I used to play by the OLD RULES.
Now I know better.
Let me say something up front: I write from experience. For more than 20 years, I’ve supported B2B sales teams, first as a product manager, then as a sales engineer, and now as a marketing executive.
For too many of those years, I did what I was asked to do. Beautiful collateral? Yup, I created reams of it. Killer demos? I’m your guy. Dutifully, I fired emails to my sales team alerting them to new materials. I would practically cry in frustration— because no one read the emails or used the materials.
Then one day, I had a life-changing experience. One of my sales reps—let’s call him Tom—lost an important deal that had been forecasted to close. When I asked him what happened, Tom seemed genuinely puzzled: He said he had really “hit it off” with the decision-maker—they were both into cycling and had gone to a Bulls game together. According to Tom, the client team “really liked the product” and had made positive comments during the demos.
“Every call went really well,” Tom said.
But when I called the decision-maker who shot us down, I got a very different story. Yes, Tom had given “very slick presentations,” the prospect said, “but he didn’t know enough about our business.” Further, Tom “did little to help me understand how our product would solve his company’s problems.” When pressed with questions, Tom “took a long time getting back with answers” and when he did, some of the information was just plain wrong.
Ouch. But it got worse. When I reviewed some of the information Tom had shared with the prospect, I found he had used a four-year-old slide deck with outdated messaging and branding, and a poorly written, inaccurate data sheet that he had “borrowed” from another rep. I can only imagine what his conversations sounded like.
Tom hadn’t approached this sale unprepared—he just had the wrong kind of preparation: wrong expectations, wrong materials, wrong approach. Tom hadn’t failed. I—and the company—had failed Tom.
I took a look at what was going on in sales at other companies, and this reality finally slapped me in the face.
- Over 40% of salespeople fail to hit quota
- 30% of reps turn over each year
- It takes an average of seven months to ramp up a new sales person.
- 65% of sales rep time is spent not selling
- Salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials
- 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales
Even worse, buyers actually think that salespeople slow down their buying process. They report that vendors don’t sell the way they want to buy, while salespeople, collateral, and demos are forced on them out of sync with their buying process.
The game has changed. But you can play to WIN.
At this point, you may be relating to the same pain that stung me. But I came around, abandoned the old rules, and set out to find sales enablement strategies that really work. I discovered that:
- It’s not about posting more collateral to a sales portal. It is about enabling salespeople to have
conversations that help customers advance through their buying process. - It’s not about creating messages at “corporate” and throwing them over the wall. It is about
discovering the messages and strategies that are resonating with buyers. - It’s not about bringing in yet another sales process or methodology. It is about providing salespeople
with playbooks containing the “plays” that are proven to work in their current selling situation. - It’s not about burdening reps with complex reporting requirements. It is about giving them tools
and applications that deliver real value.
I learned the hard way. I had to make a mindset shift. So I’ve written The New Rules of Sales and Sales Enablement to make it much easier for you. Over the next couple weeks, I'll post a fresh approach to sales enablement that challenges the way we’ve traditionally done things and channels our efforts towards empowering success rather than sabotaging sales.
Follow me if you'd like to see these posts in your feed, and please comment if you can relate to any of these challenges.