Many of today’s sales leaders admit that they are not happy with their current training programs. According to a survey we launched to sales leaders at 133 companies who primarily sell into Enterprise and Mid-Market companies, 34.8% admit that they have little to no formal training for new hires.
32.5% believe their teams are inconsistently trained — especially in areas like inciting urgency and establishing a consistent sales narrative that differentiates against the competition.
We asked: What’s holding your team back from closing more deals? #
Often, sales leaders believe this is because the products and markets their teams sell are increasingly complex.
Sound familiar?
If so, it’s time to start thinking about bringing film review into your sales process.
Why Film Review? #
You’ve likely heard of film review within the context of sports. Many professional athletes, including Peyton Manning, Ray Lewis, and Larry Fitzgerald, are known to “devour” game film.
Often, coaches will use film review to highlight some of the best plays and moments in the game giving the team a chance to congratulate a star performer. They will also correct mistakes and highlight what specifically went wrong to avoid mistakes next time.
Professional athletes across all sports use film review to break-down and analyze plays from the previous game in group, 1:1, or self-coaching settings. Teams like the Buccaneers will have film review downloaded to player’s iPads on Tuesdays — off-day — so that they review film during travel, effectively extending practice time.
For professional athletes, film review solves many challenges. All of these challenges can also be applied to sales.
- Bridging Theory & Execution: Film review provides athletes with a chance to really understand the thinking behind plays and digest what went right or wrong. Sports, much like sales, is as much about theory as it is about execution.
- Additional, Risk-Free Reps: Film reviews provide risk-free exposure to additional reps and plays. In the NFL, for example, athletes are limited by the amount of time they are legally able to spend on the field. Film review allows them to extend that practice time without putting them at risk. In sales, film review provides a chance for reps to get exposure to additional reps on the road and during down-time without getting thrown to the wolves on a real deal.
- Quicker Ramp Time: Film review can provide a great opportunity to ramp new players quickly or enable back-up players to practice. Rather than sitting around waiting to experience plays in games or from the sidelines, new players (and new sales reps or BDRs) can get repeated exposure much faster.
- Increased Camaraderie: Celebrating and critiquing each other’s efforts on the field fosters a strong culture on sports teams where everyone is both supported and challenged to improve. Film review can also be an excellent way to build your sales team culture and highlight that it is both a culture of celebration and performance increasing things like camaraderie, trust, and resilience.
How to Get Started with Film Review #
We’ve built the Ultimate Guide to Film Review to help you institutionalize the best film review process in your org. Inside you’ll find tons of ideas and best practices to get film review off of the ground successfully.
Many of the ideas came directly from ways customers like Outreach.io, InsightSquared, and Qualtrics use our platform to record and run film reviews.
To inspire you, here are 10 of the best film review playlist topics we found on Chorus:
- Contest: First Three Minutes - your opener sets the tone for your call. Run an internal contest to see who gets the most out of the first three minutes of their sales call
- Setting the Agenda: It’s critical that reps set the agenda for their calls and control them. Share best-in-class ways to set agendas throughout the entire sales process
- Best Of: Budget Qualifier: “Best of” playlists feature highlights of top sales calls. Budget qualification is one of the most difficult things reps do, so learn from top sellers firsthand
- One Call Close: Listen to the talk tracks from deals that closed incredibly quickly
- Delivering Pricing: Hear how top reps explain pricing to customers
- Best of: Buyer Intent: Learn how to pick up clues that demonstrate whether a buyer intends to purchase or not
- Roadmap Concerns: Listen to how top reps handle objections about kick-off and implementation
- Up-selling 101: CS calls with live clients provide great snapshots of how to identify an upsell opportunity and bring new ideas to customers
- Customer Story Time: “Story Time” playlists are all about helping reps bring customer stories to life
- Competitor Smackdown: Learn how to address calls where a competitor is mentioned
Don’t let excuses stand in the way of successfully coaching your team. Film review can be one of the easiest ways to scale coaching and to help reps coach themselves effectively from anywhere in the world.