There is a lot that has been written lately by Gartner (Buyer seller journey) and others like CSO insights (2018 Buyer Seller gap) that highlights how sophisticated the buyer is today. Much of this has to do with technology and the use of technology by buyers. Buyers today, because of the internet, are much more educated than years past. They know what they want. Because of this, buyers, today, appreciate sellers that lead with Thought Leadership, that are subject matter experts, and help them solve their business challenges.
A company owes it to its sales personnel to provide the most up to date sales education on products and services coupled with sales training on best practices to execute on the buyer journey. A customer-centric sales training curriculum best serves both the client and your sales professionals.
Creating and enabling a customer-centric sales program is not a simple task. It is a continuum of benchmarking your company offerings with your competition and aligning with the right go-to-market messaging. It is a focus on the ICP (ideal client profile) and enabling business outcomes for that specific ICP.
The days of “auditorium sized training programs” and the “annual sales kick off training” are in the past. With the fast pace of technology change, sales personnel need ongoing sales training with reinforcement coaching. Sales training modules are most effective when they are short and then followed up with salient points applied to a real client situation.
CSO Insights recent annual sales enablement survey shows a strong linkage between coaching and win rates, quota attainment and more. However, 70% of sales organizations still leave coaching up to the manager or use an informal approach to it.
Many organizations are either establishing a Sales Enablement team or leveraging outside resources (sales execution firms) to accelerate learning to execution. Sales Enablement experts, whether they be internal or external, can help you pepper the latest and greatest selling approaches and reinforce them with ongoing sales coaching.
With span of controls increasing, coupled with sales attrition, the sales manager simply can’t meet the demands on their time to do sales coaching. Leveraging internal or external sales enablement experts can offer an outside perspective, leverage industry best practices, and provide a more competitive perspective on deals and opportunities.