Last week, we organized a live webinar discussion focused on the Twin Pillars of Sales Success: Vision & Execution with Eric Maurer and Kyle Uebelhor of the Alexander Group and hosted by Dr. Tom Sant. It was a lively, interactive discussion and there were some really great questions from the audience.
The webinar kicked off with some of the challenges that face today’s sales leaders such as changing markets, new competition, and gaining buy-in from the sales team. As markets and the competition move faster than ever, sales leaders need to be armed with a game plan that addresses both an understanding of the buyer AND evolving sales strategies and methods that work in today’s market. Gaining buy-in with any change in the workplace can be hard and can be particularly resistant when it affects their paycheck! It can be a challenge to communicate your vision to the sales force with these barriers.
While creating the vision is the first pillar of sales success, it’s the execution on that vision that finalizes the preparations for your sales team success. Knowledge enabled selling has four components:
- Alignment (of the sales team on a common vision),
- Leverage (the expertise of your high performers’ with technology),
- Connectivity (with individual tactics and account plans with the organization’s vision)
- Learning (through coaching and feedback to better adapt and ultimately anticipate customer needs).
The key to knowledge-enabled selling is the sales playbook. However, it’s truly for the entire organization. Sales can illustrate the course that they’ve set and pull together their plan to achieve the vision. Marketing can relay targeted content at exactly the right time, plus receive real-time feedback for what’s working well or not being used. The Sales team gets a clear picture of what they need to focus on, access best practices, and effectively run the next sales “play”.
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There were a lot of great questions throughout the session; here are just a few of our favorites:
Question: I’ve already got a handful of high performing sales reps and I’m having trouble believing that implementing a new solution could replicate that success for the rest of my team. What does the group think?
Answer: That’s actually a pretty common misnomer. We consider most sales teams to be along a bell curve – there are high performers and low performers on each end while the bulk of the team are in the average performer bump. Obviously with any infrastructure investment, you expect to a see a lift in performance. An average performer taking advantage of automated processes will clearly improve their performance (and the above average performers may not improve since they likely already operate efficiently). “Moving the Middle” and shifting the entire selling organization to the right is ideal and also the trickiest for companies.
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Question: What are some tips for implementing and getting buy-in (across the organization) for a sales playbook?
Answer: There are a few tips to properly on-board sales playbooks – here are our recommendations:
- Map out the process from day 0. Create a plan from the very first day and stick with it. Having a plan will eliminate surprises and proactively set goals and milestones to ensure you are progressing with your implementation.
- Coordinate the tactical and the practical. Tactical teams like HR and IT will need to be involved for onboarding and help accelerate reps to full functionality. The practical side will focus on how to sell in your ecosystem.
- Establish rules of engagement. Help the sales force to develop concise sales process steps – “What are the three things I need to focus on tomorrow morning in my new world?”
Question: What should I put in the playbook and who should be involved?
Answer: The ultimate goal for the sales playbook is targeted at top performing sales professionals. To get there, you need to pull together a team of winners to develop the content. Understand that your playbook should be designed with a feedback mechanism so that it can continue to evolve and that it’s key to make it sound like it came from one seller. Starting with a focus of one or two primary functions and go from there will help a daunting task seem more manageable.
Hear the entire webinar from the recording.
Interested in more data points? Join us on September 10th for a live e-workshop with Demand Metric as they present their survey findings from their Sales Enablement Benchmark Study.
