Today’s post is by Juliana Stancampiano, a business leader and strategist focused on helping business leaders and their teams adapt, grow, and excel in support of their CEOs’ growth agendas. She has over 15 years of experience in creating valuable and memorable learning experiences that translate the sales and business strategy into measurable results achieved by people.
Through many conversations and client engagements – and being a salesperson myself – I often wondered what people were thinking when they were creating sales enablement “stuff” for salespeople. Not only was it long-winded and hard to find, but it also wasn’t relevant, strategic, concise, or compelling.
I stumbled around for a few years asking questions, being curious, and wanting to understand why this was the case – and who the stuff was supposed to be helping.
It turns out most traditional sales training and enablement content wasn’t helping drive more sales or engage with new or potential clients. It wasn’t clear why it was being created, but it seemed to be driven by quarterly spend and arbitrary internal deadlines.
So why would an executive approve such content? I deduced there were few alternatives with little understanding of training modalities and benefits.
Instead of creating “stuff” no salesperson can find – or that adds no value or is just plain boring – here are some questions to ask yourself about your sales enablement content:
- Do I know my audience? Will they watch a 45-minute product overview? And, if they do, what are they supposed to do with it?
- Have I looked at the company’s targeted business outcomes? Can I synthesize those outcomes to a critical few and focus on helping make that happen?
- Am I thinking through the business ask and not assuming it’s a “salesperson problem”? Thinking critically about the company’s challenges or possibilities helps define needed actions.
- Am I making this easy for my audience? Am I introducing a new tool that’s just “another tool”? Or is there a good business reason behind it? Do we already have something we can leverage?
Some of this may sound simple, but we have learned that, in complex companies, nothing is really “simple” – especially when you are selling a new idea for which few metrics are available. We have been lucky to work with leaders who believe their organizations can excel, and they have the courage – courage to do or say what others haven’t wanted to admit before them – to tackle this endeavor, implement change, and prove their success with data and experience.
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