5. Competency-based Learning

A large component of Sales Enablement is obviously training: onboarding, ramping, sales skills, process and methodology, sales tools and product knowledge are all in the mix. And that's just for Reps. Sometimes a ton of content is thrown at them with the hope that some of it will stick.

Developing a competency model and map prior to content development is much more efficient and effective. First, we have limited training resources and time (both the trainer's and the rep's time is expensive!)- focusing on key competencies makes for best use of valuable resources. But how do we determine which are key and which are "nice to have?"

One approach is to find out what top performers are doing more of, less of, better or differently than their peers. Another approach is root cause analysis of the key activities that lead to closing good deals, and focusing effort on those critical predictors of success. More on this in 6. Data Capture and Root Cause Analysis.

Qualification of deals seems to be a common area for focus, and creating clear stage exit criteria can help here. We often find customer churn and late stage delays or lost deals can be traced back to poor qualification. Do you have an Executive Buyer (EB) or key influencer present in Qualifying? Do you know all the personas' pain points? Have you presented and validated value-based use cases and proof points? Have you used MEDDPICC to score the deal?

Once key competencies are identified, performance criteria should be defined along with how these criteria need to be demonstrated and assessed. Ultimately reps will have to sell to real customers in real situations.

Again, everyone's time is expensive, so any way to automate some or all of this assessment is important. What we're looking for first is performance and behavior. We design the training for that first, then work on the knowledge that supports performance. Too often we start throwing knowledge at learners before we've understood what we want them to do.

Measuring the effectiveness of the training hinges on this focus on performance. If we know from analysis those key activities that drive success, and train to excellent performance of those key activities, core competency-based learning is in place.