The Challenge: Aligning a Growing Sales Team Around a Repeatable Process

95 Percent Group, a rapidly growing leader in literacy solutions, faced the common challenges that come with scaling a sales organization. Their team, largely composed of passionate former educators new to sales roles, needed a more disciplined and repeatable selling process to guide prospects effectively from initial contact through closing and expansion.

Key areas identified by sales leadership for development included:

• Prospecting Confidence: Overcoming discomfort with proactive outreach and installing a consistent methodology.
• Opportunity Momentum: Ensuring deals moved forward with intent, avoiding stalls, particularly when navigating complex district buying processes.
• Team Selling & Handoffs: Defining clear roles and improving collaboration between SDRs, Account Executives, and Account Managers, especially regarding qualification and discovery.
• Positioning New Solutions: Effectively articulating the value of new platform offerings alongside established curricula.
• Asking High-Value Questions: Building comfort and skill in discussing budget, decision-making processes, and success metrics with prospects.

Leadership sought a unified system and common language that the entire team could adopt to support the company's ambitious growth goals and ensure a consistent customer experience.

The Solution: A Top-Down Rollout of a Customized Selling System

Recognizing the need for deep buy-in and long-term reinforcement, I partnered with 95 Percent Group leadership on a multi-phase engagement built around my education selling system, customized for their specific market and team structure.

Manager Training First: We began with a dedicated series of virtual workshops exclusively for the sales leadership team. This "top-down" approach equipped managers with a deep understanding of the methodology through a coaching lens, preparing them to facilitate exercises during the main team training and provide ongoing reinforcement.

Hybrid Team Training: We then rolled out the training to the entire sales organization (SDRs, AEs, AMs, Customer Success) via:

• An intensive one-day, on-site workshop focused on the foundational skills applicable to all roles: prospecting for meetings, facilitating discovery interviews, and bargaining for access to advocates and decision-makers. Role-plays were tailored for both pre- and post-sales scenarios.
• A series of follow-up virtual workshops covering the remaining stages of the process: proving capabilities, creating “closing” events, and managing/expanding client partnerships.

Dedicated SDR Training: Based on specific needs identified during the management sessions, we added a dedicated virtual workshop for the SDR team focusing on strategic prospecting for inbound leads and effective qualification handoffs to AEs.

Playbook & Resource Development: Throughout the engagement, I worked with leadership to develop key resources, including:

• A comprehensive "95 Percent Group Sales Playbook" detailing each step of the customized selling process.
• Prospecting touch samples and templates based in literacy-related educational challenges.
• Frameworks for positioning core and new products.

The Outcome: A Unified Process and Empowered Team Ready for Scale

Our engagement successfully delivered the foundational system and team alignment 95 Percent Group sought.

• Established Common Language & Process: The entire revenue organization now operates from a single, defined selling methodology, providing consistency for both internal collaboration and the external customer experience.
• Empowered Sales Leadership: Managers possess the deep understanding and coaching frameworks necessary to reinforce the training, manage performance against the process, and ensure long-term adoption.
• Clearer Roles & Responsibilities: The defined process, particularly the work around SDR qualification and handoffs, created greater clarity and alignment between pre- and post-sales teams.
• Created Lasting Assets: The company now has a detailed Sales Playbook, prospecting templates, and recordings of all training sessions, providing durable resources for onboarding new hires and ongoing skill development.
• Foundation for Growth: The sales team is equipped with a predictable, repeatable system designed to support 95 Percent Group's continued growth trajectory and market leadership.