AMA: Klaviyo Director of Product Marketing, Katie Gerard on Sales Enablement

It sounds like you may be cannibalizing yourself with overlapping product offerings. If customers are happy to use your cheaper product, it means the value of your enterprise package isn't crystal clear. I'd go back to the value prop on this one, what does your enterprise package offer the customer that's worth the price? If you feel you have that figured out, then it's just a matter of illustrating that through messaging. Show some super specific examples of enterprise brands that have seen kil ...Read More

I'd watch some recorded sales rep calls to form my own opinion on what's going on. I'd also follow up with the rep to get their perspective on challenges. Once you've diagnosed the problem, there's a few steps you can take: Is the rep nailing your talk track but the customer just isn't convinced? If so, this is definitely a messaging problem.   Is the rep doing their own thing, for example using old messaging or just skipping straight to a demo? Here, the rep isn't sufficiently trained on the me ...Read More

Demo scrips and pitch decks can be very difficult to land, especially if you're dealing with a generally successful sales org which may be less open to change. It's super important that you get alignment with Sales so they don't just look at your deliverables as just a "marketing" thing and ignore them. Some tips: Make sure you have alignment with Sales leadership on the need for a demo script and the overall positioning/messaging they want their reps using. The last thing you want is for them t ...Read More

It depends on how radically different your Enterprise solution actually is and how unfamiliar it will feel to Sales. Something else to consider, is this a new tier or a totally new product?   Often your Enterprise solution isn't radically different from your Standard product, especially at launch. Also, if your sales team has come into contact with enterprise customers they're probably already clamoring for the enterprise functionality. If this isn't the case though and let's say you've acquired ...Read More

It depends on where these requests are coming from! I'm always cautious with competitor specific one pagers because it's so easy for these to get back to the competitor. I've personally seen slides our competitors have made about us and this is a) legally risky b) detrimental to any partnership you might have with your competitor c) super easy to debunk when you see it neatly written down! We do come up with "battlecards" for all our major competitors that Sales can use to quickly respond to som ...Read More

The best way to get a handle on the success rate of your enablement program is to evaluate it both quantitatively and qualitatively. On the quant side, it's helpful to do some regular sales surveys around satisfaction, whether that's quarterly or after every launch. On a scale of 1-10, how confident do reps feel speaking about new features or going up against competitors? You should also pull metrics like competitive win rates to get a broader view of how sales is performing overall. Qualitative ...Read More