Getting teams more productive faster is a top priority for every company, CEO, CRO and CMO. Here are five steps to sales enablement success. Who doesn’t want to get more reps hitting quota faster? Who isn’t wondering how to boost sales productivity? Many companies are lucky if fifty percent of their sellers are hitting quota and that’s really not an ideal outcome for most. Why aren’t we seeing closer to one eighty to ninety percent quota attainment across sales teams?
I’ve done a lot of thinking, writing and executing on practical ways to boost sales productivity. Here is a proven five step sales enablement process to achieve success. It works.
Step 1: Baseline Sales Enablement Metrics
Know what productivity problem you’re solving. Baseline the productivity metrics. Get all go-to-market teams including sales, marketing, customer success, and every customer facing team aligned on the most important metrics and goals.
Here are some of the more common sales enablement metrics:
- Quota Attainment
- Time to first deal
- Time to quota
- Win-rates
- Deal sizes
- Time to revenue
- Self-Sourced Pipeline
(Click here to read Top 10 Sales Metrics for Sales Enablement blog.)
Step 2: Get Everyone On Message
Work with marketing to get the latest customer facing corporate presentation and pitch documented, recorded, and shared with your teams. Corporate messaging alignment is an all company activity. Every customer facing employee should be on message. Create micro-certifications. It’s a best practice to make messaging certifications smaller and more frequent. It’s much better to do twelve, two to three minute certifications versus one big thirty minute certification once a year.
Individuals will practice pitches and presentations at least five times, peer review at least ten, and watch twenty when certifications are less than five minutes long. The secret to rolling out a company messaging certification is to make the exercise open, social, fun, and engaging. Make it easy for everyone to see and review each other’s presentations.
Don’t forget to start with managers first. There is a direct performance correlation between team quota attainment and a manager’s doing their pitch first.
Step 3: Roll Out Sales Playbooks
Codify what it takes to win deals by mapping out buyer profiles, qualification criteria, discovery questions, compelling events, value drivers, common objections, and competitive traps. Turn the content into a playbook that’s dynamic, easily accessible and in context. Map the playbook content and tools to the buyer’s journey including sales process stages and to dos. Crowdsource and collate winning assets and tools from top reps. Share what’s working with everyone to get more reps selling like your top performers.
Step 4: Reinforce With Sales Manager Huddles and Team Practice
The best practice sharing and sales productivity multiplier continues with manager huddles and team practice. Create meetings in a box with content and sales playbooks for managers and teams. Have front line managers take teams through content and pitches. Use weekly meetings to huddle and share best practices. Most companies don’t do this step. It’s the missing link in most sales enablement programs.
Step 5: Share Successes and Crowdsource Deal Win Stories
Getting teams to share early prospecting successes and winning deal stories more frequently and efficiently is a proven way to share best practices. Evolve the deal win story process into dynamic video storytelling. Use video to capture deal win stories institutionalize sales knowledge. Celebrate successes at the highest level with CEOs, CROs and CMOs joining the virtual high-five bandwagon. Watch what happens after the first deal win is recorded. More reps will want to record their story and be recognized too. Turn the deal win process into a badge of honor versus a chore. Get more reps selling like your top reps.
Follow these steps (and don’t skip a step) and your sales enablement dreams will happen. It’s proven to boost sales productivity. What would happen to your career and wallet if you had a proven way to boost sales productivity fast at your company?
