This article includes:
-
A
methodology for methodology success
-
Examples
of what not to do (so that you don’t)
-
Discussion
and identification of key success factors and metrics
-
The
importance of establishing a baseline and how to do it
-
The
nature of the Three Groups and methodology adoption
-
Virtuous
feedback cycles, their impact and importance
-
The
Manager’s Dilemma and how to avoid/address it
-
What
about Bob? Other impacted and impacting
teams
-
A few
coaching guidelines for adoption
-
Keeping
it rolling – systems, tools, new hires and ongoing adoption
-
A
methodology for methodology success
This article was specifically written for:
-
Presales
managers and mentors (guidance on implementation and coaching your team)
-
Presales
individual contributors (read the article as if you were coaching yourself)
-
Anyone
contemplating implementing a sales or presales methodology (especially senior
management)
A
Methodology for Methodology Success
Take a deep breath – this is a long article. Here are the key take-aways we’ll address:
Prior to the first training sessions:
0. Be clear on your overall objectives
1. Make sure you understand what doesn’t work
2. Discuss and agree on key success
factors and the metrics
3. Establish a baseline
4. Train front-line managers and mentors on
coaching
5. Introduce the front-line managers and
mentors to the methodology
6. Ensure that front-line managers and
mentors take the training
7. Address and enroll other impacted and
impacting teams
Immediately after the first training sessions:
8. Re-establish a baseline
9. Tune the training and course material
10. Assess the trainees in terms of the
Three Groups
11. Push/Pull, Poll and Publish to
establish virtuous feedback cycles
12. Address and enroll the balance of the other
impacted teams
And on an ongoing basis:
13. Keep It Rolling – implement in internal
systems and for onboarding
14. Gather front-line managers and mentors
to identify issues and opportunities
15. Continue to Push/Pull, Poll and
Publish
16. Track the KPI’s and metrics, assess,
refine and execute!
What
Not to Do…
To paraphrase Voltaire, common sense in methodology implementation
– is far too uncommon! Contemplate the
following scenario:
-
You train a large team in a new methodology…
-
But you don’t train the team’s managers in the methodology – or
how to coach their team members on how to apply the methodology,
-
Nor do you train the team’s colleagues or mentors in the
methodology – they are unexposed and expect to continue with their current
practices.
Before reading further, look away from this article and forecast
the results. What will happen?
Would you predict stunning success, significant change, and
critical improvements in key performance indicators and metrics? Or would
the team likely return to their old practices?
[Hint: Choose the second option]
So, let’s talk about successful
implementation of methodology training.
In many cases, we’ll use Great Demo! methodology as a working example,
which we’ll call out with the notation, “GD!”.
Key Success Factors
Before identifying specific KPI’s, consider the following general
plan:
- Determine
what to measure, then establish a baseline and track progress.
- Run a
pilot training session or two, then refine.
- Ensure
that front-line managers are trained with their teams.
- Train
the front-line managers on key coaching elements – and on how to coach.
- Track
progress; tune, adjust, and reinforce as appropriate.
Note: this all presupposes active support by senior
management…
Equally important additional note:
many organizations only consider the first two items on this list and
part of item 5. Executing 3 and 4 are
key success factors on their own (as illustrated by the sad example above).
Determine
What to Measure…
Key Performance Indicators need to be exactly that: key indicators of the performance of the team
resulting from the training. You might
want to think in terms of two dimensions:
1. Adoption of the methodology
2. Effectiveness of the methodology
Note that these are two very
different KPI’s! And far too many times
only the second KPI (Effectiveness) is measured. Here’s an example…
You train the team in a specific sales methodology and you choose
to track “Sales Cycle Length”, “Deal Size” and “Forecast Accuracy” (% of deals
moving from stage to stage as forecasted).
Prior to the training you establish a baseline. Six months later you review the progress of
these three KPI’s and you see no significant change.
Was the methodology at fault?
Hard to tell…!
You have no idea whether the team actually adopted the methodology and put it into practice or simply reverted
to their old ways. (This often happens
with sales methodology training when it is perceived as “the methodology of the
year…”)
Accordingly, we need to measure and track both Adoption and
Effectiveness. For Adoption, we need to
understand what are key indicators of adoption and thus how best to measure
it.
[GD! For Great Demo! Adoption, we often suggest
requesting and then tracking the generation of Situation Slides and
Illustrations as key indicators. Some
organizations today require submission of Situation Slides by sales prior to
assignment of presales resources for demos (and POC’s). Completed Situation Slides also indicate
whether adequate Discovery was completed prior to a demo. Submitted Illustrations show that the
presales resource likely applied some key Great Demo! concepts when preparing
the demo.]
Next, let’s look at Effectiveness metrics. Clearly, you must choose wisely – since what
you measure will (generally) drive behavior!
[GD! For Great Demo! Effectiveness, we recommend
tracking sensitive ratios such as:
- ($’s of)
Revenue/Demo Overall
- ($’s of)
Revenue/Demo by geography and/or by team
- ($’s of)
Revenue/Demo for individual presales people
- ($’s of)
Revenue/Demo for individual sales people
Over the period of a few quarters, you will likely uncover a
number of potentially surprising trends…
For example, overall performance of the team is shown by an
increase over time of the first metric (assuming other contributing factors
remain the same, of course). Similarly, you will likely find that certain
teams or geographies are doing better or struggling, comparatively, yielding
opportunities to coach/refresh skills – and the metric for individual presales
team members also provides performance insights on an individual basis.
Using this metrics to track sales people will show which sales
people are using presales resources most effectively vs. those needing coaching
(or to be moved along…).
[Background story: The use
of this metric was established by a colleague of mine who was then managing a
presales team. There was one sales person who always had a “huuuge
opportunity” and consumed an overlarge amount of presales resources, but never
seemed to close the amount of business that his colleagues did. However,
without hard data to present to that sales person’s manager, the problem simply
continued (as did the perception that presales’ resource/time was somehow
“unlimited”…).
By collecting this data, my
colleague was able to show conclusively that this sales person was an anomaly,
compared to his peers – and my colleague was able to convince sales management
to make the necessary change. My colleague is currently the very
successful head of sales at a major laboratory informatics company, enjoying
very strong growth in his business!]
[GD! Here are a few other
metrics to consider tracking, along with comments:
High-level Metrics – these track
the Effectiveness of the methodology overall:
1.
# of
Demos per Order: A good metric when deal
size can be normalized and when current (pre- Great Demo! Workshop) sales
cycles tend to require multiple demos.
This metric may need to be “sliced and diced” when trying to compare
sales cycles between multiple products and “Land and Expand” scenarios.
- % of
Demos Delivered with Sufficient Discovery:
Tracking whether complete Situation Slides were in place prior to a
demo is a great way to assess the degree of Discovery done (and communicated!)
prior to a demo vs. how many demos are simply “Harbor Tours” delivered
with little or no Discovery.
3.
“No
Decision” Rates: Complete Situation Slides also reduce the
likelihood of a “No Decision” outcome.
Tracking “No Decisions” offers a separate mechanism to determine the effectiveness
of the methodology (but you need to track both “No Decisions” and submission of
completed Situation Slides together for this to be applicable).
4.
% of
Orders Requiring a POC: A well-prepared
Great Demo! (Technical Proof demo, specifically) often eliminates the need for a POC.
This metric can provide insight into the effectiveness of the
methodology and, over time, the nature of the customer population (Early
Adopter vs. Early Majority vs. Late Majority, for example).
5.
%
Wasted Demos: This is another way to
assess efforts to complete sufficient Discovery vs. situations where sales
people simply say, “Show ‘em a demo…!”
(Gee, does that ever happen?).
Careful, though, you’ll want to find a simple way to differentiate a
“Show-up-and-throw-up demo” from a Great Demo! – the presence of a complete
Situation Slide is one simple measure.]
Customer Success Metric:
6.
V.R.E.
Realization Rates: This can be a very useful and compelling metric to
track. V.R.E. (Value Realization Events)
are those “early wins” that take place post-implementation for customers. Tracking (1) whether a V.R.E. was identified,
(2) whether it was achieved and (3) when it was achieved vs. plan, will yield
terrific data that can be mapped to churn (or reduced churn).
[GD! In Great Demo!, we teach sales and presales
teams to identify and track V.R.E.’s with customers – and include the V.R.E. as
one of the 6 elements of a Situation Slide.]
[Demo-level Metrics – these track the Effectiveness some of the
key elements of the Great Demo! methodology:
7. Demo Length (minutes): Generally, Great Demos are substantially
shorter than traditional demos. A
subtlety here is to track demo meetings that don’t run exactly 1 hour or other traditional time length – Great
Demos take only as long as is needed – no more, no less…
8. Time Between Customer Questions or
Comments: This can be a terrific
measurement of customer engagement. Most
traditional demos have the presenter talking for 3-5 minutes (and as long as 8-10
minutes) before asking, “Any questions so far…?”, followed by, “Nope; we’re
good…” from the customer. A Great Demo!
should see a customer interaction every minute or two.
9. Positive Feedback from Sales: The number of these can be a good indicator
of progress (but used carefully, of course).
10. Positive Feedback from Customers: Similar, but ever better…!
11. And, of course, “ride-along” tracking
of the use and presentation of Situation Slides, Illustrations, Do It and Peel
Back the Layers pathways, along with managing questions and other Great Demo!
elements.
Note that tracking these metrics provides terrific material for
managers’ coaching… (You are welcome to
a copy of our Great Demo! Coaching Guidance document to serve as a template – email us
for a copy)].
Establish
a Baseline…
You can’t honestly evaluate the success of a methodology
implementation unless you take and track measurements. And you can’t evaluate change if you don’t
establish a baseline (yet, surprisingly, baselines are rarely
established!).
This means that you need to:
1. Determine what metrics to track well before you begin methodology training
and
2. Make an assessment of these metrics
prior to beginning training so that you have
a baseline.
[GD! Prior to a Great Demo! Workshop, a
customer asked for some ideas regarding implementation. Her starting point
was an assessment form to document her team’s current level of
practice/performance.
I told her that the assessment form is a terrific starting
point… I then rather strongly recommended a few (well, several)
additional ideas to track progress:
- Establish
metrics to track for individuals and teams before and after training (as above).
- Have
your front-line managers assess their presales staff at least once before
the Great Demo! training so that you can establish an initial “baseline”.
- Have
your managers (who also need to join the training) then assess their
presales staff again immediately after the training to establish a normalized baseline (see
below for the rationale). It is also good to have discussion
sessions about the differences in perspective pre- and post- training.
For Number 2, I put “baseline” in quotes, because prior to the
training, managers and individual contributors often rank their performance better than immediately after a Workshop
– they “don’t know what they don’t know” prior to the training. You
should then establish a second, post-Workshop baseline (Number 3 above) from
which forward progress can be measured.]
OK, you’ve got your metrics identified and you’ve established your
(initial) baseline. Let the training
commence…!
The
Three Groups
Teams that go through any methodology training (sales, demos,
etc.) tend to partition into three Groups:
Group 1: Those who “get it”; the new ideas resonate
with them; and they are comfortable and sufficiently confident to try out the new
concepts on their own.
Group 2: Those who understand what they’ve learned; it
largely resonates; but they are concerned about making any substantive changes
to their processes. They are
insufficiently convinced to try the new ideas themselves – they need to see
success with their peers, first.
Group 3: Those who say something like, “I’ve been
selling/marketing/doing demos for 20 years – you can’t tell me how to do it…!” Attrition is the solution for this Group…
Group 1 are the methodology early adopters. The new ideas make sense, they can see the
value, and they are often eager to put the new ideas into practice. This Group is typically 10-20% of the
total.
Guidance for their managers? Actively support this Group, remove
obstacles, and celebrate and rebroadcast their successes – establish a virtuous
positive feedback loop.
Group 2 are the methodology adoption “majority” – often 60-80% of
the overall team. They understand the
new thinking, it makes sense, but they don’t want to try something new without
seeing proof that it works for others similar to them. This Group represents one of the biggest
challenges to methodology adoption.
Guidance for their managers? Actively seek-out and rebroadcast success
stories from the Group 1 folks – particularly early success stories. The
objective is to convince their Group 2 colleagues that the method works – and that it works for the people
they respect and relate to – their immediate peers. This gives the Group 2 people confidence that
the new ideas may also work for them, as well.
Proof.
Group 3? Sigh… No amount of training or other, non-punitive
efforts will change the minds of this stubborn, Luddite-like Group. The solution?
Attrition… (In sales, they can
stay as long as they make their numbers, generally, if they are not negatively
impacting the balance of the team).
Individual contributors:
which group do you fall into?
This suggests that Group 2 represents the greatest risk and
biggest opportunity. Organizations that
causatively take action to move Group 2 members into day-to-day practice enjoy
the highest levels of adoption and return on investment in methodology
training.
So what steps are effective in accomplishing this?
1.
First
and foremost is recognizing that the three Groups exist and identifying who
sits in each Group.
[GD! Great Demo! facilitators
can (and should) offer insights into who will likely sit in each Group – this
is a discussion that should happen as part of a post-Workshop debrief.]
2.
Capturing
and rebroadcasting success stories has an enormous positive impact. This needs to be done as a scheduled, regular
process, particularly over the first several months post-training.
[GD! There are a number of
actions that are taken as part of Great Demo! adoption, including:
i. Post-Workshop regular emails from the facilitator
(that poll for success stories)
ii. Joining periodic team calls to promote
success stories, address questions, and discuss new situations
iii. Ongoing coaching for participants
iv. Coaching for managers and mentors (on
how to coach – more on this ridiculously important topic later…)
v. Reviewing Situation Slides and
Illustrations for upcoming important demos
vi. Doing practice sessions before
upcoming important demos]
12. Setting objectives (and measurements)
that both support the method and serve to drive its adoption.
[GD! Successful organizations
have implemented the following for Great Demo!:
i. Require reasonably complete Situation
Slides prior to assigning presales resources for demos
ii. Capture and share Situation Slides and
Illustrations from successful demos]
The Three Groups - Revisited
Adopting a methodology generally means making substantial changes
to one’s practices – but change is challenging!
Group 1 tends to be more comfortable with large changes; Group 2
typically is more likely to try small steps (and let’s not concern ourselves
with Group 3 anymore).
With many methodologies, the easiest ideas to implement often have
the least impact; conversely, the ideas
yielding the greatest impact may be the toughest
to put into practice.
The guidance here is to contemplate:
1. Which team members partition into
Groups 1 and 2, respectively, and therefore
2. What strategy to take when encouraging
and coaching adoption for each individual.
Very simply, the Group 1 folks will be much more willing to make
big changes and try out some of the more challenging aspects of the new
practices; Group 2 members will likely need to start with smaller,
easier-to-implement changes.
One way to look at this is to use a four-quadrant grid, with the Y
axis identifying the level of gain or pay-back and the X axis showing the
implementation or adoption effort:
When you populate a graph like this with the key skills and
practices of the methodology, you have a tool you can use to provide coaching
guidance to individual team members.
Folks who want the “biggest bang” for their efforts will be directed to
the top-right quadrant; Group 1 members will be more likely to also work on
items in the top-left quadrant. (And all
should avoid, as possible, the bottom-left quadrant…)
[GD! Looking at Great Demo! practices, we can
rapidly assess effort vs. pay-off for a number of items:
Low Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Fewest Number of Clicks
2. “You” Mode
3. Preparing Situation Slides, based on
existing “Discovery” information (likely incomplete)
4. Precise pointing
Moderate Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Completing Situation Slides (which may
require executing more Discovery)
2. Identifying and presenting compelling
Illustrations
3. Peeling Back the Layers
4. Transition Vision and V.R.E.
discussions
5. Communicating and connecting to the
Business Value (the Delta) throughout the demo
6. The Menu Approach
7. Vision Generation Demos
High Effort, High Pay-off:
1. Preparing and delivering Complex
Situation Demos (e.g., for multiple stakeholders, multiple solutions)
2. Reaching agreement with the customer
on success criteria, the timeline and the players for a POC
3. Deeper Discovery skills (e.g., from a
Great Demo! Master Class)
Low Effort, Moderate Pay-off:
1. Remote Demos practices
2. Color, xy graph and related
Illustration presentation tactics
3. Managing Questions
4. Smooth and deliberate mousing
5. Summarizing
6. Making Demos Remarkable elements
(e.g., visual aids, whiteboard work, storytelling…)
7. Letting the customer drive (requires
more courage than effort!)]
Virtuous Feedback Cycles
Overall, what causes a major methodology
implementation to succeed or fail?
Feedback.
If the feedback is positive, more Group
2 members will be willing to try out the new practices. If the feedback is negative, Group 2 will
stay away from the new ideas.
Interestingly, Group 2 will also
fail to try the new skills if there is no feedback or if the feedback is
neutral (and, of course, if the feedback is negative).
No feedback is an adoption kiss of
death: Group 2 member says, “Well, I
haven’t seen or heard anything about the new methodology, so I guess nobody is
using it…” (ever heard that before?). Group 2 members won’t give it a try, in spite
of any successes with the Group 1 folks (no feedback, no way of knowing about
any successes).
In the case of neutral feedback, as in
“Yeah, I tried it, but it didn’t seem to make a difference…”, this is just as
bad as negative feedback. Group 2
members will stay with their current practices, as will the Group 1 member who
made the comment. After all, why invest
effort to change if the results are indifferent?
And that’s a key – the results need to
show tangible gains.
Group 2 – often 60-80% of those trained
– may not (will likely not) embrace a new methodology without seeing success with
their peers using it. If they see no
feedback at all or neutral feedback, adoption of the new methodology is at risk
(severe risk, in fact!).
A solution? Push/pull, poll and publish…
Push/Pull, Poll and Publish
Push and Pull for feedback; Poll for success
stories and Publish success stories broadly.
The first few months after initial
training are typically the most critical.
Members of Group 1 try out some of the new ideas and often have good
results. However, if the Group 1
individuals are the only ones who know about their successes, adoption will lag
– and will likely not go beyond those in Group 1.
Push and Pull everyone for feedback on
the program – the recently-trained staff, managers, executives (even
customers). Let everyone know you will
be asking for results. Poll frequently –
particularly those in Group 1 – and when you hear of a success story, get the
details (sanitize as appropriate) and Publish
it broadly.
Shout out small successes, moderate
gains, and (of course) major victories!
Reward the courage of the Group 1 folks
by re-broadcasting their successes throughout the team. This will generate a positive feedback loop
for the Group 1 members, encouraging more to report their successes.
More importantly, these success stories
will encourage Group 2 to try out the new ideas. “If it worked for Mike and Barbara, maybe I
should give it a try…” And when Group 2
people begin to report their own successes, these (oh, especially these!) need
to be published and re-broadcast. Each
member of Group 2 that reports a success (however small) represents a step
towards substantive adoption.
A virtuous cycle is the objective – and
the result!
Over time, those who have not tried the methodology (and reported
success) become the minority –
causing even more pressure to adopt.
[GD! For Great Demo!, here are a few examples of
Push/Pull, Poll and Publish:
Push/Pull:
1.
Push out weekly emails from team managers to those
just trained, “How is it going? Any
success stories to report? Any questions
on the ideas or new situations you’d like to discuss?”
2.
Pull for feedback in the regular team calls (same
types of questions as above).
3.
Require or request Situation Slides for each demo
delivered (some organizations require
complete or nearly complete Situation Slides prior to delivering any
substantive demo).
4.
Similarly, require or request Illustrations prior to
demos.
5.
Push sales people to both try the new methods and
provide feedback. Pull for their
feedback.
6.
Pull presales staff who enjoyed successes to
contribute their Situation Slides and Illustrations into a shared area to
enable others to leverage these successes with other customers in similar
situations.
7.
And use these latter as feedstock for Vision
Generation Demos.
Poll:
1.
At regular (and frequent) intervals, initially, Poll
for feedback. “How is it going? Any success stories to report? Any tips on what has worked, in
particular? Any questions on the ideas
or new situations you’d like to discuss?”
2.
When we at Great Demo! facilitate a Workshop, we
follow-up with similar emails at 1 month, 2 months, 3, 4, 6, 9 and 12 months
post-Workshop date, to provide another “Polling” pathway.
3.
Assess and review the metrics you’ve decided to
track on a regular cadence (monthly, for example) – and Publish the results to
front-line managers and their individual contributors – everyone who was
trained and/or involved. They need to
take personal ownership, as much as possible, of the progress made and results
earned.
4.
Poll your salespeople for their impressions – and Publish as appropriate.
Publish:
1.
Publish all successes, no matter how small (to start
with).
2.
Publish Situation Slides and Illustrations from
successful demos – “Here is what Deborah used to close the deal with DeLight
Corporation…”
3.
Publish any methodology usage tips that come in…
4.
Publish Menus that have been particularly
successful.
5.
Publish Vision Generation Demo components (Situation
Slides and Illustrations).
6.
Publish examples of what a “Great Demo!” looks like
– you can use Refract.ai
as a terrific tool to accomplish this.
7.
Publish examples of a what great Discovery session
sounds like.
8.
Great Story: After
the first day of a 1.5-day Great Demo! Workshop, one of the participants
reported a major success applying the ideas – she was able to literally snatch
victory from the jaws of defeat and turned a potential loss into a major
victory. The wonderful thing about this
is that she reported her success right at the start of day 2. What do you think the impact was on the
balance of the team?]
Hmmm…
You might have noticed that there is some real work involved here. You really can’t expect to have some
methodology vendor come in, deliver a day or two of training, and then expect
your team to adopt the new ideas right away?
Nope.
It takes a plan, resources, and energy to see serious adoption of any
methodology.
What Not to Do –
Revisited – A Top-Ten Eleven Don’t
List
The ideas above should alert us about
additional unsuccessful practices for methodology adoption, including (but not
limited to):
1.
Making
the training another HR “Check-box” – “We deliver it and we’re done…”
2.
Don’t
have front-line managers participate in the training
3.
Don’t
teach front-line managers how to coach their teams
4.
Don’t
have top-level management drive or support
5.
Don’t
have sufficient infrastructure in place to support and track (e.g., CRM and
Customer Success Management systems able to track the appropriate metrics)
6.
Don’t
make it part of the culture
7.
Don’t
highlight successes
8.
Don’t
review regularly (e.g., weekly team calls)
9.
Don’t
establish and track key metrics
10. Don’t introduce the methodology to
other impacted or related teams
11. Don’t Push/Pull, Poll or Publish
Wait a moment – what is that in items 2
and 3 above? This could be important…!
Front-line Managers and the Manager's Dilemma
The Good, the Bad, and the Truly Ugly – see if this sounds
familiar:
A manager organizes skills training for his team. On the day of the training, the manager kicks
things off and then disappears. Assuming
that the manager has not taken this particular skills training previously,
what’s wrong with this picture?
1. It is unlikely that this manager will
be able to coach or provide guidance to his team on the specific skills,
reducing that manager’s ability to achieve one of his biggest goals – to grow
and develop the team,
2. And in the case of methodology
adoption, our manager will be unable to coach to the new skills and concepts to
achieve adoption. Trainees will be on their own…
Accordingly, we can categorize managers into three groups:
The Good: Those who actively participate in skills
training (and are therefore enabled to coach their teams).
The Bad: Those who attend the skills training session,
but who spend 90% of the time reading and writing emails, often with noisy,
“clacky” keyboards (and are unconsciously telling their teams that the skills
being learned are not sufficiently important for the team’s attention, either).
The Truly Ugly: Those who don’t attend at all (and are
therefore unable to coach or support their teams).
The moral? Managers should
embrace skills training with the same (or deeper) commitment and “presence”
that they expect from their teams…
There is, of course, a “Great”
category for managers as well: those who
attend the training, pay rapt attention, support and reinforce the ideas during
the training, and then take steps to learn how to coach their team…! Not surprisingly, we see some of the greatest
success in both adoption and ongoing execution when “Great” managers are
involved.
[GD! As facilitators, we are truly delighted when we have a “Great”
category manager in a Workshop – it is a leading indicator of successful
adoption and execution.]
Let’s see how this all plays into adoption of a new methodology…
As an individual contributor:
You just completed a training class on a new methodology and have
tried some of the ideas in your recent interactions with customers – but you
aren’t sure you are doing the new practices correctly. You call your manager and ask for help, but
realize that your manager has very limited understanding of the new ideas and
vocabulary. What do you do?
As a manager:
You receive a call from one of your most promising team members
who is asking for help with a recent customer interaction – and you suddenly
realize that you don’t really understand the issue, the vocabulary, and
(especially) how to help. What do you
do?
The Manager’s Dilemma results from the following very typical
scenarios:
1.
“I
haven’t been trained on the methodology…”
2.
“I
didn’t have time to join the session because I’m super busy…”
3.
“I
don’t need to be trained on the
ideas, since I am a manager.” [This logic shouldn’t compile, yet it often
does…]
Simply stated, the Manager’s Dilemma is a manager being charged to
coach and achieve certain adoption and execution metrics with their team – but
being unable to do so because the manager literally doesn’t know what to do. This yields two observations:
1. Exposure: Managers who haven’t personally experienced
the methodology and the training will
be unable to coach or guide their teams – and adoption will fail.
2. Coaching Skills: Managers who haven’t been trained on how to
coach will also be unable to coach and
guide their teams – and adoption will
struggle (at best).
Front-line managers of sales and presales teams are the point(s)
of leverage with respect to implementing change in a field organization: senior management can mandate, enablement can
enable, staff members can adopt or not on their own; it is often up to the
buy-in, coaching and drive-for-performance of front-line managers to see the
desired gains achieved.
But wait: there’s more…
The Manager's Dilemma and Coaching
What about the ability to coach – have front-line managers been
trained on how to coach? Is the ability
to coach somehow automatically “switched on” when the “Manager” title is added
to one’s business card?
Nope.
1. Managers’ Dilemma: I don’t know how to coach; I haven’t been
trained on what or how to coach.
2. Managers’ Circular Reasoning Dilemma: Since I am
a manager, I should know how to coach my team (even if I don’t).
Do managers typically participate in the training classes their
teams go through? Unfortunately, often
not! This propagates the negative cycle…
3. Managers’ Dilemma: I can’t coach what I don’t understand…
Solution? Part of any
reasonable employee development plan should include resources and skills
training on how to coach their teams.
This needs to be taught and learned; it will not typically come
“naturally”.
[GD! For Great Demo!, we offer specific training
for front-line managers and mentors on how to coach along with specific
coaching instructions for the various elements of the methodology. (Contact us for a copy of the Great Demo!
Coaching Guidance document, for example).]
The Manager's Dilemma and Buy-in
This can be a huge issue!
A manager can strongly concur with a methodology, for example, but
use a different vocabulary from what was taught in a class, causing confusion. Worse, a manager may only agree with portions
of the training (and ignore other pieces), potentially resulting in deeper
confusion.
Similarly, some managers may simply not understand portions of the
training. Worst of all, perhaps, are
managers that simply disagree with the main body of the training material – and
choose to follow another pathway entirely.
4. Managers’ Dilemma (that becomes the
Team Members’ Dilemma): I’ll use my own
vocabulary
5. Managers’ Dilemma (and Team Members’
Dilemma): I only support what I like (or
know, or feel comfortable with using)
6. Managers’ Dilemma (and Team Members’
Dilemma): I don’t care that the company
has committed to methodology “X”, I like “Y” and that’s what my team is going to use…
Solutions:
1. Obvious (but strangely not
consistently done): Managers need to
actively participate in sales and related skills training – with their teams.
A
number of sales methodologies require
the use of managers as “coaches” in their training classes to reinforce/support
the training and as a mechanism for enabling ongoing coaching.
2. Train managers on how to coach and
what to coach.
This
is also rather obvious, but is comparatively rarely done. Skills trainers
typically assume that managers already know how to coach – this is potentially
a huge gap. Trainers can provide
information on what to coach for, but often have to rely on individual
managers’ ability to execute the coaching.
Interesting small example: some years ago, I volunteered to help coach my
daughter’s elementary-school-age soccer team. Before we did anything with the kids, all of
the new coaches in the league were required to get certified as coaches – this meant we had to learn
(or relearn) the rules of the game and we had to learn how to coach and what to
coach.
I was surprised at the depth of learning and skills that were
necessary to be an effective coach for the team, ranging from set-up and
execution of soccer skills practice, to position decisions, to working with the
referees, to orchestrating snacks and drinks – and the toughest challenge
overall: dealing with the parents (and parents’ expectations and perceptions).
3. Manager success stories: Just as managers can publicize individual team
members’ success stories to help drive other employees to implement new ideas,
senior managers can use front-line managers’ success stories to help drive
change amongst their peers and teams.
4. Mentors: The use of mentors is a terrific approach to
broadening the set of coaches available to any specific team. Mentors are often senior team members that are
both skilled in applying the method and in coaching – and are typically for
bringing new hires up to speed or between teams.
5. On-boarding: The loss of key team members or managers who
are replaced by new hires that have not been exposed to the training causes a
double dilution effect: the team is
losing a skilled, trained player (or coaching manager) and gains an un-enabled
replacement. Senior managers who
recognize this problem move to train their newly hired managers as rapidly as
possible; newly-hired staff are typically exposed to the next possible round of
training and, when possible, assigned a mentor as a coach.
Coaching
– Yourself or Your Team
Training on how to coach would be great topic for another article
– but for now, here are a few thoughts:
1. Identify a few of the key, high-yield,
high-impact elements in the methodology to focus on.
2. Select just one…
3. Practice, get feedback and repeat
until it becomes consistent and embedded
4. Repeat 1 through 3
There are a few subtleties here:
1. It can be very hard to adopt a full
methodology all at once – most people cannot possibly accomplish this. It is truly like trying to drink from a
firehose. Accordingly, target one new
skill at a time and work at it until it becomes part of the natural
process. Then, select the next element to
adopt.
2. Working on one item at a time also
provides the opportunity for small (and continuous) personal victories,
encouraging forward progress.
3. “Get feedback…” This means that the new practitioner needs a coach – someone who understands
what “good” or “great” look like and how to move the practitioner towards those
goals.
[GD! For Great Demo!, here are a handful of
high-value, high-impact skills to choose from:
1. Generate and use Situation Slides
2. Develop and present Illustrations
3. Break up your content into short,
discrete chunks
4. Use the Fewest Number of Clicks
5. Remember to Summarize
Each of these will significantly contribute to substantially
improved demos.]
What
about Bob? Other Impacted and Impacting
Teams
Most sales (and other) methodologies are targeted primarily for
specific teams – for example, sales methodology focuses primarily on
quota-carrying sales people. However,
most methodologies cannot exist in a stand-alone state – they require that
other interconnected portions of the organization understand the key elements
and play their appropriate roles.
With sales methodologies, there are clearly a number of directly
impacted departments, including:
-
Sales
Operations: who often must implement the
methodology in CRM systems
-
Sales
Enablement: who are generally organizing
the training and may also define and track metrics
-
Marketing: who need to learn the “language” and produce
marketing materials that align with the methodology (the Challenger model is an
excellent example of the interdependency between sales and marketing - marketing
is charged to generate “Commercial Insights” that sales uses with prospects)
-
Presales: who need to understand the methodology and
likely apply portions of it (but not all of it)
-
Inside
Sales and Business Development: who also
need to understand the methodology and apply portions of it, as well
-
Customer
Success: who need to harvest key outputs
of the methodology as inputs into Customer Success programs
-
Senior
Management: who, of course, want to see
substantive positive change towards the goals
[GD! While Great Demo! is perceived, initially, as
a presales methodology, the greatest successes occur when sales are trained simultaneously
with their presales counterparts. In
fact, the most successful outcomes take place when sales and presales team
members sit together in Workshops – it is a “team sport”:
-
Best Approach: presales and their corresponding sales counterparts
sit together to form the role-play groups in a Great Demo! Workshop. This yields the greatest, swiftest returns on
investment.
-
Good Approach: presales team(s) are trained first, followed
closely by introducing the methodology to sales (and the role of sales in Great
Demo! as a key part of this).
-
Least
Effective Approach: presales team(s) are
trained, but not sales. This makes it much
tougher as individual presales folks often need to train their sales counterparts
on the methodology (and the sales folks may “push back” as they have not been
exposed to the rationale…).
A number of very successful Great Demo! implementations include 1-
or 2-hour introductions to Great Demo! in their sales and presales onboarding “boot-camps”
– followed by more extensive sessions for presales.
Similarly, other organizations take advantage of sales kickoff
meetings and quarterly reviews (lovingly known as “Quarterly Management
Inquisitions”) to introduce and reinforce Great Demo! A particularly powerful approach is to
highlight a few success stories at these events (Push/Pull, Poll and Publish).]
Another consideration is that “Bob” is the new methodology – and it needs to take into account existing processes and vocabulary that
are already in place within an organization.
For example, many companies have strict definitions for words such as “customer”,
“client” and “prospect”. Any new
methodology needs either to subscribe to the existing “controlled vocabulary”
or know that replacing existing terms will be part of the implementation
process.
[GD! When implementing Great Demo! within
organizations, we are sensitive to these existing definitions – and corresponding align with imbedded sales
methodologies’ vocabulary and processes.]
Keep
It Rolling – Excelsior!
Great methodology implementation is never really “done” – it becomes
on ongoing process. New hires and
transfers between departments need to be exposed to the methodology, new
learnings need to be incorporated, newly minted front-line managers require
training on coaching (both how and what) – and it is likely that the
methodology itself will evolve over time.
Onboarding is clearly a key portion of the “Keep It Rolling”
process.
For many methodologies early exposure to the key ideas has a huge
impact on adoption. Accordingly, many
organizations include full methodology training sessions as part of their onboarding
process or “boot-camps”. Other companies
offer introductory courses, then “season” their new teams in the field for a
period of time before bringing these teams back for more complete
training.
The nature of the methodology, along with the organization’s
offerings, customers, and market will likely determine which approach is best.
[GD! For Great Demo!, we’ve seen the most
successful adoption and implementation for new hires following the second
approach: the new hires are given a 1-
or 2-hour introduction to Great Demo! during the initial onboarding process,
then sent out to the field for several months, followed by a full 1.5-Day Workshop. The introduction “sensitizes” the new hires
to the key ideas; the in-field experience gives them the deeper understanding
of how their customers consume the offerings (or want to consume the
offerings). This experience provides a sufficient
foundation for the follow-on training.]
Next, let’s discuss Tribal Knowledge… Tribal Knowledge is a wonderful and terrible
thing. It is wonderful when it is
collected, shared and used; it is a terrible waste when this doesn’t take
place.
Front-line managers typically see and hear the good, the bad, the
great, and the awful things that are happening in the field. Rarely, however, are there effective mechanisms
in place to collect and share front-line learnings.
Methodologies change over time as the authors of the methodologies
uncover new ideas and discard concepts or skills that are no longer
relevant. Methodologies also change as
they are practiced by individual organizations, as they enter and exit markets,
release new offerings, and as their customers change. Great methodology adoption and execution includes
incorporating new learnings (and discarding old as appropriate).
This suggests that there needs to be a person or team that takes
the responsibility to continuously evaluate and evolve a methodology, as it is consumed
and practiced by any particular organization.
In large(r) companies, this may be the responsibility of an enablement group. In others, it may fall upon the shoulders of
front-line managers. In any case,
successful ongoing execution suggests that there needs to be a group or team
that takes the responsibility for managing this evolution.
Some organizations have also established “round-table” discussions
on a regular cadence (e.g., quarterly) to surface and discuss issues,
challenges and opportunities with respect to specific methodologies. Their output feeds back into the training
courses and coaching practices (hey – that’s another virtuous cycle!).
[GD! For Great Demo!, we started the Great Demo!
Group on LinkedIn to serve as an ongoing, evergreen mechanism to share new
ideas, surface best practices, and provide tips on new technologies. It is, in essence, a Great Demo! Users’
Group.]
Another important component for ongoing implementation and
evolution is the use of software systems to enable, support and extend the
methodology. CRM systems, for example,
will typically need to be customized to support the specifics of a sales
methodology – both in terms of process steps (and vocabulary) and
reporting.
The ability to deliver reports on the desired KPI’s and metrics
drives the balance of the customization (or configuration) approach, in fact,
since the ability to generate specific reports determines what information
needs to be captured (and how and when).
Shared areas may need to be established for access to supporting
materials as well. Many sales
methodologies require materials from marketing to enable sales to use the
methodology (e.g., CustomerCentric Selling requires references for cold
calling; Challenger requires “Commercial Insights”; Miller-Heiman practitioners
work from Blue Sheets, etc.).
Organizations need to consider what standards need to be in place to
submit materials, who can submit, QC, access – and clean up the shared areas
from time to time. (Interestingly, most
shared areas are never cleaned of
outdated or irrelevant materials…)
[GD! For Great Demo!, consider the following:
-
Include Situation Slide, Illustration, and Menu fields in the your
CRM and/or shared areas.
-
Make reasonably complete Situation Slides a prerequisite for
allocating presales resources to sales for demos other than Vision Generation.
-
Capture and share successful Situation Slides, Illustrations and
Menus for use by the field.
-
Capture and share Informal Success Stories from successful customer
implementations for use by everyone – these are of particular use for new
hires.
-
Use tools like Refract.ai and Gong.io to capture and share
examples of what “good” and “Great” looks like for presenting Vision Generation
demos and Technical Proof demos.]
A
Methodology for Methodology Success
For the two of you who have read this far (many thanks), here is a
summary of the key ideas to achieve successful adoption and the rewards of a methodology:
Prior to the first training sessions:
0. Be clear on your overall objectives –
what specifically are you looking to accomplish?
1. Make sure you understand what doesn’t work.
2. Discuss and agree on key success
factors and the metrics you will track and assess, both for Adoption and for
ongoing Execution.
3. Establish a baseline.
4. Train front-line managers and mentors on
how to coach their teams (in general).
5. Introduce the front-line managers and
mentors to the methodology and coaching elements.
6. Ensure that front-line managers and
mentors take the training with their teams.
7. Address and enroll other impacted and
impacting teams, as appropriate
Immediately after the first training sessions:
8. Re-establish a baseline (and discuss
and resolve any differences in the baseline results before and after the
initial rounds of training).
9. Tune the training and course material
as appropriate.
10. Assess the trainees in terms of the
Three Groups.
11. Push/Pull, Poll and Publish to
establish virtuous feedback cycles – focusing initially on Group 1 trainees.
12. Address and enroll the balance of the other
impacted and impacting teams.
And on an ongoing basis:
13. Keep It Rolling – implement as
appropriate in your internal systems and your onboarding process for new hires
and transfers.
14. Periodically gather front-line
managers and mentors to identify issues and opportunities, and post examples of
what “Great” looks and sounds like.
15. Continue to Push/Pull, Poll and
Publish to keep the virtuous cycles thriving.
16. Track the KPI’s and metrics, assess,
refine and execute!
You’ll know you’ve truly succeeded when you overhear a “seasoned
veteran” at your company tell a new hire, “This is the way we do this here…”
referencing some key vocabulary and process steps of the methodology. It has become embedded as part of the company
culture!
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© 2018 The Second Derivative – All Rights Reserved.
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