AMA: Salesforce Director, Sales Leader Excellence Coach, Grant Glaser on Sales Enablement

Getting feedback from sales (both leaders & sellers) is crucial. It'll help you assess success, relevance, and what you need to focus on next. It's easy to skip over & move onto the next project so make sure to prioritize feedback collection for every campaign, workshop, and training you support or lead. Easy ways to collect feedback: * Create short (10 or less) question surveys in a tool like Survey Monkey or GetFeedback * Schedule brief calls w/ a group of leaders & sellers post-enablement * Create a steering committee of engaged sellers & leaders who act as feedback loops during creation, execution, and follow-up

There are many of ways to incorporate feedback into your enablement work. One framework that has served me well is the, 'Successive Approximation Model (SAM)'. In summary, it's all about: * Preparation Phase - scope, collect, brainstorm, sketch, & prototype * Iterative Design Phase - design, build, & develop a working MVP * Iterative Development Phase - get feedback, prioritize changes, iterate quickly It's all about building an MVP, getting feedback, and iterating fast. Perfection is the enemy of progress!

Sales is an ever-evolving sport and there is no sitting on your laurels if you want to stay ahead. Companies are constantly on the look-out for cutting edge technology to train & tune sales skills, increase industry knowledge, and show-up well in-front of customers. Adoption of new tools, tactics, & strategies include: * Understanding the role of AI in sales interactions * Finding ways to uncover customer pain-points before hearing it directly from a prospect/client * Staying on top of best-in-class sales methodologies (or often creating their own) * Leveraging a simple, clear, and efficient sales process that maps to the buying journey of clients

In-office, remote, and virtual training is all part of corporate learning, post-pandemic. Enablers need to think about, and design, learning that is effective across learning environment & geography. For this to be effective and for the skills to translate out into the 'real world', enablers need to: * Balance knowledge transfer (theory) with hands-on practice (application) * Provide learning 'in the flow of work' - when the employee needs or requires it the most * Inject small, consumable learning moments throughout the learners career * Focus on outcomes * Ask themselves, 'did this learning help: close a deal, speed up the cycle, create a new opportunity?'

Without feedback, you're building & delivering learning in a vacuum and not setting yourself up for success. To mitigate this: * Collect feedback early & often * Send a 5 question (or less) survey after a learning module * Host a debrief where learners can provide topical feedback in-person (or remotely) * Take the feedback & make meaningful changes & tweaks to your training & programs * Repeat each time there is a significant change - better, better, never best

One word: outcomes. Sales enablement should (and needs to be) tightly aligned to business objectives & desired outcomes of the business/sales organization. When you tie learning programs to tangible outcomes & KPIs, you get more accurate success measures. This translates to happy learners and happy business units: win-win.

There needs to be a problem to solve. Begin by finding out what problem exists. Then, * Create a clear problem statement * Define the current vs. desired future state * Outline KPIs/metrics you want the program to impact * Build an MVP to shop around with sellers & sales leaders * Ensure you have sponsorship & buy-in from your sales leaders & teams * Deliver the program * Capture feedback * Iterate & repeat

You'll get many enablement requests from a vast number of sources. I recommend triaging using this flow: * Inbound request for enablement * Substantiate with data (where & when possible) * Identify outcomes to measure & impact * Understand if the gap is: skill, will, or knowledge * Define learning outcomes * Decide if the program is necessary * Execute the program * Capture feedback * Report back findings

Many of the large research firms (ex: Gartner) and other smaller societies exist. They put out interesting reports, whitepapers, and findings that showcase new enablement technology, sales trends, and changes in the learning space. I'd recommend: * Check-out new & topical books * Subscribe or review these firms/sites from time to time * Join a community (Slack or LinkedIn) with like-minded folks

Great question & cross-functional support is paramount to success. My best recommendation: * Find common areas of overlap or shared interest * Align on the outcomes you both want to impact * Setup a 'stand-up' cadence (weekly/bi-weekly) On more extensive efforts, a project manager can be helpful. For smaller steps, stay aligned on an end goal, divide & conquer workstreams, and hold one another accountable.

I enjoy companies that operate from a set of core values & principles. Step one is to call out learning as core to the business's success. Next, you should consider: * Praising knowledge sharing * Driving a learning culture from the top-down * Offering easy ways for people to share their learnings * Embedding learning where sellers & leaders need it most

Begin by baselining critical metrics for new seller success. It could be things like: time to first deal, deal velocity, time to pipeline, etc. Then: * Divide new sellers into 'cohorts' * Measure their metrics against more tenured seller cohorts * Understand trends that support or refute your hypotheses * Draw correlation where you see it to infer if your programs are working Causation is near impossible but with large enough data-sets, you can find correlations & trends that will help explain and direct future learning.