TAKING A NARRATIVE TO MARKET
Drive consideration & win the hearts of new buyers
If you just have 3 minutes, you can view the video below for the highlights. If you like to read, keep scrolling. There's a sample on-demand course you can access below!
Challenge
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As Reddit's ads business evolved and matures, it was natural to evolve the business value proposition or 'pitch deck' for sales. At Reddit we launched a new narrative to capture the attention of new prospects and ignite their interest in advertising on Reddit. We needed to get over 200 sales reps to learn the confidently deliver and tailor the narrative to increase consideration of potential buyers.
Approach
SALES RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
As I always say, guesses are for messes. To kick start any initiative, we always start with discovery and research. In this case, we conducted interviews with sales. We shadowed several sales call with potential prospects to identify the characteristics of a productive sales pitch with a potential client, how insights are used to customize the narrative, and best practices to engage your client with good questions and move towards action.
EXPERIENCE DESIGN & DELIVERY
Not only did this qualitative sales research help understand what good looks like when positioning the value of Reddit, but we also provided feedback to our Business Marketing on the narrative deck to enhance the messaging and ensure there are opportunities for the sales reps to center the narrative around the client's business needs. We also helped coordinate review sessions to "test" the narrative with buyers from various business segments to gain insight and feedback on the messaging. Our goal was to ensure our reps could confidently deliver and tailor the Reddit narrative. We designed a modular approach that included:
Live virtual workshops
In smaller group workshops, we introduced the Narrative through a series of short, interactive exercises to help the sales team put the narrative into their own words and help them articulate a new 3rd party study that highlights how Reddit influences purchase decisions. We also leveraged the Challenger Sales methodology framework for framing insights to clients' commercial needs.
An on-demand module featuring seller videos
As a follow-up, we launched a short but sweet on-demand course that featured videos of an Enterprise Account Executive and a Mid-Market Account Executive delivering their narrative to a specific client. This module also included a sample talk track of the study and slides. It also had an assessment that all reps were required to complete.
Practice & certification
Learners were then prompted to complete a pitch challenge. This challenge required reps to tailor and deliver a pitch for a prospect. They recorded and uploaded their pitch to our learning management platform. We established a qualitative and quantitative scorecard to guide managers in scoring and feedback.
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Pitch Library
After the challenge concluded, we shared the top recorded pitches in a searchable library for sales.
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New Hire Certification
We were to incorporate the on-demand narrative certification into the new hire learning program, so all new hires are required to pass this certification as part of their onboarding.
Results
We certified 99% of the sales org with 97% overall satisfaction with this GTM effort. Most importantly, we increased the confidence in sellers to approach their clients by 50%. We were able to help sellers expand their average deal size by 25%.
Learning
With any initiative, there is always something to learn. We learned that it is so important to:
Ensure our collateral is vetted with buyers and sellers BEFORE we commit to training the sales team to give sellers confidence that this message works.
Spend more time focused on objection handling, especially around our differentiation
Invest in building a robust communications strategy to drive the adoption of a program once it is launched.