In our last blog post, we wrote on how an organization’s operating environment, or culture, is often the biggest roadblock to behavior change. And, it’s easy to see why—while our traditional change management initiatives (involving training, coaching, and communication campaigns) promote the adoption of new-in-kind behaviors, when salespeople go back in the field, they face a culture that is built for the old world, and is hostile to the new behaviors we’re now asking our reps to demonstrate.

It’s no wonder that sales organizations committed to the Challenger Selling journey find that nearly two-thirds of their sales force either partially or fully fail to consistently demonstrate Challenger Selling behaviors. While a few salespeople are incapable of making the jump to Challenger Selling, those that are often find their current operating environment in conflict with the new behaviors expected of them.

But, what is the current operating environment in most sales organizations? And, how is it different from a culture that promotes rather than inhibits Challenger Selling? This is what we set out to answer in this year’s research study, Driving Sales Transformation. In surveying nearly 2000+ salespeople across industries and geographies, we found the environment characterizing old world behaviors to be one of:  Read More »

For many of us, travelling is a year-round occurrence, as is reading. But, with summer approaching, comes the personal travel too. Why not share a few personal favorites from my summer reading list. Something to read when travelling to visit customers or meeting your internal team, or maybe at the pool or on the beach as you relax and unwind, and take in the warm weather.

Here are a few books I’ll be going back to and some new ones on my list. Oh, and fair warning – this isn’t just a list of business books; it’s a compilation of books, covering a variety of topics.

1. Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) – I’m guessing most, if not all of you, have read both of these books. But, how long ago? I recently came across a documentary on Freakonomics and realized it’s been awhile since I read it. So, I’m rediscovering them. And I forgot how interesting and surprising the stories and data are. As the author said in the documentary – if you want to understand people’s behaviors, understand their incentives. And who doesn’t want to relive what hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Read More »

Sales organizations are increasingly turning to Insight Selling to cope with increased buyer sophistication and deal complexity. That said, our recent member survey finds that most sales leaders believe as much as one-third of their sales force does not have the potential to Insight Sell. This harsh new reality, coupled with an aging workforce of baby-boomers, means that sales organizations must urgently look for new sales talent to replace their often aging and/or unqualified sales force.

However, as our latest research finds, traditional recruiting efforts fall short in hiring sales talent that can successfully Insight Sell. Indeed, Insight Selling places new-in-kind demands on reps, such as the ability to deliver insight and exercise judgment in the sale. Not surprisingly, these skills differ from traditional selling skills, and are typically not screened for in recruiting efforts.

Our analysis finds the types of skills needed for Sales factor into two categories, influencing skills (EQ) and thinking and judgment skills (IQ). As the graph below shows, most salespeople peak high on EQ, but fall short on IQ, leaving many sales organizations with reps that are unable to exercise the required judgment and thinking skills necessary to create and deliver commercial insights. Read More »

The biggest challenge to communicating messages to the sales force is ensuring message absorption. While sales enablement and communication teams strive to constantly provide reps with the most up-to-date sales information, reps often complain about communication overload. In fact, reps are often overwhelmed with the number of channels used to communicate messages—struggling to sort through relevant information in weekly newsletters, narrowing down product specification updates, finding time for new product training communications, and preparing for quarterly town hall meetings.

In our recently completed research brief, Effective Communication to the Sales Force, we brought this common problem to five member organizations to identify potential strategies for managing communication to the sales force. We asked five main questions:

1. What are your primary modes of communication to sales reps?
2. Who designs, vets, and delivers your communications?
3. How do you tailor communication for different audiences within the sales rep community?
4. How do you measure the effectiveness of your communications?
5. What lessons have you learned from your experience communicating to the sales force? Read More »

In my last blog post, I introduced our newest research findings on sales culture, and how most sales organizations today have a sales culture or climate that is hindering their ability to build a Challenger sales force. Most sales leaders recognize that while traditional change management initiatives such as effective training, coaching, and communication campaigns are required to embed new behaviors, change is destined to fail if it’s not supported by the right sales environment.

In fact, when we asked reps what’s preventing them from adopting new sales behaviors; over half of them reported their operating environment or culture as the biggest inhibitor of behavior change. And when you look at the cartoon illustration below, it is easy to understand why.

On the left is an illustration of sales leaders’ perspective on change: a big national sales meeting with all the bells and whistles (e.g., great inspirational speaker, maybe even the author of The Challenger Sale, new materials on the sales portal, exciting breakout sessions, and great training for reps and managers to come). If this sounds familiar, it’s because it represents how most sales organizations roll-out change initiatives. And for the most part, these are essential and effective strategies for driving change. Read More »

In most sales organizations, successful completion of training results in certification. That said, few reps demonstrate newly acquired skills consistently for it to translate to improved sales results. A key reason for this – most sales organizations approach certification as a one-time activity.

SLC research finds that most sales organizations certify reps based on short-term demonstrated behaviors through assessments or tests. But, short-term certification fails to ensure full adoption of new behaviors.

On the other hand, leading organizations implement long-term certification programs based on sustained behavior change. They do this in three ways: Read More »

Increasingly, organizations are pairing gamification with traditional sales training efforts to reinforce particular skills and knowledge. Using the principles of traditional games in real-world situations, a sales force is more engaged in the training, retains more information, and understands the application of what they are learning. Currently gamification is often used to increase a seller’s market and product knowledge and to practice particular skills, such as tailoring insight and creative thinking.

Gamification is particularly effective because it incorporates real-time feedback and provides a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to the sales force. Unlike so many real-world situations, in which actions go unnoticed or unrewarded, in the context of a game, proper action or answers can be celebrated. Similarly, when individuals incorrectly answer a question or apply a skill, they can receive constructive feedback to improve future efforts. This aspect allows sellers to think about effective application of new knowledge and skills in the context of actual situations they may encounter.

The opportunities for competition, mastery, and recognition in gamification incentivize reps to engage with and participate in the training. Often, the game platforms have a variety of public leaderboards that display the top players and their scores. This visibility cultivates internal (fun) competition within the sales force around the particular game and also identifies those that have mastered specific content for the rest of the sales force to learn from. Since much of these games’ content is skill or knowledge-based and the platform allows individuals to track their success, gamification allows individuals to achieve mastery and to also compete against themselves. Read More »

While most sales leaders recognize that communication is an integral part of any strategy, exclusionary focus on the ‘message’ may have unintended consequences. Such intensity around the content narrative and distribution channels internally can often obscure the implicit messages leaders also send.

Leaders impact their organization through both implicit and explicit messages and when those messages are not coherent or consistent at best it muddies the waters and at worst creates dissonance and disengagement. It is important that leaders think through the symbolic value of their actions that ground the climate they hope to engender, as they set the tone for the rest of the organization.

The best leaders deliberately use both formal and informal cues to influence their teams and set the tone of their organization. Most leaders do not consider the unintended consequences of the signals they send that may undermine or contradict the goals they are attempting to achieve. For example, in order to foster competition and drive higher productivity a leader may publish activity stack rankings, not realizing that a rep walks away with the message that the company prioritizes quantity over quality. Read More »

A CRM system is not only an integral part of the sales workflow, but is the lifeblood of the sales process, providing reps with the right information for the right customer at the right time.

The deep integration of CRM with the sales process has led some executives to take CRM for granted. Yet, these systems require huge yearly investments, and should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other investment. However, “How do you track the ROI of your CRM?” is a question no Sales Ops executive wants to, or can easily answer.

Such was the case when we took this question to four member organizations. Most of the conversations began with a laugh or a sigh as we proceeded to uncover the complexities of each members’ processes of tracking and reporting the various elements of their CRM. We asked four main questions: Read More »

The world of Sales is changing. The amount of time reps get to spend with customers is decreasing. The time to engage with customers is moving later and later in the purchase decision. The speed of commodification is increasing and margins are shrinking all the time. High performing reps are able to keep up with these changes, but what about core reps?

Sales enablement leaders are struggling to match the pace of rep development with these changes in the buying world.  The difficulty is not a lack of support to offer; rather, there is so much to do, it is hard to know where to begin. There is new technology to offer: sales portals, iPads, Chatter feeds, social selling to name a few. There are new training initiatives for skills and product knowledge as well as professional development. It can all be overwhelming.

In our Challenger skills adoption workshops we recommend beginning with a specific set of questions:  Read More »