Using the Right Sales Methodologies to Enable Success

Jessica Ly: I'm here with Joe Fenn, who's the sales enablement director at Ignite software. Welcome to the show, Joe.

Joe Fenn: Thank you, Jessica.

Jessica Ly: You have a ton of experience in this space, you were at HP and then went to Cherwell Software, and now you're in Ignite. And you've achieved phenomenal results. So this show is for the audience to learn from you. But first off, let's talk first about Ignite. So they understand the market you're in. What does Ignite do?

Joe Fenn: Oh, thank you, Jessica. Yeah, they broke ground in IT and IT sales. And here at Ignite, we actually have an online storage repository and asset or constant hosting solution that actually takes that collaborative file sharing from just hosting online. But it adds to it an enterprise-level of sharing and governance and data Lifecycle Management. So companies with distributed workforces, and we've seen a huge growth in the distributed workforce over the last year. So those companies now have the ability to not only share content but govern how that content is being accessed around urbanization.

Jessica Ly: And there are a lot of sales reps, and you're gonna hire even more this year. So your role is to enable them to be successful. So let's dive into that. And you know, from your previous experience, some of the success you've had is time to first deal you were able to reduce that by like, over 50%. So I wanted to have you share with us that experience of what was the situation what changes you make to have that kind of result?

Joe Fenn: Sure. So one of the challenges that happen in any training role or sales enablement role is your kind of pressure to figure out what your KPIs are so that you can show a direct impact on the business, your KPIs, such as a course evaluation if I do a training class. I asked the students at the end of the class, how was it would you recommend it to your friends or the future new hires, and you're going to get feedback and Net Promoter Score just based on that course. But that doesn't link to how you're impacting the success of the larger organization. So one of the items that we look at when we measure grand success or new hire success is time to first deal in time to first large or significant deal. So we look at prior to the courses being implemented ready, and how long that took for a new hire, to make their first deal not a deal that had been kind of step for them or stage for them, or those random Bluebird opportunities, but a deal that they went out discovered, nurtured and brought in. So how long that takes? Our goal is to reduce that time to delivery. And then once we get a bench line, to the benchmark of that, and how well we're doing improving that number, we also look at a scale. So putting in a small deal, a small opportunity, versus bringing in a large opportunity that's really going to move the needle for that individual first, and then eventually, for the company organization at all, is a good way to measure if my programs are successfully improving the bottom line of the organization. So that's how we do that. And as you mentioned, that is greater than a 50% reduction. So that's how I've done that in the past is to come in and say, you know, what is the time average time to first deal or time to large deal. And we get a number of anywhere from six to nine months depending on the rep. So that gives me a benchmark to improve upon. If I can bring that down into under five months or four and a half months, then that's how I've hit that success metric.

Jessica Ly: Okay, now let's talk about the content because the content is so important when you try to engage with prospects. And I know that you're involved beyond just training, right? In the typical training part of it, you're involved in the deal review and helping out with specific deals and moving it through the pipeline. Talk to us about that.

Joe Fenn: Correct. So if you're if I wrote essays and methodology, there's a couple of ways that I'm going to approach making it stick. Making processes sticky is always a challenge for me that one organization? Yeah, I can stand in front of a classroom and teach a subject, but unless the audience is using it and managers are supporting the tears, then it's gonna die on the line. So one of the things I do is I stay involved with those reps actually, with all the reps and I participate with the manager in a deal deep dive. And I use the term earlier significant women's wins that move the needle. So I asked every rep to book with me each month. And I say every rep, both existing and new. But to book with me an opportunity to deep dive so that we can go through what they are looking at in their opportunities. How to communicating with the customer, how well they're doing, their discovery calls have Well, they're connecting across the organization. Now one of the things that we find is, especially Junior sellers, is they'll get one point of contact. And that person, it may be a fan, maybe somebody who's just curious, or maybe somebody in the organization who is, you know, both a fan and has an influence in the organization. Obviously, that's the best approach. But that's still not enough significant deals. Take a significant partnership in their relationship. So what I do is I do a deal opportunity review. And I ask the seller how much they know about the prospect’s needs, and how we're addressing those needs, how our solution best fits those needs. But moreover, how they're communicating across the organization that we can help them. So there's going to come a time when that we'll call it coach or champion under the terminology so that coach or champion at some point is going to go ask somebody for some money, ask for a signature. So wouldn't it be better if when they do that, they've got three or four friends across the organization who are sending them saying, Yeah, this is the right solution for all of us, this isn't just a point solution for IT? But this is a solution that's going to make the entire organization better. But the only way we can do that is by having the seller meet more people across the organization, captured their needs, and incorporate those needs into the solution as well. So as deals grow in size, we're going to need to build cross-organizational relationships. So the days of, Hey, I got a cold call, they're interested in your product, when you quote them on a discount, I'm getting close, those days are pretty much gone. Yeah, that's the difference between being a sales rep and an order taker, and being an actually trusted advisor, go out, get to know their business, advise them on how you can help their business both with today's challenges and tomorrow's challenges, that they may or may not have on the radar. And once you can do that, and again, you reach that trusted adviser status. But moreover, you broaden your solution if you may know the term, you increase that share of wallet or increase your penetration because now your solution helps their business on multiple fronts.

Jessica Ly: I think in the enterprise sales world, definitely no one person makes this illusion is very much involving several people. And so definitely it is a smart idea to try to have influence beyond just one person. Right? You talked about the single-threaded conversation, and I was thinking about ABM in the marketing where you hear about account based marketing ABM. But that has to align with selling account based selling, too, right. So I think that working hand in hand with ABM and sales account based selling makes a lot of sense. So your content is specific to say, the sector and then the job title. Does it go as deep as really personalized content? Because you know that person, whether it's a finance or the procurement or the actual IT person, how personalized or how do you get?

Joe Fenn: It does it, actually. We start at obviously, we start with our capabilities, and what we know the market challenges and how we can help resolve some of those market challenges. And then, we begin to clarify that message for the industry and the verticals that we're approaching. And then, within that, we do persona-based conversation. So the discovery call with an IT manager is going to be a bit different than a discovery call with a sales manager or with a CFO or finance organization. So that's our persona-based content. But then we take what we've learned from that discovery and then absolutely personalize the actual proposal to directly address the need that's presented across the organization and those various roles. As I said earlier, we're building cross-organizational relationships to address cross-organizational needs because that's really how you become a successful business partner. Right, we're not just coming in to sell a point solution and move on to the next opportunity. We are building mutually beneficial business relationships so that we both succeed. We’re not going to succeed if we just get as much money as we can out of them and sell them a solution that solves today's problem. They're not going to succeed if we charge them too much and then already If we discount too much that we can't sustain our business, that's not good for them. So having a fair and mutually beneficial business relationship helps both organizations for long-term success.

Jessica Ly: You're growing fast, and you're gonna be hiring a lot more people this year. How do you scale your effort in your program?

Joe Fenn: Yes, we are growing fast. And we are looking at a greatly increasing our sales footprint across the US and eventually extending around the world. Right now, we're in Europe and the Middle East, and we're looking to expand into Asia. So there's a multi-pronged approach there. Obviously, my courses actually, I'm very used to extending those into other world regions and delivering either online or actually in person when necessary. But that's only the start of it. To really make a program stick and work, I need the sales manager’s support. So what I do is anytime I launch a new program methodology or enablement course, I go through it with the sales managers. First, make sure they're on board, make sure it's hitting the needs, that they have to connect with their prospects and customers. And then, as I roll it out, and as I coach, I coach the salespeople directly. But at the same time, I'm coaching the sales managers to take over that into individualized coaching. Earlier, we talked about our deal review process. So as I do deal reviews, I always had the manager with me, and then afterward, I have a conversation with a manager to follow up and say, okay, what did you like about where they thought their opportunity was? What gaps did you see? And you know, when you made a comment about a certain gap, that was the good part. If you missed it at recognizing a certain gap, maybe that's something you can focus on. But really, my goal is to get the sales manager owning the programs for me, so that they're, they're doing more coaching than I am, as I said earlier, I'm making with each accounting sec, every month on one deal, well, they're meeting with their five or six account execs every week on multiple deals. So we really want to get to the point where they're doing their own deep dive reviews on almost every deal, but definitely, every significant deal that we put in that large category. So we want to make sure that they're doing their own reviews so that it does scale when we grow up or grow to over 100 sellers in various wall regions. Each manager has it as a second nature to do a deal review based on MedTech or other sales methodologies. And can review methodologist?

Jessica Ly: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. So you're training the managers to become coaches. So like cloning yourself, in a way, especially with different languages, I think that matters a lot too.

Joe Fenn: As a rule, even when I was at Hewlett Packard, and we had every region in the business language of courses in English, but I do know that they can speed up conversations if it's a local language. And yeah, that I need to be a part of that and sort of that conversation down with everyone.

Jessica Ly: Now that we're working from home, I'm sure, like everybody else, you have to shift to doing training and coaching and all that remotely. How has it been going for you? What are some of the biggest challenges you face? And whether you would keep some of these remote tactics? Even once we're back now?

Joe Fenn: Yeah, and I think everyone has heard the term zoom fatigue. Recently, as over 2020. So many people shifted to work from home. For our business, that's actually a positive thing in that we really have a solution that supports that distributed workforce. My question is, how do I leverage that to take a distributed workforce, which is actually normal and sales community, but use that to engage a now distributed prospect community or customer community. So I've had to shift my training to say, you know, instead of being able to walk the halls and meet more people, you actually have to use your champions and coaches more and have them help you set up meetings with more of the cross-organizational prospects and people who can really benefit from the solution. So that's a little bit of a different twist. It's not a matter anymore of walking into a room, having a large organization, sit there, listen to a pitch and give you feedback. Now you actually have to, you're doing the zoom, calls for the pitch, but then, at the same time, maybe you have a Peter online who's watching the audience and you ask everyone to turn on their cameras, but really getting that support of your camp champions and coaches and economic buyers. To figure out who else in the organization is impacted is the critical first step. And then leveraging those contacts can actually meet with those people, gather their needs, and have a conversation with them about how we can help them, then actually takes that selling effort to a new level. So when I train on those different personas and those different anticipating needs. But it's really about the due diligence and follow-up of the sales rep to hold those meetings, get that person on the zoom call, even though they too are probably experiencing some of that zoom fatigue. But yeah, I'd say that's probably been one of the biggest challenges. You know, previously, I would have known how to hire onboarding, for example, whether going to a corporate site in your world regions for five days, and I can put on an onboarding class, I can tell them about our products and our processes and some skills, I can have the CEO or chief executive that will come in and meet with him. So I've had to convert all of that to an online version. One of the things we did, I actually taught that course here at Ignite back in November. And instead of doing an eight-hour day, we're actually good Five, four-hour days. And surprisingly, when you're on that zoom call for four hours, you actually need more breaks than you do when you're in that meeting room. So in the meeting room, I can hand out candy here, make sure everybody's eyes are open. In the zoom meeting, I, of course, have everyone turned on the cameras. But I've got to work a bit harder as an instructor to keep it interactive, to keep everyone engaged in pulling the audience more since I don't have that immediate body language to read. So that's how things have shifted a bit in the training world is, you know, keep it more interactive, we actually do breakout rooms by team or by role, and do our roleplay exercises in breakout rooms via the zoom. So that's helped us as well.

Jessica Ly: I think I feel like for most of this 2021 year. We’re still going to be staying at home, you know, working at home, I know that. So what do you look forward to doing that's going to bring the biggest impact on the revenue growth,

Joe Fenn: Well. So speaking of continue working from home, we are doing our sales kickoff coming up in February through a virtual session. So we're actually working very hard to make sure that session, even though sales kickoff can be a bit of a mainstage type event, working much harder to keep people engaged, we're actually sending out care packages to everyone's home to arrive the day or a day or two before. So they have the care packages, they have snacks that we're providing them and other fun things that they can use during the session. So that's part of it. And then again, as driving the just the increased demand in you know, larger sales numbers or larger territory. That's definitely gonna be an effort for all the sales managers and me just to maintain that constant contact and communications with the sales rep. You're one of the things we're focusing on is that manager coaching communications. We've always had the session where the managers meet with the team and talking about different products and different teams’ selling needs. And then they meet one on one and they talk about the opportunities. But what's that next conversation that conversation they're not having? Are they meeting one on one and talking about career goals and progression? are they meeting one on one and talking about things that maybe didn't go so well doing loss reviews? For example, do we want to increase that level of coaching and team communications so that nothing's falling through the cracks as we continue to move forward and continue to grow?

Jessica Ly: Yeah, so maybe having opportunities to share with each other what they're learning what works and what doesn't work on a more regular basis? Since. Either anymore or not meeting up at the in the kitchen, you know, or at the water cooler.

Joe Fenn: Right. And that's funny. You mentioned that we talked about this earlier. But that's actually two of the things I'm doing is I'm joining all the team calls and I do a session on a team sharing. And so that we were doing deal reviews, both when we're using Loss Reviews, our team perspective, but I've also started another session. I'm calling it Ramp wrap, wrap as in chat. But we are actually having all of the new sellers, both senior and junior. All the new sellers joining a call every second week on Friday to just share with the other new sellers what they saw, what they liked, what they didn't like, share with me what they didn't like so I can adjust the programs. So getting that cost perspective of communications going has been a big part of our success and wrapping up all these new people.

Jessica Ly: Great.

Joe Fenn: Ramp wrap, you can call

Jessica Ly: It has been a great conversation with you, Joe. Thanks for being on the show to talk about night and the best practices and tips and the lessons learned in sales enablement.

Joe Fenn: Yeah. Thank you, Jessica. I just want to say I really do enjoy your podcasts, and it’s kind of fun to see this.

Jessica Ly: Thank you so much.