How Salesloft Allowed IBM To Focus on Coaching and Consistency

“I don’t think many of us come into sales management because we want to be CRM jockeys, right?” said Adrienne Loper, Senior Inbound Digital Sales Leader at enterprise powerhouse IBM. “Certainly, that doesn’t apply to me.” 

In an interview during Saleslove on Tour in Austin, Adrienne shared how Salesloft has helped her and other leaders on her team streamline and define the sales process, letting them focus on softer skills, like coaching and motivating to improve the skills of the team as a whole.

That sort of coaching, along with better access and insights into individual seller’s activities, also helped IBM create a more consistent sales approach.

We’ll take a look at how Salesloft boosted IBM’s ability to invest in their sales reps and drive more consistent results.

Prioritizing new seller success

IBM prides itself on being a great place for reps to start and develop their careers.  Therefore, Adrienne feels it’s critical for the new sellers on her team to be set up for success. . “What I like to do is pair them with a more senior rep,” she  shared. “Someone who’s a top performer and who knows the role and the tool stack really well.” Not every new rep comes to IBM with the right tool expertise and familiarity, and certainly not all of them are able to operate on the level a more experienced seller is. But when she partners both new and tenured reps like this, she finds that new reps ramp up faster. 

So it’s important for IBM to break down the process for newbies on milestone-based assessments: a day in a life, week in a life, month in a life of a seller, and what the expectations and responsibilities are for each new milestone. But according to Adrienne, what’s equally important as that milestone-based routine is how her new reps leverage the tools that her team uses. She mentioned that Salesloft helps make life and consistency of touches a lot easier as far as technology goes — for reps and leaders. 

“I always say that one of the most important attributes of a successful sales development rep is organization,” Adrienne told us. “I know that’s not exciting, but the volumes of our business are such that you have to have a method. You have to be able to stay on top of thousands of client interests that are coming in — and Salesloft is a differentiator in that space.”

The IBM revenue org has made it clear that they prioritize their people, and to make the onboarding process as pleasant as possible, new reps are able to adopt technology early on so that they can perform better as their jobs progress. 

Letting leaders lead

Adrienne takes the responsibility of being a sales leader very seriously. “I want to grow individuals,” she said. “I want to help them get established in their career, and then I want to help them progress through their sales journey.” So the less time that she has to spend fiddling around with systems or prescribing activities the better. She’ll have more time that she can use on higher level coaching and developing a broader strategy for her sales organization, which, to use her own words,  is “a huge win.” 

Time savings isn’t the only way Salesloft allows Adrienne and other sales leaders at IBM to coach, though. Salesloft also gives her and those leaders a view into daily seller activity, so that leaders can really scrutinize customer conversations and assess them on a rep-by-rep basis. “I enjoy listening in on calls,” Adrienne told us, and she shared that her process to help her team reach their goals is very organic.. “I feel like the sales development role is very entrepreneurial. And I love that. And I think my reps love that as well.” But the view that Salesloft gives her into a seller’s workflow means she can coach and guide better. She can use Salesloft to ask a seller “Is that action working?” or “Is that action performing in a timely manner?” As a result, Salesloft has been a game changer for her and her other sales leaders.

Funnily enough, Adrienne wasn’t even aware of the coaching component of Salesloft initially. “I was looking at it more from a rep level than a leader level.” She admits that both aspects have been great for IBM, but noted that coaching with Salesloft has made a difference. “It’s been really insightful for me to be able to drill down rep by rep, and have those specific conversations around their activity.” She says, without question, that the ability to coach has been a wonderful value add.

Keeping the approach consistent

Before switching to Salesloft, Adrienne shared that IBM had a problem with consistently delivering their outbound sales communications. “I think we really struggled,” she said. “Each rep would have a different approach.”

It wasn’t just consistency of messaging, but consistency of execution, too. Some of her reps would use four touches while others would use as many as ten. And as a manager, it was hard for her to get her  head around which reps were doing what and what was actually effective.

Switching to Salesloft provided a roadmap for IBM’s reps. Now, they were able to build out cadences that included a variety of different measurable touches and timelines for their executions.  

Would Adrienne if she could go back to using another revenue workflow platform or technology? The answer is clear: Salesloft is a vital part of the IBM revenue organization. “I cannot imagine going back to pre-Salesloft honestly, because it has improved our processes so much, and it has made our execution so much better and so much more consistent.” 

Need to improve your sales leaders’ coaching and your sales reps’ consistency? Watch Adrienne here in her Saleslove on Tour interview, then reach out to us for a demo today.