How to Assess Sales Readiness

You rely on your sales team to “bridge the gap” between leads and conversions—but in order for your sales team to be the most effective, they need to demonstrate sales readiness. But, “what is sales readiness,” you ask? Specifically, sales readiness refers to an employee’s ability to draw on the skills and knowledge needed to communicate throughout every stage of a buyer’s journey.

To better understand what sales readiness is, it’s also important to understand what it’s not. All too often, the terms “sales readiness” and “sales enablement” are used interchangeably. However, while enablement focuses more on sales results, readiness places more of the emphasis on preparing employees to be effective at each stage of the sales process.

Sales readiness also involves careful evaluation and assessment of each member of your salesforce to ensure that they are, in fact, capable of guiding buyers through their respective journeys. After all, just because you provide all of the “right” sales training to your team doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be ready to apply that training in a real-world scenario.

In this sense, it can be helpful to consider sales readiness an important component of sales enablement—but the two are hardly interchangeable. By having a true understanding of why sales readiness matters and how you can evaluate the readiness of your own sales team, your organization can enjoy such benefits as increased revenue, more valuable metrics/insights, and much more.

Why is Sales Readiness Important?

Now that you have a better understanding of what sales readiness entails, why does it matter? There are actually a handful of ways in which certifying your staff for sales readiness can help your business.

Increase revenue

One of the most important outcomes of sales readiness training is an increase in revenue at your organization. Why? Because simply put, practice translates into revenue. 92% of leaders at $1 billion companies go out of their way to measure both qualitative and quantitative factors of their sales team’s growth. If you’re not already taking the time to assess your employees for sales readiness and truly prepare them for success, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

And with sales readiness and sales training software, you can get your employees “sales-ready” 62% faster so you can begin reaping the benefits sooner rather than later.

Enjoy insights and metrics for improvement

The right sales readiness software can also provide you with some valuable insights and metrics that you can use to improve your sales training and the way you do business. With the specific metrics provided by your sales readiness platform, you can identify and address potential weaknesses in your sales training programs. Likewise, you can track individual employee progress to get a better feel for who could use a little more focused attention versus who is excelling.

Tools like Lessonly’s sales readiness software makes it easy to get all the insights you need in a comprehensive, streamlined platform. With this information, you can better refine your training and improve results.

Improve communication between sales teams and prospects

One of the most common areas of sales training where employees struggle is in communicating effectively with prospects. At the same time, teaching sales staff how to talk to prospects isn’t easy because each sale is completely unique; there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach.

With a sales readiness platform, you can provide staff with the experience and training they need to more confidently communicate with leads. Meanwhile, the more personalized approach afforded by sales readiness training makes it possible to work on communication with each member of the sales team.

Boost rep engagement and retention

Sales staff are more likely to be engaged in their work when they feel like they’re receiving the proper training, tools, and resources they need to be successful. When you go beyond basic sales training to include sales readiness assessment and personalized coaching, you’re showing your employees first-hand that you’re invested in their success. As a result, you can boost employee morale and possibly even increase retention. It’s a win-win for everybody!

How to Create a Sales Readiness Checklist

Not sure where to begin when it comes to implementing a sales readiness program in your workplace? Consider starting with a basic sales readiness checklist, which can help your organization and sales leaders with the formal assessment process.

We’ve outlined some of the key components you should have on your checklist below, as well as why they matter. However, it’s important to understand that every organization is unique—and you may want to add some other items or skills to your checklist to reflect specific goals or training outcomes.

1. Target customers and segmentation

You can’t expect your sales staff to be effective if they have a hard time understanding or relating to their audience. Ideally, a sales-ready employee will have a solid understanding of the buyer’s journey, as well as how the content they present to the client may affect that journey.

In addition to understanding their leads, you may also wish to assess your employees’ specific lead generation strategies. This will help you evaluate how productive your sales staff is when it comes to finding new and valuable leads when the pickings are slim.

2. Value proposition differentiation

Another aspect of sales that even some of the most experienced sales staff can struggle with is coming up with a unique and compelling value proposition. Having a great value proposition is one of the most effective ways to turn a lead into a sale—but this is something that typically requires a great deal of practice, as well as a solid understanding of the buyer’s unique journey.

By taking the time to evaluate an employee’s ability to differentiate their unique value proposition, you can learn a lot about his or her overall sales readiness.

3. Sales process

Does your organization have a tried-and-true sales process or “formula” that has proven successful in the past? If so, then you may also want to consider evaluating an employee’s ability to stick with the documented sales process as part of your sales readiness assessment. While it’s true that there will always be situations where a sales team member should deviate from the “typical” process, all of your sales staff should be aware of the organization’s process and how to follow it consistently.

4. Performance goals

An employee’s ability to set and strive for individual performance goals can also say a lot about his or her sales readiness. Likewise, your sales team should have an understanding of any “big-picture” goals or outcomes that your organization may have in place, such as reaching a certain number of new sales in a specific period of time.

Aside from awareness of these performance goals, however, you should also be evaluating your employees on how well they’re able to come up with a workable game plan to achieve these goals without guidance from management or supervision.

5. Sales skills

What does it mean to be skilled at sales? Obviously, this definition will vary from one industry and one organization to the next. However. a sales readiness program will implement specific skill assessments (along with hands-on training and practice) to get a better feel for where each employee may be thriving or needing more guidance.

As part of this, you may also wish to evaluate how well your sales staff is able to use the tools and resources available to them to successfully make a sale.

Do Better Work with Lessonly’s Sales Readiness Platform

It’s important to understand that this is not a “one-size-fits-all” sales readiness checklist. However, it can be a great starting point for your organization as you decide on the sales readiness tools you need moving forward.

Lessonly’s sales training software helps sales teams transform sales readiness. Our powerfully simple training platform combines the power of on-demand training and certifications, skill assessments, hands-on practice, effective feedback, and actionable insights to create a winning sales enablement strategy. The result? Shorter ramp times, consistent and confident reps, and more closed deals. See why over 3 million learners at 1,000 companies love Lessonly. Give us a try today.