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

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 vs. deck creation. The product brief contains things like a problem to solve, buyer personas addressed, why it is important now (urgency), competitive landscape or what you are replacing, discovery questions, customer stories, user quotes, ROI calculators where applicable, product FAQs, assets to send ahead or leave behind, outbound messaging sequences, demo recordings, modified product screenshots, and recordings of effective calls of other reps - to name a few. Training reps on products starts with training on the specific pain points the product addresses for specific personas. Understanding what problem you solve, who you solve it for, and why it is important now is essential for sales to be effective. There should be a focus on lining up discovery questions to help the salesperson dig into the prospect’s unique situation before trying to pitch any new product.

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 questions, conversation narratives, etc. I tried limiting to 5, but I’ll share 7 basics (lucky you) I would ensure sales have in their hands to sell effectively: 1. Buyer personas - Can you really sell if you don’t thoroughly understand who you sell to? 2. Solution summary 1-sheet - send ahead or leave behind. This is essential in getting sales on the same page on the product benefit story, and also having a quick way to answer product questions for the prospect 3. Core pitch and product demo - this is typically a deck with a narrative. But you don’t always need a deck. Some of the most effective salespeople I know never use a deck. They talk through discovery and use the company’s website and product demo to show and tell. 4. Discovery questions - Most deals break at discovery. Having a playbook to consistently understand the prospect is absolutely key. 5. Outbound sequences - I think everyone in sales should be prospecting, no matter their role. Providing consistent email templates and call scripts will be very helpful in driving consistent results. 6. Customer case study - you can toot your horn all you want. But buyers like me will want to see evidence of your claims. Providing a scrappy case study of a customer story that includes testimonials and proof of ROI is essential. 7. Competitive battlecards - you rarely sell in a vacuum. Helping your team prepare for the forces that influence the sale outside of your control is important.

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 is to pick salespeople who are seasoned performers and who others in the team look up to. If you have their stamp of approval, the rest will follow.

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 person needs to be good at should motivate them to catch up. Other than that, I wouldn’t waste my time getting one person to learn how to use a basic tool. It’s not fair use of time for the rest of the team who can benefit from your work at scale.

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 juice AND keeps it down. Now that’s oversimplified in some ways. The partnership between both functions begins at the problem identification phase. Both teams should be on the same page about the gaps in driving effectiveness for the sales teams - whether it is a recurring challenge in core performance, or an opportunity to train on a new product launch. Having a sales enablement roadmap is essential in making this partnership effective. This is typically owned by sales enablement with input from product marketing. For instance, if product marketing creates a new pitch deck for sales, it requires adding a ton of context, talk tracks, discovery questions, role plays, follow-up playbooks, and other preparation to make the pitch deck effective. Most of this is led by sales enablement with input from product marketing. SE also determines how much repeated exposure and training the sales team needs and how much ramp time it takes for the sales team to be effectively using the new pitch deck. Sales enablement schedules these training sessions and invites product marketing as subject matter experts to help drive the training sessions. Measuring the effectiveness of these steps in the process and incorporating that into future sales enablement efforts for continuous improvement is what makes this partnership effective in the long run.

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. Examples of lead metrics are - sales usage KPIs, training completion, opp open rate, sales stage movement, talk time on calls, etc. Lag metrics indicate how effective the project was and helps plan for the next enablement initiative. Examples - revenue, quota attainment, opp close rate, time to close, contract value, etc. Qualitative measures can be: * How confident do they feel about a topic/process/demo? * How prepared do they feel with materials necessary? * How willing are they to share feedback and collaborate with you on improvements? A huge advantage we have today is using call recordings from tools like Gong or Chorus - where you can create playlists for mentions of keywords, pitch analysis, follow-ups, etc. In the end, it has to come down to revenue generated as the ultimate effectiveness metric. Otherwise, nothing else you measure matters.

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 messaging, then the best incentive is to build trust that your output is reliable and effective for others on the team. Seeing proof of impact within the team is very effective in getting others to use your messaging.

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 are in smaller groups, with the sales managers, and with individual reps who can add value to your research.

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 meetings. Sit down next to a salesperson for lunch. Set up virtual coffee meetings. Look at their activity on LinkedIn. Dont just talk to the sales managers. Connect at every experience level and role in the sales process. When creating content, review early concepts with sales verbally. “Hey, Lee - we are thinking about building out [this story]. What do you think?” A product marketer should be perceived as almost being on the sales team (and the product team - which is a post for another topic). A sales enablement person may have a sales background - which helps with trust, or they may have to earn it. Many salespeople have strong opinions. I would be careful to not get carried away by one strong opinion. Use it to support your data, or find data to support a hypothesis. You don’t always have the data - then use your gut to make a call and keep a close pulse on the lead metrics to see if it is working as intended.

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 problem and the full solution to it. Not the product features. A solution story requires telling a narrative from the perspective of the customer. Utilizing customer journey stories is essential in this approach. Clearly define the problem and map out their journey to solve for the problem using your products along the way. Clearly articulate the benefits at each step and the overall outcome. Use published case studies, customer quotes, and interactive demos where applicable.

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 team ready to sell to a new persona. You should be demanding the time necessary to make this happen if a new product class is introduced to address a new persona.

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 score sheet - objection handling, trap setting, etc.). I would try to make the scoring as subjective as possible—not how “ideally” it was delivered, but how the prospect reacted to it. You can learn a lot from winning conversations. But also a ton to learn from loss conversations. Reducing instances of losses can be an effective way of measuring performance and course correction.

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 Docsend. These tools also allow for a third important measure - did the prospect pass it around to the buying group? Now you’re hitting the right notes. If the salesperson doesn’t use something, it doesnt necessarily mean it’s an ineffective asset. Sometimes it means they need more awareness and training on the value an asset can add to their sales process. On the other hand, more usage by sales doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective. It is important to track what role the asset played in the prospect’s buying journey.

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 positioning - or any way your tool lets you slice the data. I would put up filters for the topics and keywords that reflect what you need your sales team to deliver consistently at scale to drive your ideal brand and product positioning.

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 interactions. Refer to the top 7 core assets I mentioned in a different question in this AMA - that will be a good place to start. Overall, I highly recommend making your approach buyer journey-oriented vs. sales enablement oriented.