In my opinion, there are four pillars of sales effectiveness. Even incremental improvements in these areas can raise your overall sales effectiveness.
Digital Tool Adoption
Technology initiatives can require a high degree of change for sales teams, and when you are competing for share-of-mind with revenue generating activities, getting the level of attention needed to make the change sticky can be nearly impossible. To make things more complex, it's often not just the tech that needs to be covered in training. Any gap in understanding of sales process and pipeline management can reduce the effectiveness of CRM and sales enablement tools—even when sales teams know where to click on the screen. Launch events are not enough. But combining launch events, micro-learning, and ongoing monitoring and assessment can build excitement, reinforce new behaviors, and uncover gaps to address along the way.
Change management
Data strategy & Standing up enablement tech
Sales process alignment
Training design & delivery
Marketing Collateral Activation
80% of marketing collateral never gets used. The difference between what gets used or not is (1) findablity and (2) relevancy. I once led an initiative to change the messaging around differentiation. Within one year the slide deck we released to sales teams became the most used tool globally. Why? Because the training and rollout focused on findability and relevancy. Learners practiced using the tool, envisioned how the tool fit into the sales process, and connected the dots about how to access it within their sales tech stack (CRM, sales enablement). Luckily, improving finally and relevancy of marketing collateral is not hard. You just have to do some things differently and focus on
Knowledge management
Marketing-sales alignment
Lead scoring & handoffs
Technical Training Curricula
If you're looking at your large product portfolio and asking yourself, how will my teams ever learn all this, you're not the first! Many teams struggle with how to combine, prioritize and sequence training in ways that are effective. How can you take all of these variables into account and deliver an effective, time-conscious training program? As an extreme systems-thinker, I find these kinds of challenges energizing! I specialize in analyzing complex portfolios and positionings to build a curriculum roadmap to take learners from awareness through application and into mastery.
Curriculum design
Instructional design
Training strategy development
Training-the-trainer
Sales Skill Acumen
It’s not popular to admit, but I believe that all sales skill methodologies and competencies are 85% similar across businesses and industries. Even though customer relationships vary business to business, and the name of the stages in your pipeline might be different, all customers want the same thing: to be successful and to make their work lives easier. This can be achieved through basic sales skills that build relationships and a deep understanding of customer needs. Even if you have a favorite sales methodology, competency assessment, or time-tested pipeline management strategy, connecting the dots in these areas can help advance your sales enablement program:
Building customer intimacy in pre-sales
Deal qualification
Sales process & pipeline management
Training-the-trainer
Learn more
You can learn more about my perspective on the Pillars of Sales Enablement in my Sales Enablement POV Blog. Click on a topic that interest you below.
Get in touch
I love helping teams achieve new levels of sales effectiveness by finding opportunities to improve (1) digital technology adoption, (2) marketing collateral activation, (3) technical product curricula, and (4) sales skill acumen.
Let’s discuss your goals and find low-hanging fruit.