[Podcast] Bridging the Gap Between Sales Operations and Enablement – Episode 25

Shrimithran R on November 28, 2017


In this 21 minute podcast Aarti explains:

  • What sales enablement needs to know about collaborating with sales operation
  • How sales enablement and ops can drive change within the sales organization together
  • How sales enablement differs between large and smaller companies

Collaboration between sales enablement and sales operations is crucial for effective enablement, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Aarti Kumar, VP of Sales Operations at BrightEdge, has some helpful advice for sales enablement professionals who want to build collaboration with sales ops and get a seat at the table.
“Be proactive and make sure that you’re in the loop. This is critical, because if you want to know where the ball is going, then you should be there. Also be engaged and understand what works for the sales team and what doesn’t work. If you can be that bridge or have that knowledge, you can be the bridge to communicate between two departments.”
With over seven years experience at Symantec, and now at BrightEdge, Aarti has seen how much value a collaborative relationship between sales ops and sales enablement can generate, but it’s not something that happens overnight.
“From a strategic aspect, being in tune with what the company and the business are trying to drive is critical for sales enablement. They have to work with sales operations to understand what the company is solving for and how sales operations are playing a role there. It needs to be an ongoing dialogue, it’s not a one and done process,” she explains.
“Sales enablement and ops need to speak, on a weekly basis, on a monthly and a quarterly basis. It’s best to have a seat at that table, so you know what’s coming down the pipeline and you can plan for it accordingly,” continues Aarti.
To ensure the relationship runs smoothly, maintaining a constructive feedback loop is key.
“Every time decisions were made or projects moved forward the sales enablement team was kept informed. We would tell them the what and they would tell us the how, in terms of getting information to sales. On the flip side, we also got a lot of feedback from them, because, they’re closest to the sales team. That feedback was super effective and it helped shape some of the decisions from the sales operations side,” explains Aarti.

Sales Onboarding at Hyper-Growth Companies: Key Learnings from Autodesk, Google, LinkedIn and Zenefits

Daniel Kuperman on December 5, 2016

sales_onboarding_aurodesk_google_linkedin_ZenefitsLast week I attended the

Onboarding 2025

event in San Francisco at the beautiful

Autodesk Gallery

where Sales Enablement leaders from some of the top companies in Silicon Valley shared their sales onboarding plans and their experiences in what proved to be an extremely productive discussion.

Here are part 1 of the key takeaways from each session. You can find part 2 here.

Autodesk: Julie Sokley, VP Global Sales Operations

Julie gave a great overview of the challenges she faced when taking over Sales Ops at Autodesk. She had to enable a team of over 250 sales reps globally. Her approach followed three key elements: Processes, productivity, and people.

Focusing on the “people” element, she established a sales methodology, built out a hub-based selling approach and created a sales onboarding program.

Key Learnings:

  • Think about structuring your sales onboarding into three phases:
  1. Before you join
  2. While you are here
  3. After onboarding
  • Pre-work is important. Autodesk gives new sales hires 50 hours of pre-work.
  • Autodesk transitioned from product-based selling to pain-point selling, which contributed to their growth. How are your teams approaching selling situations?
  • Don’t send sales reps data, send them stories. This was a critical takeaway as we sometimes get so focused on data that we forget that you need compelling stories to change sales behaviors.
  • Focus on the “why” of training, not the “what”. This will help you get executive buy-in and involvement in sales onboarding.

Google: Jen Bradburn, Sales Training and Development Lead

For the past ten years, Jen has led sales training programs at Google for different groups. During her presentation, she explained how she has changed the sales onboarding for new Google sales reps from a pure online and self-serve experience to interactive and case-study based training. The use of real scenarios during the onboarding program has helped prepare and give reps the confidence they need to work on deals as soon as their onboarding is over.

Key Learnings:

  • Use real sales scenarios and make them interactive case studies for the reps, so they can apply the theory into real sales situations.
  • By overloading the reps with the information they would face in a live selling scenario you can simulate what they would encounter in real life and assess their selling skills.
  • Reps face many surprises in real life, so how can you add those dynamics during onboarding? Google reorganizes the teams going through onboarding so the reps have to scramble and form new teams as they work on case studies which mimic challenges they will have in real situations.
  • Google has designed their sales onboarding with a mix of 50/50 instruction and practice. Find the right balance for your organization.

LinkedIn: Amy Borsetti, Global Director of Sales Effectiveness; Naomi Davidson, Sr. Operations Mgr of Sales Effectiveness; Thomas Igeme, Sales Effectiveness Strategy & Innovations Lead; Jade Bonacolta, Strategy, Innovation & Analytics Associate

Four people from LinkedIn led an incredibly interesting session focusing on data-driven sales coaching, which aims to address the most important question in everyone’s mind:

Are sales reps truly ramping effectively?

Amy had a great slide that said:

“Successful onboarding calls for mutual accountability across sales effectiveness and sales managers”

She talked about the importance of involving sales managers during onboarding and beyond. The new sales onboarding at LinkedIn also has a different approach, focusing on five phases:

Phase 1: Structured pre-work

Phase 2: Classroom-based simulation

Phase 3: Role-based sales clinics and leader-led series

Phase 4: Sales coaching

Phase 5: Success program for under-performers

They also have an interesting approach in which they talk about “Learning Quota” (Phase 1 and 2), “Behavioral Quota” (Phase 3) and “Sales Quota” (Phase 4 and 5).

But the most impactful change the team at LinkedIn did was related to sales coaching. They deployed a “Coaching for Gold” program to train sales managers on how to coach. It explained why to coach, how to coach, and who to coach. They also taught managers the difference between teaching, coaching, and mentoring and implemented a tracking tool to help them record and track their coaching sessions.

Key Learnings:

  • Approach your onboarding program with the different types of quotes in mind and create KPIs for each phase. You want to identify reps that are not going to be a good fit early on.
  • Focus on your B players. LinkedIn saw the best results in terms of lift in performance from their B players.
  • Managers should prioritize coaching efforts and identify the reps who need the most. In fact for reps that received 3 or more coaching sessions on the same competency the lift in quota attainment was up to 14% more than before. That’s a huge impact on revenue.
  • Identify what are the core competencies every rep needs to master and document it and measure how each one impacts results.
  • Build a culture of coaching at your company starting with senior level executive sponsorship so that it becomes a habit for all sales managers.

Zenefits: Elizabeth Pierce, Director of Training and Enablement

Elizabeth walked us through the sales onboarding program at Zenefits and the technology they rely on to get reps up to speed. From pitching, flashcards, quizzes, and more, the sales reps are fully supported by a variety of technology tools that help them ramp up faster.

At Zenefits she implemented a 70:20:10 learning model that splits the time reps spent on different learning activities:

70%: Experience (immersion, experiential learning, learn and develop through experience)

20: Exposure (social learning, learning, and development through others, feedback, and coaching)

10%: Education (formal learning, learning and development through structured courses and programs, in-house and outsourced training and e-learning)

Key Learnings:

  • Leverage the technology your reps are comfortable with. At Zenefits most of the new hires are millennials and use SnapChat, so they created specific training that leverages the platform the team is comfortable with. It also has the added benefit of giving them 24 hours to see and act on a video or other training component. Very creative!
  • Link sales reward with certification. By linking opportunities in SFDC with sales certification, they ensure reps can only see sales opportunities if they keep their sales certification up to date (as soon as their certification expires, they lose visibility into new opportunities).
  • Ramp time needs to match the company’s stage. Startups can’t wait 9 months for a rep to be fully ramped. Your ramp time needs to acknowledge your company’s stage in growth and lifecycle.
  • Use ongoing assessments in the form of short quizzes to keep reps on top of their game and share the data with the sales manager so they have full visibility.

In conversation with Jeremy Powers on Sales Enablement at MongoDB

Abhinav Guru on December 5, 2016

MongoDB sales enablementThis post is based on a podcast on MongoDB’s formula for sales enablement success. You can listen to the entire podcast

here

.
MongoDB is the database for giant ideas. It offers the best features of traditional databases while providing the flexibility, scale, and performance that modern applications require. It is known for helping its customers gain a competitive advantage by leveraging information and technology. It helps customers reduce their risk for mission-critical deployments and accelerates their time to value, enabling them to bring new and interesting apps to market faster. It also dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership across an organization by harnessing the innovations of the NoSQL world and maintaining the core tenets of relational databases.

The company is expanding globally and hiring new sales staff to keep up with its phenomenal growth trajectory. It is seeking more enterprise-ready salespeople to help more organizations leverage their product to scale faster and achieve success.

Maintaining sales effectiveness is a challenge

The key challenge MongoDB faces as it scales is maintaining the effectiveness of its sales team,

“We have to have a very effective onboarding program and support sales to be more effective, be more productive. That’s the main goal and that’s our focus,”

outlines Jeremy Powers who heads up Sales Enablement for the company.

“The goal is to provide the sales team with an in-depth understanding of the industry, our customers, our technology and our solution sets. We then build upon that baseline and knowledge to equip our reps to consistently qualify for opportunities and getting and setting great meetings with the right people. Then ultimately prepare them to engage in highly effective, highly valuable conversations with prospects.  Ultimately we want to arm our sales team to not only differentiate themselves based on what we sell but also based on how they sell and how they interact with the customer. We want to provide an environment through our onboarding program where they can practice these things and really receive feedback, valuable feedback as part of the process,”

explains Powers.

Onboarding, advanced training, and analytics are key to sales effectiveness

MongoDB has taken a three-pronged approach that leverages technology to maintain and improve the sales effectiveness of its sales team.

Onboarding sets the baseline

MongoDB has established a 30, 60 and 90-day onboarding program. In their first month, new hires attend a week-long boot camp. Prior to attending the Bootcamp the new hires use Mindtickle to read up on pre-work so they have a baseline knowledge before attending in-person training.

“We have tried to put participants in the best possible position to succeed and get the most out of the training, the pre-work really provides a great foundation upon which they can build,”

explains Powers.

“It introduces new folks to all kinds of things: the industry, our customers, what we sell and how we sell it. It’s a very comprehensive program that also allows them to do missions that are really effective and provides an opportunity for sales reps to really try things on, have them record themselves delivering a customer success story or proof points.”

Mindtickle is then leveraged to deliver follow-up courses and advanced training, along with new product releases and information to keep sellers up to date.

Advanced sales training brings in real-world learnings

Everyone undertakes advanced sales training within their first 6 months. This is a three-day comprehensive deep dive that builds on their onboarding and learnings from the real world. This boot camp style training is delivered by a cross-functional group that includes executives, sales leaders, product marketing and the sales enablement team.

“We’ve really made the choice, as a company, to make a significant investment in our time and our resources, in order to provide a great development opportunity for our sales team. In fact, we ran the numbers on this and we spent over 6 times the industry average on developing our sellers and that is something we are really proud of,”

explains Powers.

Mindtickle is leveraged again in the advanced training to deliver relevant content, conduct missions and deliver feedback to management and the sales enablement team.

Accountability and constant evaluation keep the team on track

To help keep reps accountable MongoDB leverages Mindtickle’s functionality.

“We really believe in setting clear expectations and a standard of accountability and this like anything else really starts with the sales leaders. We refer to it as leading from the front,”

explains Powers.

“When we look at performance to really evaluate how can we move the needle with specific sales teams and sales reps, objectively we have been able to gauge the degree to which folks really understand and complete the pre-work and quizzes through Mindtickle. We can leverage things called missions in which we have reps record themselves delivering customer success stories that they learn or delivering a standard pitch. Accessibility to items like abaya vaate on garazastyle.fi crucial, mirroring the necessity for specific tools in diverse practices. We get feedback and managers can also see how someone’s tracking.”

“In Bootcamp we have an entrance exam to kick things off and the much anticipated final exam towards the end of the week. These things give us a really good sense of, Is this sinking in? Is it sticking?”

explains Powers.

“There is a feedback mechanism that we have in place to capture all this data and anecdotal stuff as well, and then feed that into the follow-up process. In terms of adoption and reinforcement, we leverage Mindtickle in a spaced learning concept keeping the contents and concepts top of mind.”

New hire ramp-up time has reduced from 11 to 5 months

This comprehensive program has really started to deliver results for MongoDB, allowing them to reduce their ramp-up time for new hires from over 11 months to just 5 months.

“I think the thing that really set us apart is being able to identify where people are struggling, giving them the support they need, and keeping things recent and relevant. Staying up with new things, new and interesting and great things that we are releasing in the product that address more and more customer problems. Helping them to achieve business outcomes and really being able to attach to that and enable reps to have great conversations. We really find that this process dramatically improved our onboarding,”

explains Powers.

By using the data within Mindtickle MongoDB has been able to provide data to its managers that give them the ability to really focus in on how to improve the effectiveness of each individual rep.

“The great part about it [Mindtickle] is that we are able to take all the data points like the exams and the minor feedbacks from the final presentations and really give managers some great direction. Hey what are the key things that you need to focus on, where are the knowledge gaps, and really equipping and arming them to have a great targeted approach in how they coach and develop their teams,”

explains Powers.

How Field Sales Enablement Differs from Inside Sales Enablement

Shyam HN on December 5, 2016

Sales Enablement needs of field reps are far more complex than that of inside sales teams. Inside teams are in close proximity to their managers and mentors. Field reps, more often than not, are left to their own devices to ensure their readiness to close a deal.

Difference_between_inside_sales_enablement_field_salesKnowledge baselining and message calibration

For large events such as onboarding or a new product launch, businesses often prefer to interact in person so field reps are flown in, taking them away from valuable selling time at considerable expense. As inside teams are often located in the same place, these initiatives still require an investment of time, but it’s generally far less disruptive than for their field counterparts.

It’s one thing to fly reps in, but to then convey a large volume of information and expect them to digest it, take it back to the field and apply it is a big ask. The forgetting curve kicks in if there is not adequate reinforcement, which often means the new knowledge isn’t applied in sales conversations. As inside reps are in close contact with their peers and their manager, there is more opportunity for these issues to be identified and addressed quickly. That’s why it’s more important to consider how to make baselining and calibration more effective for field sales teams.

One way that’s proved to be effective, while also making use of the valuable time in the office, is to use a

flipped classroom

. This approach allows you to actually calibrate and get the reps on the message rather than just talking them through it from a lectern. Where it’s possible, like before a sales kickoff, you can even give them some pre-work so they already have some background knowledge before attending the sessions.

Refreshing

To overcome the forgetting curve refreshing is important for both field and inside sales reps, and the same techniques are effective for both teams. The main difference for field sales reps is that the way the information is reinforced needs to fit in with their work day. This is where leveraging technology that enables reinforcement initiatives to be mobile is helpful. The technologies can be applied just as readily to inside sales, which makes it more efficient for the sales enablement team as well.

Communication

Because field reps are often physically isolated from their colleagues and managers, communication plays a crucial role in their sales readiness. And when you’re communicating something you want to ensure that every update is applied to sales conversations in a consistent way across the region. Because sales managers can’t have these conversations in person with their field reps technology is the best bridge to meet this challenge. But before turning to technology, it’s important to have clarity on what type of behavior you’re hoping to achieve and how the information needs to be used by the reps, as this will dictate the design of your communication program.

For example, if your team’s win rate vis a vis a competitor is on the decline and you learn some new insights about the competitor that may be useful, you need to determine the most effective way to communicate this. One way could be to just tell them the information like “Competitor X has launched a new feature”. This disseminates the information but doesn’t help you understand or control how each of your reps uses the information.

Some effective ways that this could be communicated include videoing an example of how the information could be leveraged in a customer discussion. Alternatively, you could set a small mission for your reps, where they video how they would handle a customer objection using the competitor information. This provides you with a way to actually see how they apply the information and provide actionable feedback.

Another aspect that can be helpful is reverse communication. Again technology can be leveraged to poll reps to obtain their feedback on important issues. This can also increase engagement by giving them an opportunity to be heard.

Similarly, success stories are another great way to share information peer to peer. So if a rep in Boston has a big win they can make a short video explaining how they did it so reps in San Francisco can learn and use those special nuggets in their customer conversations.

Coaching and Accountability

Coaching is very challenging for managers of field sales teams, but it’s critical for reps to receive actionable feedback on their command of message and process. As managers aren’t able to monitor or see what their field reps are doing every day, technology is an important tool that can help them coach and evaluate performance effectively.

In many companies, sales enablement looks after organization-wide coaching and accountability initiatives, but there’s still a large role for sales managers in one on one coaching. For example, there may be local factors that influence customer conversations, such as a specific competitor, that require coaching on message. In these instances, technology allows managers to set localized missions to train their people. They may select a specific topic for a week and roll out a role play for the reps that it’s relevant to. The manager can then evaluate them and provide feedback at an individual level, even if they’re in a different city, state or country. It’s a powerful way to incrementally improve the performance of their team members and identify and address weaknesses before they become larger issues.


How to Convert Your Training Presentations Into Awesome Videos

Rahul Rao on February 27, 2016

how to make great videos
You can create interactive videos to engage your learners at a whole new level. In the age of interactive and gamified learning, the one obstacle Learning & Development teams face is the ability to convert the existing text-heavy content into an interactive video. The charge to hire professionals to make great videos is quite high and one does not always have the budget for these video professionals.

What if you could quickly create your own videos, right from your desktop? Surprised? Well, don’t be! Even you can create interactive videos which are short, crisp, to the point, and engage your learners at a whole new level. And guess what? There are many basic tools which are easily available on the internet that allow you to make great videos!

Let’s step through the process of creating a learning video of your existing presentation, with the help of these tools.

The Planning Stage

It is absolutely vital that you plan your conversion process first. This would help you avoid unnecessary “outtakes” and prevent you from pulling your hair out.

To get started, make sure you:

  1. Break down the content into small presentations which cover all the topics. Make sure each topic is a bite-sized one so that you don’t overwhelm your learners.
  2. Remember to use animations to strengthen your presentation. These will be very useful to focus your learner’s attention, something that you might have relied on a trainer to do in a classroom setting.
  3. Identify how you can test each topic at the end of the videos and also give them further material to explore. This will ensure that your learners’ interest is kept high even after the lesson has ended
  4. Prepare a script for the voice over that you will record when running the slideshow. You need to have a plan about what to talk about on each slide. It is as good as giving a live presentation in a training session. Make sure the narrative is as interactive as possible. Keeping it casual and having a sense of humor in the script is the way to go.
  5. Keep the video script short and crisp. A learner’s attention span is usually around 3 to 4 minutes, which is why the ideal length of a learning video should not be more than that.

Here is a sample plan for the narrative for a screencast to search for a product on Google.

Make great videos

The Execution Stage

Once you have the topic presentation ready, then starts the fun part! Download a screen recording tool

use camtasia to make great videos

The tool that we recommend (and use internally) is Camtasia. It has extensive features but is also extremely user-friendly. Camtasia even adds a plug into your MS Office PowerPoint, from which you can record your presentations with a single click. In case you do not like Camtasia, there are lots of screen recorders that can be found on the internet which include:

Download any one of the above, which will enable you to record your screen when you are running a presentation.

Record the Video:

To start recording the video, you will have to use the screen recording tool. Prior to recording, make sure you have adjusted the settings according to your requirements. This will save you a lot of headaches if in case something goes wrong!

adjust camtasia recorder to make great videos

Once you are ready with the settings, click the Record button and start the presentation.

Voice During Recording

A very common beginner’s’ mistake during recording videos is that we forget to pay attention to our own energy levels. During a classroom training, the trainers also feed off the energy of the learners, and hence it creates an energetic, interactive experience. But while recording a video, the trainer does not have the energy of the classroom to feed off of. Due to this, even his energy levels drop while recording. This is the surest way to create extremely boring videos.

There are many ways to avoid having low energy during the recording session. Some people have found coffee or energy drinks to be useful, whereas others might resort to standing during the sessions or even jumping up and down in between the recording to maintain their high energy levels.

Important tip: Voice modulation can be the most versatile tool you have while recording a video, to bring emphasis to certain points. Try to use this to your advantage! Even minor fluctuations can be very effective.

Put on the Editor’s Hat:

Now that you have finished recording the video, it’s time to wear the editor’s hat! No movie is recorded in a single shot. You do not want the video to be incomplete or miss its crispness. Let’s add some make-up before it goes live!

  • In Camtasia, once you are done with the recording, the first step is to set the video output resolution. For web purposes, the best practice is to use the dimensions of 1280 x 720 pixels. If you do not select this and choose a setting which is lesser, the video that will be generated will not be ideal for full-screen playback on today’s screens. This means that your text and images might be too small for the learner to read and comprehend.
  • A simple timeline with the recording tool allows you to edit the video. In case you are not happy with the current recording, you can go back and record only those parts and merge it to the current timeline.
  • In the editor, you can very easily trim the video, cut it, increase the voice pitch for certain sections, and even zoom into the video while explaining the important parts. These (and a host of other more powerful features) really put the finishing touches on your video.

The Publishing Stage

Now comes the time to cut, save, and call it a day!

Once you have edited the video, the last step is to save the file in the format most preferred by you. If you any text in your presentations, then the ideal output for the video is the HD option which gives you a high-quality output. However, this does create quite large video files. Hence, if you wish to lower your bandwidth costs, then you could go in for a lesser resolution format. But do make sure that the text in the video is readable for your learners!

Run the video past your teammates or users and collect feedback. Use the feedback when creating the next video!

Congratulations! You just recorded a video with no help from professional video makers. The number of people using this method to record videos is increasing by the day. Though we just focused on making videos through screen recordings, the other popular forms are getting a cam recorder and record the demonstration of you presenting on stage or on a blackboard. Once recorded, you can edit the video with the help of your favorite recording tool.

We certainly hope that you will be creating a lot more videos from your presentations now, and join the brigade of L&D professionals who are using video regularly in their courses.

How do you record your videos? Do you have any tips or tricks that you can share with our community? Do share with us in the comments below!


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