CommercialTribe Case Study | Pure Storage Sales Manager Enablement

How Pure Storage Structures Sales Manager Enablement to Accelerate Growth

The Company

Founded in 2009, Pure Storage is a leader in the enterprise data storage industry. Pure Storage provides companies with an end-to-end data platform powered by innovative software that is cloud-connected to mobile devices. The company’s all-flash based technology, combined with its customer-friendly business model, drives business and IT transformation with solutions that are effortless, efficient and evergreen.

The Challenge

Pure Storage Sales Manager Enablement ChallengePure Storage has experienced massive growth since its inception, but with that comes growing pains. Pure Storage works very hard to hire, retain, promote, and train top talent in a dynamic business environment. As the sales team grew to meet demand, sales leaders hired or promoted sales managers with little formality to the sales management process. While most growing sales organizations focus on training their salespeople, frontline sales managers in need of training are often overlooked.

Dan FitzSimons, U.S. Vice President of Sales at Pure Storage, is a rare breed of sales leader who believes in the multiplicative effect that great coaching and development can have on a team. As business boomed, he quickly recognized that the traditional sales modus operandi of riding star sellers, only focusing on late-stage pipeline, and ad hoc management processes simply was not tenable.

“It’s not that my managers did not know how to manage their teams. They’re all experienced and highly capable sales managers,” explains FitzSimons. “We wanted to focus on how we could help our frontline managers become more effective through consistency and formalized management processes.”

“We wanted to focus on how we could help our frontline managers become more effective through consistency and formalized management processes.”

~ Dan FitzSimons, U.S. VP of Sales

Sales managers in every company and industry are incentivized to hit their number each quarter. This short-term pressure can make it difficult for managers to invest in long-term team development and pipeline management. As a result, rather than building pipeline and getting involved early in the cycle when there is a better chance of improving outcomes, managers focus on late-stage deals. The problem with this mindset is that, when there isn’t adequate early-stage pipeline continuously built, eventually the well runs dry.

Soo Masson, Director of Sales Enablement at Pure Storage, understands this issue all too well. In her years of experience in sales operations and enablement, she has personally experienced the havoc that ad hoc sales management processes can cause in an organization.

“We were running on all cylinders and business was great,” recalls Masson. “But Dan and I both knew that we needed to build more structure around the frontline manager role to really set our team up for success in the long-run.”

Emblematic of a truly progressive sales organization, FitzSimons and Masson partnered up to tackle this issue by aligning sales and enablement strategies. In the short run, they wanted to create a method through which frontline managers resist the tendency to solely focus on late-stage deals and short-term outcomes, without dramatically affecting compensation or incentive structures. In the long run, they envisioned investing in a system to help frontline sales managers develop their teams and create a sustainable pipeline and, in doing so, secure the future of the sales team—and Pure Storage.

The Solution

Pure Storage Sales Manager Enablement SolutionEvery company has a sales process, and most have a sales management process. But very few have a structured sales management methodology that develops frontline managers into effective coaches and mentors. FitzSimons and Masson knew they needed to develop a formal, consistent sales management methodology that would enrich the pipeline, develop the sales team, and equip FitzSimons’ ten sales managers to be effective coaches. To accomplish this, they wanted a two-tiered approach that would give frontline managers a methodology to manage performance, while creating a mechanism ensuring continual improvement in that effort.

After doing their research, Masson and FitzSimons brought in Jay Tyler Consulting and CommercialTribe to provide an integrated solution that met their needs. Jay Tyler’s Leading Sales Excellence instructor-led training is an in-person workshop focusing specifically on teaching frontline sales managers a prescriptive Field Management Process and calendar cadence, enabling them to become more effective leaders. Leading Sales Excellence teaches leadership skills resulting in a sales-driven culture and establishes frontline management priorities. Ultimately, the goal of the workshop is to embed the Field Management Process in the field with specific cadences around pipeline reviews, forecast reviews, quarterly business planning, and field travel.

In alignment with the Leading Sales Excellence methodology, the CommercialTribe platform serves as the vehicle for Pure Storage to evaluate how well their frontline managers apply the training in the field and continue to improve. CommercialTribe enables visibility into the sales force’s calendared activities and provides an unbiased assessment of behavior improvement of over time. To begin measuring how well sales managers were applying their training, FitzSimons focused on assessing his managers’ ability to conduct pipeline reviews.

“The pipeline review is such a critical part of keeping both managers’ and sellers’ focus on sustainable pipeline development, and yet it’s commonly a misunderstood interaction” explains FitzSimons. “As a result, pipeline reviews often lack consistency and devolve into a deal review where late-stage deals are the focus, rather than focusing on the health and activity of the full pipeline, particularly in the earlier stages.”

Working with FitzSimons and Masson to execute on the critical characteristics of a Pure Storage pipeline review, Jay Tyler Consulting and CommercialTribe partnered to create the assessment criteria of an effective pipeline review. This assessment maps the critical points in a successful 60-minute pipeline meeting. It includes meeting agenda guidelines, action items, and detailed observable attributes that measure a manager’s coaching skills.

The partnership then established a baseline for applying the skills taught in the Leading Sales Excellence workshop in the field. Each sales manager recorded and submitted one of their pipeline review calls using the CommercialTribe platform. CommercialTribe used the assessment criteria to produce a “heat map” report on each individual manager’s performance and the management team’s overall performance. This report established a performance baseline for FitzSimons and his managers with specific, actionable feedback to inform coaching and development to improve pipeline review meetings.

Frontline sales managers were given their individual scorecards and one month to practice and improve their pipeline review meetings. Because of the baseline gap analysis, FitzSimons also knew exactly what areas needed improvement, which informed his coaching of his sales managers.

“Our enablement team invests in instructor-led training of all types, but it is extremely difficult to track participants’ progress after training and measure the results. With Jay Tyler’s Field Management Process and CommercialTribe, we created a system that has a visible, measurable impact on the performance of our managers.”

~ Soo Masson, Director of Sales Enablement

The Results

Pure Storage Sales Manager Enablement ResultsOne month later, FitzSimons’ sales managers submitted a second pipeline review call for CommercialTribe to assess. Using the same assessment criteria from the baseline assessment, CommercialTribe provided FitzSimons and his team with structured, measurable results and insights into the performance of the management team.

Overall, the progression assessment found that 60% of managers improved. Even more impressive, 100% of participating managers had measurably mastered key attributes of an effective pipeline review, such as providing specific feedback, building professional rapport, and mentorship. The largest measurable improvement showed that 90% had now mastered active listening, pressure testing, providing specificity in recommendations and establishing action items.

“Our enablement team invests in instructor-led training of all types, but it is extremely difficult to track participants’ progress after training and measure the results,” explains Masson. “With Jay Tyler’s Field Management Process and CommercialTribe, we created a system that has a visible, measurable impact on the performance of our managers.”

Perhaps most importantly, FitzSimons has effectively been able to make 1 + 1 = 3. By aligning a field management methodology with technology that supports, measures, and evaluates the results, he has the system in place to develop his team’s sales management skills that will lead to long-term pipeline health. The investment Pure Storage made in the development of their sales managers will pay dividends for the growing organization for years to come.

Pure Storage Sales Manager Enablement Builder

About Pure Storage

Pure Storage provides companies with an end-to-end data platform powered by innovative software that is cloud-connected to mobile devices. With Pure’s industry-leading Satmetrix-certified NPS score of 83.7, Pure customers, which include organizations of all sizes, across an ever-expanding range of industries, are some of the most satisfied customers in the world.

Learn More About Pure Storage

About Jay Tyler Consulting

Jay Tyler Consulting has designed seven leadership development programs, each specifically targeted to different levels of an organization to inform world-class leadership and maximize business results. Jay Tyler’s proven methodology for unlocking the potential of frontline sales management is delivered through interactive workshops, one-on-one executive coaching, and mentoring.

Learn More About Jay Tyler Consulting

About CommercialTribe

CommercialTribe is the standard SaaS platform for developing and coaching sales teams to improve performance. The platform enables observation of selling and management behaviors at scale, makes it easy to assess with consistency, quality, and timelines and provides insight and direction to activate coaching.

Learn More About CommercialTribe

/by

CommercialTribe Case Study | Enabling An Agile Sales Team

How a leading internet technology company enabled an agile sales team using CommercialTribe

A leading internet technology company that has experienced significant customer and product line growth since launching in 2003. While this growth has made the company very successful, it also means that, when they needed to adjust the product messaging strategy, they needed a solution proven to be effective at managing sales transformations and enabling agile sales teams on a global scale.

The Challenge

Business moves quickly and the brand is constantly updating product offerings, challenging the sales enablement team to effectively roll these updates out across a large, global sales team.

In 2017, they realized that they needed to get their sales organization—from business development to account executive—delivering a more comprehensive solution-based narrative. The vision was to drive a high-quality, consistent message across one of their most popular product lines. The enablement team was tasked with ensuring that the commercial team could deliver the message, while also being agile enough to shift the messaging or the process as market demands shifted.

To accomplish this goal, they needed to align on the product’s end goal and set performance expectations. The enablement team worked closely with sales leadership to align change management and communication around what was important and relevant to the sales team. Using this collaborative relationship, they created a certification methodology that was comprehensive and quite forward-thinking.

Before partnering with CommercialTribe, each sales rep would schedule a one hour 1-on-1 meeting with their manager, during which time they would role play various product and messaging narratives.The frontline manager would then assess the rep’s performance by filling out a Google Form scorecard and send it to enablement. Then, the Sales Readiness Team would work to aggregate the data from all submitted scorecards to analyze participation, performance, and readiness.

While the certification methodology was solid, the absence of a dedicated practice and message certification platform made implementation time-consuming. This was particularly true for busy frontline managers, who could spend as much as 8 to 10 hours in 1-on-1 meetings and scoring for each launch initiative. Enablement also became concerned about the consistency and objectivity of the performance data they received from managers. And, critically, the entire process from content creation to sales certification could take up to three months—far too long for a leader in the fast-moving tech space.

The Solution

The company’s enablement leaders found the right tool to complement their process and create greater efficiency in CommercialTribe. Using CommercialTribe, the sales and enablement teams have the ability to standardize messaging and certification processes across a global sales team, along with the flexibility to customize the message by role and region—deploying the right message to the right user base at the right time.

The company is now able to quickly drive high-quality, consistent sales messaging in their product line unit through CommercialTribe and are expanding its use into additional business units. The platform provides sales and enablement leaders with the flexibility to launch large, transformative sales changes or make small, yet critical pivots efficiently and effectively. Enablement can set up practice and roleplay activities to help reps perfect the message in a safe environment. Or, to observe a real seller-to-prospect interaction, they can ask reps to simply submit a live-call recording, saving time by allowing them to certify within their normal daily workflow.

“Highlight reels” are also developed using clips from the best pitch submissions to provide clear visibility into what great messaging looks like to all managers and reps. Using their library of highlight reels, customized for different roles, regions, and products, the sales team can easily tap into the organization’s “tribal knowledge” prior to pitching the new message to a real customer or prospect.

Once their team has submitted practice pitches or live-call recordings, sales managers are able to view these interactions in CommercialTribe from anywhere, at anytime. The sales and enablement organizations worked together to create and assessment and scoring system that allows sales managers to score their reps performance and provide detailed, actionable feedback. This system not only saves sales managers hours of time, it also allows them to observe how well reps are able to adjust and pivot in actual conversations. It also helps sales leaders hold managers accountable for making sure their teams can deliver the message.

The Results

The company’s sales organization was able to move a robust, yet time-consuming launch process into a platform that streamlines efficiency, accountability and consistency. And the speed at which they can pivot and go-to-market shows it. They can now launch a new message and get everyone in the global sales organization certified in six weeks or less.

Measuring engagement by participation, the enablement and sales organization drives alignment on new messaging to a high standard. Their ability to drive a 90 – 96% participation rate in the new message certification program is more than simply compliance-driven participation. The sales and enablement team works very closely to create custom messaging that is relevant to different sales roles and regions, and to deliver the information in a way that is highly relevant to the team.

Better yet, using CommercialTribe has cut out the need for the 1-on-1 meetings busy sales managers were previously using to certify their reps. They are now able to observe, assess, and certify their reps in 80 minutes, on average, compared to the approximately 80 hours they were dedicating previously. The platform also saves sales reps’ time, as they can use their live calls to certify on messaging within their normal, daily workflow.

Saving a significant amount of time and dramatically reducing time to market has had a significant impact on the company’s sales organization and revenue attainment. They have launched and completed four messaging certifications in just two quarters. This speed to market and agility has contributed to the pilot product unit becoming the company’s fastest growing business unit, surpassing even the company’s flagship product.

About CommercialTribe

CommercialTribe is the standard SaaS platform for developing and coaching sales teams to improve performance. We create an environment to unlock the potential of every rep and manager to get better—every quota carrying year—by intelligently observing reps in multiple selling scenarios, constructively assessing their behavior, and providing managers with with clear coaching paths to close rep development gaps—and improve their coaching skills.

Learn More About CommercialTribe

/by

CommercialTribe Case Study | HubSpot Sales Team Development

HubSpot aligns sales and operations with CommercialTribe to put the measurement of development of their SMB sales team on auto-pilot.

HubSpot is the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales software company. Founded in 2006, the company has grown to serve over 34,000 customers in 90 countries and employs nearly 1,800 people across seven offices, with hundreds of sales team members worldwide.

HubSpot is renowned for its strong company culture and commitment to promoting from within, which has been key in supporting the significant growth the business has experienced over the years.

The Challenge: Developing a Young Sales Team as They Sprint for Monthly Quotas

Mike Pici, Director of Sales for HubSpot’s SMB sales team, oversees eight frontline managers, who each manage around ten sales reps. The team is mostly made up of young sellers led by a group of first-time millennial managers.

If you think that the sprint to the end of each quarter is a challenge, get this: Pici’s team operates on a monthly quota system. His team of roughly 70 sales managers and reps reset the clock every 30 days. This pace makes it very difficult to spend time developing junior employees and first-time managers because everyone is working to get to the finish line and hit the number.

As HubSpot continues to broaden its platform with innovative new products, Pici’s team needed to evolve their process. It became increasingly essential to be able to conduct high-quality discovery calls to ensure reps understood prospects’ needs and could accurately position HubSpot as the solution to their problem. As the business continued to grow rapidly, this discovery call—the Inbound Growth Assessment (IGA) in HubSpot vernacular—increasingly became an area of focus as a vital step in the sales process.

Mike Pici is a new breed of sales leader. Though his team works hard and he deals with the constant pressures of reaching monthly quotas with a young and developing sales team, he is still committed to carving out time to develop his people. However, like many sales leaders who believe in development, Mike continually grapples with having to re-invent the wheel on where and how to develop his team.

Channing Ferrer, the VP of Sales Operations & Strategy at HubSpot, was experiencing Mike’s pain from the other side of the office. Channing and his operations team conducted a study to determine the fundamental attributes and skills of a successful HubSpot sales rep. While he knew that attributes and skills were indicative of what makes a great sales rep, he did not have a mechanism with which to measure an individual’s strengths and weaknesses against these parameters. Nor did he have a clear path forward to coaching and developing the skills the team needed to gain the attributes and skills they needed to be successful.

Both Mike and Channing needed a systematic approach to pinpointing skills gaps, coaching for improvement, and measuring progress.

The Solution: Establishing a Sales Team Development Program

When HubSpot partnered with CommercialTribe, they found a solution tailor-made for developing sales teams.

Working with CommercialTribe, Mike focused the development of his sales team on improving the IGA. The IGA was a relatively new piece of the sales process, as HubSpot has been shifting from solely selling marketing automation to including their sales platform in the product mix. The IGA intends to frame a bigger customer problem and how HubSpot’s broad solution can address that pain.

CALIBRATE

HubSpot-Sales-Team-Development-BaselineCommercialTribe worked with both Mike and Channing to develop a customized assessment map that accounted for what Channing knew were attributes of a successful HubSpot sales rep with what Mike cared about specifically for running a successful IGA.

This calibration exercise also built trust between Mike and Channing’s departments to ensure that the attributes were correct and the assessment would be adopted by all parties.

BASELINE

Within two weeks after the assessment map was built, the sellers on Mike’s team had submitted a live recording of an IGA call for assessment.

CommercialTribe’s baseline assessment returned results that confirmed Mike’s hypothesis that there was room for improvement on the IGA call. While the team overall was certainly market ready, there were specific areas that, if improved, could make a significant impact on conversion rates at the top of the sales funnel.

COACH

Now it was incumbent upon Mike and his managers to take action. The baseline assessment produced insight into where to coach, but now they needed to put those insights into action during team and 1-on-1 coaching sessions.

CommercialTribe provided coaching guides for Mike and his management team to formalize coaching interactions with a clear and constructive agenda. The coaching guides led managers through the agenda to review the baseline assessment with their reps and align on what makes a great IGA. They would then discuss what the rep did well and where they could improve. Last, they would discuss and agree on actions that they could take to close the skill gaps.

Managers also used CommercialTribe’s “highlight reel”, which contained a different seller demonstrating a given attribute from the assessment map in 1 to 3-minute snippets. Sales reps and managers were able to view and return to the highlight reel on their own time and during coaching sessions to reinforce what an excellent IGA should look like.

“The value of the unbiased 3rd party assessment was huge,” describes one of Mike’s frontline sales managers. “Separating the assessment from coaching allowed us to coach constructively and focus on the fundamentals of great sales conversations by getting back to the basics, like focusing on why setting an agenda matters.”

“Perhaps one of the most surprising and rewarding moments for me,” shares one frontline manager, “was when a veteran rep who was very difficult to engage in change responded positively to the experience and we were able to open up a new coaching dialogue.”

PROGRESSION

HubSpot-Sales-Team-Development-ProgressionWith the baseline results in front of them and coaching delivered against strengths and weaknesses, Mike Pici’s team was ready to submit their IGA calls for a second performance assessment.

Simply put: Mike’s team got better at delivering the IGA.

More specifically, the team’s IGA improved by 22% overall. The team saw huge gains in setting an effective agenda, focusing on differentiation, and delivering an insight. Mike used this opportunity to pause and celebrate with his team, calling out a few cases of exceptional improvement. One team improved by a whopping 44%, three sellers received perfect marks, and five achieved over a 50% lift in their IGA delivery.

The Result: Sales Team Development on Auto-Pilot

Channing and Mike expect to see this improvement show up in his team’s ability to build early-stage pipeline, an area that is hard to get management focus on given the monthly quota system at HubSpot.

“By providing them with clear insight and direction, busy sales managers can now see where and how to coach the key behaviors that move our pipeline forward,” says Ferrer.

The development of a sales team doesn’t begin and end within a quarter but is an on-going commitment to continually improve. “Once I determine where we want to get better, there is a system that puts the measurement of development of my team on auto-pilot,” says Pici.

With the Inbound Growth Assessment call clearly improved, Mike Pici will now turn his attention to the next development area for his team. A quarterly development calendar has been built using a menu of interactions, including not only developing how his reps interact with customers but also how his sales managers interact with their teams.

Could a 20% improvement in the effectiveness of your sales team benefit your organization?

Put the development of your sales team on auto-pilot when you subscribe to CommercialTribe. Request a demo today!

About HubSpot

HubSpot is a leading inbound marketing, sales, and CRM growth stack. Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 34,000 customers in more than 90 countries use HubSpot’s award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. HubSpot Marketing includes social media publishing and monitoring, blogging, SEO, website content management, email marketing, marketing automation, and reporting and analytics. HubSpot Sales enables sales and service teams to have more effective conversations with leads, prospects, and customers. HubSpot CRM helps sales teams organize, track, and grow their pipeline. All three platforms integrate right out of the box and are available for free to start.

Learn More About HubSpot

About CommercialTribe

CommercialTribe is the standard SaaS platform for developing and coaching sales teams to improve performance. We create an environment to unlock the potential of every rep and manager to get better—every quota carrying year—by intelligently observing reps in multiple selling scenarios, constructively assessing their behavior, and providing managers with clear coaching paths to close rep development gaps—and improve their coaching skills.

Learn More About CommercialTribe

/by

CommercialTribe Case Study | How To Fix a Sinking Sales Demo

Fixing a poor sales demo in a global organization feels like trying to turn the Titanic.

When a multi-billion dollar global financial services organization realized that their sales demo was sinking, they turned to CommercialTribe to turn the Titanic.

The Company

A multibillion-dollar financial services company that specializes in developing software to help improve compliance and reduce costs for companies of all sizes. They employ hundreds of sales executives worldwide.

The Challenge

When the company realized that 75% of their sales team was unable to effectively deliver a sales demo, they knew they needed a quick solution to the problem. Not only were these sales demos not turning into revenue, but in a quickly maturing market, this meant that the company stood to lose critical market share.

There are many ways to train a sales team. But when you have to turn the Titanic, you can’t just tell your engineers to shovel more coal into the furnace and hope for the best.

The Vice President of Sales knew he needed to find a scalable, proven program that would work across his diverse teams. He wanted a solution that would not only train his sales team, but require them to practice, and then apply the needed changes in their sinking sales demo. That is when he came across CommercialTribe’s unique sales team development platform.

“Before CommercialTribe, we were focused on telling our buyers what the solution is and what it does,” he explains. “That’s not the most effective sales approach. Now, as a result of our practice initiative, we are back to what matters most—what it means and why our customers buy.”

The Solution

Salespeople who are able to identify specific pain points and clearly articulate value in a sales demo are 35% more likely to be selected as the preferred vendor. And yet, time and time again, we sit through the same old “about us” and “feature-dump” demo.

With 57% of his reps improving their sales demo results, the proof of concept was impossible to ignore.

Using CommercialTribe’s sales development SaaS platform, the sales leader was able to quickly identify the top-performing demo and then align the rest of his team of sales representatives around the message. All in just 15 days. With 57% of his reps improving their sales demo results, the proof of concept was impossible to ignore.

“CommercialTribe has been a primary ingredient in our culture shift. The team is not only embracing the concept that practice drives results, but are eager for the next exercise.”

The Results

CommercialTribe fixed the demo problem. But it didn’t stop there. CommercialTribe is now the sales team’s solution for ongoing sales skills improvement, which also provides a framework for effective coaching. So far, his sales team has improved on such fundamental sales skills as

  • Setting an agenda that focuses on the audience’s pain points
  • Positioning the solutions to solve specific challenges
  • Clearly articulating differentiation
  • Helping the client see themselves using their solution

The organization’s sales training program’s ramp to productivity has been significantly reduced — from several months to a matter of weeks using a formal practice, assessment, and coaching process. With an unsinkable new sales demo and new-found agility to respond to market changes on deck, this global Fortune 500 financial services organization is steaming on to reach ever higher goals and accept new challenges.

“CommercialTribe’s service has been outstanding. So many times you buy a solution only to find it unsupported. CommercialTribe has been proactive, responsive, and with us every step of the way.”

About CommercialTribe

CommercialTribe is the standard SaaS platform for developing and coaching sales teams to improve performance. We create an environment to unlock the potential of every sales rep and manager to get better—every quota carrying year—by intelligently observing reps in multiple selling scenarios, constructively assessing their behavior, and providing managers with clear coaching paths to close rep development gaps—and improve their coaching skills.

Learn More About CommercialTribe

/by

CommercialTribe Case Study | Corporate Visions Launches a Successful Sales Kickoff & Aligns A Growing Sales Team

How does a quickly growing, global company launch a successful sales kickoff?

After an aggressive round of acquisitions, Corporate Visions, Inc. realized they had a growing, worldwide sales team that needed to learn about new products and align around a single message. They needed a successful sales kickoff to launch their own corporate vision in the market.

The Challenge

According to Corporate Visions research, sales and marketing teams agree that a rep’s ability to deliver the best possible message to prospects is the key factor in closing a deal (85% agree). Yet, practice, roleplay, and coaching of these messages are nearly nonexistent, with only 41% of companies asking their team to demonstrate proficiency before going to market. The missed opportunity impacts every aspect of selling – reps influence the market less often, close less business, and fail to break the status quo.

Creating discipline and a road to a practice-based culture allows teams to adopt the right skills, messages, and behaviors necessary to articulate value to prospects.

After Corporate Visions acquired a series of companies, including WhiteboardSelling, Executive Conversations, and BayGroup International, they needed to combine multiple sales teams into one group selling the entire portfolio. This presented a challenge: Corporate Visions needed a way to ensure that reps mastered all of the company’s messaging before selling.

The Solution

CommercialTribe helped Corporate Visions design a sales enablement approach for boosting messaging proficiency across the worldwide sales team. To help adopt the new messaging and drive practice, CommercialTribe created a Product & Service Go-to-Market plan that incorporated the suite of new solutions. The plan combined several steps to build a practice-based activity curriculum, which included:

  • Leaders recorded best practice delivery of the company’s seven point-of-view whiteboard stories for each offering
  • Reps viewed and practiced as many times as it took to get it right, and then submitted their final take for manager feedback and certification
  • Leaders saw a report on their organization’s performance and how well reps adopted the right message
  • Reps were required to stand and deliver each of the seven whiteboards during a two-day workshop during the company’s sales kickoff

The Results

  • Over 90% of the selling organization participated and certified on the seven strategic whiteboard stories within three months
  • Each whiteboard scenario was practiced and recorded 2.5 times on average before final submission
  • Unanimous reps feedback that the sales kickoff was the most impactful, useful, and fulfilling in their experience, including previous companies

CommercialTribe is assisting Corporate Visions in driving the quality and consistency of their messaging, joining the progressive 9% of companies using video to practice. With reps able to articulate value and break the status quo, Corporate Visions is documenting improvements in cross-product pipeline and cross-sell conversions.

Learn More About CommercialTribe Solutions »

About Corporate Visions

Corporate Visions, Inc. helps global business-to-business companies create more sales opportunities, overcome the status quo, and win more deals by improving the conversations sales representatives have with customers.
Learn About Corporate Visions

Key Takeaways

  • CommercialTribe designed a Product & Service Go-to-Market solution
  • Over 90% of the team practiced
  • Sales kickoff was the most impactful, useful, and fulfilling in reps’ experience

“CommercialTribe’s video-based practice helps our team and clients develop quality and consistency in their messaging that allows reps to make a difference in the market. Complex skills and messages that previously weren’t being reviewed are now practiced more than 3 times each until they are mastered. When reps are able to practice and get feedback, they can take the right stories to a prospect and spark an entirely new insight, changing a sales presentation into an engaging answer to ‘why change.’”

– Tim Riesterer
CSO/CMO
Corporate Visions, Inc.

/by

CommercialTribe Case Study | Veritas Certify to Fly at Sales Kickoff

How do you effectively introduce new product messaging at scale and allow for practice, accountability, and certification? Certify to Fly.

Undergoing a company go-to-market messaging change and a new drive for global sales enablement, Veritas needed to efficiently ensure that a team of 135 instructors could master four new Sales Plays in order to effectively teach them to the sales force during the worldwide sales kick-off held in Orlando, FL. Partnering with CommercialTribe, the Veritas sales enablement team was able to deploy video-based Gold Standard Sales Plays to the instructors, allowing them to practice and certify in advance of the kickoff – as well as gain insights into how well the instructors actually knew the message.

The Challenge

With a new sales enablement focus with the split of Veritas into an independent entity and a firm mandate to create more effective reps, Veritas sales enablement developed a plan to produce video-based Gold Standard Sales Plays to ensure reps could observe “what good looks like.” Instructors were given the videos on an all-hands conference call and were expected to review and learn the message before heading to kickoff, where they were expected to teach the new Sales Plays to the sales force.

There was one problem: resources. With a need to take the new Sales Plays global, Veritas sales enablement was faced with a 2-month deadline for ensuring the 135 instructors were not only trained on the new Sales Plays, but also qualified, effective, and ultimately certified.

The challenge Veritas faced was a silent issue. After the initial webinar training, the team had to uncover how to ensure visibility and accountability into who actually practiced, as well as certified, at the new Veritas standard. Given the diverse geographical locations, the training and certification had to be done locally within the different regions.

“The program worked well, but it could not scale,” expressed Sean Cataldo, Director, Global Sales Enablement at Veritas. “Ramp up times were immense, and it took an entire year to prepare. The return was great, but the intense amount of in-person, unpredictable work made the process less scalable and unmeasurable.”

With 2 months to coordinate and train a global team of 135 instructors, Veritas needed a solution that could scale. In particular, the solution needed to broadcast the new Sales Plays, allow the instructors to practice, and asynchronously coach and certify. CommercialTribe was selected to take the effort global.

The Solution

Veritas devised the “Certify to Fly” program, where instructors would have to fully, and verifiably, certify on the new Sales Plays before attending WSMC and helping to train the global rep team.

Using the CommercialTribe platform, Veritas Sales Enablement created a Gold Standard scenario for each of the 4 new sales plays, all with relevant PowerPoint presentations, a detailed script, and a best in class video delivering the message.

Each of the 135 sales instructors were assigned a single Sales Play that they were responsible for delivering at the WSMC. During their preparation week, the instructor was able to access the Gold Standard scenario within CommercialTribe, review the delivery and content, and then practice their own delivery of that Sales Play. Once an instructor created a version showing mastery of the material, they were able to submit their session to selected subject matter experts for review, feedback, and certification.

Once certified, instructors were Certified to Fly to WSMC, break off into smaller classroom groups with reps, and confidently deliver the right message into the organization.

The Results

Using CommercialTribe helped Veritas achieve four key goals surrounding WSMC:

  • Establish Consistency – Ensure that all instructors were actively prepared to deliver a consistent message to the larger sales force
  • Ensure Quality – Through the submission processes, the Sales Enablement team was able to assess the quality of the message instructors planned to deliver
  • Provide Visibility and Accountability – Sales Enablement was able to track which instructors were actively prepared for the WSMC – and which were not. The platform automatically tracked views, practices, and submissions, as well as time to complete the exercise and certify. Additionally, CommercialTribe provided a video recording of each facilitator’s certification, allowing for a unique window into their proficiency.
  • Drive Adoption – By practicing the message in advance of the event, rehearsing, repeating, and recording the right content, instructors arrived more prepared to deliver and teach their peers/colleagues.

115 instructors logged into the system, with 70% submitting their practice sessions. Instructors who logged in viewed the new message 10 times on average before practicing, and practiced messages an average of 8.5 times before submitting for feedback. All training was completed asynchronously, eliminating the need for instructors to coordinate in-person time to practice.

Based on the results, Veritas has introduced CommercialTribe across its global sales team, helping ensure that every rep can see and hear the new message, practice the content as many times as they need to get it right and certify – before taking it to the marketplace.

Learn More About CommercialTribe Solutions »

About Veritas

Veritas enables organizations to harness the power of their information, with solutions designed to serve the world’s largest and most complex heterogeneous environments. Get industry-leading solutions that cover all platforms with backup and recovery, business continuity, software-defined storage, and information governance. Find out more >>

Key Takeaways

  • CommercialTribe designed a Sales Kickoff solution for Veritas’ global team
  • Over 70% of the team practiced
  • Instructors practiced 8.5 times on average
  • Veritas established consistency, quality, visibility, and adoption in their enablement program

“CommercialTribe for us is the cornerstone of the next generation of our enablement program. It’s one of the core elements that we’re going to rely on to take this into the future. CommercialTribe allows us to make messages available where and when sales needs them, and enable sales to watch and practice in an efficient way and critique themselves. They helped us pilot and scale out a new enablement initiative that we are now rolling out to our global team.”

– Sean Cataldo
Director, Global Sales Enablement
Veritas

/by