Invest in Technology – Technology plays a significant role in enablement.  Some combination of audio, video, HTML, Sharepoint, etc. will factor into your enablement strategy.  It should be flexible and provide options to support the message and the audience.  Invest in foundational technology early and make sure that it is flexible enough to meet your needs over time.
• Emphasize On Boarding – If there is one aspect of training that is critical, it’s getting new hires ramped up and productive quickly.
• Solidify a Sales Methodology – Which one doesn’t matter.  Pick one, stick with it and reinforce it.  Most of your reps have a favorite – pick that one.  Don’t over invest, but be consistent and commit.
• Align with Kickoff – Kickoff should be a year long experience.  Use Kickoff to set the stage for the year and reinforce the objectives throughout the year.

Enablement 2.0

• Specialize by Audience – The Field is more than Sales, right?  It includes technical teams, channel folks and more.  Their needs are unique from Sales.
• Line Managers – Target them as your extended enablement team.  Through them you reach the sales team.  They want to help their teams and do the right thing.  Help them, help you.
• Content Strategy – This is where less is more, governance and a “bill of materials” comes into play.  It’s also the point where you need to move beyond the subject matter experts creating their own strategy for content to a uniform, consistent approach that is consumable for Sales.
• Mobile – Your salespeople live on their iPhones and Blackberries, some are even toting around iPads.  Emphasize mobile access for all of your deliverables.
• Video – Video is becoming huge and it needs to be simpler than it has in the past.  Get your leaders and experts camera-ready and figure out how to use a flipcam and edit on your laptop.
• Be Prescriptive – Bucket enablement into what they must know, extra credit and on demand.  Be clear that’s what you’re doing.  They will appreciate it.
• Differentiate Between Global and Local – What needs to happen at headquarters versus what is better executed in region?  Define it and facilitate strong relationships with the regional teams.  They are critical to your success.

Enablement 3.0

When you get to 3.0 please call me, I would love to talk to you.

Executive Buy-In

No matter what stage of Sales Enablement you’re in, you need buy-in from sales leadership.  Paint a vision for them and ask for permission to pilot enablement efforts.  Metrics are key, but stay focused on higher-level performance numbers.

Permission From Marketing

Enablement is a partnership with Marketing.  Avoid setting it up as a competition.  Marketing teams may see enablement efforts as treading on their turf.  Emphasize their role as experts and yours as translators.  Find out where they’re frustrated and offer to help.  Engage them early in the process. Be sure to close the loop so they feel they’re getting something out of the partnership.

Emphasize Process

While there is a lot of art in sales enablement, be sure to build process into the mix.  Think about the quantity of people involved on both sides.  Defined processes will facilitate communication, provide air cover and force you to think through scalability.

Low-Hanging Fruit

Get started today by shutting down worldwide distribution aliases; put together a communication plan for your senior executive and invest in a technology platform.  Create a “family” of deliverables and launch them under a unified them or naming convention.  Consolidate wherever possible, kill vanity projects.

Whether you see yourself as a trailblazer or not, you are definitely mapping new territory.  Most of the people I’ve met through SalesCraft are passionate about what they do and that makes all of the challenges worthwhile.  The blueprint for sales enablement will be refined many times as we all figure this out over the next few years, but before you know it every sales executive will take it for granted that a strong sales enablement effort is critical to success.

SalesCraft Meetings

Do you remember when one of the deliverables for Sales Kickoff was a “Playbook”?  Or a set of “Blueprints”?  Or maybe even “Cheat Sheets”?  Whatever they were called, they were inevitably a lot of hard work and expensive to produce.  The end product looked good – really good.  The Playbook represented a lot of hard work and the collective knowledge of the Marketing team at a given point in time. Unfortunately, the Playbook was almost always out-of-date the moment it was printed and its value to Sales was almost impossible to quantify.

Fast forward a few years…  Today,  everything is online and available through (?) a portal of one kind or another.  Our ability to produce and deliver content is enhanced, and there are a variety of proven technologies to support these efforts.  But, selling situations have become more specific and the customer more informed, and Sales is struggling to know what tool to use in what situation.  On top of that, competition is more intense and solution selling is more complex than ever.

So what do you do?  How is a new and improved version of an old idea the answer?

Getting Started

At first creating a Playbook seems simple and straightforward.  But it turns out there are a number of decisions that need to be made prior to getting started.  What are the selling situations that are most relevant?  How do you create a repeatable process?  How do you build something that will help new reps onboard faster, while still providing seasoned reps with information that provides value?  This is just the beginning of the questions you need to answer.

Playbook Layout

It probably goes without saying that  selling is linear in nature.  There’s a somewhat predictable and, hopefully, manageable beginning, middle and end to a sales cycle.  Most companies have a sales methodology in place to manage their pipeline and forecast.  The Playbook must be aligned to these stages.

Simple & Specific

Whether your Playbook is about a product, solution, campaign or industry – you need to be prescriptive and concise.  Part of the beauty of a well-executed Playbook is that it’s simple.  The Playbook provides exactly the components needed to complete a specific “play” or sales scenario.

The Right Content

As you prepare your first Playbook, you may learn that your content owners (or subject matter experts) are not in the habit of creating content based on sales stage.  The creation of Playbooks actually becomes a compelling reason to change behavior and drive value on behalf of the field.  Just keep in mind, it will extend your timeline if you have to create new content.

DISCUSSION LEADS

Larry Ball of Polycom.

Productivity Driver – Polycom launched 12 Playbooks earlier this year with the goal of driving sales productivity.  The key metrics are increase in deal size and in the total number of closed deals.  Polycom is also looking to drive forecasting accuracy through the use of Playbooks.

Sales Process Reinforcement – The Polycom Playbooks closely follow the steps and associated activities of the company’s sales process.  Coaching tips, sales tools and other resources are served up for each activity at the appropriate point in the sales process.

Polycom uses Kadient to deliver Playbooks, integrated with Salesforce.com.

Jenine Young of VMware.

Field Validation – The VMware process requires field validation and input.  The field wants to have exactly what they need to get their job done served up to them.  The playbooks are never released without field signoff.

Layout – Content is segmented into Discover, Engage and Close for both Sales and Technical users.  Additional information is provided on Promotions, Competitive, Training and Customer Facing materials.

VMware uses SAVO to deliver playbooks, integrated with Salesforce.com.

Promotion & Adoption

Playbooks are only relevant if they are used.  An aggressive promotion and adoption campaign has to be part of the rollout process.  Executive buy-in and sponsorship is also key.  Don’t overlook the internal selling effort.  Expect to discover some gaps in process or content as you work toward this effort.  Consider engaging a pilot group to work out the kinks before a major launch.

Potential “Gotchas”

The risk goes back to why expensive printed playbooks failed.  The playbook has to be relevant and current. It’s critically important that you understand the time and resources involved to plan, create and maintain your playbooks over time.  Any lapse in relevance could lead to a loss of credibility.

A Killer Deliverable

Thanks to technology, playbooks have the potential to be a killer deliverable.  Technology makes it possible, but solid, repeatable processes are required to make it work over time.  Expect to rollout in phases, adjust along the way and occasionally retrench. Playbooks are a great point of intersection for sales and marketing.  More importantly they have the potential to truly give your sales team an unfair advantage.

SalesCraft Meetings

Leadership requires communication.  It’s not enough anymore for a sales executive to be “good” in front of a room.  Sales leadership requires the ability to communicate to multiple audiences in multiple formats.  Quality counts, because those audiences expect more and have a shorter attention span.

All sales executives will tell you that communication is important.  If they’re honest, they will also tell you that it’s hard to maintain a consistency and frequency with communications when they have so many other demands on their time.  In recent years, the role of field communications has become more prevalent.  Different from traditional communications roles, field communications is the gatekeeper for communications to the Field.  Frequently this function also enables regional field leaders to communicate with their teams.

At the first SalesCraft meeting of 2010, a panel including Debbie Medal of NetApp, Bill Taylor from Oracle and me, shared our experience assisting field executives with their communications. Joe Mullen of SNP Communications who also has significant experience in this area, was our moderator.

Authentic Voice

The critical success factor for successful factors for communications is to be sure your executives are speaking in their “authentic voice”.  This is a fancy way of saying it’s important that they be themselves.  We can all tell the difference between when someone is speaking from the heart or reading words written for them by someone else.  An authentic voice – making sure that your executive speaks from the heart and is true to their personal and business values — is deeply important.

Flexing to Your Executive

It seems like an obvious statement, but each executive is different.  Each come with their own strengths and weaknesses and likes and dislikes when it comes to communications.  Look for areas of strength and build on those.  Someone who is not good in front of large groups may be great moderating a panel.  Remember that when people are communicating they are more vulnerable.  To really be a good communicator, you have to open yourself up.  You must be sensitive to where their individual level of comfort.

To be a good coach you need to be both honest and sensitive.  There’s a lot of trust involved in letting someone else look after your communications.

Know that there is muscle memory involved.  Everyone gets better at communications with practice.  Be sure to keep challenging your strong communicators with new mediums like video.  Strength as a communicator has become a “must-have” skill for all executives.

A Voice in Your Head

When writing for someone else, one of the most important things you can develop is the ability to hear that person’s voice inside your head.  Can you hear them speaking those words?  How would they really say something?

In order to develop this skill you need to be around this person.  Actively listen to them speak both formally and informally.  Before long you’ll be able to “hear” them anytime you want.

Special Guest  -  Carl Eschenbach, EVP Worldwide Field Operations at VMware

A natural and gifted communicator, Carl shared his perspective on the impact of having a dedicated resource to assist him with internal communications.  His ability to communicate effectively while reducing the time and effort required has changed dramatically.  He considers it a vital role.

Today, Carl regularly hosts a quarterly radio program, tapes video messages, hosts a quarterly leadership call and more.  His signature vehicle “The Esch File” is a weekly audio recording communicating the top news of the week.  This has become part of the field culture at VMware and allows him to connect with a large organization in a way that is easy, impactful and immediate.

PANELISTS

We were fortunate to have very knowledgeable and experienced panelists who’ve worked with some of the most successful field leaders in high tech.

Bill Taylor of Oracle

Know What’s Going On – It’s your job to be connected and aware of what’s happening in the business.  Good news or not.  What’s more you must have the business acumen to understand what’s important now and how to present the information in a relevant way to your audience.

Keep It Simple – Communications works best if it’s simple.  What are you trying to say?  Who are you trying to say it to? And why should they care?  Answer the fundamental questions and you can’t go wrong.

Debbie Medal of NetApp

Process & Metrics – A repeatable process and vigilant metrics are key to communications. Continually ask your audience what they liked and what they want in the future.  Then build that in to future programs.

Balancing Leadership & Audience – In a larger company, the entire field leadership team will form a “bench” of communicators.  Learn how to balance executives with message and audience.

Newsworthy?

So what exactly should a Field Executive communicate?  Communications for the sake of “communicating” is designed to fail.  It’s important to focus on news.  Think about what is top of mind for the audience right now and talk about that.  Some topics are obvious – earnings release, major product launches or events, an acquisition.  Avoid opinions and pontificating.  Figure out what news is executive level.

To Measure or Not to Measure?

There were differing opinions in the room about metrics.  Is it really possible to measure the effectiveness of communications?  Is communications so subjective that it can’t really be measured? And what is the responsibility of the audience to stay informed?  At some point the responsibility shifts to the audience and a commitment is needed to be an active participant.

SNP Communications

Our moderator for the evening was Joe Mullen of SNP Communications has worked with dozens of field executives.  SNP provides effective and innovative program for field executives.

It’s Priceless

How do you place value on alignment, consistency, motivation and community?  All of these are things every field executive values and communications is what makes it all possible.

SalesCraft Meetings

This is a topic that that has been around forever and is not likely to go away anytime soon.  I have heard an occasional urban myth about a company that was able to achieve true alignment, but I think most would agree it’s a rare and elusive goal. Speaking from experience I’m kind of glad that sales and marketing don’t always get along or see eye-to-eye.  Because if they did, my job wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

At the last SalesCraft meeting of 2009, the room was evenly divided between sales and marketing titles.  The bias tended to favor sales, and some even had the view that Marketing works for Sales and alignment would be easier if Marketing accepted that “reality”.  But is it really that simple?

Mars & Venus

There is a difference in language between Sales and Marketing.  Look at the number of words each group will use to communicate the same idea. And I think you could make a case that the individual who chooses Sales as a career is fundamentally different from someone who chooses Marketing.  It’s not surprising that these two groups have a hard time getting on the same page.

Marketing Perspective

It would be so easy to say that the alignment problem could be solved by Marketing simply treating Sales as a customer.  But is that realistic?  Is it even a good idea? Think about the day-to-day realities of a Marketing team.  They sit between the engineering or development part of the organization and Sales.  They are always in the middle, and truthfully – a lot of the glory goes to the other guys.  Marketing is constantly pulled in two directions, trying to deal with two very different internal business partners.  It really is a juggling act.

Marketing needs to think about the long-term picture; not only marketing current products and services, but setting the stage for tomorrow.

Sales Perspective

Sales would tell you it’s all about time and spending time in front of the customer.  Every minute spent “re-working” a presentation to make it customer-ready is time away from the customer.  They believe that unless you’ve carried a number, you can’t possibly understand what it’s like.  And they are probably right.

DISCUSSION LEADERS

We were joined by two very dynamic and experienced professionals, each with experience in Sales and Marketing.

Tim Riesterer of Corporate Visions.

New Frontier – Where do Sales and Marketing intersect?  All agreed that it was really in two places.  Leads and this other thing that might be called content or messaging or enablement.  The fact that it doesn’t even have an established name shows how far we are from figuring it out.  Lead processes are pretty well established, but it’s this other area that represents an opportunity for greater alignment.

Keep It Simple – One of the challenges that exist when it comes to enablement is how the content is presented.  Sales teams work in a predictable set of steps to close business.  Let’s call it Introduction, Qualification, Development and Close.  But how much, if any, of the Marketing content is developed according to sales stage?

Bob Wright of Marketing Arts

Create A Shared Process – Expertise exists within your marketing organization.  Start there and take the tools or messaging you are creating to sales for validation and refinement.  The final deliverable will have DNA from both teams, resulting in a win all around.

Embed Sales Knowledge – If you expect your messaging to gain traction with Sales, a guide or playbook developed collaboratively may be the answer.  Include some information not typically found in traditional marketing materials like “gotchas”, “reasons to sell” and how to “qualify out”.  Make sure that both Sales and Marketing have input and sign-off on the final deliverable.

Tie Messaging to a Customer “Problem” – Put your messages in the context of your target buyer’s problem. Buyer conversations should begin with “I have this problem” followed by “this is the value our solution offers to solve this problem” and finally, “how we solve this problem” is with these key features or differentiators or proof points.

Bridge the Gap

So I think you have to ask yourself if it’s really possible for Sales and Marketing to be aligned?  We know from experience that it’s rare that Marketing delivers exactly what Sales seems to need or want.  We also know that Sales will always ask for more than they really need.  And while we want Sales expertise, we don’t really want Sales to create their own stuff.

Playbooks

There was a lot of buzz in the room around the possibility of Playbooks.  These provide targeted content designed to enable sales to execute against a specific Play.  A play can be very granular, for example – an upgrade targeted at a specific industry with a limited time offer.  The Playbook that supports that Play can include a customer-facing deck, offer details, relevant customer stories or references, competitive information, scripts, and more.

A New Approach

Perhaps the very reason for a sales enablement function to exist is to translate between Marketing and Sales.  Let’s give up on alignment.  What we really need is a decoder ring.

SalesCraft Meetings

There’s nothing like a little weather to spice up an event.  For the fourth SalesCraft it rained.  It rained a lot.  Our scheduled speakers, Michael Gerard of IDC and Drew Larsen of SAVO were unable to attend due to flight delays and many who had planned to be at the meeting were unable to make it through the downpour.  Still, every seat around the table was taken and one of our founders, Dan Keefe of SAVO (who knows a few things about sales enablement), stepped in to lead the discussion.  Drew Larsen, SAVO’s CTO, was able to join by phone.

Let me start off by saying that until recently I would have listed “enablement” as one of the more overused, less meaningful words invoked by either Marketing or Sales.  What does it mean exactly?  And let’s be honest, a lot of what’s been delivered under the umbrella of enablement was anything but enabling for Sales. The word had become too generic, along with its twin sister “readiness”.

But it appears that I may have judged too harshly.  Certainly IDC feels that way as you look at the concentrated effort they’ve made to study and advocate best practices in sales enablement.

Still Fuzzy

Despite the energy and buzz that seems to be building around sales enablement, it was clear that the highly experienced sales and marketing professionals in the room were still trying to define it for their organizations and figure out what to do with it.  These are early days for sales enablement, not unlike sales operations 10-15 years ago.

Who Owns This Thing?

The answer appears to be everybody and nobody.  It was probably split 50-50 in the room between Sales and Marketing.  What’s more, there was wide variability among the companies represented as to the level and skill set of person responsible.  In many cases, there was no clear owner.

DISCUSSION LEADERS

Dan Keefe and Drew Larsen of SAVO.

Sophisticated Buyers – The customer has changed dramatically in the past ten years.  Who needs the sales rep for information when you have the internet?  So how does that change the conversation?  Sales needs to be more nimble and better prepared to engage the customer on multiple levels.

Fluency – Thinking about the goal of enablement, what is the ultimate objective?  Certainly we want our salespeople to ramp faster, be more productive and close more business.  But there are many things that factor into those broader goals.  Perhaps it’s all about fluency.  How do we keep a salesperson fluent when everything around them is changing so rapidly?

Real World Application

Sebastian Grady, CEO of Altus Technology, offered a reminder to keep it simple.  His salespeople present via webex all the time.  He plans to record those sessions and use the best ones as training vehicles.

Sales Sponsorship

Inserting a strong opinion of mine into the discussion, I believe that if Sales Enablement has any chance of being successful, it must be owned by Sales.  If Sales doesn’t own it, they won’t care about it as much.  Every Sales organization has a unique ability to kill something they don’t understand or appreciate.  The challenge is how to raise visibility high enough that the function can get any attention when compared to quota-carrying roles?  Then again, sales operations was in the same boat 10-15 years ago.  Now there isn’t a sales executive on the planet who would attempt to run their business without sales ops.

Failure of Sales Methodology

I think we all know that a lot of what’s developed for Sales doesn’t really benefit Sales as much as it does the rest of the organization.  CRM is a great example of that.  But what about sales methodology?  TAS, value selling, VITO letters, whatever – it’s been around for a long time, most of us have given a week our lives or more to sit through these classes, but somehow it’s fallen short of really being enabling.  Why is that?  Process and methodology are good right?

Technology Partner

A leader in the sales enablement space, SAVO provides a flexible, intuitive technology platform that radically changes the way sales consumes and shares content.  It would be fair to say the SAVO makes sales enablement possible.

A Translation Exercise

I’ll offer the thought that enablement is not about more content, it’s really about translating the content we have and making it customer-ready.  Take all the knowledge that exists in Marketing and package it in a way that it is immediately useful for the Field because it’s in customer-ready language.  This is where a Field Enablement team comes in.  In order to do that effectively a separate team is needed to translate and package all of the knowledge that already exists in the organization.

A Seeding Model

Some of best salespeople I know use a seeding strategy to sell millions of dollars worth of software.  Enablement can seem so broad in scope it can be hard to know where to begin.  The important thing is to start and make sure you “seed” the concept of enablement with the best possible deliverables.  Then make sure everyone knows about it.  There’s a significant amount of internal selling involved in getting started with sales enablement.

Then it’s all about building on your success.

SalesCraft Meetings