Investing time into getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of your sales reps is a crucial precursor to delivering training plans that are tailored to develop the right set of competencies, leading to improved sales results.
This was the main takeaway from Episode 3 of the GTM Value Creation Corner Podcast, in which Nearmap, a leading provider of high-resolution aerial imagery, shared their success story.
Nearmap disrupted the old model of creating aerial imagery about 15 years ago by capturing images with aircraft instead of satellites and using patented technology to significantly shorten the time required to process digital maps from months to just days.
The company proactively captures aerial imagery in several forms over most of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, providing subscribers with instant access to imagery that is updated three times a year. Customers come from a broad range of industries and entities: government agencies, construction, urban planning, utilities, insurance, and more. The aerial imagery enables customers to inspect locations remotely for better informed planning and monitoring.
Following a take-private acquisition by Thoma Bravo, Nearmap began to implement OKRs (objectives and key results) with the goal of developing a world-class, enterprise GTM team. As part of their GTM transformation, which was first focused on the people at Nearmap, the company looked to SBI to help them ensure a smooth process.
Developing sales reps through ‘Know and Grow Your Talent’
“We came up with ‘Know and Grow Your Talent’ to support our corporate OKR of growing and improving our go-to-market team,” said Karen Mattice, Director of Global Sales Enablement at Nearmap. To fulfill the ‘know your talent’ part of the initiative, Nearmap reached out to SBI to leverage the digital Talent Assessment tool.
“The assessment we used gave our sales reps a chance to say what they were good at and what they weren’t without actually writing it down. The assessment asks questions to uncover what competencies they’re strong at and what they might need a little bit of help in,” said Karen, who recognized that sales leaders have limited time to spend with so many sales reps in a way to know their competencies this well.
The assessment data highlighted the areas of focus to guide creation of individual development plans, leading in to the ‘grow your talent’ phase. As a first for the company, this also led them to develop a standardized sales methodology training, which combined best practices from several sales methodologies. They then used the assessment data to hone in on certain competencies in training that more of their sellers needed help with.
With the ‘Know and Grow Your Talent’ initiative well underway, leading indicators indicate that it is working. Nearmap has observed that sellers are talking less during calls with prospects which signals greater confidence in what they have to offer.
Catch the whole conversation on “Know to Grow Sales Talent”—episode 3 of the GTM Value Creation Corner podcast. Listen to the podcast here.
