ShiQi Wu

I’ll break this down into 2 parts even though this might be simplified after all sales enablement likely will have multiple parts depending on importance of product.

• Whether sales has received the information
• Attendance rates, Tests/Quizzes to capture main points, engagement rates during the training, feedback post the training and % of sales force trained
  
• Whether sales has activated post the training which might take longer
• Adoption of product/recommendation 
• Revenue growth attributed to the product 
• No. of clients pitch to
• Higher win-rates

Its important that any activation you do is aligned with sales on goal to either drive revenue or grow product adoption (usually because there is evidence it works better for clients). In general if we do sales enablement there are 3 buckets to consider. Being tactical can also be part of building up the strategy around the program. 

• Large Product Launch – Being clear what the product is, why we’re launching it and how will this be beneficial for clients. How can you also amplify this messaging with cross-functional stakeholders. As mentioned earlier, we work very closely with marketing and this is a good time to check in on the best way to land the message in market at scale.  
• Sales Program – What do you need to arm sales with to take to market. How can they approach clients and that the value proposition of the product or narrative makes sense to clients/market. 
• Tactical ones to answer FAQs – We still need to address to day to day FAQs and host office hours to ensure that the message is repeated, it is clear to sales what they are selling and why they are activating on it. 

This might not be for all sales enablement programs. But for larger ones, track the progress within the timelines you have set out, give timely updates to leads and ask for support where you need to ensure consistency in messaging. At the end of any program, it would be valuable to do a “roundup”.

I believe we should be working closely with marketing teams to amplify all the internal work to an external facing audience. This can be in the form of pitch decks, one pagers, workshopts etc that externalizes the content and message we are trying to launch to market.

For Go-to stack of sales enablement, we have a tiering system to prioritize how big the sales enablement will be 

• P0: Full training, commdocs, one pagers, pitch decks and dashboard trackers if necessary 
• P1: Happens in a smaller meeting (ie: product update meetings), commdocs 
• P2: Announced in groups (or other collaboration tools) but if there are any other questions, they can reach out to the individual product market experts or leave them on what we’ve termed as “topic boards” where sales can leave non-urgent questions and we’ll get back to them at a later time.

I think there's a similar question above on measuring KPIs. Please refer to it. But essentially I'll look at 2 parts 

1. Whether sales has received the information

• Attendance rates, Tests/Quizzes to capture main points, engagement rates during the training, feedback post the training and % of sales force trained

2. Whether sales has activated post the training which might take longer

• Adoption of product/recommendation 
• Revenue growth attributed to the product 
• No. of clients pitch to
• Higher win-rates

This is a tough one. I work mainly on Southeast Asia which is made up of multiple regions and languages. With minimal resourcing, we tend to do a large online training once a week with the intention to reach as many sales folks as person. 

• We then try to get feedback from the team or the sales leads to see where are the gaps and what do we need to tweak
• If necessary, we will conduct local market office hours or specific training sessions targeting to individual markets. 
• We also try to enable our partners on the client solutions team to help be an extension of us so we don’t have to do this ourselves! It’s a good way to work with XFNs and also build up product champions who are also working in the market to help get the message out to the local teams!

Here’s how I see both roles coming together 

• Both: Either can bring up if there’s a topic of interest either from sales or there is a specific product activation/training need
  
• Sales enablement – Expertise is to ensure curriculum design and also project managing the entire process; They tend to have a broader view on what other trainings are happening and are invaluable to ensure that our teams are not overtrained.
  
• Product marketers – Working on the content and bringing it to live for the teams taking the training. They tend to have specific expertise on a topic/product

There are certain grey areas around who designs the decks, who invites other people to co-present etc. But in these cases, what I’ve found worked well is discussing this early on who to take on which aspect of the process.

This depends when the product is being launched. Its hard to be competent if they have not “sold” the product. So usually 1-2 weeks ahead of large product launches. This also gives us time to collect questions, ensure we are answering as many FAQs as possible and preparing proper objection handling for the sales teams. Also we know it will take more than 1 training session to build up knowledge and capability. So repeating and doing follow up office hours or sharing snippets of wins from fellow sales will always be helpful to build confidence.

When it comes to sales competency, there are a few things we can do,
- Having short tests/quizzes
- Sitting in calls with them to support any product questions in the early days so they understand how we would manage questions from clients

Getting buy in is an exercise on understanding who to influence and what to do to influence them. A couple of things I think about are 

• How do I align the sales enablement plan with sales leads to get a commitment on either revenue, adoption or being the executive sponsor for what you plan to do
• Will this plan be in line with their goals; if its not, how do I frame it in a way that best meets them? 
• Will the sales enablement training address concerns/questions from sales (and by extension the client) so that it is a good use of time. 
• During an early testing phase, how can you get allies or sales champions to help showcase the benefit of the product or activitation