Why I’m so passionate about sales enablement!

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Tamara Schenk

The other day, I had a call with a sales rep. So what, you might think. I thought the same, until the call happened. First, there was the sales rep’s request for a one hour meeting. I said, I’d prefer to have a short call first. Unwillingly, he agreed.

Then, we had the call:
„Did you already have a look at our web site?“
Interesting approach…would it become funny or horrible?

„Yes, I had a quick scan, when we scheduled this call, but I didn’t find something really valuable regarding my current business challenges. But I’m sure that you will now connect the dots for me.“
Hey, wasn’t that an invitation to ask me about my current business challenges, an invitation to listen? Apparently not. He didn’t react on my response, but continued to talk about the functions and features of his product, without drawing breath.

After a few minutes, I interrupted him and said „Sorry, but I’m a bit surprised that you are so focused on general product features and functions at this time, without knowing our current challenges from a business perspective“.

Silence on the phone…. „That’s why you should see the product, then you would see the value!“ I couldn’t believe it!

I replied „I am capable to think in multiple dimensions at the same time and I do understand what the product does, but I still don’t see how your product’s capabilities could be valuable regarding our current business challenges? What are for instance your recommended business requirements for a successful implementation of your product to drive our results?“

„Oh, our customers x, y and z are really happy with the product.“

„What was there initial starting point when they implemented the product, which specific problem did they try to solve?“ I asked him.

He tried to give me some generic data – from a standard reference sheet, I guess.
Not valuable for me.

Then, I explained, that I’m currently not focused on a tool implementation, because we are at another stage along our own problem solving process – honing our newly implemented processes and methodologies with a few pilots in the field before we would consider the implementation of an additional tool.

Then, it couldn’t be worse, he said: „Well, you know, I’m a seller, I just wanted to make sure that my product is part of your decision making process“.

HORRIBLE! It takes some time to make me really angry! Now, I was angry.
Inhaling, exhaling…

I said „Why should your product be part of a decision making process, which I don’t have at the moment, as I mentioned. And why should it become part of a future make-or-buy decision?“

Again, silence on the phone. How to make the most of a situation? I asked him, if he would like to have a feedback on the call. He agreed.

Then, I explained him my role and responsibility, what kind of transformation we are currently driving with sales enablement – changing the seller’s mind set from „I have to sell a product“ to „I love to solve my customer’s problems“, translating GoToMarket models into more seller and buyer relevant GoToCustomer frameworks regarding strategy, methodology, processes and IT applications. I gave him a bit more color on the GoToCustomer approach, on outside-in thinking on how to model a customer regarding relevance, context and timeliness.

Then, I shared a few insights with him about the expectations from executive buyers regarding strategic vendors – especially the fact, that products and solutions were not part of their top expectations – most important for them is that the vendors can map their own capabilities to the buyers specific challenges to solve their problems, to drive their results, to create value.

Then, I shared with him, how I was feeling during that short call – just as a any prospect that could feed his pipeline goals – which had nothing to do with creating value for me, with solving my business problems.

So, why am I writing about that? Not only, because it could become a sales rep’s nightmare to have a sales call with a sales enablement professional…

Because sales conversations like this are the reason why sales enablement really matters, why I’m so passionate about it! These conversations are the reason why we have not only to establish sales enablement as a profession and a discipline, we also have to re-establish sales itself as a profession.

Having a call like this is no art at this point, it’s about to learn a trade, based on general communication skills.

This example shows how much broken the selling system actually is. It’s about the „product selling muscle memory“, which is nothing else than an inside-out focused view of the world, based on the idea that we are still in a seller market, where we can organize ourselves around our well-known internal design points.

The related „inside-out muscle memory“, which is exactly what the sales rep demonstrated – doesn’t allow to recognize the full potential of a prospect. Because, inside-out often means to work with product and solution based benefits and generic values which are derived from the perspective of a single product or solution. But the buyer’s world is not organized by our portfolios. The buyer’s complex world is at least as complex as ours, but in a different color – which can include much more potential for a vendor, if the customer is modeled the right way and if we avoid to look too early from a product’s narrow perspective and miss the whole business complexity behind.

So, it’s not about fixing a few things in an inside-out selling system, it’s about how to design GoToCustomer frameworks that help sales reps to work from the outside to the inside – it’s about how to drive change. It’s about selling strategies, methodologies, trainings, sales content, skills and competencies, engagement models, related metrics and much more. All these topics on scalable efficiency have an impact on strategy, processes and IT, across the whole selling system. And than, it’s about scalable learning, it’s about unlearn and relearn – change that’s touching people’s hearts.

How GoToCustomer frameworks can look like, will be part of my next blog post – and how GoToCustomer frameworks can lead not only to successful sales enablement, but also to successful buyer enablement…

Posted in Go-to-customer, Sales behavior, Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Challenges | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

How to leverage the full potential of your sales enablement platform!

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Tamara Schenk

It’s time to share some insights on sales enablement platforms/solutions and their real value – and how to leverage their full potential.
A few weeks ago, there was an interesting LinkedIn question regarding sales enablement platforms. It was called „So you’ve got a platform for Sales Enablement! What is the feature that really benefits or differentiates, that enables you more than yesterday?“
Those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I wrote a response which was rather a blog post than a short response on a LinkedIn question. That’s why I’m writing this blog post on one of my favorite topics – for YOU, the whole sales enablement tribe out there!

First of all, there are platform providers and platform providers. Some of them just sell a software product, a platform, and some of them sell a variety of sales enablement services, for instance consulting services to identify the customer’s current state and specific business challenges, specific implementation services tailored to the customer’s current state, change management consulting services and additional content management services. I think, we don’t need to debate that the tool providers won’t be the winners in that business.

Anyhow, some platform providers still believe – and that’s how they are selling – that technology itself would deliver significant business value to their clients. However you might think about that… I don’t agree.

In fact, I strongly believe, that technology is a great enabler for additional business value and that we need to leverage this great potential with a smart and holistic implementation strategy – then, we will get a win-win situation and see significant return on our investment – in terms of growth and efficiency!
But one without the other won’t deliver the expected added value.

The reason is this: There is a critical dependency – and that’s sales content. Yes, sales content and the related content management processes! So, what has to be done to leverage the full potential of technology? It’s all about „content management homework“, which is from my point of view a mandatory phase in every sales enablement platform implementation project. But that’s not the most funny part of the project, especially not in a large organization.

Let’s start with the end in mind to give you an impression what I mean: You live in wonderful, effective and efficient sales content world, without any random acts of content creation. All the attributes you mapped to your content are completely covered by the newly implemented sales enablement platform and you create great value in terms of reduced search time, reduced ramp-up time for new hires, dynamic content generation and increased collaboration between content contributors and content consumers based on a variety of social collaborative features – and you receive great analytics in multiple dimensions.

What does that mean and how to get there? It means, that content types are defined and categorized, the purpose is defined for each content type (e.g. gain appropriate access or create shared vision of success), the internal and external target groups including their altitude level are mapped, each content type is also mapped to customer oriented milestones along the sales process or directly to the customer’s problem solving process.

You might get a first impression what has to be done…. Yes, it’s a lot of work and I strongly recommend to start with a content assessment – what is really relevant and what’s not required and not used? Be brave and throw away everything that’s no longer relevant for your organization. You will find the same or similar content on different platforms, portals, you will find content that’s outdated, that’s no longer relevant, content which has at least to be reworked and so on.

Quality before quantity – that should be your mission for content and for platforms!

Then, each content type has a clearly defined RACI matrix regarding content creating, content publishing and content localization including the relevant budgets – covering all relevant roles in your organization that are working on sales content. All that is by definition a cross-functional endeavor. Not only marketing, product marketing, but also solution sales roles, presales roles, portfolio managers, process managers, solution designers, sales enablement managers and commercial roles are content contributors!

Based on that content management foundation – you could launch your shiny new platform! Then, make your roadmap and prepare the next level and create dynamic content – and that’s where technology can be really very valuable and very helpful. An example can be to create standardized and modularized content elements focused on specific selling situations in specific industries. If a sales person is then looking for challenge x, industry y, target audience is CIO, first meeting etc. – and the sales enablement platform creates an 80/20 approach for the specific selling situation – the missing 20% have to be customized – much better than customize 50% or rework everything! That creates value for sales reps in terms of much more selling time! The same principle helps you to design dynamic playbooks, ideally connected to your CRM system – cherry on the cake!

Additional benefits are mobile services, social features like commenting, rating, contact information on the specific solution manager, marketing manager, solution sales contacts – just one mouse click away – the possibility to chat and to use web conferencing and all those features also in a mobile version – all that is very, very valuable!

Sales people will use what’s quick and easy and what creates value for their daily business. And, be aware…. sales people will never distinguish between platform and content – it’s one system for them, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Finally: Really smart sales enablement vendors are aware of all these issues, they know pretty well how big the change effort in your organization might be to leverage the full collaborative potential of their technology. They don’t sell a product, they sell tailored services, e.g. consulting services that help customers to master all the content issues together combined with their technology, based on a professional analysis of the current state including professional change management services.

Really smart providers love to solve your problem and to create long-term business value for you, they are not focused on selling you a product only…

 

You might be interested in more blog posts on that topic – on Michael Fox’s excellent sales enablement blog:

Convinced About Content
Content Management and Content Creation for Sales Enablement

and another one:
Forrester Sales Enablement Community – Selecting Sales Enablement Solutions

Posted in Content Management, Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Solutions, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

What’s the role of collaboration for sales enablement?

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Tamara Schenk

Attending a conference, having the possibility to talk to many people in different roles is always exciting, especially attending the second Forrester Sales Enablement Forum, March 19-20 in San Francisco.

Ask ten people how to define sales enablement, you will still get ten different answers. Ask ten people how to define collaboration and collaboration’s role regarding sales enablement, it’s almost the same. But at least eight will define collaboration from a technological perspective only. I had many conversations on the role of collaboration for sales enablement and most of them – even in our community – were like this:

“Well, of course it’s important, but everybody has another definition of collaboration” or

“Collaboration? But we already have implemented the products x,y and z” or

“Isn’t that all about communication and organizational alignment and already covered in different approaches?”

As you can imagine, I don’t agree.

No, collaboration is not only about communication, it’s not only about organizational alignment and it’s not only about technology.

Let’s figure out how collaboration is actually defined and how and where it is an essential prerequisite for the sales enablement discipline and sales enablement performance.

Who is the thought leader number one when it comes to collaboration? Morten Hansen, management professor at University of California, Berkeley and at INSEAD, France. To make a long story short, Morten Hansen says first of all, “the key point is… to start with the end in mind: the goal of collaboration is not collaboration, it’s better results!”

How many so-called collaboration projects do you know that have something like “better collaboration” or “more collaboration” as project goal in their charter? I’m sure, we all know many projects like this, focused on implementing technology for “more” collaboration. But what is “more” collaboration? As Morten Hansen says “you should only collaborate when it’s the best way to improve performance”.
Collaboration within companies (which is our focus here) can be between divisions, geographies, functions and foreign subsidiaries.

First of all, let’s map that view of collaboration to the well established Forrester sales enablement definition to identify the need of collaboration to improve performance across the entire selling system.

Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.

Collaboration is not mentioned, explicitly. So, I will try to derive the need for collaboration:

  • “all client-facing employees” are not the sales people alone, different kinds of SME’s from different functions, business units or division are included. In big outsourcing deals, collaboration between buying and selling teams to achieve the customer’s desired outcome is not just nice to have, it’s the essential success factor to win a deal and to achieve the customer’s desired outcome later on.
  • “right set of customer stakeholders”: sales people have to address different stakeholders with different roles across the customer’s agreement network.
  • “at each stage of the customer’s problem solving life cycle”: The customer has a problem solving process which we have to align to our sales process. Both processes cover a variety of different roles from different functions and all these roles need to collaborate efficiently across the vendor’s internal supply chain and across he customer’s complex stakeholder network – to get the best resources for their deals. Also here, the success factor is to have a common goal, e.g. the desired customer outcome and a shared vision of success to achieve this outcome.
  • “to optimize the return of investment of the selling sytem”. Sales might be a function, but selling is a system. Only if we consider all roles and functions across the end2end value communication chain, we are able to reduce the randoms acts of sales support which is relevant to improve the ROI of a selling system. Also here, a common goal is mission critical to be able to drive an approach like that, and collaboration is the enabling power to achieve it.

Second, we also need collaboration to establish the sales enablement discipline itself in our organizations, especially if we have a strategic and holistic ambition. Let’s take a few of the most important sales enablement fields of action (see also Forrester’s SIMPLE framework):

  • Sales model: designing a coverage model – how ever it might look like – requires to achieve a common design point between sales and finance, which is easier said than done, because sales wants always more (growth), finance wants always less (EBIT). What do we need? Collaboration between functions, the critical success factor is to have a common goal.
  • Engagement models: Designing your operating engines, you will need different engagement models for your different sales segments, sales channels, sales units – you name it. All of them will be based on collaboration at least between functions, often also between busines untis and between foreign subsidiaries. Also here, the crtitical success factor is a common goal.
  • Sales content on a certain maturity level is based on a cross-functional content management process that covers content structure, content generation, content publishing and content localization. Collaboration is the essential prerequisite to get such a process successfully implemented. We are talking about collaboration between functions, business units and foreign subsidiaries.
  • Knowledge management is the same challenge. If you want to solve this challenge for the entire organization and not just provide a nice tool for a single function, you won’t be successful without cross-functional collaboration. You will need to define taxonomies covering the entire organization, it’s about collaboration between functions.
  • Metrics: That’s one of the most important sales enablement topics – from a collaboration perspective. Not the functional driven KPI’s are the KPI’s that matter, what matters are the KPI’s along the end2end value communication. What do we need to establish before? Yes, collaboration between functions to be able to measure what really matters. Sounds so easy, but it’s not. Have a look at your financial reports. What are they based on? Functions, business units, right?

That’s why I think, we have to include the role of collaboration in our sales enablement definitions, in our frameworks and concepts, but in a way that we really focus on collaborations’s business value first before we are think about collaboration technology.

Technology has of course great potential to enable collaboration, once we defined what we want to achieve in terms of business results and once the management has designed mechanisms to tear down well known collaboration barriers.
But managing collaboration barriers, that’s another topic for another blog post…

Thoughts?
Chime in and share your ideas!

Posted in Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Challenges, Sales Enablement Definition, Sales Enablement Metrics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sales enablement professionals – Why to be a “simpltist” AND a “linchpin”!

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Tamara Schenk

Back from the second Forrester Sales Enablement Forum in San Francisco, there are many topics to be shared and to be discussed. So, let’s get started:

One of these topics is the idea of being a „simpltist“. Scott Santucci ended his key note with the idea of being a “SIMPLTIST”.  This is a word made up by combining SIMPLE with SCIENTIST.
The “S” is shared by both SIMPLE and SCIENTIST.  The IMPL comes from SIMPLE and the TIST comes from SCIENTIST. So, what was Scott’s intention to come up with this idea?

As Scott said, „simple“ should be the first principle, to remove the complexity from the selling system which requires a holistic view and a reality based approach, as he explained.

Scientist“ should be the second principle, as Scott presented, because that’s about how sales enablement professionals are going to help make things more simple.  The need of a systematic approach to manage and to navigate complexity requires the application of science.

I agree with many thoughts, especially with the brilliant idea to create this one single word! But, I missed a few elements, the criteria of a linchpin, of an artist. So, I had to write a response and here are my thoughts. You can also check out the whole discussion on the Forrester sales enablement community.

There is a lot of wisdom in “simpltist”, a lot of dimensions that are really important for what we are doing (holistic view, reality based approaches, engineering and ongoing operations).

I’d like to share a few thoughts on “complex” versus “complicated”:
In German, we have these two words and they mean different things – I can imagine, it might sound well German engineered ;-)
The complexity of a customer’s agreement network will always remain complex, we cannot reduce this complexity by cutting parts of that (which means deleting stakeholders), but we can provide frameworks, principles, structures and tools to make it easier and more efficient for sales reps to navigate this complexity. Another example is the variety of dimensions we have to consider as SE professionals, let’s say sales channels/segments, deal categories, account segments, content types etc. We will always have to consider these dimensions, because they are all essential parts of our selling system. But also here, we cannot reduce these complex dimensions itself, but we can provide frameworks, structures, tools etc. to navigate complexity, to think through, to be more efficient and more successful.

What we can do, is to make each dimension less complicated. An example are accounts that are not mapped to the legal account definition – that’s complicated. First, we have to manage much more data records and often also more account teams and people, second this view makes us less successful because we might miss opportunities. So, we can simplify the world by reducing the number of accounts down to legal accounts and we can be more successful at the same time, because that’s the view how our customers organize themselves and we have a better chance to see all budget centers and initiatives. We made one dimension, the account dimension, less complicated.
We can also reduce the variety of random acts of sales support – in EACH dimension, e.g. in the content dimension or in the training dimension.

So, there are many topics we can make LESS complicated and MORE efficient by using the ideas of a simpltist. But we won’t be able to reduce the variety of dimensions that make a selling system complex.
Navigating complexity by developing structures, models, frameworks and tools to be more efficient and more successful – and make each of the several dimensions less complicated, that’s our challenge!

Why do I miss something reviewing the „simpltist“ definition? Why do I miss the idea of a linchpin, of an artist? I think, we should better address the “right brained” dimension, the “HOW” we are evolving our discipline over time.

Here is why: The idea of a „simpltist“ is pretty much focused on scalable efficiency. I completely agree that we need that view. We need to define selling systems, operating models related to the business strategy and all these things. But HOW are we doing that and HOW are we driving people to change – not only their thinking but also their daily doing – within the cross-functional sales enablement discipline and how do we drive sales reps to change, to make a difference in their account teams and at the customer?

That’s why I love Seth Godin’s book “Linchpin” so much (grateful, that a friend recommended that book to me, it definitely changed my way of thinking). That’s exactly the reason why I opened my track session with this book! What is a linchpin?
As Seth Godin says, a linchpin is a person that is indispensable, an essential building block in great organizations – and guess what, why? Because linchpins are artists. An artist in this context has nothing to do with painting or sculptures (I love sculptures!!), what Seth Godin means is this: “An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity and boldness to challenge the status quo”.

That’s exactly what we are doing day by day! And this one is one of my favorite Seth Godin quotes:
“If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”

That’s exactly our situation! We have to write our own story, therefore we use the simpltist principles, structures and frameworks – of course. But, we all have a different map, we develop this map over time. And the criteria of an artist – bravery, creativity, insight, boldness – are all our “must haves”, that’s what we need to drive our journey in a successful, indispensable way.

The criteria of an artist, that’s what makes a difference, that’s how we tell our story, that’s how we drive change, how we address our challenges, how we inspire people to change.

So, back to Scott’s question:
From my point of view, a successful sales enablement professional is not only a simpltist, but also a linchpin. He/she is an artist and will make a difference. A successful sales enablement professional in a “linchpin and artist way” will touch people’s hearts, not only their minds. And that’s what we need to drive change!

Based on scalable efficiency – ready for scalable learning!

I’m looking forward to learn more about your thoughts! Chime and share your ideas!

What do you think about the simpltist idea and the left-brained and right-brained thoughts?

Posted in Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Challenges, Sales Enablement Definition | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thank you… Welcome 2012!

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Tamara Schenk

Initiating….
That’s what I did this year when I launched my own blog on sales enablement. I’m deeply grateful for that experience, thanks a lot to those of you who inspired and supported me in this way.

I always enjoyed to write and to publish a blog post and I always enjoyed reading and thinking about your feedback, your thoughts, your remarks and ideas.

  • Thanks – for inspiring and supporting me to start this endeavor
  • Thanks – for reacting, responding and for sharing your thoughts
  • Thanks – for challenging my thoughts
  • Thanks – for sharing and recommending my blog posts

Thanks – for creating ART together!

“Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.“
Seth Godin

My vision is to establish and to grow a tribe with you and for those of you who are ….

  • passionate about strategic and holistic sales enablement
  • passionate about adding value to customers, sales organizations and stakeholders (not shareholders only…)
  • passionate about changing organizations from push to pull
  • passionate to make a difference!

I’m counting on you!

Enjoy your holiday season!
I wish you a healthy, happy, successful, amazing 2012!

Posted in Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Challenges, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sales Enablement – What Are The Biggest Challenges?

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Tamara Schenk

A challenging question… if somebody asks you this question while you are driving a variety of tactical programs, you might address many operational challenges you are facing on a daily basis.

If you are asked this question while trying to evolve sales enablement to a strategic level in your organization, to help implementing changing business strategies, you might have different challenges. Let’s focus on these challenges according to the broad and strategic scope of sales enablement, we discussed in my previous blog post.

How are we doing that, evolving sales enablement to a strategic level? We have to explain the why, the what, the how and the when to many different stakeholders. Explaining the why is the most important and the most difficult challenge. Why is explaining the why so challenging?

First of all, it means to help the senior executives and the C-level to understand what the whole problem actually is all about. But this whole problem is not an isolated sales problem, it’s about the whole selling system, it’s a cross-functional problem.

Easier said than done, of course. Sometimes, this journey can be painful …
Never give up, stick to your vision, your time will come!

Imagine for a moment, you have a 30.000 meter or feet perspective looking at your organization. The CEO, is he/she satisfied with your sales force? Probably not. Research shows as e.g. the Forrester survey, initiated by their CEO talking to other CEO’s: The majority of the interviewed CEO’s is not satisfied with their sales force. Their perception is, that the sales force is not adapting quickly enough changing business strategies. Ask your CFO the same question. Let’s bet, the CFO will say, selling expenses are too high, the account or channel profitability is not good enough, etc.

Every role has a completely different view on the selling system, and our job as sales enablement professionals is to connect the dots and to explain the problem we have in our current selling systems – and how we want to change that, step by step.

The CEOs are focused on the shareholder value, based on 20th century push-based thinking. What should be the focus to survive in the 21th century? Delighting customers, then achieving the financial goals. No happy customers, no long term shareholder value.

So, what is your CEO probably doing – facing the investors and the customer expectations? He/she asks the board members to help sales to achieve profitable growth objectives. How does that look like from a sales perspective? Marketing teams drive programs to generate leads for sales. Portfolio teams drive programs to push certain products, solutions or offerings to be sold, normally driven by profitability or capability reasons. A variety of teams generate and publish sales content and tools. Training teams offer different sales trainings, HR teams offer skills and competency programs, sales operations also drives programs on sales performance, on strategic accounts, etc.

What’s the common design point of all these initiatives? The inside-out view. Many of our current processes, approaches and methodologies are more or less „all about us“, they are designed to „push“ based on the vendor’s portfolio, capabilities and geographies.

Now, let’s talk about the customer! The customers have changed the way they are solving their problems and the way they are buying, right? Customers are processing up to seventy percent of their problem-solving process without vendors, because all the facts and figures are available online.

What do customers expect from vendors, especially from strategic partners and trusted advisers? They expect to have valuable conversations which means they expect that sales people are NOT talking about their company, their products and their services. They expect that sales people add value, focus on solving the customer’s problems and challenges and on driving the customer’s business outcomes. So, valuable conversations have to be meaningful, in context, relevant and focused on the current state along the customer’s journey.

Where are we? We are in the middle of the selling-system, often still designed inside-out. But our customers require sales people who are thinking and acting in an outside-in manner – that means a lot of stress to prepare valuable sales conversations, within an inside-out system…

The sales conversation is THE critical point, that’s where all messages have to be tailored exactly to the customer’s role and responsibility, to their current stage along their problem-solving process, that’s where all the complexity has to be reduced towards a clear problem-solving approach which adds value to the customer. In other words, the complexity of both worlds, the vendors and the customer’s world, has to be managed and reduced to a meaningful conversation with valuable messages.

Is that all about content and trainings? No, definitely not. First of all, it’s about the whole sales model, the selling strategies, the account segmentation, the different growth strategies within different account segments, it’s about efficient resource allocation according to these account growth strategies and to the different engagement models – and then… it’s about content, skills and trainings.

So, there is room for improvement, right? That’s exactly the role for strategic sales enablement professionals. The selling system’s performance could be much better regarding efficiency and growth, our both pillars for strategic and holistic sales enablement.

First of all, explain the whole problem, always covering efficiency and growth, use a few examples where your organization currently does not do “more with less” according to the senior executives you are talking to. If you have the possibility to present for a few moments – before you will be interrupted – you will create light bulb moments!

Then, the most important challenge is mastered – you will have senior executive sponsors!

After that, continue with the what and the how, the definition of your sales enablement function and how you want to run the function or the program and how you want to measure it.
Next light bulb moments will follow, because you are addressing the problems described before.

What are your experiences on how to evolve sales enablement to a strategic and holistic topic?

What are your lessons learned?
I’m looking forward to learn more about your stories!

 

Valuable research:

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/using_forresters_simple_framework_to_gain_traction/q/id/60994/t/2

 

Posted in Sales Enablement, Sales Enablement Challenges, Sales Enablement Definition | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments