Enablement Excellence - The Importance of Embedding

A company that never needs to make any adjustments to their sales organisation is as rare as the proverbial hen’s tooth. 

Over the life of a business, outside expertise and training for sales teams will be needed; to help improve the pipeline, increase deal size and mitigate risk, to ensure enterprises stay sharp and continue to grow. 

Often, an enterprise technology business will decide to move towards the MEDDIC framework for their go-to-market organisation. MEDDIC has been used in the tech industry for 30 years by some of the biggest tech unicorns. 

This methodology, if used correctly, is proven to increase revenues, decrease the sales cycle and increase overall productivity of go-to market organisations. 

Bringing in outside help to deliver training is both costly and takes time. Not optimising that time and money is an unfortunate reality if the training isn’t embedded properly from the outset.

 The challenge is:

• How do you ensure you embed MEDDIC, or any new methodology, properly? 
• How can you make sure that the money and time spent on training the team is optimised for results?

Because if MEDDIC is implemented properly it WILL drive revenue growth and deliver a significant payback. 

Learning and embedding a new sales methodology spans multiple teams and doesn’t just happen overnight.

If, as a salesperson, you haven’t used the MEDDIC methodology before, it’s a lot to learn and embed in your day-to-day workflow.

If, as a manager, your entire go-to-market team hasn’t used MEDDIC before, learning and embedding it is a whole different ball game!

One of our absolute must-haves to ensure success of any training program lies in the following question:

IS THE MANAGER IN THE ROOM?

And by that, we mean REALLY in the room - being an active participant, doing the exercises, sharing their experience and knowledge with the team. 

We have delivered training to many organisations and those where the managers are in the room see significantly faster outcomes within the first 3 months. 

 Managers must be fully present to ensure:

• They understand the sales training and embed it into their own day-to-day work
• They adapt their coaching to reinforce the learning
• They observe the team behaviour and support individual learnings needs

 If managers are not in the room, we can guarantee that any training will take longer to embed into the team or worse case, the training will never stick, costing time, money and opportunities.

So why is this so important and particularly relevant for MEDDIC training?

• The managers will know what questions to ask of their team to keep them on track with the new methods they are using
• The team members have someone they can go to with questions after we have left.
• The MEDDIC language will be used across the whole organisation, reinforcing the training every day; a vital part of embedding a new sales methodology
• The onboarding process will have MEDDIC at its heart

By being that manager in the room you are instrumental in the learning experience and embedding excellence in your team. 

By being that manager in the room you are ensuring that your team will start to deliver on the training.

You will see your team form a cohesive unit that all sing from the same hymn sheet and notice that the onboarding of new members is improved and their time to productivity is reduced. 

Ultimately, the management time investment will be your insurance policy to increase revenue and improve your bottom line. 

CHANGE DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT

The results seen by a go-to-market organisation that has embedded a methodology like MEDDIC across all teams doesn’t happen overnight.

However, by simply being in the room during training you are sending a positive and useful message to the team to get things started:

Leadership is investing in the training and it’s important.

 Once out of the room, the managers are accountable to keeping everyone on track and producing the results that we know MEDDIC can deliver. That means being available to answer questions and to frame your questions to the teams in the appropriate new language.

CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT

After time, it’s natural that following an initial boost in performance, some team members might need further support. Team members might also need fresh ideas or have great examples of success.

As custodians of the learning and development roadmap, it’s our job to keep finding new ways to reinforce the content, stimulate ideas and keep the learning fresh.

So, consider in your learning and development plan, how you break down component parts of the learning and keep a cadence of fresh sessions running over time.

Mixing media and role plays are a great way to spice up the learning too.

TAKE TIME TO SAVE TIME

So, our advice for all sales managers out there:

When setting up the training for your team, make sure that you block this time out of your diary and make sure you are in the room. 

You will likely have a long list of things that may look like a more productive use of your time, however, there is no better investment of time than ensuring your team is learning, developing and you are there to support their journey.

Whilst we are discussing the impact that sales leaders can have on sales training, as MEDDIC applies to the whole go-to-market organisation all of the points discussed here are equally important when applied to marketing,  pre-sales, and customer success. 

If you are interested in new ideas, inspir’em sales meeting exercises and lesson plans are available to continue the development journey of your teams.

Contact us today to further boost your sales and see your revenue grow.

For more tips on applying MEDDIC in the real world - join our community at inspir’em today.