Evolvers

If you have a high volume of leads but a low conversion rate, have marketing saying things are great, but sales saying it's a struggle, and have data sets that don't tell the same story either, you likely have misalignment between your sales, marketing groups.  And this can have a serious cost to your business.

These are some of the challenges author Jeff Davis highlighted as clear indicators to sales and marketing alignment issues in our latest interview. But stress not, as we also discussed specific ways to not just recognize, but help overcome these alignment issues.

When taking over a new sales enablement program, what do you do first? How do you prioritize and remain not just focused but motivated through what promises to be a lot of trial and error?

This is what we discussed with Bill Mathias, the Global Head, Sales Enablement and Revenue Operations at ACI Learning, a training provider for leaders in Audit, Cybersecurity, and Information Technology.

Bill shared how he created a culture for success, the capability and maturity framework he leveraged to guide progress, and the measurements he used to track accomplishments.

How is the role of the Sales Engineer (SE) changing, and what is needed to enable Sales Engineers for success?

These are some of the questions we posed to Sales Engineer author, training and consulting expert John Care. Having trained thousands and run Sales Engineering for the likes of CA, Business Objects and Clarify to name a few, he was just the expert we needed to capture an understanding of the changing role of the SE, how to optimize SEs for virtual environments, how to keep SEs better enabled, engaged and retained.

When it comes to what makes a seller and sales leader successful, there is one key ingredient that makes all the difference in today's market, and that is trust and transparency.

In this interview with award-winning author of the Transparency Sale and sales performance consultant Todd Caponi, we discuss his groundbreaking research on the importance of transparency to driving sales success, and how setting and meeting expectations and embracing your "flawesomeness" can make all the difference in winning that big deal. Even more, we explore not just how trust and transparency can drive better seller performance, but how it can be leveraged to transform sales leadership to drive more predictable revenue performance and growth, and how Todd has shaped these new findings and practices into his new book, The Transparency Sales Leader.

Growing two incredibly successful value acceleration programs, first at Splunk and now at Databricks, Doug May has the success metrics and track record that immediately grabs your attention, and makes you want to know his secret sauce for success.

And this is exactly what we discussed in this important interview, uncovering Doug and his teams' secrets to value enablement program leadership, adoption and scale. Doug openly shares what it took to build both programs to success, what he would do differently, and the success metrics this has driven.

When you launch a new Customer Success organization, and go from a team of 9 to over 50 in less than two years, you must be doing something right, and certainly have some important lessons to share.

In this interview with Jessica Lovell, VP of Customer Success for SPINS, a leading wellness-focused data technology company, we discuss the challenges in creating and growing a new customer success organization, how to best enable the team and measure for success, and important lessons  learned along the way..

When you develop and launch a value enablement program you want to make sure you value selling, marketing and customer success is done right, and evolves correctly to greater success. This means being able to sell customers on participating, overcoming key objections for credibility, and instrumenting sales and partners to scale.

In this interview with Rui Miranda and Fiona Leeson, customer value leaders with fintech firm Finastra we discuss what it took to get their value enablement program right, and the four lessons they learned along the way that you can proactively address to make your program even better right out of the gate.

Rui -

I wanted to get a view of what priorities and initiatives the best sellers and sales leaders were working on to kick-off 2022, and who better to tap than the Sales Evangelist himself, Donald Kelly.

Donald hosts the popular and valuable Sales Evangelist podcast, is CEO / founder of Sales Evangelist Training, is an Adjunct Professor with BYU in Idaho and is the VP of Sales with BenfoComplete.

In this interview we do a quick lookback, reviewing the big themes that drove 2021 initiatives, and how these are being reshaped as we move into a New Year. Everything from the importance of trust and transparency, seller retention and diversity

As customers want less friction in the buying process and demand more from sellers, what do you need to do in order to meet new buyer needs and deliver differentiated experiences?

In this interview with Lisa Schnare, a Sales Development Consultant and Fractional Sales Leader and a ValueSelling Framework Advocate & Associate, we discuss ways to leverage a more value oriented approach and framework to improve your buyer engagements and drive better sales performance. We discuss ways to perform better buyer discovery, demo more effectively, how to "clean the plate", form and collaborate on a plan letter and several more specific techniques you can leverage immediately to boost sales.

How effective is current forecasting and how can it be improved with data, insights and intelligence to drive more efficiency, accuracy and predictable revenue outcomes?

In this interview we discuss these issues and revenue intelligence solutions with Todd Abbott, the Chief Executive Officer for InsightSquared, and a seasoned executive sales and marketing leader for the likes of Mitel, Spireon, Avaya, Seagate, Symbol, Cisco and IBM.

Listen in to learn what data is important to consider, how to measure sales and buyer flow, and why this is an essential tool to implement in 2022 for Chief Revenue Offices (CROs), sales execs, marketing leaders and revenue operation pros.

When you have 20 years of experience in creating and scaling value selling programs, you learn a thing or two. In this interview with Scott Jeffries, Director of Value Consulting for Slack, we tap his extensive experiences in his current role, and with Netsuite, TFP and SAP, as he outlines his proven formula for allocating the right resources and investments, hiring the best value consultants, and scaling the program for selling and partner success,

Checkout his proven roadmap to help you create, launch and evolve your own value enablement practice:

Post pandemic, most sales enablement teams are leveraging learning management systems (LMS) to help remote and hybrid sales teams become better trained, competent and engaged.

To better understand the best practices which sales enablement pros are leveraging to accomplish this, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Kling, Vice President of Marketing, for LMS solution provider SAP Litmos.

In this interview, Jennifer discusses the "art of the possible" in remote training, video and mobile learning, and coaching, and outlines the three key priorities for 2022: 1) Mobile learning,  2) Sales leader advancement and growth, 3) Enabling hybrid workforce training / learning.

When you develop a business value program, where do you best start, and what are the exact steps you can use to achieve scale and excellence?

In this interview with Gino Colonico, Digital Transformation lead for PTC and key developer of PTC’s value enablement / management office and tools, we explored these questions and more, with Gino sharing his personal journey and lessons learned.

When you are selling digital transformation to manufacturing, product and engineering firms, it is essential that there be a solid business case made for change, and business value outcomes tracked and achieved over time.

Shawn Tsetsilas is the Digital Transformation lead for PTC, a leading provider of CAD, PLM, IoT, and AR solutions, and I had the opportunity to talk to him about the Value Enablement program he is helping PTC develop and launch to do just this type of assessment for prospects and customers.

Shawn discusses what it takes to get a value program right, at scale and adopted effectively, with some great and frank advice.

When you want to evolve and elevate an existing sales enablement program, or set up a new practice from scratch, where do you turn for a blueprint?

In this interview with Mike Kunkle, one of the top sales enablement thought leaders, author of the new book “The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement” and currently Vice President, Sales Effectiveness Services for sales growth consultancy SPARXiQ, we discuss the elements of an effective sales enablement blueprint, with building block details on how to think about your content, sales hiring, sales training and coaching, measurement and how to optimize your sales tech stack.

How perfect does your ROI business case proposal need to be? How much evidence is enough, or too much?

To answer these questions, we turn to former CIO, two-time best selling author and IT value consultant Jim Maholic to discuss the importance of presenting a credible business case, what evidence is needed to reinforce the credibility and how to best scale a value enablement program for success.

How do you get sellers to do better value discovery, storytelling and quantification? How do you assure rollout, adoption and scale of your new value program despite being remote?

These are just a couple of the key value selling questions I tackled with Chad Sanderson, Managing Partner for leading sales training firm Value Selling Associates.

In this interview he discusses the importance of having a framework to help drive more effective value discovery and conversations, and how to reshape value learning and enablement programs now that sellers are remote.

Why should your reps be more Sherpa and less Salesperson?

What can sellers learn from musicians to maintain their groove and up their performance?

These are just a few of the questions we addressed with author, podcaster, keynote speaker and selling consultant David Fisher, better known as D-Fish.

David has written 9 books including the best-sellers “Hyper-Connected Selling” and "Networking in the 21st Century", and he’s the host of "Beer, Beats, and Business", a podcast that shares casual conversations with leaders in sales, marketing, and entrepreneurship. We tapped into this consulting and research experience to better understand what it takes to be a better seller, sales leader and revenue enablement professional with the "new normal".

How do you get sellers best enabled with new selling methodologies, messaging and skills now that they are remote?

To answer this key question we tapped Jason Gwilliam, a Sales Enablement Evangelist, Podcaster, Blogger, and Speaker, currently Sales Enablement Leader for Abbott's Structural Heart division.

Tapping his extensive sales enablement and training leadership experience with several medical device companies and the Navy, we discuss the best ways to keep your remote sellers engaged, capable and confident.

What does the journey to leading your own value practice look like, and what does implementing value enablement across the entire customer lifecycle entail?

In this interview, we explore both the personal journey and customer value lifecycle with Jeff Collins, Senior VP of Value Engineering for business spend management firm Coupa. Jeff provided several key value innovations he and his team have put into solid practice, especially: engaging with proforma value hypotheses early in the customer engagement process, leveraging benchmarks and peer comparisons, the value of success stories and proof points and the best way to implement Realize value / ROI for customer success.

How do you best convince sellers to evolve from price to value? How do you assure buyers trust in you and in the decision to be made?

These are two key questions among others that we addressed and answered with practical advice and methods in this interview with author, podcaster and keynoter Ian Altman.

Checkout his sales performance and value selling advice here -

When engaging with new prospects and customers, it's essential to align with business objectives, build a solution transformation journey and know the business outcomes.

In this interview with Christopher Li, VP of Transformation and Innovation at Revenue Intelligence firm Xactly, we discussed his Transform business advisory group who deliver on this vision, and how he optimized his value enablement and acceleration lifecycle initiatives for pre-sales growth and customer success.

If you are in Value Enablement and Value Selling, you are likely very passionate about the topic and practice. And if you are the ROI Dude and the ROI Guy, it's not just in the name, it's in the blood.

In this interview with Steve Kaplan, we geek out on the value of ROI pre and post sale, value storytelling, and how vital financial justification is for "building trust in the decision".

When you want to have a credible, trusted value program it pays to lead with a six sigma and customer success approach, this according to our interview with Rosalie Girard, the Director of Business Value Engineering for unified search, analytics and machine learning pioneer Coveo.

In this conversation we explore ways to leverage Customer Success to gather real-world impacts and evidence to fuel your Value Enablement program, Day in the Life of (DILO) to quantify benefits, and strategic value plans to prioritize and roadmap mutual success.

With so much change in buying processes and digital selling, I wanted to test some theories and bounce a few ideas off a true expert, to understand what is working best and how to improve.

I turned to Lori Richardson, a B2B Sales and Revenue Growth Strategist, a Salesforce and LinkedIn “Top Sales Influencer to Follow”, a Virtual Sales Kickoff Speaker, Author, Event Organizer, and host of the award-winning, "Conversations with Women in Sales" podcast.

Checkout her sales transformation advice here:

Connecting, engaging and convincing buyers is harder than ever before, but sharing and leveraging insights can give you a significant edge.

Knowing this, we tap THE experts, Dr. Stephen Timme and Melody Astley from Finlistics, author of the book Insight Led Selling, to discuss exactly what insights are and how sellers can leverage to get more meetings, close more deals and improve renewals.

A remote, and even more challenging hybrid selling environment requires sales enablement to rethink how they enable sellers with the right content, tools and intelligence to succeed. So what should you be doing today to properly enable success?

Who better to learn from than Nancy Nardin, Founder of the decision resource site: Smart Selling Tools. In this interview we discuss the key introspective questions you should be asking, and what content, value and sales enablement practices you should be leveraging immediately to improve customer engagement experiences and drive selling success.

As sellers we are often provided with discovery guides and taught about the key questions to ask our prospects, but do we have a guide and coaching on how to provide the best answers, especially responses enabling us to build trust, so important with today's skeptical buyer?

In this interview with Dr. Brian Glibkowski, author of the book Answer Intelligence: Raise Your AQ we discuss six methods to Answer questions, in order to influence your deals from "Do Nothing" to "Yes".

In this interview with value expert, "Sales is King" podcast host and top-sales leader Dan Sixsmith, we review some of the pressing challenges he and his team have been addressing over the past few quarters, and why he thinks now is the time to address these challenges elevating value from a "just tools" to a lifecycle program approach. Best of all, we discuss the new Value Enablement Lifecycle framework and the people, process, tools, integration and intelligence that can help guide the journey.

With so many businesses now selling subscription services and relying on recurring revenue, it's not just marketing and sales responsible for business development. It is now everyone in the organization who plays a role.

In this interview with Alex Moyle. the podcast host of the Growth Hub podcast series and author of the book “Business Development Culture, Taking Sales Culture Beyond the Sales Team”, we discuss the challenges of achieving recurring revenue success and the key enablement you need to implement today in order to drive success.

How important is enabling your partners a key to their success, and how is Partner Enablemnent best accomplished?

In this interview we ask these questions of Murat Guvenc, currently the Managing Director for Accuras - an IBM Data & AI partner.

He leverages this current partner experiences and background as a Business Unit Sales Manager for IBM’s Cloud Business Unit to outline the importance of enabling content, tools and storytelling in winning business for partners today.

How do you handle hyper-growth and not just keep the wheels on, but achieve even greater than expected success?

According to this interview with Mark Ebert, the SVP of Sales for 6sense, you have to enable your legacy and new sellers with the right equipment (toolset), right game-film (mindset), and right practice (skillset) to accelerate success.

Checkout this great sales leader discussion on exactly how to implement the right sales and value enablement to help overcome hyper-growth challenges and achieve success.

Is closing a six figure deal any different, now that we are selling all / mostly virtual?

This is one of several important questions I posed to the author of "Winning the Six Figure Sale", Jeff Goldstein.

Find out why he doesn't think BANT is dead at all, how you need to assure your pipeline is overflowing, and  how Inspect, Assess and Coach are vital for sales leaders to get right.

What does it take to be in the top 1% of sellers, and what can you learn from the best to enable more of your "middlers" to become top performers?

We tackled these questions with Scott Ingram, the host of the Sales Success Stories and Daily Sales Tips podcasts, and author of the three great books: Sales Success Stories, B2B Sales Mentors and Finding Sales Success on LinkedIn.

With accelerating requirements and over 800 different sales enablement solutions, how do you make sure you make the right choices and get what you need for success?

In this interview we turn to the expert, Dan Cilley, CEO and Founder of Vendor Neutral, THE go-to-resource, dedicated to helping sales leaders and enablement professionals simplify their sales, content and value enablement technology selection process and advance their practices and performance.

Buyers say they will do business with a seller that can best:

1) Understand their business

2) Prove value for money

3) Reliably follow-up and communicate

This, the latest post-pandemic research revealed for the first time here, and discussed in great detail with Jonathan Farrington, Director of Sandler Research and founder of Top Sales World.

Checkout what this research means and Jonathan's take on how to best enable sellers for post-crisis success.

If you are in sales, without in person trade-shows and conferences post crisis, you don't have much choice but to "cold call" in order to generate enough opportunities. But isn't cold calling dead, and with thousands of other sellers eager to prospect, aren't customers already inundated with too many  requests for demos and meetings?

How do you break through the noise to connect and engage with prospects, without turning them off?

Is it best via phone calls, email or social? What about video and personalization?

I am asked all the time how to best enable and train sellers on how to address these issues. Heck, I know what works for me, but I didn't have the answers as to what works best overall.

So I sought out the expert, Morgan J Ingram, a LinkedIn Top Sales Voice and Top 25 Sales Development Thought Leader, and a very successful podcaster, seller, sales leader, coach and trainer.

In this interview I put Morgan on the spot, to get answers to all my pressing prospecting questions, and hopefully answer yours as well.

If you are a seller looking to up your prospecting game, or in sales enablement or a coach who wants to better empower your selling teams, this session is a must listen for practical prospecting advice.

How do you get that new value enablement program not just off the ground but soaring high?

In this interview with Vikas Mundada, the Director of Business Value for Ping Identity, we explore in detail how he designed, developed and launched a new business value enablement program.

Where are organizations struggling the most in their sales enablement and transformation, and what is working best?

How do we get the sales enablement people, resources and budget we need to improve?

These are just a few of the questions I posed to the Sales Enablemenbt Sherpa himself, Bob Britton, Director of Sales Enablement for security and networking from Netsurion.

He dished practical advice and roadmap guidance for anyone building and improving their sales enablement practice.

It is well known that Account Based Marketing (ABM) can be leveraged for better outreach and generating closable opportunities, but less know how it can also be used to better get new accounts to revenue and existing accounts to renewal and expansion.

In this interview we tap the expertise of Kristina Jaramillo, host of the Stop the Sales Drop podcast and founder of Personal ABM, to explore how an ABM approach, content and mindset can best be leveraged to drive performance.

What are the top challenges faced by sales, sales enablement and customer success leaders in 2021?

When you run one of the largest peer groups and resources for these leaders and practitioners, you learn every week what's most concerning and what to do to solve each. In this interview with Sales Assembly 's President Christina Brady we reveal what she is hearing every week as to the top challenges this year and what you can do to help address each.

How do you grow Consumer Product sales despite virtual engagements and a tough business environment?

In this interview with Tom Meyers, he is a Vice President of Sales for Conagra Foodservice, we discuss recent food service challenges post-crisis and how his team are not taking these sitting down, proactively leveraging value storytelling, interactive presentations and sales enablement to address customer opportunities and drive much better customer engagements.

Post crisis, buyers are taking more time, involving more decision makers, more stressed and risk averse. As a result, you may have to rethink and adjust your negotiating tactics to stop the discounting and achieve desired results.

To explore these changes and get the best advice, we interviewed Ron Hubsher, the CEO of the Sales Optimization Group, an international sales and sales negotiation consulting and training organization, and author of the book “Closing Time: The 7 Immutable Laws of Sales Negotiation”.

As more B2B customers are involved in every decision, engage more deeply, scrutinize the financial outcomes of every decision more thoroughly and expect consumer like experiences, the pressure is on Product Marketers to evolved and "do differently".

To learn what is expected and how to differentiate, we interview Lance Shaw s a long time Product Marketing leader and currently the Director of Solutions Marketing for data backup, storage and management firm Commvault.

We discuss ways to leverage bots, interactive content and value assessment tools to generate more close-able leads, improve customer engagement experiences and drive marketing success. 

As a pre-sales engineer would you ever consider becoming a value consultant?

In this interview with Jessica Bell, a Senior Value Consultant for content management and engagement firm Egnyte, she discusses her personal journey from sales / solution engineer to value consultant, and why it was the perfect choice for her.  Jessica shares her techniques for designing a great toolset, better customer value engagements, scaling a value program for success, and how a growth mindset has served her well, regardless of the role.

Value has evolved from simple ROI and TCO spreadsheets, to interactive ROI / TCO calculators, to now lifecycle management throughout the customer engagement. From enterprise technology solution providers to start-ups and b2b solution providers across many industries.

In this interview, we discuss the ROI, TCO and business value management evolutionary trends and current best practices with Bill Liebler, the Director of Value Management at NetSuite, and formerly a value, channel and industry pre-sales expert from IBM WatsonCrossWorlds Software, and Oracle.

Checkout his insights and advice here:

As the CMO of Gong, Udi Ledergor knows a thing or two about virtual selling and how revenue intelligence has helped to optimize performance of his and his customer's sales teams.

In this interview we press Udi on what sellers are getting right and wrong in their virtual selling engagements, and he highlights the three key factors winning sales teams and sellers are leveraging to win more deals and grow their business.

What is the difference between a Product and a Success Outcome, and why should you distill everything down to the one success outcome that makes your line of business unique?

These are some of the questions I asked the Outcomes Guy, speaker and author Paul Henderson in this important interview for value and customer success leaders.

Inspiring, Influential, Interactive

When I came across this research from Rain Group about the growing engagement gap between buyer and seller I was floored, and you will be too.

The results illuminated the four top factors influencing buyer purchase decisions, and unfortunately, just how sellers are falling short now that we are all virtual selling.

If you are a sales or sales enablement leader, this interview with Andy Springer, the Chief Client Officer at RAIN Group and most recently the Author of Amazon Bestseller "Virtual Selling", is an absolute must listen.

When selling virtually, sellers are reporting some serious challenges, including the ability to connect, get stakeholders together, gain consensus and instill confidence in the decision, this according to Gartner. So how do you best overcome each of these challenges?

To understand how best we tapped the wisdom of Tim Wackel, a leading sales trainer, keynote speaker, and executive presentation coach, an inductee in the Sales Hall of Fame, and a sales leadership veteran of Agilent Technologies and HP.

He reviews his Problem Solving 101 approach to being a successful seller, a time-honored straightforward approach to prescribe not pitch, and some special techniques you need to apply to virtual selling environments to drive selling success.

It can be difficult to know where to best start, and what steps to take in the journey to optimize your value consulting group and value acceleration program for your organization.

To learn what's best, we interview Scott Sendel, currently the RVP of Insight and Value Services at Palo Alto Networks, and a  long-time value acceleration pioneer and veteran, as Vice President Global Customer Strategy with Oracle, a Senior Principal Value Engineering with SAP and Engagement Director with I2 Technologies.

Creating value programs from scratch as well as being a key component in some worldwide benchmark practices, he's learned a thing or two, and he shares so many best practices to guide your journey.

What are some of the big challenges facing product marketing post-crisis? How do you end Death by PowerPoint presentations? What is the best way to leverage value to differentiate your approach and solution throughout the buyer's journey?

Not only did this value team figure out how to most effectively propose business value improvements to it's public sector prospects, it managed to weave value across the customer lifecycle and into their solutions and purpose.

In this interview, Nick Bishara, the Director Sales Operations at Objective Corporation discusses how he and his team first developed and delivered a set of value tools, and over the next four years leveraged this success, expanding the program across the organization to a comprehensive value acceleration program.

With buyers doing more research on their own, and requiring financial justification for every purchase consideration, value, ROI and TCO calculators are an absolute requirement.  In fact, if you don't have these for each of your solutions, you are already starting off at a distinct deficit.

This according our interview with Greg Bennett, the Head of Emerging Technology for Product Marketing at data protection and information management solutions provider Commvault.

Checkout some of the advice he has for making your value, ROI and TCO calculator programs world-class.

From all the potential criteria, how do you assure you are picking the best sales enablement platform?  How do you vet the content and develop the best experience for the sellers? How do you pilot and deploy for best adoption and effect?

This interview with Lisa Bobb-Semple (United States Postal Service) provides step by step advice on what it takes to get a sales enablement program right, from a been there, done that practice leader. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night were going to get in her way. Hear about Lisa's journey and learn from her adventures.

When you have tens of thousands of data points on what characteristics make sellers a success, and you are an experienced CMO as well, you figure out a thing or two about sales enablement, content, virtual selling and more.

In this lively interview we discuss the importance of content, "Reading the Zoom", sense making and simplification with Aptology's CMO Caroline Tien-Spalding.

The need for engaging, justifying and proving value with prospects and customers has never been higher, so what should you be doing to address this marketing, selling and success opportunity?

In this interview with Matt Denton, the Senior Global Director for Inspire Value (formerly at)ServiceNow, we discuss the latest trends and best practices in value engineering and management, and what Matt recommends you do over the next 12 months to drive success.

In his 25 years of sales transformation and performance consulting, Mike Kunkle has learned a thing or two (or three).

In this inspiring interview with this esteemed author and speaker, we discuss the identity crisis that Sales Enablement has had, the growing engagement gap between buyer and seller, and the steps you need to develop a buyer-centric approach to selling and sales enablement in order to overcome these challenges.

Virtual selling is here to stay, and you have to work on your presence and building trust with your prospects and customers in on-line engagements and after each meeting with the broader buying committee.

You may have experimented with video for initial reach out and prospecting, and it can be used as a tool for so much more.

In this interview we discuss the best ways to succeed in this new selling environment and especially ways to leverage video messages throughout the buyer's decision making process to inspire change and gain greater trust.

We've seen an incredible increase from buyers to be able to effectively communicate and quantify differentiating value to clients. But how do you create a value program ... step by step, one that uses more science than art, and is scalable from day one?

In this interview with Aaron Froberg, the Sr. Director of Value Acceleration at Egnyte, we discuss exactly how to build a scalable value consulting and selling program from the start, how to expand it from just selling with value, to accelerating with value, and the measurements and performance you can expect when you get it right (does a 2.6x increase in win rate sound good?).

This interview with Omer Minkara, author, VP & Principal Analyst at Aberdeen Group, explores the latest research, insights and advice on Remote Sellers.

In this session Omer outlines three ways to get the most productivity from your sellers now that they are remote and digital selling, and six new Sales Tech elements to drive improved selling effectiveness.

When you've developed and launched go-to-market programs for tech leaders like ServiceNow, SGI, EMC, Nokia, and startups such as Clumio, you learn a thing or two (or three).

In this interview with product marketing veteran Steve Siegel we discuss how to put value at the center of your go-to-market, and what it takes to launch a successful program to better communicate and quantify differentiating value to your prospects and customers.

There are six big trends driving sales transformation: the rise of virtual selling, a new generation of leaders and new buyers, the need for integration and measurement and the explosion of AI,

With these trends in mind, Stephen Diorio and his team at the Revenue Enablement Institute published new research and a framework for creating a new Commercial Model and selecting the best sales technology to support the transformation.

In this interview, Stephen discusses the driving trends and outlines the 9-elements of the 21st Century Commercial Model.

B2B buyers indicated just how important selling experience is in creating customer loyalty, far more than brand, delivery and price, and those sellers who create a better experience are leverage these five key traits.

We had the opportunity to interview Challenger's  Senior Vice President of Marketing, Spencer Wixom, to get all the details on this new research, how the Challenger Sales Methodology has evolved as a result, and what you need to do now to meet elevated buyer expectations and deliver a better selling experience.

The buyer's decision making process has become much more complex, and too many decisions are ending up at "No Decision". This is a challenge, but also represents an incredible opportunity for the seller who knows how to help the buyer navigate a more complex process.

In this interview "The Best Sales Coach" , podcaster and consultant Gert Scholts discusses his take and the three things you need to do now as a seller or sales and enablement leader to capture the opportunity.

Before early 2020, we saw the majority of sales and marketing teams focused on new account acquisition to fuel growth. Then the crisis hit, and many companies “circled the wagons” around existing customers, and all of a sudden key account management became vital again.

So why this renewed focus and how do you get key account management right ?

In this interview with Liz Heiman, CEO and Chief Sales Strategist for sales consultancy Regarding Sales, she answers these questions and many more in order to assure expansion revenue and growth from your key account management sales and enablement.

When it comes to Marketing strategy, one of the go to researchers and consultants has some special insights and strong opinions on how to become more engaging, especially now that b2b selling is more digital and remote.

In this interview with Matt Heinz, we discuss his predictions for 2021, and his specific advice on how to be more engaging, value-focused and agile in the New Year.

Getting pre-sales enablement right when buyers are more digital and all remote is a challenge, however, these two professionals know a thing or two (or three) about best practices, especially when it comes to software sales.

In this interview we explore the challenges and three practical solutions to improve your software sales performance with Tim Bromme and Jan-Erik hosts of the Sales Excellence Podcast and expert pre-sales practitioners.

What is Design Thinking and how can you apply it to make your next virtual sales engagement collaborative and amazing?

We explored how to leverage a three step approach of Discovery, Insight and Acceleration, with the expert on Design Thinking for sales, Ashley Welch, co-author of the book Naked Sales - How Design Thinking Reveals Customer Motives and Drives Revenue.

In this interview we discussed how anyone in sales, even if they don't have drawing skills, can leverage a Design Thinking approach to improve empathy, gain trust, co-create a solution and accelerate buyers from "do nothing" to "Yes".

Checkout a typical sales presentation or Success Story and you'll notice the solution provider is often the center of attention, but this is not what the best storytellers show us as a different, more effective path. A good story makes the buyer the hero, bringing us along on a journey of purpose from pain and despair to happily ever after.

In this interview with Chief Fabulous Officer and sales enablement frontierswoman Melissa Madian we explore how to leverage visuals and storytelling, to sell like Netflix.

In this interview with Ryan Rhoten of brand messaging consultancy Careerbrand, author of the book CareerKred: 4 Simple Steps to Build Your Personal Brand & Boost Credibility in Your Career, and the host of “The BRAND New You” podcast we discuss the importance of having clear messaging, leveraging storytelling and refining and promoting your personal brand as a seller.

We are in a world now and forever more where selling will be overwhelmingly digital and remote, and as a result having the right messaging is more important than ever, unfortunately we still see too many organizations pitching their products and services with features and jargon instead of delivering the simplicity and clarity buyers want and need.

So what are the key elements that make for good messaging, and how do you leverage storytelling and personal brand to get the word out?

There is a big question looming over b2b sales into 2021. With most  buyers leveraging digital and engaging remotely, do we even need sellers at all?

This question is one we posed to the VP of Global Sales Development at global transportation and logistics firm DHL.  We discuss how sellers are more important than ever, if they are able to evolve and make an important and critical pivot, and the key role sales enablement plays in creating a new toolset, skillset and mindset for success in 2021.

What are the most important strategies and tools to implement for sales enablement going into 2021?

In this interview we talk to Clark Green, the Vice President of Operations & Enablement at Xactly Corp. about his teams dynamic sales growth, transformation and tactics to succeed.

A CMO who continues to rely on spam, forms and cold calls is so yesterday. Buyers demand more, and there is a better way to connect, engage and sell by doing less. This according to my interview with Latane Conant, the CMO for leading account-based marketing firm 6sense and a new author with an important book that was the basis of our discussion.

Latane was direct, frank and for a change, she kept our talk G-rated! If you are a marketing leader, you have to get Latane's take on how to outperform by leveraging ABM in a new way to optimize your marketing and sales.

Why is the Chief Customer Officer so important now to growth success, and what should your strategy focus on for 2021 sales, marketing, customer success and service success?

In this interview with Yamini Rangan, the CCO of Hubspot, we discuss the accelerated shift to digital, remote and economic focused buyers and the leadership and strategy you need to execute in 2021 to be prepared and succeed.

Virtual selling is here to stay, it is certainly not new, and there is no excuse for poor virtual engagements any longer.

This according to my interview with Alice Heiman, one of the most experienced sales consultants and readiness professionals.

In fact, according to Alice, the winners in 2021 and beyond will be those organizations that not only embrace virtual, but strive to build a world class virtual selling organization.

So how do you get virtual selling right, and what is world class all about?

When the crisis first hit, many companies realized that their best strategy was to circle the wagons, focusing on existing customers and key accounts.

Some of these key accounts are at risk, with many facing budget lockdowns, cutbacks and pressure to consolidate vendors. Others are not cutting back, but accelerating business and digital transformations.

How do you make sure you don’t end up in the discount bin or the chopping block,  evolving from being tactical to being more strategic and capturing new opportunities?

These are just a couple of questions we pose to two key members from the Key Account Management Forum, a research group from the Cranfield School of Management: Dr Javier Marcos Cuevas and Mark Davies.

Learn how proving value delivered and inspiring value opportunities is so important to Key Account Management success into the recovery.

As a front-line marketer, what should you be doing now to be ready for a better 2021?

Now that we are mostly remote sellers, how do you maximize your time, optimize your sales performance, all while keeping your sanity?

In this interview with CRM expert Jeroen Corthout (co-founder of SalesFlare), we explore how you can take advantage of the remote environment to elevate capabilities and success.

The ability to communicate and quantify your unique business value to prospects and customers is essential with today's economic-focused buyer,, and getting a value program developed, launched and scaled is an imperative. So how do you do this quickly and effectively?

In this interview with the Head of Business Value Consulting for sales performance management firm Xactly, Michael Ketchmere discusses his journey to develop and scale an effective business value program in less than six weeks.

We discuss it all including the rapid development process, five steps to assure successful launch, sales process integration, adoption, outcomes and evolution.

How do you build rapport with prospects, even though you are now limited to a 13" virtual meeting screen?

How do you make sure you are not losing buyer engagement?

How do you pivot from pitching to blueprinting business value?

In this interview, co-author of the book Virtual Selling and sales training expert Dave Shaby we answer these questions, as he provides the research and advice you need to accelerate your seller's digital success.

Sellers are facing a tough go-forward environment. Spending freezes, lower executive clip levels, and the dreaded cross functional approval board, the COVID committee. AS a result, 47% of buyers indicate they’ve already put off one or more purchases due to the crisis, with more to come.

The increased need for a value-focused approach is certainly upon us, and in fact in a recent survey, 66% of buyers say the value and ROI of a proposed solution are important to sign-off. However, less than 16% of sellers are adept at delivering business value assessments and ROI analysis. How important is this value gap and what could this be costing your organization in stalled deals and lost sales?

In this interview with Julie Thomas, CEO of Value Selling Associates, we discuss the importance of taking a value first approach to selling today, and the importance of proper discovery, communication and quantification of  business, organizational and personal value to bridge the value gap.

As organizations look forward to 2021, getting sales quotas, compensation and enablement right is essential, but difficult with accelerated transformation, uncertainty and potential risks.

In this interview with prolific author Mark Donnolo, Managing Partner of Sales Globe, we discuss what changes organizations have made post crisis, and what sales performance improvements to prioritize for 2021 success.

Doing a good job of discovery and listening are so important to buyers, yet so many sellers are struggling to get this right, especially in today's now digital and remote selling environment.

In this interview with Deb Calvert, an Inductee in the Sales Hall of Fame, Keynote Speaker and Sales Effectiveness Consultant as President of People First Productivity Solutions, we discuss what makes for "good discovery", especially how it is more a dialogue person to person than a qualification or diagnostic.

In her thoughtful answers, Deb outlines the five essential discovery elements, and exactly how to make sure your sellers get discovery right.

Sell More with Better Value Communication and Quantification

Right from his LinkedIn profile you can tell John Bossong is different. He's a seller that clearly takes a value-first approach, has created a podcast and personal brand, not to sell more but to help his customers.

John is the epitome of the Modern Seller, and in this interview episode we learn what makes him so different and successful.

When you were the VP of Global Enablement for Marketo, Head of Global Sales Enablement for Oracle Marketing Cloud,  and  had key sales enablement and training leadership stints with Salesforce, 3PAR, PayPal, NetApp and Siebel you might have learned a thing or two.

And indeed, Roderick knows enablement, and has a knack for codifying what many perceive as a difficult and complex set of practices into a set of straight-forward rules and guides.

We discuss what it takes to get your sales enablement right - the correct mindset, skillset and toolset you need to succeed.

Now that selling is more digital and remote, how do you better connect, build trust, and win the business?

My interview with author, podcaster, keynote speaker and selling expert David Fisher has so many gems of advice, to help guide a better sales enablement, transformation and performance success.

Shimon Abouzaglo, is the founder of the Value Selling & Realization Council, an organization dedicated to the practice and practitioners of value, and has had a long career as a business value practice leader and practitioner with IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, SAP, Infor and Accenture Interactive.

Who better to discuss where we are today regarding business value assessment and realized ROI practices, how far the practice has come and how much more needs to be done.

Where are sellers and sales leaders falling short today, and what are the new skills you need to thrive and accelerate into 2021?

In this interview with author, podcaster and B2B sales consultant Steven Norman , we discuss seven steps you can use today to transform sales team performance and build a bulletproof sales machine.

Cold calling is dead, this according to Colleen Francis, a #1 LinkedIn Sales Influencer, renowned author and sales consultant. In this interview, we explore just how much prospecting has changed post-crisis, and what your sellers need to do in order to have better reach-outs, engagements and performance.

We touch on specific techniques such as the Tempo Triad, how to build a trusted personal brand on social media, and how to be sure you and your sales reps transcend the gerbil wheel of selling.

If you get your new sales hire right it can mean great things for hitting your growth targets. But get it wrong, or worse, hire a toxic troublemaker, and the costs can be over a million for each error. So, how do you make sure you are only hiring the best for your organization and customers, and you on-board and enable them correctly?

We explored these tough questions with sales performance author, podcaster and expert C. Lee Smith in this informative podcast session.

Imagine you are a sales leader responsible for selling leading apparel, footwear and sports equipment brands such as Salomon, Atomic, Wilson, Precor and Louisville Slugger. Now imagine how you and your team's world was turned upside down by the COVID-19 shutdown and crisis. impacting team sports, ski resorts and retail stores to name just a few business drivers.

This is exactly what we explore in our interview with VP of US Sales, Matt Navarro, discussing how he was able to help his team maintain a winning attitude and quickly pivot to digital selling.

Many of you have heard about Revenue Enablement, and might be wondering what it is all about, and why we need another type of enablement beyond just Sales Enablement?

Who better to explain than Stephen Diorio, creator of the Revenue Enablement Institute. In this informative session, we define what Revenue Enablement is all about and why it is so important.

When you've cut your teeth at, run and created value consulting and selling programs at companies like Salesforce, Adobe, Deloitte Consulting and SAP, you've learned a thing or two about what makes a good program and delivers a great customer experience.

We dig into the best elements in these most successful value consulting and selling programs, including how to overcome adoption and customer engagement challenges, and the hardest lessons learned.

What is a trusted advisor, why is becoming one to your customer so important, and how do you achieve it?

According to sales veteran Greg Brown (Salesforce, Peoplesoft, E.piphany and Apptus)  it comes down to a simple formula: Rapport, Credibility and Value.

In times of uncertainty, emotions are charged. This can lead to indecision, not a good thing when you are trying to move a buying committee and your champion through the buyers journey to "Yes".

So why does this happen, and as a seller, what can you do to ease the anxiety and achieve success?

In this interview with #1 LinkedIn sales expert, author and consultant Anita Neilsen, we explore the neuroscience of decision making in today's post-crisis world and specific strategies sellers and sales enablement can take to leverage the current conditions and accelerate success.

Where are customers seeking value from their Cloud investments? Have the value priorities changed post crisis? And how do companies like VMware collaborate with customers to prove and improve the business value of Cloud?

These are just a few of the questions we explored with Craig Stanley, Group Product Line Marketing Manager and Cloud Economics expert for VMware.

What is the secret to selling? David Priemer says it's simple. Just sell the way you buy.

David is an expert in the neuroscience of selling, and he leverages his background as a research scientist along with his accidental career in sales with Influitive, Salesforce, Varicent and Infor to decompose the best way to connect, engage and win over your customer.

In this interview we discuss what makes a great remote selling experience, the best way to do discovery and demos, and the important difference between ROI and value.

Focusing on existing customers is key to success for many organizations through the crisis. How do you optimize your growth sales and customer success teams to better engage with existing customers now that all meetings are remote, buyers are more frugal and you get more "No" than "Yes"?

Who better to ask than Mediafly's own Andrew Miehl. See what he is doing to better retain and expand existing customers, focusing on enabling better remote selling, realized value and maintaining a fun, winning attitude.

If you have a start-up or early stage company you know how hard it can be to get to "Yes" in normal times. Throw in a health crisis, economic shutdown and a bunch more uncertainty through recovery and "good luck".

Well, you don't need luck, you need a sales process and system, this according to our latest guest: Scott Sambucci, accomplished consultant, podcaster and author of the book "Stop Hustling, Start Scaling".

In this interview we discuss how to stay positive through all the issues, the importance of refining your process and forecasting indicators, and especially the need to better qualify opportunities. Any start-up or early-stage founder, sales and marketing leader needs to tune in and download this episode.

When the next billion dollar SaaS company for investment firm Emergence Capital needs to redo their strategy and playbook, Doug Landis is the growth partner they tap to deliver the goods. You can imagine how busy he is during this uncertain time.

We were more than excited to grab him for an interview, to discuss what he is seeing and recommending to portfolio companies, and the importance of visibility, empathetic messaging and a "spectrum of value".

Unless your deal is tied to support both strategic objectives and tactical priorities, unless it is tied to tangible value and business outcomes, it won't get considered much less approved. This according to sales and marketing consultant Bob Apollo in this latest podcast interview.

Hear what Bob had to say and why it is so critical. 

In this interview with marketing and channel expert, Lorin Coles, we tap into his experiences developing major go-to-market strategies and campaigns for Equifax, RedHat, Cisco, and Microsoft, to gain advice on how to shape your sales and channel enablement programs from crisis response to recovery and new opportunities.

We explore how to make your customer the center of all your strategies, how to empower a "value exchange" and what you should be doing with your direct and channel enablement to assure success.

If you are in Consumer Product Goods, your world has been turned upside down with stores and establishment closures, and permanently changing consumer preferences and behaviors.

As the leader for sales enablement and transformation at Heineken, Devin Long is in the thick of these changes. His belief: This is not the time to pull-back and be timid, in fact just the opposite. The crisis is a great catalyst for advancing your sales transformation programs, and implementing much needed Digital Selling tools and technology.

In this interview we explore Devin's Digital Selling vision as he dishes advice on where to best begin, how to set a vision, key sales tech components, how to gather executive and field support, and how to measure and prove success.

Uncertainty can create opportunities. Those that are able to use this time to self-examine and reinvent their offering, positioning, marketing and sales approach could be the new winners.

In this interview with experienced marketing consultant and podcaster Paul Mosenson we explore what you should do now to evaluate your approach and capture this unique opportunity.

Although most sellers try to present your organization and solutions as perfect, with a "we can solve all your challenges" approach,  research clearly shows that embracing imperfections leads to much greater success.

This from the author of the award-winning & international best-seller, The Transparency Sale, Todd Caponi.

In this interview we dig into his authenticity findings, the neuroscience of trust and why being "flawsome" is your ticket to accelerated decisions and more wins.

Paul Liberatore is the Director of Sales Enablement for Tricentis, and a practitioner and consultant in the space for 30+ years. He knows a thing or two, often taped as the go-to guy to create sales enablement programs from scratch.

I was so pleased when he agreed to join me for an interview. We talk about his state of sales enablement, lessons learned from his best successes and challenging failures, and the best way to navigate your sales enablement practice through tough times.

How do you make the best choice when you are looking at over 600 different sales technology providers?  This is where Dan Cilley and Vendor Neutral come into play.  They certify the top 100 vendors, and work with organizations to help streamline their selection process.

In this interview we discuss the sales tech landscape, RFP and selection process and ways to optimize sales enablement success.

#salestechnology #salestech #certifiedvendor #VendorNeutral #RFP #selection #salesenablement #valueselling #comparison #vendorselection #salestools #sellingtools #salesperformance #salesoptimization #CRM

As a tech entrepreneur, field sales expert and sales leader with Google, Autonomy and IBM, Steve Benson has run some amazing sales teams, and weathered a storm or two.

In this interview we discuss the keys for field sales reps and managers to survive the current uncertainty and drive performance despite the challenges.

Getting through and flourishing through uncertain times may all come down to one thing, having a winning mindset.

In this interview of author and sales performance coach Michael Sadeghpour, we discuss the key elements used by elite athletes that sellers can leverage to drive better performance. These include Attitude, Effort and Ownership.

Checkout how to leverage these three components to improve your sales performance and enablement practices:

Why is it so important to move from sales enablement practitioner to strategic leader? In this interview with Dr. Brian Lambert, author, co-founder of the Sales Enablement Society, and Inside Sales Enablement podcaster, we explore how important sales enablement is to growth success, why the practice hasn't advanced as quickly as anticipated, and what can be done to drive better success.

Customer Intelligence, Machine Learning and AI are all important considerations for sales enablement practices.

In this interview with Pete McChrystal, CEO and founder of sales enablement firm Accent Technologies, we discuss CRM integration, best use cases and the art of the possible.

What does it take to migrate your sellers from using a spreadsheet to leveraging an interactive value assessment tool?

In this interview we talk with experienced value consultant Clayton Slagle about his business value selling tool and program at PTC. We walk through the entire lifecycle of the program from conception, through development and launch,  to achieving substantial business benefits.

What is the state of Sales Enablement today?  Is it thriving as a healthy practice, or faltering post hype-cycle?

Ever the protagonist, this interview with Scott Santucci (former Forrester analyst, consultant and podcaster) will certainly cause debate and a rethinking of your sales enablement strategy and plans.

Digital selling is now a requirement, and you have to grab and keep a buyers attention, made more difficult that many in person meetings are now remote and online. So how do you get your presentations to grab a buyer's attention and inspire engagement?

This interview of visual presentation expert Nathan Jackson, Managing Director of Presentify provides practical advice as to how to reshape your traditional presentations into more effective visual storytelling tools.

As buyers become more budget constrained, risk averse and economic focused, the ability for sellers to communicate and quantify your differentiating value is important to getting your proposal considered, and vital to getting executive approval.

In this interview with Mike Wilkinson (consultant, author and well known as "The Value Selling Expert"), we discuss the important need for value selling, and four easy steps you can use to optimize how your sellers engage with value: Qualify the Value, Value Discovery, Value Demonstration and Delivery of Value.

Tanya Carpenter is the Chief Revenue Officer at Leapgen, a Workforce Management Consulting Firm focused on Digital Transformation.

In this interview we focus on the challenges of selling human capital management advisory and consulting services and the need to evolve from pitching services to articulating outcomes and business

The Death of the B2B Sales Rep, key research conducted five years ago under Peter O’Neill's tenure as Vice President & Research Director for Forrester.

In this session we interview Peter to learn more about these predictions, how accurate they turned out to be, and what new challenges he sees moving forward for sales enablement and marketing.

Chris Holgate is the Founder & Managing Director of Success in MPS a provider of Worldwide Managed Print Consulting and Sales Training, and a veteran business and sales leader from Ikon / Ricoh, Sharp Electronics and Canon Europe.

In this interview, we discuss the unique challenges of selling services, how to improve discovery, articulate differentiating business value, and how to best train and enable sellers to transition from pitching products to consulting on services.

Gregg recently joined Citrix as the Global Head of Value Engineering, chartered to build a worldwide team to help prospects and customers assess the business value of running on Citrix technology.

In this interview, we discuss his challenges launching this new practice, his guiding principles for excellence, how he proves the value of his practice, and his plans for future growth and scale.

Sales Enablement has quite a history. And what better person to interview on this topic than Craig Nelson. Currently, Craig is  the VP of Global Training and Enablement for SAP, but his roots in Sales Enablement go way back. First as a practitioner for NetIQ, LBMS and 3M, and then as co-founder and leader for one of the first Sales Enablement platform companies iCentera (which was acquired by Callidus Cloud and then SAP).

We met Craig over a decade ago, when he co-founded led one of the first Sales Enablement companies,  iCentera. He successfully sold this company to CallidusCloud, which was then acquired by SAP a few years ago.

In this interview we discuss the roots of sales enablement, and the lessons learned from the early days that can guide us into the future. Craig outlines six key Sales Enablement use cases that SAP CX is focusing on in 2020, which can serve as a great guide for your own improvement efforts.

She's a sales coach, keynote speaker, social personality and author. In this interview we speak with Tanya Kunze, CEO of SWIFT Coaching on how to optimize sales performance through self awareness, neuroscience, seller and customer profiling.

When you have over 40 years of  high-tech sales performance, CRM application consulting, alliances and business development experiences, you know there's some perspective to explore and predictions to garner.

In this podcast we interview Mike Jortberg, Global Sales Director for Customer Experience and Salesforce for Slalom Consulting and veteran business development leader and consultant for Salesforce, Axciom, Siebel (now Oracle), Hewitt Associates (now Aon Consulting).

We discuss all things CRM: The biggest changes, what's remained the same, and what still needs to be improved. Mike also reveals one his best techniques for improving sales performance - leveraging the Buyer's Journey Map and how to leverage it in your own sales enablement plans.

The best sales leaders have a performance mindset: A different way of thinking. A way to make it happen no matter what. A way to more quickly transform, scale and grow.

Jason (Jay) Lovelace has such a mindset, and he knows how to instill it in the groups he leads. As the Chief Commercial Office for SPINS, a wellness data technology provider to retailers and brands. over his 18 years as a key executive for Career Builder, and throughout his advertising agency days, Jay has created and honed a way to get more from the people he leads, processes he optimizes and technology he leverages.

Dive into the performance mindset of a successful Chief Commercial Office / Revenue Officer as Jay shares his mantras and methods

Not too long ago, Total Cost of Ownership was pronounced as a dead method to analyze, compare and select amongst different solution options. So to see if this prognosis was true, I went to the source - to my friend Bill Kirwin, the originator of the IT TCO model for Gartner.

In this interview we discuss the origins of the original TCO model, what makes it so powerful and relevant still today, and how to create and deliver TCO models and tools that will resonate with skeptical buyers.

Bryan Naas is the Director of Sales Enablement for learning management system company Lessonly, and a veteran of Salesforce, where he served as Director of Product Enablement and Readiness for the Marketing Cloud. In this episode, we discuss the challenges with legacy sales training approaches and why implementing a modern sales readiness is so critical for driving quota performance, improving forecast consistency and delivering sales success.

We dive into specific sales readiness recommendations to improve on-boarding, advance "middlers", enable front-line managers and drive channel partner success.

The integration of CRM and sales enablement is essential to improved sales success, according to this interview with integration partner expert Tony Kavadas, but all integrations are not created equal. There are several integration use cases that deliver more value, and should be a part of your sales enablement evaluations and plans.

As a VP of Marketing for the leading provider of natural flavors worldwide, one of Eric's first tasks was selecting and rolling out a new sales enablement platform. In this edition, he shares his experiences, challenges and learnings, as well as what his team wants to tackle next.

Although most organizations achieve their sales revenue targets, why does individual sales performance continue to struggle, with almost half of sellers still not meeting quota goals and less than half of deals forecasted actually closing. Consistency and predictability remain a challenge.

Modern sales readiness offers a potential answer, this according to my interview with Gop, helping your team evolve from traditional boot camps and in-person traditional training to leveraging a platform for continuous, ongoing learning of "on message" and "on task" capabilities needed for every individual seller to succeed.

In this session, we discuss the current sales performance challenges, ways sales readiness can help bridge the gap, and how MindTickle leverages their Readiness Value Assessment Tool to better communicate and quantify the value of readiness to frugal prospects.

You started selling when you were a teen. You cut your teeth at Ingram Micro, Egghead and Aldus. You led a team responsible for $350M in revenue at Microsoft. You write the first book on Social Selling,  create and run a sales transformation company, and in your spare time launch 3 successful podcasts, including the latest dedicated to promoting Women in Sales.

You are Barbara Giamanco, and were we ever excited to learn from you.

In this interview we ask Barbara how to best break through to busy execs, why you need to "Ditch the Pitch" to add value in every engagement, and the one thing you need to do today to drive significantly better sales performance.

Upwards of 70% of global revenue comes from third-party channels, making channels incredibly important, However, most organizations haven't reshaped their channel programs to meet changing buyer trends and the need for proper channel sales enablement .

In this interview with Jay mcBain, Principal Analyst for Global Channels at research and advisory firm Forrester., we discuss significant channel enablement research findings from Jay and his team, what strategic changes leaders are making now to address new opportunities, and why the Forrester team believes 2020 is THE year for Channel Enablement.

When it comes to optimizing sales performance, the often overlooked front-line sales manager is key to achieving goals, this according to David Brock, author of the: "Sales Manager Survival Guide,"  a veteran sales leader at IBM and Tektronix, and currently CEO at global sales consultancy: “Partners In EXCELLENCE”.

In this interview, we explore why front-line sales managers are so important, what it takes to get sales management right.

Clive Miller is the founder of sales consultancy SalesSense and a veteran sales leader for Blackboard, SGI and SUN. In this interview we discuss the changing buyer landscape and the three big challenges facing sales enablement today: Moving sellers from Solutions + Benefits to Challenges + Business Value, Increasing Sales Productivity and Improving Forecast Accuracy. Clive provides some great advice on how to recognize and address each of these selling challenges.

In this interview we talk to successful financial services sales leader turned entrepreneur Stan Carpenter about his experience going from tennis pro, to sales leader, and eventually to entrepreneur. We dig into what he learned along the way, and some of the techniques he uses to lead his team and drive growth.

As the former director of WW channels for Microsoft, a leading indirect sales expert at KPMG, and a co-founder of a channel recruiting and optimization startup, there aren't many who know more about what it takes to create and grow a successful channel program than Nigel Postings. In this interview, we explore the challenges facing channel program managers today, and what it takes to grow, optimize and enable channel programs for success.

This important interview with Forrester analyst Mary Shea discusses the latest Sales Enablement research, revealing the latest findings on the Death of the B2B Sales Rep, 2020 sales technology predictions and the roadmap to achieve superior ROI leveraging modern Sales Enablement.tools.

Starting a new Business Value program from scratch isn't easy, but when you are able to pull one together, the business impacts can be substantial. In this interview we deconstruct what it took for Aaron Froberg to create a new Business Value program at content management firm Egnyte.

We discuss everything from establishing the goals and missions of the program, the first successful steps, how he scaled the program to success, specific impacts on the business ,and what he still has on his roadmap to accomplish. If you are thinking about creating and scaling a Business Value program of your own, this interview is a can't miss.

Latane Conant is a CMO extraordinaire for 6Sense, a leading Account Based Marketing platform provider. In this interview, we discuss Latane's new value program: how she leveraged value marketing tools, sales tools and even reports from the 6Sense platform to help prove and improve the value and ROI customers receive from 6Sense solutions.

In this interview with Liz McChrystal, VP of customer experience with Accent Technologies, we discuss how the first wave of Sales Enablement, a world of content management, sales readiness and point solutions, is quickly being replaced  with a second wave, which is all about data, integration, intelligence and AI.  Liz, who has a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and a decade of experience working with sales enablement leaders on their programs, provides examples of how companies are leveraging sales enablement and data from  CRM and other systems, combined with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning processing to improve sales efficiency and effectiveness.

What do ultrarunning and value consulting have in common? In this episode, we interview Zach Rickenbach, a value consultant for identify and access management firm Okta, to learn how he and the Okta team scaled their value selling program to engage over 2,000 prospects and customers each year.

As more solution providers move to a subscription model, securing that next renewal and figuring out how to up and cross sell to each customer becomes as, if not more important than new logo acquisition.

Often customers need tangible proof that the purchase produced a return on investment in order to renew or expand the relationship,  however most solution providers don't do a good job of being able to quantify the realized value provided.

In this interview, we discuss the importance of Realized Value, what providers are struggling with today, and the best practices on implementing the right way.

Kate Migon is a successful leader, honing her sales craft since her first sales job in high school. But every once in a while, you face that challenging situation. One which tests your mettle and makes you even more passionate about wanting to do well.

In this episode, explore just such a situation, the lessons Kate learned, and how it helped her become an even better sales leader today.

#b2b #sales #salesreadiness #valueselling #evolvedselling #buyerenablement #IOT #data #insights #tribe #salesleadership #salesstrategy #german #whiteboardselling

When a B2B company's sales and marketing are misaligned, it can cost 10% of revenue or more per year. What is misalignment, how do you know you have the symptoms and how do you avoid this huge cost?

In this podcast, I interview Jeff Davis, a sales and marketing alignment expert, author and international keynote speaker. We discuss his book: Create Togetherness: Aligning Sales and Marketing to Drive Revenue Growth, to provide practical tips to help you identify and begin to address your sales and marketing alignment issues.

#b2b #align #sales #marketing #alignment #salesstrategy #marketingstrategy #JeffDavis #CreateTogetherness #salesenablement #valueselling #contentmarketing #evolvedselling #salestools ##salesplaybook #ROI #theROIguy