Author: Jay Mitchell

Sellers, Expect to Earn Equal Value to What You Serve Buyers

February 11, 2021

Jay Mitchell

A sellers purpose is to serve buyers with a solution. Yet buyers and sellers struggle to remain in harmony — and naturally so:

Buyer pains are often not recognized or are simply ignored, so “status quo” wins as buyers do not feel the urge nor can justify investing in a solution.
Sellers have solutions to buyer pains but are often too pressured to “hit their quota” to take the time to help the buyer understand and embrace their pains.

I have already touched on the importance of sellers’ expertise on their buyers and their patience and empathy on the buyer’s journey to bring buyer and seller interactions into harmony.

But another disharmonious reality has yet to be addressed: When salespeople receive disproportionate compensation in comparison to the value they deliver to buyers. In some scenarios this could mean salespeople and others involved in the selling organization are receiving more than they deliver. It can also mean they are receiving less.

To encourage buyer/seller harmony, sellers must be compensated fairly based on the value they create for and deliver to buyers. How does this break down for organizational decisions and actions?

Sellers Must Strive to Create More Value — and Then More Beyond That

Sellers must focus on being givers (and not takers) first and foremost. Sellers should serve their buyers. How can your buying organization deliver not just one-time value but rather sustainable value? If your product teams can answer that question it will provide a path to sustainable revenue performance.

Can Sellers Be Too Customer-Focused? Yes—and It Is Threatening Your Long-Term Buyer/Seller Harmony.

Sellers Must Compensate Their Salespeople Fairly

Incentives and bonuses offer great motivation to sales professionals. However, when salespeople are not being fairly compensated for the value they offer buyers — and thus bring back to their organization — their performance will likely start to falter, and so will your revenue performance over time. Develop a system that works for your organization and that is fluid and dynamic enough to recognize and reward salespeople who are acting as trusted advisors.

Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™

To learn more about overcoming common selling status quos for the pinnacle of buyer/seller harmony, read my latest piece in Top Sales Magazine. And for help with building a powerful and servant-minded sales engine that supports sustainable revenue performance while winning an unfair share™ of the market, reach out to our team of experts.

Achieve Buyer Harmony

Deliver RICH Virtual Content: Part III — Does your content address complexities unique to your audience?

February 4, 2021

Jay Mitchell

No one predicted the sales environment that exists today. Likewise, no one can confidently predict the road ahead. Virtual selling presents a cost-effective solution to current selling challenges — and likely will continue to be an integral part of any future mix of sales conversations.

The foundations of value-oriented selling do not change in a virtual environment — they actually become even more important. In a “Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™” fashion, sellers must put their prospect at the center of a sales conversation rather than pitching a product. This fosters value-based partnerships that extend benefits in both directions for years — something that has been true and will continue to be true.

Take a moment and assess your marketing and sales teams’ abilities to interact effectively and valuably in a virtual environment.

Are they pushing products? Or are they utilizing a “Seek to Serve” selling strategy through this new channel of communication? Although the future is unknown, your selling does not have to be.

In a virtual environment, sellers must work even harder now to capture a prospect’s attention and hold it by sharing content that is RICH™. In this four-part series, Mereo experts will dissect each of the four aspects of RICH virtual content — and how you can win an unfair share™ and continue down the path toward sustainable revenue performance by practicing it.

The Failure of the ‘Yes-Man.’

Saying “yes” to your buyers and clients can seem appealing. Is this what you want to hear? We will not bring up the things you do not want to hear. We will agree with what you think and with what you want to do, even if it is not the right solution for you.

Yet, according to a recent study conducted by Aberdeen Group, B2B buyers gravitate toward sellers who can sharpen the buyer’s competitive advantage and provide an appealing long-term solution vision, among many other things. Likewise, 65% of buyers still see value in discussing their situations with salespeople, according to a recent CSO Insights study.

Yet, 30% of the time buyers are not engaging sellers until after they have identified and clarified their needs — and another 26% are not engaging with sellers until after they have identified a solution (CSO Insights).

Uncovered in this same CSO Insights study, though, was a massive number of buyers — 90% — who noted they are willing – and even welcome – to engage salespeople earlier in their buying process, that is if the salesperson could provide specific value. This does not translate to agreeable sellers but rather highly informed, strategic and supporting sellers.

The gap between buyers and sellers remains in large part because of this reality: B2B sellers are not offering what their target B2B buyer finds as valuable. They fear bringing up the elephant in the room: the pain.

Make Room For Complex Realities Unique to Your Audience. Boldly Lead With the Complicated.

A seller who “Seeks to Serve, Not to Sell™” begins first by understanding how to deliver relevant value to their target buyer, long before there are dollar signs associated with the relationship.

This translates to a buyer’s pain: What business problems are keeping them and their organization from reaching their goals? What regulations does this target buyer have to navigate through that are hindering their business? What market conditions are they facing?

Issues for a business often appear and persist because they are complex and therefore are inherently risky for the business and the buyer to address. Risk creates a higher threshold for action — it requires more value to move from status quo. Risk also creates interest and urgency — in talking, in understanding current trends, in relating to what others are doing and in removing the risk if the buyer believes your sellers to be credible and your solution to be relevantly valuable. For another take, look to our friends at Eyeful Presentations who share a great guide to remote presentations.

RICH IDEAS IN PRACTICE

What similar client use cases are relevant to this buyer’s pain?
How can you provide a novel solution to an age-old problem?
What pains are harming your buyer that they are ignoring?
If your buyer ignores the problem, what impact does that have?

Seek to Serve™ Virtually Everywhere

Prepare your teams now to engage with relevance, innovation, complexities and hard proof in a virtual content setting — and reap the benefits a mutually beneficial relationship built on trust and value.

Explore More Solution Marketing Growth Solutions

Sellers, Be the Patient and Empathetic Guide to Your Buyer’s Journey

January 21, 2021

Jay Mitchell

Previously in our buyer/seller harmony series, we looked at salespeople in the role of the hero. And truly, salespeople and selling organizations do provide heroic solutions to buyer distress.

Yet, when it comes down to it, everyone is the hero of their own story — and the same is true for your buyers. Imagine what makes a true hero: There is a person with a mission (an organization, you could say), who has goals but faces a number of obstacles. To overcome these mountain passes and dragons, this person needs a trusted and credible guide to lead the hero to his or her success. This hero, my seller, is your buyer.

But in which role does that leave your selling organization?

In one of the most vital roles to their plights, in fact: You are your buyers’ trusted and credible buyer journey guide. You have the power to help your buyers reach their greatest successes. And in doing so, you may just find that you are meeting your own as well.

Read on to learn how to master this balance of buyer/seller harmony.

Buyers Need Your Guidance Through Their Journey

A buyer does not one day sit down at his or her desk and spontaneously realize their company needs your solution. Many times they do not even see the true challenges lurking across their company and in the surrounding landscape.

Buyers must go on a journey to find the solution to their challenges. And with a trusted advisor to guide them, they have a better chance of finding the solution that will help them achieve, and even exceed, their goals. Are you ready to be that guide?

Slow down for a moment and consider this: A buyer’s lengthy and arduous journey often does not fit into the timeline of sellers. Sellers work within the realm of urgency. They have quotas to meet, and CSO and CEO pressures to answer. But a seller who leans into their own pressures and foregoes supporting a buyer on their important journey will come off as pushy — and will ultimately be pushed aside themselves for an alternative solution, or none whatsoever.

In a selling climate where the buyer is in more control than ever before — with more tools for navigating the journey than in the past — how can a seller achieve harmony with the buyer journey and be an essential guide?

Meet Your Buyer on Their Path

Most buyers today do not engage salespeople until long after they have identified their challenges and a number of possible solutions. While this may put salespeople in a difficult spot in their guiding efforts — there are means of serving buyers with the right value messaging before even making real contact.

As an expert on your buyer, you can hit the right points across channels where your buyers will be searching. Think your website, think your virtual content, think your social selling strategies. Are these the bread and butter of sales conversations? Not quite. But they can and should have consistent messaging that will prime and guide your buyers directly to your buyer hero guides.

Guide, Do Not Pull, Your Buyer in Their Journey

Once salespeople are in contact with buyers, they must resist the urge to yank along the buyer to the solution. Even if it seems an obvious path, buying psychology demands a steady, cautious process that goes from one stage to the next. Would Yoda have rushed Luke Skywalker’s use of the force? There certainly was an urgency, however, Skywalker would not have been ready to face his ultimate challenges if he had not gone on his journey to uncover his strength and to see all the solutions available to him against the Dark Side.

Are Your Sellers Enabled With Tools for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey? Prepare to Be the Ultimate Guide Now.

Your buyer may need to be encouraged and educated along the way, however, any urgency you provide your buyer must come from their perspective, to benefit their behalf and to be of the utmost thoughtfulness of their needs.

Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™

Achieve Buyer Harmony

Sellers, Be the Heroic Expert — For Your Buyer

January 14, 2021

Jay Mitchell

When buyer/seller harmony is achieved, more than a sale is made. Value is exchanged. Yet, for a number of reasons, sellers are about as in harmony with their buyers as I am in singing along with the radio. They need some help.

Numerous barriers threaten buyer/seller harmony across all industries. Specifically in our B2B selling world, salespeople face high quota pressures, misalignment between product and marketing and sales teams, and a lack of the right value proposition and messaging to engage buyers.

But with the right skills, effort and mindset sellers cannot just overcome these barriers but attain a place of understanding and value exchange with their buyers. Read on for one of the top strategies for reaching this harmony.

Buyers Need to Be Seen

Sellers come off as pushy or one-sided to many buyers for the sole fact that buyers do not feel understood: Do you really know what I am up against? What can you say about my industry or customers that I am not aware of myself? Why would this be my best solution? What do you know? You surely do not get my situation.

But often, buyers are too deep within their role, organization, industry and situation to see the light of a solution on the other side — or even the initial challenge keeping them from achieving bigger and better themselves. They get stuck in the status quo. And they need a hero to see the true villain and rescue them.

Are You a Salesperson—or a Trusted Advisor? Find Out Here.

Your salespeople can and should take on the role of hero to your buyers. Yet, they need to know what they are up against to best be prepared and succeed. After all, Batman would not know what tools to equip his belt with if he did not understand the villains he was up against, as well as the people he was saving. A seller who aims to be a hero should not only know about their buyers — they should know more about their buyers than the buyers know about themselves.

This means sellers must unearth, dig deep into and embrace:

Buyer Pains and Challenges
Buyer Motivations and Goals
Relevant Use Cases

CSO Insights found that an overwhelming 90% of buyers would be open to engaging salespeople earlier in the buying process if sellers led with (1) something new for the buyer, (2) something risky for the organization or (3) the buyer themselves, and/or (4) something complex. In doing so, sellers are establishing real value exchange from the get-go.

When a seller truly understands the buyer’s needs, the solution and value messaging becomes clear and resonant with the right audiences. The buyer is better served. And the seller ends up saving the day in the end.

Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™

Achieve Buyer Harmony

RICH Virtual Content: Part II — Is your virtual content full of innovative ideas and insights?

December 17, 2020

Jay Mitchell

Take a moment and assess your marketing and sales teams’ abilities to interact effectively and valuably in a virtual environment.

Are they pushing products? Or are they utilizing a “Seek to Serve” selling strategy through this new channel of communication? Although the future is unknown, your selling does not have to be.

Avoid Becoming an Information Parrot.

If the insight can be found on your corporate website, there is little value you hold as a salesperson or a company leader. This all comes down to differentiation. If your competition is saying, if the industry has been saying — and if then you are parroting it, without any unique spin or additional insight to share — why should your audience turn to you for solutions? Why should they listen when they have heard the same story again and again, in media formats that do not take up 30 to 60 minutes of their time?

Make the Content Innovative. Dare to Share New Ideas and Insights.

There is a performance trick that is tried and true: the art of the reveal.

Imagine the magician on stage. Beside him stands a stool. Draped over the stool is a cloth. Beneath the cloth you can just barely make out a shape. He swiftly removes the veil and you see a familiar object: a top hat. You have seen this trick before. There will be a white rabbit or some other form of rodent he will “magically” yank out. You almost start spacing out, thinking about your buzzing phone in your pocket and the emails you need to answer when this performance is over. But then, the magician takes the hat and tosses it out into the audience, where it disperses into dozens of smaller top hats for everyone to snag. You reach inside the hat and find a slip of paper that reveals the magician’s secret. And an old trick turns into an innovative engagement.

What new information are you bringing to bear over and above any insights that are easily researchable? How can you peel back the veils from industry buzz to a new insight to an innovative take unique to your audience? According to a McKinsley Global Innovation Survey, 84% of executives agree that innovation is important to growth strategy.

Capitalize on the virtual selling dynamic to introduce subject matter experts from your organization — interactions that previously may have been more difficult to facilitate in a travel-intensive, in-person format. For another take, look to our friends at Eyeful Presentations who share a great guide to remote presentations.

VIRTUAL CONTENT RICH IDEAS IN PRACTICE

What new perspectives can be brought to your prospect’s situation? Even if these demand difficult topics for your audiences, you serving your clients by battling status quo.
What are others in similar situations doing that they may not be aware of? Your audiences’ use cases should be a go-to resource when you are developing content.
What insights can be shared that are specific to their issues? Go back to Part I of the series. What innovative ideas and insights are unique to the audience?
What familiar information can you leverage to turn on its head for some new insight? Familiarity is not a bad thing. Repeating messages in fact can lead to action. But there needs to be value. And there needs to be something new in there to continue to captivate.

Seek to Serve™ Virtually Everywhere

Prepare your teams now to engage with relevance, innovation, complexities and hard proof in a virtual setting — and reap the benefits a mutually beneficial relationship built on trust and value.

Explore More Solution Marketing Growth Solutions

Infuse the Right Energy into Your 2021 Virtual Sales Kickoff

December 3, 2020

Jay Mitchell

Leaders in the B2B business world have turned a corner in recent weeks to see a clear reality before them: a virtual sales kickoff for 2021.

The technology aspect of pulling off a large event from team members’ respective homes may be intimidating at first, but many are already finding solutions that actually come in under budget of what the travel and event spend of previous years surpass. The real challenges your leadership team faces are much loftier than which technology platform is best.

As we already reflected in late July, a virtual sales kickoff will lack the face-to-face engagement and energy an event demands to empower and inspire your teams toward a great year of winning. And beyond that, a virtual sales kickoff must contribute to building realistic momentum after a year of disruption and struggles.

Both of these elements — energy and momentum — are vital to fulfilling the purpose of the event and will take more creativity and strategy this year than ever before. At Mereo, we have the honor to work with some of the top B2B organizations and leaders to see firsthand solutions being built around these challenges. We want to share them with you here.

Although 2020 has been marred by the pandemic, 2021 is your organization’s opportunity to turn things around and ramp up for sustainable revenue success. Make the most of it. Read on for creative strategies to infuse your virtual sales kickoff with the energy that will drive your teams’ 2021 activities and efforts!

Infuse Your SKO With Energy

Send your teams physical pre-event swag.
Plan for a “wow” factor entrance.
Spend more time celebrating 2020’s small wins.
Rollout a compelling strategy for 2021.

What Does Energy Have to Do With a Sales Kickoff Anyway?

One of the first sales kickoff events I attended was led by a fellow who enjoyed basking in the limelight. Was he mostly ego? Sure. But did he know how to deliver the right high-level energy to the event from the get-go? One hundred percent.

That first year of mine, our teams settled into the event room of the hotel and chatted while we waited for things to kick-off. I expected impassioned speeches and some fist pumps — but I was not ready for what came bursting through the airwall partition of the event room.

“Did you hear that?” we all started to ask, turning heads, as the low growl of engine shook the floor.

Moments later, we saw our event leader burst through the airwall and skid onto the stage. Our sales kickoff energy erupted as we watched in awe and then cheered at the incredulity and awesomeness of his daring stunt. And that energy remained a steady roar throughout the next two days.

Why does this matter? A key part of a successful sales kickoff is the energy of the event itself. But the virtual setting puts a screen barrier to the energy groups can generate.

How is your leadership team working to overcome these struggles? How will you invigorate your teams to hit 2021 hard with vigor and drive? What can you do to fire up your troops with inspiration and entertainment?

At Mereo, we have some strategies for your leadership to explore.

Virtual Sales Kickoffs Are Not Complete Without Some Physical Swag.

How can you break through the screen for tangible connection? Why not send your teams something meaningful and culture-building? Not only do people love receiving boxes in the mail, their brains actually react with a higher level of engagement of dopamine when opening surprises.

Swag sent a few days before an event can set the tone of the theme, can empower members with vital tools for joining in or interacting during the event, and can induce excitement for your people — who will otherwise be facing the same-old environment of their home office. Transport them with what you send in the mail. Help prepare them to transcend the screen and join you for the event with their full attention and energy committed.

Make an Entrance They Cannot Look Away From.

What entrance can build the energy your teams need — especially after 2020? With virtual presentations, your leadership is up against household and otherwise distractions you have little control over. Bursting through a screen on a motorcycle is unlikely, but from pre-recorded capabilities to engaging multimodal presentations to even technologic enhancements there are a number of ways you can get creative.

Beyond making a powerful entrance that amps up energy, think of ways you can maintain that energy throughout the event. Maybe you shorten session times to avoid zone outs. Maybe you engage more winning individuals within your organization outside of the core SKO leadership team to provide ideas and engage. But try not to put your audience in the spotlight during the event without providing advanced briefing. Symmetrics Group has found that there are a subsect of people in every organization who are not comfortable with, or appreciate of, virtual tools and settings.

Take More Time to Reflect on and Celebrate 2020’s Small Wins.

In a typical three-day sales kickoff setting, reflecting on the previous year usually accounts for less than 10% of the focus. You wrap up last year’s successes quickly and move on to focus on the here and now — and into the future.

Yet, because 2020 was such a challenge and something you and your teams overcame together, this becomes an engaging hero story that your teams can rally around with pride and, what this article is intended to help you build, energy. The wins might look differently than years’ prior. But celebrate what you can and lift up your teams and your people and the pillars of your organization you all stood on to make it through to today. Then use that buildup to propel into 2021.

Rollout a Compelling 2021 Sales Kickoff Strategy.

For many organizations, revenues suffered a downward trend in 2020 — and actually have been showing such a trend for a couple years now. Unless you manufacture and sell toilet paper, your organization likely suffered similar 2020 woes. Energy-building gimmicks aside, your people are going to be wondering: How are we going to rise up out of this? How are we going to revenue rebound? What is the strategy here?

Symmetrics Group found that when their sessions introduced new and more complex information, sellers needed more time to digest and think deeply about it, which required fewer virtual engagement tricks. This means that you do not have to pull out any fancy virtual presentation stops. Deep-dive into a solid strategy, and you will have their attention to build up their energy of determination and unified commitment to lead 2021 sustainable revenue performance.

Does your organization need help planning for a 2021 virtual sales kickoff? Contact our team of experts.

If your plans are well underway, we want to know: What efforts are you making to build realistic momentum in 2021? Share your expertise on LinkedIn or by taking the two-minute survey.

Deliver RICH Virtual Content: Part I — Is your virtual content relevant to your audience?

November 19, 2020

Jay Mitchell

The foundations of value-oriented selling do not change in a virtual environment — they actually become even more important. In a “Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™” fashion, sellers must put their prospect at the center of a sales conversation rather than pitching a product. This fosters value-based partnerships that extend benefits in both directions for years — something that has been true and will continue to be true.

Take a moment and assess your marketing and sales teams’ abilities to interact effectively and valuably in a virtual environment.

Are they pushing products? Or are they utilizing a “Seek to Serve” selling strategy through this new channel of communication? Although the future is unknown, your selling does not have to be.

Avoid the Virtual Content Trap.

Relevant content seems like common sense. Of course you created the content for the audience receiving it. And now, in a virtual environment, much focus goes on the mode and channel of delivery. Professionals are fretting over presentation design programs. Sellers spend hours researching virtual meeting options. And then when it comes to the content itself? Well, that will not take too much work, sellers say. What is all that different now, anyway?

Almost everything. Virtual interactions remove the in-person urgency and direct nonverbal feedback cues. It hampers true connectivity and engagement.

Too often presentations and pitches lean heavily on promoting a selling organization’s agenda and solutions. The very things that sellers know how to talk about best — but also lacking in relevancy to an audience who is focused on their own problems, their own needs.

The truth is, not only are sellers going to start burning out from the virtual selling — falling back into bad status quos — buyers and clients will also soon, if not already, tune-out virtual interactions more often than they engage.

Give them a reason to engage.

Make the Content About Them. Make the Content Relevant.

Have your presentations, pitches, and past buyer/client and internal communications fallen into the above content trap in the past? Or have you struggled in the last year to keep your audiences, internal and external, engaged? Have you failed to re-work your content strategy while you have been revamping every other part of your business to accommodate a virtual model?

The good news: There is time to turn your strategy on its side — and to use it to leapfrog above and beyond other organizations struggling with virtual content.

Our RICH™ content best practice: Every conversation must be centered around:

Your prospect’s role
Their team’s issues and challenges
Their industry’s particular dynamics and needs
Their business strategy and environment

Every interaction needs to ferret out the audiences’ specific pains while helping them (not just you) better understand the impacts of those pains to them and their team. Clarity of the situation and related impacts are golden for your audience and empowers your sellers to tailor every solution to address those pains and deliver relevant value. For another take, look to our friends at Eyeful Presentations who share a great guide to remote presentations.

RICH IDEAS IN PRACTICE

Have you put in the prep work and uncovered your audiences’ needs, pains, goals, etc.?
Are there opportunities to open the dialogue to your audience in the presentation to increase relevancy tenfold? Duarte has found that 64% of people say a presentation with two-way interaction is more engaging than a linear presentation.
What about market or industry conditions makes this a relevant and urgent topic? Have a thoroughly thought through answer to this!
Are you engaging your audiences around one of the four key topics they find most relevant and valuable? CSO Insights found that an overwhelming 90% of buyers would be open to engaging salespeople earlier in the buying process if the content proved relevant as (1) something new for the buyer, as (2) something risky for the organization or (3) the buyer themselves, and/or as (4) something complex.

Seek to Serve™ Virtually Everywhere

Prepare your teams now to engage with relevance, innovation, complexities and hard proof in a virtual setting — and reap the benefits a mutually beneficial relationship built on trust and value.

Explore More Solution Marketing Growth Solutions

Mereo President Discusses 2021 Sales Enablement Predictions in Top Sales Futurists Roundtable

November 12, 2020

Jay Mitchell

AUSTIN, TX (NOV 2020) — In November 2020, Mereo founder and president, Jay Mitchell, was invited to join the Top Sales Futurist Roundtable panel, to make sales enablement predictions, tackling the question, “What is sales enablement going to look like in 2021?”

Mitchell was joined by three other sales enablement thought leaders — Tamara Schenk, author and strategic advisor of Showpad; David Mattson, CEO and president of Sandler Training; and Britta Lorenz, PDAgroup partner, sales department manager and WiSE DACH chapter lead — in this discussion led by Top Sales World founder Jonathan Farrington.

The Roundtable touched on the history of sales enablement — to which Farrington paid homage to his inspiration from a recent Mereo LLC post “A History of Sales Enablement – and Predictions for Its Future” — its purpose and its slow start. The panelists further debated the current sales enablement environment and standing, and spent the majority of the discussion detailing where they see sales enablement headed in 2021 and beyond.

“At its core, sales enablement is still about how we empower our sales teams,” Mitchell quipped in the Roundtable. “How does marketing, how do operation teams, how does the organization as a whole equip sellers to go out and engage in effective conversations — because the sellers have the right tools, the right skills and the right content?”

While the overall trend of the discussion pointed out many shortcomings in organizations’ current sales enablement programs and its slow maturity as Mereo too has touched on in past articles, Mitchell holds an optimistic look on future progress. He sees sales enablement trends growing more holistic and well-rounded in recent years, rather than focusing on sales trainings alone.

Likewise, Mitchell and other panelists point to a trend in sales enablement focus on the entire buyer/seller journey for long-term support and service, as well as projected growth in sales enablement technology investments with some debate for the efficacy of such focus.

All in all, Mitchell wrapped up the discussion by focusing on the core of sales enablement goals. “It comes down to this: How do you serve the customer? What is the best thing you can do to add value to the customer?” If selling organizations focus on these questions, they will lead their sales enablement programs in the right direction.

Listen to the November 2020 Top Sales Futurist Roundtable for an in-depth look at the future of sales enablement from the industry’s leaders. Access the recording by signing up for free.

ABOUT MEREO

For companies seeking to achieve sustainable revenue growth, Mereo provides revenue performance services which help companies win an unfair share™ of sales cycles. Market leaders such as Ariba, Eppendorf, Citrix, Castellan Solutions, Pitney Bowes, Accel-KKR, SAP, Zebra, E2open, Vistage, Philips Healthcare, Axway, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, State Street, Ace Hardware, Miller Heiman, OKI Data, Logility, Appirio, Michelin, HireBetter, The Vintage Racing League and dozens more employ Mereo’s revenue performance programs to unleash repeatable revenue growth.

A History of Sales Enablement — and Predictions for Its Future

October 1, 2020

Jay Mitchell

The Beginnings of Sales Enablement Programs

Travel back to 1999, perhaps in a cubicle-lined office or around a rectangular conference table, John Aiello and Drew Larsen strategized a new approach to sales operations and management. What were they fighting against? Decades of:

Misaligned and inconsistent differentiated value messaging.
Lack of buyer and solution information.
Ineffective and nonexistent sales processes.

These issues had been infiltrating the sales world and obliterating salespeople’s effectiveness at doing their jobs — to sell. And these problems were plagues across industry, geography and selling organization size.

Add that to a changing B2B buyer, where the buyer had begun to shift from a reliance on salespeople for information to seeking it out themselves through new technological advancements.

Aiello and Larsen pioneered a method to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of salespeople that was catered toward the changing buyer. They preached new selling strategies and consistent selling strategies. The pair spoke to learning customer pains and committing to relevant conversations full of value. They promoted alignment across the organization.

Some people caught on and began implementing their sales enablement strategy right away, however, the majority did not catch-on until the 2010s. The increased interest drove new technology solutions, which then drove data analysis and research firms to get on board to better help salespeople lead with value in their interactions with buyers. Sales enablement-specific positions exist at the majority of sales organizations (60% according to CSO Insights study). In fact, Gartner estimates 15% of technology spending in 2021 will be invested in sales enablement technology.

Today, sales enablement is an organizational best practice. While its popularity has held strong for the last decade, many organizations still struggle with the core ideologies of sales enablement. The good news is that sales enablement is in the reach of every selling organization.

Avoid the trap of informal sales enablement programs. Win with a formal strategy!

The Future of Sales Enablement

Sales enablement expert Tamara Schenk nails the definition of sales enablement:

A strategic, collaborative discipline designed to increase predictable sales results by providing consistent, scalable enablement services that allow customer-facing professionals and their managers to add value in every customer interactions.

The Sales Enablement Society, or SES, defines sales enablement as follows:

Sales Enablement ensures buyers are engaged at the right time and place, and with the right assets by well-trained client-facing staff to provide a world-class experience along the customer’s journey.

What is the common theme in these two definitions? It is about the client and the professionals that engage with them. Make those people more effective at serving the client and everyone wins – especially the client! That’s Seek to Serve.

This structure will continue to drive sales enablement into the future, but let us explore a few key elements of these definitions that will shape and evolve and mature as sales enablement moves forward and becomes even more widespread in the B2B industry.

COLLABORATION

Sales enablement is a tag team effort. Client-facing professionals – namely “sales” – are the real target for enablement by the rest of the business. And let’s be clear that means sales reps but also front-line sales managers. Marketing, product and operational teams have a responsibility to arm and equip sellers, which is an effort that necessitates engaging sales in a dialogue about what is needed and then working together oftentimes in active coordination to create valuable selling assets.

These efforts can center around product launches, merger and acquisition assimilation, scaling the sales system and more. It takes a village — or in this case, an organization — working together with a common purpose of predictable sales results.

Historically, there has been “water-cooler” talk between the sales team and their sales support brethren. But going forward, the sales support teams must be even more intentional about engaging sales. In-person workshops will likely transform in the future to incorporate at least some virtual characteristics as teams come together to create what sales needs. In many ways this virtual future can actually accelerate the process — as the organization is not as constrained by travel to support in-person meetings.

SERVICES

Sales is the consumer of which services exactly? These are not so straightforward and not always tangible:

Skills
Content
Tools

Each of these services must be architected around the conversations between buyers and sellers along the buyer journey and sales process continuum in order for the exchange of true value.

As the first half of 2020 turned our organizational practices on its head, virtual tools have been rapidly adopted and widespread. Use these to digitize the delivery of skills training through eLearning — not just in classroom instruction but also virtual role-plays. Our friends at Commercial Tribe offer solutions to enable your leadership to create effective and robust digital trainings to connect with their sales teams and make an impact.

Additionally, explore digitizing the delivery of sales content and tools, empowering sellers with the access to and knowledge of how to pair the right tool with the right message at the right time for the buyer journey. Content and sales assets must be predicated on a value messaging framework that is compelling for buyers by first addressing their pains—while accentuating solution differentiation for competitive advantage. Membrain, Mediafly and Klyck all offer sales enablement technology that can empower your organization to do just that; Mereo principals have witnessed these tools action with many clients to great effect.

Finally, with an increased investment in sales enablement technology, sales support teams will gain a better view of current gaps, what other tools are needed, how and when assets are being used, and how to improve content strategy and development into the future.

ADDING VALUE

Seek to serve is the prevailing theme that drives Mereo and that we seek to impart on the Firm’s clients. Why? Because it works regardless of industry trend or market situation. Every customer interaction provides a forum for creating more value for your audiences. As you press forward, how can you add that value differently or more meaningfully?

The answer is simple but hard to follow through on: Know more about the customer than they know about themselves. Buyer empowerment is only growing as digital spaces widen and journeys are side-stepping salespeople later and later. When buyers do engage, your salespeople need to deliver insights to these conversations — or risk losing. What those conversations look like matters. Customers do not want to hear about products or even solutions. With sellers they want to garner leading practices on the marketplaces, to gain a better understanding of their risk factors and to simplify the complex.

Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™ is the true north star of selling — here and now but also into the indefinite future of sales enablement. Learn how to embrace a culture of Seek to Serve by reading the free Mereo Seek to Serve eBook, and explore how these sales enablement strategies paired with this Seek to Serve philosophy helped Axway transform with sustainable revenue performance as the result.

Your 3 Greatest B2B Lead Generation Activities for 2H 2020

September 17, 2020

Jay Mitchell

B2B lead generation traditionally has centered around in-person engagements. Salespeople traveled by car and plane to meet with prospects and maintain relationships with buyers. Coffee shop meetings, in-office discussions, dinners and golfing filled schedules. Now, due to social distancing, buyers are turning even more to the internet to research solutions and even make B2B purchases. But where does that leave salespeople?

While B2B sellers have been adapting in the interim — and many are still hoping in-person B2B lead generation and nurturing will return soon — there are a number of activities your salespeople can invest in now, virtually and at a safe distance, to serve up value to your buyers.

Thought Leadership Counsel

Times are strange — some might even argue unsettling. Your buyer always has pains to deal with, but in 2020 these pains turned on their heads and morphed into something new and daunting. One of the greatest tools salespeople can provide right now is counsel and insight to these issues and shifting situations. Your sales team must keep a pulse on your buyer’s industry and outlook. Truly effective salespeople can turn that pulse, data trends and past experiences into insights that can guide buyers to making smarter decisions for a more successful future.

Take thought leadership to the next level! Transform from thought leader to industry navigator.

Tap into your top salespeople and partner them with your marketing department. Together, they can create valuable and thoughtful blog posts and articles that Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™ in a time when buyers need it the most — and in a digital space where they will be looking first and foremost.

Even more-so, this strategy feeds into your digital marketing space and enhances your strategy for connecting in a socially distant environment. From SEO keyword boosts to email, e-newsletter and social media, to even repurposing article content in video, podcast and infographic formats — these thought leadership pieces have great potential to effectively connect your salespeople with your buyers in relevant dialogues. Even better, if a digital marketplace makes sense for your solution strategy, this content can lead buyers down that funnel to action.

HireBetter, a leading talent management firm in Austin, Texas, can speak to the effectiveness of serving buyers and prospects with a digital resource center. Learn more about their strategy here.

Sales Video Calls

Sales calls are an age-old strategy of selling. They connect buyers with selling organizations through a person they can meet, connect with, eventually trust and build a value-based relationship with and turn to for solutions.

While in-person sales calls are for the most part on hold, an alternative option is to replicate the connection via video conferencing technologies. Instead of relying on the phone or email alone, salespeople should make the most of our modern-day technologies and engage across a screen.

It is time to take virtual selling seriously. Learn how >>

Domain, industry and subject-matter experts from selling organizations have been constrained in feasibly meeting in-person with every client or prospect due to travel schedules and simple calendar space. Salespeople have thus been limited in engaging a value-added resource historically. Virtual calls with these experts is emerging as a compelling approach for salespeople and client success managers alike to create more value for their clients and prospects. And this can go even further with virtual executive briefings – a tool that has traditionally been solely executed in pristine executive briefings centers often a selling organizations company headquarters. We are witnessing a number of clients have wonderful success with virtual versions of these executive briefings.

Blasts From the Past

Client value stories are one of the top sales assets that support B2B buyers’ decision-making. This provides the proof that backs up your salespeople’s solution pitch. Yet, a high percentage of salespeople lack access to client value stories and indicate that they do not feel comfortable using them in their selling process.

Take this time before sales ramps back up with more active buyers to connect your salespeople and marketing team to develop client value stories from past successes that will help support future wins.

These stories can and should take many different formats and can not only feed your marketing fodder and strategy — but also be a key sales asset when directly connecting with buyers.

Regardless if your B2B lead generation strategy takes a different form, it is vital to drive it from a place of empathy, relevance and Seek to Serve. Now more than ever, buyers will be able to identify sellers who are committed to truly providing value versus those obsessed with making a quick profit.