Podcast Summary

On this podcast, we'll dive into a recap of B2B sales trends in 2021. What has changed? What stayed the same? What is going to carry over and what's going to be different in 2022?

Timestamps:

[00:01:07] Our guest: Josh Wagner

• Josh Wagner, Enterprise Account Executive at Shift Paradigm
• Podcast: Love Selling Hate Sales

[00:01:40] What are some of the most notable changes in B2B selling in 2021?

[00:04:10] What are some success stories of companies doing it right?

[00:21:00] What are current views on the status of sales and marketing and the alignment post-2021? What are the biggest impacts in bringing them together?

[00:28:00] How has the funnel changed? How has that to hybrid selling?

Resources

LinkedIn Profile – Josh Wagner

Website – Shift Paradigm

Podcast – Love Selling Hate Sales

LinkedIn Profile – Dave Karr

Website – Klyck.io

Podcast Summary

On this podcast, we'll talk about some fundamental ways that you can enhance and optimize your B2B website strategy.

[00:01:25] Our guest: Sam Moss

• Sam Moss, Co-Founder of 1Click Agency
• Sam's Podcast: B2B Made Simple

[00:02:25] Where do you start when you're analyzing an existing website strategy

• Look at backend issues – if you don't know what's going on, it can really slow down the site.
• Try not to over-complicate things. There should be a call-to-action (CTA) and it should be one of your main points.
• Through your advertising, you can bring people in and then give them something of value to drive conversion.

[00:04:20] What are some KPIs that you should be measuring to gauge your site's technical performance and conversion?

• Track KPIs. How many people are booking meetings/demos or calling to set up appointments?
• Bounce rate is very important. How many people are going to your site and only staying for a few seconds? It could mean that the wrong traffic is coming to your site or that your messaging is off base.

[00:13:35] What is the value of customized landing pages?

• Depending on where the buyer is coming from, you need to tell a different story.
• Homepages have a more general message, but landing pages can talk to buyers depending on where they are in their buying journey.

[00:15:40 How should a website tell your business' story and how are different pages part of that strategy?

• “About” pages are very important. People want to do business with people.
• People are looking for people they trust and if your company can tell their story, it's going to be a big plus.
• Before you even begin to scroll, your website should answer three questions.
  • What do you do?
  • How are you going to make my life better?
  • How do I buy from you?

[00:21:30] What are the fundamental differences in how you should approach optimizing your strategy for e-commerce?

• There aren't many differences.
• Speed is still important.
• Make sure that it's an effortless experience.
• If the store is overwhelming or tough, navigate or confusing, people are going to leave.
• Make sure your site is optimized for mobile.

[00:24:15] How do you make sure that your site is optimized for lead generation?

• The message. Make sure your message is cohesive through your marketing strategy.
• Don't overthink. Many times, you can see what you need without AB testing something.
• Optimize your landing pages by telling a story.
• Your selling point shouldn't be the features, but the benefits, especially on landing pages
• Keep your call-to-action (CTA) simple

[00:33:00] What marketing strategies drive traffic?

• Posting on social media and podcasting can educate the market
• Sending out informational emails without trying to sell anything builds brand affinity and trust

Resources

LinkedIn Profile – Sam Moss

Website – 1Click Agency

Podcast – B2B Made Simple

LinkedIn Profile – Dave Karr

Website – Klyck.io

Podcast Summary

On this podcast, John Horn, CEO at StubGroup, joins us to talk about ways to improve your reporting and execution for digital marketing.

We talk about how to use data insights on how to more effectively track your ads, increase your conversion rates, improve funnel performance, and more.

[00:01:25] Our guest: John Horn

• John Horn, CEO at StubGroup
• StubGroup has partnered with hundreds of clients to solve the complex questions all businesses face in the ever-changing world of digital marketing.

[00:02:10] Where do you start with digital advertising online? How do you structure reporting?

• Understand who your best fit customer is and then build your messaging around that
• Through your advertising, you can bring those people in and then give them something of value to drive conversion

[00:05:30] How do you put technology platforms in place to help track metrics?

• You must have a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to capture customer information and retain it in one central place
• You need something in place to track website analytics, like Google Analytics, to see where the PPC advertising traffic is coming from
• The more you know about the ways that people find you, the better you can invest your time, resources, and ad spend

[00:10:10] What are good platforms for starters and what do you need beyond the basic tech stack?

• HubSpot is an excellent option. They do a great job of connecting the marketing side to the sales side
• Lucky Orange and Hotjar are good heat mapping software to see how and where people are clicking on your website
• Website live chat is an under-utilized sales communication tool. It's a fairly frictionless way for people to ask questions without having to place a call or fill out a form

[00:13:30] How are teams structured when they're just starting out vs when they are up to speed?

• Usually, it's the people tasked with sales and marketing. In many cases, teams delighted it to administrative support roles that wear many different hats. This can be difficult to scale but is acceptable if you are just starting.
• Accountability is very important – leads come in, but what's happening with them after
• Having a process in place is integral to success

[00:19:00] What are some of the challenges that companies run into?

• Analytics and reporting stop to soon. For example, a company will find out the cost per lead and then go no further
• Tracking and reporting for a longer period can demonstrate which channels are performing well and which aren't
• Not knowing where to start – best practice is to figure out the target audience and then proactively reach out to them
• Look for the lowest hanging fruit and invest time and resources there

[00:24:30] What should B2B companies do to ensure that marketing metrics are front and center?

• Track everything. Collecting as many data points as you can on your digital advertising will ensure you are able to get the information you need later.
• Work backward from metrics to where you need to be on the marketing side of things

[00:31:00] Key take-aways

1. Install Google Analytics on your website and figure out how to use it
2. Audit and optimize your response time for leads
3. Analyze the lifetime value of the customers that are converting in your funnel over time

Resources

LinkedIn Profile – John Horn

Website – StubGroup

LinkedIn Profile – Dave Karr

Website – Klyck.io

Website – HubSpot

Website – Lucky Orange

Website – Hotjar

Podcast Summary

On this podcast we talk about how to establish a culture of data inside your organization. If you're like most B2B companies, data and capturing it are likely on your mind often.

How do you apply it? How do you monetize it? For the answers to these questions and more, tune in on your favorite podcast streaming platform.

[00:01:05] Our guest: Nick Amabile

• Nick Amabile, CEO at DAS42
• DAS42 helps executives and managers use data to understand and improve their business, reduce the time to achieve actionable insights, and make better decisions faster

[00:02:33] What is causing and driving the big focus on data? What kinds of trends are emerging?

• Move to digital – anything from digital marketing to direct to consumer
• Start first with the business goals and then work backwards to a technical solution and not the other way around

[00:05:00] How do you decide what technology to implement and how do you make it work cohesively?

• The goal is to get the data in one place – get your supply chain data, customer data, sales data, and inventory data all in one place so that you can join them together and create a 360° view of your business
• Create business meaning out of the data – something that can translate rows and columns and tables and database concepts into a business concept

[00:07:10] How do you structure a team around data?

• Centralize the team – It's very efficient to have one team that has a single view of what's going on. Start small. It could be just a few business analysts that know the business drivers and the data sets well

[00:11:30] What are typical challenges organizations face and how do you minimize them?

• Businesses looking at new technology to solve a problem instead of evaluating the problem, then deciding on the right technology
• Start small by identifying one or two high value use cases and really make sure that you're able to knock that out of the park end to end

[00:16:30] What is a culture of data inside an organization?

• Enable the marketing department, the sales department, the finance department, supply chain department, etc. to ask and answer their own questions
• With data coming in from many different sources, having a centralized place for it helps make sure that salespeople have everything they need to know about a customer and there are no surprises
• The key is to get employees excited about the data and bringing it where they're already working (for example Salesforce), instead of forcing them to use and learn new technology
• It's important that people see value. When they see value, they're more likely to see the benefits to the way that they do business

[00:20:00] What are some of the things you should be thinking about to start building data?

• Management should be driving accountability and transparency
• Everyone needs to be on the same page
• Make sure there's a governance process in place

[00:25:55] Key Takeaways

1. Standardize KPIs. Even if they aren't technical, just get them written down
2. Get everyone on the same page and start thinking about how you're going to govern and manage your data
3. Make sure that you're able to get data to as many people as possible

Resources

LinkedIn Profile – Nick Amabile

Website – DAS42

LinkedIn Profile – Dave Karr

Website – Klyck.io

DAS42 Article – What Structure is Right for my Data Analytics Team

Klyck Article - The Power of Data and Sales Enablement

In this episode of B2B Enablement, we're going to be talking about video marketing and how you can use it throughout the entire journey for your customers. Whether you're looking to create content for the awareness stage of the buying cycle, or for use later in the funnel, video is a powerful tool.

Podcast Summary and Timestamps - Links and Resources Located at the Bottom

[00:01:21] Introduction: Drew Franklin, Marketing Communications Manager at Altec

• 10+ years of experience in the marketing arena – primarily B2B and manufacturing and tech sectors
• Started using video eight years ago
• Communications manager at Altec leading the content team

[00:02:14] Getting Started

• Video is not a fad, it is one of the best tools to drive engagement
• You can easily start creating videos today if you have a computer or mobile phone with a camera
• Start from there and scale up, you don't need to buy expensive or fancy equipment to get started
• Use what you have – don't forget, there are also free tools at your disposal like Vidyard to help

[00:06:00] Production and Tools

• Start where you can with what you have
• Consider mics, lights, and cameras to help create a better environment when creating content
• Links to Drew's suggestions can be found in the resources section at the bottom of these notes

[00:12:20] Content Distribution

• Create content once and distribute forever by dividing that content up into multiple formats (IE Webinar can be spliced into audio clips and also a brochure)
• Empower your reps to post videos on social
• Get your message out organically using traditional mediums where you customers are (LinkedIn, other social platforms, google…etc)

[00:17:00] Importance of Video & How it Can Be Effective

• Video can be diversely used for a range of different use cases
• Not only for marketing – sales, customer service, customer success, everyone can use it

[00:18:00] Personalization

• When possible, create personalized videos to increase engagement and response rates
• Do some research on a specific individual or posts that they've done on LinkedIn and try and drive some engagement – can be difficult if you try to scale up because you're creating videos at 1:1 ratio for each prospect
• When you need to use video to scale, consider using what you already have (webinars, podcasts, etc.) and chop it up into small chunks for your sales reps to use as touch points in their outreach

[00:29:00] Distribution Tools

• Three main tools you need
  • Video creation software (eg. Vidyard or Wistia)
  • Sales engagement software to distribute the videos (eg. SalesLoft or email)
  • Sales enablement software to track content engagement (eg. Klyck.io)

[00:38:30] Scripts and Messaging

• Ask questions – assumptions are dangerous
• Don't make a video assuming something about your prospect, ensure you know them so you can tailor your content to them
• Try asking questions that lead to answering pain points
• Messaging can be a case-by-case situation

[00:44:30] Hardware and Infrastructure

• Drew shares a host of tips, tricks, and suggestions on how to select and use video hardware. From basic setups, to more advanced production rigs, he shares his thoughts on what you need to be successful.
• List of hardware resources is included below.

Resources and Links from the Podcast

Video Audio & Lighting Kit – Starter Budget

Video Audio & Lighting Kit – Next Level

Video Audio & Lighting Kit – Professional Level

Wistia – Down and Dirty DIY Lighting Kit

Wistia – Editing Basics for Business Video

Predictable Revenue – Chain of Relevance

Klyck.io Podcast - Video Marketing - Why B2B Businesses Need a Strategy

Klyck.io - Sales Enablement

Tools and Software

Canva

Descript

Adobe Premiere

SalesLoft

Vidyard

LinkedIn Profiles for our Guests

Drew Franklin's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewdfranklin/

Paul Tkach's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paultkach/

Dave Karr's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davekarr/

Podcast Summary

Industrial manufacturing has been left with a nasty black eye from 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Joe Mills, Business Development Manager, Element Three, joins the show to discuss findings from his companies recent research report on the state of manufacturing, post-COVID.

Joe shares 4 key challenges that manufacturing businesses are facing in the new normal, and how industry leaders are choosing to address these challenges in their businesses. Listen in to learn how others are viewing the market and what separates the leaders from the laggards.

Key Topics of the Podcast

Challenge 1: Changing Buyer Behaviors

• Digital transformation acceleration
• Expanded lead generation activities
• Buyer control vs sales control
• Sales and marketing technology

Challenge 2 : Event Uncertainty

• Lack of alignment
• Networking still matters
• Lower attendance levels
• No measurement for impact

Challenge 3 : Hiring - an Obstacle for Growth

• Indiana: 100,000+ open jobs
• Application rates at the lowest level in years
• Macro studies show no impact from COVID relief

Challenge 4 : Supply Chain Disruption

• Four major disruptions
• Abundance of demand
• Near-shoring trends emerging
• Sales & marketing activities in question

Resources and Links from the Podcast

Copy of the Presentation Slide Deck - Click to Download

Element Three's Complete Manufacturing Trend Report - http://elementthree.com/trendreport

2021 Roadmap for Industrial Sales and Marketing eBook - Click to Download

How to Approach Industrial Marketing the Right Way : Podcast - Listen Now

Klyck.io Website - Sales Enablement for B2B

Joe Mills' LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-mills-0ba62b42/

Paul Tkach's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paultkach/

Dave Karr's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davekarr/

Podcast Summary

Sales Enablement is an important piece of any company's sales technology stack and getting started can look like a daunting task.

Companies who have implemented a Sales Enablement strategy outperform their competitors by a remarkable margin (Aberdeen Group)

In this podcast, we'll review a series of steps to get you and your team started with your journey.

Key Topics of the Podcast

• Who Owns It? Build Your Team - Put the right team and leaders in charge, your team is one of the most important driving factors for your Sales Enablement strategy
• Set Clear Goals & Requirements - Taking the time to analyze your company tribulations will go a long way to helping you build a sales enablement strategy that's specifically tailored to your pain points.
• Defining Key Metrics - Identify metrics that help measure the success of your project and activities
• Content Management & Organization - You don't know what you don't know. Gathering your content together and arranging it into categories like brochures, graphics, fact sheets, videos, etc. will help you identify where your deficiencies lie
• Implement a Sales Enablement Platform - Using your Goals and User Requirements, choose a platform that fits your needs + Train your teams

Resources and Links from the Podcast

Copy of the Presentation Slide Deck

Sales Enablement BluePrint

User Specification Requirement

Sales Enablement Checklist

Klyck.io Website

What is Sales Enablement

Paul Tkach's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paultkach/

Rebecca Spary's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaspary/

Dave Karr's LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davekarr/

1. Who Owns It? Build Your Team

• Put the right leader in charge
• Ensure you choose some to lead your SE efforts, someone who has visibility into both sales/marketing efforts and can work towards aligning your teams
• Because sales enablement is more associated with the revenue-generating side of the business, we typically see the responsibility held there (Sales or Marketing leaders)
• Identify receivers & supporters
• The most likely receivers are the sales team (inside sales, outside sales, and distributors) and the most likely supporters are the marketing team
• Define respective roles and responsibilities for your Sales Enablement team to ensure your efforts are aligned going forward

1. Set Clear Goals & Requirements

• Assess your current state and understand the challenges that your teams/organization are facing
• Taking the time to analyze your company tribulations will go a long way to helping you build a sales enablement strategy that's specifically tailored to your pain points.
• Establish simple but clear goals & objectives that you are trying to achieve, these typically pair with the challenges you are facing (Centralize content for teams to access, collect analytics on content engagement to understand utilization...etc)
• Collect input from stakeholders (Users/Teams) to help understand needs
• Start by deciding upon two to three reasonable goals for your sales enablement project
• These can include – but aren't limited to - better sales and marketing alignment, determining sales training needs, and insight into customer engagement
• Create a blueprint with action items to make sure you are meeting your goals and outcomes. Sometimes when embarking on a new project, it's easy to get caught up in the smaller details while losing sight of the bigger picture. By creating a blueprint and referring back to it often, you can keep your focus on smaller achievable objectives that will guide you towards your ultimate goal
• Setting goals will also help to keep your team engaged and motivated
• Establish a User Requirements Guide

1. Defining Your Key Metrics

• Identify metrics that help measure the success of your project and activities
• Choose clear KPI's that help measure your goals/objectives
• Some examples of typical sales enablement metrics are: number of sales team logins to the app, number of presentations created by sales, number of content shares by sales, number of opens and engagements by prospects, number of content views by prospects, etc.
• If you have your sales enablement system connected to your CRM, you can easily start to track ROI and deal influence metrics as well. This can be done by correlating prospect engagements with closed deals and revenue dollars.
• Once you get clear on the results you want to achieve in each area, you can drill down to determine the activity and effectiveness measures which drive these outcomes.
• Remember, revenue results are important, but you can't manage them at the start of the project. However, you can manage the activity and effectiveness of your people in order to achieve those results. Starting small and measuring leading indicators is the best way to get started.

1. Content Management & Organization

• You don't know what you don't know. Gathering your content together and arranging it into categories like brochures, graphics, fact sheets, videos, etc. will help you identify where your deficiencies lie
• Aggregate and identify the sales and marketing content you want teams to use
• Develop a strong understanding of how you want to organize your content for teams to access, one of the best ways to do this is to align your content with your buyers journey
• Develop the categorization for your content including a set of filters or tags (Most SE tools will include this)

1. Implement a Sales Enablement Platform

• Using your Goals and User Requirements, choose a platform that fits your needs
• Ensure that the technology/platform you choose has an understanding of your goals and can help support them (Customer Success/Support)
• Get the support of the end users - Being a dictator and demanding that your sales and marketing teams start using a new tool may have adverse effects
• Encouraging these teams to come to the table with their thoughts and ideas will go a long way to helping them embrace the idea of changing their process.
• A sales enablement tool is designed to help, not hinder
• Make sure that you have someone in the organization who is capable of leading training for those teams. You'll want to create a thorough training strategy so that teams are not only trained on how to use the sales enablement tool, but also understand the process of sales enablement in the organization

How to Approach Industrial Marketing the Right Way

In this episode, we discuss the story and your brand, the strategy and your tactics, and your scorecard.

[00:01:00] Introduction: Joe Mills, Business Development Manager at Element Three

In his role, Joe Mills meets with everyone that starts working with Element Three, a marketing agency laser focused on industrial clients. He has experience with everything from local businesses that are trying to expand regionally, all the way to national brands that have a footprint throughout the United States beyond. He has a wide range of perspectives on the problems that people face when trying to scale industrial marketing.

[00:03:00] Industrial Branding - The Story

The story is really the brand. To benchmark how well your company is currently positioned with its branding, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have a defined place in the marketplace?
• Is your positioning clearly defined?
• Do you have a noble why for why you are in existence?

As a main starting point, you want to look at where you have the least amount of definition about what's happening within the business. If you don't have a story to tell, pumping millions of dollars into marketing campaigns is going to fall flat.

To be successful, you need to build some foundational elements. The value inside of doing brand work is about building a story that makes you more significant as a business.

[00:15:50] Industrial Marketing - The Strategy

Think of a flow chart with your strategy on the far left and your tactics on the far right and in the middle, you've got audiences. The biggest mistake that people make is coming in with predefined tactics, but don't have a program to fit them into the strategy.

The first thing you need to do is understand your customer. You must understand what resonates with them and what their challenges are. You must know your audience before you get your message out in front of them.

If you don't have that defined, you're going to make mistakes and spend money on tactics you can't be sure are working.

[00:23:00] Industrial Marketing Metrics - The Scorecard

The scorecard is something you need to weave into your entire plan. So, you've got the story, you've got a strategy you're building through tactics, and now you need to define what you want to measure.

Until you align marketing activities to business objectives, understanding what marketing should have ownership of in their scorecard is difficult. The most normal things you see inside of a marketing scorecard are cost per lead, leads generated, marketing-generated revenue, and the weighted value of your pipeline.

Marketing should be there to make your sales team more effective. It should be there to make sure your sales team is busy. You should have qualified prospects that you are meeting with because marketing has ownership over the pipeline.

[00:34:10] Take-Aways

1. If you don't have a differentiated brand or a story to tell you really need to start there. Every company has a story to tell, it's just uncovering what's the interesting thread to pull.
2. Don't get lost in the world of tactics. If you don't have your strategy defined, you'll be a windsock. Allow your strategy to determine what your tactical efforts should be.
3. The data that you measure is only important if it's actionable. Your marketing data should be tied to business results.

Resources

LinkedIn Profile - Joe Mills

Website – Element Three

LinkedIn Profile - Dave Karr

Website – Klyck.io

Klyck Article – How to Improve B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment

More Details on B2B Sales Enablement - Sales Enablement Platform

In this episode, Jeroen Corthout joins to discuss CRM best practices for B2B businesses and what insights you can apply in 2021.

[00:00:35] Introduction: Jeroen Corthout, Co-Founder and CEO of SalesFlare

Jeroen Corthout is the co-founder and CEO at SalesFlare, a CRM for small businesses selling B2B. They help CRM work by automating the data salespeople normally have to input manually and then unlock that data by helping salespeople stay on top of their customers and follow-up at the right times.

[00:01:39] What are typical challenges when implementing CRM systems? How do people overcome them? What are the broad level struggles of CRM implementation?

The main issue is that it's not being used, or it's not being used properly or enough.

One common mistake that companies make is getting the wrong CRM because they haven't thought through what exactly it is they want to achieve. People know they need a CRM, so they just get one. The easiest way to get the right one is first knowing what it will be used for.

Most companies that face challenges with CRM implementations are ones that happen without a lot of thought or are used in an old-fashioned way. As long as you begin by defining your objectives, have an implementation strategy, and a team together a to help make decisions, you will have more success.

[00:11:21] How are B2B companies addressing the low utilization problem? How do you improve that?

B2B businesses have to get away from the bad habits that were created a decade or more ago regarding the traditional ways to use a CRM system. It shouldn't act as big brother to look over people's shoulders and tell people what they should be doing or micro-managing. Rather, use it to embrace the power of technology. You can sync things automatically with inputs so that you're not burdening the sales team.

[00:17:28] From now through the next 5 years, how is CRM going to look different? How are we going to use it different? What should people be considering adopting in their businesses to be ready for that?

Data inputs and connecting systems are two big things. Integrations are certainly part of the future. You have to try to make it as simple as you can.

There is a big difference between simply gaining access to data or being able to report data in your CRM system, versus actually having a system set up where you can interpret that data and turn it into something actionable.

[00:26:24] How do you begin to use CRM to report data back in a way that you can actually begin to take action and do something with it?

Seeing the emails that have been exchanged and the meetings and phone calls that have taken place is interesting, but then it goes beyond that. It's knowing what emails were actually opened, what links were clicked, and who went to the website. It also helps salespeople focus on what their customers are looking for. A customer may be looking at on your site but checking out the pricing or a product you didn't expect. It makes it so the sales team can judge the kind of things their customers are interested in and real-time data allows you to get in touch at the right time.

[00:31:12] Where does CRM fit into aligning sales and marketing? How does it bring those two teams together?

CRM systems come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some are more focused on sales and some are more focused on marketing.

If marketing had to ask sales about every single customer, it would very inefficient. With CRM, there's data in a system that answers those questions. Marketing just has to look at the data and doesn't have to ask sales for their thoughts. They can use that data to make decisions about marketing.

However, if one team is out of balance with the other, it's always creates disconnects. Especially when you start thinking about things at scale. Open communication between sales and marketing is key.

Resources

LinkedIn Profile - Jeroen Corthout

Website - SalesFlare

LinkedIn Profile - Dave Karr

Website - Klyck.io

Klyck Article - 5 Ways to Get More Value from Your CRM

This episode is all about building a sales enablement strategy and deploying it across your business! I'm joined by Lisa Neff, who is the sales enablement manager for Porex. Lisa shares a wealth of information about how to get started building your strategy, where to begin with deployment, and how to manage KPIs for success.

[00:01:15] Introduction: Lisa Neff, Sales Enablement Manager at Porex

Lisa Neff is with Porex, a company based out of Atlanta. They are a global leader in advanced porous solutions and are a member company of the Filtration Group. She has been with them for a little over a year, but has about 16 years of experience in sales enablement.

[00:02:00] How did Porex begin on their sales enablement journey? What were some of the drivers inside the business? How did that strategy begin to evolve inside of your company?

Porex is a 61-year-old company that grew very quickly and expanded globally. There was a separation in the sales teams as they had different ways of handling their content and customers. Without a centralized location for sharing, we noticed problems and inefficiencies and it was the sales team that was carrying the burden. The sales leaders came together to come up with a plan regarding how they envisioned sales operations working.

[00:04:40] How did your organization begin to look at structure? When did something click within sales operations? Who was able to help champion this concept of moving toward a formal sales enablement function?

A critical step was defining what sales enablement meant to our company and then defining our mission statement. Ours is to be sure that we are developing our sales reps with actionable information to grow revenue. A major component for Porex is training – no matter where a rep lives, they have the same information across the globe. The biggest problem was that there wasn't an easily accessible and centralized location for content. We needed that so reps could have meaningful conversations with their customers. Sales enablement was a fantastic solution to that problem.

[00:09:25] How did you address sales and marketing alignment and what were some of the things that led to your success of being tightly integrated?

Marketing finds the need in the market or whatever niche they're focusing on and create content they're passionate about and then they bring that to the sales reps. The sales team has answers to questions and they're confident because all the content is right there.

[00:13:25] How do you set metrics and KPIs around the success of the team?

One thing we started looking at was what the expectation was for how often we expected a rep to be in front of a customer. Another thing we thought about was if the rep was in front of the customer, did we expect them to present material. We had an expectation that reps should be sharing a certain number of pieces of content with a client in a 30-day window. Our adoption in March was only about 40% and by the 1st of July, we were hitting that 85 to 90% mark. Now a year later, we at a 100% adoption and continue to see that month over month which is a testament to the software. It works.

[00:18:30] How have you approached sales enablement as a function vs sales enablement as a software?

As a function, it is building those partnerships across the other functions of your company - marketing and customer service operations, for example. Sales enablement acts as a liaison. It's really about communication. One of the key things is building trust with your teams and not working in a silo. You have to do what you say and say what you're going to do to form a trusting relationship.

[00:21:55] What have you found to be the biggest challenges for deploying your sales enablement strategy and what have you done to avoid roadblocks?

One of the challenges we faced was simply reminding the reps that the tool was there and how to use it. Sales enablement was the baby department and it was still brand new. We had to be very flexible and willing to adapt to change. Klyck gave us a structure that really helped guide us in setting a foundation of what an application package that's ready to go to market looked like. There was also confidence in the sales team. Just knowing sales enablement was part of the process and that when we're doing a new product release or taking some strategy to go to market, allowed our sales team to get comfortable with knowing that the resources they needed were available in the sales enablement tool.

[00:31:00] What did you attribute to be your biggest factors of success? And what advice would you give to others who are going to get ready to take the plunge?

We started with a rep council. We took a couple of reps from each region (some high performers and some low performers) to give feedback. We wanted a true adoption experience from different perspectives. Throughout that first month, everybody got a little homework assignment where they needed to go in and demonstrate a feature of Klyck. Not only did it create muscle memory, but also drove home the idea that sales enablement was a part of the fundamental sales skills in the company. We wanted our reps to go in and play with it for a little bit. That was a big thing - go in and play to see you can't break it. And that's the great thing about Klyck, you can't. We wanted to take that fear away.

[00:36:19] Take-aways

1. Have a mission statement
2. Build trust with your team - deliver what you say you're going to
3. Sales enablement can create an atmosphere that provides the fundamental skills for how a person reacts to problem and the tools they'll use to conquer it

Sales Enablement Checklist Resources

Lisa Neff LinkedIn Profile

Porex Website

Dave Karr LinkedIn Profile

Klyck.io Website