The current trend with sales teams is moving away from generic messages and the batch and blast approach. The method that everyone's talking about and trying to focus on now is personalization. Customized methods can be incredibly difficult for an SDR to create. My guest today is an expert at personalization for sales teams and we discuss challenges and solutions for crafting personalized emails for effective sales.

On today’s show, I am speaking with Kristina McMillan from TOPO a research and advisory firm that focuses exclusively on sales and marketing organizations. They have dedicated practices for sales, sales development, and marketing. The focus is on market research, executive advisory, and the study of high-growth organizations to understand the processes, levers, and best practices that contribute to high growth.

Episode Highlights:

• Challenges with creating personalization at scale and having a repeatable structure that allow customization.
• The four stage messaging framework research, crafting the message, 2-3 touches a week, and using technology to automate.
• Knowing what to look for in the research stage.
• The three steps to crafting a message: setup, engage, and offer.
• The importance of understanding the role of the contact person.
• The offer should draw the client into the conversation to learn how I can help them.
• Using the touch patterns together with the framework. Sequencing and cadencing.
• Touch at least two to three times a week. A frequency that builds familiarity.
• Recognition and having a multifaceted profile for contacting a client.
• The importance of telling stories or having cliffhangers and persuasive copywriting.
• How people will respond when you offer something of value to them.
• Maximizing your return on effort.

Resources:

• TOPO
• Kristina McMillan on LinkedIn
• Kristina McMillan on Twitter @Lifeiterated
• TOPO Blog
• Analyst@TOPOHQ.com

There are a lot of definitions of sales enablement. What is it? How do we do it? Why does it matter? Having a process and mindset that extends across an entire organization can help enable salespeople to be successful. Still, it would help to have a clear plan and goal to get the most impact out of the enablement process.

Today, I have two guests Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey.  Cory and Hilmon just happen to know a little bit about sales enablement. They are the authors of The Sales Enablement Playbook and they run ClozeLoop a sales enablement platform. They are based in San Francisco, and this is a fun and lively episode with two guests diving into the topic of sales enablement.

Episode Highlights:

• Cory and Hilmon share their definition of sales enablement and focusing on the prospect.
• How there isn’t a one thing silver bullet type solution to sales enablement.
• Every department needs to contribute to sales enablement.
• Having a mindset based on customer engagement where every team contributes.
• Having the customer conversation at the center of the bullseye. Then as the concentric circles move out there are other team members contributing.
• Understanding your messaging and how it relates to buyer personas.  
• Pain points and features and how they relate to customer stories.
• Issues with a disconnect between marketing and sales. Creating micro content for the salespeople.
• The three types of sales conversations: lone wolf, scripting, or finding the sweet spot of the entire team's effort.
• Creating a playbook that allows a natural feedback loop.
• Knowledge management is about the conversations.

Resources:

• ClozeLoop
• The Sales Enablement Playbook
• Cory Bray on LinkedIn
• Hilmon Sorey on LinkedIn