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: