Let’s get the bad news out of the way: across all industries, only 43% of sellers now meet their quota. That means nearly six out of every 10 sellers fail to meet their goals.

Here’s the good news: a comprehensive, data-driven sales readiness approach can help you overcome your key challenges — and empower more sellers to meet (and even exceed) quota.

But not all readiness strategies are the same.

So, what do the best sales organizations do differently to ensure their reps are ready to sell? To find out, we analyzed activity from more than one million users at 350 companies for our 2022 State of Sales Readiness Report.

Based on our key findings, we’ve put together five proven hacks that’ll help you optimize your own sales readiness program and start crushing your sales goals.

Hack #1: Don’t reinvent the sales enablement wheel

Sales enablement is an essential component of an effective sales readiness strategy. And because key aspects of selling are always changing, enablement teams must go beyond onboarding (in favor of what we at Mindtickle refer to as sales everboarding) to deliver ongoing training and just-in-time content to ensure sellers understand these changes and internalize them.

But preparing new onboarding or ongoing training content requires a big investment of time. On average, it takes six weeks to launch a new program from scratch.

However, winning organizations launch sales enablement programs a whole lot faster — without compromising quality. What’s their secret? They focus on efficiency by leveraging templates.

Think of program templates as out-of-the-box yet customizable blueprints developed for common sales enablement use cases and based on industry best practices. Some of the most commonly used templates in Mindtickle are for:

• Sales onboarding
• Product training
• Sales processes

Templates eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel each time you launch a new program, which means you can launch programs a whole lot faster. On average, using a template, enablement managers can launch a new program within seven days. That means sellers can consume the learning much earlier — and start applying what they’ve learned to close more deals.

Hack #2: Update key sales content on a quarterly basis

More than 25 years ago, Bill Gates wrote an essay titled, “Content is King.” In 2022, the sentiment is still very true — especially for B2B sellers. Having access to the right content ensures sellers are always ready to close more deals.

Most organizations invest significant time and resources into developing content that helps prepare reps for every selling situation. But, all too often, those same organizations release new content and then don’t give it much thought for months on end. As a piece of content gets stale, seller engagement drops.

However, top sales organizations are making it a priority to regularly update their key content. And our analysis found that new or recently updated content is correlated with better overall engagement.

Don’t mistake content development as a one-time event. Instead, commit to updating your key content on a regular basis to keep seller engagement high.

How often are the best sales organizations updating sales content?

The 10% of organizations that get the highest amount of seller engagement make content updates once every 3.25 months, on average. And they see 4.58 content engagements per seller week. In comparison, organizations that update key content once every 4.5 months see an average of 3.43 content interactions per seller per week.

That means the top 10% of sales orgs are seeing a 33% increase in overall use of sales content. Clearly, regular updates pay off in terms of seller engagement.

Hack #3: Expect resistance from prospects on sales calls — and equip reps to handle it

It’s a simple fact that if a seller isn’t making enough calls, they’re not going to close enough business to meet quota. So it’s probably not surprising that the best sales reps spend a good amount of their time on the phone.

In an ideal world, each of those sales calls would be largely positive, with prospects feeling confident and excited. But that’s not reality.

We analyzed more than 100,000 sales calls and found that negative sentiment outweighs positive sentiment — by a lot. Just over a third (37%) of calls contained positive sentiments (think confidence, analytical discussion, and excitement, among others) than negative sentiments (think anger, uncertainty, disappointment, or tentativeness). The remaining 63% of calls had more negative sentiment than positive.

Sales calls often contain more negative sentiment than positive.

But make no mistake: a negative call isn’t necessarily a lost cause — especially when it’s handled the right way. The best sales organizations train their reps to expect resistance from prospects and equip these sellers to handle it.

Ensuring reps know your messaging and can lead a proper demo is important. But it’s not enough. Be sure you’re also focusing on enablement topics such as objection handling and competitive knowledge. The right enablement can help reps build confidence and turn largely negative calls around to close more deals.

Hack #4: Support sales coaching with follow-up and reinforcement

Sales coaching, when done well, can have a big impact on the success of a seller (and the entire organization). In fact, the power of coaching is proven. Recent research found that eight out of 10 teams with effective coaching practices hit greater than 75% of their sales quotas.

But coaching can’t be a case of one-and-done. A single coaching session, on its own, probably isn’t going to have much of an impact.

The best sales organizations understand that ongoing follow-up and reinforcement is essential to ensure that skills coaching sticks — and those skills are applied when it matters: in the field. In fact, top managers are three times more likely to assign content, training, or a role-play exercise as a follow-up to a coaching session.

The good news is that coaching follow-up and reinforcement are proven to improve a rep’s readiness. On average, there’s an improvement of 13 percentage points in Sales Readiness Index scores for reps who are assigned follow-up actions after a coaching session.

The average improvement in Sales Readiness Index scores for reps who are assigned follow-up actions after a coaching session.

Talking the talk is not enough. After a coaching session, assign self-paced enablement, content to read, role-plays, or other existing resources to reinforce skills and give reps opportunities to practice what they’ve learned. By doing so, you’re sure to boost reps’ overall readiness, as well as their on-call performance.

Hack #5: Document your ideal rep profile

Hiring for fit is a great start. But even the most seasoned sellers need ongoing skill development, reinforcement, and manager-led coaching for long-term success. However, before creating these programs, sales leaders must take a step back to identify exactly what skills reps need to succeed. In other words, they need to develop an ideal rep profile (IRP).

But, more often than not, they don’t take the time to do so. While 93% of companies have documented their ideal customer profile, fewer than 1% have identified and documented a corresponding IRP.

 

Few organizations document their IRP.

• 93% of companies have documented their ideal customer profile
• Fewer than 1% have identified and documented a corresponding ideal rep profile

This is a big misstep. After all, how can you achieve excellence if you haven’t even defined what it looks like?

The best organizations understand that an IRP is the essential foundation of any winning sales enablement program, and they put in the time to define theirs.

Take a page from their book, and document the skills and competencies needed for sales success at your organization. Then, consistently measure teams and individual reps against the IRP. By doing so, you can shed light on the learning gaps of each rep and be better equipped to deliver learning and coaching that closes those gaps and creates more peak performers.

Benchmark your sales readiness to optimize your strategy

Sales organizations that expect to achieve quota can no longer rely on the Pareto principle — the notion that 20% of sellers generate 80% of sales. Instead, they must work to ensure every seller is ready to close any deal.

But sales enablement alone isn’t enough to prepare sellers. The best sales organizations know they must take a more holistic, data-driven approach to sales readiness.

By benchmarking your sales readiness against that of best-in-class organizations, you’ll shed light on opportunities to improve your own readiness strategy.

Want to learn more about what the most successful sales organizations are doing to ensure all of their reps are always ready to sell? Download the 2022 State of Sales Readiness benchmark report.

When you think of the future of sales, it might conjure up images of watching product demos in virtual reality or having AI completely take over the sales discovery process. And while it’s fun to imagine these big, dramatic changes, in reality, the market transformation is likely to be much more incremental.

But even slow-moving changes still have a significant impact on your sales team. If you don’t keep your finger on the pulse of changing buyer expectations, technology, and skill sets, you might get left behind as competitors adapt faster and capitalize on new opportunities. Four revenue leaders shared their insights into where the changes are likely to occur and what form they’ll take.

Sales reps will own inbound lead generation

Gone are the days of sales and marketing working in siloes. SDRs and inbound sales reps will start to take over inbound lead generation campaigns from marketing departments.

It’s becoming more common for sales and marketing teams to be brought together into wider revenue departments, both reporting up to a Chief Revenue Officer. Terkel CEO Brett Farmiloe predicts:

“We’ll see a bigger blend between sales and marketing. In particular, we’ll start to see sales functions taking responsibility for inbound campaigns, which means we’ll see more sales resumes coming through with SEO and PPC certifications.”

If sales teams take greater responsibility for the whole sales cycle — from generating the leads right through to closing deals — then sales leaders will need to plan for new, specialist roles on their teams. According to Forrester, today, the average sales rep spends only 23% of their time on core selling activities. Increasing specialized sales roles enables other reps to dedicate more time to activities that move deals forward, rather than splitting their focus across outreach, lead generation, nurturing, closing deals — and anything else that lands on their plate.

Mindtickle Director of Sales, Jason Alumbaugh, says:

“Effective prospecting and generating demand will be essential skills for sales reps. In addition, the ability to effectively qualify leads will be the most impactful skill to help reps make the best use of their selling time.”

The rise of the sales influencer

Sales reps who have strong personal brands will be increasingly in demand with employers. As companies try to differentiate from competitors, reps with a strong social media presence will become more and more sought after. Their activities on social platforms build their reputation as an expert in their field, which helps them build trust more quickly with customers, extends their reach, and makes them a real asset to organizations.

Mindtickle GM and Regional Vice President Anthony Parker explained:

“Sales reps without a voice or personal brand on platforms like LinkedIn will find it more difficult to stand out from the pack.”

But placing greater importance on sellers’ personal brands can become a double-edged sword for businesses. It will make it easier for recruiters to identify and source top talent. Bringing on a social media savvy seller can bring attention to your organization once they join and update their networks. But reps with big personal brands may also be a risk, as they’re likely to be highly sought after by other companies and may be easily lured away by a more lucrative offer.

To prepare for this changing dynamic, sales leaders should encourage their whole team to build out their personal brand — and avoid hiring just one rockstar rep who makes a name for themselves on social media.

Sellers must be trusted advisors

According to Gartner, “33% of all buyers desire a seller-free sales experience.” As millennials take on more decision-maker roles in the sales process in the next few years, that percentage will only increase, as “44% of millennials prefer no sales rep interaction in a B2B purchase setting.” As a result, sellers will need to adapt their behaviors and processes to keep up with changing buyer expectations.

DataRails Account Executive Ed Haft believes that sales reps need to focus on becoming trusted partners and experts rather than the stereotypical pushy salesperson. He explains:

“Relationship building will become an increasingly important skill as we shift toward people wanting to build trust and a relationship to enhance the customer experience.” He added, “Sales activity will become more intensely focused on problem-solving — being able to identify the problem the customer is looking to solve and demonstrate how you can achieve it.”

A 2020 study by LinkedIn found that 88% of consumers only buy when they see a salesperson as a “trusted advisor.” Therefore, if sellers are to remain relevant and continue to play their essential role in the future buying process, they need to prioritize building trust with their prospects. One way to do this is to focus on your customers’ desired outcomes and focus your sales conversations on solutions rather than sales.

AI will deliver crucial insights to help reps excel in any sales scenario

The majority of companies are investing in artificial intelligence and other technology to arm their teams with more customer data and insights to help drive more revenue. Forrester found that 68% of technology decision-makers have already implemented AI or are in the process of doing so. The proliferation of AI tools will mean sales teams can get more detailed insights across all their sales interactions.

Alumbaugh explains, “There will be a consolidation of sales tools so more effective AI-driven insights can be provided across all activities in the sales cycle.” While some reps may still have concerns about being replaced by AI, we believe that high-value sales transactions still need that human touch. So sales reps are perhaps some of the roles least likely to be replaced by AI and automation.

Using AI to analyze customer interactions will help sellers to better personalize their recommendations and follow-up messages based on prospects’ needs. Krittin Kalra, founder at Writecream, explained:

“Some of the most important skills for salespeople will be the ability to understand their customer’s needs and translate them into a solution, and the ability to be able to think on their feet and be able to react to different situations.” He added, “Technology is transforming the way we do business, by giving salespeople the data they need for each scenario.”

But all the AI-driven insights — and the tools themselves — will only help sales reps if they know how to use them and interpret the data. Although not a sales leader, Levi Olmstead, senior content marketing manager at Whatfix, believes that “it will be a challenge for sales leaders to support their sales reps properly. Reps will need the right process documentation and tools to be able to adopt these platforms and use them correctly.”

Competitive knowledge is a non-negotiable selling skill

In the U.S. alone, more than 400,000 new business applications were submitted each month in 2021, totaling over 5.3 million new businesses created over the year. So if you think you’re operating in a crowded market now, chances are it’s going to get even more so over the next few years.

Increasingly crowded markets mean that buyers have more suppliers to choose between. Haft from DataRails predicts, “The most important skill for sales reps will be their competitive knowledge and the ability to clearly and concisely differentiate your product and service against others in the market.”

Sales managers can help their reps build knowledge through ongoing sales enablement and training to prepare for this. Seemingly small improvements, such as achieving messaging consistency across the team, will help to present a more knowledgeable, prepared, and professional face to your prospects and help you stand out against less-prepared competitors.

The future of sales is full of opportunities — for companies that start preparing now

Incremental shifts are a big danger for sales organizations as they can be harder to detect and respond to than huge, sweeping changes. You don’t want to be the proverbial frog in the gradually boiling water, struggling as changes creep up on you and realizing you’re too late to adapt. But if sales leaders can help their teams embrace these changing market conditions and ensure reps develop the necessary tech skills and sales behaviors, they stand to capitalize on these opportunities while competitors get left behind.

As a sales leader, it should be no surprise to hear that preparing your team to win starts with building knowledge through continuous training and reinforcement. Developing seller knowledge starts with onboarding, but it’s most effective when continually reinforced throughout a seller’s tenure with your company.

We recently teamed up with Heinz Marketing to create The New Sales Enablement Standard: How Today’s Sales Leaders Grow Revenue With a Sales Readiness Approach. In it, we look at how sales leaders can empower their teams to achieve revenue goals through customized readiness programs. Let’s dig in!

1. Many sales leaders used to expect 20% of their sales force to generate 80% of their revenue.

Gone are the days of sales leaders relying on a few top sellers to do the heavy lifting for the rest of their teams. In a typical organization, that means four out of five sellers wouldn’t be used to their full potential — causing a serious negative impact on the bottom line.

By creating customized sales training plans, sales managers can unlock the true power of their full team. To do this, it’s important for managers to quantify every possible aspect of seller performance including things like sales performance based on business goals, completion of training modules, and the number of new skills obtained.

When coaching and monitoring these specific key performance metrics in each seller, teams are able to customize their tactics to each individual seller to help them reach their goals.

2. Of teams who hit 100% of their sales goals, 32% have a dedicated sales enablement program.

The reality is that only 14.7% of sales teams hit their sales goals. That isn’t a particularly high amount when you consider the investments that most organizations put into sales headcount. But when you look at the teams that are crushing their targets, there’s something many of them have in common: a dedicated sales enablement program.

Traditionally, sales and marketing teams have managed the sales enablement strategy entirely on their own. But a modern selling environment calls for the involvement of more teams in order to build a stronger program and ultimately a stronger team. The top three functions involved in sales enablement programs are sales/revenue operations, sales leadership, and marketing.

3. 78.6% of companies that have an effective training program meet 100% of their selling quota.

When an organization takes the time to invest in a sales training program, everybody wins. With nearly 80% of companies that have an effective training program in place meeting their quota, the results speak for themselves.

The key is to take training beyond onboarding and on-the-job coaching and start regularly training employees on a more consistent basis, placing an emphasis on knowledge retention rather than just delivering information.

4. Only 37% of companies extend their onboarding programs beyond the first month.

While we’re all familiar with onboarding and how important it is to a seller’s success, very few organizations foster a learning environment for reps outside of that first 30-day window. The major problem with this is that it’s proven that companies who invest in ongoing training win more deals.

In the results of a recent survey, of the respondents who hit 75% or of their quota, 90% participate in sales training on a monthly basis. Promoting continuous learning is essential to equipping sellers with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve their revenue goals.

5. After just six days, people forget 75% of the information they learn in training.

Reinforcing knowledge is just as important as the imparting of knowledge itself. We often speak about the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve, which is a formula that states that humans forget approximately 50% of new information within an hour, forget 70% in 24 hours, and 90% after 30 days.

This is where spaced reinforcements come into play. By creating microlearning modules coupled with spaced repetition, retrieval practice, coaching, and personalization for each rep, sales managers can more effectively promote knowledge retention within their teams.

6. 8 out of 10 teams who have effective coaching practices hit greater than 75% of sales quotas.

It’s no secret that better coaching practices equate to more wins for your team. In fact, adopting a consistent coaching culture is vital to your team’s success. When done right, it can provide insight and opportunity to improve on every buyer interaction (like where something went wrong, how to uncover bottlenecks, and how to pivot for future success).

Performance-related conversations can be difficult to have, especially if a rep isn’t doing well. But when we rely on data to guide these conversations, they not only become easier to have, but are also more valuable for the rep on the receiving end of the feedback.

7. 57% of respondents who have effective practice opportunities see sellers achieving 75% and greater of their sales goals.

Sales practice opportunities can include everything from microlearning, to role-play, to quizzes, to certifications, and beyond. The important thing is that sellers are given ample resources to flex their knowledge and build on their existing skills to grow in their roles.

Of the respondents to our recent survey who hit 100% seller quota attainment, 57% rely heavily on coaching to build knowledge within their teams. This shows that with every bit of coaching a seller receives, their ability to move deals forward and close deals in real-world conversations dramatically increases.

A worthy investment for sales leaders

Sales coaching is definitely an investment, but when you look at the data, it’s not something sales leaders can afford to ignore. It’s clear that taking the time to build out training programs that go beyond a seller’s first 30 or 90 days on the job drive tangible results, and are well worth the efforts when it comes to achieving revenue goals.

At the end of the day, we all want our teams to be successful and reach quota every quarter. But in order to hit those goals on a team level, we have to take a step back and start nurturing sellers’ abilities on an individual level too. After all, the greatest successes all start with one small change. Let a stellar training program be yours!

Like many other companies at the moment, Mindtickle has been learning to adapt to a 100% virtual environment. As such, we just wrapped up our Q2 Quarterly Business Review (QBR), and we were able to conduct the entire process and meeting virtually. In a way, it was a living QBR with sales and other team members presenting content based on their own lessons learned. Fortunately, it was a success with engagement being strong throughout! But of course, there are always lessons to be learned for making these better and better over time. As the Head of Sales Readiness, I oversaw the QBR ranging from the format and structure to the sessions and post-event engagement. As part of that experience, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of the lessons learned.

• Make sure you have a theme. Even though I know what the theme was and the objectives, I should have communicated better to the field instead of assuming they would discern the theme by piecing all of the sessions together. Make sure to market the QBR with a lot of excitement ahead of time.
• Pick a platform to support your plan. Without Mindtickle, it would have been difficult to put a logical framework together for the sales teams to follow. Being able to use a platform designed specifically for making virtual QBR’s successful obviously gave me an advantage. But it is important to remember that, regardless of what platform you use to execute the virtual QBR, ensure that the flow and logic of the structure make sense. I constantly checked and re-checked that the sessions were being organized in the proper order and that the times were aligned with the agenda, and the technology helped keep me accountable to that.
• Segment your virtual QBR. Breaks are not only encouraged, they are mandatory if you want your QBR to succeed. You can’t expect to have an engaged team for a full day or a couple of half days without building in some breathing room. I built in three breaks throughout the day and that seemed sufficient, but when creating the agenda, assume that your learners are going to need mental and physical breaks throughout.
• Pre-work is essential. While pre-work is an important part of the virtual QBR, I would incorporate additional activities including having the presenters pre-record some brief messages and shorten the live presenting time. One key learning is resist the urge to schedule 60-minute sessions in a virtual QBR. 30-minute sessions are ideal and even those can test the attention spans of reps. Make the pre-work such that the live presentations take care of themselves and all that are left are questions and possible brief reiteration.
• Keep people excited and engaged. Not only did I build in knowledge checks throughout the day and during breaks, but we also played online games with questions and topics completely unrelated to the QBR content. It shouldn’t be all work and no play and you should give the team an opportunity for a mental break to have some fun.
• Assign a moderator to check messages. As the organizer especially in a virtual environment using Zoom, you’ll likely be bombarded with questions, technical issues, clarification, follow-up, etc. during the QBR, which is not only difficult but stressful. Ask someone to help moderate the questions and the chatter that comes through during the day.
• Do dry runs beforehand. The dry runs we did with the presenters allowed myself, along with sales leadership, to ensure that the message was concise and focused, which helps keep people engaged throughout the day.
• Create breakouts to accommodate different discussions. Something we didn’t do but will certainly incorporate next time, is to use the breakout room feature in Zoom. Give the teams time to digest and talk about how they can apply what they are learning throughout the day in a safe space without worrying about interrupting the sessions.
• Keep participants on their toes and engaged. We’ve all done it – turned off our video during a video call. To keep everyone honest, randomly ask participants to turn on their cameras and say something about themselves throughout the day. This ensures they are staying engaged and provides everyone an opportunity to learn something new about their peers.
• Reinforce knowledge and key learnings through structured post-work. Organize post-QBR work that will make an impact and that will reiterate key themes learned throughout the day. Using Mindtickle, we accomplish this through a series of quizzes and exercises that occur right after the QBR and over several weeks to ensure knowledge reinforcement.

While the feedback was that this was a very successful event, I (and I’m sure my enablement professionals agree) am always looking for ways to improve the experience Every training is as much a learning experience for sales enablement as it is for the sales teams.

I hope these insights are useful and I invite fellow sales readiness and enablement professionals to comment and join the discussion. For more blogs like this and other resources to help keep teams remote and ready, visit our “Remote and Ready” page.