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In this post, Cory Bray talks about how he sees Ambition fitting into the Sales Enablement Ecosystem, a framework he and Hilmon Sorey outlined in their book: The Sales Enablement Playbook.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from our book:
Think of your lowest performer. Think of the last person you fired. Think of the person who quit and the team got better (addition by subtraction). What do all these people have in common?
Someone at your company hired them!
That’s right! At some point, the employee and the hiring team mutually agreed that there was a great fit. You spent a bunch of money. The employee bragged to their friends about the new job. Then, at some point, something went wrong.
Ensuring that employees deliver the value that was expected when they were hired is a key part of the Sales Enablement Ecosystem. Let’s take a look at how Ambition can help.
Ambition in the Sales Enablement Ecosystem
Let's start by defining the (often misused) term, Sales Enablement.
It’s not about a specific tool or technology. It’s not an individual role played by a wizard behind a curtain, nor is it a complex scientific equation which drives prospect engagement. It’s about access, accountability, measurement, and simplicity.
World class organizations execute The Playbook every day and audit their efficiency. Knowledge flows through these organizations organically - without top-down bottlenecks. Sales insights are shared, retained, and surfaced when and where relevant. Not surprisingly, these companies experience fast and consistent growth while recruiting top sales talent easily because the best athletes want to play for the best organizations. End Result:
Think of Sales Enablement as the extension of a prospect-centric mindset to all departments within an organization. The Sales Enablement Ecosystem is how your sales organization equips itself to execute that mindset in the most efficient, scalable way possible - using tools, tactics and strategies that work in synchronicity.
Ambition Ecosystem Benefit #1. Consistent Leadership and Motivation.
Remember in high school chemistry when we learned that radioactive isotopes have a half-life? Each isotope’s radioactivity will fall to half of its original value after X years. Sound familiar? Well - employee motivation tends to follow a similar path, with a twist ... you can re-energize employees!
Here are some things that employees hate and increase their “motivational half-life” (increase is bad in this context):
Inconsistent Management: If expectations and feedback appear to be random, you’ll kill morale. Employees need to know what’s expected of them and how they’re doing against those expectations.
Embracing Mediocrity: I guarantee you that if you let underperformers stick around too long, your best people will leave. Or, you’ll have a “corporate cold war” on your hands.
Perceived Unfairness: Many issues that appear trivial in the context of the company are likely the single most important topic in the employee’s life at the time. Remember that.
Ambition does a good job of addressing these issues. They allow managers to consistently and objectively communicate expectations and performance to the whole team.
If people are falling behind or “unfair” activity is occurring, the data is out in the open for all to see ... thereby replacing politics with facts. However, you need to get the data first.
Ambition Ecosystem Benefit #2. Unlock Data Silos.
Answer each of these questions honestly right now:
1. Does everyone on your sales team know their specific goal for this quarter?
2. Do they each know specifically where they stand vs. that goal?
3. Are they aware how their performance compares to their peers?
4. Do you know for a fact who is highly motivated vs. who is just getting by?
If you can’t ask a business question, push a button, and get an answer, then your lack of access to data is hurting your ability to be successful.
Many companies have data silos between Sales Ops, IT, BI, Sales Management, et al, but it’s 2017 and the technology exists to tear down these silos. Embrace it! Ambition helps sales organizations automatically route data alerts and recognition from Salesforce, Slack, and VoIP systems.
Ambition Ecosystem Benefit #3. Enable the Managers.
The highest value activities for sales managers are recruiting and coaching. The problem is that they’re often sucked into accountability and administration tasks, while the higher-value activities are neglected.
If you find yourself in this situation, there are two common approaches:
1. Hire More People
2. Implement Technology
Hiring people almost always increases complexity, and unless there’s a problem that’s uniquely solved by human beings, technology is probably the best option. Ambition enables managers to:
Coach More Frequently: Instead of preparing reports or sitting in meetings with sales ops, the data is at their fingertips and they can just coach.
Coach Consistently: Employees and managers are mutually aware of both expectations and performance, so there are no surprises.
Attract Talent: The best salespeople want to work on the best sales teams.
Taking your sales team from its current state to a world where managers are spending most of their time recruiting and coaching won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to understand and develop your Sales Enablement Ecosystem ... and Ambition plays a key role here.
About the Author
Cory Bray is a Co-Author of The Sales Enablement Playbook and a Co-Founder of ClozeLoop - a knowledge management platform for sales teams.
Ambition: The Agile Sales Management Platform
Harvard Business Review and AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization). See how Ambition helps enhance sales KPI visibility and sales floor engagement using real-time scorecards, dashboards, alerts, contests, and TV leaderboards.
Contact us to schedule a demo of Ambition for your sales force today.
