Sales Enablement  

Bridging the strategy and execution gap

Situation

Global sales teams needed to be armed with Arrow Electronics' newly created brand strategy and positioning, solutions portfolio, and verbal identity.

Sales representatives were under tremendous pressure to learn about products, how to communicate value, the customer, and the complex purchase processes of customers in many different industry verticals.

Goals

Arrow Electronics wanted to:

  • Bridge the gap between strategy and execution.
  • Build a strategic, ongoing process to equip all customer/partner/supplier-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of stakeholders at each stage of the problem-solving life cycle. 
  • Ensure that sales teams present the company’s value proposition in a consistent way
  • Enable rich conversations through a configurable portfolio of materials based on customer, partner, and supplier scenarios
  • Equip teams with information and messaging necessary to have discussions about the Five Years Out initiative as it related to specific products and their solutions portfolio.

Solution

This started with an audit to understand the people, goals, KPIs, behaviors, processes, and technology currently in place.

The solution included:

  • A sales training strategy that balanced the needs of leadership, specific BU’s, and the sellers they supported.
  • Goals and KPI'S that moved beyond activities (# of assets, #of sessions, # of tools)—to high level benefits (access, successful meetings, shared vision, building a business case).
  • Learning experiences vs. static content
  • Actionable assets. Specific pieces like: messaging frameworks, tailored positioning, customizeable presentations, email templates, thought-leadership pieces, battle cards, discussion guides, and sales meeting presentations were created to help teams plan, create demand, sell and deploy the right message at the right time
  • Technology hub to house content and learning experiences 

Processes were set up to avoid common pitfalls which can include instances of well-intended but isolated decisions about what salespeople need to be successful in telling brand or product stories. Without a plan to coordinate these efforts, the result is a dissonance of individual initiatives — random in purpose and virtually impossible for the sales channel to effectively absorb and adopt. 

Results

By identifying goals, metrics, defining a strategy, and identifying / proactively solving common challenges actionable content could be created operationalized.

 

As the lead and sole strategy consultant  I helped Arrow Electronics create their brand purpose and strategy, operationalize this strategy through a solutions portfolio and visual design system in collaboration with designers,  apply the brand to recruiting, on-boarding, and retention efforts,  develop a verbal identity, and sales enablement program.