Too often, those of us in the product marketing role are not doing enough to help our sales team or sales channel be successful. Our typical approach to helping is to provide a new salesperson with some marketing collateral and a product presentation and then wish them luck as they look for prospects and try to close deals with anyone that listens. This approach is sufficient for the star salespeople as they intuitively know how to talk with the right potential buyers about their problems and then show these buyers how to solve these problems with their products or services. But unfortunately, this only represents about 20% of salespeople. The other 80% of sales people need more training and coaching to be successful and we as product marketers need to help them be successful. This is the process of “Sales Enablement”. What happens when we don’t engage in the sales enablement process? Sales people pursue opportunities that don’t fit well with your solution, speak with the prospects that aren’t really decision makers, sell solutions that you don’t really have and the list can go on. But the overall resulting impact is wasted time and effort in pursuing the wrong opportunities, confusion in the market place and poor sales results. In this webinar, you’ll learn: • Why the typical approach to enabling sales doesn’t work. • The key goals of a successful Sales Enablement program. • The core tools you need to develop to effectively enable your sales channel. • Best practices to make sure the Sales Enablement program is effectively implemented.

1. Nothing Happens Until
Someone Sells Something:
Best Practices to Enabling Your Sales Channel
to Effectively Sell Your Products
Tom Evans
CompellingPM
@compellingpm
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

2. Presentation Agenda
• Typical challenges with sales teams
• Why this happens
• What you (PM) can do to improve the
situation
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

3. The Scenario
Product (Smart Credit) targeted for credit
issuers to better manage credit lines and
interest rates based upon the credit risk of their
clients/prospects, resulting in more balance
build and less delinquencies and write-offs.
“The events depicted in this presentation are fictitious. Any similarity to
any person or company, living or dead is merely coincidental."
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

4. The Lead
• Sales meets an IT Manager of credit card
issuer at a trade show.
• IT Mngr – “I need a solution to detect
payment fraud. Can you do it?”
• Sales – “Yes we can!” (liar)
• Sets face-to-face visit
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

5. The Prep
• Sales to Marketing – Create new collateral
that shows “our payment fraud solution.”
• Sales to Sales Engineer – Help me with a new
presentation about “our payment fraud
solution.” And while you’re at it, create a new
demo that shows “our payment fraud
solution.”
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

6. The Sales Presentation
• PowerPoint Presentation
– Let me tell you how great our company is.
– Now, let me describe our Evolutionary Statistical
Algorithm (ESA) and how great it is.
•
•
•
•
Demo - Now for another “cool” feature.
IT Mngr – “Do you have feature A, B, C?”
Sales – “Yes we do” (liar)
IT Mngr – “Here is RFP, Send a proposal”
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

7. The Proposal
• Sales to Marketing – Create a new proposal
template for payment fraud.
• Sales to Sales Engineer – Create answers for
this RFP.
• Sales to Engineering – We must have features
A, B, C in the product now to win this deal.
We have a final demo in three weeks.
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

8. The Close
• IT Mngr – “The VP of Fraud decided to go with
Competitor X, which is used by companies a,
b, c for the exact solution we need.”
• Sales - Discount the price!
• Sales - Discount it some more!
• Sales - Send in the cavalry (executive team)
• Sales - Oops – we still lost it – Why?
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

9. The Why?
• Opportunistic v. Targeted Opportunity
– I.e., high unlikely to win to begin with.
• Never engaged executive that owns the
problem
• Sales message was technical v. speaking to
business needs
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

10. The Impact
• Wasted resources on long shot opportunity.
• New features in the product that nobody
needs.
• A frustrated and irritated executive team.
• Confusion in the market place on what the
company does.
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

11. The Real Why This Happens
1. That’s just the way sales people are.
2. They were never properly enabled with the
right knowledge and tools.
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

12. The Real Why This Happens
1. That’s just the way sales people are.
2. They were never properly enabled with the
right knowledge and tools.
PM
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

13. The Solution
Sales Enablement
Who owns it?
Who owns the message?
Product Marketing
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

14. Sales Enablement Defined
Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process
that equips all client-facing employees with the
ability to consistently and systematically have a
valuable conversation with the right set of
customer stakeholders at each stage of the
customer's problem-solving life cycle to optimize
the return of investment of the selling system.
(Forrester)
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

15. Evidence of Sales Enablement Problem
• In 43% of losses the reason was “Lost funding or
lost to no decision (Forrester)
• 39% of executives say that meetings with
salespeople are valuable. (Forrester)
Failure to Show Value
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

16. Goals of Sales Enablement
• Improve sales team productivity.
• Enables sales to have valuable conversations
with the right buyers.
• Ensure consistency and clarity of messages.
• Focus on right opportunities.
• Provide better buying experience for
prospects.
• Improve sales success!
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

17. Starting Point of Sales Enablement
• Deep Understanding of Customers
• Who they are
– Buyer Personas
• Why they buy
– Problems they want to solve
• How they buy
– What is their buying process
June 21 Webinar
http://www.aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/2013/05/how-to-develop-a-deepunderstanding-of-your-target-markets---the-starting-point-for-great-product-ma.php
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.
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18. Sales Enablement (Base Components)
•
•
•
•
•
Product Backgrounder
Needs Discovery Guide™
Executive Level Presentation
Message Driven Demo™
Competitive Weapons
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

19. Product Backgrounder
• Target Markets / Segments
• Market Needs / Challenges
• Buyer Profiles - Personas / Needs / Challenges
/ Goals
• Key Messages
– Value Proposition
– Points of Differentation
• Talk Track
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

20. Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

21. Needs Discovery Guide
• Aka - Pain Sheets / Solution Development
Prompters
• One per buyer role per market segment
– Challenges / Impact / Capability / Benefits
– Match to your sales methodology (if any)
• Use buyer’s language/terms
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

22. Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

23. Executive Level Presentation
• Market / Buyer needs
• High level discussion of how your solution
addresses needs.
– Remember the key messages
• Benefits / Value Proposition
• Case Study
• 10 to 15 slides
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

24. Message Driven Demo
• Communicates key messages.
• Show how buyers needs are solved.
• Build it as story.
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

25. Competitive Weapons
• Competitive Comparison Matrix
– Value/benefits oriented
• Competitive claims and your response
• Questions to raise competitive weaknesses
– Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
• Don’t misrepresent or make false claims!
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.
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26. Getting Sales Buy-in
• Have an executive sponsor (Sales VP/CEO).
• Train them and train them some more.
• Test them on their knowledge via certification
process.
• Make the tools real (not ivory tower)
• Show how this will make them me their
objectives
• Cannot be perceived as imposed by
product/marketing
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

27. Closing Thoughts
• Train the sales team & then test them (certify)
• Review on a regular basis.
• Make sure marketing and the executive team
participate.
• Use for sales channel.
• Much of info should already exist - MRD,
Market Strategy, etc.
Enhances your role as market expert!
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

28. Upcoming Training
• Optimal Product Management & Product
Marketing
– Dec 9 – 11 (Austin)
• AIPMM Certifications
– Nov 5 – 6 (CPM – Austin)
– Nov 7 – 8 (CPMM – Austin)
More dates/locations - www.280group.com
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.
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29. Free 1 Hour PM/PMM Consult
•
•
•
•
First ten to submit information on form
http://compellingpm.com/freeonehour/
Please include background on topic or issue
Must include company info (no Gmail)
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.
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30. Thank You!
Tom Evans
CompellingPM
tevans@compellingpm.com
@compellingpm
www.compellingpm.com
Copyright 2013. The Lûcrum Group, Inc.
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