We do what here?! Best practices for sales enablement

1. We do what here?! Best Practices for Sales Enablement Prepared for the Boston Product Marketing Summit 2019 Arianna Valentini, Product Marketing Manager, Syncsort October 17 2019
2. What we will talk about today • Does product marketing own sales enablement? • A phased approach to building up sales enablement • Best practices to keep in mind • Case study
3. Why is sales enablement important? Buyers Are More Informed Customer-centric selling Source: Sesmic Software
4. Image Source: Vecteezy.com Quicker time to close Improved customer discussions Competitive intelligence Faster onboarding Consistent market message Education and enablement outside sales Stronger sales data Scalable sales processes
5. Where does sales enablement fall into product marketing’s role? Insight and Strategy Messaging Go to Market Enablement • Market drivers • Personas (development and maintenance) • Use case development • Target markets • Value propositions • Differentiation • Frameworks • Product and thought leadership content • Go to market strategy • Launch plan between product and sales • Customer development • Value of new capabilities • Training and development • Sales support content • Sharing of channel and field requirements • Competitive intelligence • Continuous support of sales cycle Based on Pragmatic Marketing Framework, Gartner, Product Marketing Debunked by Yasmeen Turayhi
6. Phased approach to building up sales enablement program Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Intervie w, Intervie w, Intervie w Key Use Cases and Competiti ve Market Content Inventor y Formaliz e Resource Repositor y Enable on Formalized Resources Continuous Alignment with Sales and Marketing Leadership
7. Phase 1: Interview, Interview, Interview • Sales is your customer…so talk to them! • Expand interviews beyond sales • Ex. presales engineers, business development, demand generation • Keep record of core themes from each interview in Excel • Consider teams outside your immediate geography • Leave the building if possible and keep interview short • Best success = 20 minutes of time • Keep questions focused on their concerns, what they need
8. Best Practice: Interview Questions • Interview questions should be open ended • Listen more than question • Record interviews if possible Sample questions: • How can I help you? • Tell me about your sales process • Can you tell me about your biggest competitive loss? • What resources do you wish we had?
9. Phase 2: Key Use Cases and Competitive Market • Determine if use cases and competitive information are formalized • Resources to building use cases and competitive information: CRM, sales interviews, and market research • What content is needed to support current sales goals? • SWOT analysis, battle cards, internal product sheets that are use case focused, reference guides • Look for partners in your company to help you create these resources Remember: Competitive information and use cases are living
10. Best Practice: Privately Owned Competitors • Who owns them: Check out parent company website and look for 10- K • Get Techie: help pages, product release pages, release notes, user groups • Employee sentiment: Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, job listings on website (sign up for alerts) • Check out the noise: social media, trade shows, press releases
11. Phase 3: Content Inventory Content needs to cover every step of the buyer’s journey Plan out content Measure success of current content Determine gaps • Write briefs • Keywords • Presentations should align with current sales process • Quota attainment • Content usage • Sales time (decrease)
12. Best Practice: Keep a DAM Mindset Remember content needs to be found! • Clear folder structure • Naming convention • Version control rules • Keep file sizes low Based on Best Practices from Sesmic Software, The DAM Book by Peter Krogh
13. Phase 4: Formalize Resource Repository • All the great work you are doing needs to live somewhere • Doesn’t have to be fancy – look for something everyone can easily access • Think through structure of content within resource repository • Make sure to align structure with sales leadership
14. Best Practice: Organizing the Repository Use Case (by vertical market) aka Problem Trying to Solve Competitors Customer Type (B2B, B2C) Use Case Content (Product Centric) General Product Content (product sheets, presentations, reference guides) Top level
15. Phase 5: Enable on Resource Repository • All of this hard work is useless if no one uses it! • Think of ways to engage sales to use resource repository • Align the release of the sales enablement resource repository with a major sales event • Ex. Bootcamp or Sales Kick Off
16. Best Practice: Play into what sales does best Make it a competition!
17. Case Study Starting from scratch
18. Background and goals • January 2019 – financial services company hires 7 new sales representatives • 8 existing sales representatives • All sales attend a January sales bootcamp and are tested on their knowledge of the company, products, and strength of pitch • Sales representatives need a minimum score to keep their jobs • Average score lower than desired, decided to retest lowest scores in 3 months
19. Sales Population Overview 60% Less than 5 years of sales experience 2 Geographies, United States and United Kingdom 3 With financial services background
20. Phases in action Interview, Interview, Interview Key Use Cases and Competitive Market Content Inventory Formalize Resource Repository Enable on Formalized Resources Process 3 weeks of sales, sales engineers, and customer service interviews 15 interview total Competitive market defined – top competitors narrowed Discovery of most sold use- cases with least content 2 days of working across sales, CS, and marketing to determine what content was already produced Built in Confluence Launched “Spy Game” 3 week game with clues and challenges centered around the enablement center (new reps only) Findings and results Resources were scattered Lack of competitive information ELT agreed on 3 competitors to target first Product specific content needed Lacking: • Battle cards • SWOTs • Use case product content Structure defined in lock step with sales VP and marketing leadership Sales able to practice their elevator pitches before re assessment Weekly progress meetings with Sales and Marketing Leadership
21. Closer look at the game • Spy Game – 3 weeks, 3 missions + final • Highest average out of all 3 missions won Gift Card • Mission 1: Cold call “prospect” with competitive solution • Mission 2: Use Confluence to look up a competitor and recall prospect • Mission 3: Build a value pitch based off of personas found in Confluence • Final Mission: Final pitch to group using as many resources from Confluence and they liked
22. Results 100% ~20%* Increase average value pitch score * Based on those sales members who had to re-do value pitch process Adoption of resource center by new sales members
23. Thank you! Questions? ariannavalentini@syncsort.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariannacvalentini/ www.ariannavalentini.com