But we already are using sales frameworks…
Scripts, playbooks, Wikis, battle cards, cheat sheets… Your sales enablement organization is likely already deploying their method and subsequent tool to help your sales reps know how to organize call structures based upon variables like lead source, opportunity stage, buyer persona, current technographic, etc.
Sales frameworks are, in large part, essentially the same thing; unfortunately what we have found is that regardless of the naming convention you use internally to describe the roadmap your reps should be using, the reality is that they often are not.
The problem inherently lies in the fact that all of these tools are hosted on other platforms. Platforms that unless opened, go unused. It is one of the struggles sales enablement leaders face.
They gather the requirements, contact a handful of vendors, run through demos, get procurement to buy the solution, and spend months organizing and implementing only for the call to start and the sales rep to forget to open up a new tab and access the information.
Sales Enablement and Revenue Leaders
When the Abstrakt product team was interviewing sales enablement and revenue leaders, one of the most common frustrations being experienced by these leaders was their inability to force (or remind) their sales reps to log in to the respective tools before launching a call block or running a demo.
Whether the rep was outbound prospecting through a tool like SalesLoft or Outreach or running a demo through Zoom the problem remained. If the tool didn’t get open, the information was unused. So, for all you sales reps out there who are maybe questioning why using frameworks should be a priority in your day, here are a couple of reasons to keep top of mind:
- Leverage your resources. Your company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into people, and those people have spent countless hours researching your market all with the goal of providing you the right information to win (which gets you commission).
- Remove the excuses. It is the end of the quarter, and you are not going to hit your number – we have all been there. If you have been using the technology provided to you, by your company, it is easier to make the case for you to get another shot. Missing your number, are not using tools like sales call intelligence platforms… basically a one-way ticket to landing your next sales role.
- Feedback to your team. Compound and shorten your company’s learning curve. If you and your fellow reps are all using the same talk tracks, sales frameworks and overcoming objections in the same way and still are not winning at the expected rate it provides immediate feedback to your organization on what is working, and what is not working.
- They work, plain and simple. For as long as reps have been selling snake oil, scripts, and frameworks for success have been deployed in a manner that creates repeatable sales motions that result in success. It would be naive to think that as a sales rep, your outbound prospecting motion is special, and you don’t need guidance.
The how matters when it comes to sales frameworks
As we have discussed, the biggest problem in the adoption of sales enablement tools is that they are often not top of mind in the seconds after a potential customer asks how your product is better than your competitors.
Picture this scenario, a prospect asks “how are you different from Cymbal?”
The following seconds will make or break your deal. Sales rep… fumbling through the 37 browser tabs open, refreshing their page, scrolling through a few seconds of information only to find a broken link.
So, your sales rep immediately reverts back to what they know… a cocktail mixture response of features they personally like about your product.
Now, imagine this scenario. Instead of searching through countless browser tabs to find the battle card for Cymbal, the correct way to handle an objection, with a direct link to the battle card pops up right on your reps screen, within .08 seconds of the prospect mentioning them as a potential competitor. This is what happens when organizations deploy real-time sales coaching software, as a direct alternative to traditional conversational intelligence software.
Sales enablement and revenue leaders can stop being reactive, and double down on their investment into sales enablement tools like Seismic and Highspot because they will now know that their content is being delivered to the reps in the moments that matter, live on the call.
Sales reps will no longer have the excuse of “I couldn’t find it” because Recommended Responses direct their attention directly to the response that is relevant to the scenario. Sales framework usage and compliance goes up exponentially overnight because it is no longer an afterthought, it is core to their success, especially when deployed via real-time call coaching software.