Changing product, problem set, and audience all at once requires lots of in-deal hand-holding
Sales reps sell the products they know best into opportunities they understand, to people they are familiar with, using tools they’ve succeeded with before. That’s why sales adoption is one of the greatest challenges to any new go-to-market initiative. Even when developed with salespeople’s input and lots of customer intelligence, introducing a new sales strategy is akin to teaching someone to ride a bike. The amount of time before the training wheels come off will vary.
Expanding sales reps’ comfort zone requires a broad array of training, support, and incentives. CA has seen the rewards of such a multifaceted sales enablement approach. To implement a new use case-based sales strategy, reps who had been selling product features to midlevel technical buyers would now be asked to speak to nontechnical decision makers about the key metrics of mission-critical business processes. The marketing team provided comprehensive, hands-on sales enablement. They started with a global sales training tour. Senior executives actively promoted the new approach and initial sales successes. Though feedback on the tools and the training was overwhelmingly positive, most reps were still reluctant to put the new concepts to work in the field. The industry marketing staff stayed closely involved with every major deal in the pipeline. Still, widespread adoption took time, coaching, encouragement, and frequent repetition.
Do you need such a broad enablement effort for every new sales initiative?
That depends on how many of the following are changing: features, pricing and packaging, products, competitors, partners, the problem you’re solving, the scope of impact on your customers’ business, and the decision makers and influencers you need to engage.
The simplest change is the addition of new features to solve the same problem for the same buyer. In this case, salepeople need to know how the new capabilities will benefit the customer. A short information session and updates to product content are sufficient.
The introduction of new products that solve new problems is more complex, even when the buyers remain the same. These require learning the new product, pricing, and competitors, and grasping a new set of customer needs and benefits. For any cross-sell or upsell opportunities, sales reps must be able to connect the issues addressed by old and new products. Plan to educate on the same content multiple times: ahead of the product announcement, again in preparation for launch, and then again after the product attains initial market traction.
Create sales tools for each audience and stage in the sales process, and provide simple ways to find and use those tools. Demonstrate unwavering and consistent executive advocacy and on-site support for key deals by product managers or specialists. Even after you’ve done all that, be ready to nudge, encourage, and run behind the bike while the sales force cautiously tests the new ideas. Consider monetary incentives to give the new product an extra push.
When new buyers are involved, the sales organization may need a whole new skill set. Reps comfortable speaking to IT managers may not have the confidence and expertise to engage business buyers or senior IT executives. Reps who are comfortable with a specific industry or business process may have to learn a whole new language. They may find that discussing $100,000 deals was easy, but that $1.5 million feels too big.
The most complex jump occurs when everything changes at once. With enough training and support, top salespeople can sometimes make this complex shift. For everyone else, changing product, problem set, and audience all at once requires the assistance of specialists and lots of in-deal hand-holding. Even so, training wheels may not be enough. When introducing drastically different sales requirements, plan on hiring new sales resources.