Favorite part of FM? Where do you need work?

Casey Dupuis

Hi All,

My name is Casey - I work in SaaS software sales on the Infrastructure side (Large Enterprise/Core). In an effort to engage on this platform I thought I'd ask a question to everyone:

1. What is your favorite part of FM? Why is this your favorite and how did you practice it?
2. What have you found most challenging in FM? What are you doing to improve in this area?

I'll start:

1. My favorite thing about Force Management has been the ability to function more effectively as a team. Setting a standard across our sales org has gotten everyone speaking the same language and working towards the same goals which has increased motivation to all be our best in our business.
2. Preparation: I have found that FM takes preparation, practice and then execution. If you don't take the time to prepare for engagements during every step then it's easy to miss critical components of the framework. I'm always asking my team to hold me accountable when they see gaps to help me continuously get better.

Cheers,

Casey

Joe Huber

Thank you so much for sharing this, Casey! Shared language is an amazing callout, too. Underrated win.

I'm still relatively new to the team at Force Management, but I attended a training and I'd say the best part for me was relating things to real examples. There is an emphasis on taking the theories and putting them into place during the trainings. I've sat through sales training where I had someone talk at me for a day, only to forget most of the content because it wasn't applied to my world or role.

Rachel Clapp Miller

Welcome Casey! Thank you for being here! You can't underestimate the importance of consistency.

Morgan Daniels

Casey -- I couldn't agree more about the common language! We embraced Force's thought that this program and initiative shouldn't just be something that only the sales team knows. It's a common language across our org.

The common language not only helps us for account plans, forecasting, deal reviews, etc but it's also awesome to see the difference it makes when our product marketing team is using the CoM framework to introduce new features and how they connect to our customers required capabilities and provide them value.

One of the biggest areas of challenges we've seen is around hesitation to try something new. We created a slack channel focused on CoM to celebrate the wins and also encourage shared lessons learned and questions.

Casey Dupuis

@Morgan Daniels Nice! Another good thing we did was set up a slack channel where people could share Mantra's that have recently been helpful in deal cycles. This get's everyone using the Mantra and builds accountability. :)

David O'Connell

Been a CoM fan for over 10 years now. One of the best ways I saw to reinforce the Mantra (and therefore all the work that needs to go into being able to articulate it) was a sales leader who started every opportunity review/update with the question "Give me the Mantra." She set the expectation that if you didn't know it, then there would be no further discussion. You had to come prepared. "Inspect what you expect."

David O'Connell

My favorite thing (in addition to the common language as noted above) is that is provides a relatively simple "roadmap" for new reps to get up to speed on problems we solve and how we do it (better). We structure all our enablement materials to align with CoM and that creates a consistent process for all new hires. "Here's how you have a value-based conversation and here are the specifics about our solutions."

What I find most reps struggle with is Negative Consequences (they just don't take the time to dig into the cost of the problem), getting customers talk about Required Capabilities and then of course Metrics.