Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 86: Product training hurts your sales team

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86: Product training hurts your sales team · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your product training is actually hurting your sales team, not helping it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Find out why and what to do about it on this episode.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-sized sales podcast, 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.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a seller or sales leader at a B2B startup, you're in the right place, especially if it's a cybersecurity company.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 86.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm recording this at an off-site training I'm doing with a small group out of country, and we're working on a bunch of different things, including actually thinking about the topic for today, which is what prompted me to record this.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that most product training that is done at companies, B2B, SaaS, cybersecurity companies, never mind startups, is really hurting the sales team.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not helping the sales team.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So why is that?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be a default that anytime there's some sort of change in the product, or we feel like there's some sort of knowledge gap in the product or in the sales team's ability to succeed, we default to just saying, let's do some product training, let's get the truth, let's get the product out there, let's get them trained in the product.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And usually what happens is someone who's very knowledgeable about the product will tell us all about the product.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's part of a general malaise, I think, at companies, where the whole company seems to be orientated around product.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's especially the case at startups, where the founders and the exec team are excited about the game-changing product that they're they're building and delivering.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you find that there's a whole bunch of people with job titles that include the word product.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there's planning that's done around a product, and there's engineering teams that are built around a product, and all these things are all about the product.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what falls way behind in the narrative inside the company is actually the customer.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the terrible thing about it is that someone actually has to go and sell this and talk to prospects about what we do and what we can do for them, but they don't care about our product, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Their starting point is themselves.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Their starting point is their challenges, their priorities, their problems they're trying to solve right now, not our product.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what ends up happening is the sales team is bombarded with a whole bunch of product messaging, and then somehow has to translate, usually on their own, that into a conversation that they can have with a prospect that isn't about the product, but it's actually about the prospect.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just this weird world that we're in where it seems the default of, I would say, 95% plus of training is around product.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's hurting us, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's funny because people deride sellers all the time because oh, all they do is pitch us, all they do is tell us about their product.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no freaking wonder if all the training we give them is all about the product.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do we expect anything to be any different in this?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think about there's a video that's been doing the runs for many years, actually, and it's actually more about individual productivity and planning your life, things like that.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you may have seen it before.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't, just go into YouTube and and do a search for something like big rocks in jar productivity or something like that, you'll find it.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And basically the concept is that uh there's a bunch of videos there actually, but the concept is that someone stands there and they they've got you know big rocks, small rocks, sand, and some sort of liquid.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what they talk about is if you want to fill that jar, you don't start with liquid.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't start with the small sand, you don't start with uh the medium rocks, you start with the big rocks, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you fill it up with big rocks, and then you find actually in between the gaps, there's room for the medium rocks.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once that's done, there's room for the sand.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And once that's done, you've still got room for water.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the message in the in the productivity space is you start with the big rocks.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where the the phrase we've probably heard about, heard used about big rocks comes from.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's equally apt when we think about how we work with our sellers and how we help our sellers succeed.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening right now, in my opinion, is we're the big rocks we're starting with is the product.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're starting about things that are all about us.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our product's amazing, it's groundbreaking, it's got patents, and it's doing things completely differently.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And look at all the amazing whiz-bang watches it's got that does all this cool stuff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the fact, oh, and it's going to help our customers, our prospects in a certain way.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're filling our sellers' minds with the big rocks around product.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's completely the wrong way around.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: We should fill our sellers' minds, fill our own minds with things about our prospects and understanding them first, and then filling in the gaps and filling in metaphorically the gaps in the jar with product.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we're gonna redress the balance a little bit.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we fill the minds of our sellers with product stuff, no wonder that's what they're gonna talk about.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: As leaders, if you're a sales leader out there, you got to look at uh what you're doing for your team.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you find yourself that you, A, you're criticizing or feel like your team's not executing well on discovery conversations about customers and problems, but instead default to product, look at what's happening around them and see if there's a cause around how they're being enabled and trained with a focus on product.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is something that if we want to really change how we how our sellers work and all the things that they do with our prospects, we've got to change how we deal with them.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can't get rid of the job titles with product and the name.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We can't get rid of the focus of the company around the product.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be nice to think that would redress itself, but it, you know, in reality, that's gonna be really, really tough to do.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we can look at what we can do for the sellers.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So here are three ways that we can help our sellers get more focused on customers and prospects and their needs as opposed to just always defaulting to product.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, way number one is to have specific training on personas and have it all the time and use a persona-based playbook to help drive the training and the enablement of the sales team.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've seen a lot of are sales playbooks that are focused around use cases.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not a terrible idea, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's the idea that our product will actually help our customers with these use cases, and we train the sellers in the use case and we explain what it's all about.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in that document is gonna be a list of personas that care about that use case.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: The trouble is that salespeople don't go and meet use cases, they go and meet people, personas, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: These are the people that we go meet with.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you're doing, if you're starting with your playbook as one or run use cases, you're first of all starting your translation demands of the sales team to translate a use case playbook to the person they're about to meet.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got four or five use cases and that person's gonna meet the head of the SOC, the security operations center, your seller has to dig through three or four different playbooks to find out which ones the SOC leader cares about.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that's all wrong.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do all the training around the persona, and in there will be use cases that persona cares about.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you can understand the persona, the more we understand the persona, the more we can empathize with the people that we talk to, we can ask better questions, we can offer better solutions, we can even connect better with them as humans if that person believes that we understand their world.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can understand all their problems, and therefore, when we're talking about these things, the empathy comes in.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in general, therefore, what we're gonna have is much better and more useful and valuable conversations.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would be good examples of trainings that you could do pretty easily with your sales team that would really be all around the persona?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, here's some ideas in no particular order.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: First one might be thinking about a day in the life of the target personas you have.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: What's their general day-to-day look like?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: What are the demands of them?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: What sort of reports do they have to run?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: What sort of alerts do they have to look for?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's the competing elements for their time?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: What uh happens around them, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it late nights?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is it early mornings?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it uh are they work part-time, are they nights and weekends, things like that?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So understand a day in the life of the person that we're targeting.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Next one is how are they measured?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding that, asking after sales, so when we've got the customers going back and asking them, how are you guys measured?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: What matters to you when you're thinking about prioritizing your time day to day?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Third one might be is having that structure defined of what a persona-based playbook might look like.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going to have elements such as starting with the job title, thinking about what their activities are in their role, their fears and frustrations in their role, competing demands of their time, who are they in conflict usually inside the organization?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are they usually frustrated about in terms of our product area that we might care about?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: All these things might be elements of a standardized persona-based playbook.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, in the playbook, you want to have questions, good opening questions, questions that really demand a value-based conversation from the prospect and your sellers.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Another one might be explaining the different roles.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to meet the head of the SOC.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be useful for the sellers to understand not just what the SOC leader does, but the different roles, maybe in a lesser way, underneath them.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do they structure their team?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are the different teams or individuals underneath them do?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And how are the roles and responsibilities divided up between them all?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: These might be all good ideas to actually give some intentional training around our target personas.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Idea number two would be to get very intentional about any and all product training delivered by people not in your team, that it has to start with the prospect.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It has to start with the persona.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you can set your expectations with the presenters ahead of time and follow through on it, demand that they do it properly.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't do it properly, then you have to cut them off.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where you really have to set expectations ahead of time to say that if you don't do things this way, then we just won't have these conversations and we'll do it ourselves.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to be pretty firm.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that what you could do is set the expectation that whenever you come and talk to my team, the first 20% of whatever information you're imparting and any training you're doing, it absolutely has to start with the orientation of our prospects.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot start with ourselves.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot start with any changes in the product.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So what might that look like?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it might say that, you know, let's say there's a new release or a new feature coming up, and in a more detailed way than I'm saying, but what you could say to your product marketing manager, product manager, whoever it is that's that's coming to talk to the sales team, you know, they have to say, you know, you know how when the stock leader has told us that they're having challenges with A, B, and C, and what it means is it's impacting their team in certain ways and downstream and all the rest of it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, our new release coming up has a new feature in it that's gonna help them with that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Even just that simple reorientation, setting the expectations that the product manager has to come with that orientation about setting everything up about the eyes of the prospect and the problems they have is gonna really help out.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the worst culprits of this, any environment around a sales kickoff, we do feel that we have to have an agenda that includes other people in the organization, which is dead right.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're trying to create consensus, we're trying to create understanding and support amongst other groups in the organization.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, we want them to come and speak to the sales team.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: But unless you take control over how that interaction is going to happen, you're gonna end up with very me and us oriented presentations in a sales team that gets disengaged and probably led down the wrong path.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I recommend that what you do is you set the expectation with the anyone else that's interacting with the team at a sales kickoff and then vet their presentations beforehand.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Idea number three is to set expectations with the sales team and with yourself that you're gonna create an environment where the sales team is immersed in the persona.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't just doing a better job of engaging during a sales cycle.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's all around that.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: That their activities in their territory or with their target accounts means that they're immersed with their prospects.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of things that you could do to help foster that.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: What you could do, for example, is say that once a month on the team call, you're actually going to interview a customer.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna interview them about all the things we talked about.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do before they had our stuff?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do after we had our stuff?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's their pressures on their time, how they measured.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go for a monthly customer call like that, where you're looking for them to explain their world.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you can set their motivation with the customer and say, look, we really want to deliver value to our customers.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We want to deliver value to more aspects of the marketplace.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure that you are looking forward to interactions with our sales team.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: You helping us do this is going to help that, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And get them on board.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might also do that in the manner of an internal podcast.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe what you can do is have these recorded, maybe 45-minute interviews with the customers, but then break it up into bite-sized chunks and send it out internally to the sales team in terms of a podcast.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: You could also set expectations with your team that you expect them to interact informally or socially with people with inside our target persona.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It could be things like attending ISSA events, it could be attending get together for beers and pizza type events that the target personas have.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: It could be taking people out to lunch, dinner, all these different things.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you're expecting your sellers to have X number of informal or social interactions per month and not leave it to chance that the seller is going to go and do that.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: One idea that I've seen used now at two different companies by the same sales leader that's really worked out is the idea of having a champions day.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So in early stage companies, we are relying on someone usually pretty senior to have a bit of a bet on us delivering and growing and gaining traction and surviving and making a big difference from a value perspective over time for that person.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it requires a bit of a stretch for them sometimes to make that bet with us.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore they should be celebrated in some way.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: What this one sales leader has done is created this champions day where what he does is bring together the internal champions of our product at the prospects and have them talk amongst themselves about what they're doing, how they're using it, but also get their direction on the product.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it like a user's group, but at a much higher level.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is not user training or feature feedback, things like that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more about the decision maker that bought the product coming together with other people just like them in an environment that's maybe 50% formal presentations and 50% social.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's drinks and dinner afterwards.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to flood that with all the sales team, but you certainly want to be able to get these people talking and listen to what they're talking about, suggestions they have, things like that.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then in some way, feeding that back to the sales team.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Either have the people that could attend do presentations back about what they heard, but have that as a regular thing that you do.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's hard to get senior leaders often to come and do that, but maybe once every six months or so might be a good cadence to do that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get really good insight into the customer that you can feed back to the sales team.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I would say is that if you want immersion, is uh no more of these BS wind wires.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wind wires happen all the time, and they're we sold this huge big deal to this huge big company.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And look at the 45 people inside our company that really helped win this deal, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everything from the seller to the SC to the sales leader to the product marketing person to the product manager and this guy and that person and that girl, all had an incredible amount of help, and thank you so much.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a great win.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of a team win is huge.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But uh what's much more useful is actually being very honest about what was driving the sale.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: The best ones I've seen are actually not written down but recorded.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the seller is very, very honest and to the point about what happened.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: We found this opportunity this way.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the first meeting went like this.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what they latched on to was this.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we asked this question, which seemed to really open up a really good conversation.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, the POC happened.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then get honest, right?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: The POC was a disaster at first.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was all in the wrong place, and they were trying to drag it off in a million directions, and then what we were able to do is bring it back into the right scope, and from there they saw the value, you know, things like that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is a much more useful win-wire type exercise than a one-page document saying how awesome we are and all these great people that that helped us win this big deal, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're gonna immerse yourself, immerse yourself in what it took to truly win these deals, and maybe if you have the seller has the relationship with the customer, they might be able to come on live on the call and give maybe some of their perspective.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's part of it is that maybe they don't listen in in the whole call because there's some things that we may or may not want them to really understand or hear, but have them jump on for 15 minutes to explain, well, this is what initially caught my eye.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here was my aha moment.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I when I realized you guys did this in this way, I was like, wow, that's gonna really make a difference for us.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe this the customers on these wind wire calls as well.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then the final thing I'd say to the sellers and the sales leaders is these days, there are so many podcasts and YouTube videos that are all about target personas.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the security world, there's CISO podcasts, there's there's videos about CISOs.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of the great ones is the I think it's a CISO Security Vendor Relationship Podcast.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And every week there's, I think his name's David, the host, has at least two SISOs on there.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they discuss various topics and talk about how they're handling things at their company.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: You get such a good insight into how they think about what they're doing in their program.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, honestly, they talk about you know vendor pitches, they talk about their frustrations with vendors, things like that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really good insight into that.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one idea, but there's a whole ton of podcasts.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do a search for security or syso and see what's there.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: On the YouTube side, I I've come across a bunch of series from different companies.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do a search for Cisso interviews, for example.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's one guy that does, and I'll put it in the show notes, maybe.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's one guy that does, I think he's an ex-Sisso and he consults with CISOs now, and he talks about being a CISO right now.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: What makes a great CISO?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, what are the frustrations?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: What are they challenged with?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: How are they dealing with the job shortage?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: All these things that are relevant topics for CISOs.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's some that I've seen that are three or four CISOs just chatting almost like a round fireside chat round table about various different topics.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some that I've seen that are more formal, where a consulting organization is interviewed one-on-one with big name CISOs, CISO of GE, the CISO of United Airlines, things like that.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll put all these in the show notes so you you can go and look at those ones.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so easy to consume this content, just put it in your podcast player, put it into a playlist and in YouTube, and just have and listen to these things and what everyone's talking about.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great way to immerse yourself in uh the world of your target market.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there were three areas.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: One is to have continuous persona-based training that's all about the persona.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Second one is when you do have any training that's inside the company, set the expectation out with anyone that talks to your team about what they start with.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they start with prospects and they start with problems.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't start with our product.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, think about immersion.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: How can you, as an individual seller or sales leader, immerse yourself in the world of your target persona?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: With that, good luck and good selling.