AI-Powered Sales Enablement with Howard Brown, #194

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The rise of sales enablement technology is fundamentally reshaping what sales leaders thought was possible. From providing real-time sales coaching insights to help reps improve their sales skills on the spot, to empowering sales organizations to use large volumes of data to elevate their sales processes – the sales game is changing!

And, with the emergence of proven AI-powered sales tools like Revenue.io that make mastering the art of selling even easier, today’s modern seller is being equipped with more customized sales solutions than ever before.

Exactly how innovative sales enablement technology can be leveraged to shift the capabilities of sales teams is the topic of discussion in this episode of the Modern Selling Podcast.

My guest, Howard Brown isn’t just a sales visionary, but his company is truly redefining how we collect, process, and analyze sales data to generate higher customer engagement and ultimately sales revenue.

If you’re a sales enablement leader who is looking for ‘that’ next level tool or strategy to accelerate the development of your sales team, then this is not an episode to miss!

Howard Brown is the founder and CEO of Revenue.io, a technology solution that powers sales, customer success and marketing teams, to deliver better performance with real time guidance and intelligence. As a three-time entrepreneur and former clinical psychologist, Howard’s thought leadership on sales, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence has been featured on Bloomberg TV, FOX Business, Forbes, Cheddar and elsewhere. Howard is also a faculty member of the Revenue Enablement Institute and was named one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs.

That’s why I couldn’t be more excited to bring his incredible sales genius to the Modern Selling Podcast.

Listen in to the full conversation to see how AI-powered tools like Revenue.io are giving sales teams an unshakable advantage to not just sell better, but to also be more effective with their sales training.

How to Create The Exceptional Customer Experience

In previous episodes of the Modern Selling Podcast, we covered the importance of creating an exceptional customer experience. But, I was curious to hear Howard’s perspective as it relates to the data that his company sees everyday.

Howard explains, “I think that companies have lost focus on putting the buyer at the center of the sales conversation. After all, they have unlimited choices, so everything usually comes down to an exceptional customer experience. But, the challenge becomes how do you provide your sellers, your support team, your marketing team, and your employees with the tools and insights they need to make an exceptional customer experience possible – every time?”

That’s the precise question that at Vengreso we strive to answer with our Modern Sales Mastery Course for Teams. It’s our view that by honing in on your customer personas that you can craft highly personalized customer interactions that not just convert prospects into customers, but that also nurtures and builds amazing customer relationships.

The key, like Howard alludes to, is in building a robust and shared sales enablement strategy to coordinate all the pieces of data, insights, tools, and resources across all of your customer-facing departments.

Jump into the episode and pay close attention to the 13-minute mark in the conversation to hear how Revenue.io meets the unique new challenges facing today’s modern seller.

The Emerging Role of Revenue Operations 

As the selling landscape has changed over the past 18 months during the pandemic, it has been interesting to see how sales organizations have tried to adapt.

Here at Vengreso, as a digital sales training company, we were able to easily expand our video trainings, like our Video Sales Mastery, to help companies make the pivot from in-person to virtual sales training.

However, there is still a growing challenge for so many organizations related to translating new training into new selling behaviors that move the needle and get results. This is no different as we go up the sales hierarchy to the C-level teams.

So, I wanted to get Howard’s perspective on the growing importance of the Chief Revenue Officer and where he sees this role going in the near future. 

“To be successful, a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) must have a strong grasp of sales, marketing, operations, and customer success and how they all work together,” Howard shares.

“Too often, companies promote someone to CRO without ever considering if they fully understand all of the components that drive and can influence revenue.”

That’s why in my perspective, the best CROs are those that have been VPs of sales and have an intimate understanding of the customer, the sales and marketing process, and how precisely to enhance everyone in the process to perform.

Download and listen to the full episode to hear the three things Howard says every CRO must do to remove siloed reporting and analytics to scale their sales growth. 

The Biggest Sales Enablement Challenge & How to Solve It

It’s always difficult to find qualified sales professionals that have the skills they need coming in the door to dominate in a virtual selling environment. Add to that the extensive onboarding and training process that goes into getting a new sales rep ready to sell – there’s never enough time for sales coaching.

I’ve seen here, at Vengreso, even with the extensive amount of coaching and on-the-job training we provide with our Modern Sales Mastery program, it still takes us 4-6 months to get a sales rep ready to handle the entire sales cycle from prospecting to deal close, on their own. 

But, with new AI-powered technology like Revenue.io, I wanted to hear Howard’s insights into what sales enablement leaders and sales managers can do to lower the sales learning curve.

Howard shares, “In order to do this ‘right’, you can’t just have anyone coach your sales reps. You want to look at ALL of the engagement data, the supervisory data, the coaching data, and take the outcome data to truly optimize and figure out what’s working and what’s not working. With Revenue.io, we get so granular with our data that we can tell you which coaches or sales managers are actually making their sales reps better and which ones are doing more harm.”

This is such an incredible level of visibility that hasn’t been available before! And, by tracking coaching effectiveness across your organization, this becomes a much-needed resource that sales enablement leaders can use to maximize their team’s success.

Join the full conversation and hear the unique coaching strategy we use at Vengreso to get our sales reps onboarded faster and ready to book more meetings and close more deals.