What new hire salespeople want to know

In the blog post ‘Sales Enablement’ from 22-Sep-2009 the salestrainingdrivers.com author looks at what new hire salespeople want to know:

“How do you enable the sales team?

Millions of Internet pages are dedicated to the subject of sales coaching and sales training. Have you conducted an Internet search for it lately?

With all that content available, it’s amazing that sales teams have any trouble hitting their performance goals. Have you ever thought about it from a salesperson’s shoes? Think about it: there are many different resources available for salespeople on how to close, how to manage time, how to ask questions, how to manage a territory, and how to stay motivated.

Yet, despite all this, the next evolution in selling is upon us, and it requires all salespeople to conduct a thorough review […]. If salespeople aren’t actively embracing this evolution, they will be passed by.

[…]

New hire salespeople want to know:

• what are my expectations?
• what are the goals?
• what does success look like?
• what is in it for me?
• what do I need to do?

[…]”

I would add:

• what do I need to know?
• where do I get the latest information?
• who are the subject matter experts in the organization?
  

The author goes on to speak about…

“[…] each salesperson’s ability to fully customize their own selling system to the needs of the clients and their territory. Seasoned sales pros of today have a deep command of the basics, and they’ve come up with something that is uniquely their own over time. […]”

The first part reminds me of the extend to which this kind of knowledge is geography specific as well as specific for industry verticals and client needs. In a global enterprise Sales Enablement knowledge needs to be organized by all this concurrently. Does your organization have an information architecture that allows that?

The second part shows the reality of people having their own unique ways of doing things. Hence, gathering tribal knowledge / best practices from peers can only go so far… as Gerhard Gschwandtner points out in his blog post ‘Is Sales Enablement just Lipstick on a Knowledge Management Pig?‘:

“I read, “Clone top performers.” Excuse me! Why not promise, “Clone your Swiss bank account”?”