WHITE PAPER. Blueprint for Sales Certification. 7 Elements of a Successful Program

Transcription

1 WHITE PAPER Blueprint for Sales Certification 7 Elements of a Successful Program

2 Introduction Increasingly, companies are rolling out certification programs for their sales professionals to ensure that they can clearly articulate a value message during the sales process as well as validate that they have retained key knowledge. With the large investments made in new hire onboarding, product launch trainings, new messaging rollouts and national sales meetings, it is imperative to assess the effectiveness of these initiatives with sales certifications. Effective sales certifications give management a crucial window into their return on investment, and into the readiness of their sales teams. Establishing a certification program is not simple or cheap, and few companies do it well. That s why many companies have turned to Allego to streamline their sales certification programs. Leveraging Allego s Blueprint for Sales Certification, customers have seen immediate benefits from the flexibility, timeliness and accessibility that the platform delivers. The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Psychology Today In order to fine-tune this blueprint for our customers, we have continually analyzed a wide range of sales certification programs and determined that there are seven key elements to success. In an era of unprecedented competition, leading organizations are incorporating these elements into their certification programs and realizing the results they ve been looking for. 1. Show Them What Good Looks Like Everyone needs a starting point. Share examples with your team of short videos that demonstrate the right way to deliver the message or articulate a relevant customer story. Imagine a scenario where a rep is preparing for a sales certification on a new product that her company is trying to get to market. Traditionally, her course of action would be to review pages of product documents as well as any notes she has on objection handling. The problem with this approach however, is that aside from being incredibly tedious and boring, it isn t effective. According to Psychology Today, the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. If you also factor in the nuances of body language and other non-verbal communication, which is absolutely essential to sales presentations, it becomes clear that she s not fully set up for success having to rely on this traditional method. Many industry-leading companies are integrating mobile-video technology into their certification programs as they work to remedy the inherent flaws in traditional training methods. Imagine how much better positioned our sales rep would be if she could easily access a library of bite-sized videos of the top presentations designated by management? She could pull them up on her mobile phone or tablet and do a quick keyword search by regulatory requirement, product, product category or any other relevant term to access digestible videos whenever she has the time. 2 Blueprint for Sales Certification

3 This kind of easy access to company-specific best practices and insights into the right way to deliver a message or articulate a relevant customer story has truly raised the bar for sales certification programs. It has created an environment of ongoing peer-to-peer learning and best-practice refinement where managers can review and approve a particular product presentation, and then share so all reps can see what their presentation for the new messaging or product ought to look and sound like. They can use these top gun videos as a guide while preparing for their own certification. Anyone who s been successful in sales can attest to the power of being able to watch the performance of another rep in their company to gain perspective on the best way to deliver a presentation for a particular product. Companies who have the power to show their whole team what good looks like are much more likely to achieve the desired ROI from their sales training and certification programs. 2. Practice Makes Perfect As a lead-up to certification, encourage sales reps to practice in private repeatedly to allow for self-assessment and self-correction prior to submission. The discipline of video rehearsal has given management a revolutionary new tool to motivate individual reps to practice in private. Public speaking is one of people s greatest fears, and when confronted with the prospect of getting in front of an audience or delivering an important sales pitch, we all tend to have the same response: obsessive mental rehearsal. Whether in front of a mirror, while driving, or while pacing around a room, we run through the things we want to say over and over again until we have some semblance of comfort with our level of mastery. But there s a problem with this approach: it s wholly self-focused. Amid all of our, I ll say this and then I ll say this practicing, we often don t consider whether our audience will be truly engaged with what we are saying. Oftentimes, seemingly insignificant things, like personal mannerisms, can derail an otherwise strong presentation. With one of the companies we analyzed for this report, there was a rep who would unconsciously roll his eyes upward as he delivered his presentation. He was not aware that he was even doing this until he was tasked with submitting a pre-certification check-in video. In reviewing his numerous takes, he began to notice this behavior and was able to correct it. The other problem with purely mental rehearsal is that it doesn t fully account for what we plan to say. Unless you re actually speaking it aloud, it s very hard to force yourself to put your thoughts into complete sentences. Instead, we end up practicing more of an outline of what we might say rather than the actual word by word performance, i.e. First I ll talk about their business challenges, etc., etc.; then I ll talk about how our company started and how that relates to their problem, etc., etc... The weakness of this rehearsal approach is apparent when it comes to filling in the etc., etc. with actual words during the live presentation. Having a rep record 3 Blueprint for Sales Certification

4 a video of themselves forces them to map out exactly what they are going to say and then practice it over and over until they can deliver it fluently without pauses or hiccups. Not only are they forced to put everything into words, but they also have a complete record of their manner of presentation, which is the starting point for making real progress. 3. Stand, Deliver & Submit When a sales rep is ready, allow them a fast, easy and convenient way to record their delivery of the new messaging on a mobile device or laptop and submit into a workflow that routes to an appropriate manager for review. Traditionally, companies have been forced to allocate precious resources to pushing out the training content for teams to study, and then flying in managers and reps for face-to-face sessions to complete the certification process. This has always been an expensive endeavor, and leadership can t be sure reps are actually sticking to the messaging once they re certified. This is another reason why many modern sales organizations have turned to mobile-video sales learning platforms. The technology has caught up to allow reps to record their submission videos anywhere on their mobile devices or laptops and share them immediately with their managers. Teams can avoid the need for face-to-face training sessions to certify reps, and this brings a new level of agility to organizations when it comes to new product or messaging rollouts. Companies can get reps out into the field selling much more quickly in half the time in some cases we studied. Being able to leverage video technology for reps presentation submissions enables managers to gain deeper insight into what s really going on in the field, and actually inspect what they expect whenever, and on whichever device is most convenient for them. 4. Certify Anytime/Anywhere Evaluate and certify sales reps without the challenges of travel, scheduling logistics or connectivity. After viewing a certification submission, managers can provide in-video feedback and provide a standardized assessment with a customizable criteria scorecard. Being able to use asynchronous video to evaluate and comment on reps submissions brings a new level of visibility into exactly what they are saying when they stand and deliver in front of prospects and customers. Because managers don t have to worry about travel or scheduling, they are freed up to offer feedback where they might not have otherwise been able to because of the time constraints associated with face-to-face sessions. State of the art video compression software that utilizes predictive caching allows all of this to be done even without an internet connection. 4 Blueprint for Sales Certification

5 An example that best illustrates this is a particular case we studied with a leading software company. When rolling out new positioning for its cloud-based CRM and staffing solution, the company faced a unique challenge: its more than 100 reps were located around the globe, so in-person manager auditing of individual sales rep s articulation of the new messaging was simply too slow and costly. Instead, the COO and his team used Allego to create a series of short videos that articulated the right way to talk about each of the three prongs of their new messaging. The company s reps were each tasked with viewing the first of the three videos, and then recording their own presentation of its content using Allego. Managers reviewed the videos, and used Allego s patent-pending in-line feedback functionality to grade each rep s performance on seven criteria, which ranged from command of the material to presentation style and alignment with corporate strategy. Each sales rep used the feedback to record and submit an improved performance of the pitch. When the rep was deemed to have mastered the first phase of messaging, they were certified, and the process was repeated with each of the remaining two messaging prongs. 5. Share Best Practices & Objection Handing 65% of sales reps agree that sales pitch advice from peers is more effective than training from the corporation. The Fractured State of Enterprise Sales Enablement and Training Allego Select the best certification videos and curate them into a Best Practices channel for reps to reference and review in the field for reinforcement. Create a Top Objection Handling channel for short videos generated from field experiences with new messaging. Industry-leading sales organizations are using this capability to great effect. There is great power in learning tips and tricks from colleagues, and having a best practices channel populated with exemplary videos created by peers and curated by management seizes on this. There is a treasure trove of value sitting with that one rep who has just the right personal presence when presenting the newly rolled out product, or that other rep who is able to articulate the new company messaging with exceptional fluency. Managers are able to use mobile-video to showcase their exact presentations to the rest of the team. It is crucial for sales leaders to facilitate collaboration among their teams so that the treasure trove doesn t just sit there in the mind of those few reps while everybody else has to go out and learn the lessons themselves in front of the prospect. In fact, studies show 65% of sales reps agree 1 that sales pitch advice from peers is more effective than training from the corporation. It s much more powerful when reps can review certification videos created by their peers as reinforcement out in the field. A rep sitting on the train, or in a parking lot heading into a sales call, can easily peruse the best examples of whatever product presentation, messaging, or regulatory information they are about to deliver. Having this information in easyto-access video format that they can watch on their mobile phone or tablet allows reinforcement of concepts learned during the certification process, and facilitates the kind of motivated self-study and improvement that many sales reps yearn for. 5 Blueprint for Sales Certification

6 6. Highlight Success Stories To illustrate success with new messaging, solicit Customer Win Stories from reps and share them with the team. The most successful sales organizations continue to bring value to their reps long after the certification process is over by using their best practice library as a jumping off point for facilitating ongoing collaborative learning. Being able to draw from the collective experience of teams allows companies to formally collect, refine, and curate the priceless tribal knowledge that has traditionally been difficult to get maximum use out of. For instance, a team member coming out of a sales call where he had to navigate a tricky pitch with the new messaging with lots of questions around compliance issues can walk right out to his car and record a 2-minute video on his smartphone outlining how he answered them. He can share the video with his manager for approval, and if she chooses to, she can immediately share the video with the whole team, tag it, and make it easily discoverable for any team member looking for a refresher before they go into a similar sales call. Or the manager can create a gift card contest asking for each team member to record a two minute synopsis when coming out of a sales call delivering the presentation with the new messaging. Similar to how it is done during the initial certification process, she can go through and pick out the winner based on who has the most of that special something and share the video with the whole team for inspiration. The result is that sales organizations continually develop their best practice library and fill it with the most effective procedures and win stories for all the most common challenges specific to their individual company essentially, a self-updating, YouTube-style sales playbook filled with distilled, highly relevant content coming straight from the field. Having a central repository allows reps to see great examples of success stories with newly rolled out products or messaging, which leads to increased confidence within the team when they themselves go out on calls. Knowing that other reps are having success and being able to peruse videos of what worked with customers can be just the push that some reps need to walk into unfamiliar territory with confidence. 7. Customer Success Channel to Support New Messaging Collect stories from your post-sales team highlighting how customers are using your solutions and realizing value. Reps can leverage these videos as part of their storytelling. Our sales teams are on the front lines with prospects day in and day out nobody has a better understanding of the dynamics of the markets we operate in than they do. But once we close the deal, it is our post-sales team who really dives in with the customer on the mutual journey toward full utilization of our solution. There is a gold mine of information about the real ins and outs of our products that lies within the minds of our post-sales teams. They are the ones with the deepest understanding of the ground truth how the different aspects of our solutions are really being put to work. 6 Blueprint for Sales Certification

7 It can be one unique and unexpected use of our product or solution that makes the difference during the sales process. Or perhaps that one unique way that our newly rolled out messaging resonated with a particular customer when they were still in the sales process. In the past, organizations had to either rely on the established personal relationships between sales and post-sale teams for this vital information to be transferred, or set up a cadence of meetings to discuss customer use cases and results. However, personal relationships don t always exist, and these meetings can be time consuming and difficult to coordinate. Add to this the fact that the post-sales team is often too busy handling customer demands to accurately document the success stories that add value for the sales team. Instead, post-sales team members can easily record a bite-sized video outlining a unique customer response to the new messaging or novel use of the product. They can immediately upload the video to a secure, designated customer success channel that the sales team can access for inspiration, novel product use cases, or stories and anecdotes to add to their tool kit. More meetings are avoided, and both post-sales and sales teams are spared the hassle of having to use text documents to transmit this key information. Conclusion Sales certification programs are a key aspect of measuring and monitoring performance for any successful sales organization today. The most advanced companies are leveraging these seven elements to give management a crucial window into their team s performance, the consistency of their messaging, and their return on investment. 1 About Allego Allego provides an intuitive sales learning platform that boosts sales performance by harnessing the power of mobile devices to transform enablement and training through video content sharing. With Allego s mobile-first platform, organizations can create and curate the best content from the field and corporate office to better train and collaborate with sales teams, without the time and expense typically associated with in-field coaching or on-site training. Users can easily access relevant, quality content, anytime, anywhere, allowing them to capture their best ideas, master their pitch and accelerate their performance. Tens of thousands of global users across a range of industries have adopted Allego to improve sales success. Explore further at Allego Software salesinquiry@allego.com