Enabling Consistent Sales Conversations at NEC

NEC needed a consistent sales message across the direct sales team and the channel partner community. Inviting sales into the message creation process ensured buy-in to the story and sales playbook approach.

There were a few major outcomes we wanted from the Sales Playbook Project. Most importantly, we wanted a consistent message where both our internal teams and channel partners would deliver the same message in the same way.

The discovery process we went through to build the Sales Playbook was my favorite part. We interviewed sales teams important to the project and brought in key members from those sales teams to workshop through what the development of the Playbook looked like. The result was that they owned the process. The words included in the Playbook are from the sellers, the teams, and the sales teams themselves. It wasn't just something we delivered to them - the Playbook was what they came up with themselves.

Even more importantly, we now speak to the customer's objectives rather than focusing on the importance of the solution. We stopped talking about ourselves as much and now talk more about the customer's priorities. Then, we can focus on what we can do to make our solution work best for them. Focusing less on our solutions would not have been the outcome if we had taken a different messaging approach.

Since we launched the Playbook, we have released a full set of solutions that have the complete confidence of our seller organization and partner community. It's been very successful! A big part of the project's success was building the messaging around the customer and their needs and less around the solution itself.