Google Cloud

Increasing Sales Velocity

Accelerate Performance led the best training I have ever attended at Google! They kept the sessions actionable, fun and relevant. The high energy and passion is contagious. Their approach is "real"... I walked out thinking that was time well spent. And, most importantly I have used the techniques, both the sales skills to raise my game and the coaching skills to drive my team’s success and growth!

Kristina Hahn

Sales Leader Google

Situation

Here was the situation with the Google Cloud inside sales teams:

  • Experiencing fast growth - with sales and people
  • Even more ambitious growth targets ahead
  • Very challenging competition
  • Lots of product and customer complexity

Given the above, talented junior sellers needed to quickly establish credibility with senior prospect audiences in a way that led to bigger deals and faster sales cycles.

Approach

The Google Cloud team needed to make an impact with their sellers on on their business quickly. So the AP team listened to customer calls and observed existing selling and coaching practices. Quickly, we identified tactical opportunities in regular conversations like these:

  • To engage senior business leaders (vs. only technical leaders) there was an opportunity to focus more on asking business questions before technical questions.
  • Given the experience gap (junior sellers approaching senior buyers) we needed to focus on tactical best practices to build personal and business credibility faster, earlier in conversations and relationships.
  • Given the intent on solving business problems (not just technical problems), we identified the opportunity to communicate solutions and business impact, vs. solely product features.

In partnership with the Google training/enablement and content teams we built training and coaching modules and customized tools in a very short time period. (This was done over a couple of weeks; speed was part of the reason we were hired here.) Then we led training and coaching - delivered in an extremely relevant and easy to use fashion, and in a way that sticks because sellers use it and leaders reinforce it.

Outcomes

This training has led to the “way” Google Cloud sells:

  • There is consistency among sellers.
  • Sellers are more strategic in their interactions.
  • The program is globally relevant and scalable across the organization.
  • Sellers and leaders use it every day.
  • New sellers are now able to get up to speed faster with a “track to run on.”
  • Managers have a consistent framework to coach toward.