5 Innovative Sales Enablement Exercises that Could Save Your Business

In the age of software and technology, gone are the days when “sell me this pen” was the first sales enablement training sales managers could think of.
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With the advancement of the internet and sales enablement software technologies, such as sales conversational meeting intelligence, training exercises have evolved dramatically. 

But why focus on the old school methods and ruin the enthusiasm of the ramp-up period. Not that we want to undermine your efforts, but making the sales enablement fun and intriguing will definitely add to the sales goals. 

So, what can you do differently?

It's going to be a fun ride if you own or are considering buying conversational intelligence software for your sales enablement process. 

You can do a multitude of sales activities and leverage the conversation meeting intelligence platform by recording every conversation to understand the performance of your newbies and new hires. The most engaging and powerful sessions can be used to create sales playbooks. 

You can use Conversation Intelligence to make effective sales enablement exercises by following the tips below:
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1. Buyer Persona Detective:

‍An important part of being a sales representative is learning and understanding the audience.

Haven’t we been interviewing the target audience, looking them up on LinkedIn, catching up for a cup of coffee, and anything else that takes us closer to the buyer, to know them a little better?

However, the basic details of any persona are generally available on the internet. Oh, yes, we looked you up on the net. Just kidding!

Coming back to the point. You can follow a similar exercise for your new sales team.

Tell your new hire that XYZ company's VP of Marketing will be meeting them within a designated timeframe, and ask them to come prepared for the D-day.

Use the conversational intelligence assistant on your meeting platform to start a role play. Imitate the vice president, and check for minute details. Determine if they have gained enough knowledge by assessing the depth of their research. 

Reason for adding recording assistance- the new hires can listen to the meeting and evaluate it themselves, as well as identify areas for improvement.

In other words, research shouldn't take a backseat. A better understanding of your customer will make closing the deal easier.
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2. Solve Business Problem

Have you ever had to deal with an annoying CRO who is dissatisfied with demand generation? 

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Well, this is your chance. 

Talk to your new rep about the challenges your CRO's sales team is facing. 

Take note of the rep's sales pitch. Is it selling a solution or promoting a product? 

Your new guys must listen and identify what they can do differently after listening to the meeting. Recording the meeting can serve as an excellent training tool.
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3. Little drama and aggression

Objections have never been easy to handle. The seasoned guys have been bashed and humiliated enough when answering questions. 

In some cases, questions are simply fired at the salespeople to test their knowledge and patience. 

We encourage you to get as aggressive as possible. Talk to your sales reps about pricing, extra charges, warranty information, and anything else that can make your company stand out.

Eventually, they'll start cross-questioning you about the relevance of the question, more context, and park the question for the product team. Then you'll know your sales guys are ready.
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4. Are your reps observant enough?

You must have recorded a collection of sales calls. Is that the case with you? If not, learn what conversational intelligence can do for you.

We want your representatives to do the following. Listen to a few recorded meetings (use filters to find the training-worthy meetings) and ask the reps how they can improve the call. 

We are confident that you will enjoy doing this exercise along with your reps. As a result, you will create a playbook for other employees on best practices in sales.

5. Our favorite- Watch the most sales-worthy movies

Watch these epic movies with your team on Friday eve, and then discuss what they can learn from these films. 

Here are our favorite movies:

• Big Short
• Moneyball
• The Pursuit Of Happiness
• The Wolf of Wallstreet
• Jerry Maguire
• The Founder
  

‍What not to overlook while carrying out the sales enablement exercises along?

Surely you are very excited about the new ways and want to share them with your colleagues. 

But stay with that thought. 

Fun alone cannot produce sales results. When the following factors are taken into consideration, a sales enablement software and a training plan will make sense.‍

Content optimization strategy

Content production and creation are equally important during training. Just not learning, but new ideas, customer findings, industry knowledge, etc. should be carefully documented and structured appropriately.

And content isn't just the responsibility of the marketing team. The sales team can produce the same volume of content as the marketing team. Marketing can supervise and proofread the content to keep the esthetics and messaging in check.

The creation of content is not a primary sales task, but rather a byproduct of good sales practices. Our sales team does not need to perform any specific task but should be the source of the content and make inputs. Furthermore, they can contribute to webinars or demo content where they demonstrate how they negotiate and sell solutions. 

Sales enablement software makes a platform available that organizes the training material, sales collateral, templatized content, case studies, product details, and use case content in a better and accessible manner. 

Quick reminder: Case studies and project synopsis are critical to the sales team's document collection and training.

Sales enablement software can help you track the usage of produced and used content. It will be easier for you to determine what content works and what needs improvement.
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Analytics is key

Part of being a sales rep or sales guy is to analyze data or client interaction. It’s not all about presentations and pitches. Sales deal more with graphs and charts than demos and pitches.

Reports help in keeping a tab about the ever-changing market trends, products and services, demographical changes, sales techniques, and selling activities that matter. Without knowledge of these things, it's hard to run a successful sales team.

Hence investing in sales enablement software is recommended. 

One of the biggest advantages is the access to analyzed marketing, sales, and customer content data. 

Analytics captures key areas of customer engagement-

1. Understanding customer sentiment- Identify your customers' preferences. Analyze the customer's emotions and semantics with the help of a data-driven AI-powdered tool.
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2. Smell hidden opportunity- Analytics keeps a tab on cross-selling and up-selling opportunities without manual intervention.  
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3. Predict sales targets- Sales forecasting algorithms in the latest software plays a vital role in presenting relationships and trends, thus predicting numbers with a high level of accuracy.

Yes, sales enablement software can help enhance the sales training process by offering standardized reporting and analysis. That makes it easy for everyone on the team to comprehend and digest. 

Having an eye on mistakes is actually more valuable than success. Analytics helps the sales trainees reach their fullest potential by looking at areas of improvement.

Empowering the sales with Technology

Training program and content is an efficient source of coaching. Also, plugging into live meetings. Yet, technology can make the whole process more profound, systematic, and less of a task. How?

There are particularly 4 reasons we see while investing in core and non-core sales technologies:

1. Efforts are measurable and reportable. 
2. Transparency and visibility to all stakeholders(including team members outside sales) 
3. Automates the process to a large extent
4. Remote selling and training is a possibility

Automation enables your sales team to focus on selling rather than on repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

‍“I lead a high growth SaaS startup sales team. Currently, no one knows who we are. If my team and I spend time in the weeds of admin work, it delays the amount of time that we could be spending on direct selling. Hence, automation is a must for us”- Aaron Drummond, Sales Manager at Place Technology.

How does conversation intelligence software impact the sales enablement process?‍

You are already aware of or maybe using the feature of recording and transcription in a Conversation intelligence tool. If not, read more. ‍

The CI software is capable of a great deal more than you recognize right now. Here’s how Place Technology utilizes Convin’s Conversational Intelligence software. 
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"We needed to move off a manual Google Spreadsheet that took a lot of time to update. I can now consolidate all the feedback provided to each rep and use it to coach, track improvements, and sell more effectively. The need for on-demand call coaching is essential, and if you are spending more time prepping than coaching, your team cannot achieve success.”- Aaron Drummond, Sales Manager at Place Technology.

The reason we recommend combining CI to your sales enablement strategy is this:

Conversation meeting intelligence analyzes every sales training call, identifies critical keywords, significant topics, and leads/trainers can quickly jump to critical moments recorded in sales calls to further analyze for improvement. 

While training the new reps you can train them on how to leverage the meeting intelligence tool during a sales call. For example:

• Don’t make notes on calls
• Recognize risky opportunities on recorded calls
• Check for non-compliant topics of conversation(sales managers duty)
• Develop a list of best practices and use cases for future reference
• Check call recordings on your CRM platform
• Access and assess the performance stats 
• Filter calls and prepare for follow-up calls

Documenting the training plan, strategy, trainees, goals, metrics, content, and criteria for choosing a sales enablement plan is as necessary as creating all of it from scratch. But you can’t stop employee churn. In such cases, your recorded data, as well as the sales playbook, will come in handy. 

Without a second thought, leverage the power of conversation intelligence software to record all discussions and meetings during the sales enablement exercise.

Keep the best ready for the rest-new hires, new trainees, and anyone who benefits from the sales team.

Lastly, if there is anything we missed or if you need more information, no need to contact us(we’re available, but we respect your time). Why not try reading the 10 Things a Sales Leader Should Learn Before Investing in Sales Enablement Software