The Sales Enabler - Jeff Ernst - Sales Enablement Best Practices

What Shade is Your Sales Enablement Lipstick?

Is Sales Enablement just lipstick on a knowledge management pig?  So asks Gerhard on his Selling Power blog.  He takes some potshots at sales enablement vendors and the industry analysts who cover them. Many of them are deserved, others are not. 

Maybe the question he meant to ask is "What do I have to do to get those sales enablement vendors to sponsor the Sales 2.0 conference?"  I've shared my opinions on that directly with Gerhard because I want to see those conferences prosper.

For one thing, sales enablement vendors want to sell to VPs of Sales who believe in scalability and repeatability, are willing to do the work to make it happen, and recognize the role that enabling technology can play.  They are out there, I've worked with many of them.  And one thing they know is that you can't just throw "Sales 2.0" technologies at the problem and expect sales performance to improve overnight.

Gerhard starts a great discussion about whether sales enablement can impact sales productivity, and asks if sales enablement has a future? As long as Jim Dickie's data shows 40% of reps missing quota, and Lee Levitt's research shows buyers think sales reps actually slow down their buying process...then the answer is yes.

Gerhard says that "The noble purpose of Sales Enablement companies is to help sales organizations save time finding relevant information, create and organize sales content and create quick access to all experts across the enterprise."  I disagree.  Those aren't noble, those are by-products. Not too many VPs of Sales care about content. 

The real purpose of sales enablement companies (both technology and services providers) is to help the VP of Sales address an issue that keeps him/her awake at night: "How do I scale my sales organization, to generate more revenue with fewer resources?"

As I've written here before, sales is like any other business process.  The only way to scale it cost effectively is to drive repeatable behavior.  The only way to drive repeatable behavior is to surface best practices - the activities, strategies, and conversations that are proven to work in different selling situations, so that every rep can do more of those things.  That's the role of sales enablement.

If you truly believe that best practices are not resusable, then your only choice to scale sales is to hire only gifted A players.  We know how well that works.  You've got to enable the B and C players to be incrementally better.

The sales enablement vendors all try to surface best practices, but they do it in very different ways.  Some are focused on delivering a better sales portal, some are using Web 2.0 capabilities to automate the inefficient ways sales people work today, while others allow you to guide sales reps through the customer's buying cycle using proven playbooks.  The best approach for you depends on your culture. 

Don't let the vendors fool you, there's no way to enable sales without hard work.  But I for one would rather have a sales enablement person spend one hour to save 1,000 salespeople an hour each.

Sales call problems: can you say "improvise"?

I had a big sales call today.  Thirty minutes before, I noticed I lost my internet connection.  It got worse, none of my computers had internet.  Even worse, no phone.  My whole Comcast service was out (which meant my 17 year old had no TV, yikes).

For most people, panic sets in, but not for a sales enabler.  I still had my Blackberry.  And it gave me a perfect excuse to put aside the powerpoint and just have a conversation.  Isn't that what selling is all about? 

As it turned out, the call went just fine, but it reinforced my strong opinion that the best thing we can do to enable sales people is to make sure they can carry on an in-depth conversation with the "fox" in the buyer's organization.  If I had my way, powerpoint would be banned from sales, because too many sales people hide behind it.

Tell me your story about how you've improvised instead of going into a panic when something goes wrong on a sales call.

Can your reps talk about your prospect's biggest issues with empathy?

My job is to create tension in the room.  I just conducted a Sales Enablement Workshop for a tech company with over a thousand salespeople, where I had 20 key players from marketing, product management, and sales in the same room. Their issues were very typical of what I see with all my clients:

• The marketers are trying to get the sales team to move from selling product features to selling solutions that bundle multiple products and services.

• The sales folks think that the marketers don't understand what the sales team really needs in the field and the tools they get from marketing aren't useful.

• The product guys feel they really understand the value propositions of their products...the sales guys disagree.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.  This group of incredibly talented people, who all have the same goal of helping all reps sell like their top reps, was missing something so important.

Scott Santucci from Forrester captures it brilliantly in his recent post on A Story of Empathy - The Lost Art of Selling?  Scott says:

What truly separates top sales people is in fact that innate ability to connect the dots with a buyer...When I ask them how they sell, I get more or less the same answer; “well, I just sell a vision – you know what I am talking about.” I do, but it’s a hard thing to describe to the rest of the organization.

They are talking about empathy.

Scott shares some data from a recent survey of technology buyers, who were asked the question, “When you meet with a vendor sales person, in general how often are they prepared for the meeting in the following ways?" (% are for respondents who answered 'usually’)

  Knowledgeable about their company and products                88%
  Knowledgeable about my industry                                      55%
  Can relate to my role and responsibility in the organization     34%
  Knowledgeable about my specific business                          29%

These reps clearly aren't connecting the dots.  As Ardath Albee says in a post Is Sales Connecting the Dots with Buyers, that comments on Scott's data:

Salespeople don't need to know more about your products' feeds and speeds, they need to learn and assimilate information about their prospects. And they need to learn it well enough to have conversations with those prospects so they can earn the right to play a role in helping them craft the solutions to their most pressing business issues.

Ardath continues with a statement that echoes the first of my New Rules of Sales Enablement:

It should be becoming clear that what sales enablement should, um, enable is better and more valuable conversations between salespeople and buyers. Not just the end-game decision maker, but all the people involved on the buying committee.

Amen.  But how do you help your reps show empathy with buyers situations?  Here's one easy thing you can do.  Create "Issue Sheets" for the top 4 or 5 issues of each of your primary buyer personas that your solution can address. 

You know what the issues are, so scratch out as much as you know about the issue and its implications for that buyer on a piece of paper.  Then make it fun.  Invite a few reps (make sure there are some top reps in the bunch) in for lunch or out for a beer, and ask them this:

"When you're having a discussion about this issue with a prospect, what does the dialog sound like?  What's the tone of their voice?  How is it personally affecting them?  How have they tried to address this issue before, and what were the results?  What are the consequences of not solving it?"

Record it as a podcast, type it up in a doc, the format isn't important, just get this information into the hands of all your reps, help them internalize it, and listen in on some calls to see if their conversations improve.

I love it when I can apply what I learned in Kindergarten to the real world.

What do you think?  Can your sales peole empathize with buyers pains?  What are you doing to help them have these important conversations?

How to create a sales playbook in four easy steps

The first questions I always get from my clients when I talk about why they should create sales playbooks is, "How do we go about creating playbooks, and who does it?"  This is not surprising, given that most companies have cut way back on their sales support staff this year.

The key is to keep it simple and base it on what's proven to work.  Here's a simple four step process that I always use.

1.  Assess ::
You start by identifying recurring selling situations where you want to drive repeatable behavior. If you find your team competing in 80 deals a quarter selling a particular product line to CIOs in the manufacturing industry, that situation is a good candidate for a playbook.

Once you’ve identified the situation, profile winning sales engagements by interviewing your top reps to find out things like:

• What were the buyer’s information needs at each stage of their problem-solving process?
• What tools and materials did the reps use and when?
• What objections did they have to overcome?
• What experts did the rep bring in to help work the deal, and what role did they play?

Look for the patterns across multiple sales engagements, and then align these with your sales cycle or sales process.  Don't believe the statement you may hear that "each of our top sales people does things very differently."  Remember, sales is like any other business process, in that the only way to scale it is to drive repeatability.

2. Build ::
Organize the content, tools, and resources you identified in the Assess stage into playbook activities. Identify gaps where new information needs to be created and assign ownership for filling the gaps. Surround the playbook activities with coaching tips that help the reps know how to perform the activities.

3. Launch ::
Roll out the sales playbooks to the sales team. Start with a pilot group to get feedback. Make sure there are well-respected sales professionals who are opinion leaders in that pilot group. Expand usage to the larger team with the support of sales management, marketing and the opinion leaders in sales.  As you roll it out, make sure everyone knows which top performers were interviewed to gather the best practices for the playbook, because every middle-of-the-pack rep is always wanting to know what the superstars are doing so they can do it too.

4. Evolve ::
Playbooks should be living, breathing creatures. Monitor usage and measure the impact. And use these metrics to optimize the playbooks over time. You will find opportunities to:

• Refine the activities, content and messaging within the playbooks
• Eliminate the choke points in your sales process
• Keep deals from going off track
• Develop new sales playbooks

If it takes you more than a week to create a playbook, then you're likely overthinking it and making it too complicated.  You're better off focusing on the 10-15 things or activities that really matter in a sales cycle, rather than overloading the playbook with everything a rep may ever need.

And don't forget to check out the guide on How to Create Killer Sales Playbooks for more details and best practices.