I can score a 250 on Wii bowling fairly regularly, no problem. But get me to a real bowling alley, and I’m lucky to break the century mark.
Sadly, none of us will improve significantly at bowling or tennis or golf from the comfort of a living room sofa, and for obvious reasons: The virtual experience is a far cry from the sport it’s trying to simulate.
By the same measure, we can’t expect a salesperson to ace our message in front of customers through training techniques that scarcely resemble the actual arenas where sales conversations take place.
To ensure your reps deliver your story in a way that’s moving, consistent and memorable — told on purpose, not by accident — your sales training methodology has to be dynamic, even rigorous. Your 2015 sales kickoff is the ideal venue to drive that transformation.
Practice makes perfect
An online video and a quiz to prove competency may seem like fine enough methods for reinforcing and assessing your reps’ messaging delivery. But they won’t do enough to prepare your salespeople to deliver your story effectively in front of prospects, every time.
To succeed in the field, your team needs to practice in front of a discerning audience, get feedback, and receive coaching and certification from subject matter experts who can refine the delivery and make sure it’s consistent with your brand.
Use your 2015 kickoff to set the tone with sales practice sessions that foster good selling habits and ensure your salespeople deliver your story in a meaningful and visually compelling way throughout the sales cycle, and across different selling contexts.
With this in mind, here are some practice measures I’ve designed for the reps attending our 2015 kickoff:
• Match your point of view to your stories. Great messaging stems from a distinct point of view. For 2015, we’ve created or updated our company’s “point of view” stories
for key selling scenarios. We’ve emphasized visual consistency with whiteboard-style storyboards designed to unhinge a prospect from his or her status quo and see unique value in our solutions.
• Demonstrate success in multiple scenarios. To show reps what great conversations look and sound like in the relevant contexts, we’ve recorded demonstrations in two formats —
one for online conversations, the other for live, physical dialogues.
• Record and review. Before the kickoff, we’re having our reps put their message delivery skills to the test in both the live and virtual formats. We plan to mail them the materials they need — desktop easel pads and markers — so they can record themselves delivering the whiteboard stories. They will then submit these trial runs for review and coaching from our sales training experts.
• Stand-and-deliver. At kickoff, our reps will rotate in small groups between rooms dedicated to each of the core visual stories, where they will be given one of several potential customer scenarios (options could include a new prospect or an existing customer with certain products in place but not others). After some prep, they will deliver that particular story, getting feedback along the way from sales leaders.
• Expert certification. During the first quarter, our sales reps will return to an online YouTube-style tool (www.commercialtribe.com, for example) to submit their final recordings for each storytelling situation. These final submissions will then be reviewed and certified by the respective subject matter experts, ensuring that no matter who’s delivering your story, and by what medium, you know it’s being told in a way that’s engaging and consistent.
Your messaging is the story of your company, the narrative that distinguishes you in the eyes of your customers. But your story is only as good as your reps’ ability to tell it in front of prospects.
Your 2015 kick-off is the perfect forum to build great messaging into your sales culture, and to ensure your reps are prepared to articulate value — verbally and visually — where it matters most: With their lips moving in front of prospects.
Tim Riesterer is Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions, Inc. (CorporateVisions.com).
