Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 82: 5 steps to ramp new sellers when you have no enablement and no time

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82: 5 steps to ramp new sellers when you have no enablement and no time · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: You are ready to hire sellers and you want them to rent quickly, but you don't have the people or the process to do it as well as you'd like to.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you do?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Bite-sized sales, where we believe that sales at B2B startups should be easier than we often make it, and that it's plain wrong that sales teams at startups don't get the help to succeed like sales teams at their bigger and more well-known competitors do.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a seller or leader at a B2B startup, you're in the right place.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and welcome to episode 82.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get to the main content on this episode, I want to introduce you to our sponsor, which is autobound.ai.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Autobound.ai.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've been working with some of my clients, and they've been thinking about their pipeline generation at the AE level and also with SDRs and thinking about how they get deeper knowledge and deeper personalization with their biggest and most high value prospects.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as we've been doing that, they've been thinking through, it would be good to know these things about these companies and these personas inside these companies so that when we reach out, we can reference very relevant and high impact things that will show that we've done our research and show how we we can be relevant to them.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as we we've been going through the research and as we've been going through the process, there's multiple times where we said, God, there must be something out there that you can hit a button on and it will go and do some of this research for us, take the grunt work out of it, and then even start crafting some messaging and some paragraphs and sentences in the outreach that we need to do.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And lo and behold, autobound.ai, this is what they do.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're really building a very valuable tool that's going to be high impact for many different people, but especially, I think, if you're doing high-value sales into larger companies and you're doing the appropriate amount of research to be relevant for them.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I recommend taking a look at autobound.ai.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So today's subject is all about ramping of sellers, ramping of SDRs, and frankly, also ramping of SEs or SAs as they come in.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: That hiring is coming, the headcount has been approved.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know how you would want them to be ramped up and how quick you want them to get on board and start producing.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you just can't do it.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's so tough when you're on your own.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: At bigger companies, they have huge enablement teams, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at some of the bigger vendors in cybersecurity, they'll have 10, 20, 30, even more than that sometimes, so the truly big ones, people in their enablement team.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that you can have someone come on board and just hand them over, and the process takes over and all these good things happen to them.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: But a startup, you're on your own.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: You might have a few sellers, two, three, five, whatever it is, on board already.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: You might have an SE or two, and maybe a product marketing person.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's about it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in these situations, what happens is bad behavior kicks in.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's by necessity more than anything else.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know that you gotta get do something to get them going.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You you don't have the time, but you're gonna give them something to get going.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the struggle is real, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just don't have the resources, you do whatever you can to make it all come together as best you can.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what makes it worse is you're being watched carefully, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: As the first sales hires come on board, everyone's watching to see what they do and how they do it and how successful they're being.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You got an exec team looking, you get the CEO thinking about how these new sellers are performing.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Are they representing my company, especially if they're a founder?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are they representing my company properly?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The board is wants to make sure that you've thoughtfully gone about onboarding these people so they can produce quickly and you can get to the repeatable model uh quicker.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to prove that you can do it.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those that are not in sales will sit there thinking, our product is amazing, it's groundbreaking, it does amazing things.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like people are just gonna have to hear about it and see it, and it'll just be so easy.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as we all know, that's not always the case.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in situations where I've gone in and built out programs, and I get to hear from existing sellers that are already on the team.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what they usually say is, gosh, I wish we had this when I joined.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then what they do is they tell me the stories.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I heard one at a company where they said, our first day, we there was three or four of us that joined on the first day.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: We went to corporate, and the first thing that happened was we went out to the country club of our head of sales and sat there having lunch and then drinking all afternoon, just uh talking about selling and talking about selling the product that we got into.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the person said it was fun and all.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was good to bond with these new hires and also with the head of sales, but yeah, I didn't remember much from the session.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in situations where they come in and they said, Oh, yeah, the first thing that I was told to do was learn the demo.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just go talk to the SE, learn the demo as if you had to give it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I I get to uh work with as new sellers come in and they see a proper program, they go, Oh, I wish I had this at my last company.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I hear things such as, you know, your first day, get your laptop, read the data sheet, and get a demo and away you go.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And these are, you know, as I say, these are by necessity sometimes, but they're not ideal.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's a sink or swim.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to figure things out quickly on your own.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're left to your own devices, and there's not much room for error, and there's not many people who have much sympathy.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as a leader at a company, sales leader, you can't afford to have people drowning.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do to help them given that you don't have much in the way of resources, given that there isn't the template already there to be successful, and you don't want to just pass them on to someone else saying, go watch what they do.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So here are five things I recommend that you think about and tackle.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: First one is going to seem a little obvious, but I tell you, it doesn't always happen.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that is to be very clear on what the objectives are for this seller as they come on board.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Be clear what they are and be clear when they have to be hit and what has to happen to get there.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what I would encourage you to do is think about two things.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: One is how soon can you have them doing outreach?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you have them do outreach in the first week and the second week?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: What would that be?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And measure them.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these sellers are going to come in with their network of friendlies.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: How soon can they start reaching out to friendlies and get meetings booked?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's gonna be the key metric right there.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Get meetings booked in the first month, second month, third month on board.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So one objective should be meetings booked, and the second one should be holding those first meetings.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if your objective is to get a bunch of first meetings, we need to make sure that the person, the seller that came in is gonna be able to go and run those first meetings.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reality is, of course, that you don't want them on their own.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that I think about it is what if they book a really good first meeting and for some reason, whatever that may be, no one else from the company can attend and are left on their own.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Can we make sure that they can hold their own and do a good job in that first meeting?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're clear on those objectives, we need them to be able to be able to book first meetings, do the outreach, and secondly, hold first meetings.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The question then comes, well, what do you do to help them be effective to do those two things?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really get clear on that, there's gonna be things you you don't want them to spend time on.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, maybe the demo isn't the right thing for the hen to go and learn, the right thing to go and learn.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I would say is uh way over-index on them understanding and learning about the problems that your solution and company is solving and the persona who has these problems.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, if if I had my way, I'd I'd build an onboarding program at a company where all they did was think about, learn about, talk about, talk to people about problems and the personas that have those problems.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you understand that, then you've got the foundation on which to build.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Too often what happens is we understand our product and then fill our brains, fill our new hires brains full of product stuff, and then get on to things like problems and personas, things like that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the wrong way around.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to start in the middle of any process, it should all be about problems and the persona.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would I do?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would have give them a project to document what these problems are and the personas that we're tackling.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you can give them some pointers, but I would actually say, look, we've got five customers.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to talk to people at our company that worked with those customers and identify the problems that we're solving for those customers.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Who are we selling to?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who bought the product at that at the customer side?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: What were they concerned about?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: What was the big thing that we solved for them or we're trying to solve for them?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And have them build out, it doesn't have to be a fancy document.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Give them, ask for some bullets that they can explain and talk around.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it is these two personas are our target persona.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the persona cares about, their fears and frustrations, the challenges they're facing, how they're measured.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then here are the problems that they're having that we solve.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And just giving them that little framework and telling them to go and figure this out with the existing team on board, both sellers and non-sellers, will really drive them to think about the right things as they're getting themselves ramped up.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So give them that project to work on.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's number two.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is I would have them build their own outreach in terms of emails and maybe some call bullets, you know, maybe not script, but if they were to call a friendly, what would they say?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if they've done the work on the persona, this is going to be relatively easy, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna say, okay, I've learned all that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now what I need to do is figure out if I had a short email to send to a friendly, what would I say in that short email?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Have them build that out and then come back to your review and practice.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine they picked up the phone to their friendly, what would they say?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's role play it.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: More of the work is on them, but then your role is to help them get comfortable and give them some pointers so they get more refined and better.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what they might think is the right thing to say, you've learned is not, and you need to explain that to them.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's number three.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, have them build their own discovery questions, their own customer stories, and their own answers to common objections.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the thing is that you probably hired some sellers who know what they're doing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: They've got some track record, they're they're trained.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to be told the fundamentals about how to go and ask some discovery questions.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have a basics or fundamentals to build on.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now that they understand some of the big problems that we solve and they might have maybe listened in on some calls, have them come up with their list of their own questions they would ask, and then ask to see them and talk about it with them and give them some pointers to refine them.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you know, they they've been thinking about the customers you have already.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have their own customer stories.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Get them to construct a two-minute version of a customer story they can tell.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if they reach out to a friendly, they say, Listen, I just joined this company, they solve these two or three big problems.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: For example, at, and they need to be able to tell a customer story right there.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is that?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Have them construct that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe what else you do as well is say, look, here are the four, five, ten, whatever it is, common questions or objections that we get.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you think through what you think might be the right answers or the right ways to handle those?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's uh come back to me and collaborate on those.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So again, they're they're doing the work.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the nice thing is you don't give them the work because you you don't want to do it yourself.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: You give them the work because that's how they learn.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: They really have to think through these things.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final thing I'd say is to spend time with them and practice.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much value in those informal moments, the lunches, the coffees, the walk around the blocks where you talk about the things they're learning and you give them the chance to get comfortable through practice.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So don't ignore those.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: If they're remote, then make sure you're communicating every day, multiple times a day with them.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: They need to feel that you're there to help them, even though you're giving them exercises to go and work on.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there are those are five things to do to address it.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna actually add one more that's almost like a meta one to do here.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you may have already done this, but I think it's highly valuable to have a conversational intelligence tool in place that records your calls and analyzes your calls that you have.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So whether it be gong or chorus or there's lots of ones out there right now.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because you need a tool to coach individual sellers.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a more mature company, it's more commonly used for coaching.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: In these environments, when it's early stage, you can learn so much by going back and listening to the calls as they've happened and what was said and remembering the questions you asked and things like that.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But imagine if you're a seller, new seller coming in and being able to listen to 15 gong calls or 15 chorus calls that have happened in the last month or so and just hear what happens live without having to get on a Zoom live and listen in silence and all the rest of it.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's so powerful having that.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then also imagine that person comes in and you give them an account and you say, I'm gonna give you whoever it is, Propter and Gamble.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you go back, you'll find out we've talked to them four times in the last nine months.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't really go anywhere, but you get to go and listen to the calls that with Propter and Gamble and hear what was talked about.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: How valuable is that with a new seller coming in?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say if you've not done that yet, look into it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just highly recommend it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't already, then maybe another thing to give your new sellers to do is to go listen to these calls as part of the exercises I just talked about.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: A quick summary.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let them struggle, don't poison them with product information, don't fill their brains with what we do.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You want to fill their brains with what our main persona is and the problems that they have that we solve and get them focused on the right short term actions that are going to lead to their success.