Driving a Sales Methodology, Lessons from Tealium

Sales is tough.

It’s not an easy thing to figure out for any company. Especially, when that company is a MarTech company that is growing faster than they can implement systems.

These systems don’t just pop into your sales teams’ brains overnight.

It would be great if they did.

However, it takes consistent work and effort to have all of your sales people speaking the same language.

Today’s episode is a recording of a breakout session at the Sales 3.0 Conference that I conducted with John Chinello, Director of Global Sales Enablement, and Laurie Schrager, VP of Global Revenue Operations, at Tealium.

We discuss the following topics on today’s episode:

• Finding the right sales methodology
• Implementing the right methodology
• Understanding Tealium’s competitive differentiator
  
• How to scale when your team is scattered into silos

The term frictionless has been around for more than a decade. However, one of the biggest sources of friction can be internal processes, that make it difficult to help your team achieve the success they are looking for.

“In order to provide frictionless buying experiences for our customers, we have to increase their awareness.”

CHAD SANDERSON from ValueSelling Associates

The problem of expansion

My two panel guests from the team at Tealium explain the growing pains of working in an expanding MarTech company. Tealium brings a customized solution to customer data. As a platform it helps companies manage their customer data.

However, with all of that data comes problems such as what to do with all of the information that is coming in. In the past, it had been distributed into a bunch of different silos.

This made cross-channel communication difficult, and hindered their ability to create a cohesive sales methodology as a company.

When you are dealing with over 800 customers in multiple verticals in countries all over the world, it only makes it more difficult.

Managing teams

“Sales methodology aside, you need to understand what your competitive differentiator is, who you are, and what you want to be. That is the biggest challenge.”

LAURIE SCHRAGER from Tealium

Laurie is the head of revenue operations and enablement which means that she helps the technological process and people interface smoothly.

John is the head of all enablement initiatives, and he has helped them grow their 475 employees across the globe.

Tealium was growing so fast that each team were focused on their own initiatives—they didn’t have their competitive differentiators to drive outcomes through a consistent sales process.

In order to get something to become part of everyone’s daily language it means getting everyone to be a part of the same operations in order to truly sync up.

The problem was that they wanted to scale, and wanted to get rid of the silos in order to make that necessary. So John was tasked with driving something operationally that would be scalable.

That presented another problem.

Creating a process for methodology.

“We all agreed that we were going to drive outcomes by using a consistent sales methodology, and that created a better customer journey through all the hand-off points. The key to success is consistency.”

LAURIE SCHRAGER from Tealium

Finding a coherent sales methodology to help your company to scale can be extremely complicated. Especially when you have nearly 500 employees scattered across the globe.

Prior to the Vortex Training (two days spent with ValueSelling Associates on prospecting) the energy level between SDRs and other sales team members was very low.

As Laurie pointed out to me, “the worst thing you can do is to create a generic sales methodology.”

As she put it, “generic isn’t appealing.”

Salesforce created the constraints for the sales methodology to work well.

The benefits of an outside-in perspective

The Tealium team felt that the outside input from ValueSelling was invaluable.

When ValueSelling came in and trained new hires at Tealium, they asked the ValueSelling Associates—how long have you been with Tealium? This was a testament to the in-depth work that we provided them and the value that their team received.

Or, as John put it:

“Here’s an organization that knows us, they invested the time to getting to know our business really well,
so much so that when they came in and trained new hires at Tealium, they ask the ValueSelling Associates—how long
have you been with Tealium?”

JOHN CHINELLO from Tealium

One of the biggest takeaways from working with the ValueSelling team was the passion and energy that they were able to walk away with as a result of feeling more clarity and more direction.

What kind of challenges are you seeing today?

Today the team at Tealium still face the worry of attrition. There are many things that they could have potentially done differently, such as enabling the managers to be able to inspect the process easier. They also could have ingrained the methodology into the ways they coached and managed their team meetings and conducted one-on-ones.

Lastly, these processes could have all been built into the forecasting process.

However, one of the biggest areas of relief is in the area of team enthusiasm.

As John put it, “when you think about the camaraderie of an SDR group, you need that across the board with everyone in the company.”

“I would encourage anyone else who is trying to drive a behavior change, to celebrate the successes more. Celebrate those wins, because that’s what drives sales teams forward, when they hear their peers succeeding with something.”

JOHN CHINELLO from Tealium

This post is based on a B2B Revenue Executive Experience podcast with John Chinello, Director of Global Sales Enablement, and Laurie Schrager, VP of Global Revenue Operations, at Tealium. To hear this episode and many more like it, subscribe to B2B Revenue Executive Experience here.

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