Exceeding quota is always top of mind for sales pros and their managers. Achieving higher win rates is one sure way to achieve that goal. Your Sales Enablement team can help here, says Eric Estrella, Client Success Manager at Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), in a post accompanying the company’s 10th annual workbook, How to Make Your Number in 2017.
The workbook’s main theme is covering the ins and outs of what SBI calls the “Revenue Growth Methodology.” While this 406-page report is chock-full of insights and advice, it also includes an entire section dedicated to sales enablement. According to SBI, the Sales Enablement role is meant to onboard new sales hires and drive up revenue per sales rep.
How Sales Enablement Can Boost Win Rates
And in Estrella’s opinion, Sales Enablement can and should own something that is the secret behind higher win rates: conducting win/loss interviews. The key is to go about these interviews in a methodical way. When conducted well, these interviews should surface insights including:
- Buying process decision criteria
- Who is involved in the decision making
- How and why competitors beat you out
- Gaps in your sales process and content
- Your market differentiators, or lack thereof
Unfortunately, according to Estrella, too many fail in this regard for one or more of the following reasons:
- Not asking the right questions
- Not defining the right objectives
- Interviewers lack insight into the selling process
- Interviews focus on products rather than the buyer and buying process
How to Interview Effectively
A post on the OpenView Venture Partners’ blog provides step-by-step guidance for nailing these interviews. Authored by Sue Duris, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at M4 Communications, the post breaks the process into three parts:
- Pre-interview: This is when Sales Enablement prepares for and arranges the interview
- Interview: Duris offers 15 questions for consideration
- Post-interview: Sales Enablement should aggregate and analyze the interview results to draw conclusions that can help drive better sales strategies and approaches
In a follow-up post, Duris covers the details of this phase, including analyzing results, creating a report, and holding a debriefing meeting.
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Topics: Sales trends
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