Categories: Sales Transformation | Company Alignment | Sales Training Initiative
So you invested in a sales enablement initiative. Maybe you launched a new sales methodology or qualification framework. But six months, a year, two years down the road, you realize it’s not delivering the results you need.
At Force Management, we often work with companies after they’ve had an unsuccessful sales initiative. We help them take the foundation they built and determine a plan for better alignment and execution. It's also true that the sales initiative you needed last year or two years ago is very different than the one you need right now - in this stage of your growth journey. Our draft-in approach helped Aptean take performance to the next level, increasing deal size by 64% and total revenue by $720 million — without having to rip and replace their existing sales training and tools.
From our experience, when sales leaders don’t get the results they expected from a sales enablement investment, one or multiple of these gaps are present.
1. Your executive team wasn’t fully aligned
Too often, training initiatives only involves sales leaders and sales teams. But complex enterprise sales aren’t won on sales alone, and neither is sustainable long-term growth. So why shouldn’t your performance initiative reflect that?
The first step to an initiative that generates consistent company-wide execution is getting your executive team aligned. Yes, everyone is working towards the same topline revenue goals, but are they in agreement on what behaviors and messaging will drive them? Consider how each member of your leadership team would answer the following questions:
- What problems do you solve for customers?
- How specifically do you solve those problems?
- How do you do it differently or better than your competitors?
- What’s your proof?
If everyone can’t give the same, one-sentence answers to each of those questions, how can you expect to create repeatable success across your company? Marketing, product, and post-sales success teams all need a common language to effectively negotiate and deliver on value. Coaches need clearly defined success behaviors to coach to. All of that begins at the top. A truly transformative revenue enablement initiative begins with buy-in and agreement from the entire executive team.
2. Your content wasn’t customized and relevant
Acronymic frameworks like MEDDICC, BANT or SPIN can seem easy to implement. After all, they’re just a set of steps to follow, right? The problem that many leaders encounter after implementing these seemingly turnkey frameworks is that they are not applied consistently or accurately.
Take MEDDICC for example. You’ve probably heard sales leaders talk about how MEDDICC can enhance revenue predictability and how MEDDICC helps sellers win with decision-makers. Yet, there are levels to the results that teams see with MEDDICC, and it largely relates to the levels of commitment and customization in implementation. You can easily roll out a new qualification process with a short one-time training session and start requiring managers to go through each letter on the list with their teams. But you’ll likely encounter these problems:
- Your sellers won’t see the value in it, throttling adoption
- Your managers won’t know how to coach to it, meaning your teams won’t be able to effectively execute it their deals
- Qualification data will be inaccurate, hindering visibility into the strength of your pipeline
The truth is, even the most ‘plug and play’ methodologies won’t have a strong impact on your go-to-market success without customization to the value your solutions provide, the way your customers buy, and your team’s existing workflows.
Before implementing a new training initiative or process, take the time to get input from cross-functional teams at multiple levels. Take into consideration what their greatest day-to-day challenges are, where they’d like more support, and what they feel is working for them now. When your teams feel considered and invested in, they’ll be much more likely to buy in to your new strategies and adopt new behaviors — especially if they see direct correlation with their success.
Customization shouldn’t stop at your qualification process. We’ve seen many companies drive scalable growth with the combined power of a customized value message and qualification framework.
3. You didn’t have a strong reinforcement plan
The Forgetting Curve refers to research that shows humans forget 50% of new information after one day and 90% of new information within one week. No matter how excited and prepared your team feels after a training event, human nature means they’ll rapidly lose most of those new behaviors. That means low adoption rates and, in turn, failure to deliver expected revenue impact.
The solution is reinforcing your sales training with a continuous learning plan. Many initiatives have this built in, but not every reinforcement plan is created equal. Our experience has taught us that successful training reinforcement does three things:
- It’s done in practice, not just theory, through roleplaying and hands-on opportunity coaching with managers or AI assistants
- It’s relevant and applicable to users’ day-to-day tasks and challenges
- It’s embedded into existing processes, platforms and workflows
- It’s continuously updated based on what’s proven to drive success
Building reinforcement into coaching and onboarding plans also supports your team as you grow, ensuring that new hires can onboard faster and with greater success. If you want to drive real transformation with your revenue organization, reinforcement should be embedded into all of your processes moving forward from your initiative.
Drive Real Revenue Impact
Company leaders today face a mandate: grow or fail. If you’re making big bets on improving forecasting, leveraging AI for sales, bringing new products to market, or increasing your enterprise value next year — ensure your investment will drive tangible results. Our newest eBook, The Growth Imperative, explores how elite leaders align company-wide execution to their topline revenue strategy to get results in six core focus areas that support lasting, scalable success.
If you’re planning your next Sales or Revenue Kickoff, we can help. Let’s start a conversation on how we can build on your existing revenue enablement investments to get the performance results you need.
