AMA: Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Jira Align, Daniel Kuperman on Sales Enablement

When selling to developers your enablement activities are likely to take on a different focus so that the team understands how to engage in a discussion and build a community while keeping their sales pitches locked in a drawer. It will also require in-depth technical enablement and understanding of technical use cases as well as how to answer questions without trying to sell them something. The biggest shift might be the mindset, where the sales team needs to focus on what is the best answer to my customer/prospect vs what I want to sell them. It is a very different motion and requires people to be OK telling someone that your product/solution is not the best fit for their use case or even recommending a different vendor. On top of all of that, enablement should also help sellers navigate the differences in the org structure, their roles and responsibilities, and how to reach to high-level decision makers.

In my view, a demo should talk directly to the persona you are dealing with. This means you need to tailor the flow to address that persona’s key challenges, needs, and the situation they live in. I am not a big fan of super-scripted demos. Every salesperson or sales engineer will have their own way of presenting the story, so I like to focus more on the key value proposition I want to make sure it gets clearly articulated at different points. Some may see a product demo as the opportunity to tell the prospect everything that there is to know about the product they are pitching, and that’s when you get into an hour-long boring session where the prospect just says “ok thank you for the demo, we’ll be in touch” and you never hear from them again! A good demo will focus on what is important for that prospect and the personas represented in the meeting while pulling them into the story and facilitate a conversation. When thinking about demo flow, make sure to: * Build a story: what is this demo about? Who is the main character, what are the challenges we are trying to solve, and what is the end result? * Create story hooks: these are moments you want to pause and ask the prospect about their opinion or to give them a moment to talk about their own challenges and how they related to what was shown. * Don’t boil the ocean: it is better to have them wanting to see more details about a specific product area than trying to show every little feature. * Make it about them: a demo disconnected from the prospect’s reality will fall flat. If you can’t use data that is related to the prospect’s own industry or situation, make sure to address their needs and situation by drawing parallels and similar examples.

I like to ask: * Who is this for * Who else would use this * What are you trying to achieve with this * Why now In some cases a sales rep may come asking for a very specific piece of content they think can help in a sales situation. Going through the questions above helps me understand what exactly they need it for and why. Some times they have the right intention but the wrong delivery… in the end is all about understanding the ‘ask’ before you spend too much time working on it.

The best enablement decks I’ve seen address: * Who is this for? * Why is this important? * What is the impact of this? * Action items / next steps Whatever the subject, following the framework above will help identify the specifics of why someone should pay attention. It is also important to always keep in mind the broader context of where the company operates and if you are selling multiple products and/or have a large global presence, to make sure that the team understand that particular situation. Finally, it is not as much about the deck itself I think is important but the delivery of it and the fup activities. How are you going to ensure people are paying attention? How will you measure knowledge retention? These will be important aspects to consider as you rollout any enablement session.

When your messaging needs to be reworked there are typically multiple signs pointing this way. Not only your reps may not be getting traction, but your competitive losses start climbing, fewer qualified leads enter the funnel, and when talking with customers you start hearing more “you were cheaper than the competition” instead of “we saw greater value in your product”. Analysts (Gartner, Forrester, etc.) can also help serve as early warning signs that your messaging needs work, as they will flatly tell you that you sound just like everyone else. I’ve been there and it hurts but is a great wake-up call. This why it is so critical for product marketers to conduct win/loss analysis and also to occasionally sit on sales calls. Now, if you see that leads are coming in, the pipeline is growing but deals are getting stuck, this could be an indicator that the sales team is not being able to convey your value prop or that they are having difficulty in clearly articulating why your solution is different. In this case, more training or enablement can help. The biggest risk we have is waiting too long to diagnose the problem. The ideal scenario is when you can intercept the problem before it becomes too big, and this is where sales enablement tools like MindTickle come into place. They can help you identify if reps are able to deliver your message by providing virtual role-plays and allowing you to measure their effectiveness before they even start talking to customers. Using tools like Gong or Chorus can also help as you are able to listen to call recordings and identify patterns that might be hindering a salesperson's effectiveness. 

This is done in conjunction with your sales enablement team, if you have one. Ideally you will look at the key priorities for sales enablement which you gathered directly from the sales team either via surveys (if you have a big team) or informally during a feedback session (great for smaller orgs). Part of the prioritization process involves looking at: 1. What are the most requested enablement topics or needs 2. Which of those will have the highest impact in a seller's ability to meet their quota 3. How much effort is required to deliver it From there you plot along the timeline the projects you will take on and work with the enablement team on the best way to deliver them. In some cases you could just record a video and make it available for on-demand consumption, in other cases you will want an in-depth training session. These should also be thought about and scheduled in advance. And, of course, you should try to avoid the last month of the quarter when the sales team is fully focused on closing deals.

This varies by company. I’ve been in organizations where PMM would write email templates and in other places PMM would only provide the messaging framework and key bullet points and the BDR/SDR team would write it themselves. Regardless of whether PMM writes those email templates or not, it is important for PMM to meet regularly with the BDR/SDR team to understand what is working and what is not, what questions they have and objections they are getting from prospects.

Some of the big differences you will see include: * Longer sales cycle * A bigger group of buyers and influencers * More focus on security, certifications, and customer proof The main change is to incorporate additional personas in the sales cycle which will include new messaging and positioning. When you go from having to convince 1 or 2 people to buy your product to 5 or 7, more work is needed. In the Enterprise market you will also be asked more questions about security, certifications, global support, etc. so enabling the team to handle these questions will help. Finally, the sales cycle will likely be longer and thus training for the sales team on how to handle the longer sales cycle, how to accelerate deals, how to build rapport with different stakeholders will be important. Many companies when expanding to Enterprise also want to review their sales methodology and approach. As you re-think enablement programs to address the enterprise market, work with the enablement team on these key differences and adjust training and enablement sessions as needed. 

This is where the partnership with the sales enablement team is valuable. If you don’t have a sales enablement counterpart, then I suggest the PMM team to think in terms of the Knowledge - Skills - Behavior framework. Here’s how this works: * Knowledge: what do sales reps need to know in order to be successful? * Skills: how should they apply their knowledge in sales conversations? * Behaviors: what activities make for a successful sales rep? This is a good framework to discuss with sales leadership. The common understanding of what sales reps need to know, how should they talk about it, and what specific behaviors will make them successful can help you lay down the foundations for a strategic program. In the end, we want to make sure that the sales team can accurately articulate the value of your product/solution and are competent in handling objections, and know how to differentiate from alternatives in the market. Whenever there’s a request for you to ‘create this for the sales team’, go back to the framework and think through which area this new ‘thing’ will impact and how. As requests come in you can categorize them differently and prioritize themaccording to the expected impact.

Ultimately is about revenue attainment. Are sales reps being able to make their numbers? If yes, you are likely doing your job well. Now, if we look more closely at how to impact revenue attainment from a product marketing perspective we end up with the following metrics: * Win / Loss rate: this can indicate if the messaging/positioning needs work and if sales reps have the right tools at their disposal. * Competitive win rate: indicates how effective are the battle cards and competitive training. * Conversion along the marketing funnel: this will give you anindication of content performance and messaging. * Pipeline coverage: are we targeting the right personas, the right companies, and are reps able to convey value. Other metrics that the sales enablement team will be monitoring include sales ramp time, quota attainment, etc. which may not be relevant for product marketing unless your team is also involved with these activities.

You have several products with release dates next to each other and limited resources, so what do you do? Here’s how you can think of this: first, identify the releases with the highest ‘tier’ or ‘priority’ (classification of release tiers vary company by company). The highest priority feature is typically the one with the highest impact in the market and that should get more enablement focus.