Harsha Kalapala

AMA: AlertMedia Vice President Product Marketing, Harsha Kalapala on Sales Enablement

November 2 @ 9:00AM PST
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AlertMedia Vice President Product Marketing, Harsha Kalapala on Sales Enablement
Top Questions
Is there a framework for creating good sales enablement decks for new B2B products or training new sales rep on your product?
Eg: How do you structure it? I can imagine some standard sections such as Competition, Market Problem but are there standard "must haves" section that have worked well.
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Any new product should have a “product brief” associated with it to help not just sales, but any internal stakeholder to be on the same page about the purpose and positioning of the product. Enabling sales can be done effectively without ever involving a deck. My focus is on content and training ......Read More
824 Views
2 requests
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
If you have product marketing and sales enablement as separate functions, asset creation should be owned by product marketing for the most part. Anything sales enablement creates should be in support of helping sales consume the content that’s already built — such as talk tracks, discovery questi......Read More
437 Views
3 requests
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
I don’t just open up a store and wait for people to come. I personally go find the first 2-3 customers that attract more to the store because apparently, it’s the place to go. No matter what you create, you should build champions for your content within sales. The most effective way to do that......Read More
288 Views
1 request
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
It sounds like the salesperson needs tools training. I wouldn’t get them all the resources they need to learn how to search in your asset database/software. I would assign them a “buddy” in sales who can answer their questions on this quickly. Seeing their peers being good at something this perso......Read More
307 Views
1 request
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
If you build it, they won’t come. Product marketing assets are ineffective without proper sales enablement efforts - whether there is a separate team for it or not. The simplest analogy I use is that product marketing creates the juice, and sales enablement makes sure the sales team drinks the......Read More
476 Views
3 requests
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Sales enablement effectiveness should have quantitative as well as qualitative measurements. Quantitative measurements should have lead and lag metrics. Lead metrics help you ensure you are on the right track early on in any enablement project and allow you to course correct as needed. Example......Read More
412 Views
4 requests
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
I don’t incentivize sales for this. Any such incentives will be short-term band-aid attempts. I dont see them solving a problem.  A well-trained salesperson should know when to focus on product benefits in their sales conversations. It’s never the lead. If you want them to use specific product me......Read More
290 Views
2 requests
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
I find meeting with the larger team separately not to be an effective use of time. Instead my team tags on to existing sales meetings regularly when they have it, and request a few minutes ahead of time if there are any questions to ask, or quick announcements to make. The most effective meetings......Read More
311 Views
1 request
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
The sales team is often at the front lines. They are the eyes and ears of your go-to-market strategy. Engaging with sales starts with the little things to build trust that you understand their world. Sit with the sales team at the office at a floater desk. Be a fly-on-the-wall in their meeting......Read More
390 Views
3 requests
How do you tell a multi-product story through sales collateral?
for example, how do you tie products to fit together instead of going to market with one product/one focus point?
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Solution messaging is key. It’s not about what the products can do for you, but about what you can do with the products. Does your one product solve for one problem entirely, or do your customers use multiple products to solve for a bigger challenge? If the latter, you should be selling the probl......Read More
345 Views
1 request
How do you enable your sales team when the product teams decide to introduce a new product that targets a different persona, from your traditional buyer?
Would love to get your perspective on generating excitement around your new product, vs. continuous enablement on the core capabilities of your solutions
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Go back to the basics and develop the buyer persona assets for this new buyer. You can’t effectively sell to someone you don’t understand. Training and workshops for the sales team to fully internalize this new buyer persona, and ask questions in a group setting or 1-1 is important to get the tea......Read More
282 Views
1 request
What's the most reliable way to measure performance of intangible sales enablement (such as training, objection handling, trap setting)?
For instance, it's easy to jerry-rig performance to a one-sheeter that was sent in the course of a deal, but I'm having trouble finding ways to measure performance for intangible efforts that improve sales performance but isn't easily attributable to revenue.
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Qualitative measures require qualitative assessment. I don’t see a way around spending time listening to calls (at 1.75x speed of course) :) The best way to measure performance is to select a random sample of sales conversations - enough to be quantitative (10+) and assess the intangibles on a......Read More
314 Views
1 request
How do you assess which sales enablement materials are the most effective?
As B2B product marketers we want to be able to identify which sales enablement assets (i.e. one pagers, pitch decks, etc) are the most impactful to guide future resoure investment decisions but oftentimes tracking of these materials can be challenging since it frequently requires manual tracking on the part of the sales team.
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
There is no single golden arrow. Every piece of material has its role in the process. I look at effectiveness from two perspectives. One - did the salesperson use it? Two - did the prospect use it? Fortunately, there are tools for this today. You should be using a tool like Seismic, Highspot, or ......Read More
508 Views
1 request
How do you get insight into the current state of prospect/sales interactions?
What are good ways to learn about the field's approach, prospect priorities, etc.
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
Listen to calls. There’s no other way thats really effective. We live in the world of Gong/Chorus - where we have unprecedented insight into prospect conversations. There is no excuse to not take advantage of this ability. You can set playlists based on topics, segments, keywords, competitive pos......Read More
510 Views
1 request
How do you recommend setting up a process for marketing to support sales when that doesn't already exist? Think scrappy startup phase! :)
I'm a product marketer who has never had to work with sales before because I've always worked for low-cost B2C SaaS companies that have a short marketing funnel without handholding needed for sales. I'm currently working with an early-stage client that is just starting to put together marketing materials and email flows.
Harsha Kalapala
Harsha Kalapala
AlertMedia Vice President Product MarketingNovember 2
For startups building this from scratch, I’d throw out any best practices and build what’s needed for your unique situation. I would think about laying out the sales process and the buyer’s journey. Build your assets for the buyer’s journey overall and assess what parts of that journey are sales ......Read More
310 Views
1 request