Timothy Riesterer's Blog, page 17

How You Should be Whiteboarding

Ever since the book “Back of the Napkin” became popular there has been a movement toward bringing hieroglyphics back to interpersonal communications.  Stick figures and illustrated icons have re-emerged as a legitimate means to deliver critical messages, and whiteboarding has become the best way to deploy these messages.

This has created more of a by accident, do-it-yourself approach inside most companies and with salespeople than a purposeful enterprise methodology.  The result is lots of renegade whiteboards of suspect quality and questionable impact.

Kind of like PowerPoint.  Just because you have the program on your computer and you produce a .ppt file doesn’t mean you created a great presentation.  Most times it means just the opposite. Same with taking a marker to a dry erase board or flip chart.

Incorporating visual storytelling into your company’s approach to executive decision makers is great, but it needs to be treated like a systematic process if you want to ensure the quality of the message and the delivery.

Whiteboarding is a Methodology

Whiteboarding impacts the message development, the deployment of that message into an effective visual whiteboard, and the delivery skills necessary to bring that story to life.  Creating the organizational capability and confidence to use a pen vs. a clicker as your communication weapon of choice requires a purposeful, repeatable structured approach.

It’s not a methodology in the sense of sales processes such as opportunity management, account planning and alike.  Those methodologies help salespeople know how to structure a deal – where to show up, who to meet with.  Whiteboard selling is all about what are you going to say when you get there.

Develop, Deploy, Deliver

Here’s an overview of the three components of the on-purpose, whiteboard selling methodology that I conceptually introduced above:

Develop

Great whiteboards look spontaneous, and the imagery looks simple, but they are really the product of a well-facilitated development process.  They follow a proven choreography for how a great story is built, told and visualized. This includes significant incorporating significant intelligence into the process, such as leveraging brain science to understand how visual contrast is required to help get a reaction to your picture, or how to grab and spike attention with compelling visual techniques and storytelling models.  It isn’t simply about putting some words, arrows and stick figures on a board.

If you can’t explain or justify why you draw your whiteboards the way you do, then you are guessing at what might work and hope that it’s effective.  Sales methodology companies documented long ago that “hope is not a strategy” (with a nod to Rick Paige of the Complex Sale).  We’ve worked to develop repeatable templates for crafting whiteboard stories that have been proven to work at different stages of the customer buying cycle.

Deploy

Packaging your whiteboards for use in the field requires a toolkit containing coaching and customer-facing content.  As you may suspect, teaching a salesperson to deliver your whiteboard is like helping an actor learning their part.  As the director, you must provide a script and a storyboard.  You will need to decompose your whiteboard into a “build” showing how each part is drawn, along with the commentary behind it.  This is documented in a sales coaching guide with thumbnail pictures of the whiteboard parts and the accompanying script next to it.  We also recommend you capture an example of someone delivering it and providing as a video or voiceover of a PowerPoint with illustrated images and micro-builds.  In either case, it’s about demonstrating the best practice in terms of timing, cadence, emphasis, and interaction.

You also should provide this in customer-facing form.  The PowerPoint micro-build allows your field people to potentially deliver the whiteboard in a web conference call in a simulated fashion.  Also, a professional, animated video of your whiteboard can be used by the field as a follow-up tool to document their presentation and give prospects something to share inside their organization.

Deliver

Here’s where the rubber hits the road.  Salespeople need to understand both the art and science of whiteboarding.  This means sufficient training on the use of a pen and a writing surface and getting comfortable with the conversation vs. presentation approach this requires.  It also means understanding the principles behind why the story needs to be told the way it’s been developed, including the brain science and storytelling models at work in the content, and the objective for each whiteboard.

Practice, practice, practice. I say it three times not to be trite, but because this is the part where many whiteboards fall apart.  Salespeople need to practice delivering the whiteboard until they can deliver it naturally while demonstrating complete command of the content. It’s not just about eliminating errors. It’s about building confidence, taking ownership and making it their story.  Ideally, you will develop coaches who are capable of providing appropriate feedback and even certifying client-facing folks on their delivery.

Whiteboards Have Documented Impact

Aberdeen research has documented improved performance in companies who have started to replace traditional presentation decks with whiteboards.  There’s a correlation between increased whiteboard use and improvements in productivity of new reps (or new products), first-year reps hitting quota, deal cycles, lead conversion and more.

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Neuromarketing: Seven Ways to Sell to the Decision-Making Old Brain

Funny thing about B2B marketers and sellers – you seem to presume that business decision makers check their brains at the door. Because it would appear, by the messages you develop and the presentations you make, that you think you are selling to robots that logically process and rationally justify everything. Neuromarketing is the antithesis of that, and prevents you from treating your decision makers like Spock from Star Trek, assuming that they have no capacity for emotion.

The study of neuromarketing proves that prospects are still human. Your target buyers make decisions to change and buy based on emotion while justifying with facts. Neuromarketing, a concept developed by psychologists at Harvard University 1990, is a field of marketing research that examines consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. The approach is based on research into how customers think (pdf), which shows that 95 percent of thinking takes place in our unconscious minds and that people use conscious thought primarily as a way to rationalize behavior.

Today, neuromarketing is getting increased attention from companies who want to understand the science behind how people make decisions. Corporate Visions has been using neuromarketing-based approaches in all of our message development and selling skills training for more than 20 years. Here’s a quick overview of how you can apply this research to your efforts.

Neuromarketing And Brain Science: The Old Brain vs. the New Brain

The brain is divided into three primary areas. The neocortex is the brain’s analytical computer, which processes data. The limbic system is where all emotions reside. The brain stem and other brain structures are responsible for your survival. This part of the brain is described by psychologist Robert Ornstein as the “Old Brain” and Seth Godin refers to it as the “lizard brain.” The Old Brain quickly assesses situations to determine if you are at risk or danger. If it senses your well-being is in jeopardy, it forces you to react and move away from the potential threat. And, your Old Brain decides what gets noticed – what gets your attention. Therefore, you need to appeal to the Old Brain.

So how do you use this information about neuromarketing to improve the way you sell? Here are seven ways to stimulate the Old Brain.

1. Be Visual

Of your five senses, the Old Brain responds most strongly to the visual sense. In fact, processing things that you see takes up about half of the resources of your brain, with the other half being devoted to everything else.

The neuromarketing lesson: Use big pictures and props to help you reach your prospect visually.

2. Create Contrast

The Old Brain loves contrast. And the closer together the things being contrasted in your messaging are, the more powerful the impact will be. The contrast you want to create shows your prospects that staying where they are today – the status quo – is an “unsafe” decision and that moving to your solution is the “safest” decision.

The neuromarketing lesson: Show the prospect that where he is is not a great place (the “before” story) and then show him that where he can get to is a much better place (the “after” story).

3. Use Firsts and Lasts

Your Old Brain is also strongly influenced by firsts and lasts, beginnings and endings. The Old Brain is constantly on the alert for the unexpected – things that break the pattern that it’s used to. That means that your first big opportunity in your messaging is to take advantage of the time when the Old Brain is naturally paying attention – the beginning of your message.

The neuromarketing lesson: You want to start with a grabber. And you need to close hot. Don’t end with the typical phrase, “Any questions?” Instead, say, “You’ve seen how, only with us, you can do [power positions 1, 2, 3]. So where do we go from here?” Be direct and make it pop.

4. Use Emotion

The Old Brain uses emotion to mark things that are important enough to be remembered. Having an emotional response helps make memories stronger while those memories are still forming in the brain. That’s why people vividly remember emotional events – such as their wedding day or the Berlin Wall coming down – but they can’t remember what they had for lunch a week ago.

The neuromarketing lesson: Getting some emotion into your message is the key to making your message memorable after you’ve left the room.

5. Keep it Simple

Overloading people with too much information typically results in one of four behavior changes:

Can’t respond. It’s almost as if you see doors closing behind their eyes.
Get irritated or bored. You know you need to engage your prospect at the emotional level (see point 4 above), but these aren’t the emotions you’re going after.
Start to develop a “so what” attitude. As in: “So what?!? Why are you telling me this?”
No decisive action. The worst thing that happens when you overload someone with too much information is that he can no longer make decisions. And that’s a killer when you’re trying to sell something.

The neuromarketing lesson: Simplify your message. You don’t have to tell your prospect about everything your solution can do. Focus on those things that are different about your solution. And make things simple by using metaphors and analogies.

6. Make it Concrete

The Old Brain prefers concrete language to abstract ideas. If you were asked to think of an apple, you could do so easily. Why? Because you’ve experienced apples with your senses. The idea of an apple is concrete for you. An abstract idea is something that you’ve never experienced with your senses. An example of an abstract idea would be increased efficiency or improved productivity.

The neuromarketing lesson: It’s not enough for the prospect to intellectually understand a benefit. Use visuals to make a complex concept more simple and to make an abstract idea more concrete.

7. Make it Personal

The Old Brain cares about survival, but whose survival does it care about? It’s own. It’s not worried about anybody else’s survival. And one of the simple ways in which the Old Brain views you is as either “part of my tribe” or “part of other.”

The neuromarketing lesson: If you are seen as “other,” you’re going to have a tough time persuading your prospect. Use “you” phrasing to keep things personal for your customer and to show that you’re part of his tribe.

Corporate Visions has been using the brain science behind neuromarketing for more than 20 years to develop a portfolio of solutions that helps companies create effective sales messages, tools, and training.

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Three Counterintuitive Ideas for 2017 Sales Kickoff Meetings

Want to wow your sales team for kickoff? Try some new approaches that could help reps have value conversations customers want to have.

It’s sales kickoff planning season in sales and marketing organizations around the world. You definitely have to set the dates, confirm the budget, find the location, and get executive buy-in. But when it comes to the content for the sales kickoff meeting, don’t settle for a new version of the same checklist you may be using.

Here are three counterintuitive ideas to help your salespeople really remember and use your content from your 2017 sales kickoff.

1. Model conversations vs. new sales pitches

Sales kickoffs are usually full of new products and updated features. And that’s okay. But instead of hours of feature-dense presentations that focus all on you, what if you modeled great customer conversations?

76% of buyers will buy from a company that illustrates a buying vision—rather than another entry in a long list of commodity suppliers. Show your sales reps how to lead to your offerings by creating the urgency for customers to make a change in the way they’re solving for future challenges. Then you can position your offerings in a unique and impactful way. (Also read It Takes More Than a Technology Stack to Drive Demand)

 2. Enable conversation competencies vs. sales processes

Many companies are making great inroads in new training methodologies and technologies, but how much time will you dedicate to training skills and processes that mostly feature how your salespeople should manage a sale cycle, when most people agree the customer has the most power?

71% of sales managers agree the ability to “articulate value” is the biggest difference between high and low sales performers. So what if you enabled your team’s competencies to progress opportunities based on having conversations that customers truly find valuable? What if they could create pipeline based on establishing differentiation, write proposals that pass executive muster, and close opportunities profitably without losing value throughout the sale cycle? That would make for a big kickoff! (Also read Are Your Reps a Selling “Triple Threat?” on corporatevisions.com.)

3. Advise brain science vs. new theories

Hey, I love a good book, too. And sometimes CEOs fall in love with a new business book that offers to introduce best practices into your sales training. But often companies just imitate the processes of other companies with mixed successes. The challenge is that “best practices” are other people’s successes, which means it’s old news, and your competitors read the same books. So at best you’re frustrating your team and at worst your enabling mediocrity.

But what if you didn’t follow the crowd to this year’s book club favorite theory, and instead introduced skills that leverage how the human brain perceives value, and how buyers make decisions based on how it perceives value? Understanding how customers buy, vs. how OTHER salespeople sell, would make a much greater impact at a sales kickoff! (Also read Best Practices Aren’t Always the Best Methods on ATD.com)

You only get a few days with your whole sales team in one place. Try one of these counterintuitive ideas! And I’d be interested in your plans for your 2017 kickoff meetings!

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Beyond the Classroom: Matching Skills Training to the Selling Moment

B2B sales training could be nearing a tipping point. Investment in classroom-based training is set to remain flat in the years ahead, while investment in virtual training is poised to rise, according to a Corporate Visions survey of sales leaders. As companies struggle with challenges around training access, the increased interest in virtual training suggests sales leaders believe some training is better than no training. But what features should a modern skills training program include as companies make the shift “beyond the classroom,” relying less on scheduled training events, and more on a just-in-time, situational model? That’s what Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, discusses in this interview with Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World Magazine.

Q: You are co-author of “The Three Value Conversations,” a book we named top sales and marketing book last year. Can you first explain what the three value conversations are?

Tim: In show business, top performers are often praised for being the “triple threat,” meaning they can act, sing and dance. In selling there’s a triple threat skillset your salespeople must master to be a top performer – Pipeline, Proposals and Profits. And, each of these is driven by one of the three value conversations we wrote about:

Create value, where salespeople must be able to tell a story that overcomes their prospects’ status quo bias and differentiates you from the competition in a way that builds more pipeline.

Elevate value that requires them to build proposals connecting external factors and strategic initiatives to your solutions in a business case that passes muster with executive-level decision makers.

Capture value by avoiding profit leaks that occur throughout the buying process and managing the tension during negotiations to protect your margins.

These three skills can form the foundation of a competency-based training model tied to actual, measurable outcomes.

Q: What in your mind is the biggest skills training challenge B2B companies face today?

Tim: Time out of field is the first obvious challenge. In a recent survey we conducted, four out of five companies said they are not able to train as many salespeople on the skills they need each year. And, the top reason was the pressure to not take salespeople out of the field. It came in 20 percent higher than budget as a limiting factor.

Arbitrary learning paths is the second challenge. In the same survey, companies said they rely on managers to choose the training for their reps, which may have some correlation to the time-out-of-field challenge since managers feel the pressure to keep salespeople in the field. And, they rely most often on generic training paths based on rep tenure and role versus any type of performance indicators or needs assessment.

Q: Time out of the field is a valid concern for sales leaders. What can companies do to limit time out of the field without sacrificing necessary training?

Tim: The market appears to be showing increased interest in virtual training formats, but it’s conflicted, according to our survey. We found that 65 percent of companies plan to increase spending on virtual skills training, while classroom training investments will be flat.

However, those same respondents said they believe classroom training to be the most effective at changing behaviors and virtual training to be significantly less effective. It’s hard for anyone to argue this. Which means people are having to choose efficiency over effectiveness. The big breakthrough will be if companies can find a way to more effectively deploy virtual training so you can get the desired time savings and uptick in performance.

Q: What does more effective virtual training look like?

I will be the first to grant you that workshop-based training, which includes role play, stand and deliver, coaching and feedback experiences, has tremendous advantages for creating behavior change.

Virtual training is not going to be a 1-1 replacement. So, you have to think differently when it comes to applying online training for increased impact. It starts with replacing arbitrary learning paths such as rep tenure and role and manager training choice with custom learning paths.

Here we see four possibilities for using the efficiency of virtual training to gain effectiveness advantages:

Performance-based training – This starts with available data from your sales systems. The information exists to help you identify reps who are struggling in each triple threat area, such as those who are not creating enough pipeline; the reps whose pipelines are constipated with unapproved proposals stuck in the middle of the funnel; and those sellers who are unscrupulously discounting and leaking profits. Now, that you know who is struggling with either pipeline, proposals or profits, imagine being able to push them targeted, online training modules with competencies designed to improve their specific performance challenges.

Needs-based training – Relying on manager or even sales rep intuition regarding which training is most necessary can be very subjective and can now be replaced with a fluency assessment. Imagine a behavioral outcomes survey that can identify the strengths and weaknesses of salespeople across the triple threat skills and match that to specific competency modules that can be “kitted up” for a personalized learning journey tailored to their needs.

Situationally relevant training – One area every company is looking to reinforce is a consistent sales process. Just putting the steps in place and formalizing your CRM to prompt the sales administrative tasks doesn’t mean your salespeople will do each stage well. What if you could align specific skills training modules to each step of your sales process and present those online at each opportunity stage of your CRM?

Integrated Play-based training – As you launch products and promote go-to-market strategies in sales “plays,” you create a tremendous opportunity for something we call embedded skills training. In addition to the sales messages and assets and tools in a sales play, imagine the appropriate skills training modules included right there in the play. Each play may require different selling skills. For example, you may be trying to sell a disruptive solution in one play, which requires unique skills to overcome the status quo. Or, you may have a play to sell a highly complex, integrated solution that requires executive and financial acumen skills as well as consensus-building skills. Or, you may have a play for a commoditized portfolio where your salespeople need the skills to differentiate and protect margins.

Each of these four is only made possible with the availability of flexible, virtual training modules. And, each of these four scenarios offers ways to make virtual training more effective. This becomes even more powerful if the online library is based on a tested and proven competency library.

Check out Corporate Visions’ State of the Conversation Report, “Beyond the Classroom: Trends in B2b Sales Training,” to learn more about what’s next for skills training.

As originally featured in Top Sales Magazine, November 2016

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Three Critical Outcomes for Sales Enablement Pros

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.” – Steve Jobs

If you are responsible for sales enablement, these words of wisdom could do you well. In the absence of a single accepted definition, sales enablement is often thought of as a container for all of the factors that influence a valuable sales conversation. For example, according to analyst firm Sirius Decisions, “sales enablement’s goal is to ensure that every seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers.”

Skills, knowledge, assets, and process….that’s a lot of territory. Working on any one of these could be a full-time job for your enablement team. And your sales enablement stakeholders aren’t shy about filling the suggestion box with dozens or hundreds of good ideas. But, you have limited resources and face unlimited suggestions for things to make, fix or improve. How do you set priorities? Where do you start? And how can you tell what’s working?

Focus

Steve Jobs was facing hundreds of great ideas when he returned to Apple in 1997. He said no to most of them, ruffled more than a few feathers, and ultimately built the most valuable company on the planet. He did it by sharpening the company’s focus and by narrowing down the company’s efforts into a limited set of projects that fit into what he described as a “cohesive larger vision that is going to allow you to sell eight billion dollars, ten billion dollars of product a year.”

As a sales enabler, the cohesive vision guiding your efforts is the need to improve sales conversations. And just like Apple, which was floundering before the return of Steve Jobs, you’re at risk of implementing a disjointed set of initiatives that will cause you to fall short of that vision. The best way to figure out what to focus on is to identify outcomes that you are trying to drive and tie them to a limited set of activities that can affect them.

Focusing on Outcomes

Ultimately, your executive team cares about increasing the number, size, and profitability of deals that your sales team closes. To be successful in the near term, you need to identify a limited set of outcomes that impact that goal and pick one to concentrate on. And then, and only then, should you identify the skills, knowledge, assets, and processes that need improvement.

Here are three measurable outcomes that you can monitor and execute against. They aren’t comprehensive, but they cover the critical areas that most executives care about.

Pipe: It all starts with qualified opportunities. That comes from prospects seeing the need to explore new ways of operating and becoming interested in your company’s approach. Poor lead conversion rates and an overall lack of qualified opportunities are a good indicator of problems with pipe.
Proposals: Your prospects need a meaningful business case and value story to make sure your proposals justify an executive decision. If you are seeing qualified opportunities stall out, it’s a good indicator that your reps lack the business expertise and financial acumen needed to translate your solutions’ capabilities into outcomes that your customers care about.
Profits: Your reps need to advance opportunities without giving away the value they’ve created. In other words, they need to close deals while protecting margins and maximizing the profitability of each deal. Elongated sales cycles and thin margins are usually indicators of a problem in this area.

Executing Against the Most Critical Outcomes

These three outcomes don’t describe everything that happens in a typical buying journey, but they are critical enough that improving any one of them can significantly impact the profitable business that your team can deliver. Strategies for three outcomes are presented greater detail in The Three Conversations, a book authored by several Corporate Visions subject matter experts. Here is a quick overview of strategies outlined there:

Pipeline: Here the problem is that, without realizing it, your marketers and salespeople are starting customer conversations with traditional approaches that are actually commoditizing your offering, creating indecision for your buyers, and even causing skepticism about your claims. If your team is struggling to create qualified opportunities, then you need to focus on getting reps to lead with a story about how prospects should change from the status quo. It’s only after that commitment to change has been made that they should have a conversation that leads to your unique differentiators.

Proposals: Once your reps have created an opportunities, they’ll have to go toe-to-toe with the financially savvy executive decision makers who will be looking to justify the business impact of investing in your solution. If this creates fear and reluctance on the part of your salespeople, you’ll need to focus on developing their ability to tell a differentiated story based on business value, engaging executives with confidence, and motivating them with a compelling executive value proposition.

Profits: Here, declining margins are an indicator that reps are giving away too much value across the entire buying journey. Too often, they rely on instincts and a natural desire to please that actually trains prospects to expect more, to expect freebies, and to make you expend a lot of valuable effort before the deal closes. Here the focus should be on developing strategies to maximize the profits that come out of the opportunity.

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The Future and the Past: Why Contrast Matters in Your Message

Imagine if there was one simple messaging trick you could use to increase your prospect’s willingness to make a purchase. What if that technique could also increase his or her desire to switch brands, pay more for your solution, and recommend it to others? What if it also generated the perception that what you’re selling is different and better?

What if I told you that trick was real—something you can actually apply to your customer conversations to give yourself a messaging edge?

I’ve spent my career trying to gain ever-sharper insight into what kind of message convinces prospects and customers to leave their status quo situation to do something new and better. But what kind of messaging techniques actually make that happen?

That’s the question underpinning an experiment my company recently did in conjunction with Zakary Tormala, a marketing professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert in persuasion.

Specifically, we wanted to test the persuasive effect of establishing a contrast between the current and future states in your message, pitch, or presentation. We designed the study with the intention of determining whether highlighting key differences between a desirable future state, such as new product features and benefits, and a problem-riddled current state would enhance the appeal of doing something different more than if you were to simply present the future state information alone.

Testing The Effect Of Contrast

Here’s how we set it up. We instructed two groups of participants to imagine they’d had their current smartphones for about a year and were reading some information about a new smartphone option. Prior to viewing the information, they were informed that they would receive some information about the new smartphone’s features and benefits, which would begin on the next screen.

What the participants didn’t know is that, prior to the study, they were randomly assigned to two different presentation conditions. Each condition varied two aspects of the information: the presence and location of information describing problems and issues with their current phones.

The first group viewed the non-contrast (future benefits-only) condition, in which participants received a list of four of the new smartphone’s features and benefits. Participants were exposed to no other information.

The second group viewed a contrast (current issues/future benefits) condition, in which they received the exact same feature and benefits list for the new phone. But next to this information, they received a list of four issues or problems associated with their current phones that correlated to each of the features and benefits.

As you see, the experiment tested a current state/future state comparison against the future state-only condition.

Which Condition Came Out On Top?

While all participants received the exact same information about the new smartphone features and benefits, the study revealed that this information was more impactful and more persuasive when it was juxtaposed with the shortcomings of the current smartphones.

The comparative, side-by-side presentation outperformed the future scenario-only presentation by a statistically significant margin across several areas, including:

Purchase intent: Participants in the comparative conditions reported greater interest in and a higher likelihood of purchasing the new smartphone. On average, these conditions created a 14-plus percent lift in purchase intent.


Willingness to change: Participants in the comparative conditions reported more favorable attitudes toward the new phone and a greater willingness to switch to it (and pay more!) by a margin of 14-plus percent.


Advocacy: Participants in the comparative conditions were 12-plus percent more likely than future state-only participants to advocate on behalf of the new smartphones–in other words, to share information about the phone and recommend it to others.


Perception of quality: Comparative condition participants found the new smartphone to have higher quality, be more innovative, and to represent a more clear-cut improvement over their current phones. In these dimensions, the comparative conditions outperformed the future state-only condition by a margin of 13-plus percent.

We confirmed these results even further by testing two other contrast conditions (putting information on separate screens or in different positions on-screen) against the future state-only one, and these comparative conditions also came out on top by the same statistical margins across all the areas above. So regardless of how you present the contrast, the new smartphone was more attractive when its features and benefits were directly compared against current smartphone limitations, rather than just presented on their own.

The crux of these results is clear: Contrast drives persuasiveness in your message. To unseat a prospect’s status quo, you need messaging, content, and skills that present a sharp contrast between the pain of where your prospect is today and the benefits and upside of where you could lead him or her tomorrow.

Check out our new eBook, “Good Intentions, Wrong Instincts,” to learn more about this study and other sales and marketing experiments we’ve conducted.

This article originally published in CMO.com

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Are Your Insights Edgy Enough?

Insights have exploded for good reason: They can disrupt your prospects’ world and give them the urgency and direction to do something different now.

The problem is, many of the insights circulating in the market today aren’t sufficiently different from the ones your competitors are putting out there. Sometimes they’re exactly the same. Or they’re simply providing information that’s true but ultimately useless in terms of getting your buyers to see their world differently and take action.

Quality insights are the lifeblood of great messaging and content. But if your insights look and sound a lot like everyone else’s, they’re in danger of becoming commoditized. And if your insights are commoditized, there’s a good chance your messaging and content are, too.

Research To The Rescue

As buyers get more discerning about the content they engage with, they’re going to start demanding a lot more rigor and credibility around insights creation.

In other words, if they’re going to carve time out of their day to read or watch or listen to what you’ve produced, you need to give them a payoff. That payoff typically comes in the form of interpretations, data, and perspectives that are credible and that they can’t find anywhere else. Original research—done well, and with the intent of unearthing something new that your customers will care about—has the potential to deliver these things in a bold and unique way, giving you access to insights and information that only you can claim, and allowing you to shape the conversation on terms that distinguish you.

Here are some pointers for leveraging original research and building it into your approach to messaging and content.

Get Edgy And Counterintuitive – One trend that’s both a symptom and a cause of content fatigue is the repackaging of others’ original insights, which some then repurpose without adding anything new to deepen the conversation. That’s a recipe for sounding a lot like everyone and getting ignored by buyers. For your messaging and content to flourish, you need to take edgy, counterintuitive stands that challenge conventional wisdom and run against the grain of “best practices” and popular thought.

And most importantly, to do this well, you need to back your boldest claims with tested and proven research, so that you’re not just touting good feelings and hunches, but you’re getting behind actual principles supported by research that your buyers will find compelling and different from what they’re hearing in other watering holes.

Provide Fresh, Forward-Looking Interpretations – The great thing about original research is that it generates original insights (i.e. data that you have and others can cite). But data points fall flat without a compelling narrative around them—one that’s forward-looking, fresh, and creatively spun. And make no mistake: There is serious demand for high-quality analysis in this vein. A survey from my company revealed the type of insights message B2B marketers and salespeople believe to be most impactful—so-called “visionary” insights, which provide forward-looking market perspectives—is used the least in marketing collateral, while the least effective type of insight—“anecdotal,” which are in-house and best practices-oriented—is used the most.


Partner With A Pro – Developing rigorous, falsifiable research is no small undertaking, and it’s easy to see how the idea of incorporating it into a marketing program might seem daunting. To make that process smoother, my company formed a small research team within our company and contracted with a leading researcher, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business whose research interests—which include persuasion, messaging, and social influence—dovetail with many of the marketing and sales topics that we like to test in a formal environment.

The bar has never been higher for making an impact with your messaging and content, and today, with so-called “content fatigue” setting in, there’s a premium on fresh and original information.

Adding an original research component to your marketing activities is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a source of new insights among your audience. And the best part about it: When you do it well, you get the license to be a little more edgy in your messaging because you’re backing your case up with tested and proven data, not hunches and feelings.

Check out our new eBook, “Good Intentions, Wrong Instincts,” for an example of how to put first-party research into action in your messaging and content.

This article originally published in CMO.com

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Another Example of How Best Practices Are Not the Best Practice

If you’re like me, you might’ve recently sat through another conference put on by an analyst firm promising to share “best practices” they’ve codified from their observations of hundreds of other companies. And, I wondered to myself, are these thousands of people cramming the halls and breakout rooms actually learning anything that will move the needle?

I recently wrote that following ‘best practices’ may actually be a bad practice — after reading a provocative article on the topic in Fast Company. Then along comes another excellent take on the issue from investment strategist Michael Mauboussin, with a concept he calls “the paradox of skill.”

In his article, Mauboussin says, essentially, that following best practices of others “misses the mark because they fail to consider what competitors may do.” He goes on to say, “Results are a combination of your actions with those of your rivals. If all companies are getting better in lockstep, no company is gaining an edge.”

Or, as he puts it more succinctly: “Getting better in an absolute sense doesn’t matter if it’s offset by the competition.”

In other words, trying to imitate best practices is not a recipe for beating the market or differentiating yourself from the competition. But, ironically, that’s your ultimate goal, isn’t it?

One of Mauboussin’s key rules in the “paradox of skill” is that absolute improvements matter less to success than improvements relative to your competition. In other words, someone could spend a year getting objectively better at stage-acting, ballroom dancing or shooting three pointers. But if your peers are also improving at the same time and in the same ways, your relative advantage will be minimal or non-existent because you haven’t actually increased the skills gap between you and them.

Because best practices research and recommendations in sales and marketing are based on emulating so-called top performers, there’s a good chance those who subscribe to them are adopting the same skills others have already gotten good at (or worse, already moved on from). As a result, your competitive advantage suffers.

But an overreliance on best practices training may not be the only thing holding your company’s teams back…

The “Spread of Excellence”

Renowned biologist (and baseball enthusiast) Stephen Jay Gould used the term “spread of excellence” to describe how the range of skill between the best and worst hitters in baseball has narrowed significantly since 1941, when Ted Williams finished the season with a batting average of .406 (the last time a player exceeded the .400 mark for the season).

As Mauboussin explains, many cite that the expanding international talent pool, together with better training, as major contributing factors to the shrinking gap or the “clustering” of skills.

The good news for sales professionals? Unlike baseball, sales hasn’t experienced the “spread of excellence.” There’s still a broad gap separating high and low performers. But, like baseball, better, more focused practice and training can play a significant role in closing the skills gap.

A recent Corporate Visions survey found that many companies lack a formal practice, coaching and certification plan for their reps—even though 85 percent of companies agree that their team’s ability to articulate value is the single most critical factor to closing deals. The survey found that:

Only 41 percent of companies ask salespeople to practice their messaging using stand-and-deliver or role-play scenarios.


34 percent of respondents said no one is responsible for coaching and certifying their company’s value messages. The rest indicated they’re trusting their sales managers or trainers to do this in addition to their other responsibilities and regardless of qualifications.


Meanwhile, only 9 percent of companies regularly expect salespeople to record themselves delivering value messages so it can be reviewed, coached and certified by subject matter experts.

Combined, these numbers show that there’s a lot of room for companies to set themselves apart by adding some rigor and structure to their skills practice program. Make no mistake: The skills gap is still wide between high and low performers. Implement a practice program to ensure your reps are on the right side of the divide. Because, as Mauboussin says, “If you compete in a field where the range of skill is wide, the more skillful will succeed at the expense of the less skillful.”

Check out our new eBook to learn how so-called “best practices” could be leading you astray in your marketing and sales activities.

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Transforming B2B Customer Conversations

I had the good fortune of spending some quality time recently with several of our customers at our annual Conversations That Win conference. I wanted to hear firsthand from them how they are transforming their B2B customer conversations through the work they are doing with Corporate Visions. I am grateful for the insight they shared with me, and the opportunity they’ve given us to share their stories.

These leaders are doing the tremendously important work of helping their businesses differentiate and win. They are developing breakthrough messages, and equipping their marketing and sales teams to present a unified voice at every step in the customer journey. It is our honor to serve and support these leaders every day.

Hear how our customers are transforming their organizations with Conversations That Win.

THANK YOU to our outstanding customers featured in this video:

– Andrea Armstrong, Aon Hewitt

– Rica Lieberman, Cisco

– Shelley Robins, United Rentals

– Jay Greaves, Ceridian

– Joel Kline, Starbucks

– Lynette Simmons, Intelsat

– Thierry Van Herwijnen, Wipro

– Bob Bladel, Hyster-Yale Group

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A Skills Deficiency of Our Own Making

Four out of five companies worry they are not training as many salespeople on the skills they need

Companies are struggling to train as many salespeople as they want on the skills they need, but it’s partly a product of their own doing.

According to a new joint survey between my company, Corporate Visions and Sales & Marketing Management magazine, nearly 80 percent of companies say they are not able to train as much as they want primarily because of pressure not to take salespeople out of the field.

Ironically, when we asked “who is the primary decider of what training salespeople should get,” the No. 1 answer was “their manager.” In other words, the very same people who struggle to justify time out of the field.

Sound like a conflict of interest? That’s because it is one.

Faced with the contradictory pressures to drive the business or take time to hone their team’s skills, the majority of managers are opting to take a pass on the training, according to 56 percent of respondents. The next-highest reason for limiting training reach was budget constraints, which ranked a distant second at 37 percent.

Three big training challenges and possible solutions

Faced with this kind of pressure, senior sales management and training leaders need to reconsider their options when it comes to providing the necessary skills development. Here are three considerations in the form of challenges/solutions your company will need to wrestle with if you are struggling with this same dilemma:

Competency models tied to key performance indicators vs. generic roles and responsibilities curriculum
Custom learning paths vs. arbitrary learning paths
Flexible, just-in-time and online options vs. rigid, scheduled and classroom-only option
Competency model-driven training curriculum

According to Sirius Decisions, 70 to 80 percent of companies do not follow a competency-based training model, meaning there’s no standard set of skills that salespeople need to master, and no agreement about what level of proficiency they must show.

What’s a reasonable roadmap for developing a competency-based training program? One idea is to build a competency model around the three “value conversations” salespeople must master across the buying cycle. These value conversations are tied to the critical moments of truth in any deal cycle.

•   Pipeline (Create Value) – Provide training, practice and coaching on the ability to disrupt the status quo, convince a prospect or customer of the need to change, and then effectively differentiate from competitive alternatives to create more qualified opportunities.

•   Proposals (Elevate Value) – Provide skills development and tools to improve the ability of reps to connect external factors and key customer initiatives to your solution, and then build a meaningful business case that communicates value and passes muster with key executive decision makers.

•   Profits (Capture Value) – Provide concepts and techniques to make sure your reps don’t let value leak and margins suffer as the deal makes its way through the process and you confront the inevitable pricing pressures as you run the procurement gauntlet.

By ensuring reps are being trained, coached, measured and certified on these value conversation skills, you’ll improve the relevance of your curriculum relative to sales’ key performance indicators.

Custom learning paths based on performance indicators

With a competency model in place, you can now replace your outdated “arbitrary learning paths” with custom learning paths designed to up-skill salespeople in the areas they actually need, as opposed to relying on unreliable manager opinions or generic role- or tenure-based development plans.

Helping to make this easier is the fact that data is available from several sources, which can help determine each rep’s specific area of training needs. For example:

•   You can look to your CRM system to find which reps are struggling to create pipeline sufficient to meet their quota.

•   You can see which reps tend to have deals and proposals get mired in the middle of pipeline because they struggle to get executive-level buy-in.

•   You can look at deal data to see which reps are the most unscrupulous about discounting and pricing.

Using these performance indicators, you can begin to assign the appropriate training to your reps, helping you address the areas of greatest concern. You can also consider behavioral outcome type assessments that help determine the skills gaps associated with each of the competencies in your model. Well-written surveys that include benchmark data for comparison to low and high performers can help you prioritize which reps need help in which areas.

Flexible learning modalities

Competency models and custom learning paths won’t help your reps unless you can get the right training to the right reps at the right time. As the survey revealed, time is the biggest enemy of a great training program. In traditional classroom learning, reps are often waiting to attend a scheduled class in a city near them that may be months out from when you have determined their need, only to have that date come and the rep’s manager decide they can’t leave the field (or, perhaps a travel freeze could keep them grounded in their home office).

Imagine being able to push virtual, modular content to each of your reps, as soon as you determine gaps and deficiencies in their performance? The idea of just-in-time, situational learning is a reality with modular online training options, which can intercede in real time when an acute performance challenge is identified, creating a custom learning path.

Classroom training may still be perceived as the standard when it comes to driving behavioral change in the field. However, valuable as that format is, it will have zero impact if you can’t get reps into the classroom when they need it.

That’s why companies need virtual training formats that aim to replicate the training rigor of a classroom setting. This virtual format should be based on competency models, custom learning paths and situational learning modalities that improve reps’ performance without removing them from the field.

Evidently this is becoming more obvious to companies, with 65 percent of respondents indicating they plan to increase spending on virtual, modular training formats. Meanwhile, investment in instructor-led classroom training — perceived as the most effective in terms of driving behavior changes — is set to remain flat, according to the survey.

Clearly, there’s growing interest in virtual training, but the survey results suggest that the quality of the format hasn’t caught up to the demand. In fact, only 9 percent of respondents rated virtual training as the most effective for behavior change compared to classroom (45 percent) and manager-led coaching (39 percent).

But, given the choice between getting no training and getting some training — in particular, training that is tied to key competencies and customized to performance indicators, and can be pushed immediately — we may have reached a fundamental tipping point in the area of sales skills training.

Check out Corporate Visions’ State of the Conversation Report: “Beyond the Classroom,” to learn more about how these trends are driving significant changes in sales training.

This article originally published in Sales & Marketing Management Magazine.

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