Selling Power Blog

How Effective Sales Enablement Starts with Prioritizing the Right KPIs

Today’s post is by Ed Calnan, Co-founder and CRO of Seismic.

 

 

Teams looking to remain effective and successful while working remotely need to be sure they share the same goals. Without the ability to stay in touch on the ground – and hold in-person check-ins and meetings – having a team that rolls up to the same goals is critical to keeping your go-to-market engine running smoothly with a distributed workforce. And enablement is one of the best ways to ensure your sellers are focused on the right things.

But what are you tracking to make sure your teams stay effective? As a sales leader, you need to be sure your team has the right priorities to succeed. For Seismic, it’s about tracking key results that all filter into our central focus.

Enablement key performance indicators (KPIs) should all support one central goal – generating more revenue to drive sales success. So how do we set the right goals to keep our team focused on the right things that all feed into this ability to generate revenue? 

The Three KPIs That Will Drive Sales Success Right Now

Seismic’s key results filter into three buckets – all of which are priorities in focusing your team on driving more revenue.

Shorter sales cycles

Finding ways to shorten the sales cycle is one of the easiest ways to drive more revenue. Quicker sales cycles represent a smooth sales process and a compelling message to buyers. And some of the best KPIs to track around shorter sales cycle are those that give your sellers more time to actually sell.

When sellers spend less time on things such as searching for content and ramping to productivity, they can devote more time to getting in touch with prospects, building valuable relationships, and taking other actions that will actually drive decisions from buyers.      

KPIs around 1) time spent searching for content, 2) time spent training, and 3) conversion rates will give you visibility into how much time your sellers are spending effectively communicating with buyers, compared to taking on more menial, time-wasting tasks. 

Higher win rates

Go-to-market teams wasting energy on activities that don’t effectively connect with buyers are ultimately less efficient. A successful enablement program will shine a light on the activities that are truly essential, while automating other activities or eliminating inefficient processes altogether. 

And, ultimately, this prevents budget from being wasted on ineffective activities.

The best go-to-market teams will deliver a strong message to the right prospects in a personalized way. Forrester’s 2019 State of Sales Enablement Report found that buyers expect more relevant, personalized information than they did five years ago.      

So be sure your enablement program has KPIs on 1) time spent creating content, 2) content usage, and even 3) lead quality to make sure your go-to-market teams can efficiently guide prospects through the buyers’ journey.

Increased customer value

Finally, finding ways to bring more value to your current customer base is a major consideration for anybody who wants to see effectiveness in their enablement program. Especially at a time like this, creating more value for your own customers is imperative for companies looking to keep revenue coming in from organizations that get value from your product.

Some great indicators can give insight to sales leaders into the value your customers get from your product. With this in mind, you need KPIs around 1) churn rate (to monitor those customers who no longer see enough value to justify their spend) and 2) cross-sell and upsell rates, which will showcase customers getting enough out of your product to increase their investment and double down.

KPIs Keep Sales Enablement Efforts on Track

Keeping these key rules in mind is what will truly ensure your enablement program is on the right track. At a time when organizations are tightening their belts, making sure your go-to-market teams are efficient and effective will be a major difference for teams trying to do more with less. With visibility into important, easy-to-understand KPIs, you can understand how your team and your enablement program are performing in a simple fashion.

Want more sales enablement insight? Access Seismic’s guide, “12 Sales Enablement KPIs for Enterprise Sales Leaders.”

How Much Do You Really Know about Sales Enablement?

Today’s post is by Mark Stralka, founder and CEO of Mobile Locker, a global sales enablement platform. Mobile Locker facilitates seamless and frictionless collaboration between sales and marketing. The platform also delivers trade show "lead to pipeline" conversion with unprecedented velocity. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Sales enablement has been around for decades. Still, it’s often misunderstood.

Take a minute to answer the following questions to find out if your perceptions about sales enablement are fact or fiction.  

FACT or FICTION? A typical sales enablement program improves sales by approximately 10 percent in the first year.

FICTION: Sales enablement is a proven way to increase sales. The actual level depends on your current situation, what changes you decide to make, and your team’s commitment to sales enablement. 

The typical effort more than pays for itself in increased efficiency and productivity within a few months. Improvements will continue over time – leading to better sales results year over year for as long as you maintain a disciplined sales enablement program. 

Want to learn more? Download “The Sales Enablement 6-Pack.” 

FACT or FICTION? Sales and marketing process improvements are the top drivers of sales enablement success.

FICTION: Training is an equally important contributor to the success of sales enablement initiatives. Educating reps and other employees – giving them the knowledge they need to do their jobs better – is the fuel that drives the leading programs.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement breaks down the barriers between sales and marketing. 

FACT: (Even though you may think it’s impossible to bring the frenemies together!)

A sales enablement program and system makes it easy for marketers to develop and distribute sales content – and for salespeople to use it. The system is a central hub where both groups can monitor content usage, communicate about it, and determine its effectiveness. 

It eliminates the issue of each team using its own systems and depending on different sources of data to track success. It encourages the use of common language that brings people together to work toward common goals.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement software works best on a computer and is less effective on other devices.

FICTION(ish): Many old-school sales enablement systems are cumbersome and work best on computers and laptops connected to the Internet. The latest, however, are optimized to work on any device – laptop, tablet, or smartphone – any place, any time, with or without Wi-Fi.

This makes them a great asset for reps who often find themselves in challenging sales situations where they may be called on to use a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or all three. If you haven’t checked out sales enablement solutions lately, you owe it to yourself to take a fresh look.

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement solution will replace all the other tools sales and marketing teams currently use.

FICTION: Think about a sales enablement system as a hub that will integrate seamlessly with everything you’re currently using, including your CRM, contact management software, email system, and more. There should be no need to change anything. It will simply enhance what you’re already using and make things more effective.

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement system is something you “grow into.”

FICTION: While it’s always a good idea to plan for tomorrow, you should never pay for software functionality you may never use. Even worse, doing so could confuse and frustrate people who have to work with a too-complex system. This often leads to abandonment. 

It’s smarter to invest in a sales enablement solution that’s right for you now, is scalable so it can grow with your business in the future, and lets you add features and functionality when you’re ready for them.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement systems are difficult to customize.

FICTION: While a lot of well-known sales enablement software is out-of-the-box, there are other alternatives. Mobile Locker’s app is an example of one that can be customized quickly, easily, and cost-effectively to meet the needs of virtually any business. 

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement is about process, not data.

FICTION: It’s true that a sales enablement program will improve your sales and marketing processes and procedures. However, modern sales enablement technology takes things to the next level by providing you with easy access to data about the effectiveness of your sales process, team, and collateral. You’ll also gain invaluable insights about the people in your customer base. 

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement program and system is hard to implement.

FACT(ish): Like any worthwhile endeavor, starting a sales enablement program takes time and effort. Once it’s up and running, you’ll gain efficiencies that will make it easier for you to do your job while generating better results. Businesses find the short-term trade-off completely worth it. 

Once you establish a sales enablement program, implementing a modern system is simple. Salespeople and marketers can be up and running and using it in a few hours. 

Want to learn more facts about sales enablement? Contact the friendly experts at Mobile Locker to get answers to all your questions.

How AI Automation Will Change the State of Sales

Today’s post is by Jessica Munday, a content marketing specialist at Automation Hero, an intelligent process automation (IPA) company combining RPA and AI for next-level businesses.

 

Sales productivity is the number one challenge for 65 percent of B2B organizations. It’s an industry-wide problem that heavily impacts revenue margins and a company’s bottom line.

The biggest inhibitors to productivity are the inefficiencies within the sales process. According to Salesforce, the average sales rep spends 64 percent of his or her time on non-selling tasks – 25 percent of which are administrative tasks.

The burden on sales managers grows as executive leaders push for higher revenue gains. The solution managers have discovered? Implementing sales AI to automate inefficient processes that prevent sales reps from selling. These technologies make it so the data entry and busy work are still done, but salespeople have more time to sell and drive profits for the company.

Rapid Growth in Sales Tools

The current sales tech landscape has more than 700 tools – up from around 300 in 2015. Growth in the sales technology space will continue to accelerate over the coming years, resulting in a flooded market with thousands of productivity tools.

While many of these tools promise to increase productivity, the number of vendors and products out there add even more noise and confusion for sales managers. In this hyper-growth market, managers can find it difficult to select the right tools for their business needs. They waste time comparing and evaluating vendors to find “the needle in the haystack.”

Many of these basic productivity tools add even more steps to the already-inefficient sales process, further preventing sales teams from selling.

What Makes Sales AI Better

Sales AI tools differ from traditional sales technology because they’re built with intelligence to improve the sales process and enable salespeople to be as productive and sales focused as possible. Sales AI optimizes the sales process through automation and augmentation.

Automation is when an intelligent machine performs low-level, repetitive tasks automatically with little assistance from the sales rep – and, as previously stated, sales reps spend a majority of their time on administrative tasks. Sales automation cuts down that time by performing tasks like CRM data entry, researching contact information, scheduling meetings, and drafting emails.

Augmentation is designed to elevate human intelligence to help people work smarter. Augmenting the sales team’s intelligence leads to sales reps making smarter decisions. Tasks that can be augmented include “next-step” engagement recommendations, prospecting, and cross-sell and up-sell suggestions. Gartner predicts that, by 2020, 30 percent of all B2B companies will add intelligence augmentation to augment at least one of their primary sales processes.

Sales AI Adoption

A Forrester survey shows that 46 percent of companies are looking to implement AI systems specifically for their sales and marketing teams. Salesforce says it’s the top growth area for sales teams, with adoption expected to grow 139 percent over the next three years.

Early adopters are already seeing results. Eighty-three percent of the most aggressive adopters of AI and cognitive technologies say their companies have already achieved either moderate (53 percent) or substantial (30 percent) benefits. Research shows that high-performing sales teams are 3.4 times more likely than underperforming teams to already be using AI.

Critical Skills and Habits You Need to Succeed in the AI Era

Today’s post is by Ilan Kasan, co-founder and CEO of Exceed.ai, the leader in AI and automation for sales and marketing. Ilan is a thought leader and blogger and a strong proponent that the best sales teams will join forces with AI to exceed their goals.

 

To succeed in the 1950s, salespeople needed a handful of critical skills: connecting with potential customers, listening to their needs, and forming a strong relationship based on trust.

Then came the 1980s and 1990s, and things changed.

Suddenly, salespeople needed to learn how to crunch numbers and work with CRM systems. Administrative skills became a core part of their job. They became documenters and technologists in addition to relationship builders.

Now, we’re entering the AI era, and everyone is quaking in their boots that their job might be overtaken by an AI entity.

We’re not nervous, because we view this new era differently.

We welcome it. We even celebrate it.

By partnering with AI-powered tools, today’s salespeople can delegate their administrative work and focus more on what they have always liked doing and have been valued for: building relationships.

Building relationships, listening actively, and making people comfortable are best accomplished by humans, not technology. Here are the three critical skills salespeople can use to succeed in our new AI era.

Skill #1: Fearlessness

The only way to succeed in the AI era is to embrace it without fear.

According to research by InsideSales, over 20 percent of sales teams that don’t use AI tools say it’s because they don’t trust AI, and 5 percent are scared it will take their jobs. That means over a quarter of sales teams avoid AI out of fear. But, when you have the right solution, you’ll find it’s not as intimidating as you thought.

Exceed.ai’s virtual assistant enables sales teams to make the best use of their time by taking over repetitive administrative tasks, freeing sales reps to focus on the things only humans can do. Exceed.ai assistants can:

• schedule calls and book meetings,
• make initial contact with cold leads,
• qualify them,
• identify the best time to reconnect with potential customers, and
• unfailingly follow up on new leads through natural, two-way conversations over email and chat.

Sales teams that use Exceed.ai experience up to an 80 percent increase in new sales opportunities and a 67 percent drop in the cost of qualifying leads.

When you let go of your fear and really partner with your AI sales assistant, working alongside it effectively, you can prioritize your time more efficiently and convert more leads into sales opportunities.

Skill #2: Relationship building

The biggest benefit of sales in the AI era is that salespeople are now free to dedicate the bulk of their time doing the things AI can’t do, like banter, joke, find common ground, and build genuine relationships with potential customers.

Human nuance, demonstrating emotion, and connecting with people are what salespeople were born to do. But, in the past two decades – when nearly half of their time was required for emailing; communicating back and forth to establish, confirm, and reschedule meetings; following up; and documenting every interaction – their true sales skills set, including fostering relationships and closing deals, became stymied.

AI has created the opportunity for salespeople to excel at exactly what they were hired to do. AI tools can free salespeople to cultivate the skills buyers value. Research by Salesforce reveals that 75 percent of buyers expect companies to understand their needs, and 79 percent want to interact with a salesperson they trust. Today’s buyers want to trust their vendors and suppliers, and that can be done only if salespeople listen carefully to what buyers need and want.  

Skill #3: Cross-collaboration

Entering the AI era doesn’t mean salespeople will suddenly become “lone wolves,” sitting together with their AI assistant, set apart from the rest of the marketing and sales teams. On the contrary, skills as a team player will be more important than ever, and more productive.

AI will make sales teams smaller – placing each representative in a holistic unit that unites sales, marketing, and customer service. Salespeople will have to grasp the big picture, considering all the interactions among the three departments. Only salespeople who recognize and prioritize cross-collaboration will succeed.

Salespeople also have to embrace greater transparency within the team and let go of their pride in doing everything themselves. It’s going to require a completely new perspective, where every sale is truly a joint effort. They’ll need to be willing to share information, leads, and insights openly and freely, learn how to intelligently delegate to their AI partner, and become willing to hand over leads for someone else to complete the sale.

Use AI So You Can Sell More

With the advent of AI, salespeople can fully embrace interpersonal skills, relationship building, fearlessness, and other uniquely human skills, and leave the administrative work to technology.

Salespeople must abandon their fear of AI and learn how to delegate to it, then polish their relationship building skills. Visit Exceed.ai to learn how.

Sales Enablement Confusion: How to Cut through the Noise

Today’s post is by Michelle Vazzana, CEO and a founding partner at Vantage Point Performance, a leading global sales management training and development firm. She is co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance. Vazzana is also author of Crushing Quota: Proven Sales Coaching Tactics for Breakthrough Performance.

 

Sales enablement is growing rapidly as a discipline, and so is the number of solution providers. How is a sales enablement professional supposed to make informed choices? Where does one look to find answers? Those are important questions – and, yet, there is a question that must be answered before any meaningful improvement effort can take hold: “What is sales enablement?”

In the end, isn’t sales enablement all about equipping sales forces to make more sales? Is it really as simple and basic as that?

We think it is. Here’s our definition to help sharply focus our discussion on sales enablement.

Sales Enablement: getting the right sellers to sell the right solutions to the right customers using the right sales strategy, the right sales message, and the right tools based on the buyer situations they face.

This may seem basic, but – as any sales enablement professional will attest – it’s hard to accomplish. All elements must be aligned to get the best performance and the biggest gains. Get one wrong and the entire effort is hobbled. Let’s unpack the biggest barriers that keep your sales enablement efforts from hitting pay dirt.

Barrier #1: Wrong Sales Fit

A sales force is made up of individual salespeople with varying attributes and experiences. A manager not only has to hire the right people for the job; she also has to make sure the people already on the job are the right fit for the company and sales role. If data is not used to determine the variety of selling situations salespeople face and the sales approach that works in each situation, it is virtually impossible to assess salespeople accurately. This is true for new hires as well as seasoned sellers. To determine fit, salespeople should be assessed against their natural aptitude using different sales approaches as well as their knowledge of the tactics necessary to win in different buying situations. There is no one-size-fits-all, perfect seller.

Barrier #2: Wrong Sales Support

Companies have a plethora of sales tools. The tech stack is 10 deep. Organizations spend millions of dollars building marketing messages, buying a CRM system, and building fancy dashboards to keep everyone informed – yet salespeople are not selling the right solution, to the right customer, at the right time, using the right message. Sales managers and sales leaders regularly overengineer the “sales recipe.”

Again, the answer lies in understanding the variety of buying situations sellers face and then using data to determine which sales approaches work best in those situations. The sales enablement tools should directly link to the buying situations and the sales approach used in those situations. When this approach is taken, the tech stack becomes smaller, tighter, and a lot more useful.

Barrier #3: Wrong Sales Coaching

Sales managers wield the biggest influence over the behavior and performance of their salespeople, yet few companies have dedicated sales manager training. Sales managers are equipped in much the same way as salespeople: They are taught how to sell and how to use sales tools. Then they receive general leadership training on how to coach and are expected to figure out the rest. But they don’t. In our most recent study of sales management coaching practices, 75 percent of the sales managers had less than 49 percent of their salespeople at quota. That’s a sales enablement fail.

What managers need is a way to sort through the noise, focus their salespeople’s effort, focus their coaching effort to those activities most closely related to quota, and establish consistent coaching practices. Doing this is not rocket science, but it is science – and there are identifiable, effective sales coaching practices that accomplish this.

Barrier #4: Wrong Sales Rep Training

Of all the sales enablement efforts that could (and do) go wrong, this is the perennial miss. Organizations long for consistency in the sales force and go to great lengths to accomplish it through training on single sales methodologies. This is doomed to fail, because there is no one sales approach that works in every buying situation. In fact, studies completed by Dr. Leff Bonny of the Florida State University Sales Institute found there are roughly four sales approaches that reoccur time and time again – not one. And each works only if used in the right buying situation.

Any given sales methodology – whether consultative selling (like SPIN® or Solution Selling®) or a disruptive approach like the Challenger Sale® – works in only about 25 percent of buying situations.

When Dr. Bonny studied the behavior of low, average, and high-performing sellers, some interesting findings emerged. The lowest performers did not have a consistent approach and were random in their approach to different buying situations. Average performers were much more likely to adopt a single sales approach (the one they had been trained on) to every buying situation, and they did not vary their approach. High-performing sellers adapted their approach to the different buying situations. The one-size-fits-all sales training approach equips salespeople to be merely average.

The biggest sales enablement barrier of all is not knowing which of these problems your company has. If sales enablement professionals are honest, they often don’t know. Sales enablement leaders must use data, not educated guesses, to equip their salespeople to sell the right solutions, to the right customers, and using the right sales approach, tools, and message based on the buying situations they face. Period. Do that and you will get far more of your salespeople to quota.

Stop Wasting Your Time on Bad Sales Enablement Content

Today’s post is by Juliana Stancampiano, a business leader and strategist focused on helping business leaders and their teams adapt, grow, and excel in support of their CEOs’ growth agendas. She has over 15 years of experience in creating valuable and memorable learning experiences that translate the sales and business strategy into measurable results achieved by people.

 

Through many conversations and client engagements – and being a salesperson myself – I often wondered what people were thinking when they were creating sales enablement “stuff” for salespeople. Not only was it long-winded and hard to find, but it also wasn’t relevant, strategic, concise, or compelling.

I stumbled around for a few years asking questions, being curious, and wanting to understand why this was the case – and who the stuff was supposed to be helping.

It turns out most traditional sales training and enablement content wasn’t helping drive more sales or engage with new or potential clients. It wasn’t clear why it was being created, but it seemed to be driven by quarterly spend and arbitrary internal deadlines.

So why would an executive approve such content? I deduced there were few alternatives with little understanding of training modalities and benefits.  

Instead of creating “stuff” no salesperson can find – or that adds no value or is just plain boring – here are some questions to ask yourself about your sales enablement content:

• Do I know my audience? Will they watch a 45-minute product overview? And, if they do, what are they supposed to do with it?
• Have I looked at the company’s targeted business outcomes? Can I synthesize those outcomes to a critical few and focus on helping make that happen?
• Am I thinking through the business ask and not assuming it’s a “salesperson problem”? Thinking critically about the company’s challenges or possibilities helps define needed actions.
• Am I making this easy for my audience? Am I introducing a new tool that’s just “another tool”? Or is there a good business reason behind it? Do we already have something we can leverage?

Some of this may sound simple, but we have learned that, in complex companies, nothing is really “simple” – especially when you are selling a new idea for which few metrics are available. We have been lucky to work with leaders who believe their organizations can excel, and they have the courage – courage to do or say what others haven’t wanted to admit before them – to tackle this endeavor, implement change, and prove their success with data and experience.

How to Drive Success During Your First 90 Days as a Sales Enablement Leader

Today’s post is by Roderick Jefferson, CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates, LLC.

 

 

You’ve been hired as (or promoted to be) a sales enablement leader. Now what do you do? Where do you focus? How do you evaluate your team – or build a new one? Every company wants a world-class program, but what does world-class sales enablement look like?  

How many times have you been asked this question? My best advice is to let your customers (sales leadership) answer it for you. This will give you an opportunity to build a group of champions on your behalf while showing them that your organization would never build what you “think the sales organization needs,” – instead, building a long-standing, mutually equitable relationship that impacts the maturation, growth, and success of the company!

As you move into this role, you must adopt a well-structured approach to gathering and analyzing information about the function’s responsibilities and priorities. First, you need to evaluate your current environment.

As a new sales enablement leader, you’ll need to quickly develop an understanding of the organization’s current enablement resources, processes, tools, and priorities. Meet with as many of your internal customers (sales, marketing, sales ops, product marketing, competitive, HR, etc.) as possible to help you form a well-rounded opinion about the maturity and value of your current organization. They will also help you focus on their priorities and needs. Because enablement is an evolving function, do not make any changes within your first 60 days!

Listen, Learn, Lead

As you meet with your senior sales leaders, ask them the following ten questions:

1. What is your definition of sales enablement?
   
   
2. If you had a blank canvas, what would you see as your team’s top three to five priorities for this quarter and fiscal year?
   
   
3. What is your definition of success – beyond just “hitting the number”?
   
   
4. How long is it currently taking to successfully onboard a new sales professional?
   
   
5. How are you currently tracking and reporting on the components of their   onboarding experience?
   
   
6. What type of feedback are you receiving about their onboarding experience?
   
   
7. Who are your most successful frontline managers and sales professionals, so I can get their input and feedback?
   
   
8. What if I could create a way to scale your top performers and drive more incremental revenue at a faster rate?
   
   
9. What are you willing to commit to in order to ensure the success of your frontline managers and their direct reports?
   
   
10. How soon can we meet again so I can share the results with you?

It’s critical that you get a deep understanding of the nuances of their business, leaders, and teams, as well as position yourself as a valued partner.

Next, you need to develop a strategy. As a new sales enablement leader, you’ll want to develop an in-depth evaluation of assets that will be used to determine which will require further optimization.

This evaluation should drive the creation and communication of your 100-day SWOT analysis. While continuing to deliver existing enablement programs, you must select new strategic initiatives that can improve the effectiveness of sales in the near term. Based on the list of potential new activities, process changes, and technology improvements identified in the previous steps, identify and build consensus around priorities – then begin implementing.

Remember, as a new leader you can do anything you want – you just can’t accomplish everything within the first 90 days. Especially if hope is your only strategy.

Learn more about how I can help you with sales enablement strategies by watching the video below.

How to Hire a Sales Proposal Writer to Win More Deals

Today’s post is by Jeff Weil, general manager of Upland Qvidian.

 

 

We just turned the corner on graduation season, and hiring managers are hard at work trying to draw the newest crop of talent to their organizations. While companies are trying to fill plenty of entry-level sales and marketing roles, there is one underrated job they should emphasize: the sales proposal writer.

Any business with a sales or marketing team should hire a dedicated sales proposal writer to help assist with the proposal process and enable the team to win more deals. However, some companies choose not to hire a dedicated resource – preferring to delegate the work of proposal writing to various subject matter experts within their organizations, who frankly often don’t have the time to develop the content needed for a compelling request for proposal (RFP) response.

A sales proposal writer will help manage content creation and ensure the company’s brand is consistent throughout every submitted proposal – a key detail that can often be overlooked when sourcing input from a variety of internal experts.

For companies that don’t have a sales proposal writer, fear not: The talent pool is vast – especially now that school is officially out. But, with so many candidates to choose from, how can companies narrow down their selection to find the ideal prospect?

The Traits of the Best Sales Proposal Writers

While the exact role of the sales proposal writer will vary depending on the industry in which they operate, how their sales team is structured, etc., there are certain traits every business can look out for when hiring for the role.

Aside from the obvious ones of being a skilled writer and exceptional communicator, the best proposal writers are also:

• Self-starters – Finding a candidate who has an entrepreneurial spirit is key, as proposal writers often must teach themselves new topics, operate independently, and manage time efficiently. While they’ll be core members of the larger sales team, proposal writers will spend much of their time on their own – creating or editing content for very specific topics. The ability to master those topics without leaning on anyone else is a huge asset, and one that hiring managers should be on the lookout for.
  
  
• Creative – While they may not be crafting fictional stories, proposal writers still need to figure out a way to add spark to each proposal a company develops. Businesses should look for individuals with a strong sense of creativity who can think outside the box to make each content asset unique – helping the proposal stand out amongst competitors.
  
  
• Detail-oriented – This is a particularly crucial trait for businesses operating in highly regulated industries and handling mission-critical data that may be leveraged in the sales process. Even with a software tool that can assist with content governance, audit trails, and compliance, businesses need an internal resource with a detail-oriented eye to ensure that both the best and most accurate content is being used.

Marketing the Sales Proposal Writer Role

Plenty of new graduates are seeking proposal writing as their entry-level gig, but there are also those who – despite having the ideal traits – may not be considering proposal writing as their career starter. If a company runs into the issue of finding their perfect candidate who has never heard of proposal writing before, here’s how they can position it as a “dream job”:

• Proposal writers quickly become company and industry experts – a trait that can translate to success throughout their careers
  
  
• Proposal writers’ work has a significant and measurable impact on a company’s bottom line (something not many entry-level roles can claim)
  
  
• Proposal writers have access to senior management and internal experts – offering an extensive resource pool of expertise

There is monumental value in having a sales proposal writer on the team – particularly in ensuring more business wins. Companies that aren’t hiring one (or aren’t having luck doing so) need to apply these lessons to rethink their strategies before the best candidates are gone.

The One and Only Reason Your CRM Adoption Stinks

Today’s post is by Jason Jordan, a founding partner of Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm focused on sales managers. Jason is a recognized thought leader in the domain of B2B sales and co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code.

 

I’m Admittedly Numb

I’ve been around sales forces my entire career, and I must shamefully admit that certain complaints are so common they fail to concern me any longer. It’s not that the issues aren’t real, nor are they trivial – I’ve just become numb to them. It’s like the check engine light on the dashboard of a classic car I own.  The orange warning light used to command a lot of anxious attention until I realized there’s nothing I can do to keep it from returning. It’s just part of owning an old car – something will always be broken, and the orange light will always reappear. However, the car just keeps on running – check engine light and all.

That’s also how I feel about CRM adoption.

The Reason Is So Obvious

There are very few sales leaders I’ve encountered who didn’t complain about low CRM adoption.  It’s the orange warning light on the sales dashboard that commands the anxious attention of sales leadership, sales operations, and sales consultants. It’s always on and it’s seemingly impossible to extinguish. However, sales forces just keep on running.

I think this particular issue has lost my interest because the answer is so obvious to me. It’s not that leadership chose the wrong CRM platform or that sales operations didn’t commit to driving adoption.  It’s not that the implementation consultants did a poor job or that the salespeople were resistant. Well, those all could be contributing factors, but they’re not the obvious reason your sellers ignore CRM.

Your salespeople ignore your CRM tool for only one reason…Because they can.

When you read that statement, you might interpret it to mean you’re not being aggressive enough in your enforcement of CRM usage – that you need to make your sellers use CRM. That’s not what I mean at all. Decades of experience has shown there’s neither a carrot nor a stick big enough to drive universal CRM adoption. You truly cannot motivate all your salespeople to use CRM.

What I mean by that statement is much more literal…Salespeople are able to do their jobs without using CRM. So, they do.  

I’d be willing to bet you don’t struggle with e-mail adoption in your sales force – every person uses it. I’d further wager that mobile phone adoption is 100 percent, without any carrot or stick being offered. In fact, if your company refused to pay for e-mail or mobile phones in your sales force, your salespeople would probably pay out of their own pockets to subscribe to those services, because they need e-mail and mobile phones to do their jobs. 100 percent utilization, 0 percent enforcement.

But what about CRM? How is it possible that your salespeople – perhaps even your best salespeople – can do their jobs without CRM? Why is it so easily avoidable?  

The History and Future of CRM

In the answers to those questions lie the reality of CRM. CRM has historically been deployed as a reporting tool for sales management. Management can’t to its job without the reports CRM generates, but salespeople can surely do theirs. A salesperson’s job is to identify an opportunity, pursue that opportunity, and win the deal. In most sales forces, a salesperson can do those tasks without inputting data to a CRM screen. So, they do. And this brings us to the only viable answer to this decades-old issue of low CRM adoption:

You must make CRM indispensable to your sellers.

CRM needs to become so inextricably intertwined with your team’s activities that salespeople cannot possibly do their jobs without it. It needs to become like e-mail and mobile phones – a tool that actively facilitates the core tasks of identifying, pursuing, and winning deals. Rather than CRM being the orange warning light that flashes while the car keeps running, it needs to be the engine of the sales force without which no road can be traveled.

But with this insight comes a great challenge for sales leadership, operations, and consultants. CRM has to be designed from the ground up, not the top down. The first goal of every CRM design team should be to understand the natural selling motions of their salespeople and build CRM around them. Then CRM will become, foremost, an enabler of those activities and necessarily unavoidable. Salespeople will use CRM because it’s just a part of what they do – like sending e-mails and dialing phone numbers.

The added benefit of such an approach is that management’s reports then become an artifact of CRM’s true purpose – to make the salespeople better at selling. And the reports become more meaningful, since the system will capture the value-added activities that determine success or failure in the field. Ironically, building CRM primarily for the sellers will make it more powerful for sales management.

So, if I meet you at a conference, feel free to complain to me about your sales force’s woeful CRM adoption. Just be aware that my attention might be elsewhere…Like trying to decide where I’ll be driving my classic car the following weekend. Check engine light and all.

Will GDPR Impact How You Interact with Prospects and Customers?

Today’s guest post is an interview with Selling Power editors and Patrick Welch, president of sales enablement company Bigtincan.

 

 

Salespeople routinely jot down critical notes during meetings with prospects. This just makes sense: Details about a prospect’s demeanor or her sentiments about her boss can be invaluable for moving the sale forward.

With that in mind, how will the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rulings affect how salespeople are allowed to use such critical data? Do such notes have to be destroyed? Do they have to be logged somewhere online? Should salespeople get filing cabinets and fill them with ripped-out notebook pages saying, “Send Lisa the Greenfield case study, cc Bill”?

Ahead of GDPR (which went into effect on May 25) Selling Power editors sat down with Patrick Welch, president of sales enablement company Bigtincan, to break down how B2B sales professionals can manage their data about prospects and customers without a GDPR misstep.

Selling Power (SP): How will sales folks have to change the way they store the notes they take during sales calls and meetings with prospects and customers?

Patrick Welch (PW): Sales folks can still keep a record of information like this as long as it’s not personally identifiable information (in GDPR parlance). But it’s a good practice to get consent by asking your prospect or customer, “Is it OK if I have your contact information and store it?” Sales reps will be in compliance if they gather implicit consent, which is as simple as asking the prospect directly, “Can I follow up with you by emailing or calling you using the contact information you’ve provided to me?”

SP: Do you get the sense that the sales profession is prepared for GDPR? How so/not?

PW: At the data collection level, the answer is yes. However, there still is not a full awareness about the data and different types of data subject to GDPR, and a lack of awareness of the consequences at this point. We don’t know exactly how the regulations will actually convert to business functions, as the GDPR has not yet been tested in court. What we do have are best practices from other regulatory measures and recitals that were written from the authors of the GDPR, which will hopefully be followed by judges.

SP: How can third-party software solutions (data importers, under GDPR) help software exporters prepare?

PW: Speaking from the experience of being an importer (by GDPR’s definition), the importer can best support exporters by providing full insight and transparency to that exporter so they can be aware of where their data and consumers’ data is processed and how it is treated in transit and at rest. 

SP: How much can exporters lean on the promises and services of importers to ensure compliance?

PW: This is critical to complying with the regulation, as much as any other mission-critical system that any exporter customer would rely on. These entities need to ensure their vendors are in compliance when using those systems, and the vendors also have a responsibility to properly handle data and support the regulations. 

SP: What are the main concerns of data exporters? What are you hearing in the industry?

PW: We’ve heard few concerns in the sense of worry; rather, many clients are working to ensure that importers are in compliance with the regulatory guidelines and that their partners/vendors have proper procedures and processes to protect consumer data. This is a little different from the past, because the individual has recourse – unlike with other directives or guidelines.

SP: How are different industries affected by this? For example, do you see a difference between heavily regulated industries (such as healthcare or finance) experiencing GDPR prep differently from, say, retail?

PW: The regulated industries are already accustomed to being prepared for in-depth audit and data trails. The timing of the GDPR comes with a heightened awareness of the social media data processes and really making retail and other consumer-facing industries take a hard look at their own practices – not only to comply but ensure consumer confidence in their brand as well their consumer engagement. 

SP: Anything else you would like to add about data management for sales folks as GDPR approaches?

PW: GDPR shouldn’t really change the day-to-day process of a good salesperson. However, it’s something to be aware of and should have more of dramatic effect with marketers who will need to establish trust in the chain custody of their consumers’ data. Outbound marketing – especially when marketing to European audiences – will be much more difficult as awareness of GDPR grows; but, if marketers are more diligent, their marketing programs should be more effective as they will, by nature, target folks that have already consented to proper engagement. 

For more information about GDPR compliance for sales and marketing, contact Patrick Welch at  [email protected].