[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1536689888438{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Positioning sales reps to have meaningful conversations with prospects is pivotal to closing deals. But reps struggle to be heard over the noise of the competition — much like how marketing teams strive to differentiate their messaging across all channels.

Tempur Sealy Hospitality made the decision to leverage interactive, 3D content available via tablets and laptops to help reps tell the brand’s story without having to worry about carrying heavy mattress samples to every meeting. The company’s sales team responded well to this initiative, with more than 90% of the company’s reps using the content during their meetings and driving more meaningful conversations with potential customers.

We spoke with Greg Cremeans, VP of National Accounts for Hospitality at Tempur Sealy, to discuss his team’s strategy and mindset when formulating their sales enablement program. He also shared his thoughts on why the team chose interactive content as the fuel to help sales reps share the brand’s message in a way that resonates with target accounts.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_padding_divider][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1536689977792{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Demand Gen Report: Tell us about the enablement campaign that earned your team a Killer Content Award. What was the process for formulating and executing a sales enablement program with this interactive mattress cutaway content?

Greg Cremeans: The first thing was to gather feedback from not only myself, but my regional sales leadership team. We’re always looking at how we can make our reps’ jobs easier, give them the tools that they need to be successful and keep a consistent message across the country. We really started relying on them a little more to understand what they need, what is working and what is not working. We have various one-on-one discussions that I do with each of my regional leadership regularly. We had several one-on-one discussions with the team at The Mx Group because I am a firm believer that there must be solid alignment between sales and marketing.

We also did some online surveys to our third-party sales reps. We asked them about current tools that they have, how those were working and what else they need. The second was really understanding the buyer’s journey. We also created what we call a “rep council,” where we took what we believe are our strongest reps across the country and brought them into a meeting with Mx. They really start prying on them and asking them questions to understand what content tool they need.

What we’ve uncovered through that whole process is that when a buyer is in the consideration phase — that could be six months, 12 months in advance of when the project is going to happen — they couldn’t really differentiate us as a brand and see differences between us and our primary competition. Our story was significantly different, but how do you get a buyer’s mind wrapped around our story? The reps really didn’t know how to differentiate the mattresses without it visually — they didn’t have something to show to them, something they could touch, something they could feel. Just trying to take a brochure or a spec sheet or something like that and show it to a buyer is emotionless. And of course, carrying around a full mattress is not feasible.

The reps were asking for all kinds of different things — foam samples, coils samples, a mini mattress, etc. — thinking they could show all the foam layers of the mattress and whatnot. Those are really the biggest drivers that drove us towards the formulation of the enablement program.

DGR: What was the decision-making process like for choosing an interactive content tool for your sales reps to use with tablets and laptops?

Cremeans: We knew the physical samples were not ideal for multiple reasons. Mini cutaway mattresses are expensive to produce, for one. Secondly, they’re big, they’re bulky. How do you carry them if you’re, for example, meeting at the airport or something like that? The samples that we did do, like coils and foam boards, we knew they weren’t being used and it was quite an expensive investment. It is not always practical to carry samples, and you’re not always going to be in a situation where you can.

That was the point when The Mx Group came to us and said, “What if we did something interactive where we could put samples on a screen on a tablet in high-quality 3D models where we could pull the parts, show components and several other possibilities?”

Initially, I was hesitant. But the more I started to think about it, there was a couple of different things that we could achieve with it. One is that it really allowed us to tell a better story to those who would be using the product. For the hotel, what does the return on investment look like? It’s the guests. Are they getting a great night’s sleep? For housekeeping, are they easy to clean, easy to move and easy to install/uninstall? Secondly, as a brand, we had more control over our message. Using third-party independent sales reps makes it a little more challenging to keep the story consistent across the company. We really needed to be able to tell our brand message, and this was engaging and memorable for buyers.

DGR: What tips/best practices would you share with colleagues looking to execute a sales enablement strategy that positions your reps with what they need to have meaningful conversations?

Cremeans: Going back to the one point I made earlier, it’s critical that there’s solid alignment between sales and marketing. With sales specifically, we do a deep dive to understand where reps are struggling throughout the sales process and started thinking about how we formulate the responses to those challenges.

It’s also critical to understand the buyers and what you’re dealing with, understand what obstacles you must overcome to convince them that our product or services are the right choice versus our competition. That’s one thing that I do like about this more than anything: it’s meaningful and can break down what makes us different — and better — as a brand.

DGR: Can you share any updates on the success of your campaign? How did this tool help accelerate deals?

Cremeans: We do know that we have a 90% adoption rate of the interactive tool at this point, which for us is a huge win because we’ve never seen this buy-in to anything else that we’ve done to this point. Overall, our sales enablement program — since we’ve incorporated this into our overall program with Mx — has been a major driver of the business. I will tell you that we’re up about 13.5% over the prior year since we put the tool into place. We are seeing a pretty good lift in our sales. A large portion of that has been driven by the fact that we’ve given the reps a tool they could use to better talk to prospects about our message and our benefits.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”alert-warning” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-trophy”]P.S. Have a Finny-worthy campaign? Nominations for the 2019 Killer Content Awards are open! Nominate your best content or campaign here![/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]