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Sales Talent Transformation:

Building Competencies that Last

December 14, 2017

Daniel Kuperman,Director of Product Marketing, MindTickle

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OverviewThe buyer’s journey and sales cycle is increasingly complex

in today’s rapidly changing sales environment. This requires a

deeper knowledge, a broader skill set, and an entirely different

approach to training sales representatives. What’s needed is

an ongoing learning program that kicks in after foundational

competencies and onboarding have been completed.

This whitepaper is based on the accompanying webinar in

partnership with SiriusDecisions and aims to define the process

for creating ongoing learning that sticks. It will give you an

understanding of the goals, roles, and measurement involved

and demonstrate its business value to your organization.

What’s wrong with learning?In an ideal world, effective learning is the combination of

acquiring the skills, knowledge, and process required to do an

amazing job. Easy and straightforward, right?

Not so much. There are some frightening statistics around the

state of traditional learning. Some of my favorites include a

staggering 87% of all learning forgotten in the first 30 days, or

57% of organizations allot less than 15 days per year to all types

of ongoing learning. The reasons for this are several: learning

takes time away from selling, learning can often be a reaction to

a particular situation rather than part of a long-term plan, it can

be hurried, overloaded, badly designed, and worst of all, offer

limited measurement.

of organizations allot less than 15 days per year to all types of ongoing learning.

15%

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How can ongoing learning fix this?Ongoing learning is the practice of continuously engaging sales reps at

different times, with different content, and using different techniques

which helps reps to perform beyond their perceived capabilities. By design,

it offers learning in a structured and unstructured way that increases

engagement and the retention of knowledge. It offers a feedback loop for

continual assessment and reward. And most importantly, it’s measurable.

Because without measurement, it’s impossible to manage.

Ongoing learning should satisfy three key needs:

Developing an effective learning strategyAn effective learning strategy will meet these three needs head on.

It will enable you to create ongoing learning that equips your reps

with current and future competencies, addresses their needs as well

as those of the organization, captures their attention and promotes

retention, and can be measured by outcomes that can tie directly to

performance goals.

This is particularly vital in a sales environment. For many occupations,

training and learning is a case of teaching then asking whether the

subject did the learning, passed the test, etc. In sales, the focus is

on teaching, then finding out if the person can actually put this new

knowledge and skill into practice. It’s not a question of asking “did you

do it?” it’s more “can you do it?” So how do we do that?

Occupational

Does it align to the current competencies of the organization? Does the rep need it to be successful in their job?

Aspirational

Does it align to future competencies? Does it provide what the rep needs to move on to their next role?

Inspirational

Does it align to the rep’s interests and curiosities? Will the rep want to know more?

1 2 3

Tell

Show

Do

Reinforce

Own3

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STEP 1

TELLStart with a tell phase to establish the foundational knowledge

needed by the rep to execute their responsibilities. This includes

telling them everything they need to know about the buyer, the

offering, how the offering is different, and the messaging that should

be used around the offering. It’s the responsibility of the sales

enablement team, with collaboration from the product or portfolio

management team, to collect all the accumulated knowledge and

create the instructional design.

Tactics could include:

E-learning

White papers

Industry publications

Customer testimonials

Sales success stories

Subject matter expert videos or webinars

Competitive analysis

Industry research

Playbooks

Instructor-led sessions

Measurement at this stage would be centered around comprehension

which could be tested online, inline, or using an incredibly effective

tool, the teach-back, where reps are asked to teach others what they

have just learned. You can also leverage technology to make this

process fun for the rep, easy to distribute, and measurable by using

video role-play technology.

5

STEP 2

SHOWThis stage will illustrate what good looks like in a demonstrative way

for activities, interactions, and deliverables.

This might include reps observing buyer interactions, seeing what

assets are being used, and learning what tactics hit home. Like Step

One, it falls on the sales enablement team and product managers to

make this material available.

Tactics could include:

Peer mentoring

Field observations

Active-listening tools

Audio/video recording

Sample templates

Prep checklists

Call scripts

This stage can be measured by things like formal debriefs and

structured observational forms to assess activity and the application

of the knowledge gained in Step One. Here again technology can play

a big role if you are dealing with a large team. Some sales enablement

vendors allow you to create electronic forms for field observation in

which you can easily capture and analyze the observable behaviors

and aggregate the results across all reps into charts that show

patterns and trends.

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STEP 3

DOThis is where practice comes in and we apply the foundational

knowledge gained and the understanding of what good looks like.

In this stage, the reps do it over and over again. They might practice

conversations, role-play different scenarios, or develop a pitch that

suits their personalities and their customers. Sales enablement will

play a key role here with sales leadership guiding individuals and

teaching proven soft skills.

Tactics could include:

Team and one-on-one role-playing

Audio/video based practice and coaching

Pitching to peers

Scorecards whether human or technology based

Checklists

Scripts

Case studies

The skills attained against a set of criteria could be measured in this

stage by scoring role-play, for example. A word of caution is required

here if you plan on using video role-play technology. Make sure that

you can setup different evaluation parameters for different sales

scenarios. Those parameters can be customized to accurately capture

the different skills required from the reps, and the tool should be able

to provide analytics for surfacing areas of concern and identifying

where reinforcement might be needed.

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STEP 4

REINFORCEThis is where the rubber meets the road. The objective in this

stage is to ensure the rep can fully execute in a live environment!

Consistently over time.

This is where learning is reinforced by coaching in observed

conversations and real scenarios. Some companies even do this in

front of their actual customers. With the help of sales enablement,

sales leaders take the charge here and do everything they can to

test their reps.

Tactics could include:

Field coaching playbooks

Checklists

Scripts

Annotated templates

Sales motion playbooks

Guided selling

Again, the skills attained against a set of criteria could be

measured in this stage by observing and scoring behavior against

a common criteria.

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STEP 5

OWNThe final stage! The objective here is to transfer the accountability

for the previous four stages to the rep and measure against

expected impact.

This is where the rep takes ownership of the competency they

have picked up. This might mean a certification and subsequent

recertification over time. It might require the rep to track

against established metrics to self-score, or to advocate for this

knowledge with others. The responsibility is now with the rep,

but they can still collaborate with sales operations and sales

enablement for assessment and help.

Tactics could include:

Survey-based assessments

Sales success stories

Program dashboards

Master monitor programs

We measure the impact of acquired competency at this stage.

This could be in the form of self assessment and measurement

against leading and lagging KPIs.

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Forward through technology

Technology brings effective learning to new levels of

engagement by taking knowledge to the point of need and

supporting better coaching. As SiriusDecisions mentioned

during our webinar, 87% of all learning is forgotten after 30

days. If I wanted to wallpaper my living room, I would watch a how-to video the day of, not a month before! Technology allows

for this just-in-time learning and a host of other effective

learning techniques like micro-learning moments that can

help a rep brush up just before a meeting, or daily quizzes to

help with ongoing retention. Here’s where technology helps

the most at each particular stage:of all learning is

forgotten after

30 days.”

“87%

Creation tools:

Voice over

Video

Micro learning

Podcasts

Staged knowledge reinforcement:

Daily quiz

Audio/video

challenge

Asynchronous coaching:

Audio/

video-based role

play

Guided selling:

Sales asset

management

Playbooks

Learning man-agement system:

Learning content

repository

Scheduling tools

Emerging tech:

Virtual reality

Predictive

AI

Primary purpose

Knowledge transfer

Knowledge retention

Knowledge application

Activity alignment

Source of record/delivery

Proactive and coaching automation

Tell

Show

Do

Reinforce

Own

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Good learning is possible! It just requires subject matter that aligns with

the competencies of your company and your reps. Then it needs the

techniques and technology to make it effective and engaging. I’ll leave

you with a brief checklist of things you can do to boost sales enablement

and capabilities in your organization.

Create or update a competency roadmap and align it to your talent

Identify key competency learning gaps in role-based ongoing learning

Assess current programs against this ongoing learning framework

Rethink and rework the way ongoing learning is delivered to ensure attention and retention

Sales enablement and sales training leaders should rethink how they are

deploying and measuring their sales learning programs. Especially when

faced with the new realities of the millennial generation, and increasing

competitive environment because of ever changing market dynamics.

Keeping the sales team up to date can no longer be accomplished with

traditional methods and Learning Management Systems (LMS).

Take the table above as an example. The LMS system is basically a tool

for “telling” reps and falls very short on all other required aspects to truly

build sales competencies. But do you have to really look for different

tools that will cover the entire spectrum? The answer is no. That’s why

we built MindTickle, to give you a comprehensive end-to-end sales

readiness platform that can plug the knowledge-skills gap so prevalent in

today’s organizations.

Take the framework presented in this paper and adapt it to your own organization needs.

If you would like to explore how you can leverage MindTickle to deploy a continuous

learning program, please reach out to us at www.mindtickle.com.

Something to think about

WATCH THE WEBINAR