contents · effective sales enablement is scientific — it’s based on a framework of sales...

1Contents

Contents

Introduction 2How to Build a Foundation of Data 4

Summary 5Make Data Valuable 6Communicate With Data 8Develop Alignment 10

Leveraging Key Metrics 12Summary 13Sales Funnel Conversion Rates 14Sales Cycle 15Win Factors 16

Implementing Targeted Sales Enablement 17Summary 18Improving Conversion Rates 19Shortening the Sales Cycle 20Maximizing Win Factors 22

Conclusion 23

2Introduction

Do you know the Greek myth of the Hydra? It was an ancient monster that grows two heads back every time you cut one off. Hercules battled the Hydra as one of his 10 tasks, and ultimately vanquished the beast by searing the stumps of the heads with a brand so they couldn’t grow back.

That story should resonate with anyone who has ever worked in a sales enablement capacity.

Why? Each time you identify a problem and purchase a solution or implement a policy change to solve it, two more issues spring up as a result. You buy a power-dialer to improve individual sales efficiency, only to realize that you have to pull apart your entire CRM workflow for the new tool to work properly. After you’ve adjusted your CRM workflow, you realize that the changes disrupted the sync with your marketing automation system.

Once you get your marketing automation problems figured out, you can finally rest easy…. except that you still need to find ways to optimize the efficiency of the sales team, help your company’s reps move prospects through the sales process as smoothly as possible, and ensure that every calorie they spend selling moves them closer to a closed-won deal.

How are you supposed to do that if every move you make puts you two steps backwards? In other words, how are you supposed to keep the Hydra’s heads from growing back?

Effective sales enablement is scientific — it’s based on a framework of sales performance data that reveal trends in the activity of your sales reps, and requires constant testing, experimentation, and measurement. The three core steps to adopt this approach to sales enablement are:

· A foundation of data· Key metrics· Targeted enablement solutions

For this reason, analytics is the cornerstone of scientific sales enablement. Analytics give sales ops the ability to access, analyze, and report on data in real time. Without these tools, sales operations get bogged down digging in data and never have time to address any of the trends that they uncover.

Introduction

3Introduction

Introduction

At this point, you might expect us to say that analytics is the silver bullet that will resolve all of your sales enablement challenges. It’s not – the unfortunate truth is that there is no miracle cure for sales enablement.

However, by using analytics to make trends in your company’s sales performance visible and easily accessible to every member of your team, you will be able to make incremental improvements that eventually optimize the efficiency of your sales team.

This eBook is a roadmap for how to adopt the scientific approach to sales enablement and leverage it to win over reps, optimize the sales process, and boost revenue.

It all starts with gathering trustworthy data.

4How to Build a Foundation of Data

How to Build a Foundation of Data

Section / / 1


Summary

Sales enablement can take many forms — tools and technology, sales coaching, improved workflows and sales processes, just to name a few. But regardless of what form your sales enablement takes, it has to be built on a solid foundation of data.

The key to settling on the right solution for your company is to use analytics to identify where sales enablement will have the greatest impact, and measure the results of every sales enablement project you put in place. To do that, you need a trustworthy database full of information about your sales performance.

The first chapter of this eBook covers the three key steps your company will need to take to build that foundation:

• Make data valuable• Communicate with data• Develop alignment


The mistake that derails most companies’ attempts at data-driven sales enablement is that they never train individual reps to leverage data to analyze their own performance.

Make Data Valuable

If sales reps don’t derive any value from the data they record, why would they bother recording it?

Sales operations teams that try to build up sales enablement programs from scratch face a chicken-or-the-egg type question – do you dive right in and begin enabling the sales team so that they see immediate value from what you do, or do you establish a base of reliable data so that you can identify where sales enablement will have the greatest impact?

While it’s tempting to dive right in and put tools in place to improve rep performance in the short term, you risk shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t have a foundation of data.

The risk is that the tools or process changes you put in place may not meet the perceived value reps expect of them, and if you don’t have reliable data that demonstrate their impact, your reps will be even more resistant to adopting new projects in the future.

Of course, getting reps to rely on data is no easy task. The initial push for that shift has to come from the top down. Frontline reps will eventually benefit from the time they spend recording and maintaining data, but the only way to get the ball rolling is for executives and managers to enforce the mantra of “If it isn’t recorded, it didn’t happen.”The mistake that derails most companies’ attempts at data-driven sales enablement is that they never train individual reps to leverage data to analyze their own performance.


However, there is a right way and a wrong way to adopt a data-driven culture.

The wrong type of data-driven culture uses data only as a stick. In this scenario managers rely on sales ops to deliver daily activity reports, and then hit reps over the head with their metrics without digging beyond the high-level numbers to uncover the story behind performance trends.

The right type of data-driven culture is as egalitarian as possible – sales data is available to everyone, and managers help reps to interpret data and make changes on their own, as opposed to using the numbers to menace reps who fall short of their goals.

Analytics tools help speed the transition to the right type of data-driven culture by packaging and delivering raw data to reps in a format they can use. By reducing the steps between entering data in a CRM system and extracting it in a format that helps win more deals, you incentivize reps to spend time recording and curating their data.

Once sales reps have bought in to the value of the data-driven approach to sales, the next step towards the scientific approach to sales enablement is to set a standard for communicating with data.

Make Data Valuable


Sales performance data really gains value once sales reps begin thinking about their opportunities in objective, numerical terms and stop relying on feelings and intuition.

Communicate With Data

Access to data takes the subjectivity out of the sales process.

The conversation between reps and managers changes from “I have a good feeling about this deal” to “I’ve worked ‘X’ deals of this size in the past year, and I’ve won ‘Y’ percentage of them once they reach this stage.”

If managers and reps disagree over tactical matters such as whether a deal is worth pursuing or if their pipeline is large enough to hit quota, they should be turning to the database for objective answers.

Eventually, this emphasis on the numbers shifts the behavior of the entire sales team.

They stop wasting time on deals that they have little chance of winning, they make phone calls and send emails when they have the highest likelihood of connecting with prospects, and they are able to forecast more accurately as a group because they know what deals they can expect to close.


That behavioral shift eases sales enablement efforts by improving the accuracy of sales performance data and increasing visibility into the state of the sales process. Instead of receiving general complaints that “The CRM workflow is too much of a time sink,” or “It’s taking my reps too long to put proposals together,” sales operations has concrete directives from the data to work with.

Without clear, objective input, the sales ops team has to expend a lot of effort to cut through the noise and dig to the heart of where the inefficiencies are in the sales process. This brings the sales team one step closer to a truly methodical, measurable sales process that will optimize performance.

However, effective sales enablement requires resources from outside the scope of the sales team as well. Once you have the sales team on board with the data-driven approach to sales, the next question is how can you marshal resources from other departments to support their needs?

Communicate With Data


When it comes to coordinating sales enablement with other departments, data is a double-edged sword.

When everyone is looking at the same information and interpreting it the same way, sales performance data tells a powerful story that motivates other departments to contribute resources to the cause .

Develop Alignment

At the end of the day, you’re all on the same team, and you’re all out of a job if the sales team fails.

However, data can also drive a wedge between teams. The distinction to keep in mind is that siloed data harms alignment efforts, whereas a shared database supports alignment and enablement efforts. The ever-raging battle between sales and marketing departments is a classic example of siloed data damaging the interests of the company as a whole.

If sales teams miss their revenue goals, the default response is to accuse marketing of not delivering enough high-quality leads. Naturally, marketers are quick to point out that they delivered the required number of leads, but they don’t necessarily track the conversion of those leads into opportunities and deals.

Each department only tracks the metrics that are most pertinent to its own goals, and gives the most weight to data that shows it is matching or surpassing its goals.

The tribalism that ensues generally drives each group to invest even more heavily into assessing what’s working on its own side of the building, instead of aligning its goals to improve the process as a whole.


A shared database resolves this problem by eliminating the silos — everyone has to face the cold hard truth in the numbers. When marketers have data showing that the majority of leads they send over never convert to deals and waste the sales team’s time, they are more likely to adjust their tactics to accommodate the needs of the sales team.

Moreover, shared data creates accountability within the sales team. Reps and managers have to shoulder blame and look for ways to improve when the numbers show that it’s their performance that is leaving them short of their number.

Once the sales operations team can coordinate resources from every department to support the sales team, it has the foundation of data it needs to launch effective sales enablement projects.

The next step is figuring out how to measure the flow of opportunities through the sales process. To do this, you will need to identify the key metrics that expose and prioritize the most damaging inefficiencies in your company’s sales process.

Develop Alignment

12Leveraging Key Metrics

Leveraging Key Metrics

Section / / 2


Summary

Once you’ve established a reliable foundation of sales performance data, the next step towards optimizing sales performance is to map out the behavior of your ideal buyer. After all, the whole point of gathering data is to understand how reps can manage their pipeline to make every prospect follow the same pattern of behavior as those buyers.

Uncovering this fundamental insight into your sales performance is the most valuable contribution the sales operations team can make to its company’s sales efforts. To get to the heart of what motivates your buyers and understand what activities will spur action, you need to look at the right metrics.

The next section walks through 3 of the most powerful metrics sales ops teams should track to understand and guide buyer behavior.

• Sales Funnel Conversion Rates• Sales Cycle• Win Factors


Sales Funnel Conversion Rates

What is it? Sales funnel conversion rates are the percentage of opportunities that progress to each stage of your company’s sales process. They are calculated by dividing the number of opportunities in each stage of your sales process by the total number of opportunities that enter the sales funnel.

How it Exposes Buyer Behavior: By breaking your sales process into well-defined stages, it’s easy to get a high level view of where opportunities are falling out of the pipeline. This structure is vital for pinpointing the stages in your sales process that need the most improvement, and for establishing benchmarks designed to improve very targeted sections of the sales process.

How it Improves Performance: Conversion rates are the bread and butter of data-driven sales enablement. They allow reps to quickly visualize the state of the sales process as a whole, and ask for coaching or additional tools to help them improve on the stages where they are losing the most opportunities. The conversion rates also give sales teams the ability to shape strategy on a higher level by showing exactly how opportunities progress once the sales team begins working on them. Finally, conversion rates maintain the sales process by acting as red flags when the sales team struggles to move opportunities from one specific stage to the next.


Sales Cycle

What is it? At its most basic, the sales cycle is simply the span of time from when an opportunity is opened to the date that it is closed. A more powerful method for measuring your company’s sales cycle is to break it down into the time that opportunities spend in each stage.

How it exposes buyer behavior: Looking at the amount of time that won opportunities spend in each stage of your sales process arms you with a roadmap for how you can expect buyers to behave. Segmenting opportunities by deal size, industry, region, or other relevant characteristics, also helps determine what type of behavior you should expect when you sell to companies that share similar traits in the future.

How it improves performance: Sales cycles are also a powerful tool for sales ops teams to identify inefficiencies in the sales process that they can automate streamline with sales enablement tools. On a more tactical level, sales cycle analysis provides reps with very specific, actionable takeaways about how they can spend their time most effectively when they work with prospects – historical sales cycles help them set expectations, establish a time frame for closing that matches previous closed-won opportunities, and keep the ball rolling when an opportunity stalls.


Win Factors

What is it? Win factors are a more granular look at win rates, which are calculated by dividing the number of opportunities the sales team has won by the total number of opportunities they work. Win factors go one step further by segmenting individual and team win rates by a third variable such as product type or geography.

How it exposes buyer behavior: By looking at the percentage of opportunities your sales team wins based on headcount, company structure, type of funding, etc., you can quickly paint a picture of what type of prospect your reps should be focusing their time on, and hone your sales process to maximize their ability to win opportunities that are in their sweet spot.

How it improves performance: This metric is especially useful for managers as they decide how to organize their team and distribute opportunities. For individual reps who own pipeline, win rates serve as scorecards that show where their strengths are, and where they need to seek additional coaching and resources. Most importantly, win rates help reps build out detailed buyer profiles and identify the exact problems that companies are purchasing your product to solve.

17Implementing Targeted Sales Enablement

Implementing Targeted Sales Enablement

Section / / 3


Summary

Up to this point, the work you’ve completed to improve the sales team has all been focused on building a framework to measure performance. The final step in scientific sales enablement is to use that framework to identify concrete projects that will help reps to influence buyer behavior.

Sales enablement is a gradual, iterative process, and the key to executing it effectively is to pinpoint inefficiencies and measure progress as you go. Again, this approach is no silver bullet, but these incremental improvements are the surest road to an optimized sales process.

The final section of this eBook walks through the tactical decisions that enable sales operations teams to optimize sales performance on each of the three key metrics.

• Improving conversion rates• Shortening the sales cycle• Increasing win rates


Improving Conversion Rates

Conversion rates provide a comprehensive view of your sales team’s effectiveness, and show you exactly where your reps will benefit the most from sales enablement.The specific solutions for improving conversion rates vary depending on where the majority of opportunities are falling out of your company’s sales process. Broadly speaking, improvements in conversion methodology can be focused on three areas:

1. TOP-OF-THE-FUNNEL LEADSThe key to improving conversion near the top of the funnel is to refine your company’s prospecting strategy, so that your sales reps spend the majority of their time interacting with companies that are a good fit for your product. It’s good to cast a wide net at the top of the funnel – there should be a lot of opportunities that drop out in the early stages of your sales process – but if the net gets too wide, your reps end up wasting time pursuing and qualifying prospects that won’t ever buy.

2. ENGAGED OPPORTUNITIESEngaged opportunities are companies that are actively involved with your sales team and seriously evaluating your company’s product. Improving conversion rates at this stage of the process comes down to delivering the right message. Your sales reps have to effectively empathize with prospects’ needs, understand the business pain prospects are trying to solve, and prove that your product is the best fit.

3. LATE STAGE OPPORTUNITIESThe bottom of the funnel is where the skill of individual sales reps really comes to the fore, so the tools that are most valuable are the ones that automate repetitive tasks and make the closing process as smooth as possible.

Top-of-the-funnel leadsTop-of-the-funnel leads

Engaged Opportunities Engaged Opportunities

Late Stage OpportunitiesLate Stage Opportunities


Shortening the Sales Cycle

Analytics plays an important role for companies following either of these approaches. For companies that choose to automate specific segments of the sales cycle, analytics is important for identifying which segments can easily be shortened, and for measuring the impact of tools that are put in place.

The majority of sales tools on the market are designed to shorten specific segments of the sales cycle, so when you begin evaluating ways to optimize the progression of opportunities through your sales process, you must identify the exact issue that your sales team needs to solve before investing in a tool.

For example, if the largest chunk of your sales cycle is time that your reps lose navigating accounts and trying to get in front of decision makers, the sales operations team should evaluate tools that will help their reps to cut through the hierarchy of their target companies and get in front of the right set of decision makers earlier on in the sales process.

Motivating buyers to move quickly is more challenging, because you have to deal with variables that are outside of your sales team’s direct control. Even the best sales reps in the world lose deals because something unexpected happens to change their prospects’ decision at the last minute.

Shaving days off your sales cycle is a matter of automating and simplifying repetitive tasks and

finding ways to influence prospects’ behavior.


Shortening the Sales Cycle

Minimizing the impact of these unexpected changes is contingent on your ability to glean information from your historical performance. It’s possible to create a framework of activities based on previous closed-won opportunities that your sales team can follow to minimize the number of variables that are outside of their control.

Analytics tools are even more pivotal in this regard because they enable your reps to quickly sort through their own historical performance, identify opportunities they won in the past that are similar to their current opportunities, and correct course earlier in the sales process if they notice that that their current opportunities are slipping off course.

If reps can’t easily pull reports and identify the opportunities that need the most work to move forward, they won’t take action in time to save them.


Every rep on your sales team has a sweet spot. One may excel at winning complex, long term, enterprise opportunities, while another is an expert at churning through more transactional, mid-market deals with shorter sales cycles.

Win rates are the most direct reflection of individual rep performance, so improving your team’s performance in this area hinges on your ability to improve on specific win factors. The first step is to figure out what the specific win factors are that contribute the most to your reps’ ability to win deals.

Managers can intuitively point to each of their reps’ strengths and weaknesses, but it takes a lot of time and effort to compare every member of the sales team on their success with deals of different sizes, from different industries, in different geographic locations, or any number of relevant factors that might impact an opportunity.

Analytics complement sales managers’ intuition by crunching the numbers and making it easy to dig down and quickly identify win factors for each individual rep and for the sales team as a whole.

By revealing what makes each rep successful, analytics also pull back the curtain on where the weaknesses are in the overall sales process, and provide the sales operations team with more insight into which areas will benefit the most from sales enablement projects.

Maximizing Win Factors

The key to increasing team win rate is to identify each rep’s sweet spot and position them to focus on

opportunities that fall in their strike zone.

23Conclusion

Conclusion

Sales organizations shouldn’t rely on instinct. Consistent sales growth results from a measurable, adjustable process, and the ability to observe and test what activities have the greatest impact on your prospects’ buying behavior. The scientific approach to sales enablement is the only sure way to develop that process.

Sales enablement is, at its core, the art of influencing behavior. Companies that attain consistent year-over-year revenue growth are able to do so by developing a framework that presents each company they engage with the same buying experience. They develop a sales machine that they can take apart, adjust, and modify to maximize their impact on the buying decisions of their prospects.

That framework is constructed from hard data, and your ability to optimize your sales process hinges on your ability to access that data. Analytics are the core of sales enablement because they make buying behavior visible and measurable. Your approach to sales has to constantly evolve to be effective – make sure you have the information you need to evolve intelligently.

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