A lot of sellers are struggling to adjust their mindset and process to the rapid changes that have happened in the last decade. Hanuman Kamma, CEO and Co-founder of sharpsell laid out the roadmap for sales enablement in 2022 with Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled in a webinar on 7 December, 2021. Here is an edited synopsis of the discussion.

Jake: What are some of the important details around sales enablement that stakeholders should know?

Hanuman: For enterprise software companies like ours, the focus is a lot more on how to do the right demo, how to have the right content, how to deal with multiple stakeholders and how to scale the outreach. One of the big advantages in B2B sales is that the sales teams are not as big as insurance or banks (which have thousands of people spread over hundreds of towns). So, the focus is on creating the right content and on keeping track of the process. When it comes to B2C, especially when with a distributed, remote workforce, the biggest challenges are that they only engage with 1-2 stakeholders. The sales cycles are not one to three months; the sales representative gets one or two chances at most. They need to make the best impression in that one meeting. Also, the number of products that they deal with are pretty high. Understanding the customer’s needs, matching them to the right product, making an elevator pitch instantly and handling objections when in the field - that's a very different challenge.

Jake: Earlier, people took a couple of years to figure out the best sales pitches. What are the best-in-class teams doing to better enable sales representatives for success now? They are great at producing content, but what else are they doing?

Hanuman: There are two parts to it. Half the problem is to make the right content. The second half is to make sure that the content is in a form that can be used real-time. If the sales representative is in a meeting and gets clues as to which product the client is interested in, they have very little time to bring up that product and make the pitch. How does one make sure they do that right? The challenge is to make sure that they master this on day 1 or day 30, not after a year. Thinking mobile first and making sure that the content is at the representatives' fingertips is the way - and companies that do that are solving the problem.

Jake: Mobile first is a big shift that marketing organizations are not adapting to. They aren't creating mobile-first content, though most people are consuming more content on mobile.

Hanuman: In terms of content, there is a lot of long-form content out there, for example, 20-slide presentations. The expectation is that the sales person will read the long-form content and filter the bullet points to be used in sales conversations. But this is not useful for sales representatives on the move - they don’t have that time, and their clients don't have the time or patience. They want a 30-second sales pitch. Sales enablement needs to empower representatives to extract the critical information in real time.

Jake: Are the problems created because people creating the content are not close to the sales people?

Hanuman: Yes, that's one of the problems. The other problem is also the fact that a lot of the content is repurposed. Content is built for the convenience of the creators, not the convenience of the end user (the salesperson).

Jake: Sales enablement people can sometimes function as project completers rather than business outcome movers. The good teams are the ones focussed on the latter: a completed project is just the beginning. What makes an expert representative?

Hanuman: The ability to find the nuances in the conversation with the client, the needs that the representative can pick up - that's a differentiator in suggesting the right products and making the pitch. For example, when a medical representative is meeting a doctor (who is often more expert in the domain), one of the nightmares faced by them is not being able to get back with answers instantly. Saying "let me get back to you" a couple of times in a conversation shows that the representative is not an expert. What top representatives do is to be prepared for every sale - tackling every conversation like a surprise examination, where you don't know what questions to expect. This ability to handle questions live is what separates top representatives from the rest.

Jake: In longer sales cycles with multiple meetings, one can get away with it. But if it happens too often, it's a real issue.

Hanuman: In B2B it's about having the right content - but in B2C it's about the right answers.

Jake: It's the same principle. Even in B2B, you have to have the answers - not just content people aren't going to read. When the salesforce is completely remote, being likeable matters.

Hanuman: Content and answers are indeed secondary; building the relationship is important. Face-to-face conversations really boosted the energy of sales representatives, but they aren't having these conversations now. Remote conversations aren't helping with keeping up those relationship skills. With the representative working from home and the customer knowing that, the earlier leeway of "let me get back to office and send you the answer" is no longer there - responses are now expected in minutes. That is a big change.

Jake: That's a great callout. The remote world has created a new level of stress, especially for sellers. What can technology do to help them be effective in their conversations?

Hanuman: We have to make sure that the amount of time needed to put something together when a client asks should be near zero. Therefore, the sales enablement team has to create content that is dynamic and customized in real time. Clients expect content to be tailored for them based on their conversations. For a stressed out seller, saving this time is a big relief.

Jake: There is probably some correlation between likelihood of sales closure and follow up time. Are there types of content that are most mission critical - which clients ask for the most?

Hanuman: There are three kinds of information. The first is all the content centred around objection-handling. Curating the objections coming from across geographies and putting them in a playbook is critical. The second is to manage multiple product variants and updates - the representative must be able to present the right specs to the client. So clearly product information is the second critical thing. Finally sales conversations are always evolving - making the opening pitch, for example. These field updates need to be communicated to all reps.

Jake: This is applicable to B2B sales as well. Product updates are often communicated to sales teams in hour-long webinars or other long formats - interest killers. How do you map customers and the "how to’s" that enable the representative to pitch to them?

Hanuman: For a long time sales depended on standardized content and the tactical skills of the salesperson - the notion that “sales is an art". But not every salesperson is an artist; by definition, art takes time to master. That's where sales enablement comes in - to make every sales representative an "artist". That's where the how-to’s and tactics become important.

Jake: Most organizations have "tribal knowledge" - everything they need to build a world-class sales process - buried in the heads of salespeople. Salespeople end up recreating 80% of the marketing material because it's not in the right format. How does one make this better? As a trainee, I sat in on seniors' calls and looked at the way they put together material, but how does an organization institutionalize this type of behavior?

Hanuman: I will address it at two levels. One is what we have observed during the pandemic, and the other is what we saw before. As you said, the “tribal knowledge” is in the people heads. The answers to all questions are they with somebody or the other - but who knows what is not clear. The only content available to sales teams was the content created by marketing teams. A classic example is objection handling - there are thousands of objections with as many nuances. Sales enablement makes this tribal knowledge available to all by curating all experiences.

The other thing is the power of role plays. Content in a document can tell the representative 'what' to do, but they need to know 'how' to do it even more. Role plays help them do that. Another thing is, a lot of people know the value of references. But the challenge is that they don't know when to ask for it. What is the right time to ask for references is something that representatives learn after being on the field for some time, especially dring face-to-face meetings. This became a challenge as meeting shifted online. The enablement team has to prepare representatives for this - and that's when tribal knowledgement becomes important.

Jake: In 2022, what does the concept of an advisor mean to you?

Hanuman: What that means to me is this: once a sales representative has a conversation with a client, when the client has a question in the domain, the representative is the first person they think of. For example, when a doctor wants to know about a particular molecule or a client wants to know more about an insurance policy - the representative is the first person they call. The sales rep's relationship has to go beyond being a seller to someone the client picks the phone on when they have an issue.

Jake: That's a solid definition. Teams are not being trained, especially in B2B, on understanding their competitors better. How can one effectively position one's product in 2022 without knowing what the competition is doing?

Hanuman: Competitive intelligence is a critical aspect - especially to explain the differentiation. The good thing is that there is technology available to automate intelligence gathering. The real question is using this intelligence in the field - answering client questions about the competition, and actually being able to compare the product features with those of the competition. This is especially pertinent when the client has done their research about the competition. Being able to understand their client's persona, and match the product to that over the competition - that makes a difference.

Jake: The buyer's already done the homework. If you've not paid attention to that, you're likely to lose a deal. My three big takeaways - objection handling, competition intelligence and personalization of content. Any closing thoughts?

Hanuman: There are a couple of points I want to stress on. The first one is adoption. Organizations struggle with driving teams to adopt a new tool, when they are already using a dozen. When a new tool is brought in, the salesperson's first question is - is this something that helps me, or helps the management? They are more receptive to technology that helps them - and we know this after shadowing hundreds of sales representatives on the field. The other point is to make sure that you are not always centralizing things. As long as sales insights are shared across the hierarchy, they help in making more effective sales.

‍

sharpsell equips sales reps with personalized content to engage with customers and customized presentations to share with customers as per their needs. All the content is accessible through a single source - the sharpsell platform. Companies using sharpsell have seen an increase in sales productivity with higher number of products sold, higher ticket size, increased visibility on prospecting, reduced content creation cost, reduced time to first sale, reduced costs of training, and uncovering insights on product feedback.