Sales Enablement: The Cost of a Tarnished Silver Bullet

As sales leaders, we are constantly on the lookout for that silver bullet which will transform our sales teams in to super A-players with no ego and a perfect track record of using your CRM system of choice.

And there are many providers of methodologies, tools, software and services that aim to convince you that they can sell you the silver bullet you need. As sales people, we are inclined to be quite easy to sell to, and those vendors with promises of new ways to win large deals are likely to get some of our attention.

As we start to explore the latest promises for sales team transformation, the business case also starts to develop, and the better vendors will have plenty of examples to help us convince a finance director to make a new investment. Although we might start with a pilot program, to test the veracity of a vendor’s claims, we have already mostly convinced ourselves that this will be the path to those long overdue mega-deals.

The pilot is delivered. We focus on the positive results and supportive feedback in order to validate our own great judgement. A big commitment is made in terms of budget, effort and time. Our new competitive differentiator is on its way.

Or is it?

By Now, We Should Know The Reality.

A new methodology is not going to significantly transform your sales team. A new app for a tablet or other mobile device might add some value until the novelty wears off. Those on-line research tools will offer some interesting insight that only a few will use for any length of time. Neuroscience tips and tricks might be adopted by some, and then used poorly. Negotiation skills and financial acumen training will reinforce existing capabilities in your top talent and perhaps give some clues to the A-player wannabes.

The actual cost of introducing a new methodology to a modest-size company can be significant. Apart from the actual cost of licensing, training, updates, refresh training, and training for a constant stream of new hires, there are bigger costs associated with time out of the field.  The cost of productivity can also be seriously impacted as a new methodology is being introduced. For a 1,000-person sales team with an annual revenue of $750m, a total three year cost for introducing a new methodology could be in the region of $30m.

Challenges occur when the vendor-promised sales team transformation fails to materialise, which will inevitably be the case. Why inevitable? Because humans do not fully adopt new concepts after a day or two of training. Do you remember being at school and endlessly repeating your “2 x table?” It is that repetition that causes you to know and do things automatically. If you drive a manual car, do you remember when you were learning to drive, and had to think about when to change gear? Now you do it completely automatically; but it took a lot of practice to get there.

Why do we believe that by going through a workshop, lasting no more than two days, we can transform a sales force in to being multi-million-dollar sellers? It is completely unrealistic.

Rinse and Repeat

The person who initiated this entire program, the one who went to the finance director, presented a business case, secured the budget, developed the vendor relationship, and was executive sponsor for delivery, is seeing his business case fall apart, as the vendor-promised results fail to materialise. Reasons will be developed, and the vendor may well be re-engaged to refresh or tweak the training program in the hope of a better outcome. When those results fail to appear, blame will start to be applied to the methodology itself. It might suddenly become too simple or too complex for the company’s sales team.

Perhaps a different methodology is required.

A team is put on the case, and the offerings of other vendors are explored, options are reviewed, and a business case is prepared for the finance director who, some years after the previous request, will commit to a new budget, one that abandons the previous methodology and sets the company “on the right track” with an offering considered a better fit.

And the cycle starts again. We are in a spin cycle, repeating similar behaviour over time, and gaining only modest improvements.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: who has been a part of such a scenario?

What Options Exist?

We all face periods when we need to do something significant to boost sales performance. Before we go rushing in to a proof of concept for the latest sales enablement gizmo, let’s remember what we, as sales leaders, need to achieve:

• Meet, or ideally exceed, our financial goals;
• Maintain a high-quality level of pipeline visibility and predictability;
• Always be looking for the best answer to the question, “Why should our customer buy from us, now?”

Everything we do, all the sales enablement that gets provided, any methodology that is introduced, and any CRM system that is launched, should aim to help us achieve these three things.

Why do we need a methodology? I have seen some quite heated debates about whether this tool is critical for a high performing sales team.  My belief is that it is needed. My reasons for believing this are:

• Sales managers and their teams need to speak a common language;
• We need to understand, and agree on, the maturity of an opportunity, so that we can determine what needs to be done to take it to the next stage, and, ultimately, to close the deal;
• We need to maintain a certain level of quality in each opportunity; quality of process, quality of communication, quality of customer interaction.

A methodology can provide these things, but the success of introducing such a tool is dependent on adoption and top-down sponsorship. If your second-line sales managers, VPs of Sales, and any more senior, sales-oriented executives, are not speaking the same language, and expecting their teams to speak that language, the introduction of the methodology will not live up to expectations.

The Role of Sales Enablement

The functional unit usually responsible for delivering training on products and sales skills, including how to make best use of a methodology, is the Sales Enablement team. Any selling organisation expecting to develop a competitive advantage from its sales team, needs a Sales Enablement function. But there are things to consider: Sales Enablement teams typically measure their success by delivering content. If 100% of a sales force is pushed through a negotiation skills class, for example, the Sales Enablement team can tick a box: job done. To me, this is a huge opportunity to develop your Sales Enablement team as a competitive advantage. Don’t be satisfied with content delivery as a KPI.  There is a need for shared responsibility and accountability for the effectiveness of any content delivered. 

Align the Sales Enablement team’s KPIs with sales team revenue goals and see how the quality and delivery of content transforms. Taking such a path can be evolutionary.

Product Management Influence

There is another consideration.

If you work for a company that is made up of more than one product business unit, it is not uncommon for the revenue goals of the BU to drive sales team behaviour. As such, the BU is also inclined to drive the development and delivery of sales enablement content.  This can be good and bad; good because you are unlikely to find any better product training material. Bad because the BU will be focused exclusively on selling their product.

There might also be a sense of competing for the time and attention of sales teams, with the other product business units, something that will leave sales teams frustrated and often confused; the last thing sales leaders need.

I have also found that those who live in a product engineering world are often inclined to lack sufficient appreciation for customer need and tend to focus on attempting to wow their target market with features and functions. This level of conversation will keep sales teams at the practitioner level and will not allow the opportunity to access bigger budgets for higher value solutions. If your company is serious about growing deal sizes, representing three or more products from your portfolio, and establishing your company as a strategic competitive differentiator for your customers, you must invest time to understand how your customers can benefit from your products in measurable business terms.

The Pros and Cons of Saving Costs

When exploring this direction, it is inevitable that you settle on a benefit that is common to so many vendors; cost saving. Look across B2B vendors everywhere and it will not take long to find some messaging to suggest that their products help customers save money. This is not a bad thing, but it is not a complete story. No company saves money for no reason. A CFO may decide to save money in one part of his organisation, in order to be able to reinvest it elsewhere.  Having spoken to many CFOs over the years, their comments are identical; we are less concerned about saving money, and we are more interested in understanding how to spend our money better. How can your Sales Enablement team help you further develop your selling style to encapsulate this line of conversation? How can your sales teams develop the confidence and comfort to move away from sales pitches, and move towards business conversations?

If you take your cost-saving business conversation further, and get in to detail about how your customer will then spend what they have saved, you are developing a far more complete story and vision for them; you are building a more compelling reason for them to buy from you now.

Some Basic Expectations for Effective Sales Enablement

As you can see, this is a lengthy conversation, and there is much more to discuss and debate. The point, though, is that when making decisions on how to improve your sales performance, take the time to first understand what you need to achieve as a sales team, to answer that one question: Why should your customer buy from you, now? Consider who you are selling to and why they should consider you to be relevant to them. All these things can be achieved smartly and cost-effectively, without what might seem to be an endless investment in the latest Sales Enablement offerings.

Some may argue that selling has changed over the years; sure, to a degree it has, caused largely by the massive volume of information now available with a few taps on your mobile device. Fundamentally, though, selling comes down to trust; the customer’s belief that you can help them make a professional and personal difference.

If your Sales Enablement team, and your tools and processes are aligned in helping you achieve that, you are on the right path.