ChowNow was looking to elevate and grow its sales training program using Mindtickle. Cole Lindbergh, Sales Enablement Manager, Revenue Operations at ChowNow, talks about his experience with Mindtickle. While they were already using Mindtickle’s revenue productivity platform for its sales training, they’re now starting to use the Readiness Index to build an overall curriculum that goes beyond asking sellers to watch videos and take a quiz. They’re also using Mindtickle to get more insights into what makes sellers successful by building out ideal rep profiles (IRPs), which helps them identify the winning behaviors of top reps and gaps in sellers who might be struggling.
Cole talks through how he’s used learnings from the IRP and Readiness Index to inform his sales training strategy and how he’s tying sales training programs to revenue impact at ChowNow. Specifically, he outlines how they’ve been able to shrink onboarding time by two business days and get reps to their first deal faster using Mindtickle.
Key highlights
Using Mindtickle as its LMS but looking to expand its sales training curriculum beyond quizzing and videos
Looking at the Readiness Index and ideal rep profiles to understand what makes sellers tick and what separates high performers from the rest
Working with managers on sales coaching opportunities
Focusing on showing how sales training has an impact on business growth
Shrunk onboarding time from 8 days to six
Video transcription
Right now we’re using Mindtickle a lot of different ways. We’re leveraging in a lot of different ways. We’re obviously using it as our Learning Management System. We are doing training through it, we are doing assessments through it. We use missions, which is a lot of fun. But we’re looking to kind of grow on that too.
We’ve just started going down the Readiness Index path. We’re looking at coaching sessions, we’re looking at Quests, we’re looking at all these different things to try and really make our training more than just, “Hey, I’m gonna sit down, watch a video, and take a quiz.”
The whole idea here is, is that we want to try to build an overall curriculum. And when you build an overall curriculum, that doesn’t just mean you watch your video and take a quiz, right? You want to have feedback, you want to see how you’re performing, it’s others, you want to learn how I can do better.
I’m excited about the things that Mindtickle is doing because it’s ultimately going to set us up to be able to have so much more insight into really what makes our sellers tick, what makes them great sellers, or how can they improve. For me, how can I make my training better, right?
Sales enablement plays a huge role in that a lot of our training is built around trying to emulate those that are top performers. Looking at ideal rep profiles, looking at the type of things that. How can I replicate what a rep is doing very well, and bring it over to someone else?
And having an ideal rep profile, like, “Hey, this is the person that’s excelling. They’re taking the trainings, they’re doing great, and coaching sessions, they’re hitting their day, their deals, that’s awesome.” Looking at the ideal rep profile, now I can start to identify, you know, hey, this person is doing really well on these types of trainings. This person is not, is there a correlation there.
If I can go to a sales manager and say, “Hey, your rep is exceeding in all these different areas, and this rep is not, what can we do to change that? If we’re able to focus on those little things? Can we make it better? Can we get them up to quota? Can we get them to close more deals?”
I’m a true believer in explaining the positives. Let’s look at the positives and see if they’re doing well. But then let’s work on those negatives and try to bring them up to speed to create a more well-rounded rep, in the long run, things because well-rounded rep, or sales or money. That’s it’s, it’s the never-ending sight.
Now we’re looking at more of these competencies. Ideas like these KPIs around training and these KPIs around competency and Readiness Index, I’m hoping are going to be that thing that ultimately brings that to us. I mean, we’re all trying to drive revenue, like we’re all trying to drive more sales.
At the end of the day, if I can show some level of how our training is affecting the overall growth of the company, and driving more sales, that ultimately is going to put me in a better position. There is this idea of if I can clone the great rap. And that’s like winning, and I can replicate that across others. That’s going to drive more sales.
By doing a formalized onboarding, we were able to increase the time that a rep got to their first deal significantly, you know, normally it was like, 6-8 weeks, somewhere in that range. And we were able to get to 3-4 weeks. And that’s including training time. That’s strictly just because we were setting the reps up for success from the get-go.
There is an entire world of additional learnings and additional resources that are available to you to continue to grow upon that. So we’ve actually kind of shrunk some of our onboarding time, in some instances, just because of simple fact. We have the ability now to like, refer you back to a specific training or for you. We’re doing an eight-day onboarding. And now we’re down to eight business days and now we’re down to six. So we cut two days. It’s an extra two days, not only on the field, but like extra two days to meet more people.
The ChowNow and Mindtickle Story
Want to learn more about how ChowNow is building out its sales training program using Mindtickle?
Finastra, a leading global banking software company, partners with Mindtickle to optimize sales training and drive success. With 90 of the top 100 banks relying on Finastra, their 600-member sales team undergoes 20 comprehensive training programs worldwide. Director of Sales Training, Dan Storey, highlights the transformative power of Mindtickle’s Sales Readiness Index in assessing training impact. By leveraging Missions and multi-choice assessments, Finastra measures training retention and application within its sales force.
Key highlights
Missions and multi-choice assessments help the Finastra team understand if go-to-market programs are working and transferring knowledge effectively
Utilizing Mindtickle Professional Services to identify their ideal rep profile so those core competencies can be built into their go-to-market training
Sharing Mindtickle reporting with the C-suite helps them make judgments based on performance and take corrective action
Video transcription
We’re using Mindtickle to assess our sales training platform, our sales training knowledge, and our enablement program. So largely, we’re using the Missions and multichoice assessments on the learning side, to really understand if our go-to-market programs are working if they’re being effective if we’re transfer, transferring the knowledge across. And really, ultimately, if sales were able to articulate that when they get into the field.
We’re using the Mindtickle Readiness Index, and we’ve got a fairly complex go-to-market knowledge set. We’ve got seven different criteria that we’re assessing across multi-choice quizzes across Missions. Ultimately, we’re using that to predict pipeline generation and sales success later down the track, but it’s really the Missions and the multi-choice assessments are able to fully understand how much of the training that we’re doing is sticking with our salespeople, and then how much they’re able to apply.
We’re working with a professional services team to figure out what our ideal profile is, we know we’ve got knowledge competencies. We’ve definitely defined those and they’re built into our go-to-market program. What we’re now working on is their kind of skill competencies is difficult for us, we’ve got a very long sales process, very established salespeople we’ve been selling for 10-15 years. So it’s challenging for the experienced ones.
But for newer salespeople, like our sales development reps, we’ve got very clear track skills that we want them to cover. And we’ve got a two-year development path that we’re able to help build that over an app starts with their onboarding, but also go through a number of certification programs where we use Missions and knowledge checks along the way to make sure they’re meeting the kind of benchmarks at each stage of that career journey. What we are able to do on some of the factor elements is at least identify trends with our performance. So some top performers are using and engaging with the content, some of our low performers are not engaging with the content.
We’re able to identify that and then share that insight with the leadership team. And then they can make judgments based on performance based on what they’re seeing. We’re already seeing these anecdotal elements where we can make corrective behavior in the sales teams. So the impact that we’ve been able to have so far is to have about a 70% reduction on global go-to-market training.
I’ve been in the company just over a year when I inherited the team. The first question I was asked is, “We just did our global go-to-market training, did it work?” My question back was, “What did you measure when there weren’t any measures in place?” So this is the reason why we brought my Mindtickle to measure that.
We have a global sales team of about five 600 people all in 20 different programs that we’re running globally, and we had no way to correlate or compare the impact of training, we spent 1000s and 1000s of man hours training people without any impacts or measurement on the effectiveness of that. So what we’ve done is, you know, if we think about Kirkpatrick is we’ve gone to learning, and we can now define what people have learned as a result of the training.
Ultimately, the components of that how that’s going to predict behavior. So, so far level learning. So level two on Kirkpatrick, we have got level three in terms of behavior, so Missions and things to see if people can articulate it, which I think is a lot better than we were so we know that the go-to-market programs have been effective at transferring knowledge. Now we just have to see if that knowledge is turning into results.
How do you measure Sales Enablement?
Learn more about the Sales Readiness Index and how it's helping sales enablement and RevOps leaders prove the value of their efforts, improve seller productivity, and drive revenue.
Using inclusive language has become an increasingly important skill in modern society and it’s risen to the forefront in the past few months. Stanford University came under fire for its Harmful Language List late last year after it issued a guide meant to address harmful communications in its IT department. Although the guide itself was scrutinized, it became clear that it’s worth other teams taking a more thoughtful, more careful look at the language they use in the course of their work.
In the world of sales and revenue where people interact with one another as the majority of their job – and sometimes their success is dependent on how well they communicate – using inclusive language is a vital skill.
So what do we mean by inclusive language?
It means using words and phrases that avoid discrimination against certain groups of people, whether that is based on their gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. It also includes words or phrases used in lieu of language that is violent in nature.
Using inclusive language is about acknowledging diversity, being respectful of people’s identities and experiences, and creating a safe, welcoming environment for every prospective customer or partner.
This guide is meant to be a guide for how selling teams can become familiar with and use inclusive language so it’s a skill every seller has and it becomes engrained in your culture. In this post we’ll cover:
What are the benefits of using inclusive language in sales and customer success
Building trust and rapport with current and potential customers
If your goal is to close new or expansion opportunities, strong relationships are the bridge that gets you there. This is especially true when an organization primarily uses a consultative approach. While using inclusive language won’t be the finishing move that clinches the deal, not trainingthis skill opens reps up to the preventable risk of offending someone with a language-poor choice. Why take that chance when you can train yourself to create a warm, inviting atmosphere with your words?
Enhancing your brand reputation
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion profession saw a ton of growth in recent years, with 123% more job postings between May and September of 2020, in spite of the abrupt economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the traditional strategy to handle DE&I efforts internally for a company (hello, mandatory training and workshops) aren’t sufficient for folks who represent the company externally.
The perception of a brand is the culmination of media coverage, social media presence, industry rankings and awards, endorsements and partnerships, and word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers. That last factor is exactly why sales and customer success professionals should make the effort to incorporate inclusive language in their repertoire of external communication skills.
While using inclusive language isn’t going to be the top reason for a customer to refer you to someone in their network, being known as a company that truly embodies diversity and inclusion, including in every interaction with prospects and customers, is an excellent way to stand out. Being an easy, friendly, and invested partner to your customers starts with making everyone you work with feel seen and celebrated.
Strategies for using inclusive language
Avoiding stereotypes and generalizations
Stereotypes are often weaponized against minority groups both on an individual level, like bullying at school, and on the systemic level, like the stereotype that fathers and masculine-presenting parents are less capable of caring for children than mothers and feminine-presenting parents.
Even if you believe the stereotype is positive, like the stereotype that Asian Americans are good at math, it is much better for your relationship with your customer or prospect to get to know them as an individual, not assuming anything about where they grew up, what language they may speak, or what life experiences they may have had.
If you know something like their job title and some of the previous job titles they’ve had, it is absolutely appropriate to ask whether what you know about the responsibilities and frustrations that come with the job are accurate for them. This is a very common way to establish your experience with solving their set of business problems and is a great way to build trust and establish common ground.
Where a sales rep or CSM should tread carefully is in making any assumptions or sweeping generalizations based on:
Ethnicity
Gender presentation
Age
Size of their body
Relationship status
Instead of making those comments, be curious about the person in front of you. Here is an example of how to establish rapport with prospects in ways that avoid stereotypes and generalizations:
For example, let’s say you are trying to establish rapport with your male prospect on a Monday by talking about what you both did over the weekend, you may hear an answer like “Oh, I was able to get out on the golf course for 9 holes, which was great.”
Say this: “How did you get into golf? What part of the game do you enjoy the most?” Avoid assuming his relationship status, the gender of his partner, and avoid playing into the stereotypes.
Instead of this: “Must have been great to get away from your wife/husband/partner!”
Avoiding culturally appropriative language
One of the beautiful aspects of language is that it is constantly evolving, whether that be through its native speakers, or through the assimilation of words from other cultures and languages. Unfortunately, the use of some of those by folks who do not know the context of the original language can be disrespectful to its’ native culture.
A good example of this is the use of the word “pow-wow.” The people who use it may not have a grasp of the original meaning, “medicine man” since its history is that English colonizers misused it to refer to gatherings of Indigenous medicine men, and later to refer to any gathering of American Indians.
There is usually an easy replacement to be made. Simply ask yourself, “What word would I use if I had to explain this to a five-year-old?” If we apply this question to the word “pow-wow”, we come up with words like “meeting”, “gathering”, or “meetup.”
Acknowledging and respecting cultural differences
There is understandable confusion between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. To be sure, the diversity of human cultures is something to be celebrated. That being said, culture is not a hobby or collector’s item.
If you’re participating in a culturally significant ceremony and being asked to wear the traditional garb, make the effort to learn the history and symbolism of both. However, if you’re choosing to wear a piece inspired by a particular culture because it is trending on TikTok, rethink that decision and examine whether this trend is attempting to assign new meaning to this cultural marker.
Appreciating a culture does not have to mean wearing something. It can be awe and curiosity for important objects, understanding history, and partaking in delicious and unique foods without demeaning intentions.
Being aware of and addressing ableist language
According to the CDC, in 2022, 1 in 4 adults in the United States have some type of disability and many disabilities, such as autoimmune disorders, epilepsy, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Ableist language can be much less obvious or well-known compared to racist and sexist language. It often goes unchallenged because of the stigma disabled individuals face.
Many disabled people choose to remain silent when ableist language is used because speaking up can have social consequences in the workplace. Even in cases where someone is protected by the law, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, reporting or filing a claim against an employer is very unlikely to result in any kind of justice.
In fact, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which oversees the enforcement of the ADA, 86% of the administrative complaints resolved by the EEOC resulted in the employer’s favor.
To ensure you create a warm and welcoming environment for everyone, including the quarter of the population with disabilities, work on your awareness of commonly used ableist phrases and start replacing them with some of the alternatives provided later in this article.
Person-first language
Using person-first language means choosing language that resists defining people by a single characteristic or experience. There are individuals who do not mind having these kinds of terms applied to them and even some who may prefer them. In the same way that someone with large feet may take great offense to being called “Bigfoot,” while another may find it hilarious.
If you don’t know them very well, it’s safer not to use the term. Ultimately, seeing the person you are talking to as a whole human being in their own right, with many facets and nuances to who they are, is the path forward to creating an inclusive environment.
What to do when you make a mistake
If someone is politely pointing out a mistake you have made, it is more likely the case that they care for you rather than they have malicious intent and want to embarrass you. Confronting a person requires effort and doing so has the potential to draw out defensiveness from the other person.
These situations happen to everyone – even the most conscientious person in the world. When it does happen, take a brief pause before you respond to stave off the perfectly natural feelings of defensiveness.
Try practicing using “Oh! I’m so sorry, thank you for correcting me,” or something similar, as your go-to response, then repeat your sentence with the language adjusted and move into the rest of your conversation.
If there is more conversation needed to address the mistake, be curious and open. Express that you want to foster a safe environment in every way, including in the language you use. If someone has taught you something new, thank them, let them know that you will do better in the future, and encourage them to speak up again if you do slip up. If you catch yourself making a mistake, don’t beat yourself up over it. If you can, correct yourself lightheartedly in the moment.
For example, if you misgender someone and you catch yourself, simply say “Whoops! I mean (correct pronoun)” and continue the natural flow of conversation. You may be tempted to try to ignore your own mistake, especially if no one else brings it up, but exercising this willingness to correct yourself in front of others is admirable behavior and will garner respect from those you interact with.
We can all do better and feeling confident that you will be held accountable and can safely hold others accountable is a powerful factor in relationship building with a prospect or customer.
Common language hazards and what to say instead
Here are some, not all, of the words and phrases that you may use frequently in the context of customer and prospect interactions:
Gendered language
Ableist language
Racial or ethnic stereotypes and institutionalized racism
Ableist language
Culturally appropriative or insensitive language
Violent language
How to build inclusive language into your selling culture
Society’s definition of wrong and right will always be shifting and the language we use does, too. Taking the mindset that making simple substitutions to avoid the risk of hurting someone else will be a boon to any professional, but especially makes a difference for folks who interact with prospects and customers since building trust and a good reputation quickly is imperative to their success.
Using inclusive language is a muscle to be strengthened over time, like so many other interpersonal skills. Here are some ways to start baking it into your sales enablement efforts.
Build inclusive language training into sales training and certificationprograms
Use conversation intelligence tools to determine if additional training or competency development is needed
Arm your sellers with sales content that’s reflective of inclusive language best practices
Make sure your front-line sales managers are using inclusive language during their sales coaching conversations with sellers and are coaching them to do the same during their sales conversations
Make small changes, starting with the phrases you use most frequently. Choose one alternative to that phrase that you use consistently, then branch out to others when you feel like you’ve kicked the habit of using the original word or phrase. Give yourself and others room to make mistakes and be accountable for your words. A more inclusive world is built one positive interaction at a time.
