Continuous learning (not enablement) is key to efficient & effective selling

At Scrive, the success of our enablement approach boils down to a few key elements ⤵️

Cassie Pallesen

May 30, 2023
·
2
 min read

Recently, I sat down with George Amanatiadis, Vice President of Sales Enablement at Scrive, to talk about his keys to success when running sales enablement across both PLG and top-down selling motions. 

Below is an excerpt of our conversation about the fundamentals of enablement, what most sales leaders get wrong, and how to foster an always-learning sales environment where folks aren’t afraid to fail.  

What are the fundamental elements of effective sales enablement? 

At Scrive, the success of our enablement approach boils down to a few key elements:

  • First, building trust internally with sales reps is crucial to making an initial connection, understanding their challenges, and knowing how to help them. We’ve been very successful at this by promoting folks internally, which instills a different level of trust than bringing in external sales trainers who run a mostly standardized curriculum.
  • Regular, ongoing training is another success factor for us. Sales reps tend to have a short memory, as well as a “What have you done for me lately?” mentality. Doing onboarding or training twice a year isn’t going to make things stick—sales teams need repetition, retraining, and continuous tweaking to be successful. We’re constantly evaluating things like: How are we presenting? Where can we improve discovery? How are key deals coming through the funnel? What deal stage do we perform well or drop momentum?
  • Finally, automating different aspects of our selling motions lets us focus attention on helping sales reps become more project management consultants, enabling them to navigate complex dialogues. Our free trial is one area where we've automated outreach. Free trialers get a limited number of tokens to try our service after which they can convert to a paid subscription by themselves or contact sales. We outreach to higher velocity customers via automated cadences to ask about their trial experience. 

What’s the most common mistake you see in sales enablement?

The biggest mistake I see folks make is talking at people rather than helping them apply their learnings in real life and measuring the results. Sales trainings are a perfect example of this, with a course typically ending with a multiple-choice test or an in-person assessment. But how much of that training gets implemented in real life, and what’s being measured continuously? For example, how have deal negotiations shifted when moving from the first meetings to POC to negotiations due to the new training curriculum?

In this way, sales enablement isn’t an annual training offsite or simply giving sales reps a playbook to follow. It’s an approach that should help your reps build the character traits they already possess to become more successful sellers. Some reps are stronger when discussing data; some are expert storytellers; others run a stellar discovery process. A good sales enablement leader is someone who can lift those qualities up in a trusting environment that centers on continuous learning. 

Is there a specific cadence or approach for tailored enablement & continuous learning?

True sales enablement isn’t so much about a dedicated cadence as it fosters a sales environment where reps aren’t afraid to fail—as long as they can learn from it and share those learnings with the team. For example, we run regular deal clinics where reps walk through the actions they took in a recent deal, what tactics were successful, and which ones weren’t. 

For closed-won deals, we talk about the areas they struggled with the most and what moment they could break through. Closed-lost discussions are equally important: Where did we lose and why? Did we miss a stakeholder? What could be improved for next time?

This level of openness and transparency has opened up doors for greater collaboration among the sales team. Reps now often proactively share ideas and proven tactics for getting in front of prospects who are stuck in decision-making mode. For a large-sized deal, someone might share how flying over to a neighboring country to book a lunch helped get the deal unstuck. Or a rep will share a Sunday afternoon texting correspondence as an example of how to build rapport and move a deal forward. 

With market uncertainty, it’s easy to put enablement aside and double down on selling. Any advice?

I’ve always found sales enablement to be a big conundrum in an organization. If a sales team is doing well, leadership often thinks that reps don’t need training. If they’re doing poorly, they don’t have the time for enablement because they need to sell. But given the current dynamics, now is the very worst time to stop doing enablement. 

Market dynamics are changing incredibly fast, and the dialogues that sales reps had just three or four months ago aren’t the same as the ones they have today. Sales organizations need to invest in their people and make sure they have the toolsets, product competence, and depth of knowledge needed to address and sell to the market.

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Continuous learning (not enablement) is key to efficient & effective selling

At Scrive, the success of our enablement approach boils down to a few key elements ⤵️

Cassie Pallesen
|
Head of Marketing
|
Calixa
High Intent Logo

Your PLG roundup in 5 minutes.

May 30, 2023
ReadTime

Recently, I sat down with George Amanatiadis, Vice President of Sales Enablement at Scrive, to talk about his keys to success when running sales enablement across both PLG and top-down selling motions. 

Below is an excerpt of our conversation about the fundamentals of enablement, what most sales leaders get wrong, and how to foster an always-learning sales environment where folks aren’t afraid to fail.  

What are the fundamental elements of effective sales enablement? 

At Scrive, the success of our enablement approach boils down to a few key elements:

  • First, building trust internally with sales reps is crucial to making an initial connection, understanding their challenges, and knowing how to help them. We’ve been very successful at this by promoting folks internally, which instills a different level of trust than bringing in external sales trainers who run a mostly standardized curriculum.
  • Regular, ongoing training is another success factor for us. Sales reps tend to have a short memory, as well as a “What have you done for me lately?” mentality. Doing onboarding or training twice a year isn’t going to make things stick—sales teams need repetition, retraining, and continuous tweaking to be successful. We’re constantly evaluating things like: How are we presenting? Where can we improve discovery? How are key deals coming through the funnel? What deal stage do we perform well or drop momentum?
  • Finally, automating different aspects of our selling motions lets us focus attention on helping sales reps become more project management consultants, enabling them to navigate complex dialogues. Our free trial is one area where we've automated outreach. Free trialers get a limited number of tokens to try our service after which they can convert to a paid subscription by themselves or contact sales. We outreach to higher velocity customers via automated cadences to ask about their trial experience. 

What’s the most common mistake you see in sales enablement?

The biggest mistake I see folks make is talking at people rather than helping them apply their learnings in real life and measuring the results. Sales trainings are a perfect example of this, with a course typically ending with a multiple-choice test or an in-person assessment. But how much of that training gets implemented in real life, and what’s being measured continuously? For example, how have deal negotiations shifted when moving from the first meetings to POC to negotiations due to the new training curriculum?

In this way, sales enablement isn’t an annual training offsite or simply giving sales reps a playbook to follow. It’s an approach that should help your reps build the character traits they already possess to become more successful sellers. Some reps are stronger when discussing data; some are expert storytellers; others run a stellar discovery process. A good sales enablement leader is someone who can lift those qualities up in a trusting environment that centers on continuous learning. 

Is there a specific cadence or approach for tailored enablement & continuous learning?

True sales enablement isn’t so much about a dedicated cadence as it fosters a sales environment where reps aren’t afraid to fail—as long as they can learn from it and share those learnings with the team. For example, we run regular deal clinics where reps walk through the actions they took in a recent deal, what tactics were successful, and which ones weren’t. 

For closed-won deals, we talk about the areas they struggled with the most and what moment they could break through. Closed-lost discussions are equally important: Where did we lose and why? Did we miss a stakeholder? What could be improved for next time?

This level of openness and transparency has opened up doors for greater collaboration among the sales team. Reps now often proactively share ideas and proven tactics for getting in front of prospects who are stuck in decision-making mode. For a large-sized deal, someone might share how flying over to a neighboring country to book a lunch helped get the deal unstuck. Or a rep will share a Sunday afternoon texting correspondence as an example of how to build rapport and move a deal forward. 

With market uncertainty, it’s easy to put enablement aside and double down on selling. Any advice?

I’ve always found sales enablement to be a big conundrum in an organization. If a sales team is doing well, leadership often thinks that reps don’t need training. If they’re doing poorly, they don’t have the time for enablement because they need to sell. But given the current dynamics, now is the very worst time to stop doing enablement. 

Market dynamics are changing incredibly fast, and the dialogues that sales reps had just three or four months ago aren’t the same as the ones they have today. Sales organizations need to invest in their people and make sure they have the toolsets, product competence, and depth of knowledge needed to address and sell to the market.

Cassie Pallesen

Head of Marketing

,

Calixa

Self-motivated, creative, and natural marketer. With over a dozen years of experience in content strategy and development, web experience, campaign execution, as well as corporate messaging and positioning. Cassie has been a marketing leader and team manager during an IPO (Anaplan), a shut down (Atrium), an acquisition (DocSend) and now leads Calixa's marketing efforts.

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