Essentials for Implementing a Successful Sales Methodology
Developing and implementing a new Sales Methodology can be a game-changing initiative for any revenue department looking to scale up.
Unfortunately, many organizations struggle with executing it successfully, leading to low adoption rates, poor alignment with internal processes, and a lack of manager support. In other words, the investment does not pay off. The main reason behind this is the lack of planning and consideration for the complexities involved in establishing a new Sales Methodology.
Unlike small process changes, simply creating a "flow chart view of your methodology" and conducting a few hours of training is not enough. It requires careful planning and execution, as a Sales Methodology launch is a massive CHANGE MANAGEMENT effort, which lets be honest, is hard to do.
Without thoughtful planning, your Sales Methodology launch could become an expensive undertaking with minimal return.
To ensure a successful launch of your Sales Methodology, follow these five essential steps that guarantee adoption and revenue growth in a measurable and strategic way:
Step 1: Choose a new Sales Methodology that aligns to your market and maturity
“Organizations that use a formal sales methodology achieve 5.3% higher revenue growth rates than those that do not.” - CSO Insights
Choosing the right sales methodology is critical to achieving your sales goals. However, with so many different methodologies available, it can be challenging to decide which one is the best fit for your team. While many of these methodologies may seem similar, it's essential to choose one that aligns with your selling model and your team's level of support.
For instance, if you're dealing with complex buying cycles, the MEDDIC or Challenger Sales model might be the right choice. However, for transactional selling motions, a more basic qualification-focused methodology such as BANT or CHAMP would be more appropriate. Whatever you choose, it's crucial to keep it simple and select only one methodology.
Avoid the temptation to have different methodologies for different parts of the selling cycle. Doing so creates a disjointed experience for your sales team and your buyers. Instead, you want everyone to think about "the act of GOOD selling" in the same way and work towards the same goal.
To achieve this, you'll need to customize the methodology you choose to align with the expectations of each seller's role. For example, if you've chosen the BANT methodology but your BDRs aren't likely to get the "budget" during their time with a customer, you wouldn't make "B" a requirement for them. Still, they would still be aware that they need to set up an AE to achieve that aspect of the methodology later on.
It's also essential to consider the resources required to support your chosen methodology. If you have a complex selling model but lack the necessary management structures, CRMs, or reinforcement processes, you might be better off with a simple framework like BANT for now. You can always work your way up to more complex methodologies as your organization matures and scales.
Finally, when selecting a sales methodology, it's vital to keep it simple and ensure that it's easy for everyone on your team to understand, from BDRs to the CRO. While acronym frameworks can be helpful, ensure that the language and terminology used are accessible to everyone and won't be a barrier to adoption. Consider adapting your chosen methodology to your organization's cultural norms to achieve the highest adoption success rate.
With the right sales methodology and approach, you can encourage positive selling behaviors that drive buyer purchases. Choose wisely and customize as needed to achieve the best results for your organization.
Step 2: Develop operational reinforcement for your new Sales Methodology
“Companies that use a sales methodology aligned with their sales process have 18% more revenue growth than those that don't.” - Hubspot
To ensure the successful implementation of your Sales Methodology, it's important to integrate it holistically into your sales management systems. This involves aligning your Sales Process (aka “stages”) and Sales Methodology by connecting the various elements of your new Sales Methodology with the required fields in your CRM. By doing so, you can track deal strategy more easily and enforce best practices with effective field coaching and training.
To link your Sales Methodology to your sales process, it's best to map out each step of your linear selling process and align the behaviors and expectations of your methodology with the most likely place of occurrence within the selling cycle.
For example, if you're using the MEDDIC methodology, identifying the “Champion” is a critical component. If this is most likely happening during a particular stage, such as during an early stage demo, you may want to make it a requirement or "stage gate" that the "Champion" Contact Role is associated with the deal's sales Opportunity in your CRM. This helps your reps meet the needs of your sales strategy and optimizes their ability to keep pace with the buyer's journey successfully.
It's also important to define success metrics to determine whether your Sales Methodology is contributing positively to revenue growth. These metrics could include sales velocity and correlation of inputted methodology-related data points and the outcomes of deals. However, it's crucial to be mindful of not creating too many "sales admin" requirements that burden your sales team. Think thoughtfully about how you can capture the necessary data for reporting and coaching purposes and eliminate any redundant or less-utilized requirements from the process.
Overall, by integrating your Sales Methodology with your Sales Process and defining success metrics, you can ensure its successful implementation and encourage positive selling behaviors that drive buyer purchases.
Step 3: Get buy-in from Sales Managers to guarantee adoption
Effective sales coaching can improve a company's bottom line by up to 29%.
- Harvard Business Review
Sales managers are a critical component in shaping and reinforcing effective selling behaviors in the field. To ensure success when implementing a new Sales Methodology, it is crucial to involve sales managers in the decision-making process and provide them with enablement training and resources to effectively coach and guide the sales team post-launch.
One way to empower sales managers to enforce a new Sales Methodology is by investing in robust Sales Manager Enablement Training for the Sales Methodology alongside their sales reps. If a manager feels confident in the concepts of the new strategy, they will happily deploy it in the field.
Additionally, Managers should be equipped with the resources to coach against the new strategy with Dashboards to easily assess gaps in their teams performance, defined processes around Deal Strategy and Skill Coaching, and templates and guides to help them implement and use these things.
By providing Sales Manager with correlated enablement programs and tools, managers can effectively champion the change management processes during the seller launch and reinforce successfully in the field post-launch.
See this article to help guide and inspire you in creating a Manager Enablement program that works.
Step 4: Design field resources that enable the new methodology
"60% of salespeople who use a sales playbook surpass their sales quota.”
- Salesforce
To ensure your sales reps fully adopt and apply your new Sales Methodology, it's critical to provide them with easily accessible reference materials that they can use post-training launch. This requires clear documentation of the Sales Methodology in various formats, such as an overview, detailed parts, and best practice playbooks and one-sheets.
In addition, it's important to align all the correlated field content that is needed to fulfill the objectives of your Sales Methodology within these resources. For example, if one of your methodology's key tenets is Champion Selling, you'll want to include all the resources your team has available to enable Champion Selling, such as pitch decks, marketing leave-behinds, and Buyer Persona Guides.
By providing these resources, you can enable reps to successfully apply the new Sales Methodology in their day-to-day activities and drive successful buyer purchases. This approach helps to ensure that your sales team is consistently executing your sales process with a cohesive message, creating a better customer experience, and ultimately driving more revenue.
Step 5: Launch the new methodology to the sellers with robust training
“Sales reps who receive formal sales methodology training close 32% more deals.” - Altify
To successfully launch your new Sales Methodology to your sales team, you’ll need a comprehensive and engaging training program that ensures reps can effectively apply the new strategies.
This training program should be designed to provide a deep understanding of the "what, why, and how" of the Methodology, as well as equip reps with the necessary knowledge, skills, tools, and resources to achieve desired results.
It should include deep-dive courses into specific skill areas that align with your Sales Methodology, and offer manager-run certification and/or assessments to verify and validate that sales learners can fully adopt the new Sales Methodology on the floor, post-training.
Having your managers run these assessments is important, as it helps ensure managers are wholly involved in confirming the success of the program from the first day of wide-org launch and builds confidence in managers as much as it does the reps.
And finally - to make the training impactful - it's crucial to leverage the expertise and skills of the entire sales team as various session leaders or contributors, make it relatable with proof of success in your organization or as proven in other organizations, and include hands-on learning environments that measure success.
—
Implementing a new sales methodology is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and it requires careful planning, execution, and ongoing monitoring to ensure its success. By following the steps outlined above, you can set your sales team up for success and create a repeatable process that reinforces the behaviors that are proven to drive revenue. Remember, a well-designed and implemented sales methodology can be a game-changer for your business, so take the time to get it right!
Need help deciding on and launching a new Sales Methodology? Contact GTM Enabler for a free consultant!
GTM Enabler provides emerging B2B software companies with highly customized Revenue Enablement services, covering: strategy, content, training, and more. With GTM Enabler's expertise, clients experience increased win rates, shorter sales cycles, and better go-to-market operations. Choose GTM Enabler as your trusted partner for accelerated business growth.