Why I got interested in Sales Enablement and Readiness
76% of B2B customers say that sales teams that met with them were not prepared, While 2/3rd of the vendors they picked were they well prepared ones . We need to do something about this.
Some Background
A few years ago, I had just wrapped up my previous startup and joined a data company based in the Bay Area. The team consisted of one engineer with some lines of code. Over the next few years, I was able to build out a team and transform this idea into a real business accounting for close to a third of the company’s revenue.
The hero syndrome
I would be called upon to demonstrate our product to new customers. I was very excited that our product was doing well. So I would accept every customer meeting, at any time of the day. One day one of our sales representatives set up a meeting at 4 am for an international customer. That was the only slot our customers were able to attend that week so I jumped on it. I had slept late the previous night and knowing there would be about 6 people on a call waiting for me I did not get any sleep until the call. I woke up at 3 am, made myself a cup of coffee, and joined the meeting. I wasn’t very sharp during the meeting, I missed some queues and I remember realizing this was a bad idea. The demo went fine however when we wrapped up the meeting I was not feeling victorious.
Something was broken
I felt bad. I couldn’t go back to sleep for the next few hours. I was thinking why was I up at 3 am? Why weren’t my field sales teams, not comfortable speaking about my product? How many such opportunities had we missed because my calendar was booked? How many opportunities did we miss when sales, customer success, operations, etc did not catch the signal or lost an opportunity to talk about our products. We had a field force of about 50 people who should have been enabled to speak about my product yet there were less than 6 people who we could confidently put in front of the customer.
Our Sales Communication Muscle
We had failed at enabling the team. We did what any company at the time did. Sales KickOffs, PowerPoint decks, and webinars. Our problem? Sales kickoffs were a fire hose of information with little to no recall. No one read documents in the email and webinars while successful was useful only when people attended them live. The result was that our sales team knew only those products they learned when they joined. Most new products and releases never made it to their radar. Losing millions of dollars in lost business.
People are the most valuable resource a company has, with companies spending over 70% of their total cost on people. Those people help communicate with customers the value of your products and services, within the company ideas, processes, and products are useful only when people are enabled on them. Yet enablement methods in the enterprise are old and dysfunctional.
And that’s why I am working on TeamSync. Turns out Sale Communication is a significant problem. More in future posts.
This is a mobile app. It helps sales, customer success and support teams share product insights, customer insights, and market strategy with each other, on the go and a continuous basis.
TeamSync is on a mission to enable every person in an organization to achieve their highest potential.
With TeamSync enablement is not an art anymore, It’s the behavior your users have already come to expect of social media platforms. TeamSync brings consumer-grade technology and experience for enterprise enablement. Try us out today.
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