Justin Graci

Great question.

When it comes to measuring objection handling:

• Leverage a conversation intelligence tool such as Gong, where you can report on keywords within sales calls and attribute those conversations to deal pipelines.

For training:

• The best way to measure impact of a training is to run 'workshops' in addition to a training such as an eLearning. For example... I'd recommend reps taking an eLearning that walks through the 'what and the why' and then organize a workshop where they put it to practice to understand the 'how'. With the workshop, create a simple matrix scorecard to judge/grade their effectiveness in putting it to practice. This could be a role play or it could be the rep recording a mock pitch and submitting it to their manager to grade.
• I'd also recommend looking at 'before' and 'after' snapshots within your reporting. What was the runrate before they took the training, and what did it look like 30, 60, 90 days after?
• In some cases, depending on the training, you'll be able to better track things. For example, if you lead a training on 'improving win rates against X competitor by leveraging new objection handling techniqes' then you can look at deals that involved that competitor and whether you saw a meaningful increase in win rates. 

At the end of the day, not everything is going to have a direct line to tangible results. But there are more and more solutions on the market to help today, and creative ways to think about it. 

This is probably pretty standard for most companies, but these sales materials have been the most used:

• One pagers / data sheets (product overviews, use cases, etc.)
• Pitch decks that reps can customize and/or leverage 'templated slides' for easy 'drag and drop' presentation building when prepping for a meeting
• Quick hit videos -- these are usually short product demo or use case clips they can share

Beyond the well known ones above, we've seen reps finding a ton of value in higher value things like tools, such as calculators. A lot of our best 'lead gen tools' or 'consulting tools' were originally created as spreadsheets, but eventually we invested in building these as proper web-apps that look good.

My answer would change depending on what we're talking about (B2b Marketing program vs Sales enablement program).

For a sales enablement program:

1. Pitch Deck
2. Product use case glossary
3. Case study
4. Discovery question list or Demo video
5. (this isn't necessarily an asset) Prospecting lists / target account lists w/ enriched data

Great question. I suggest all marketers to collaborate with their sales team. At my previous company, marketers were required to shadow a certain number of sales calls per month. This was a great way for us to understand their process, hear what prospects are saying, and align what we're doing.

In terms of engaging Sales for input, here is what I'd suggest:

1. Find a core group of sales reps who will be your champions. For us, we identified a group of around 5 reps in the segment we were focused on, who leverage content and campaigns in their sales process. These reps were willing and excited to partner with marketing.
2. Build a template to collect their ideas and feedback within. For us, we've created one that has 3 columns: what we'd build, why we'd build it, and when/where reps would use it in their sales process.
3. Send your prompts to your sales feedback group for input
4. Meet with them to discuss live in a focus group and/or async via commenting

Another approach we've taken is with creating a "Sales Panel" which is a monthly recurring meeting with a core group of reps who are willing to provide feedback and ideas to marketing. These meetings have a dynamic agenda, where any marketer can join with a question they're seeking feedback/responses to.

My last tip... hire a sales rep who has marketing skills to join your marketing team. They'll bring with them a ton of connections/trust within the sales org.

Here are a few tips for ensuring your sales team leverages the content you create:

•  Make sure the content can easily be found. Have a central, go-to place that reps can find all your content. This can be a 3rd party platform such as Highspot, Seismic, or Allbound. Or it can be a more simple Airtable/Spreadsheet that has proper filtering if you're on a budget. Of course with a platform you'll get data/insights into what's working, what's not, so I recommend a platform vs spreadsheet.
•  Keep the content up-to-date. If a sales rep loves a piece of collateral, but continues to find that it's outdated and missing the latest info, then they'll quickly lose interest in using it, and they'll lose trust in the marketing team.
•  Host monthly 'marketing/enablement showcases'. At HubSpot, we've hosted monthly meetings that are around 45-60 minutes, and attended by sales reps. During this time, the team walks through the latest content, collateral, and campaigns. And we don't just show what the asset is... we show reps why we created it, when they should use it in the sales process, and often try to share a recent sales-win from using the asset.
•  Showcase any rep wins attributed to your content. This one has worked REALLY well for us. If you find a rep who leveraged an asset from Marketing and it led to a good engagement with a prospect or customer, then get a quote and showcase that to the broader team. Once other reps see another having success, they're more willing to use it. Bonus - if you can show these wins to Sales Managers, who are willing to share with their teams, that'll work even better.

At the end of the day, marketers who support the sales org need to focus on QUALITY and not quantity. Don't get yourself in a place where you're a content factory. Instead, do research with your reps, find what would be most impactful and useful, and commit to a small number of high value assets.

This question would likely require more details/specifics for me to answer fully, but I'll do my best! 

If you organize your sales team by market segment, then you could focus the enterprise product details on your enterprise segment reps, while the broader set of reps focus on the existing product offering.

If you have one sales team that covers all segments, then you'll need to find more of a balance. And with that, I'd make sure you don't over compensate on the new enterprise offering right out of the gates and first pressure test the product-market fit and whether a smaller group of reps have success. 

In terms of striking a balance:

• Create clear differentiation of your offerings so reps understand what the product is, who it's for, what's different from the core offering, etc.
• Help reps understand how the new enterprise version fits into the bigger picture
• Create a sales specialist team that can focus more on the enterprise offering, and allow reps to pull them into deals where they're needed.

I've learned that the best way to solve this sort of problem is to stop spoon feeding them every time. Yes, once at first is fine, but if this is one particular sales person every single time, then don't give them the direct link to what they needed and instead tell them where to find it and let them find it on their own. Here is what that looks like:

Sales Rep: Hey marketer/enablement lead, do you know if we have any one pagers about X?

Marketer: Hey there, yes I believe we do have what you're looking for. Have you looked in our enablement platform by searching for it? It should be there. If not, let me know.

Just like all humans... if we get comfortable with someone spoon feeding us, we'll continue wanting to be spoon-fed instead of figuring it out ourselves. But if you can help nudge them towards the right behavior without giving them the answer/content up front, you'll help them learn the desired behavior. Ultimately, if this tactic doesn't correct it, then I'd mention something to their manager in a nice way (again, frame it around wanting to help their rep be productive vs looking for answers).

Here are some of the top sections I'd include:

1. Positioning / value prop
2. ICP (with good-fit indicators)
3. Buyer personas
4. Use cases
5. Competitive landscape (with supporting comparison assets)
6. Proof (case studies, research, data, customer wins, 3rd party reviews)
7. Feature overview
8. Discovery questions
9. Objection Handling

Sounds like you've entered a fun career path! Prior to working at HubSpot, I worked at a startup/scaleup and learned a ton about being scrappy.

I might need a bit more context on exactly what type of support you mean, but if I can read between the lines a bit, I'll do my best to provide a few tips. It sounds like you're doing two things... 1) creating content sales can use and 2) creating nurture email flows to support sales. So let me break that into two sections

Creating sales content:

• I'd recommend partnering with someone who is close to your product, but also understands the customer pains that the product solves. Either a product marketer or sales engineer.
• Set up a cadance that you'll meet with them going forward (maybe weekly to start getting things moving)
• Work with them to identify the top pain points customers are dealing with when they don't have your solution, and how your solution helps them solve those pains. This can be your first set of assets you create content around.
• I'd also recommend identifying 1-5 sales reps who are willing to be champions for marketing
• Meet with them regularly and find out what they need to support their selling -- is it a pitch deck? is it a one pager they can send out? talk tracks, snippets, etc?
• Prioritize quality over quantity. Sales might ask for everything, but prioritize and don't take on too much at once. 

For email flows:

• I'd first start with some sort of MQL / SQL framework if you haven't already
• Then I'd identify a conversion path for prospects/buyers and figure out the best emails to trigger based on where they are in their buying journey

This is always a difficult one. Sometimes it can be easier to solve with technology, while other times it's a bit more difficult to track/measure.

With technology:

• You can track which content is being sent out/used
• You can track how many reps are 'customizing' a deck in their workspace
• etc.
• However, the issue with this is that you might see a pitch deck you worked hard on isn't being used at all. In that case, you need to evalutate whether its an adoption issue or a quality issue (ie. not the right pitch)

Without technolgy:

• You really need to rely on feedback loops and finding sales champions to work with
• Meet regularly with those champions to review assets and listen to them on what's working, what's not, and what they'd suggest improving
• Ask your reps to surface and share with you the assets they're creating on their own. Oftentimes reps are creating materials on their own, because they have a need and don't want to wait for marketing. So ask them! Then take those materials as guidance for how you can optimize, improve, and standardize them as 'approved materials' that are on-brand.

At the end of the day, every company and sales team will need the same core assets/materials. Things such as an approved pitch deck, a few core one-pagers, a pillar page on your website, or a tool such as an ROI calculator. So it really comes down to a matter of quality over trying to figure out 'which materials to create' and this can only be figured out through sales rep feedback and working with them.

So in short = work with your sales counterparts to listen, learn, and then create.