Sales Enablement 101: Treat Salespeople Like Customers

Author’s Note: This blog originally appeared last week on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog.

For more than two decades, I’ve made my livelihood supporting salespeople. Twenty-five years ago, I was known as the product manager who could be counted on to launch products and provide salespeople the tools they needed to find, cultivate and close deals in the shortest possible time-frame. They sold my stuff because they knew I’d make sure they knew theirs. Salespeople don’t like to look stupid, and they don’t have time to waste.

I’ve always fundamentally believed that your salesperson is your first and most important customer. As such, when I think about enabling sales, I think about employing many of the same strategies used to engage customers. In fact, sales enablement professionals can learn a lot from their demand gen colleagues.

 Nurturing Sales

The true test of sales enablement success is measured in sales performance, not only in dollars, but also by how salespeople perform across each stage of a selling cycle. That means crossing pre-defined checkpoints efficiently and effectively, leveraging resources and removing obstacles along the way.

Much has been documented recently about mapping sales tools to selling stages to ensure content coverage. (That’s something we’ve done for years.) But one thing many organizations have yet to recognize is the similarity in this process with the one used to acquire customers. In fact, the strategies we use to nurture prospects along a defined path are directly applicable to how we enable salespeople in complex selling environments.  And by applying some of the same methods, marketers can monitor and move specific solution areas into top-of-mind positions across specific types of sellers, and based on organizational goals.

The graphic below shows a typical buyer’s journey from awareness through repurchase stages. The top section represents marketer stages and the bottom section represents seller stages.

 Consider a customer acquisition strategy that might include:

• Prospect segmentation
• The development of target personas
• Sliced and diced databases
• Testing and measurement plans
• The development of multi-tiered messages and multi-touch strategies, such as those involving social media, direct mail, telemarketing, and events
• And more

Then compare it to a typical sales enablement effort where sellers are blasted by the sales tool fire hose at time of product/solution launch. The tools are created using a “one-size-fits-all” approach to playbooks, battlecards and scripted presentations (for example) without regard for the type of seller they are, their role in the sales process, the other things they also sell or the level of product/solution knowledge expected. That’s like sending every campaign element to a prospect in a “one and done” blast and expecting them to buy.

While many organizations are just beginning their sales enablement journey, more mature ones realize that the days of one-size-fits-all enablement are gone. And, such strategies as seller segmentation and seller nurturing are as important to the enablement process as buyer segmentation and lead nurturing are to the customer acquisition process.

 Some questions to ask yourself:

• Have you established a sales enablement program?
• Do you have documented processes and best practices in place?
• Have you mapped your sales enablement assets across your organization’s documented sales process?
• Have you worked directly with sales to understand what your sellers need and want?
• Does your organization have different types of sellers performing different roles in the process? If so, do you tailor enablement tools specific to their role?
• Do you provide sellers with a suite of enablement tools at solution launch, or disseminate tools over time?
• What mindshare tactics do you use to keep solution information fresh for sellers?
• How many different forms of media or different types of venues have you used to provide information to sellers?
• Are your demand gen campaigns synchronized with the conversations sellers are having with prospects?
• Do you track tool usage and retire unwanted or underutilized assets?

Because sales enablement is a new discipline within most companies, building best practices can be a challenge. (In fact, there are more than 1,600 sales enablement positions open right now.) Remember that some of the best sales enablement talent could be right down the hall in the demand gen department.

 What’s your formula for enabling sales?

SiriusDecisions 2011 Summit Review: Marketers are “Siriusly” Hungry

Okay, I admit it − I was poolside one hour after I arrived at the beautiful Fairmont Scottsdale Resort. I smeared on the SPF 45, ordered the resort’s signature margarita and began reading my Summit registration packet.

Let’s face it − we’ve all been to dozens of conferences where the host suggests that if we leave with two new ideas and meet a couple of like-minded peers, we’ve had a successful trip. At first glance, this conference was going to be no different. The longer I sat in the glorious Arizona sunshine, the more I decided that I’d be perfectly willing to sacrifice a couple of keynotes, sessions and tracks for some much needed R&R. So I promised myself that as soon as the conference lost my attention, I would return to the south pool.

I never made it back. Not only did the conference keep my attention, it turned out to be one of the best events I’ve attended in years for quality of content, attendee interest/interaction and for building post-conference momentum.

SiriusDecisions couldn’t be more right when they describe their world as “the place where sales and marketing meet.” Every keynote paired marketing and sales execs who presented how they overcame the challenges associated with aligning their two organizations toward supporting sales and driving increased revenues. Every track reinforced this aligned strategy with analyst perspectives on best practices in demand gen, product marketing, sales process and sales and channel enablement − each followed by practical, proven examples of success.

Most relevant to my world was Marisa Kopec and Joe Galvin’s session on sales enablement, since that’s what we do. In the most attended breakout session of the conference, the duo together shared the nuts and bolts of an effective sales enablement practice. The statistic that hit home for many (and confirmed via live polling) was the fact that the greatest inhibitor to an organization’s sales force achieving quota was their inability to communicate value messages. The need for customer-focused/value-based messaging and content has never been greater, but alongside that need comes the requirement to map those messages to suitable points and conversations in the buyer’s journey − carried forth not only by sellers, but also via various other customer touch-points. This is one area where many organizations continue to struggle. (PS – We do that, too.)

And by the way, this is one of the slides the Kopec/Galvin team presented:

It seems to me Sales Enablement is another place where marketing and sales meet. I’m just sayin’…

I left the Summit with more than a renewed sense of purpose and a full bottle of SPF 45. The next few years are going to be tons of fun as marketing and sales continue to align and sales enablement practices flourish.

Eyes Wide Open After Forrester Conference

Forrester’s Technology Sales Enablement Forum last week in San Francisco was a real eye-opener for me. As someone who has dedicated more than two decades of my professional life to sales enablement (long before the term existed,) I was encouraged to see a quality turnout for Forrester’s inaugural event.

Sales enablement is not for wimps. And while it may be reported as the top initiative facing CMOs this year, it’s not a passing whim. Sales enablement is real, it’s complex and it’s going to force organizations to rethink how they staff and what they produce.

Forrester Principal Analyst Scott Santucci presented an outcome selling — a go-to-market approach where you design your value communications system to optimize the value your customers realize — strategy as a way to deliver on buyers’ need for results.  It seems to me companies have been trying to get their sellers to focus on results for years. For example, I remember meeting with one of our very first clients, nearly 19 years ago now, who was complaining that their salespeople were pushing product. They didn’t understand how to solve business problems, sell solutions or present results. Ina recent meeting with (completely new people at) that very same client, they still had the exact same complaint.

So, is sales enablement just today’s fix to satisfy an age-old problem?  That’s the eye-opener part for me.  By jove, we may have figured this out! A successful sales enablement initiative requires a business process change authorized and executed from the executive layer.  Anything less will remain random acts of sales enablement (another Santucci term).

Oh, and yes, Santucci’s right about the outcome selling strategy. He and his colleagues talked a lot about “muscle memory” and the need to help organizations overcome entrenched behavior. If I can speak with the same marketing organization over the course of twenty years and listen to the same complaint about seller behavior, I would suggest that the problem isn’t only a sales problem–it’s a messaging problem. Organizations need to rethink how they build and deliver messages and content across buyer- and seller-facing outlets.  (PS – that’s what we do.)

Bottom line? It’s a great time to be living in my sales enablement bubble. The next few years are going to be tons of fun. And if you plan to play, you better bring your A game.

Are your sales people “buying” your sales enablement program?

Sales enablement is taking center stage in most marketing organizations–and with good reason. Companies realize that, despite truly unique and compelling differentiation, people ultimately buy from people. So, making sure your salespeople can cut the mustard in front of prospects and customers is critically important…not only to gain the trust needed to close a sale, but to build loyalty and keep customers for life.

I belong to a LinkedIn group called the Sales Enablement Leader Exchange. One of the discussions you’ll find there is a rolling conversation where people define their interpretation of sales enablement. Dozens of responses produce definitions that reinforce how we’ve sufficiently diluted the term to a placeholder for all the things that don’t fit nicely into a traditional corporate infrastructure. It’s a system. It’s a process. It’s a commitment. Etc. 

Even though the term resists a single definition, we can safely agree that sales enablement is about building efficiency (sell faster) and effectiveness (sell more).  Fundamentally, it’s about delivering content to a salesperson at the right time/context of a sales process. And when they receive this content, they know what to do with it.

The right content at the right time to an able body who can then deliver it through conversation.

Interestingly enough and despite all the focus, the benefactors of many sales enablement programs (that would be the salespeople) are frustrated. They are watching their employers invest in people, process and technologies that take all of their company’s existing collateral and training tools, and populate them into enterprise class content delivery systems. They’ve invested in automation, often without assessing the actual process itself.

First rule of process automation: Don’t automate a process that isn’t proven successful.  The result of breaking the first rule: Garbage in, garbage out.

We recently completed a client engagement where we interviewed their top 50 salespeople and identified commonalities in how they leverage resources throughout their successful selling processes.  We categorized content assets into valuable, could be valuable with improvement, and unnecessary. And, we identified gaps in the portfolio. We then created a content architecture that ensured right-time delivery via whatever delivery model they chose.

Because of our 18-year history in sales enablement (which pre-dates the term itself), we also were engaged to create all missing assets and improve that which could be salvaged. After three months of effort, we were able to launch to the various sales organizations (in the form of a playbook) a documented and proven methodology for successfully carrying a prospect to a sale…complete with proof points from their peers. It remains the gold standard for this company today. Similar efforts are happening in organizations that are actively engaging key salespeople in the creation and definition of their enablement programs.  If your salespeople aren’t buying your sales enablement program, you’re not in business.