Predictable Prospecting
Episode 65: Frontline Sales Strategies - Alea Homison
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Episode Highlights:
- Alea Homison’s role and her unique process for training and new employees
- GLG as a case-study for selling a service
- Sales enablement and the SDR team
- Alea’s 3 stage hiring process
- Creating a positive team culture
- Why daily role-playing with your team is the best thing you can do
- Hyper-personalizing your messaging
- Alea Homison’s top advice for SDR’s beginning to work with sales enablement
Resources: Connect with Alea Homison on Linkedin or email her at ahomison@glgroup.com
Episode Transcript
Marylou: Hi everyone. It’s Marylou Tyler. I have a very, very, very special guest. The reason why I say that I because she has the lucky draw of working with my co writer on Predictable Prospecting, Jeremey Donovan. Alea Homison is here today/ she the vice president of sales strategy at GLG Group. Her talk with me today is going to really lighten all of you up because she’s actually on the frontline. She’s executing. She’s activating. She’s responsible and I’ll let her tell you all the wonderful things that she does but she is really walking the walk. I talk a lot about how to do things and why we do things but she’s actually implementing and making things even better so she’s probably smarter than I am on what works, what doesn’t in the fields. Without further ado, Alea Homison, welcome to the podcast. Alea: Thank you so much for having me, Marylou. I appreciate it. Marylou: Tell us again, tell us your role within GLG Group. What life is like there and what area that you’re working on right now? Alea: My role at GLG is a bit unique. It expands both our new business efforts globally across our business units. Thinking about how do we partner with given AEs and sales managers with respect to process, execution, and accountability. Also, doing a lot of work around the sub set of sales enablement with respect to training, coaching, collateral. I spend a lot of time doing training as we on board new talent, reinforcement training with anybody on the team. Also, a lot of levelling up training, if you will. People that are already great at certain things and how do we make them exceptional and a bit more well rounded. It spends a bit of a gamut. One other unique thing I will mention about my role in the new business side is, we call them BDAs but for most organizations, they are called SDRs. They actually roll up into our team as well which affords an exciting opportunity to be on the frontline certainly on the prospecting side. It’s a great tandem and complement to the broader work we’re doing across organization across the new business sales process as well. Marylou: You actually handle, if we were to look at the pipeline, the active pipeline, as an assembly line, you actually engage at the very beginning when we’re in pre sales conversation mode which is what I call it. That makes sense to me because you’re not quite in that first conversation but you’re trying to warm up the chill to get to the first conversation. And then, your follow up conversation is under you as well once it gets to opportunity and beyond to close one. You’re touching those folks as well, correct? Alea: Correct. Marylou: Wow. Okay, cool. Where do we begin? Let’s start, since most of my guys are top of funnel, I’m curious, you mentioned the word play book. How do you know what people need training on in the playbook or when you’re starting people out, do you take them through a standard process of here’s the things you need to learn before we’ll put you on the phone or get you out there starting conversations or do you wait and see based on the data saying where people are getting stuck in order to invoke certain types of training. How does that work? Alea: I would say we come out from a multiple different angles and obviously, we value certain angles more than others. Certainly, a starting point that we had with all the head of sales talking about from a process standpoint, where do we think we’re good? Where do we think we need improvement? In some instances, have we quantified and defined into that process in a way that’s trainable and indigestible for any sales individual that’s on our team. Really mapping out what are we doing in every conversation we’re having whether that’s on the new business side or whether on the account management side. Who’s accountable on the GLG side for owning those conversation and looping in other partners? And then who’s actually the target on the client side, client persona works but also really talking someone that’s a user of the GLG service, or a buyer, or a sponsor. But then I think also we’ve spent a lot of time on and some bit of a labor of love is how do you actually have those kind conversations? I’m sure as you know, that’s one thing to put on paper, what are you going to do and who are you going to have the conversation with, it’s actually how you have the conversation so for us, that translates to some habits around pre imposed called planning and be strategic about what we’re having in those conversations and defining what good luck is like in those planning meetings. But also we spend a lot of time on the actual client communication, thinking about meeting structure, thinking about sample language. But also informs where we have worked to do is we do weekly role plays across organization. The SDR team do daily role plays but the AEs across organization do weekly role plays. That’s a great way in an organic fashion to both coach and teach but also set out key pain points where it’s an environment where very tenured sales individual has an opportunity to showcase all of the great skillsets and talents that they have. But then, in exchange for that showcase, if you will, it makes them a lot more comfortable and exposes areas of improvement. I think a much more organic way than asking someone what do they need improvement by. And then of course the layer on top of that of right along with the sales managers that can inform key areas of need as well. Marylou: Okay. For those listening right now, GLG, give us a little background because you sell service, correct or is there a product in there or is mostly service oriented? Alea: It’s mainly service oriented. Marylou: For those of you listening who thinks process really works for widgets only, this is a great example and a great case study or use case on selling a high end service but separating the roles out and really honing in on not only interest stage but inter stage enablement throughout the process. It can be done. There’s a lot of work to do this as Alea was saying, trying to figure out those conversations and which ones you should have. In the book, Jeremey and I talked about the different levels of awareness as well overlaying the types of language, the types of conversations and where the buyer is in his purchase intent. All of that falls underneath your organization. Is that correct? Alea: Correct. Marylou: Let’s take the SDR teams first because that’s my wheelhouse. Where are you seeing that you’re having the most impact by leveraging this types of play books or this thing called sales enablement? Where is that showing up as being just paramount for an SDR world? Alea: I think for the SDR team specifically, our team is perhaps a bit unique. It’s full of exceptionally talented career switchers. I have the luxury of individuals that are super excited and invested in making a pivot of the sales and are hungry to learn. Don’t have any bad habits but also don’t have any kind of preconceived notions so we spend a lot of time not surprisingly on training. It interrelates with all of the play books and role plays and things like that that were doing with the AEs across the organization as well. If I could say three things that we do with that team that I think is exceptionally impactful, one is, on the hiring front, we’ve actually moved away from some of the traditional hiring methods, if you will and we actually what I think are fairly unique three staged process. One is phone screen where we ask candidates essentially same two or three questions, have them role play without giving them the heads up that they’re going to role play and looking for not obviously the perfect client conversational role play but looking for a bit of intuition, looking for coachability, especially we have a hyper feedback culture on our team and across the organization and sales. After that role play, we give build upon and think about feedback and so how a candidate is receptive to that feedback, engaged in that feedback is a key indicator to me of success of on our team and in our organization. To compliment to that, we have them complete essentially an assessment that scales across 18, what we feel like are key competencies for a hunting oriented sales individual. We not only have the subjective elements. We’ve also got the objective elements as well. It’s a combination of a phone screen and that assessment. Second phase is a bit of a case study which really is meant to be indicative of the research and the planning that they would do before they outreach to a given individual. Because in our team we’re all about quality over quantity and so we don’t necessarily dictate how many emails you’re sending, how many calls you’re making but we do expect you to be thoughtful, do great research upfront so you can make a connection with that prospect that you’re outreaching to. Third step is the standard in person but we’ll do some extra role play and things like that but each person in that interview has a defined skillset and competency that they’re flashing out. I think robust, adding some quantitative, the assessment and really extra structure to the hiring process has allowed us to identify and attract great talent. Second thing as part of the on boarding, we do a really intensive on boarding that’s less of shadow this experience to really effective salesperson. It’s much more building from the ground up with respect to not only sales skills and holding effective meetings, what are components of that meeting, how do they think about objection handling, reverse questioning, things like that and techniques but also really robust industry training for the industry that they’re going to be covering when they start outreach. We do that in a robust fashion so that we’re able to actually have incoming SDRs on the phone with prospects at the beginning of week four. We’ve got to QA obviously that they’re ready to do that. I think it’s an ongoing, once they’re actually speaking with prospects is we’ve got a program where we’ve clearly defined four modules for them throughout the year that they’re expected to be in SDR program. Clear responsibilities and roles that they have at any point in the SDR role and it is like a little micro promotion, if you will, with respect to you’ve been able to demonstrate. This is a key confidence and continued success. We’re going to add this element of responsibility on top of it. From time blocking and accountability, we’ve created a culture where you have four outreach blocks a day and you’re doing thoughtful, really constructive outreach during those times. We’ve also got great breaks interwoven in the days. It allows the team to flow in a really productive way and removes the distractions and the feeling, because sometimes it can feel like a grind when you’re sending emails and making the calls because you’ve got a whole team ebbing and flowing their day accordingly and they know they’re holding each other accountable during those times, it just creates a culture where people want to win and see each other win and invest in each other’s success. It’s a bit of the on boarding and then I would say the accountability and the time blocking and the daily role play that we’re doing with the team. I think you have the habit inspiration and so I think recurring theme to a lot of what we’re structuring. Creating that so it’s kind of second nature. A lot of, like they say, the creative thinking is freed up for that actual relationship you’re trying to build with the prospect. You don’t have to worry about how you’re managing the day. It’s already set up for you. Marylou: It’s set up for you and it’s generally like you said, the time blocking I call block time, it’s the same thing. In my world, that’s a single tasking as much as possible for a prolonged period of time that allows you for phone work. You get better and better as you go. But of course breaks are needed. Get up, stretch, walk around. You’re not just tied to your chair the whole time. It does allow you to compartmentalize the different tasks so that you are proficient at each. The day does go by quicker when you feel more focused. It doesn’t allow a lot of room for you to be checking your email or looking at any type of social things. You’re basically doing your work flow. Like I say, you plan your work and you work your plan which is what really works well for business development. Alea: I agree. Marylou: The other thing I heard you say was about daily role playing. When is that incorporated in your world? Is it early AM? is it as needed during a certain block time? How do you go about doing that? Alea: For the SDR team, standing time is at 3:30 each day. We’ve started as people progressed to the program and start to co lead and own that second conversation outside that initial outreach. For us, there’s role plays to pitch practices if you will. Those are standing times at 10:30 on Wednesday and Friday that are further along. If they have a pitch practice, they don’t also have a role play. But for the bulk of the team, the role play are 3:30. For the AEs in the business units, they have standing time on Mondays. For times and reasons, they have essentially half the team at 10:30AM and then another half of the team in afternoon, either 1:00PM or 2:00PM. It’s a standing time each day or each week. It again, gets to be habit and so you just intuitively know, “I’m never available at that time on that given day because I know I have a role play. Marylou: Regarding the role play itself, how do you determine the schedule? For example, when I was doing this with my teams, I would have role plays for the different types of telephone calls that we’re going to do whether it was a find the right person call. This is pre having all this wonderful information now at your fingertips. Let’s pretend that we’re still mapping into an organization and we can’t find the right person because we have so many titles to deal with that we don’t know. We work on that kind of call. We work on a fit call. We call it an AWAF. Are we a fit call? We work on qualification calls. We also heavily, heavily on objection handling and that intro call. Are you set up that way as well? I’m trying to the fact that are these schedules dynamic or are they static? If they’re dynamic, what are they based on? Is it some type of discovery through the data that the call wrap up that you were talking about before that drives the role play or is it a set schedule? Alea: It’s a little bit of a blend. If we see either through conversion rates or just to be honest, sales individuals raising their hands and wanting some additional coaching will go the route of today we’re going to spend some time really focused on this type of the client conversation whether that’s pain identification for the qualification, that renewal conversation that may be a bit tougher on the account management side. If we don’t have that situation, typically what we’ll do is in the interest of making it as relevant and tangible as possible for the sales individual, we really like to practice real upcoming client conversation that individuals are going to have. What most often happens especially outside of initial on boarding and ramp up of the roleplay, people get acclimated, less of a we’re going to focus on qualification today and it’s more I’d like to volunteer. I have a really tough client conversation next week. Here’s the scenario therefore, they role play around that. We structured some really robust kind of feedback as well around each different client conversation throughout our sales processes both on the new business side as well as account management and are also helping to train people on what it means to give and provide excellent feedback to just make them as most impactful as possible. Typically, it lands more around a real client scenario that someone is preparing for and just above the benefit of peers and a manager giving them perspective on what they’re doing really great and what they could do differently. Marylou: That’s great. I love role playing. I think it’s one of those things that I’m so happy to hear from you that your AEs are doing that as well because I was just at a conference in Florida where I was listening. They were working on their new messaging and they brought an AE up to role play the new message. It was incredible to watch him because they just got this new messaging like the night before. He had to put together a conversation. He was talking to the CEO. They were up on stage. It was like, “Wow.” It’s because they felt so comfortable and practiced so much that type of conversation that he did really well. I’m sure he’s the kind of guy who practices what he’s going to say whether it’s a formal process through that company or not. I’m sure that the AEs probably really benefit from that. Do you see reduction in the lag in the pipeline through all these efforts? Is it intuitively speeding things up? Alea: We did a huge push around play books and the role plays and things like that on the AE front at the beginning of this year, in January. For our sales cycle, we’re just starting to see some of the fruits of our labor but definitely from people having confidence, I would say conversion rates are just starting to be able to see but what we’re seeing is like an early indicator to that is better and more confidence in the pipeline. People having the confidence to disqualify versus create these opportunities that aren’t really good opportunities so from a quality of the pipeline standpoint we’ve been seeing a lot of that for months. On the earliest with the SDR team where we’ve been having lot of the structure in place since early last year, for that we’ve seen our conversion and our win rate from those initial outreaches and those emails to conversion to those pitch meetings so that second conversation for us. We’ve seen that continued to move from, out of the gate, we started with around 5%, I would say which is not bad but it’s not a bad starting point. Now, for the team of SDRs which are doing this day in and day out, their pitch rate is actually 12%. We’ve seen that accelerate tremendously. They’re really a talented team and they’ve been able to maintain that 12% as people have graduated out of that program into AE roles. We’ve incorporated new talent. We’ve seen a great consistency in that ramp of effectiveness to secure those meetings. Marylou: That’s wonderful. Wow. That’s great work you guys over there. That is the target that does ebb and flow sometimes especially, your path, it sounds like you’ve got, I heard, a junior SDR role, for lack of a better term, that gets those first conversations in place and there’s someone a sales business development but further is the conversation through qualification and then beyond that, the account executive. I think that maintaining that consistency and conversion rates with the movement upward so to speak or laterally depending on where they’re going within the company giving them growth, that’s fabulous. Let’s switch gears a little bit in our remaining time because I heard you say content. Do you also work on the content assets and making sure that the personalization pieces, if there are personalization, are aligned from the language because in the book, Jeremey was really instrumental in this, we talked about three levels of personalization. There’s the data driven which is the highest reliance on technology. One step from that would be where the data elements in our database help with the conversation. It’s still a mass personalized so we’re not taking that email or taking that body and modifying in any way. Hyper personalization would be where the SDRs are actually using a template and then creating more of a personalized message from that. Where are you with that now? Alea: I would say we definitely practice hyper personalization. The messaging to any SDR or AE across the firm is really your goal again because we’ve structured a lot of things that can be habitual for you. It really does free up. Part of that to me, is starting point templates that have tested well and you see in the data, put someone in a position of success. They’re freed up then to really try to get to know prospect A through their social accounts, through LinkedIn, through just general Google, etc. in any way they can and try to understand that individual and see how they can customize on top of that messaging to really resonate with that person in a way that it’s going to be different if they were hunting you or if they were hunting me. We really try to structure the role in a way that all of that creative personalization is really the mandate of the SDRs and the sales team. Certainly, we wouldn’t expect to see the same email coming from any individual in the team because of the expectation of what we’ve sent. I think that’s the key, probably not surprising to you, but I think that’s been a key to that kind of 12% win rate because instead of outreaching to 400 to 500 names in a given month, for us, we have certain level expectation of outreach to be successful but again, I’m not really saying to give an SDR, you’re making this many calls in a day and this many emails being sent in a given day. It’s during your time blocks, do you really [00:29:15]? That will result in that win rate, in a certain number of wins in the weeks for us. Definitely, hyper personalization is what we think is the name of the game certainly to be successful on our business. Marylou: Do you start them off, when you hyper personalize, with a template that has a majority of the sales messaging inside of it or are they starting with a blank screen? Alea: We have a template that has the majority of the sales messaging. They don’t have to worry how to position GLG, if you will. They certainly to understand how we’re positioned so we can have the client conversations but in the email, we’re much more how you do make that 101 connection with that prospect on top of the messaging that we’re putting forward for you. Marylou: Okay, very good. Are there other assets that you attach with hyper personalized as an example of should ask questions that they can link to? Is there any type of click through in the hyper personalization? Alea: There is and it depends. I would say key focus for us is probably thinking more broadly about the assets that we have available to us and different assets that we can create. Currently we’ll use, in great partnership with our marketing team, we’ve got some client testimonials that depending on the role in the industry that a given prospect may sit in and could resonate well. We also have just some great, what we call learning videos, if you will, that are examples of different council members in our network which are a key part of our service. Giving this a sense of the quality of those individuals and types of insights that they may have, a kind of quick snippet that will depend and link in our emails as well, again if it’s applicable. Marylou: Right. This has been a fabulous conversation. We’re running out of time here but I wanted to ask you, I’m sure people listening to this call and thinking, “Okay, role play is really important.” There is also a level of systemization here that you guys have been able to put into place, that have served you well. If you’re giving advice to a company and they’re just starting to think about enablement, what would be the top thing you’d want them to go home and just sort of noodle around in their brain and start thinking about and implementing? Alea: I would say probably over arching. I think a key thing is not to be afraid of structure. We’re building a lot of this whether it’s play books, the weekly or daily role play, depending on the team and things like that, some of the initial reaction was this seems really structured. This seems mechanical. Sales is an art which I 100% agree that there’s certainly an art and an inspiration to sales. I would encourage people to think about how structure can free up certainly your high performers to do what they do best and focus on that client conversation. What we’ve heard resoundingly over the past two years of we implementing a lot of this is, I see it on my day to day when I’m doing outreach to clients as well, is that structure allows you to do the work you actually want to do. No one signs up in sales and says, “I would love to log in from SalesForce. I would love to do all of this other system work.” They join sales and they love sales because it’s all about personal connection and communication. What structure can allow you to do is it’ll build that out for people and then allow them to not have to worry about things that they don’t want to focus on and really blossom and do what they joined this profession to do. I think you’ll see your high performers blossom and react really, really well to what initially may feel like, “I’m not so sure you want to add so much structure around this.” Marylou: I agree 100% obviously but I also was at a meeting the other day where someone looked at me and said, “You know, Marylou, if it looks like chaos to you, it’s really system that you can’t see.” What you’ve done with your group there is you’ve enabled that system so they can see it. Once they can see it, that frees them to focus what matters which is the sales skill, the sales conversations because everything else is put into a nice, neat system that just really frees up your time. I hope people will think of it that way. Alea: One quick thing to add to is I think critical when you build that system, is talk openly about that system. Don’t make it a black box for the sales team. Communicate to them why it’s built specifically for them and how it will help them be better at their jobs and how you’re using it as well and it’s going to continue to iterate. I think building that system without that active communication and dialogue can be difficult and probably less successful so don’t be afraid of it and don’t be afraid to talk about it. I think that probably would be the takeaway. Marylou: That’s great advice. How do people get a hold of you if they want to either further this conversation or find out more how you’re running things over there? Alea: Two best ways to get a hold of me, on LinkedIn, I’m Alea Homison. Feel free to either send me an email on LinkedIn or you can email me here at glg@ahomison@glgroup.com Marylou: I’ll be sure to put your contact information in the shownotes so that if anyone wants to speak with Alea, I really suggest if you’re a leader listening to this conversation or someone in the organization who thinks that it’s too chaotic and that you’re stressed, this is one of the things to alleviate that stress right away. It takes time to build as Alea said but it’s something that once it’s built, it’s iterating, it’s getting better, it will free up your time so that you can do what you’ve been hired for which is to generate new business, close deals, service great accounts, whatever it is that you were hired to do. A system in place will help you get there faster, better, and with less stress. Thank you so much, Alea. I really loved speaking with you today. Alea: Thank you.