The tech market especially is well-known for change. While sales teams are usually well trained in the features and functions of a new technology, including their horizontal application across industries, they do require, however, more insight to the strategic priorities of business buyers at an industry level. An effective training program empowers them with a sharp understanding of the technologies, the industry and enables them to build strong go-to-market plans and value-selling strategies that deliver lasting business growth.
Before building a training program for your sales and marketing teams, consider outlining your expectations of what you need your sales and marketing teams to do, and this will broaden your tech training session beyond just product features and benefits.
What do you need your sales team to deliver?
- Increase revenues
- Closing more business, faster, by linking your value proposition to the target persona’s priorities
What do you need your marketing team to deliver?
- Improved demand generation
- Winning go-to-market strategies
- A better understanding of customers and personas and use of data to gain a competitive edge
That’s a tall order for these teams, made especially challenging when the economy isn’t participating, and some companies are leaner in response.
Build a Sales Enablement Approach That Teaches Your Teams to Fish
Ultimately, your goals are to provide your team with key industry knowledge, specific to country dynamics and covering both customer markets and the IT industry, as well as a consulting-based framework which will enable you to create meaningful value propositions.
When IDC designs our successful sales enablement programs for our clients, we work from a robust framework that can also be applied across global markets.
- Market education for sales – Include a mix that makes the content engaging, like tutorials, case studies, virtual presentations and mastery classes.
- Technology, persona & industry specific enablement assets – Offer as much information you can about your solution and the market. Include industry tutorials, persona buyer enablement, an industry playbook and industry brief and quick reference guide.
- Interactive selling tools and ABM support – Offer digital, interactive selling tools that your teams can use to prove the value of your solution. IDC offers tools like a Business Value Assessment and End-use maturity or readiness assessment that leverage our data and create a trusted transaction because they prove the value of your solution to your buyer.
- Sales Effectiveness – clearly identify competitive positioning and offer key messaging advice.
Download: Recession-proof Sales Enablement Strategy. IDC’s Sales Enablement Solutions and Capabilities
Training Content That Builds Empowered Teams
The most enabled teams have a deep understanding of their product, the industry and equally important, their customers. They know all of the personas they need to create connections with, including their pain points and desired business outcomes. Fully enabled teams also know how to empathize with customers, so they can build a narrative around their strategic priorities and break these down into use cases. Finally, closers are effective because they have the right tools to carry them through ROI conversations and validation. They can confidently map your solution to their customer’s business priorities and KPIs, and they can do this with validated data.
Consider the following content framework to achieve this:
- Industry insight and knowledge – specific industry insights aligned to country dynamics, if necessary, as well as case studies, trends and industry drivers of change.
- Strategic priorities – allow your teams to research their customers through publicly available information and identify the people and decision making they are required to do, the nature and scale of operations, how they are performing, the risks and threats they are exposed and the transformation they need, the challenges and opportunities and finally, strategy and tactics for success.
- Hands-on learning – provide an opportunity for your training participants to put their learning and research to use by way of a sample case study, leveraging their new industry insights and understanding of strategic priorities.
- Learning journey – ensure that you set clear and actionable outcomes from each session and set a plan that maps how and when you will continue to engage with your teams by re-communicating the insights and action.
If you have any questions when you’re building, or updating your sales enablement tools and training, we are here to help. Contact us or learn more about IDC’s Sales Enablement practice and how it can help you build an empowered sales team.
