How do you incentivize your sales team to use product messaging in their interactions with clients?

Two things to consider here: if they are resisting your product messaging, it may be worth asking yourself if it’s the right messaging to being with. Then consider how you’re framing the messaging to the sales teams based on who they are talking with. Let’s look at both of those.

To evaluate if you’re using the right product messaging/positioning do an audit using this formula: Positioning = Market Problems + Our Offering – Competition. In other words, what are the market problems you’re aiming to solve, how does your offering solve for them, and how is it different from what your competition is claiming? If you land on that as your product messaging, your sales teams should lean into it, not resist it. 

If you feel you already have that nailed, and you’re still getting resistance, then consider the audience of your salespeople and make sure you’re framing your product messaging at the right level. Do you have messaging created for your product that’s appropriate for C-level, decision-maker, mid-manager, and practitioner? Better yet, have you tied these together as a “chain of pain” or “pain chain” (look up this concept and apply to your messaging – it’s one of the best frameworks to use).

The best incentive is to show them the opportunities it will unlock for them. 

Example: Let's say you are trying to shift reps from talking about single products to a suite. There is resistance because they worry that will make it a tougher sell since it's a bigger decision. What do you do? 

First, acknowledge their anxiety and triage that effectively. In this case, that means making sure you deliver a way to make sure that new messaging continues to support existing sales motions. 

Secondly, show them the potential for what the messaging can unlock. In this case, potentially higher ASP and future cross-sell opportunities. 

I think if messaging is done right, the incentive lies in buyer comprehension and ultimately more closed opportunites.

Great messaging means understanding the buyer and their pain points and being able to speak to those pain points with the value propositions of your product. This type of value based selling will resonate with buyers in a way that is proven to have impact - and therefore being able to highlight that to the sales org, and showing them the impact of selling product values - should be incentive enough. 

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.

The best way to encourage the sales team to use the right product messaging is to create useful and actionable sales materials with that messaging. If your messaging is simple, easy to understand, and battle-tested to work with prospects then you won't need incentives. Good messaging should make the sales teams' jobs easier.

Secondly, make sure you have done a ton of training - just giving the sales team messaging is not helpful if they don't know when and how to use it. Creating certifications is one way of doing that as well.

I personally don't believe that reps need to be incentivized to use messaging that wins. If messaging works (aka helps brings quality revenue and bring more new logos/expansions/customers/users faster, reps will ofcourse be using it

If reps aren't using your product messaging, its mostly because of three reasons

1. Your messaging is at the wrong altitude. (e.g. it is too technical and doesn't speak value), or too generic (e.g. generic value statements without going into differentiators), or too incomplete (e...g not backed by proof points, or case studies)

2. It may be complete, at the right altitude but is just not helping them win. Maybe your product needs some innovation, or you need to rethink your messaging altogether

My suggestion would be to do some internal listening on why they aren't using what you'd like them to use. An enablement best practice is to involve them in feedback, in testing and validation and ofcourse during enablement and rollout