Author: Jay Mitchell



How to draft a powerful client value story

June 9, 2016
Jay Mitchell

 

Based on overwhelming interest in our previous post: The Power of Proof: Client Value Stories, we were compelled to provide some guidelines on how to draft an impactful and memorable client value story.

Let’s start with the basics. We define a client value story as: the most effective mechanism for demonstrating the value prospects can uniquely gain from your solution.

What is this “mechanism”? Our team has found the optimal way to organize and present a client value story that makes the most sense and provides the most insight into the highlighted solution. The format flows from left to right showing a contrasted view of the pains the client was experiencing before your solution, and the gains the client is capturing with your solution. The “bridge” from the pains to gains is your solution, and specifically the differentiators that only you can deliver. See an example below of one of our own value studies:

 

Let’s dig further into each of the essential pieces of the story:

  • Your client’s PAINS are laid-out on the left side and are crafted in a manner to re-engage the emotional fraught your buyer felt when they came to understand their pains.
  • Your SOLUTION is the bridge in the middle that your client is using to alleviate their pains and emphasizes your differentiators.
  • Your client’s GAINS are laid-out on the right side and convey the outcomes and results being achieved with your solution.
  • Your client’s quote at the bottom articulates the PROOF.

Investing in the creation of these stories will produce a great return. Clients are hungry for more than your opinion — they need proof your solution has worked with credible clients.

I challenge you to craft one of these stories with your team in the next week. Need help? Shoot us an email: info@mereo.co



The power of proof: Client value stories

May 19, 2016
Jay Mitchell

When asked what the #1 sales ready asset is that marketing needs to provide to their sales channels in a B2B sales cycle, I do not hesitate one second in my response: a solid client value story. And I’m not the only one – the proof is in numbers:

Holger Schulze, group owner of the 50,000-member B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn surveyed their audience and found customer testimonials and case studies are considered the most effective content marketing tactics, identified by 89% and 88%, respectively.

A powerful client story has all the ingredients a sales professional needs to be successful:

  • Big picture problem…Check.
  • Business, financial and personal pains for the buyer…Check.
  • Solution highlights (with differentiators!)…Check.
  • Demonstrable gains…Check.
  • Compelling client quote validating the problem was solved…Check.
  • A story that resonates with buying audiences….Check, check and check!!!

While some of the elements above may be lacking (or absent) in too many case studies, the more alarming concern we see with companies around the world is the black hole of client value stories all together.

According to Forrester Research, 78% of executive buyers claim salespeople don’t have relevant client examples or case studies to share with buyers.

All too often the sales team is begging for this invaluable sales ready asset (or more of them), while marketing is unable to secure enough client introductions from the sales and services teams to create them. And so the never ending cycle of finger-pointing continues.

Client value stories are the ultimate proof point a prospect needs in their buying journey, and here are 3 reasons why:

  1. It gives buyers the sense of calm needed to get started in navigating their current situation. When they are likely paralyzed from feeling overwhelmed, a client story can get their thoughts focused and doubts relieved – “other organizations have been here as well, and have successfully overcome. We can too…if we just get started”.
  2. It gives them a point of reference for initiating “trusted advisor engagement”. We all know prospects turn to their peers in troubling times, as 84% of B2B businesses initiate the buying process with a referral (Edelman Trust Barometer). A client story is the second best option in prospecting when a seller does not get introduced directly through a referral. Seeing a trusted peer experience success can give way to earned trust with the seller.
  3. It gives buyers confidence in justifying the decision to themselves (the emotion) and to their broader buying committee – boss, peers, etc. (the logic).  A study by Gartner revealed that 70% of executive buyers agree “client stories and case studies are the best way that providers can communicate differentiation that I trust.”

It is time for marketing and sales to unite on client value stories – the most important sales tool. If you are a marketing leader in the B2B arena, make client testimonials a priority on your team’s task list. They are gold. If you are a sales leader, engage your marketing leadership in a dialogue about why client value stories are a fundamental building block to revenue performance. But do not stop there; make sure to foster introductions to some initial clients that can get the momentum going for your marketing partners.



Your voice is needed: CSO insights sales enablement survey

May 3, 2016
Jay Mitchell

As buying dynamics change and a multitude of methodologies, technologies and service providers swarm to fill the void, having a research-based perspective on Sales Enablement is more vital than ever. If you are a sales, marketing or operating executive or a professional with either responsibility for sales enablement or someone who sales enablement impacts, please take a few minutes to complete this study.

The CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study offers valuable data and answers to important questions, such as:

  • What is the overall business impact sales enablement can create?
  • What kinds of enablement services (training, content, tools, coaching) really make a difference in sales performance?
  • How can enablement help with social selling?
  • What’s the role of content in building customer relationships?
  • Can technology improve KPIs? How well is enablement technology integrated with other SFA/CRM systems?
  • How does sales enablement manage cross-functional collaboration?
  • Do more mature enablement frameworks and processes impact sales performance?
  • How are frontline sales managers equipped to drive adoption and reinforcement?

The second annual study will also take a closer look at the differences across company sizes, regions and industries this year.

Please take 15-20 minutes to complete the CSO Insights 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study.

What’s in it for you?

  • Study results are shared with participants first. Those results can help you evolve your enablement practice as well as sell your enablement strategy internally.
  • Upon completing the survey, you will be able to immediately download the CSO Insights’ 2016 Sales Performance Key Trends Analysis, and two research notes on strategic issues in enablement, regarding content and training challenges.
  • In July 2016, you will receive the 2016 Sales Enablement Optimization Study Key Trends Report – the most important enablement research report in the industry.

Here is a link to the survey. Thank You!



The problem with sales training, part 3: Coaching and reinforcement

April 28, 2016
Jay Mitchell

In this series we are taking a look at three distinctions between sales training and sales enablement:

  1. Messaging and content 
  2. Training
  3. Coaching and reinforcement

Although commonly seen as one in the same, sales training and sales enablement are vastly different.

What is sales enablement?  A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services for salespeople and frontline sales managers along the entire customer’s journey, powered by technology. — Tamara Schenk, CSO Insights

In Part 1 we uncovered why training and sales kit content is often ineffective.

And in Part 2 we discussed how sales leaders need to do more than teach and train, by better equipping their teams with sales ready assets.

The case is not that we should throw out sales training, but instead see it as a critical, yet partial component of a sales enablement program.

In the final installment of this series we are going to compare sales professionals with professional athletes, and expand on the importance of extensive and ongoing coaching.

Do World-Class Professionals Need Coaching?

Compelling content and effective training in a vacuum — that is, without coaching — can be detrimental to both the sales professionals being trained and the overall revenue performance of the business. Let’s look to a parallel arena for an example.

World-class professional athletes in sports worldwide have coaches and trainers who support them in both pre- and in-season workouts. They are continually perfecting their craft. You would not expect the Super Bowl Champions to skip offseason workouts and training camp in the heat of the summer, and then flawlessly play their opening game of the new season. In fact, even with exceptional coaching, extensive physical training,and exhausting workouts, these world champions still make mistakes in their first game.

Why would sales organizations expect to be any different? Why would sales leaders (akin to the general manager of the football team), neglect having frontline sales managers coach the sales professionals within the training session itself and not provide ongoing coaching and reinforcement in the field? A football general manager would NOT accept that. In fact, the general manager would expect, and even require, the coaching staff to allocate appropriate time for effective coaching to enhance and reinforce the training, as well as rehearse the professionals’ use of the skills and tools of their craft. For that matter, the athletes would demand it as well. World-class athletes seek out counsel and coaching on how to improve in every aspect of their game, especially in the areas where they are weaker than their competition. Sales leaders need to require the same level of continual improvement to help their sales professionals stay sharp and ahead of their competition.

As leaders of revenue organizations, we are blessed to have access to incredible sales skills training that has been honed for decades. Even more so, we are fortunate to have access to resources like compelling content, sales ready assets, role-plays and coaching that can amplify the training into sustainable revenue performance. Take advantage of these resources and use them — not just once or twice, but create a year-round framework of continual training and equipping. Your bottom line will thank you.



The problem with sales training, part 2: Training

April 14, 2016
Jay Mitchell

Although commonly seen as one in the same, sales training and sales enablement are vastly different.

In Part 1 we uncovered disappointing data proving the effectiveness of sales training is clearly missing the mark:

  • Sales professionals forget 85% of the content and skills within four weeks of training – Association for Talent Development (ATD) — {for more stats see Part 1)

The case is not that we should throw out sales training, but instead see it as a critical, yet partial component of a sales enablement program. What is sales enablement?  A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services for salespeople and frontline sales managers along the entire customer’s journey, powered by technology. — Tamara Schenk, CSO Insights

In this series we are taking a look at three distinctions between sales training and sales enablement:

  1. Messaging and content 
  2. Training
  3. Coaching and reinforcement

2. Training & the importance of sales ready assets

A primary outcome of sales training is to enhance the knowledge and expertise of the sales channels. It is important to not only educate sales on the solution, but also the value proposition of that solution — that is, the current situation buyers would likely find themselves prior to adopting the solution, and then the typical benefits buyers derive from the solution based on their original state of affairs. This aspect is undeniably critical. But where does that leave the general catch-all of “skills training”? For sales leaders desiring sustainable behavioral change, they need to not only teach their sales professionals the new skill(s) through classroom instruction, but they also need to equip them with sales ready assets immediately ready for use in real-world sales cycles upon returning to the field.

The related sales kit inventory can include a variety of materials such as: collateral, presentation decks, demos, proposal templates, client value stories, prospecting infographics and talk tracks. In the training session, the sales professionals need to be educated on the sales ready assets and know how to role-play by using them. Otherwise, the sales professionals’ training is for naught — see statistics above as proof of how often this occurs.

For further clarity on Sales Enablement, take a look at this interview that Tamara Schenck and I did with Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World earlier this year. And stay tuned as I will cover coaching in my next post.



The problem with sales training, part 1: Content and messaging

March 31, 2016
Jay Mitchell

These days, a majority of the articles I read include a reference to sales enablement. It’s the topic du jour in sales and marketing leadership circles. An interesting twist is that many of these sales enablement points of view are being pushed by sales training vendors — that is, organizations or professionals whose primary offering is sales training. Why the parsing of words here? Aren’t sales training and sales enablement the same? Let’s begin to answer this question by looking at some statistics that show the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of sales training:

  • Sales professionals forget 85% of the content and skills within four weeks of training – Association for Talent Development (ATD)
  • As much as 80% of new sales skills are lost within one week of training if not used – Association for Talent Development (ATD)
  • Up to 85% of sales training fails to deliver a positive ROI – HR Chally

That’s definitely not a glowing endorsement for sales training. Hence the “re-packaging” of sales training as sales enablement by legacy sales training providers seeking to align with marketplace trends, in order to sell more training. I’m not saying sales training is irrelevant, but instead that it must be seen as a critical, yet partial component of a sales enablement program.

So what is sales enablement? Last year, Tamara Schenk of CSO Insights released a research note providing a clear and concise definition of sales enablement: A strategic, cross-functional discipline designed to increase sales results and productivity by providing integrated content, training, and coaching services for salespeople and frontline sales managers along the entire customer’s journey, powered by technology.

That definition is very straightforward and, thankfully, void of unnecessary marketing jargon. Thank you, Tamara! More importantly, it gives us a backdrop for examining three key distinctions between sales training and sales enablement:

  1. The messaging and content of training and related sales kits are not oriented or differentiated to fit the buying journey.
  2. Training is not just about the skills, but also the techniques for using related sales ready assets in the context of the sales cycle.
  3. Coaching and reinforcement is either lacking or neglected, both within the training and following the training session.

Today I want to dig deeper into #1– Messaging & Content. In subsequent RevenueInsights, we have examined #2 and #3 more closely. (See #2: Training)

Why is the Training and Sales Kit Content Not Compelling in Sales Training?

For marketing, the importance of content has exploded through powering marketing campaigns and supporting sales channels alike. The wrestle with the immense volume of content being generated results from how misguided it is – with a heavy product/capability slant. That trap has two consequences. First, the emphasis on product/capability means less focus on the current, pain-ridden use case the buyer is encountering WITHOUT the product/capability. For example, “You may have a really great mousetrap, but at this point, I am not aware I even have a significant problem with mice.”

The second impact of the product/capability content slant is messaging that is too often laden with LOTS of essentials and too few differentiators – it is “me-too”. Essentials are characteristics or capabilities of a solution that are valuable, but not necessarily unique to the seller’s offering. Certainly, sellers need to ensure buyers are aware they provide the essentials, however, when the core message of both the sales training content and the sales ready assets concentrates on the essentials, the true differentiators either get lost in the mix or omitted all together.

Have you been sold that enablement and sales training are one in the same? How can you improve your content by putting an emphasis on prospect pains and highliting product differentiators?

For further clarity on Sales Enablement, take a look at this interview that Tamara Schenck and I did with Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World earlier this year. And stay tuned as I will cover training and coaching over the next few weeks.



3 Immediate steps to engage buyers

March 22, 2016
Jay Mitchell

We recently sat down with a client team to lead a sales enablement session. In the corner of the room sat a few of the client’s eager and curious marketers. They watched and listened intently as we helped guide and equip the sales team. After the training, the marketers approached us, wanting to know more and were curious how their team could better support sales and what that might look like. What a healthy, proactive approach! We wish more marketing teams would take this kind of initiative. (And if your marketing team isn’t asking to be a part of this kind collaboration, INVITE THEM!)

The message that sales and marketing need to work together is not a new one, and it might sound like a broken record. Go ahead, Google it. You will find countless blogs, podcasts, articles, webinars, and the list goes on. Why is there still a need to keep preaching this message? Because it is imperative to your team’s success. However, despite the frequency of this message, sadly, the majority of sales and marketing teams continue to operate on their own islands. If this is you—if your company can resonate with this—please, keep reading.

Currently, 92% of decision makers believe sellers are NOT creating value for the buyers. That’s bad, folks. Sure, this could be due to ineffective selling, but I would bet a more significant contributor is because sellers have not been equipped with the right materials to truly engage their prospects—materials that will draw buyers out of status quo and into action.

The main piece of advice we shared with the proactive marketing team: stop pumping out the same old product sheets, and get creative—not cool, snazzy marketing creative, but buyer-oriented creative. Think less about some tagline or advertisement, and more about ways to differently and creatively engage the buyer where they are. Marketing’s role in sales is crucial, and the content they create to support sales can make a dramatic impact on win rates.

Marketing has many functions, but one of the most crucial, yet often disregarded functions is serving sales teams by producing essential materials to connect and service buyers. If this isn’t happening, revenue performance suffers. Sales relies on marketing to give them relevant and relatable assets for appealing to and communicating with buyers.

It is common for marketing teams to feel overwhelmed with the idea of creating new materials, and many are unsure of where to begin.

Here are 3 steps to help make this transition: 

  • Step 1: Start with the buyer. What are they looking for? Have you asked? If not, get a panel of current customers and prospects together and invest time in getting to know the issues they are facing. Spend time understanding their struggles and their business, personal and financial pains. This in turn will allow you to create messaging and materials that speak to and amplify those pains.
  • Step 2: Connect with sales. How could they be more relevant to buyers? What new materials do they need? Which materials aren’t working anymore? How can you support them better? What are they hearing from the buyer? Approach your sales team in an effort to better serve them, and begin to build a relationship of collaboration. When revenues increase, everyone wins.
  • Step 3: Create powerful and compelling messaging. We have discovered that buyers are inspired by stories—engaging and insightful client examples. Show how your solution has helped others similar to them. Provide thought leadership that will spark new conversations between sellers and buyers, all while considering the buyer’s pains. Understanding what buyers are struggling with and how their current solutions aren’t quite cutting it, will help you speak directly to those needs and prove why your solution can alleviate their pains.

We understand this is not a simple 3-step process; it is a mind shift—an internal strategy modification. But we can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Buyers aren’t being moved to action, because frankly, the materials and messaging they are presented with just aren’t on target. Marketing materials need to be more relevant and compelling, by telling a story and giving real-life examples.

It all starts with putting the buyer first—taking the time to truly understand them so you can learn how to speak to them. It’s time to put a stop to the broken process, and start impressing the 92% of buyers who are just waiting to be wooed.



1 Step to set you apart from your competition

March 8, 2016
Jay Mitchell

8% was the topic of conversation at dinner with a friend a few nights ago. No, neither of us were skimping on the tip for our waiter. 8% is a statistic from Forrester Research that continues to cross our paths as leaders of our respective organizations, as well as two people who have invested the majority of our careers in sales.

According to Forrester, executive decision makers believe ONLY 8% of sales reps are focused on driving a “valuable” outcome for the buyer. But maybe the real number here is 92%. If you look at the inverse of 8%, buyers believe 92% of salespeople do not have the buyer’s best interest in mind. Ouch! 8% and 92% are two sides of the same coin. This statistic is really about what truly motivates a seller — their purpose, you might say.

At Mereo, we have the privilege of working with dozens of companies as clients each year, and that puts us in direct, daily contact with sales leaders and front-line sales professionals alike. These interactions afford us the opportunity to engage with some highly-motivated people. What’s concerning in those conversations is the inherent tension sellers battle daily. They need to make the sell. That is their job, and what their employer compensates them to do. Meanwhile, the majority of the sales professionals I encounter want to do what is right for the client. It is great when their job and their drive align, but what happens when those two motivators are not united, but rather are two trains headed towards one another, on the same track, destined for a catastrophic collision?

We have a little saying around Mereo: Seek to serve, not to sell™. Ok, it’s more like a battle cry. It’s our way of life — our purpose. At its core, it is a choice to put the interest of others first, even if our best interest is not always satisfied.

In my personal and professional relationships, serving others is fundamental to my daily walk. However, there are two groups of people that I too often do not put first — my family and my clients. Why? Simply, I take them for granted. That is an unfortunate, but honest confession.

It is fair to assume that I am probably not alone in taking my family for granted. I love them and they love me. We have a full life together, jam-packed with ups and downs. We support one another through those peaks and valleys. The memories I have, and those in the making, are of utmost importance to me. Yet, it can be easy to get complacent in the relationships with my family and take them for granted, because, our relationship is rooted in unconditional love for one another—an understanding to stick together no matter what.

Similarly, clients can fall into that undesirable paradigm. It is true that, like family, we need one another and are often engaged in the ups and downs together. At Mereo, we are blessed to have a stable of great clients, with whom we are fundamentally impacting their revenue performance. But, we need them too— for they contribute to our profitability and ultimate business existence. While we pour our best into our clients, I too easily forget how much they pour into us as well (and I am not talking about engagement fees.) They trust us with their very businesses and their careers. They call on us to have a measurable impact in their performance. They count on us to deliver a valuable return on the investment of funds and time they are making. Simply put, they depend on us to do what we believe is in their best interest, especially when that does not appear on the surface to be what is ideal for us.

Which takes us back to the 8% statistic. As sales professionals (leaders and front-line sellers alike), we have an interaction-by-interaction choice to make: Will we seek first to serve, or will we seek first to sell? In a lot of scenarios, we are fortunate because the choice to put our client first is to solve their problem with the solution we offer. The tough situation is when making our number this month or quota is in conflict with what we know at our core is in the best interest of our client. In the end, when we put them first, no matter the scenario, we are choosing to be in the 8% — we are electing a dynamic that too many decision makers witness as unconventional. We are setting ourselves apart from the competition. We are choosing great over good.

Heads or tails? Which side of the coin are you going embrace when it comes to serving and selling? Will you join me in striving to grow the 8%?



M&A upside: How to win amidst daunting statistics

March 1, 2016
Jay Mitchell

I’m sure you’ve heard the numbers—various reports and research put the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) between 70-90% (Harvard Business Review). Yikes.

The idea of a merger can be a romantic one—enhanced products, new customers, cost cuts and the list goes on. It is easy to get excited about what the new relationship will look like when the two are married. However, when the courting is over, all too often executing the necessary steps to make the union a success falls by the roadside. Revenue-generating teams are left scrambling and navigating uncharted waters without a vision or plan—namely how to unify marketing and sales operations under a common go-to-market banner.

Success or failure is less tied to compelling profit and loss models or ingenious product roadmaps than one might think. Instead, M&A success is predicated on the proper investment in enablement and coaching of the combined sales teams around a common sales process that employs compelling buyer messaging.

There are three primary opportunities for unleashing revenue performance success when it comes to M&A initiatives:

  • Cross-sell/up-sell powered by an enhanced value proposition: If you have merged with or acquired another entity where products afford opportunities to provide additional value-add to each company’s install base, in effect you now have the opportunity to reach two new markets. This can prove rewarding as there is often already a level of buy-in due to the earned trust with their previous solution provider. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to leverage that trust. In light of your new solution offering, take the time to re-think the three components that build a compelling value proposition: pain, solution and gain.
  • A new trigger to overcome status quo: Maybe with a recent acquisition your solution just got a facelift by adding capabilities and features you couldn’t offer before to the problems your prospects are facing. This provides the opportunity to go back to those clients who align with the new buyer profile and revisit their pains again, but now with something that might finally uproot them from status quo.
  • More compelling differentiation to distinguish you in competitive sales cycles: Your offering is now more compelling, providing you the perfect opportunity to craft a new value proposition to put into the hands of your combined sales team. What are the new unique, valuable, provable and memorable factors you need to take into account? How does that stack up in the marketplace with competitive offerings? It is critical you find a way to distinguish your offering from the competition in an effort to fight the “me-too” conundrum.

There can be a lot of confusion around effectively realizing these opportunities. While the decision to merge or acquire can look like common sense from 10,000 feet, success is found when the details are painstakingly outlined, understood and executed properly.

No matter where you are in the decision-making and due diligence process, never assume someone else is taking care of the logistics of how solutions marketing and sales operations need to power the plan for accretive success! Here are three quick steps that need to be taken immediately in the event of a merger or acquisition–and some actions that should be outlined during the due diligence efforts:

1) Educate. As sales teams are joined or expected to work in tandem, they need to be informed of the purpose of the merger/acquisition, how it impacts them personally, their role, their product and their prospects/customers, and the benefits it brings to all the key parties impacted. Create a team of leaders (a few from both organizations) to manage the change, be point to answer questions and create an action plan.

2) Engage. (It is critical this step is taken immediately) Get appropriate representatives from the combined marketing, sales and solutions/services teams into a working session where they outline key elements of the new go-to-market strategy your teams are about to begin executing:

  • Define ideal buyer profile
  • Research and describe competitive landscape
  • Outline issues and opportunities your ideal buyers need to fix/accomplish/avoid
  • Create differentiated messaging and value proposition to be employed
  • Craft client stories to prove your enhanced value proposition
  • Describe uplift to value proposition
  • Define how to amplify buyer pain

Be careful about communicating extensively with your target buyers through marketing campaigns or sales meetings until this occurs. Instead, be proactive and accelerate the earnouts for not only the professionals in the combined company, but most importantly, your customers!

3) Equip. Even if you combine two of your market sector’s top sales teams, if they are not given the sales ready assets they need to succeed, failure is inevitable. Is a new playbook needed? How about enriched tools to reach and engage a new audience? How do we train our sales channels on the new or enhanced product and related go-to-market approach? Make sure solid leadership (possibly bring someone in from the outside) is in place to help guide and facilitate these needs. Even the best sales “athletes” need the right tools and guidance to succeed.

Defy the odds and make your merger a success by taking the time and resources to ensure your sales team is prepared for the change.

How have you aligned marketing and sales teams in the event of a merger/acquisition? What lessons have you learned?



Freak sales athletes

February 22, 2016
Jay Mitchell

I make no bones about it— I’m a huge fan of Baylor sports. People who know me say I’m about as rabid a fan as they come. I have been cheering on Baylor since I walked on to the campus as a student almost 25 years ago. And, being from Texas, for me football has always been king. So while most Baylor athletic teams have always been solid (including winning numerous national championships) it was devastating to see the football team struggle over the years. But that all changed when Coach Art Briles took the helm as Baylor Football’s head coach in 2008. Now Baylor is a perennial power, not only in the Big 12, but also on the national football scene.

How has Briles done it? By recruiting “freak athletes”, putting a great scheme and game plan in place for them and then coaching them up.

ESPN reported on Briles incoming freshmen, quoting, “…the Bears (are) reloaded with another batch of freaky talents.” When I read this article last week, it got me thinking how Baylor’s recipe for success is an incredible parallel to what sales leaders need to do to power to sustainable revenue performance. The formula for success is similar on the turf and in the sales arena:

  1. Recruit “freak athletes” to the team
  2. Enable them with necessary tools and strategies
  3. Coach them up

If you have great players, even freaky great players, on your team, but don’t take steps 2-3, your team will fail. Even the best salespeople, if not given the necessary tools to reach prospects (the right buyer profiles and lock-tight go-to-market strategies) and not provided with continued coaching and solid leadership, will quickly go from sales freak to just another sales geek.

Take the time to invest in your athletes with a programmatic enablement program and timely and relevant coaching coupled with that training regimen, and you might be surprised what your team can do.

Once your team recruits a new salesman, what steps do you take to empower them to win? How is this similar to building up a good sports team? Different? How surprised are you to see Baylor Football as a prominent player nationally? Snuck that one in on you! 🙂

Sic ’em Bears! And good selling!