Case studies
Ankorstore
Ankorstore: How Flow State helped Ankorstore ramp up their sales enablement
Ankorstore is a marketplace for B2B companies, connecting independent brands and retailers across Europe. In just two years, they’ve built a presence in over 23 countries, with local offices in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Thomas Monvoisin is the head of sales performance and enablement for the company. Part of his role is ensuring that the sales team is talking to the right prospects, has the right data and is using the right tools to hit their targets. The sales enablement department makes this possible by supporting the sales team with onboarding, training and anything else they need to perform at their very best.
However, while they had a basic knowledge of what was involved, they lacked the necessary expertise to build a strong sales enablement team and capability. Effectively communicating their global enablement vision and getting the buy-in from other teams within the organisation was also challenging, with a lack of clarity on what sales enablement really meant and its role in driving positive change.
Having identified sales enablement as a key part of any growth, Thomas realised that they would need external help. Following a recommendation, he decided to bring in the Flow State team to build out their sales enablement strategy.
A personalised roadmap to sales success
After Thomas explained the current state of the sales enablement team, Flow State set out to create a training roadmap and curriculum, covering the key areas that would drive the biggest results for the company.
From the beginning, Thomas’s biggest priority was to ramp up the enablement team and provide them with the necessary knowledge and tools to interact with the sales team. By carefully analysing the business and its customers, Aaron and Raff came up with additional ideas to improve the enablement team’s plan and performance.
This started with a sales management competency self-assessment, where everyone ranked themselves across 30+ different skills. This enabled Flow State to create a comprehensive report, identifying the strengths and weaknesses at both the team and individual levels.
Using an iterative process, they then worked with Thomas to create an agenda for a series of tailored workshops that met Ankorstore’s unique needs.
Topics included:
- Defining the role of sales enablement within a modern business.
- Building a sales enablement strategy.
- Carrying out a competency self-assessment.
- Managing day to day sales enablement activities.
- Planning long-term strategic enablement.
These workshops were designed to give the participants specific outcomes and deliverables that significantly impacted performance. For example, one of the workshops covered the 12 Pillars of Sales Excellence, a framework that Thomas and his team now use daily. Other workshops dived deeper into the structure of the sales enablement team, how to measure the success of the enablement team and what metrics to track.
All of the workshops were carried out on-site over three days at the company’s offices in Paris. More than just a series of PowerPoint presentations, these were interactive workshops that involved the whole team. Rather than just telling the team what they should be doing, Raff and Aaron gave them exercises and frameworks that forced them to explore different methods and come up with their own solutions. As a result, participants learnt how to collaborate and solve problems together.
“We deliberately wanted to stretch them mentally,” explains Raff. “We gave them frameworks which made them have to come together and problem solve in ways they didn’t do before, which gave them a tangible solution at the end of each workshop which they could then go on to implement within the organisation”
Building foundations for strong enablement
Our objective was to create a global community of “team leader coaching machines” who could raise the bar of excellence and bring value-selling methods to life through their teams.
We started by assessing the current coaching competencies, practices and cadences of 14 sales and BDR managers over a 2-week period. We quickly discovered that there was very little focus on coaching the “inputs” (i.e skills and behaviours) and excessive focus on driving activities and outputs. In other words, lots of conversations that were focused on the “what” and very little on the “how” We immediately prioritised the delivery of three key projects:
- Codifying the skills and practices required for value-selling.
- Training the entire sales organisation on value-selling essentials over an 8-week period.
- Training and mentoring managers on how to become effective coaches, and guiding them to develop and implement a new coaching framework to support lasting behavioural change in their reps.
Over a 6-month period we worked closely with the CRO, sales leadership, line managers, reps, sales enablement and sales operations teams to encourage both strategic alignment and operational execution on the program. Outside of scheduled training sessions, we also regularly facilitated 1-1 and group coaching sessions, observed deal and pipeline reviews, developed coaching scorecards and responded to ad-hoc requests from managers and reps to help embed new learnings and foster collaboration..
Ongoing support for long-term results
Once the workshops had been completed, Flow State created a dedicated Slack channel for everyone involved in the workshops. For three months, participants had unlimited on-demand access to Flow State, which could be used to ask any questions, request additional calls and get practical advice on implementing what they’d learnt.
For example, if they had an upcoming presentation with key stakeholders or they wanted to help other regions improve their performance, Aaron and Raff were on hand to help them refine their messaging and guide them through the execution.
Flow State also set up a 30-minute weekly review session with Thomas. This allowed them to regularly discuss the team’s progress and address any obstacles or challenges they were facing.
Aaron and Raff also helped with the hiring process and ensuring the right people were in the right roles. When it was time for Ankorstore to hire a Head of Sales Enablement, Flow State shared the details with their network and sales enablement communities. They then recommended ideal candidates, sat in on the interviews and gave structured feedback on the candidate’s performance.
For companies who are either yet to put an enablement function in place or need help taking their existing team to the next level, Thomas wholeheartedly recommends Flow State. Looking forward, he plans to build on this foundation and further strengthen the relationship between enablement and sales. “Flow State definitely helped us with their expertise in this industry to shape a strong and efficient team for the future.”
Upward month-on-month trend of increasing average deal size.
Defining the role of sales enablement within a modern business.
40% Increased onboarding NPS
More effective sales enablement
Carrying out a competency self-assessment
Direct feedback from Planning long-term strategic enablement
Stronger collaboration between teams
Direct feedback from sales enablement team on the positive impact of our work in scaling excellence, creating better alignment and efficiency between their team and sales managers and reps.
“There’s been a strong improvement in how enablement works with the sales team. Previously we had a top-down approach, now it’s much more collaborative.”
