The good news is the Sales Enablement appears to be a real thing.  Ten years from now we’re all going to be able to say that we were pioneers.  Or at least that’s the way it plays out in my head.  But in between now and then we have some real challenges.  It’s always the case when you’re blazing new trails – the one in front has to swing the machete.  So how do we clear a navigable path while saving some energy to enjoy the destination when we get there?

At the last SalesCraft event in June, we were fortunate to be joined by Joe Galvin of Sirius Decisions.

Joe is a passionate thought leader in the area of sales enablement and arguably years ahead of the rest of us when it comes to seeing what’s possible.

Joe brought out the fire hose and we all struggled to take notes. The room was immersed in the possibilities of what sales enablement could deliver to our organizations, why it was important and where to start.

Here are a few key points from Joe’s talk.

• Evolving Requirements – The knowledge required to be a salesperson in today’s environment is constantly changing.  Acquisitions, product enhancements, and competitive threats all contribute to a constantly changing environment.  At some point, it is too hard to keep up, so many salespeople will stop trying and simply stick with what they already know.  A real challenge when you’re acquiring new companies or introducing new products.
• Digestibility – Marketing becomes so intent on getting their message to the Field, that in order to capture mindshare, they create more content and repeat it in various forms.  The Field is in “content overload” and they lose their ability to digest it all.
• Sophisticated Buyers – Thanks to the ready availability of information, buyers know a lot more than they used to when contacting sales for the first time.  When they are ready to engage, they expect an informed, knowledgeable salesperson.  Sales needs to be able to meet them where they are if an effective meeting is going to take place.
• Measuring Productivity is Key– More calls of higher quality is the goal. Drive towards delivering more active opportunities, increased conversions, and higher close rates.  Revenue performance is relative, but tied to too many external variables.

What Does a Sales Executive Think About Sales Enablement?

If you’re lucky it’s just now hitting their radar.  They want their teams “enabled”, but what does that mean?  This is the challenge before you – to help the sales executives at your company to see sales enablement as mission critical.  And you’re going to have to define it for them.  What is it? How is it different?  How do you get from where you are to where you want to be?  And what about funding?

What is the Vision?

When all is said and done, what are you building?  The goal is a robust, flexible, innovative enablement strategy that takes into account your company’s goals and objectives, growth strategy and culture.  Equally important is a plan that is modern, scalable and integrated.  Enablement encompasses training, communication, leadership, motivation, and development.  Integration among these components is key to enablement.

The real goal is to enable sales to have customer conversations that are relevant and even revolutionary for the customer while ultimately being financially impactful to your business.

Translation, Packaging and Gate-Keeping

As a sales enablement professional, you play a very unique role.  Essentially, you sit at the intersection point between Marketing and Sales.  It may not feel like the safest place to be, but try to think of it as an adventure.  The whole company wants to get to the sales team. For sales enablement to work, they have to go through you.  It’s your job to represent their interests in a responsible, effective manner and package information in a way the field can use it, and deliver it to a customer.

Milestones

Sales enablement utopia is not going to happen overnight.  It’s going to take awhile, probably longer than you would like; so pace yourself.  And since this is unchartered territory, how do you know if you’re heading in the right direction?

Enablement 1.0

• Establish a Leadership Platform – Your executive team is key to enablement success.  People crave leadership and enablement cannot happen unless your enablement efforts are aligned to leadership objectives.
• Cleanup Communications – Everyone communicates, right?  Exactly.  And everyone in your company wants to communicate with your sales team.  It all becomes white noise very quickly.  Streamline and up-level your field communications.  The focus needs to be on the audience.  Remove vanity projects.
• Invest in Technology – Technology plays a significant role in enablement.  Some combination of audio, video, HTML, Sharepoint, etc. will factor into your enablement strategy.  It should be flexible and provide options to support the message and the audience.  Invest in foundational technology early and make sure that it is flexible enough to meet your needs over time.
• Emphasize On Boarding – If there is one aspect of training that is critical, it’s getting new hires ramped up and productive quickly.
• Solidify a Sales Methodology – Which one doesn’t matter.  Pick one, stick with it and reinforce it.  Most of your reps have a favorite – pick that one.  Don’t over invest, but be consistent and commit.
• Align with Kickoff – Kickoff should be a year long experience.  Use Kickoff to set the stage for the year and reinforce the objectives throughout the year.

Enablement 2.0

• Specialize by Audience – The Field is more than Sales, right?  It includes technical teams, channel folks and more.  Their needs are unique from Sales.
• Line Managers – Target them as your extended enablement team.  Through them you reach the sales team.  They want to help their teams and do the right thing.  Help them, help you.
• Content Strategy – This is where less is more, governance and a “bill of materials” comes into play.  It’s also the point where you need to move beyond the subject matter experts creating their own strategy for content to a uniform, consistent approach that is consumable for Sales.
• Mobile – Your salespeople live on their iPhones and Blackberries, some are even toting around iPads.  Emphasize mobile access for all of your deliverables.
• Video – Video is becoming huge and it needs to be simpler than it has in the past.  Get your leaders and experts camera-ready and figure out how to use a flipcam and edit on your laptop.
• Be Prescriptive – Bucket enablement into what they must know, extra credit and on demand.  Be clear that’s what you’re doing.  They will appreciate it.
• Differentiate Between Global and Local – What needs to happen at headquarters versus what is better executed in region?  Define it and facilitate strong relationships with the regional teams.  They are critical to your success.

Enablement 3.0

When you get to 3.0 please call me, I would love to talk to you.

Executive Buy-In

No matter what stage of Sales Enablement you’re in, you need buy-in from sales leadership.  Paint a vision for them and ask for permission to pilot enablement efforts.  Metrics are key, but stay focused on higher-level performance numbers.

Permission From Marketing

Enablement is a partnership with Marketing.  Avoid setting it up as a competition.  Marketing teams may see enablement efforts as treading on their turf.  Emphasize their role as experts and yours as translators.  Find out where they’re frustrated and offer to help.  Engage them early in the process. Be sure to close the loop so they feel they’re getting something out of the partnership.

Emphasize Process

While there is a lot of art in sales enablement, be sure to build process into the mix.  Think about the quantity of people involved on both sides.  Defined processes will facilitate communication, provide air cover and force you to think through scalability.

Low-Hanging Fruit

Get started today by shutting down worldwide distribution aliases; put together a communication plan for your senior executive and invest in a technology platform.  Create a “family” of deliverables and launch them under a unified them or naming convention.  Consolidate wherever possible, kill vanity projects.

Whether you see yourself as a trailblazer or not, you are definitely mapping new territory.  Most of the people I’ve met through SalesCraft are passionate about what they do and that makes all of the challenges worthwhile.  The blueprint for sales enablement will be refined many times as we all figure this out over the next few years, but before you know it every sales executive will take it for granted that a strong sales enablement effort is critical to success.

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