How to Build Successful Enablement Programs

Some of my hardest lessons as a sales leader came when figuring out how to setup and run training (learn from my mistakes!) Me as a new leader: "Great we have 10 topics we want to cover... let's do 1 a week. 2.5 months later we will have covered SO much ground!" 🙃 Training was more of a "box checking" exercise. Someone shared feedback on what they wanted to learn, and it got added to the list Having one 30 or 60 minute training on any topic is never sufficient, and I did the team a disservice So what was missing? And what did I seek to add later? 👉 Focus Instead of 10 topics, we might go into a quarter with 1-2 priority focus areas. The deeper engagement on a narrower topic is not unlike narrowing your focus on a smaller set of ICP accounts This creates room for practice, follow up sessions, different voices delivering the material, and ultimately makes the content stickier 👉 Engagement from other departments Where applicable, involvement from other departments can add incredible value to your training program. For instance, when you are training on a new product category, it is valuable to: - Hear firsthand from Product how it's built - Align your training timeline with Product Marketing so that materials are ready to go as the training commences - Work with Marketing so that messaging aligns to how you can sell it and everyone has the same talking points from day 1 - Work with Rev Ops to identify a market opportunity to apply your learnings - Have Sales Enablement help prepare uses cases in your sales tech stack 👉 A system to encourage accountability Once the trainings are delivered, how do you know that the sales team was paying attention? That can take many forms: - Group activity like pitch practice - Measuring adoption through tools like Gong - Contest/SPIF to encourage initial matching sales activity - Knowledge tests in your LMS (my least favorite) 👉 Repetition There's a reason Sesame Street used to repeat episodes during the week - once wasn't enough to get the message home! While your sales team isn't full of 3 year olds, similar principles apply Bottom line: instead of thinking about any topic as a single "training", think about creating "training programs" for your team 🎓 Tying it all together for a training on "New Product A" Week 1: Product & Product Marketing introduce the new offering Week 2: Outside expert/marketing/leadership deliver the industry POV Week 3: Team gets together to identify prospects and practice the pitch Week 4: Team provides feedback on material and prospecting plans are built incorporating the training Weeks 5-8: Measuring adoption through Gong. Shouting out strong adoption and privately helping laggards identify gaps in understanding Week 6: Short contest to encourage cross/up-sell opportunity creation Week 12: Revisit/Feedback #SalesEnablement #SalesTraining #LeadershipLessons #CorrCompetencies

Hey sales leaders: What do you think is the purpose of enablement? Allow me to confound that expectation. Your answer probably includes sales onboarding -- ramping new hires quickly. It may include keeping reps abreast of all the changes -- new releases, new campaigns, new processes, etc. And some of you may include doing periodic training on your unique skills, tools, and processes. But I'll bet a nickel you haven't thought about enablement in terms of performance improvement. I mean identifying behaviors that are contributing to performance gaps, and creating an intervention to measurably change those behaviors -- thereby reducing the performance gaps. Example: you're hearing that reps are discounting too heavily, and you get support for this in reporting on avg discount rates. A performance improvement approach says: --What are the behaviors contributing to the performance gap? --What do we want the behaviors to be? --How can we empirically measure if the behavior has changed? --What's the best way to achieve the desired behavior change? --Fast forward: did we move the needle on those empirical metrics? PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIORS: Maybe the behaviors contributing to the high discount rates include reps not selling value -- not uncovering the business impact of the status quo, not articulating the positive business outcomes of your solution. And maybe they're also not engaging the right personas throughout the sales cycle. DESIRED BEHAVIORS: Maybe you have a sales methodology that calls for reps uncovering & articulating business value -- so you want them to apply that methodology more rigorously in calls & emails. Maybe your deals usually start with mid-level managers, but later reps need to engage the VPs of 2 departments -- so you want them to apply that kind of persona multithreading in their deals. HOW TO MEASURE: For value messaging, leverage Gong/Chorus to measure the % of calls that mention specific words/phrases. For multithreading, measure avg # of personas on opps, & when they're added. Other interesting metrics: Avg # decreases in TCV of an opp, and avg push count. BEHAVIOR CHANGE INTERVENTION: Training is ok, documentation is great, but ongoing coaching is the best way to achieve sustained behavior change. Ideally led by the frontline manager, but okay if led by the enablement team. REVIEWING METRICS: When you clearly define the desired behavior change, the empirical metrics, and the intervention, it's very easy to show whether you made a difference. And it's very easy to argue that it was the enablement initiative is to thank. As a veteran enablement leader, I firmly believe that this kind of "purpose" (and approach) is sorely missing in enablement orgs. And IMO if more enablement orgs approached their work this way, more sales leaders would consider their enablement leaders to be strategic partners in growing the business. Happy selling. #heysalesleaders #salesexcellence

💡 Enablement Tip of the Week: Building internal relationships is one of the most critical parts of the Enablement role. 🤗 🤯 This isn't a mind-blowing post, but it's an important reminder. Whether you're a team of 1 at a small start-up ( 🙋🏼♀️ ) or a large Enablement team at an Enterprise company, the relationships you build with your executive leaders, your cross-functional stakeholders, your front-line managers, AND your Reps are, in my opinion, one of the most important things you can do in your role. 🧭 Executive leaders will (or should 🙃 ) be able to provide you with the strategic goals of the organization which you can then strategize and build your Enablement programs to support. 💪🏼 Your cross-functional stakeholders are the ones who will help you accomplish and deliver on those initiatives. 🩺 Your front-line managers are the ones who will give you insight into the pulse of the field AND provide top-down support and reinforcement for your initiatives. 🥾 And your Reps, those are your boots on the ground, they will tell you what's *actually* happening and give you great, albeit sometimes hard, feedback. 🗣️ 😵💫 This relationship-building doesn't have to take over your calendar or schedule either. Figure out what cadence works best for you & your team(s). 🗓️ Bi-weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? If you find that you're canceling your sync more often than having them, adjust the recurrence. And don't be afraid to use async options like a recap or check-ins via Slack, Teams, etc. 💛 You don't necessarily have to skip through the office, although let's be honest, that's awesome 😆 - but making yourself available and building those relationships can make a HUGE difference in your Enablement practice. #salesenablement #enablement #revenueenablement #thoughtleadership #tipoftheday #tipsforsuccess #tipsandtricks