Building Enablement for the Hybrid Role: What to Prepare For
Building the hybrid role that combined sales and customer success functions was and still is probably the most interesting challenge in my career. We started this motion in my customer success team back in 2019 and since then scaled multiple times and ended up being one of the largest teams in the sales organization here at Wrike. While we still have a long path ahead of us, I already started talking about our experience in this and this article.
As the team transitioned from a handful of people to a larger group it became apparent to me that we needed a separate and unique onboarding track that took into account all the specifics of the hybrid role. When thinking about the best starting point we realized that even though the role itself was new, the functions included in it have been present in the organization for a long time. So when building an enablement program for the hybrid role we didn’t need to start from scratch but could build on top of the existing onboarding tracks for the account manager role and customer success role. Today I would like to share several findings from our process of building this enablement and what to keep in mind if you decide to introduce the hybrid role in your company.
Review the existing sales and customer success onboarding
Since we did not want to reinvent the wheel, as a first step we performed a thorough review of existing sales and customer success onboarding programs. It was not a surprise that they intersected in many ways. For example, both programs included the parts about the product but the customer success one dived deeper into various use cases and best practices. Also, each program had a number of unique elements. Obviously the sales one had such elements as delivering a demo, generating commitment, and asking discovery questions, while customer success one included, among others, value selling, customer lifecycle, and providing strategic guidance on achieving the goals the clients set for the product.
As a result of this initial analysis, we got a pretty clear picture of what we could remove without any negative impact and which elements were missing. In order for the hybrid role onboarding to be structured and seamless, we broke it down into three logical buckets: sales, customer success, and product. In each bucket, we listed the necessary minimum (based on our experience) of skills and knowledge that the person needed to have to be successful in the role. Then we compared the chart with a list of elements of existing sales and CS onboarding programs we previously reviewed. It gave us a clear understanding of which elements we already had covered, and which we needed to create from scratch. Looking back retrospectively, I can say that I’m very happy that we started to build the onboarding with this exercise. Knowing what was missing and what needed to be modified enabled our leadership team to divide those items among ourselves and cover all the gaps in a reasonable amount of time.
Add clear instructions on work prioritization
When we interview for the hybrid role and the candidates ask what we would name as the biggest challenge in the role, we always name work prioritization. Even though we’ve made tremendous progress toward solving this challenge for our team members, we still have a long way to go.
The challenge here basically has two layers. On the first layer, the question is how to balance the work between sales and customer success and, basically, what proportion of time should be dedicated to each. On the second layer, we’re talking about work prioritization within these buckets. Which customers should be engaged first and which may have a lower priority? What metrics can the team members use to prioritize the account lists themselves? If the leadership team doesn’t provide clear answers to these questions, it would be very likely that hybrid reps would be overwhelmed and would struggle to hit both sales and retention targets. The better are going to be the instructions, the easier it will be for the team members to juggle many balls and maximize the output of their client engagements.
Provide guidance on making the most of each meeting
Another common response I provide to the team members when they ask about the balance between sales and CS work — every customer meeting should contribute to both key objectives — hitting sales and retention targets. This means that a hybrid rep needs to do an amazing job of owning the conversation and managing the time effectively. They would start by providing the customer with value (e.g. sharing best practices, answering questions, assisting with process mapping, etc.) and reserve the time at the end of the call to ask discovery questions to identify upsell opportunities and schedule the next steps.
Obviously, it’s easier said than done and quite a lot of practice would be required to get to the point where the rep would be able to do that effectively on every call. But a good starting point would be describing what good looks like in the playbook and providing a detailed overview of an effective call. I recommend having one of the experienced team members record one of the calls to be used as a benchmark and also preparing a checklist that team members would be able to use as a cheat sheet.
Prepare focus areas for potential candidate profiles
When introducing the hybrid role to the customer-facing team leaders need to decide which experience they would require from applicants and candidates coming from which roles they would like to see in the candidate funnel. We decided not to narrow down the scope too much and were open to interviewing candidates with almost any type of customer-facing experience — from SDRs, AEs, and AMs to CSMs, Renewal managers, and professional services consultants. We did discuss internally though that people coming from different roles would require different focus areas as a part of the onboarding process.
For example for those who did have a sales background and who didn’t have a problem picking up the phone many dozen times per day, we prioritized the product and value selling and positioning elements of onboarding. And on the contrary, those coming with a CS/PS background had more time dedicated to reviewing things like opportunity qualification frameworks, prospecting, and setting time-based incentives (TBIs). What was a critical factor of our success is that we were prepared to be flexible with different candidates and didn’t attempt to create a “one type fits all” onboarding experience. If we did that, I believe that scaling the team would be much more challenging for us.
Define the minimum viable product
Introducing a new role in the organization and preparing a good onboarding program for it is a big challenge. When leaders are making a decision on what needs to be present in that program, everything seems to be important. As the initial draft is being reviewed it may be tempting to add more and more pieces. I strongly recommend not to overdo and overthink it. Regardless of the volume of preparation, it would be highly unlikely that an ideal state would be achieved from the first attempt.
And since there’s no universal recipe for success the only way to check what’s working and what’s not is to onboard the first several people, review their initial results as well as the feedback they would provide on what was valuable during the onboarding, what was missing and what might’ve been excessive. That said, instead of trying to make an onboarding perfect, decide what you consider a necessary minimum for a strong start in the role. What would be the minimum viable product? What is essential and what is not? Deploying an iterative approach and modifying the onboarding based on your particular team’s experience would likely lead to great results in the long run.
Once the first iteration of the onboarding program is completed, evaluate the approximate volume of time required to finish it. Be prepared that its duration would exceed the average duration of sales/CS onboardings — that’s totally fine since we’re basically squeezing two roles into one. If the duration seems extremely long — consider removing certain elements and plan to cover them during the post-onboarding training sessions. Finally, consider preparing a detailed questionnaire for the team members to get extensive feedback on the program so you would have a clear understanding of what needs to be improved.
