B2B sales enablement

We’re experts in Sales Information Management systems and the discipline of leveraging data to drive sales.  Sales resources are always tight.  Data provides the clarity of purpose and focus that salespeople need to drive sales by concentrating on the game-changing opportunities.  We help sales teams to identify the most profitable market segments and customers, so they can channel their activities in profitable business.  We use insight-driven data warehouses to learn from previous successes.  We build on ‘what works’ to create more predictable sales pipelines.  We’re big fans of designing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems around activities, measurable outcomes, and a commitment to reducing manual data-entry required of salespeople that can become a huge distraction.

We design and implement Sales Content Management systems.  A Sales Content Management system marries up useful sales tools and marketing collateral with the needs of salespeople at any point in time in the sales process and lifecycle.   Done well, salespeople should expect to always have the best demo tools, marketing collateral, pricing and product information at their fingertips – probably using a CRM system as the conduit to signpost the latest version of the most useful resources.  Of late, Sales Content Management systems have started to combine light-weight Learning Management Systems capabilities to equip salespeople with a single point of use for all sales related knowledge.

We work with marketing and sales leaders to create effective Sales Playbooks for their teams.  A sales playbook provides salespeople with a simple guide to what they are to sell and how they’re to sell it.  Each product or service has its own dedicated section and walks through the sales process (activities, arguments/counter-arguments, benefits, competition and other resources).  Salespeople can use the Sales Playbook as an aide memoir on how to sell solutions.

Sometimes, salespeople are seen as order takers and a ‘passive’ presence in sales meetings with customers and prospects. Whiteboarding is about telling a story using a whiteboard as a visual aid. It’s a great way for salespeople to present their ideas to customers and prospects, partly because it demonstrates to their audience that they know what they’re talking about. This gives them a position of authority in the room.

For product managers and solutions marketers, whiteboarding is a great way to ensure salespeople know their products. The challenge of knowing you will have to educate others once you’ve learned something yourself can be a great motivator to listen intently and absorb new ideas.

Newton Day uses whiteboarding as a learning device for salespeople. We want salespeople to PRACTISE and APPLY what they’re learning. No sales product training is ever complete in our view unless salespeople can ‘play back’ what they’ve learned in a whiteboarding session.

To get the best results from whiteboarding, it’s important that sales leaders take the lead and do the training themselves. This knowledge can then be cascaded to salespeople by people that share the same challenges they also face. We always recommend that sales leaders video their sessions.

Our team has vast experience in designing, populating and managing customer credentials systems.  Credentials, such as testimonials and case stories, play an important role in evidencing the ability of an organization to deliver its value to customers.  Case stories build trust and confidence in customer relationships.  They also educate customers into the value and use of solutions. But sourcing case stories can be a major overhead and sales distraction.  While salespeople WANT case stories, they don’t want to inherit the effort needed to source them or produce them.  Similarly, marketing teams are always keen to get their hands on case stories, but they find sales colleagues are keen to shirk the task of sourcing them.  Working with an expert independent provider like Newton Day helps both sales and marketing team to get what they want and help foster new opportunities through the timely supply of rich case story examples.