Sales Training Article: Are You Struggling to Sell New Product with a Legacy Sales Force?

By John Staples, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)

When it comes to launching new products, your Key Accounts are the pilot group. We talk about success being 50% talent and 50% the conditions you place that talent in; Sales Enablement defines the conditions for launching new products and services.

Questions:

• Do you struggle hitting the new product first year targets?
• Do you struggle with the sales team not embracing the new products?
• Are you getting beat up for relying on the legacy product to make your number?

If you answered "yes" to all 3 questions, you're not alone. As soon as the product is thrown over the fence to you and your team, it's now your problem the company's not hitting the new product goals.

Sales conditions are constantly changing, the pace of change continues to accelerate, yet you continue to accept new product without properly enabling the sales team.

Give your sales team a chance by ensuring the following groups do their jobs and that you're involved in the process (refer to the Sales Enablement chart to the right).

• Product Management
• Product Marketing
• Product Development
• Field Marketing

As a CSO, VP of Sales or Sales Manager; Sales Enablement is core to your responsibilities.

Part of your Key Account opt-in package includes access and co-development of new products and services. The launch of a new product shouldn't be a surprise to your key accounts; they should be pushing you to finalize the release based on the value of the solution they worked to help develop.

Key takeaways:

• Leverage the Key Account Management team to pilot new products; that's why you're in their labs/test environments
• Make sure you have a Sales Enablement program and that every product/service goes through every step
• Don't confuse Sales Enablement with a Product Gate Process; only a small portion of the Sales Enablement program is found in a world class Product Gate process
• Don't assume a tweak to the compensation plan is the answer