Next week, we'll be hosting the virtual Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Summit, and we asked Steve Hallowell, Highspot’s VP of Strategic Services, to give us a sneak peek into some of the insights he will be sharing in his session, Building a Scalable Revenue Engine.
Q. Let’s jump right in with a question that will likely be top of mind for most enablement leaders – what’s the most critical step when working to align your sales enablement and sales teams?
A. The first step is to be very clear on what you want your sales team to do. What are the initiatives that matter? But then, more specifically, how do you translate those initiatives into actual behaviors? What are the specific things you want your sellers to do?
Once that is clear, it gives your enablement team a very tangible thing to focus on driving through your organization.
Q. How have you found success when navigating your enablement team through uncertainty? I think that is top of mind for a lot of people right now.
A. I think one of the things that give us all comfort is when we have predictability in our lives. This is a time when there's so little that is predictable. Companies can help their sellers the most by telling them, “Hey, these are the major things you have to accomplish, and I’m going to help you do that.”
When you offer that clarity and consistency, it becomes a platform for building effective habits. And habits are very reassuring in challenging times.
Q. Why do so many sellers struggle to be successful?
A: We see that it's common in many organizations that far too many sellers are not performing to the level they could be because the company hasn't done the work it needs to show people how to be successful.
There's always going to be some people who are not succeeding in every company. But it's the company's job to figure out what the best people are doing and how to package those behaviors so that everyone on the team can replicate them.
If you have a bunch of people traveling up a mountain for the first time with no map, no compass, no benefit from the people who've gone before them, of course, many people aren't going to make it. However, if you say, this is the map, this is the easy route, here is the best equipment to get there, you're going to have a much better success rate.
Q. Steve, sales training has been around for a long time. Why do so many companies struggle to get sellers to execute what they’ve learned?
A. I think the issue is that they define it just as sales training. Sales training is one piece of the puzzle. You also have to give folks the right material and resources to succeed. Most importantly, you have to manage and coach your team.
If you go off and train on something and it's not important enough for your managers to coach your teams to do it, it probably wasn't worth doing the training in the first place.
Q. We’ve all seen this happen before where companies put a lot of time and energy into launching a new initiative, such as a new product launch, but adoption is low. Why is that?
A. You know, there are often two things. The first is that the organization hasn't translated this lofty initiative like selling a new product, selling value, and selling more into the specific items they want their sellers to go do. The second thing is that even if they have listed the specific behaviors, they are not being methodical about driving that new initiative through the organization. Sellers will also need support, training, and coaching from their management teams to execute effectively.
Catch the video version of this interview here...
... and gain more insights and best practices from Steve on Wednesday, February 17th at 11:00 AM Pacific Time or 7:00 PM GMT during his session, Building a Scalable Revenue Engine.
