Category Archives: Sales Enablement Strategies

Prepare Your Reps for Improvisation

I recently watched one of my all-time favorite comedies, the 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap, a “rockumentary” following the fictitious band Spinal Tap as it tours the U.S. desperately looking to regain its lost popularity. Rob Reiner starred and directed a cast that included Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, all famous for their comic improvisation. Most of the movie was ad-libbed; the actors were given rough outlines instead of scripts to memorize for their scenes and simply worked off each other. The talent and skill of this ensemble resulted in one very funny movie. The job of sales enablement, to a degree, is to prepare reps for improvisation. I’m not talking about showing up on sales calls and making things up off their top off their heads – but the ability to spontaneously adapt and react to whatever happens on a call and with a buyer.

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Reflections on Summit 2013 Through a Sales Enablement Lens

Last week, SiriusDecisions hosted more than 1,500 attendees at our annual Summit, held at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. As a new member of the SiriusDecisions team, it was a wonderful experience to watch my colleagues in action as they presented our latest research and insights to the entire crowd. The presentations covered a wide range of topics important to b-to-b marketing, sales and product leaders, from the rearchitected waterfall to the unified integration model. But sprinkled throughout each presentation was a subject that is near and dear to me – sales enablement. As I made the rounds and introduced myself, the conversation consistently turned to sales enablement, even before I mentioned that I cover this area. Here are my answers to three of the questions I encountered most often during those discussions:

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Summit 2013 Highlights: Apply Productivity Analysis to Improve B-to-B Sales Results

Time is the most valuable resource a sales rep has: “A salesperson has, typically, 50 hours in the week in which to work. It’s the job of both marketing and sales to ensure that those 50 hours are spent as productively as possible,” said Jim Ninivaggi, service director of Sales Enablement Strategies at SiriusDecisions, who spoke at Summit 2013 this morning. B-to-b organizations often struggle to keep reps focused on higher-yield activities that lead to closing deals and bringing in revenue. This was borne out by the results of an instant poll of the Summit 2013 audience: Only 1 percent of participants polled felt very confident that their reps are fully productive vs. 41 percent who are very confident that their reps are not fully productive.

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Why Your Staff Needs to Go on a Sales Call Today

Most reps adhere to the adage “Plan your work and work your plan.” But does your staff fully appreciate what that involves? From time to time, field marketing, sales operations and sales enablement should go on rep ride-alongs to observe and discover new ways to enable sales success. Here are some pointers to help you make the most of these ride-alongs (and to make sure you’re asked back).

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“Fieldsourcing” Sales Content: The Benefits of Running a Content Collection Week

The New Yorker magazine runs a popular weekly contest that invites readers to submit a clever caption for a single-frame cartoon drawn by a professional cartoonist. The magazine typically receives more than 5,000 submissions. The editors pick the top three, and readers then vote on their favorite (I was fortunate enough to be a finalist a couple of years ago). The magazine’s cartoonists have often remarked that the captions created by these amateurs are funnier than the ones they originally envisioned. Marketing and sales leaders know their field reps create their own mailers, presentations and sales tools; they’re just not sure what they’re doing, or why. This lack of knowledge means that some really great content goes unutilized, while some really bad content is being presented to buyers. Just as The New Yorker contest uses crowdsourcing, marketing and sales can run regular content collection weeks to “fieldsource” sales content from their reps and sales engineers.

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How Stopping Saturday Mail Delivery Impacts Your Sales Reps

The United States Postal Service recently announced that, effective August 10 of this year, Saturday mail delivery will be discontinued. Of course, this will not diminish the amount of junk mail I receive, only the day that it is delivered. When I read the news online, what I found interesting is that not all Saturday mail will stop. Delivery of packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail, and Express Mail will continue. I am sure that I will get an official notice from the post office, but for now, it’s a bit confusing. Here are some useful guidelines for communicating to and from sales reps.

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Is Email the Best Way for Sales to Communicate?

Two years ago, Thierry Breton, the CEO of Atos, a European IT services and consulting provider, announced that in three years, Atos would no longer use internal email. Some viewed this statement with skepticism, while others called it visionary. Atos’ plan is to shift its internal communications from email to a social business solution. The Atos Zero-Email strategy is still active, but the company has not publicly announced which alternative tools it intends to use for internal communication. Some announcements have discussed the use of instant messaging along with social media platforms. What about your sales force? Could this be a reasonable course of action?

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Four Proven Ways to Reach at Least 90 Percent Sales Quota Attainment

How can you improve the performance of your b-to-b sales organization? Set higher quotas? Provide higher commissions or accelerators? Increase training? Hire more sales specialists or, perhaps, administrators? Which levers should you push and why? In the past, we have written about the clear relationship between pipeline-to-quota ratios and pipeline conversion ratios and pipeline velocity (3x-or-less pipelines have better conversion rates, while 4x-or-more pipelines have faster velocity, but that does not make up for the worse conversion rates). Analysis of our sales benchmark data reveals four interesting commonalities between b-to-b organizations that reported at least 90 percent annual quota attainment for their sales force.

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Game, Set and Match: What Tennis Can Teach Us About Sales Coaching

When we think of great coaches (e.g. legendary football coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers, men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke, women’s basketball coach Pat Summit of Tennessee), we typically imagine them pacing up and down the sidelines or court, yelling instructions to their players. During timeouts, they gather their players to discuss strategy and plays. They are active participants in the game, getting almost as much television coverage as their players! This is not the case, however, in tennis. It is illegal to coach a tennis player during a match (though some coaches try to skirt this rule by using hand signals). You don't see a tennis coach pacing the sidelines, calling the shots or huddling with their player to discuss strategy during a break.

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Measuring the Success of Sales Assets

During a recent visit to a travel agency, I was surprised by how little the agent knew about the destination I was considering. Let’s just say there are many TV ads for this kid-friendly vacation spot, but when I asked specific questions, the basic response was, “It is a really popular destination.” This was of little use in my decision process. I was expecting more insight – popular activities, comments from other vacationers, whether our travel dates coincide with the busy season. Instead, I am back at square one with too many choices and a fast-approaching vacation deadline. Reps often have this problem with their asset management tool. Listing what is hot or popular does have some benefits, but sales reps want content suggestions for their specific opportunities and sales stages. Needing to search for content on the system adds another administrative function to their already busy day.

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