This post was originally published by Olivia Adkison on lessonly.com.
If you’re in sales and feel like you’ve hit a wall when it comes to measuring and improving performance, you’re not alone. You live in a world of numbers, goals, metrics, and quotas. But here’s the truth: A massive part of sales readiness is working backwards, and when that’s done right, hitting your numbers gets easier. When teams identify what KPIs they want to hit, and then create training and practice to improve in those areas, everyone wins.
It’s easier said than done, but good news, it’s not impossible—especially with the guidance from three sales enablement pros. We enjoyed a conversation between Adriana Romero, the Director of Enablement Solutions for LevelJump, Meganne Brezina, our Senior Director of Enablement at Seismic, and Bryan Naas, the VP of Sales Productivity at Braze. Here’s a peak at what we learned!
Make yourself more than a sidekick so your reps can be heroes.
Adriana started her career at a company where enablement folks were considered sales sidekicks, but not in a good way. They had less of a voice at the table, less pull in decisions, and while there were some leaders who saw the value of enablement and practice, there wasn’t overwhelming support. Why? Because there was no way to prove that sales enablement and performance were tied together.
Meganne mentioned that practitioners often sit in such strategic roles. And while they bring the perspectives of different teams and different priorities in the business, what’s most vital is that they have established credibility through deliverables and results. This might be something on a mammoth scale, like delivering a really effective sales kickoff. But it also includes something more incremental, like an impactful training campaign around objection handling that helps activities, especially at the top of the funnel.
Sales enablement is more than slide decks and training.
“Enablement is not building decks.” Adriana said this early on during the discussion, and Bryan brought it back in the middle of the conversation because it’s important to remember. Great enablement is never just sales content. It’s not just training. It uses these things as tools to leverage. Instead, enablement is really about impacting and moving the needle.
There are a lot of ways for sales leaders to impact and help reps be more productive and sales ready. Sometimes that includes creating content and decks that aren’t necessarily a blast to make, but there are numerous ways to create the programs that are going to help do it. Clearly defining your sales enablement approach internally, especially with sales managers, is such an important part of that communication so you’re not just throwing around what Meganne endearingly refers to as haphazard “random acts of sales enablement.”
Invite and enable frontline managers to coach reps with you.
It should be a top priority to enable and align frontline sales managers so they can coach their teams. Just as company executives need to be bought into the idea of enablement, so do your frontline managers. Realistically, those managers are the boots on the ground, feet on the street, leaders with super close, 1:1 rep relationships. And, when you think about scaling organizations, disseminating enablement via frontline managers becomes vital because running a single webinar for 500 people just won’t cut it.
In Meganne’s past experience, she and her team created enablement “packages.” These packages included everything from meeting agendas, to recommendations on how to manage the time, to different sales decks, and more. She and her team packaged these high-value resources right in their LMS, which happened to be Lessonly by Seismic, so managers could revisit these materials and update them in real-time.
Final thoughts
Getting reps sales ready to make a lasting impact on your org is essential in shoring up any team and hitting quota consistently. If you’re in the market for other sales readiness resources, here are a few we recommend:
- Riding the Next Wave of Enablement: The Ultimate Guide: From training and coaching to creating the right content and delivering that content at the right time, there’s a lot that goes into enablement—and sellers— a success.
- What are sales readiness platforms: Take a deeper look at all things sales readiness including the benefits and how to use the right software.
Plus, our sales training software can help your team transform sales readiness by combining on-demand training, hands-on practice, effective feedback, and actionable metrics and insights. The result? Shorter ramp times, consistent and confident reps, and more closed deals.
