[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Welcome. This is the Sales IQ Podcast. My name is Luigi Prestinenzi, and I'm on a mission to help salespeople be the best sales professionals they can be. Each week, we'll bring you a different message from thought leaders from around the globe so we can help you master the art of selling.

Welcome to another episode of the sales IQ podcast. I'm your host Luigi Preston NZ. This episode is all about sales enablement and how to get the most out of your sales efforts. We so many changes occurring when it comes to selling different platforms, the requirement to give more information, many of us find it difficult to manage all that information required to assist the customer through the buying process.

Our guest this week is Tamara Schank one of the leading experts when it comes to this topic, Tamara is currently the research director at global research from CSO insights, advisory board member at the sales enablement society and coauthor of . Please welcome Tamara to the show.

[00:01:07] Tamara Schenk: Thanks for having me. Oh,

[00:01:08] Luigi Prestinenzi: fantastic.

Um, so look, before we get into this, you know, really hot topic, um, please share with us a little bit about you and, um, how you started in the world of sales and sales and.

[00:01:21] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, sure. Happy to do that. So, yeah, I'm in my business career around twenty-five years round, I initially started with, um, a company I had with a partner.

So we developed and sold and implemented software for just-in-time time suppliers for the automotive industry. So I learned to do all of this. And then I was an it consultant for a couple of years and I became a management consultant. I have business development role. So consultants is always selling.

So you just can't um, yeah. Distinguish that to selling from delivering. Yep. And then, uh, I started with T systems at Archer telecom company in 20. Yeah, that's right. And I had a couple of roles there from strategy implementation to sales roles, again, business development roles. And then I was asked to, to call it a sales restructuring program.

And as usually a, you move a few people out and you tell the others that they have higher quota, um, fewer people. And then I started to think about, okay, but how do we actually help our sellers to be able to achieve these goals? And then. I found. That may actually don't help them very well at this point.

So for instance, we had content they should use on 35 different places on a global level. Um, the training landscape was not organized, uh, at all, and there was no consistency. Around it. And we were just about to implement the new sales pros and CRM and all this stuff. So, uh, so the thing is always a barrier to use, start to, to make things better.

And it, this point I had a senior executive sponsor who was running the portfolio, or you call it the product management part of the house and he had to consolidate different future. What is it actually reselling? I had to consolidate that and he had a need to communicate specifically that to, to Salesforce.

And I said, you actually, that is a bigger, bigger picture. That is where I come from. And so, and he was happy that he had someone who could sell. This problem. So we started to consolidate a content landscape to implement a sales enablement content platform. And then you go into the content you see, actually the content is not customer focused, it's too product focused.

Then you work on that. You develop some frameworks to, to get better with all of this, and then you come to the bigger picture and actually w what, uh, what is it we do when. When it comes to sales training for our sales folks, then you have to orchestrate that piece to make it more customer centric and really orient that, um, to, to changing buyer behavior, things like that.

And then you'll come to the coaching part because then you miss. Maybe we missed something to integrate and, and rug with the sales managers to help them to become better coaches, to really be able to move the needle. The long story short, this is what I did a couple of years until 2013. And in 2014, I.

Changed my role and became an analyst. And I try and see you so insights. Uh, we are the research division or from Elohime group. We are an independent research, uh, division, um, there, and, um, yeah, I'm the lead analyst on all things sales enablement, and I'm happy to combine the data. The research declined, broke, and also with my own experience.

Of course.

[00:04:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. So you've had quite an interesting career going from. You know, that just in time sort of lean model being that consultant and then moving into, you know, a VP of sales enablement for quite a large, you know, global business. Um, what attracted you to the, to the Miller Heiman research division?

[00:05:21] Tamara Schenk: I, it was interesting because, uh, when I. Started to take care about sales enablement. That was 2008 nine, and then we were on the implementation phase in 2010. Ed was very new at this point and also. At this point, it was very focused on, this is all about technology that helps to organize your content, innovative salespeople needed.

Um, and it was the term was promoted by those vendors at this time. And then as you work in this, you, you see, uh, I need help. And I, um, was looking for help in the industry. And so, um, I found who was at this time leading the sales enabled practice within Forrester. So I was used. With analyst during my career around sales enablement.

And I always found this very useful to combine the idea of having data and also having frameworks to be able to apply that to, to our contacts we had at this time at T systems and to tailor that accordingly. So that definitely helped me to be able to develop a strategic more strategic business case because I started.

This idea as a program and it, I could, with the help of, um, all these, um, all the work we've done at this point, uh, I could develop this to a strategic function back in sales. Very it should be. Um, so, and then I. At this point, I said, I've done all these different facets of sales enablers, and what could be an X career step.

And so on. Actually I liked this work. I could imagine two crew to connect the dots and to look at it from a different perspective.

[00:06:59] Luigi Prestinenzi: Oh, fantastic. So, I mean, because it's interesting, right? Because that you would have been quite an early adopter of that sales enablement movement. If it's 2008, 2009, um, what were some of the challenges that you experienced?

Um, When trying to adopt this new sales enablement methodology.

[00:07:19] Tamara Schenk: Oh, yeah. So many actually run from Montana to do the next one as usual when you start new things. But, uh, um, so the first one is, of course there is a new term and initially it creates fear because others say, okay, what does that mean? And then, uh, some other functions might feel threatened.

Um, so at this point, Of course, we looked at it at this point from a content perspective and it's of course so much more than that. So alone with add, you cannot move the needle. So you need to connect the dots. Of course, across the content landscape, the training, the coaching, the tool, the technology landscape, and it's important to.

To make sure. And that was the learning journey for me that it's, it's not about creating a new team, that's vacuum vacuuming and everything else that could look like enablement because whatever is existing in an organization. If you don't have this function or discipline or initiative right now, Everybody in the company wants to help sales.

There is product marketing who is sharing the decks. There is marketing. They do things for sales. If it's leads, it's content, it's social content and it's blogs, it's videos, and it's polished references, case studies, white papers, all the things that a sales operations, they help with the process. They provide templates, legal, they provide contracts and out of the templates, sales.

And all the things and then sales training, and L and D they provide their stuff. And the problem is that all of this, there isn't that up to make sense. It's usually presented in a way. From the perspective of these functions, is this what we think sellers and buyers should need, but it's, it's not addressing sellers challenges usually, and as it, it's not consistent and not the signed along the customer's past together, it's usually not consistent.

And it creates confusion a Salesforce. Any, if you have your quota, if you have. Does this, my it's so important to know sales. Um, Dan, you simply switch off the noise. If it doesn't make sense to you, you use what you have in your laptop and go for it. And that's the problem. Um, sales enablement has to solve, um, It.

And these orchestrating element is really, really very important. And to have this common design point, any tasks to be in the age of the customer tasks to be to customer and specifically to entire customer's path or buyer's path of buyer's journey. It's just important to have to speak a picture. Um, in mind when doing this and the orchestrating role, it's really something that's important.

And I always want to have more home because otherwise you create fear in marketing. You create fear in product you create wherever you are in your organization. Sales ops is asking about that's. What we do know that there is a difference sales ops is more about. Creating the foundation. Damn, all the architects of your selling system has processes and procedures and systems and performance management and compensation and pipeline management and sales enablement.

Ideally built on that to work with people, to engage sellers, to empower them. To enable them to be more successful.

[00:10:50] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. So just to confirm, so cause there is, there is a bit of a market, um, or a lack of understanding in industry about what sales enablement the definition is. And what I've heard you say is it's essentially, uh, a way to orchestrate different areas of the business to pull in information that is customer centric.

That helps the buyer through the buying process. Um, have I sort of understood the definition for, you know,

[00:11:20] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, you, you have to domain idea. Absolutely. And so how we define it specifically is, um, that Delta name is a strategic collaborative initiative because it can come as an initiative, as a function.

It is designed to increase, um, predictable sales results by providing consistent, scalable enablement services for customer facing professionals and their managers, so that they can be available. In every buyer interaction. It's not a five roads definition. I know that, but we wanted to make sure that we define what it is, how it is done, why it is done and for whom.

And that it's also a definition that shows it. It's not the same then sales ops, because part of the problem, why are we discussing year over year? What sales enablement is is because there is the same gap of defining what sales operations actually is. It does this, why is this part of the confusion is that we don't have clarity on a sales upside.

So we want to create clarity in the sales enablement side. We have to solve the problems on both

[00:12:28] Luigi Prestinenzi: ends. It's interesting you say that because I often find even, you know, clarity from induction, you know, who owns induction is induction owned by the sales leader or is induction owned by, you know, human resources?

Um, there is a general lack of clarity around some of these. And ciliary function. So yeah.

[00:12:48] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, we are not in infield. It's it's really interesting because if you look at a finance department, you, if, if, you know, if you talk to somebody about an, about an EBIT or an EBTA or what a cashflow is, you have a very specific definition and.

What is agreed with that that's a common standard and we still have a long way to go to get it. Some clients standard into Salesforce.

[00:13:13] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Fantastic. So just on that, so, um, you know, that's a really good definition, uh, as a way to describe that, that function of sales, sales enablement, um, Obviously you've authored a report, um, or you've helped sort of put together a report that sort of summarizes a lot of this stuff.

Um, what was some of the big takeaways or some of the key highlights that you were surprised you in that report?

[00:13:40] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So all the reports we're doing always big teamwork at CSR in science everybody's contributing. Um, and the big surprises we found this year is that, uh, sales enablement is still growing, but it's not growing that fast as it was growing two years before, but we've also found that.

We now have more than 60% of organizations who say, yeah, we have something. We call it sales enablement. Um, uh, dad, we have a much higher sales enablement rates. If you will, in organizations that are a lot, you then do you want not 50? Millions in annual revenue and in specific industries. So like high-tech professional services, it services all these industries that experience that interruption of debt, business models early on.

So they are more likely to ever more early adopters when it comes to sales enablement. So as I come from an it services company earlier on CP had this 2000 8, 9, 10. Exactly. These. In these years, so to services and to the cloud, and all of a sudden it was no longer of any value to talk about how fantastic your data center would look like.

And at the same time that buyer roles changed. So, you know, it was selling cost savings to a CIO was no longer differentiating and insufficient in any way because the buyer roles change to the CFO was asking, how does that fit into my Abbott? Very very different challenges and very, very different approach.

Um, you need to, um, yeah. To design, to tailor into target and to sell your services. Okay.

[00:15:25] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. That's very interesting. And what are some of the challenges that you've seen organizations, you know, um, encounter when trying to drive this?

[00:15:34] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So you ask about what we found in his study specifically. So we found specifically that.

The priority you have to sales, enablement services have changed a bit. Um, so we found that sales process improvements would always include it in the sales enablement top three. So it was this it's now, um, um, uh, lower rank. So it, it also shows that as sales enablement is more growing up, that sales operations.

It takes again, ownership of demo and record responsibilities. So it sales enablement, the really sales training services are still the number one service. And that means all kinds of sale skills, methodologies, product, process, social selling, customer value, it justification customer journey, all these kinds of things.

Um, and content is becoming more important that organizations see more and more content is not just. You know, we have a nice technology. We can push everything on that platform. Is it, is that helpful? No, it is not because if you don't have organize your content in a way that engages sellers and helps to facilitate by interactions, you know, it doesn't create a value.

You're looking for Dan sales. Coaching is becoming more and more important. Organizations are becoming more mature when it comes to sales code. Um, and of course technology plays a bigger role every year. Um, and we cover, we try to capture the whole idea of designing enablement services, innovative that it's engaging seller, but more importantly, engaging buyers.

At the end of the day, we capture those in this year, study another big theme of customer engagements of what are the components to it and where various the industry. Yeah.

[00:17:23] Luigi Prestinenzi: And he finding that, you know, you mentioned earlier that some of the bigger organizations are the ones that have really adopted the sales enablement approach.

Um, what about the sort of, you know, the small, medium enterprises, the midmarket 50 mil, a hundred mil. Um, have you seen any of those organizations adopt this practice?

[00:17:44] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So, uh, the good uses, um, those organizations are adapting sales, enablement, um, ideas, and it is usually a much simpler for them because they don't one tab and out of 10 divisions and out of 10 business units, they have to orchestrate things cross.

So, and imagine organization. In that size, they very often have already sales and marketing on the one leadership mean in a more integrated way. So then it's easier to get to a shared vision of future success. What sales enablement should do. Yeah, the good news is it's very often simpler. Even if you should work with a frameworks and ideas, the implementation is simpler as you have less stakeholders to get on the same page.

Yeah. Yeah, but definitely you don't have to Rooks food, a lot of different business units and so on to, to get more executive stakeholders aligned. So, um, yeah, that's actually the good news.

[00:18:46] Luigi Prestinenzi: So less bureaucratic buying, less bureaucratic type enables the, the, the sort of the smaller organizations to really drive that sales enablement.

[00:18:55] Tamara Schenk: It's really the idea. Do I have a team that thinks backwards from the customer's path and is able to assess what is it actually behalf in terms of content? Is the content in any way designed to serve the different faces of the customers pass or is actually, if you're honest, while we have more around our products, you know, it's deep dive on our product or is it really designed to engage buyers that can be done in an assessment?

A content management framework can be. Designed and a process to orchestrate a course, maybe dev enablement team, the product and the marketing team when it comes to content creation. So usually these are the core teams that can be a starting point. Or if somebody says we have a bigger issue with our training and seller engagement and coaching product can also say, okay, what is it actually, we are doing it is consistent in any way.

How do we make sure that. Our Salesforce is able to apply it to skills we need, um, in, uh, to yeah, to respond to the modern buyer. If that's value messaging, if that social selling, if this is a strong sales methodology that, that supplied, you can also come from from this perspective, it doesn't matter where you start.

You should have this bigger vision in mind that at the end of the day, you have to. Integrate these enablement services to align all of them and to make sure that you move the needle. And with all of those, having said that less is more.

[00:20:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. So that's your answer really? W I really love the way you keep referring back to moving that needle.

Um, you know, and, and, and having that positive sort of growth from a sales perspective, um, for organizations who haven't been. Uh, so, you know, a formal sales management function share with us what they should do to, to commence this build of capability and where should they start?

[00:20:50] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So I hate to say that, but it depends.

So it really, I would start with what we found is the most improbable thing is how you set up the idea of sales enablement in your organization. And if you rename an existing team and say, this is now what they are doing, not looking at the strategy, this is not a good idea. Actually, this is a recipe for failure.

So you should take the time. If there is a sales leader, Can we say, yes, let's tackle this thing because we have a few challenges. Then it's really important to understand what is the business motor sales strategy? How are we actually doing when it comes to executing to sales strategy? So I will find some strengths, some challenges, weaknesses, and gaps.

So, and that actually describes the scope of sales enablement in that specific organization. Um, And the strategy to, to be developed from that analysis should always be connected to, to sales leaders and to senior execs strategic initiatives. So what is important to them? What are the metrics they have to achieve or are the KPIs that you're measured on?

They have to achieve in this fiscal year, in the next 18 months or whatever the timeframe is. And then you can come to a situation where you would say, okay, We've actually done. A lot of process stuff is fine. You know, does Kilz, you're fine with onboarding. Maybe we have that situation, but we actually very product centric in our sale, et cetera is actually talk way too much about products.

So we are not really focused on the customer's path. So you could come up with a situation where you're saying we have two. Define a new value messaging, a roadmap to get this raid from marketing messaging to sales messaging. And we first have to develop that and then we have to develop the skills and then we have to reinforce it via coaching that our sales managers are actually able to coach along those lines.

That could be a scope in a specific organization and in a second organization, it could be a different challenge. They may be just have done that. So. Challenge. Yeah, this is my, it really depends on the analysis. It's really important to look at the challenges when it comes to executing a strategy, what does it really need to do?

So

[00:23:10] Luigi Prestinenzi: should one, should one organization review the skills of their people first before embarking on the sales enablement project or?

[00:23:19] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, so it was Kyla sass assessment. Um, Can can be a very important thing to do assessing the content that's available, assessing the training landscape that's existing and also looking, um, yeah.

At the sales process together with sales operations, you know, is it used, is not used why? Yeah. So it's something that has to be improved and that, because the process landscape is the backbone of it because enablement services have a hard time to exist in a vacuum. Yeah. Ideally I should be able to connect them to a process that comes from the customer's path.

[00:23:58] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. It's an interesting dilemma, right? Because some of the most mature sales organizations that have. Yeah, very defined sales frameworks and sales processes. You know, some of the challenges is, is around, um, purchase, uh, adherence. Um, he's getting salespeople to adhere to a process, um, or continuing to build on their skills because you know, a lot of salespeople.

Um, there's only so much sales training. You can throw at a sales person at the end of the day. Um, you know, the concept of selling, I know that people would argue with me, but the concept of selling yes, it's evolved, but the concepts are still the same, you know, some of the, um, uh, how to win friends and influence people from Dale Carnegie.

Some of the concepts he talk about in 1936, uh, if we're so relevant today, um, you know, so how does, how does an organization. Um, you know, we've spoken about business that might not have had sales enablement. Now we talking about more mature organizations that have really been driving that function of, um, you know, focus on development process framework.

What happens when that sort of plateaus.

[00:25:08] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So yeah, maybe if a few data points to get the batteries up. So what we found across the study and the study is global, um, more than 500 organizations worldwide. So what we found is if organizations made the steps into the world of sales enablement to ha.

Usefully much better quote, attainment and win rate results. Compare to the crew that does not have anything called sales enablement. So if you look and that's, first of all, good news, you know, if this is 14% or 22% improvements compared to these two KPIs, it doesn't matter as the debts. First of all, good news, the devil is in the detail.

So if you're down a look more specifically to actually achieve. You know, there are senior executives expectations who met these expectations or exceeded them. Dan it's actually the case that only one third of our organizations were able to do that. So if they reported, yes, we met or exceeded the expectations.

So that means we have two thirds that don't that said, yeah, we met some expectations. And then we looked at the performance data again, and then we, we had to see to state that these two-thirds are actually investing in something called sales enablement that are not very successful. So they were just a bit better than average.

And this is not about you invest at something. Um, so the question is that was for us in, okay, what is the one-third really doing differently? And it really starts with. How we set it up. Is it really, as IHS shared moral set up in a more strategic way, do we have a formal approach that's aligns you to strategy?

Did we capture that in a shelter? Daddy's really our guideline for the next 12 to 18 months. Now we are running this in a consistent way and it's a lot about. Senior executive buy in and also about establishing a governance model that helps to keep the senior execs engaged and aligned because the problem with this is if you.

You know, if you sound like sales training, you are treated like sales training, but not as somebody who is running a function, that helps me to achieve my strategic, my goals of my strategic initiatives. You know what I mean? It's just really important that also enablement leaders evolve in this path too, to find their voice and.

As leaders that help to achieve the company's bigger goals. Yeah.

[00:27:46] Luigi Prestinenzi: And how important that is. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for sharing that. How important is you mean? You mentioned that, you know, executive buy-in, how important is, you know, the, the C the C level executive buy-in. In having an enablement

[00:28:01] Tamara Schenk: strategy. Yeah.

It depends if it's always a C level, it definitely depends on how your organization is structured. So if you were in a larger organization and you do this for a business unit only, but this business unit is, is lying a bit company, then it's probably not the C level, it's your managing director or whatever.

So it should be, you know, the sales leadership. Team, it should be aligned with the marketing and or the CX leadership teams, a high where this is organized, but I would say plus product, ideally. So this is really important to have all them on the same page. Um, and in organizations, what we found very interesting in high-performing organizations that have quota attainment results.

You know, bigger than 80% quota attainment, which is great because the industry average is around 53 or 54. You look at, so in these industry organizations, we found it interesting that they actually report very often to two se level function. And which is not a team sales overload, the chief revenue officer to the CEO or CEO or something like that, or chief growth officer did.

That was an interesting finding. So we've look at this in more detail in that, in, in next year to study. Yeah. It really does set up the setup is really important that, and it's about, did he sign what you do in how you do it?

[00:29:28] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. And can you just clarify that again? Um, you spoke about high-performing from a, from a quota, I think 80%.

Can I just clarify what, what you just said there, because I want to make sure.

[00:29:40] Tamara Schenk: Um, so a industry average of the percentage of salespeople achieving quota, what's India enablement steady about 53 to 7% in our sales performance study. It was about 50. 4%. It was last year, 53%. That's around the average, what you see, not only in our research, but also in others.

This is the average percentage of salespeople achieving quota, which is not a good number. It was 63, 60 4%, um, uh, 10 years ago or eight years ago. Um, um, so, and if you look, you have an organization says. In our organization, 80% of salespeople achieved or overachieved deck boat. And then that's definitely a big difference.

Is this the group we looked at and we found that in this group, more of the sales enablement teams report to the C-level.

[00:30:33] Luigi Prestinenzi: So the head of the red line

[00:30:35] Tamara Schenk: means beyond, beyond the sales leader, even if that's a chief sales officer role. Yeah.

[00:30:41] Luigi Prestinenzi: Okay. That's really interesting. It just goes to shows that, um, yeah, that's a huge

[00:30:47] Tamara Schenk: difference.

It's an organization. Uh, dad also very focused on growth and the more important growth is for an organization. The more important sales enablement becomes because that will, we've seen this idea of scalability is becoming more and more important for enablement teams. So if, if you, you have a fast growing organization and, you know, And your leadership team says it will be a cry on your company.

And we actually expect you to onboard them in the next three months to everything then, you know, uh, To have my sales enablement function set up in a way you did, I can scale what I provide. And that means I have to make sure that I have processes in place. I have organized how we collaborate across teams.

So this is formalized in one way or another, and I can actually be able to do that. And of course, then onboarding has a very specific relevance then.

[00:31:47] Luigi Prestinenzi: That's fantastic. Well, look, one of the things that I found quite surprising, I mean, I'm in the rapport was around, um, the enablement services for salespeople.

So there's primary services, um, and sales, training, and coaching. Um, can you expand on that for us?

[00:32:06] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. Interestingly, you know, from, for four or five years in a row sales training is still the most important, uh, service for, um, enablement teams. And it covers everything from skills. So product to methodology, to process, to tools, to value messaging, social, selling, justification, all of this, um, content became more important than sales.

Coaching became more important. And we. We see this year after year and the data I did, all of these services impact performance. If they are done properly, if they meet expectations and stay really engaged sellers and then also help to engage buyer into, um, interactions with buyers, but sales coach. Um, provided by to ideally by to say frontline sales managers is really the most effective service, because if you define it the right way, you create a system that made sure that sales managers.

Um, thrive reinforcement and adoption of the enablement services you provided to your salespeople. So it's very important to have to see us management's on the same page all the time.

[00:33:15] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that

[00:33:17] Tamara Schenk: statement. If whatever transformation you want to run, I'm sorry. If it's not happening at the front line, it's not happening yet.

Yeah. So that's very often overlooked and it's more, all we do is from an enablement perspective and the sales managers around not even heard. So I always love to work, um, with very ambitious sales managers and they are usually like a sales people. They're always interested in something that can help them to be more successful.

They were simply listening to it. And you just, you don't have a second chance all the time, but if that's something that. Interest. I'm going to say, oh, that's good from my team that makes us more effective. They are on it. And they work with you. So, yeah.

[00:34:02] Luigi Prestinenzi: And so did you, and you might not have that data, but did the, when you did your, your, your analysis and, uh, the, the high performing organizations that achieved 80%, um, where you're able to see, you know, whether they, they, ladies were good coaches, did, did you get any insight into how they coach or the effectiveness of.

[00:34:24] Tamara Schenk: Um, yeah, so we did map that out for this specific rule for organization, but that's actually an interesting blog post idea. So coaching in generally is getting more mature in organizations. So it's just three years ago we had 50% of the organization that said, oh, coaching. And with us, it's relieve it up to the managers.

And that's the same thing as saying. Nothing would ever happen. Yeah. Um, so now we see that only around one third, four organizations are saying it's left up to managers and organization. We're all moving in an informal and hopefully faster in an informal state or in a formal state of sales coaching at means we have a coaching process aligned.

We have coaching and guidelines. We have developed our managers. To be effective coaches and we make, we have a cadence established to begin with is to, to, to get this up and running. And we also measure success. So that's what we call a form or even a dynamic coaching approach. The impact is on wind rates.

It's a 16 dot 6% win rate improvement in such a dynamic approach compared to the studies Everett and it's around 10 or 11% improvement on the actual improvement on win rates. In a former coaching in Wellman compared to the studies average. And that's huge. So if you ever have management rates in an organization, usual note at one or two percentage points make or break the year, and if you have an actual improvement and intuitive manner, so that really cannot be ignored or should not be ignored because

[00:36:05] Luigi Prestinenzi: th there's some pretty compelling statistics when you think.

Um, from, you know, having a formal coaching or a dynamic coaching process and how that's linking to, um, you know, to, to performance improvement. Maybe we have to jointly write a blog about that tomorrow.

[00:36:23] Tamara Schenk: Oh,

[00:36:23] Luigi Prestinenzi: that's fantastic. Um, so really appreciate you sharing that. I think take, what if you're a sales professional, we have a lot of, you know, sales, um, professionals that listened to.

Uh, you know, from a whole range of different companies, they might not have, you know, that formal coaching within their business or that sales enablement function for them to access. Um, what are some of the things that they can do that, you know, will enable them to be more effective salesperson?

[00:36:50] Tamara Schenk: Okay.

Given a, you know, if I have a situation that nobody's supporting me as a sales person, um, I would always think Annenberg from the customers. Okay, good minds. It backwards on the customer's Paso. And is this what, what everyone can do, um, on his or her own? So, and this is simply understanding that customers have different challenges and different goals in different phases of their customer's path early on.

MRIs focused on understanding the problem and the business impact of a problem. I'm not pitching a product I simply down because it's not what they want and it's it. They cannot even understand your wonderful product and services because they are just about to understand the problem they have to solve.

So what they need in this fine is this business perspective approach. So how can I solve this problem? And by the way, to your body, to actually understand the whole impact to impact is a bit bigger that a problem is bigger. Yeah. And the opportunity is getting bigger. Um, so that's just very important. And this is where the value messaging is so important that I can talk to people, re respecting their role and factoring in their role and the challenges they were in as I can have this kind of conversation.

And when they have committed to solve this problem and that they need to buy something and there's maybe a formal RFP or whatever, or they make this commitment to buy something. Then I of course have to share more about how this product specifically can solve this problem, or this solution can solve this problem and also talk to different buyer roles that are involved.

Um, it is more the time to talk about specifics, the product, but this business level conversation, then it beginning there was so important and then they're often not done or then set was saying, okay, they do all of this on their own anyways, you know, Not doing this. So it just, because buyers do more on their own doesn't mean that we don't engage them early on.

Actually the earlier you engage them and the earlier sales manager can coach a lead or an opportunity. The more effective it will be, the cruise you can help to, to shape that. So that's definitely something you can always help. And then also share this across your team and, and, and photo sales managers may be listening to this.

I would always focus on. Creating an atmosphere of sharing so that the players in the team can share. Best practices, what worked for them so that ours can learn from it and that the whole team can, can leverage these learnings.

[00:39:29] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah, that's fantastic. So, you know, just to repeat, we're going to focus on the customer and the problem that you can solve with the customer and be really comfortable

[00:39:38] Tamara Schenk: saying we did.

Um, we did a buyer's study, um, also in, in 2018 can also be downloaded and see it's an inside stuff. Yeah, the four preferences for buyers. What is it? They want sales to do more consistently more often there is not a single one that's around product or service. They want sales people to be prepared, um, day one, that they were excellent at communication.

And that means. Channels of communication and they want sales. They want to learn something new. They want to understand something better. They want to be, to have someone who can help them, whatever they found online to put that into their context, especially in a complex buying situation. And they also want that Ceros are not running of even a deal has been closed.

It doesn't mean to become the better service professional. To stay responsive during this time and to be with them for preference, there's nothing about products. It's all about helping them to, to achieve devalue value. They actually bought from you

[00:40:42] Luigi Prestinenzi: say that the solution that we offer is a byproduct of the conversation that we have with our prospect and customer.

Um, so really appreciate you sharing that. Um, on another topic. So now that, you know, there's so much data that's coming through from each side, there's, it's everywhere. Right. Um, I'll ask you, so how did this I've had, I had a really good debate with, with, um, with Richard Harris, uh, recently about this particular topic, but in your opinion, east sales, a science or an.

[00:41:15] Tamara Schenk: Ah, it is both. Um, you know, if you asked this 30 or 40 years ago, everyone would have said, it's an art. So we actually don't know what they're doing. And nowadays they say with all the technology, I, it all online, it's more of a science. Um, but if you look closely at your high-performance and your average sales for.

So it's both. We often ask organizations in our best practices. World-class practices. Do you know why you are top performers are top performers and most organizations don't. They know who they are, of course, but not why. So, and that's the piece of art that always comes into, you know, even. A-players in your organization.

I mean, they were the people who prepare meeting who do everything maybe last minute or two days before, whatever, but they are fully prepared and they have everything in mind, how they will run that meeting and they go into the meeting room and it feel the energy and sense what's going on and able to change.

The whole agenda just in a second, and it will be successful with that. The one hand side, it was crazy. You know, the inside, this is, you know, de leverage not only their intellect, but all their intuition. And if you want to call that art, then that's the element they are bringing into this. That's a great response.

I would want to say in they leverage intellect and intuition. So data and intuition and in our data and technology, power time be off over proud intellect. You know, and try to, to make intuition not important that I think that that's not the right way to do it. So it would always mean people who are really powerful.

They leverage all these elements into like then intuition and instincts.

[00:43:04] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Fantastic. And so if you had the opportunity to go back in time and start your career again, what would you do this.

[00:43:15] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Cause I maybe

[00:43:20] Luigi Prestinenzi: took a long time to get into research. Um, yeah,

[00:43:23] Tamara Schenk: look a long time. Yeah. Um, but it says maybe part of my soul's journey to take some time to eat, to, to find that field and also to connect the dots and to do all the things. Um, yeah. I do at the moment and also to energy, I bring into this, I think things have to grow and that's a good thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So honestly, uh, I don't know. I will probably not have started an old business so early on because I was definitely too young to deal with all the personal challenges that come with it. I would have probably done that later and get a lot more experience early on, but you know, it happened for whatever reason and I know the reasons why, and I took all the learnings with it and I think that's the most important thing.

[00:44:13] Luigi Prestinenzi: That's fantastic. Having that exposure to, you know, running your own business and being a consultant and being in sales. Um, has that given you a really different lens when you're doing this research?

[00:44:29] Tamara Schenk: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, it helps you in a research role, you actually have. I mean, you have to take the time because you have to understand the bigger patterns in the data, and then to verify things with customers and to look at case studies and to look back at the industry, what are really the big patterns.

So, and this is this very often. What I experienced when I was a sales enabled leader. Then they won't have enough time to really understand what's currently going on. Yeah. Yeah. So, because it's so pressured, it's so hectic. It's so fast. So, and I noticed from, yeah, many peers, I have four currently in this role to say, I know it's all good stuff, but I don't have the time I have to end.

And they were in such a tactical pressure and it doesn't make it always better, which as I said earlier, so less is more. Yeah, it's not about running five programs for the sales force. It's maybe only doing two and throwing away a lot of old stuff. That's no longer relevant, but that takes courage. And it also takes the time to really propel that decision is, Hey, this is what we here.

Stop doing. Get takes time to come up with. Yeah. Now, you know, with this program, if you want to call it, like, this is what we stopped doing. Yeah.

[00:45:55] Luigi Prestinenzi: It gives you more focus, right?

[00:45:57] Tamara Schenk: So yeah, focus on, yeah. Focus is important. If want to move energies or we'll have to focus on it. And then we see a move. Yeah.

[00:46:07] Luigi Prestinenzi: Well, look, I've thoroughly enjoyed this.

I mean, this is, this is a topic. Yeah, I'm really interested in and, um, I spend a lot of time researching. So I've thoroughly enjoyed this. You've mentioned a few reports and what we'll do. Um, we'll get that information from you and pop it in our show notes. So our listeners can, can go and download, but where can, um, where can they connect with you and engage with your content?

Can you please share, um, you know, where were you when you spoke to miss.

[00:46:35] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. So who was interested on, um, our continents? So insights go to CSO insights.com. We have a blog. We publish usually Tuesdays and my blocks are usual publish Thursdays. Um, we have on that page menu, it has called research studies or whatever is open market can be downloaded there.

And we also have current studies. We are always looking for participants to take our own use. So currently we are researching, um, world-class practices. So if you want to feel inclined to help us with ad, it will be highly appreciated. So it'll link girls on the website. And of course we will come members who want to dig more deeper into the members contents.

So there are a couple of different memberships available, otherwise connect with me via LinkedIn, or follow me on. Oh,

[00:47:25] Luigi Prestinenzi: fantastic. Well, look, we really appreciate you having, you know, coming onto the show and, uh, look, there's so many other topics that we'd love to have you back on again.

[00:47:34] Tamara Schenk: Yeah. Thank you so much, Luigi, or rather a great pleasure.

I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.

[00:47:50] Luigi Prestinenzi: What I loved about that episode with tomorrow is that tomorrow didn't start a career in sales. I love that Tamara began as a consultant and worked in non-sales roles before moving into the world of selling this example. Again, reinforces that sales is an art and can be learned and improved through training and development.

My challenge to you for this week is what is your focus when it comes to personal development? What skill will you focus? So that you can be the best sales professional. You can be.

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This episode was transcribed digitally, some errors may be present.