Growing Skills and Winning Deals: Sales Performance with Work.com

In any sales organisation, driving performance, identifying experts, and growing skills are keys to success, but all too often companies struggle to bring effective methodologies to life. Work.com enables organisations to cultivate and standardize the winning strengths of the top sales performers. Join us to learn how customers have created a culture of peak performance with Work.com, and learn some tips and tricks you can use to maximise your team's full potential!

The most common problems in the sales world are sales representatives that struggle with unclear expectations, inconsistent wins, and high industry turnover. These problems are compounded when a sales platform is spread nationally. “Organisations that do not focus on sales performance are missing the mark,” says Meg Hadlock in Customer Success at Salesforce.

Companies question how to not only get their employees on the same page but also how to get them excited about growth and training. Hadlock demonstrates that no matter the size, companies can use Work.com to engage employees and to boost sales mentoring. When Work.com is utilised with Salesforce, companies experience a 30 percent increase in skill development, a 43 percent increase in sales coaching, and a 45 percent faster rate of employee onboarding. Why are these improvements important? Because they drive the bottom line and help achieve sales goals. Customers who adopted Work.com showed a 32 percent increase in sales.

John Serdinsky, CenturyLink’s Director of Sales Effectiveness says that CenturyLink began utilising Salesforce to automate the sales process a decade ago, however as they continued to grow and merge with other companies, it became vital to find better ways to connect sales reps and and improve sales training techniques. One of the largest problems created by the telecom company’s various mergers was the discordance of various company cultures and sales processes. CenturyLink adopted Work.com to place all of their employees on the same page, allowing equal footing inside the continuosly morphing company.

Serdinsky explains how CenturyLink employs Work.com. The first initiative CenturyLink utilises is the badge feature, allowing them to recognise and reward salespeople who have achieved greater sales performance. This method of awarding badges publically on the Chatter feed has a twofold effect: Employees feel incentivized to meet their sales goals and they feel their work is appreciated. As a result, says Serdinsky, employees work harder to reach goals. Badges also create a momentum inside of the company. Serdinsky says “winning didn’t feel like winning” until excitement started growing from the badges. Since the badges are visible on the Chatter feed, employees see the success of others which not only spurs competition, but also creates a greater sense of community, since CenturyLink allows peer to peer badges. Sales reps are recognised by both management and peers. Peer-to-peer badges are currently the largest percentage of badges given inside of CenturyLink, says Serdinsky. As a result gratitude and success have become a part of their company culture.

CenturyLink also utilises Work.com to allow sales managers greater involvement in the coaching and success of company goals. Work.com creates an avenue for managers to see up-to-date account of their team’s goals and training. Managers use the private chat feeds to encourage and to reward their sales reps who are also rewarded publicly for the trainings they’ve accomplished. The sales mentoring process at CenturyLink allows sales managers the opportunity to coach their reps in the moment, leading to easier change and less discrepancies in the sales process.

Another way CenturyLink uses Work.com is to focus on metrics behind badges and goals that truly drive change. When immediate rewards for productivity, revenue, or collaboration are issued, those positive acts are more likely to be repeated. This very subtle sales training techniques drives sales and has changed the bottom line, says Serdinsky.

Dave Braidman, Senior Business Architect at CenturyLink says the final goal with Work.com was to “make being a new hire fun.” With Work.com’s onboarding process, CenturyLink set goals for new hires with badges to reward them for meeting training goals. This practice is especially important for CenturyLink as a large sales company, with the numerous new employees, onboarding managers, and various training requirements. Work.com creates a way to track and reward the new hires, integrating them from Day One into CenturyLink’s company culture.

CenturyLink constantly works to improve their sales training techniques, says Braidman. Coordinating with Salesforce and the Salesforce community to find solutions, CenturyLink initiated their latest program, Salesforce U which is expected to expedite the training and certification process and was inspired and made possible by CenturyLink’s close ties to Salesforce and their community.

Jodi Schiff, CRM Development Manager at Kimberly-Clark says that their greatest problem with proper sales management hinged on the various CRM systems that they used globally; the variation in systems divided the regions. In 2010 Kimberly-Clark began implementing Salesforce around their global operations, allowing their salespeople and managers to have a global visibility. While this implementation helped unify Kimberly-Clark, they still required a more robust coaching tool. In 2014 they launched Work.com to boost sales performance and provide sales mentoring.

Schiff says that Kimberly-Clark focused on three areas with Work.com: Coaching, goals, and badging. Their current sales motto is “Row together, grow together,” and is accomplished through Work.com’s standardized coaching. All sales associates and sales managers receive the same coaching as their peers, evening the playing field and creating equal opportunities for advancement and growth throughout the company.

Kimberly-Clark appreciates the coaching notes available in Work.com, not only for documentation of coaching but also because the notes allows managers to have private conversations with their sales reps. This privacy is very important. The culture at Kimberly-Clark allows employees to feel comfortable receiving and asking for coaching because of the quiet, consistent coaching.

Kimberly-Clark’s second aim with Work.com creates and manages the day-to-day goals. Individualise goal creation allows sales reps and managers to create goals in their own words with the standards on how the goals will be measured. The versatility of the program allows sales to have their goals measured by percentages, by target goal, or by actual completion. This form of sales mentoring inspires a greater sense of self-motivation.

Kimberly-Clark also uses badging but with a more conservative approach than CenturyLink. . While CenturyLink has badges for numerous accomplishments, Kimberly-Clark prefers to specialise, creating only two badges both aimed at specific sales promotions. The difference in badging means that when Kimberly-Clark does create a badge, they dedicate more time and prizes to the badge campaign. Schiff says they have seen significant boosts in sales with both badge promotions.

Kimberly-Clark has also taken the lead from Salesforce and are creating their own sales university. Work.com allows them to create individualised training and an effective sales program catered towards their company culture.to

Work.com is a Salesforce service to drive sales performance through motivating and coaching. Goals can be tied directly to Salesforce data allowing easily trackable metrics. Work.com allows real-time recognition with badges announced on Chatter. Gift card rewards can also be integrated into performance initiatives. The aim of Work.com is to align company, team, and individual goals.

Work.com is a highly personalised coaching tool and mentoring tool that allows you to inspire, and drive your salesforce forward, in the way that best suits your company culture and company goals.