How do you test and validate your sales enablement buyer persona and journey assumptions and hypotheses?

Understanding the nuances of your ideal customer profile (ICP) is like holding a treasure map where X marks the spot of untapped sales potential for your B2B enterprise A strong hypothesis is easy to test. It shouldn’t take you much time to design a research study to validate or invalidate your hypothesis. If your hypothesis is invalidated by users, don’t feel disheartened. You’ve stopped precious Engineering time being spent on building a solution that simply doesn’t solve users’ problems. A good measure of being iterative is throwing something away because user research proved that it wasn’t going to work. Finally, build an ROI (or TCO) Calculator. This becomes a clarifying exercise. Technology bridges that gap & make it a non-manual

An example from my experience for better understanding about ?? Validating Sales Enablement Assumptions? Strong buyer personas and journey maps are crucial for sales enablement success. But how do you ensure your assumptions are on point? 1. Conduct customer interviews to validate persona & journey stages. 2. Analyze win/loss data to understand buying behaviors. 3. Get feedback from your sales reps on the accuracy of the personas. 4. Leverage data to track buyer behavior and refine your content strategy. By actively testing your assumptions, you can ensure your sales enablement efforts are targeting the right buyers with the right message at the right time.

Define your assumptions and find historical (several Q worth) data to see how your organization has been performing against those KPIs. This will inform your “going forward” hypotheses. Determine your future goals: “our goal is to improve Leads to Closed Won rates by x%”, etc. Meet with Closed Won (and Closed Lost) customers and ask what you did well and what you can improve. Ensure customer success in the first 90 days and document that success with an interview, video, whitepaper. Great for sharing internally and with prospects! Finally, build an ROI (or TCO) Calculator. This becomes a clarifying exercise. Building one of these is possible only if you know your product and have a good handle on the pain points solved.

Understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) is like holding a treasure map with an X marking the spot of untapped sales potential for your B2B business. Testing a strong hypothesis is straightforward – it’s like conducting a quick experiment to see if your idea flies or flops. If your hypothesis doesn’t hold up, don’t sweat it. You’ve just saved valuable Engineering time by avoiding a solution that doesn’t address user needs. Embracing the iterative process means occasionally tossing out ideas that don’t work. Lastly, build an ROI (or TCO) Calculator. It’s like using a GPS to clarify the value of your solution, turning complex calculations into a breeze with technology.

Make sure that one of your key resources is your sales team. You want to illicit candid feedback from everyone on your team that touches a prospect or existing customer on a day-to-day and weekly basis. There is no better way to develop your ideal customer persona than to learn about the actual needs, decision criteria as well as potential obstacles to achieving a sale with new prospects and existing customers. This can be done in a survey-type format with a free solution such a Survey Monkey, where they can submit what will likely be a variety of answers to the same set of questions anonymously.

Ask open ended questions to understand customer painpoints, challenges, preferences and behaviors. Analyze their responses against your Sales Enablement buyer personas and journey assumptions. How are they similar? How are they different? Use what you learn and update the buyer personas and journey assumptions. You can use surveys and in person interviews to acomplish this. Share your findings with the Sales and Marketing Teams.

Win stories and loss stories are critical to any persona design. This is an area i often link to chess. The gold in persona understanding in loss reviews. You learn much more here than win reviews in the back end. Win reviews are mainstay in nearly any company where as loss reviews can be more rare

Be wary of the accuracy of qualitative direct research like surveys and interviews. No matter how they're designed they have inbuilt bias, even beyond question design – i.e. somebody agreeing to do it in the first place represents a different mindset to those who don't (the majority). Instead, mine your call data for insights. Your GTM team have a high volume of conversations with all personas every day, use that. It's authentic. Technology can bridge that gap and make it a non-manual exercise...

Collect direct and in-depth insights from your actual and potential buyers, as well as stakeholders like influencers, decision-makers, and users. Use methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and observations to gather detailed feedback and opinions. Ask open-ended and probing questions to explore their needs, challenges, preferences, and behaviors, as well as their perceptions and expectations of your solution. This qualitative approach provides valuable context and nuance, helping to validate and refine your sales enablement buyer personas and journey assumptions effectively.

Think of analyzing sales enablement data like assembling a puzzle. ?? Use affinity diagrams to spot patterns and journey maps to weave these into narratives. Empathy maps add emotional intelligence, letting us step into our buyers' shoes. ??♂??? Cross-referencing these insights with existing data is crucial. It's a reality check and an opportunity-spotter. This isn't a one-time task but an ongoing cycle - continuously refine and adapt your strategies. In sales, today's breakthrough is tomorrow's old news! ??

You want to compare the data you are gathering with existing sales opportunity, sales forecasting and actual order data you have available to you. Look for trends such as buying reasons and objections (e.g. Closed Won/Lost Reasons, customer survey feedback, etc.) If little or none of this information is available, or there are major gaps in the data, address the issue with Sales Operations and Management. Recommend adjustments that can be made to the CRM and/or ERP systems so the reasons why deals are being won or lost are recorded. This crucial data should be tracked and made a data requirement when confirming a sale has taken place or when a prospect decides not to move forward.

Share the buyer personas, ICPs and Journeys with Team, with the Sales and Marketing Team. Have the Sales Team build presentations and targeting strategies with select customers. Measure the success by appointments generated and sales closed.

Analyzing and synthesizing findings is a crucial step in validating sales enablement buyer persona and journey assumptions. Qualitative research, organizing and interpreting data is key. Patterns, themes, and insights to validate or invalidate hypotheses. Affinity diagrams, personas, journey maps, and empathy maps are instrumental in visualizing and communicating these findings. They help understand the buyer's perspective and behavior patterns. Moreover, comparing these findings with existing data is essential. It reveals gaps or discrepancies, offering a deeper understanding of the customer journey. This comparison helps refine buyer personas and journey maps, ensuring they accurately represent the target audience's needs and behaviors.

Turn Insights into Actionable Strategies! Organize and interpret the data from your qualitative research, looking for patterns, themes, and insights to validate or invalidate your assumptions and hypotheses. Utilize tools like affinity diagrams, personas, journey maps, and empathy maps to visualize and communicate your findings. Compare and contrast these insights with your existing data to identify gaps or discrepancies. This thorough analysis ensures your sales enablement strategy is based on comprehensive and accurate buyer personas and journey mappings, enabling you to make informed, effective decisions.

Test out your assumptions and hypotheses with sales team members at all levels. Getting their feedback can help you to further refine your recommendations, and make sure that what you propose and present is relevant to them. The ultimate goal of sales enablement is for the entire sales team to embrace and adopt new processes and strategies to help them close deals more effectively, and to help improve marketing and prospecting efforts. Asking for their opinion, will go a long way in gaining their full buy-in later on in the process. It may be tempting to skip the step, but the last thing you want is to get serious pushback during the implementation phase because you did not involve the sales team early enough in the process.

Refine and Elevate Your Strategy?? Revise and improve your assumptions and hypotheses based on your findings to accurately reflect the reality and complexity of your buyers and their journey. Prioritize the most critical and impactful assumptions that will guide your sales enablement strategy and tactics. Document and share these updates with your sales team and other stakeholders, and actively solicit their feedback and input. This ongoing refinement ensures your strategy remains dynamic, informed, and aligned with the evolving needs of your target audience, driving more effective sales outcomes.

Work closely with sales management and sales leadership to incorporate the right sales Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) in your sales enablement strategy and explain how you plan to measure success. Do your best to synthesize KPI’s across the sales organization. If needed, make recommendations to improve data consistency and eliminate process bottlenecks that prevent the data from being collected at the time a sale is confirmed or when a potential sale is lost. It is crucial that sales team members understand why they need to enter this data to begin with and that sales management facilitates these efforts. Otherwise, data gaps will continue, and trending data will be difficult to produce in the future.

This is where you put your assumptions to the test. Implement your sales enablement strategy, but don't just set it and forget it. Measure, measure, measure! Track your results and see how they align with your assumptions. Are you hitting the mark or missing the target? Tip: Use analytics tools to track key metrics like conversion rates, engagement, and sales.

Implementing and measuring your sales enablement strategy is essential ??. By applying updated assumptions to equip your sales team with tailored content, tools, and training, they can effectively engage buyers at every journey stage. Crucially, it's about monitoring outcomes like sales performance and customer satisfaction. Metrics such as conversion rates, win rates, revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and net promoter score are vital in measuring success. They're not just numbers; they're the pulse of your strategy's health ??. This data-driven approach ensures your strategy stays dynamic and responsive to market changes.

Found that most companies I work with still fall well below the average amount of buyers engaged is well below what HBR and other reports suggest they should be. This can often be because roles like the user buyer are underrated. Tracking the average number of buyers and seeing correlation with revenue is a cute way to build the business case for ICP importance in Enablement programs

Execute and Optimize for Success! Apply your updated assumptions and hypotheses to design and deliver the right content, tools, and training to your sales team. Enable them to engage buyers effectively at each stage of their journey. Monitor and evaluate results and outcomes, focusing on metrics like sales performance, customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. Use indicators such as conversion rates, win rates, revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and net promoter score to measure success. This continuous monitoring ensures your sales enablement strategy is effective and allows for ongoing optimization to achieve better results.

Create a reasonable cadence (6-12 months) to measure success and gives you the time you need to plan and implement new strategies. Treat each new iteration of your sales enablement strategy, as if it were a brand new roll out. Remember, ultimately, the success of a sales enablement strategy comes down to whether or not you achieve buy-in from the sales team. They have to do what you are suggesting in order for you and sales management to see any improvements. Sales enablement is always a team effort. Keep the Sales Team involved throughout the process and incorporate their feedback whenever possible. Everyone wants to work smarter not harder, and you can help make that a reality as a partner for your sales team.

Iterate based on recent historical company performance data. Give iterations sufficient runway to succeed - don't expect 4 weeks to see changes. Keep asking questions: 1. Is my product stable? Do customers renew? How do industry analysts rank us? 2. Is there a product-market fit for my company’s product? What's the customer acquisition cost (CAC)? 3. Is the sales team stable - higher churn rates make it difficult for Enablement content to "stick" - and make it difficult to baseline past performance or figure out if we’re improving over past performance. 4. Are we targeting Enterprise and Mid-Market companies or SMB? SMB focused companies may be fine with SDR driven, smaller deals- therefore, the appetite to test iterations may not exist.

In the ever-evolving sales landscape, it's like playing a game of chess ???. You've got to think three moves ahead and be ready to pivot. Iteration is key ??! It's not just about adapting; it's about staying ahead of the game.