Why you do this session / potential triggers
The messaging that your team uses will evolve as they develop from experience, as they share with other reps, as your product develops and as the industry changes. You need to steer the messaging in the right direction as that happens.
That doesn’t mean having a team of robots reading scripts. You want people to use their own initiative to make things happen. What you don’t want is committing to features on an unknown timeline just to get a deal across the line, or worse, promising features that won’t happen at all. Even if it doesn’t go that far wrong, even your rockstar reps need a check in to make sure they are on point.
Usually if there’s poor messaging out there you’ll see it for yourself or get feedback directly. But it might also be the underlying issue if you see a rep struggling to get traction.
What you need to prepare as a manager
Coming into the session, as well as being able to share examples of where you see the wrong messaging being used you should be prepared to coach them on a better approach.
It’s also worth taking time in advance to see if you can identify a potential root cause – for example, did they borrow messaging from someone else, misinterpret it or use it in the wrong context? Or is there a fundamental lack of understanding around what they are selling?
What the rep needs to prepare
The rep should come to the session highlighting any areas they are potentially struggling with. Are there examples of messaging they need help with? It may be that their later stage messaging is great but they struggle with earlier stage or lead prospecting messaging.
What you’ll cover
Here’s some guidance for each talking point in the notes template:
What triggered the need for this session
Here’s where you’ll note why you wanted to have the session.
Review examples
This is where you’ll note the examples that you pulled together during your prep, so you can go through them, and for each one discuss potential alternatives.
Rep input: identify root cause of any issues
This is the chance to deep dive on what’s causing any issues with messaging.
Review potential resources needed
Would specific sales training help?
Would a course on email communication or demo skills help?
What resources are in the company and available to help?
How can the rep develop based on this?
To make the session valuable for the rep, there should be some action for them to take to make an improvement based on what they’ve learned. This section of the notes is a reminder to add those as actions so you can follow up later.
Some example actions might be:
“Sit with sales ops team to get a better understanding of sales engagements”
“Talk to product manager to understand product market fit messaging”
“Set up a call shadowing session with rep X who knows feature Y particularly well”
What next?
Remember to share the notes and actions once you’re done.
Based on how the session went, you might want to update the rep profile with an update or a change in their skills profile.